One Week

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" - Alfred Lord Tennyson (Ulysses)

A few weeks ago I rented a movie entitled "One Week" which tells the story of a man in his mid-twenties who is diagnosed with cancer and given the news that he may have as little as one week to live. Being presented with this news, the man buys a motorcycle, sheds the safety and security of his established life and embarks upon a trip west in search of something bigger. The closing minutes of the film ask aloud the question upon which the movie is based; what would you do if you knew you only had one day, one week, one month to live?

Even while I am not faced with any life threatening diseases, as the credits scrolled down the tv I could not help but try to answer that question. What things in life would take on greater importance? Which things would matter less? Watching one week unearthed questions that I have asked myself for sometime, questions to which, to the best of my knowledge, there exists no one right answer. Playing in the backyard as a kid after supper during a long summer evening, I looked up from the game we were playing at that time to catch a glimpse of the last moments of the sunset. The sun, following its westward path, dipped below the horizon leaving me staring at the red sky it had left behind. I can remember thinking as I sat staring at the western horizon where the sun had just been, that you can never go back. The sunset that I had just witnessed was now gone, a moment in time that could not be returned to, swept away by the incessant forward march of time. While to most adults this is an accepted fact of life, to the younger me this simple realization would forever change how I viewed the world around me. Walking away from that sunset left me with a sense of urgency, I had to make the most of every given moment before it was gone. Even simple things like driving to the local convenience store for candy took on a new importance. I feared that if I failed to make the most of each trip to the store, each afternoon at the beach, each day in general, they would quietly slip into the past, never being experiencing to their full potential, like the sunsets that I had taken for granted prior to that point.

As the years past, and more time was stacked between me and that sunset, the urgency that I felt then was largely forgotten, pushed to the back of my mind by the routine of daily life. Shutting off the tv after having finished watching one week, I again felt that familiar urgency I first experienced as a kid. This time though, the feeling of urgency was accompanied by a feeling of not knowing what to do with it. I had direction, but not destination. For a few days after returning one week to the video store, I analysed each day as it came and went; had I made the best of today? Some days I was unsure, worried that perhaps I hadn't. The thing about worrying however is that while it does focus our attention on the traps in life that we can all fall victim to, it does little to help us avoid them. I have a clipping from a magazine that I keep on top of my dresser that reads- "Your position in relation to other objects in the universe directly affects your perception of the universe. If things haven't been going your way recently, maybe you should try a different view" It would seem that while I was in search of my elusive "days lived to the fullest" the problem lay not so much in how I lived the days themselves, but rather, in how I viewed them.

"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin." - Grace Hansen

Masters of the Sky

I close the door quietly behind me, trying not to wake my parents who were sleeping down the hall. The cool night air greets me as I jump off the back step, it's scent a mixture of that of freshly cut grass and salt air carried by a north wind from the bay. It is quiet tonight, the road empty of the traffic typical of summer weekend evenings. I head east to the neighbour's garage beside which our community's mailboxes sit and with a quick look around to confirm the coast clear, I hoist myself on top of the mailboxes, and pull myself up onto the roof of the adjacent garage. From here you can see the lights on the other side of the bay, blinking in the distance. I lay my head back on the peak of the roof of the garage and focus my gaze upwards. Somewhere above the low rumble of a jet engine cuts through the silence. It's blinking strobe lights give the eastbound flight's position away against the backdrop of a starry sky.
I imagined the crew of this particular flight, sitting in the dim light of the cockpit, guiding their aircraft toward some destination on the other side of the Atlantic. In my mind I had built those who fly these aircraft up to be almost superhuman in their abilities. All knowing and unerring; they were the masters of the sky.
Upon moving west to learn how to fly, it was this benchmark that I figured the crew of the eastbound flight sat upon, and that I set out to achieve for myself. There were the inevitable setbacks and strokes of luck that mark the progression of many pilots and looking back now I admit that I was anything but a natural. While there were many examples around me of those who seemed happy to settle for average, I was fortunate to have a select few who pushed themselves, and sometimes unknowingly, me with them, to a higher standard. They were instructors and students, co-workers, captains and first officers. Their reasons for striving for perfection may have been quite different from my own, but that was of little consequence.
One such captain recently told me that a well rounded pilot is a combination of skill, knowledge and attitude, brought together in the correct proportions. Like the loaf of bread mom baked during my childhood that could have saw a productive life as something more adept at scrubbing dishes than being eaten, missing an ingredient, or adding a particular one in incorrect proportions can make all the difference. Fortunately for those who do not come standard equipped with these key ingredients, as it has been said in the past, it is in the trying that we get there.

City Airport Slated to Close

"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change" - John A. Simone Sr.

In a decision made yesterday, city council voted 10 to 3 in favor of a gradual closure of the City Centre Airport, starting with the dismantling of Runway 16/34 which could begin as early as next year. The remaining Runway 12/30 and the infrastructure located on the west side of the airport would see a similar fate at a later date to be determined by city council. According to the motion, the final closing date of the airport would be set at a time when council requires the land in order to meet its development goals.

"Eventually, we'll have to set an end date," said Mayor Stephen Mandel. "It's not an immediate closure. It's not going to happen in the morning."

In response to the decision, Councillor Tony Caterina, one of the three councillors who voted against closing the airport, voiced concerns on the decision itself, and the means by which the airport is planned to be closed;

"It leaves a lot of people hanging on both sides, which is exactly what we didn't want to do and I think the most critical part about this is that we've sent a message .... Edmonton council has sent a message to the rest of Alberta and into the Territories that we are not concerned about their concerns," Caterina said Wednesday.

Those who operate out of the east side of the airport, among them the Alberta Government, Transport Canada, Airco and the RCMP, would be the first to feel the impact of the closure of Runway 16/34 and the accompanying infrastructure. Some may choose to relocate to the west side of the airport for the remainder of time which it will remain open, although, with the seeming inevitability of a complete airport closure, one could only guess that east-side airport tenants would be cool to the idea of moving to the west side, only to have to move again at a later date.

Aside from the uncertainty this decision has created for the company which I fly for and the implications it makes of the fate of my co-workers and myself, I find the rush to develop the land occupied by the airport while undeveloped lots sit empty in the area surrounding the downtown, disappointing. With both sides having put out their share of propaganda, now that the decision has been made we can only hope that the benefits of closing the airport that, to some, looked enticing on paper match evenly the reality we will all soon be faced with and that those benefits will serve Edmonton as a whole, not just those who sit on City Council.