Kendall Defoe
Bio
Teacher, reader, writer, dreamer... I am a college instructor who cannot stop letting his thoughts end up on the page. No AI. No Fake Work. It's all me...
And I did this:
Stories (824)
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Montréal, Strikes and Me
Here we go again... On June 2nd, the STM voted to go on strike for nine days, running from June 9th to the 17th. It will not be a total shutdown of the public transit system of my adopted hometown of Montréal, Quebec. Only certain hours of the day will see the buses and metro closed to the public, but still does not make it easier for the average commuter to plan their day-to-day activities...
By Kendall Defoe 7 months ago in Journal
Nothing but Something
Here is the link to the challenge: “The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.” I wrote that down and I knew that I had to because I had my red pen that always went with the reporter’s pad that said, “Reporter’s Pad” right on the front. It is the same red colour as the pen and I know that I can make notes now even if this is very strange and I do not like this place and there is no carpet here and I wonder if I am going to be in trouble because I did not show up for lunch and I am not hungry so should I worry.
By Kendall Defoe 7 months ago in Horror
Contested. Top Story - June 2025.
And here I go again... June is here, and with it my yearly entry into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)'s Poetry Contest. They also have ones for Non-Fiction and Short Stories, but I think most wistfully over the one devoted to poetry. First, the deadlines are always the same, this one coming just as summer is about to begin (one of the coldest days in Montréal, but still). Second, I feel like I do my best work at the end of the semester with the pressure of term work and grading taken away and placed on someone else's back.
By Kendall Defoe 8 months ago in Writers
The Effin' Life
Now this was an effin’ great book! There is so much about this memoir that I want to share with you, but let’s get some basics out of the way: I am a fan. It was not always a guarantee that I would love the best Canadian rock and roll group of all time (and is that hyperbole?). I was born in the inner city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to working-class immigrant parents from the Caribbean. A rock and roll group that wrote songs about a future where music would become illegal and titled certain tracks as “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” or “Solar Federation” would not be popular with a generation devoted to soca, zouk and kompa (look those up). It was not until we moved to the suburbs that I discovered that the older brothers of the boys in the schoolyard – always the boys only – had copies of the best years of Rush.
By Kendall Defoe 8 months ago in Geeks
Running Man Press
It was a dark and rainy day... Okay, apologies over the whole 'It was a dark and stormy night' cliché, but I discovered over the Victoria Day weekend that one of my stories became front page news in a journal called the Running Man Press. The interesting thing is that I had almost forgotten that I had written and submitted the piece (the editor who said that he would inform me of the date of publication never contacted me about the issue). I have also discovered that it is not available online (the page I found advertised how to submit, the fact that they only print 5000 copies per issues - a smart idea, I think - and that they have many wonderful t-shirts and other doodads available to support their cause).
By Kendall Defoe 8 months ago in Writers
Yuge. Top Story - May 2025.
My former Americans, Over the last two years, I have tried to make this country…well, you already know that, don’t you. All those hats and flags and t-shirts and the other things you do to show that you really believe in what that great nation can be… Could be… Would be…
By Kendall Defoe 8 months ago in Journal
Come On In...We're Hoping
I had no intention of writing this piece. Another semester is down; I have ongoing contracts, exhaustion, and my summer of scrounging for money to cover the bills I will have to handle. I know that there will be no real break for me until mid-June, and I am trying to enjoy any spare time without staring at a news crawl or wondering if Canada will ever have a team holding Lord Stanley’s finest silverware. And to save money, I have been using libraries, secondhand bookstores, and the occasional Livre-Service box (thank you, Montreal). One of the interesting things about those boxes is that I have often found things in them that could not be mistaken for a book: t-shirts, pens, pencils, highlighters, magazines, newspapers, videotapes (!), and even the occasional DVD. This past week, I found Merchant and Ivory’s “The Bostonians,” not a film that I would bother with, but it is physical media and the creation of a pair of filmmakers whom I admire. And then I made the mistake of bringing it home, opening up the case, and noting where that movie originated.
By Kendall Defoe 8 months ago in BookClub
