Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

Canada Day
(or It Is Now Time To Make It Unclear or Running Back to Saskatoon or Do You Really Want A Thug Or Do You Want Love? or This Is The End or The Workers Are Going Home or Dear John or I Love The Way You Run Your Mouth Baby or Say What You Want But Keep Your Lips Sealed or A Man Get Paper But He Don't Live Right or Lord, I Miss You or Why Deny The Obvious Child?)
by Kent Bruyneel, Editor-In-Chief (Retired)

1. On Wednesday June 4th, 2003, I was offered and accepted the position of editor of the esteemed and inimitable Grain Magazine. At exactly the same time, I resigned from the position of editor of Internet daredevil and CanLit darling, Forget.

2 On Commercial Drive, the food stuffs collide with the pot smell and everywhere there is darting. Everywhere there are kings and salesman and signs backing bids. There are no closed spaces, no colours too brown to see; there are a million jumping people, up and down from 18th to Hastings. Closing your eyes does no good. The sound you hear is Canadian. The faces are the citizens of home.

3. I am looking for a place in downtown Saskatoon within sprinting distance of the Bessborough Hotel. In this I require very little: ceilings from 11-18 feet high, no more than three doors, and power outlets everywhere. (Because... Forget is not dead, it comes with me (and M-Do and Sparky and Miki and Shyla and whoever) and it does not like doors. However, Forget will no longer be accepting unsolicited submissions.) Definitely no more than four doors.

4. At Rocky Point Park the trees and the ice cream shops throw shadows on the parking lots and bike paths lined with all the people of the world. But there are few places free from cars in Vancouver and this is not one of them. Still you can find some solace in the fact that the people leave their cars for awhile and skate and walk around. So much water towers over us all, like the mountains, and we are so splendidly unaware. Like remembering how beautiful the Canadian flag truly is, because today you see it fluttering from both sides of a Pontiac Grand Am just settling now into the last spot in the last lot at Rocky Point. Be sure that whichever way the Olympic decision goes this morning, Vancouver will have more cars and more parking lots. More pavement.

5. For the record: Forget has published approximately 350 pieces by approximately 100 different authors; it is read in fifteen countries and has a mailing list of approximately 5000 people. For the record since the start I have had five girlfriends, two broken hearts, been in five weddings, held ten to fifteen hands and cried at least a dozen times. Probably more. All of these things, the 350 articles, the five girlfriends, the 100 authors, the fifteen hands will be here—online and in my memory—-forever. Or as long as I don't die.

6. I smoked a cigarette on the deck with my laptop and my imagination racing. It was blue for the sky. It was trees and the smells of the suburbs and wanting more than anything to appreciate what I had, the chances I have been given. The moments that run right by you the fastest are the moments you should remember and never forget. Sure, I was always doubting the structure of this deck, this backyard, this memory. But doubt is part of the revelation too. Doubt is beautiful.

7. Forget will publish special projects from here on in. It will do so absent any further editorial leadership from your humble servant. (The best examples of what a special project might be are a) the book and b) The 31 Days of Kelly Gruber (Yeah, both will be finished eventually. Yeah.) ).

8. Don't hold your breath. Ever.

9. I have never in my life waved a flag of any sort. Not once. But Canadian television is fantastic. Man I am so fucking hooked on Temptation Island, the reruns on the Life Network (it seems less dirty watching it in rerun). Before that my father and I watched Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles. It was the best Canada Day in years.

10. The one immediate change under way at Grain is that e-mail shall now and hereon be known as email.

11. It is always coldest near the windows.

12. You should subscribe to Grain.

13. Thank you.

Kent Bruyneel. C'mon and kick me.