From the Editor Suzanne Boyd
YES, the Bryan Adams anthem isa sure fire party starter and favourite hotweather jam, but the song’s sunny nostalgia-tinged exuberance resonates on a deeper level, and it’s little wonder. Five decades on, the events of 1969 are still reverberating, their collective aftershock an inflection point in our culture that still influences how we see and define ourselves today. In “It Was 50 Years Ago Today” (page 44), we delve into three of the most seismic happenings of that year – the moon landing, the Stonewall riots and that little festival called Woodstock – a triumvirate that neatly sums up our yearning for the exploration of the unknown, self-determination and freedom. It’s the human need to be a part of something greater than ourselves.
Profound syner
gies abound, and these are the type of topics fit for weighty tomes, and by all means pick up one, if that’s your poison. But summer is the time of self-indulgent, transporting books for leisure and pleasure, so there is no time like the present to introduce Zed – The Zoomer Book Club. We are, for obvious reasons, partial to the last letter of the alphabet, but this new entity is also meant to be the source for all your bookish desires, from A to ... well, you get it. Get reading with us in “Summertime and the Readin’ Is Easy” (page 56). A book that I would welcome to my library den (above) is The Caesar: 50 Years, 50 Stories. It contains recipes from luminaries such as Dan Aykroyd and Jason Priestley, who give their own twists on the classic created by Calgarian restaurateur Walter Chell in 1969. He innovated the American Bloody Mary with a somewhat divisive choice of clamato juice. Yes, they say tomato, we say clamato. We’re Canadians, darn it, and I say cheers to that!