{"id":232,"date":"2015-01-29T12:43:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T17:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?p=232"},"modified":"2017-06-15T13:18:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T17:18:38","slug":"quarrels-with-our-past-selves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"“Quarrels with our past selves”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past weekend Link Byfield, my former boss at the Alberta Report<\/em>, passed away. I remembered him in a previous entry here,<\/a> after his illness was publicly announced. My former colleague Colby Cosh now does the honors:<\/p>\n

Jan. 26, 2015, Colby Cosh in Maclean’s<\/em>: R.I.P., Link Byfield<\/a><\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/p>\n

My impression is that Link had spent his early twenties knocking around Western Canada taking drugs: I don\u2019t know if you could call him a dealer, but I gathered he had not exactly been averse to a quick profit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some people might be surprised by this but it wasn’t any big secret. I recall one day walking into Link’s office wearing a tee-shirt with the logo of the Marion Hotel on the front. A friend had bought this for me as a souvenir after a couple of pitchers of beer in said bar during a recent trip to Winnipeg. Link noticed the shirt and broke out laughing. “Where did you get that?” he bellowed. He had a expressive face and with a gigantic smile\u2014when he was telling a story about something he thought was funny, preposterous, or both, he’d lean back on his chair, pull his chin back, show a good amount of teeth and squint his eyes\u2014he explained that in his misguided youth he had served part of a community service sentence for drug possession working in the Marion Hotel bar. I was able to commiserate because in my misguided youth, I told him, at age 21 in fact, I had been busted for drunk driving and served part of my community service working in the bar at a Royal Canadian Legion. (I’m pretty sure I should insert a joke here about the Canadian justice system, but for some reason I’m lost for humor at the moment.)<\/p>\n

Here is the quote-worthy end of Colby’s article:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Ted Byfield\u2019s great secret: he\u2019s a hippie, only with the opposite polarity.<\/p>\n

Some of his children, including Link, spent time as real hippies. They found that it didn\u2019t add up, that the tethers of order and family and work had value after all. It makes you wonder how much of what we call our ideology arises from circumstance, or even emerges from quarrels with our past selves. I wish I could go back and have a long chat with Link about it over two coffees and a messy desk\u2014his or mine would do equally well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past weekend Link Byfield, my former boss at the Alberta Report, passed away. I remembered him in a previous entry here, after his illness was publicly announced. My former colleague Colby Cosh now does the honors: Jan. 26, 2015, Colby Cosh in Maclean’s: R.I.P., Link Byfield Excerpt: My impression is that Link had spent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Q4T3-3K","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":192,"url":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?p=192","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":0},"title":"More memories","author":"Kevin Steel","date":"January 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"My friend Kevin Grace (aka The Ambler n.b. updates pending), after seeing the picture posted below of Paul W. and Davis S. in the Alberta Report newsroom, asked if I had any other photos from that era. I do. They are pretty random. I've just now scanned a bunch and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Memoir"","block_context":{"text":"Memoir","link":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?cat=11"},"img":{"alt_text":"Carmen Wittmeier 1 - 72","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yusipka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Carmen-Wittmeier-1-72-215x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":377,"url":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?p=377","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":1},"title":"Math blame, from general to the specific","author":"Kevin Steel","date":"June 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This article by David Staples in the Edmonton Journal, about dropping math test scores here in Alberta has kicked up some dust locally. Everyone is pointing to something called Discovery Math, which I don\u2019t know much about, and trying to figure out who to blame for implementing it 20 years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linking, not thinking"","block_context":{"text":"Linking, not thinking","link":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yusipka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/cropped-yusipka-site-icon-72-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":39,"url":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?p=39","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":2},"title":"Link’s chair","author":"Kevin Steel","date":"September 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"My apologies for not having a better picture of the above. Scratch that. I should apologize for even posting this picture because it's not the photo I wanted to use. Truth be told, I don't have the photo I want. That would be picture of Link Byfield, my old boss\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Memoir"","block_context":{"text":"Memoir","link":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/?cat=11"},"img":{"alt_text":"links chair","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yusipka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/links-chair-1024x692.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yusipka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}