all or nothing?

Lets rewind. Back in 1995, long before scrapbooking was a thing, I started a Nothing Book – it was grade 10.

Page 1: This book represents my life. Things that I have experienced and people I know. It was made for no reason but to remind me of some good times and to show other generations ahead the life of a youth in the nineties. … Lets just say Angela Chase was my spirit animal…

Grade ten was the beginning of high school. Amanda had recently moved to Hudson, Quebec and Sarah, Georgina and I spent a lot less time in Waverley and much more time exploring Bedford and Halifax making new friends and trying new things. We wrote a ton of letters to Amanda and and recorded every detail of our lives in our books. The Halifax music scene was strong and we spent almost every weekend pining after boys in bands at Café Olé. There were a lot of mix tapes, road trips, beach nights and rides on the 80 (bus) downtown.

So what’s inside my Nothing Book? Everything:

Every day of the summers of 1996 and 1997 are summarized
Every movie stub and Café Olé ticket were saved
Lists!!! A bucket list like: buy and drink my own big gulp
Our list of nameless but well identified boys (skater boy, green coat boy, downtown boy + 60 more)
Minute-by-minute details of our two trips to Quebec to visit Amanda during the summer
Concert tickets – Sloan, Inbreds, Super Friendz, Backstreet Boys, The Tragically Hip, Rheostatics, Barenaked Ladies, Chixdiggit, Plum Tree, Violent Femmes, U2, Thrush Hermit, Our Lady Peace, Ben Harper, Cake and Jello Biafra
Detailed descriptions of big events (the G7 summit, the Buskers, road tripping to Moncton to (not) see the Inbreds, PEI cottage adventures, hotel parties, Sarah’s car accident, leaving high school, leaving Halifax, first year at University)
Accounts of spontaneous nights like dancing in a circle with Sloan and the Barenaked Ladies during a Danko Jones set at Halifax on Music
Fan pages for Elvis Stojko, My So-Called Life and Dave Foley
Movie reviews : Grease vs. Grease 2 / Alive / Anything featuring Christian Slater or Ethan Hawke
Ashes of the grade 11 chemistry periodic table of elements (literally!)
A tribute to Tim Hortons and our coffee cup shrine (464 cups saved and then burned at a sacred campfire)
High school : Clippings from the Pickle Jar (student-run school zine), Root Beer Fest, Drama Fest and how things went down when we got caught skipping
Mentionings of Eagle’s Rock, the tracks and late night road trips to Martinique Beach
Emails, letters and a lot of notes
My drivers test and beginners license plus a full description of what went down at Has Driving School
Song lyrics to REM (with this note included: “The first visit to Hudson, we decided to figure out the words to What’s The Frequency Kenneth. Our second trip we advanced to this song It’s the End of the World As We Know It. A bigger challenge but with new technology we went into the NET and found the real lyrics…
A ticket of every single metro stop in Montreal that I visited in one day
The menu to Wong’s Cuisine at the Cock N Bull Pub on Ste-Catherine Street, Montreal
And then a few blank pages at the end where I abruptly stopped writing. It was the end of first year at Concordia, I left residence and turned 19.

It breaks my heart but makes me so happy.

We had a lot of fun and despite how embarrassing some of it is to read, we had one hell of a good time. On Saturday night, the four of us got together over dinner and a bottle of wine. We read from our letters and books, listened to mix tapes and laughed a lot. It was the best. Thanks guys. xo.“Mental note: Never forget Corey Feswick”