Calgary Through the eyes of writers

The historic Alexandra School in Inglewood, a stone's throw from the Bow River pathway evoked in Shirley Black's personal essay. Since 1981, this building has been home to the Alexandra Writers' Centre Society, a pillar of the local writing scene. Calgary writer and lifelong Inglewood resident, Shirley Black, along with Michael Fay, was one of its founders. (Photo: Calgary Public Library)

Sophie is a fixture on the Inglewood pathway. She collects empties from her regular customers and loads them into a Safeway cart, along with the occasional discarded treasure people put out with the trash. Sophie always stops to talk.

There is the rattle of her cart coming down the lane. I kneel lower, dig deeper, trying to make a hole big enough to crawl into although I’m just transplanting perennials.

It’s not that I don’t like Sophie. She simply talks so much. I know nothing of her life in Calgary, where she lives, whether she’s married. Yet I know all about her former life in New York City. The big apple, she calls it, where she and her ex-husband, the rat, performed magic shows.

“We were so good we entertained in all the big venues,” she said. “Even Carnegie Hall.”

Shirley Black, “Under the Bridge,” Freshwater Pearls: Thirty Years of Inspiring Writers (Recliner Books, 2011)