top) christmas this year was awesome. my mum's side of the family went down to see my parents in boston. a bunch of great stuff happened, including the exchange of redneck fishing/hunting patterned camouflaged shirts. the boys dressed up in them with mesh-back caps and chugged beer. best family christmas ever, real ivy league shit.

middle) this picture was from a walk i went on with my mum, dad, sister, aunt, and cousins. we went to the coast just north of boston. i really didn't want to fall down these rocks and into the atlantic on jesus's birthday.

bottom) god bless america.

sausage fest 2011, haliburton, on. i flew back to ontario in november to see my friends, drink beer, and eat meat. i hope to be able to continue this tradition with my friends for many years to come.

top) me in the bush after an epic atv ride. photo credit, tom weatherburn. tom and i got stuck a bunch of times. correction, i did, tom had to help me get out. the ride was too much to stop and take pictures, but we documented our survival after we made it off of the swampy trails and onto real roads.

middle) taken on a hike with some of the best people i know.

bottom) allister campbell, alex ross, and tom hoddes.

gravelbourg, sk.

i went here with the basketball team i coach. really nice town, tons of history, hugely rooted in religion and a prime example of how conservative the province is. the whole town shuts down by 8 p.m.. no joke. i tried to find a place to take my team and eat after our last game. we couldn't find anything. we went to the restaurant, but they told us they had just closed their kitchen, this was at 8:03 p.m.. we went back to the school where the tournament was hosted, they had two pizzas, the pizzas were burger buns with melted processed cheese, no sauce, no meat, scratch that. we went to the ice rink where we heard there was a hockey game being played, the whole town was there, they had a canteen, the canteen was open, but they had no money or food in order to conduct business. eventually we ordered food to go from real little / the only bar in town, patrons: 2. i got food poisoning.

before the food poisoning kicked into full effect i took these photos on a shitty little camera i have.

top) saskatchewan mural art, one of my favorite characteristics of every small town.

second from top) my motel. i checked in with a kid working the desk. he was in the seventh grade, he was dutch, his family moved to gravelbourg and bought this motel. while checking in he wasn't sure if the room he assigned me was occupied he ran outside in the snow in his socks, and came back complaining how cold his feet were, there was nobody else even staying in the motel. i have no idea why he did this, but he made me laugh. i sarcastically asked him where the pool was and what time the continental breakfast was, he didn't understand. i laughed some more.

middle) the town is considered a cultural gem, it is a french community and home of the saskatchewan liquor control board. there is real beauty in the craftsmanship of these buildings resting in this little "nowhere" town. this is a sculpture outside of the amazingly crafted catholic cathedral, the priest/figure is louis-pierre gravel.

second from bottom) the cathedral in the distance looking down main street. middle of a saturday, nobody around. there was one teenage boy joyriding, and doing fishtails through town. nobody stopped him.

bottom) this was an old convent, it has since turned community college. from what i could tell it seemed pretty abandoned and may comment on how quiet and still of a town gravelbourg is. gravelbourgh is a little portal into the past.

yellow grass is a real dive of a town. i want to live there.

one time i was driving through and was hoping to buy gas. they have a pump in the town, but you need to be local and have a key to unlock it, only then can you get gas. you also need to cross your fingers and hope there is actually gas to pump. needless to say i didn't fill up, but i took some pictures of the town. people in small town rural saskatchewan love it when i take pictures of their homes, their favorite part is my ontario license plates. canada is a great country, and canadians believe this, but not all canadians believe that the rest of canada is great.

yellow grass is the site of the highest recorded temperature in canada.

top) trailer made from the back of a pickup.

second from top) seafoam green is a common color for little war time houses out in the prairies.

middle) certain shitboxes of houses seem so perfect to live in. i would truly enjoy living in a creaky old home that is rocked by the wind traveling across the flat land of saskatchewan.

second from bottom) a faded, but close enough to seafoam green to make my previous comment about seafoam green houses on the prairies reign true. this place was also pretty cool because they kept their treadmill on the front lawn in the winter.

bottom) this is the main road of the town, and it actually just runs to an end and into a wheat field. yellow grass.