Wayne Arthurson > Quotes

“We stood at the edge of the farmer's field, squinting even though it was overcast. That's part of life on the Prairies. When the sky is more than two-thirds of your existence, there's no choice but to squint, even on an overcast day.”
― Wayne Arthurson, Fall from Grace

“I took in the open barrenness of the landscape and wondered what compelled people, any kind of people, to settle in a place where the prominent colors were brown, gray, and white; where the growing season was barely one quarter of the year; and the length and breadth of the land was dwarfed by the immensity of the sky. The eternally optimistic, that's who, because only people with a totally optimistic worldview would look at this seemingly dead countryside and figure that it would be a great place to build a life, start a family, and/or create a civilization.

Then again, maybe they were seduced by the seemingly constant sunlight. This day may have been overcast, but that was an anomaly. For the most part, sunshine was the norm, even during those bitterly cold days when the light lasted less than the average workday and the cold could kill you if you weren't prepared. But maybe they knew that; maybe they understood that even in the dead of winter there would be light, yes, diffused to a constant orange glow because of the sharp angle of the sun, but light nevertheless. And that was enough to stay.”
― Wayne Arthurson, Fall from Grace

“My trip home took me north along 101st Street up to 104th Avenue where I cut through a large open lot where the old railway used to run toward my neighborhood. From there I headed west along 105th, behind Grant MacEwan College and its concrete towers, until I got to my house, which was located in a neighborhood officially called Central MacDougall.

However, over a series of years, it had been given a series of informal names based on the immigrants who lived there at the time. It had been called Little Saigon in the seventies and eighties because of the Southeast Asian boat people fleeing the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Those folks had moved, and in the past ten years or so they had been replaced by refugees fleeing African wars in Ethiopi, the Sudan, Somalia, and like. The new name was now Little Mogadishu or, more informally, Kush.”
― Wayne Arthurson

“Casinos were nothing new for Edmonton. Outside of Nevada, the city had more gambling space per capita than any other city in North America, a fact that some people in the chamber of commerce liked to celebrate, while others didn’t.”
― Wayne Arthurson, Fall from Grace

“It was six o’clock by the time I was outside, but it was already dark. Typical for late fall. The days were getting shorter and shorter, the arc of the sun getting lower in the south sky and the shadows longer. In a few more weeks it would be dark by four and by the time Christmas rolled around, we’d only be getting seven hours of daylight, not a lot for the most part, but at least the sun would be shining. People new to the city always commented on that. Even though winter was cold and the days were short, the sun shone most of the time. And the sharper angle changed the wavelength of its light to the warmer reds and oranges, so even the color of the air would change.”
― Wayne Arthurson, Fall from Grace