“Meeting Gudrun Peel” is an excerpt from The Education of Aubrey McKee, a novel to be published in 2024 by Biblioasis. The second in a multi-part series, the book details Aubrey’s arrival in Toronto as a young adult.
remnants
what is this country of young men
from kingston london edmonton?
all their dreams & friends
seem like old routines
done over again
this one from montreal
so splendid & tall
an exquisite doll
decked out for a fall
another from newfoundland
singer in a noise rock band
the very model of a man
in love with his brand
there’s always another
waiting to greet you
happy to meet you
all set to complete you
– gudrun peel
OTIS JONES was prophetic, kinetic, eclectic – one of the more fashionable madmen of the scene – and the only person in my acquaintance who’d published a book of poetry. He was from Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, a wake-and-bake pothead, a wavy-haired giant, a slapdash oddity, and the kind of dude who might be growing a beard or shaving his head or falling in love in a Yukon bookstore. I met him tree-planting in the sundry foughten fields of British Columbia and he told me to look him up if I was ever in Toronto. So there I was on Bloor Street West, at the outset of my adult life, watching Otis Jones in rubber boots approach along the sidewalk. He wore a plaid shirt,
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As a screenwriter and story editor, Alex Pugsley has worked on over 185 produced episodes of television, writing for performers such as Lauren Ash, Mark McKinney, Dan Aykroyd, and Michael Cera, and for such series as Hudson & Rex, The Eleventh Hour, Life with Derek, and Heartland. Recently, he wrote and directed the feature film Dirty Singles which won for him the Irving Avrich Emerging Filmmaker Award at TIFF. Following the publication of his first novel, Aubrey McKee, he was named one of CBC’s 2020 Writers to Watch. His first story collection, Shimmer, was published last year by Biblioasis.