My first (and so far only) published work had to do with the Olympics. It was February 1994. The winter Olympics in Lillehammer had just begun, and several news stories were on TV about how, 10 years earlier, the Winter Olympics were in Sarajevo. The media was finding it delightfully ironic how this former Olympic host city was now in the middle of a heated war zone. After watching a few of these reports, I felt inspired. I dug out my notepad, and wrote an essay about how much war sucks and wouldn’t it be cool if one day the only battles were the friendly ones for Olympic gold. In November of 1994, my English teacher gave the assignment to write something for the Remembrance Day ceremonies. The winner would get to read it at the ceremonies. Rather than write a lame poem like most of my classmates, I just went and dug out my essay. But I added the clarifying line, “I wrote this a few months back.” I presented it to the class, my English teacher loved it, and I read it at the ceremonies. Then, my English teacher faxed it to the Edmonton Journal, and it ran in the Journal’s Remembrance Day insert.