"The Floor"

A comic strip about my old house

I have something a bit different to share today - an old comic about the house where I grew up.

I’ve been thinking about that house, and here’s why. For a few years, I’ve been collaborating with local journalism outlet The Sprawl, and recently we’ve started making zines about Calgary (the city where I live). You can check out those zines here! For the latest one, I wrote about the neighbourhood where I grew up, Scarboro. And in the zine, I mentioned my old house.

I realized that this wasn’t the first time I drew and wrote about that house. Back in 2003, I wrote a comic strip about it (also meant to be a printed mini-comic/zine, funnily enough). It was called "The Floor.”

Why did I decide to write about the floor in my family’s house? I had heard that the wonderful indie comics artist/writer David Lasky (check out his Patreon here) was working on a project that had something to do with minimalist comics. I tried to think of a subject that would work for a very simple, bare-bones comic. The first thing that came to my mind was an image of the floor of my old family home. I ended up not writing a minimalist comic, but I did write a story about the floor.

On the title page, I wrote that it was a “fable,” but I don’t think that’s really accurate. It’s just a story from the past. A story that folks who grew up in boom-and-bust Alberta, like me, might be able to relate to.

Despite the economic crash of the early eighties, it was a happy house to grow up in. (By the way, the song lyrics mentioned in the comic are from a song by Calgary ‘90s band The Dudes.)

When I was looking around my basement, I found this picture I drew of the view from my bedroom window (of the house next door!), in 1988.

Here are two pictures I found of the house in 1990. A couple of years later, it was painted green (an improvement on the grey-brown in the photo!).

The Last Christmas at 502

In 2002, we had one last family Christmas at the house, before it was sold. Back in those days, I often made Christmas cards with my own artwork, and that year, I thought I’d paint the house. It wasn’t until after the painting was done, that a friend of mine pointed out to me that the house in the picture looked empty and sad. She was right. That’s how I was feeling about saying goodbye to the house.

The house is still there today, though - not green anymore (and looking pretty different than it used to look), but hopefully still a place where another happy family is enjoying it!

To end this post on a happier note, here’s another Christmas card painting from around the same time: this one’s of my dad singing Christmas carols as he walked along our street with a bunch of carolling Scarboro neighbours. One of many happy memories of my time in that neighbourhood!

Wishing you happy times, wherever you are! And I promise to post more Bob Dylan comics soon.