Poet for Our Times

Like many people, I’ve taken to going for long walks during the lockdown. Today I buy a Fanta at the gas station near our Calgary condo, and when I step outside again, a painfully thin man astride a BMX bike asks if I have a cigarette (I don’t). I cross busy Fourteenth Street, with its loud traffic having stubbornly returned, and after just a few steps on the other side I am swallowed by the green quiet of Mount Royal. The change is dramatic. I put one earbud in to listen to a podcast, leave the other out to hear the birdsong. This old, affluent neighbourhood was originally known as American Hill, but around 1910 it rechristened itself after the Montreal mountain, out of loyalty to the Dominion. After about an hour, my route past silent mansions, under enormous poplar trees, through wide avenues and park after park after park takes me to a lookout over downtown, dominated by the cross-hatched, obsidian gleam of the Bow Tower. I linger for a few minutes, with dog walkers and...