While some Canadian authors are able to write full-time, others subsidize their art in ways that don’t involve the written word. In this e-mail recently sent to NeWest staff, Rick Ranson describes his nonliterary professional activities:

Today was an especially glorious day. I worked at the North End Water Treatment Plant – the sewage department. My job was to dismantle two stacks that were rotting away from all the – wait for it – dry sewage.

My partner, Lloyd, and I took two cutting torches and proceeded to slice away portions of these two stacks filled with human waste. When I say ‘human waste,’ I mean it in the nicest way possible. It’s been processed, de-watered, mixed with gas, and finally burnt (hence he stacks). Unfortunately, over time, those pesky little molecules of waste-dust settled in he bottom of the two stacks, getting stuck. Because of this, they are now high mounds of perfectly round piles of dung.

The natural updraft in the building meant that the disturbed dust was sucked past our faces, the heavier particles then settling back down on us. It was like standing in a slowspinning shower of dry waste all day long. The company gave us brand new cover-alls, new gloves, and respirators with chemical filters. By the end of the day, we had to throw everything away.

Right in the middle of the worst part of the day, when the waste-dust was so thick I could barely see my companion four feet away, I shouted through my respirator: ‘Hey Lloyd! Do you know that I’m a published author?!’

For more adventures by Rick Ranson, our raconteur-in-residence, pick up a copy of Paddling South: Winnipeg to New Orleans by Canoe .