RAVEN: The House That Joe Built
It was 1986. A year of superb vintage—an Inukshuk in my palace of memory. In the days when we all wore big shoulder pads and sported Lady Di wings, 1986 was a year that really had legs, both for me personally and for Canada, too.
Over the Christmas break, I’d joined my family on Vancouver Island in the log house they were building. I had become obsessed with all things Japan, from art and culture to sushi and language, and decided I had to live there. I was four months into a gruelling Japanese language post-grad university program in Edmonton (where tires do freeze), but this was now the second-coldest winter in living memory (aren’t they all?) and my cup of stoic determination was just about at the dregs.
I suppose it was
