Category Archives: Alienated Youth is My Drink

The last we saw in the Alienated Youth is My Drink series, our Deb-lost-in-a-milltown narrator was Debutante Ball-bound (Part Sept).  In Part Huit, I wrote about my workshop many years later with Frank McCourt and how I’d omitted from the … Continue reading →

I guess one of the things that drew me to Tanya is that she talked about the stuff that no one else was saying.  Instead of just enduring the racism of milltown, she called it out.  If she had a … Continue reading →

(This story starts with the post “Alienated Youth is My Drink“) House hunting in milltown had been a debacle. I’m guessing in retrospect that my parents must have had a somewhat limited budget as they still owned our city house, … Continue reading →

So, the stage was set perfectly for my double life to begin. During the week, I was in milltown with Shirley, Marlene, Tanya, and Bruce, preparing to do Storybook Theatre for the children of union workers, mill managers, shopkeepers, grocery … Continue reading →

Tanya had not so much friends as “cases,” people who exemplified a certain cause, people who were moving targets in milltown. Shirley, Tanya’s best friend, was Asian and working class; her parents owned Wong’s Diner in the middle of the … Continue reading →

Drama class became my haven in mill town. After Tanya and Shirley took me under their protective wing, I’d gone in a short span of time from trembling and pathetic to nearly bad ass as everyone in the class was … Continue reading →

I don’t want to say Tanya was the first smart kid I met. I knew plenty of smart kids back at my city school. Kids who aced physics tests and math exams, who’d go onto be lawyers, valedictorians and engineers. … Continue reading →

Without revealing myself as an utter snob, I will say simply I did not see kids I wanted to hang out with as I surveyed the parking lot of Nanaimo District Secondary School, chock full of beat up trucks and … Continue reading →

It seems like writers’ biographies inevitably must include some period of childhood misery, alienation and isolation. They were always sick as children, or locked in their rooms or, something even further afield, like the young Jerzy Kozinski wondering through war … Continue reading →