It is like fishing. They are never there until you don’t have a hook in the water. I am speaking, of course, about stories which are like fish because they nourish our lives and equally important they keep me employed, which I like very much.
Cameraman Geoff Fontes and I are our in the fishing boat with rubber tires cruising the back alleys and main streets with the camera ready and we ain’t finding nothin’.
Wait, there’s potential. A guy in his van is trying to get into an underground parking lot but the van is just a smidge too high. Maybe he’s going to try to squeeze in. I jump out. Geoff parks and gets the camera.
We know great stories can start with a tiny incident. Maybe the driver has measured the opening and knows he can do it even though it looks like he can’t. Then he will tell us “where there’s a will there is a way.” I will ignore his cliché and he will be an inspiration.
I am thinking that maybe he has no choice and will do it somehow. I am hoping something amazing is going to happen.
Then he backs up and drives away.
I will be strong. We will fish somewhere else.
Two hours later we still have found nothing. I am getting weak. I pray the phone does not ring from the office saying they need the camera somewhere else.
We see little kids watching a construction site. No. They are in a day care and we cannot take their pictures. We see guys moving a dock around Granville Island. No, “we are just moving a doc, and besides, we’re finished.”
All the while Geoff is getting pages about buildings burning in Tennessee and police stand offs in California. He belongs to some kind of emergency notification network that tells you about disasters of the world. He has even modified it so that he hears only of fatalities where at least two are deceased. Except for that he is a cheerful guy.
We see a city worker standing by a front end loader with a flat tire. Have you ever seen a front end loader with a flat? Fascinating. The city repair truck comes and two guys get out to fix it.
There must be something interesting about changing tires on front end loaders, I say.
“Nope,” they say. “We just change it.”
At last we see some kids throwing rocks on Trout Lakes, which is frozen. The rocks make tweeting and chirping sounds. That is wonderful. And then we meet a grandfather who is willing to carry home a chunk of ice for his grandson whose little hands are cold. That is beautiful. And the grandfather says it is his job to make the impossible become real for his grandson. That is even more beautiful. I am happy. We have caught a prize.
Then I go to edit with Jamie Forsythe who works out of one of the microwave trucks, which is really a mobile broadcast centre where he is able to edit and send live reports to the newsroom.
He is parked next to Science World. When I get there we both see a homeless man nearby who has piled up his blankets over his shopping carts and crawled inside his flimsy shelter right next to the giant shinny silver ball that contains the wonders of the world. His tiny home looks so out of place.
We go to work and Jamie edits, meaning he puts the pictures together that makes the story look good, and I write about the frozen pond. We finish and it is nearly 6 p.m. and we get out of the truck. And there, surrounding the homeless man’s shelter a group of young women are exercising.
They have put their exercise mats on the ground in a circle around his cart and they are skipping ropes, and then doing pushups and sit ups. The women all look healthy and fit and are under the guidance of a trainer who is telling them how to get more reps and hops and how to build their abs while the homeless man is peeking out through the blankets. The women are close enough so that when they stretch out their legs some of them touch the cart.
It is a living story of contrasts, of rich and poor, of separate worlds and of oblivion to one of those worlds. Jamie has an emergency camera, but as he gets it out the women are just finishing their body building. They roll up their mats, tuck away their water bottles, and jog away. The cart covered with blankets remains alone.
It would have been a beautiful story of how we actually live. But it got away.
Then again, there’s always tomorrow.
Mike
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