Writer chooses pen over boring tort
For want of a clear direction after he finished an MA in English at McGill University and nudged by a girlfriend, Andrew Pyper enrolled in law school. He knew the legal profession wasn't for him six months after he started. But, "being a good Protestant" he finished what he started. When The Porcupine's Quill published his first collection of short stories half way through his articling year, he veered off his chosen path onto the ramp marked Writers, This Way.

        "The arrival of my book was commensurate with my deep unhappiness as a lawyer," remembers the 29-year-old writer-in-residence at Champlain College.

        That was in 1996. Now, he is tutoring would-be scribblers and polishing the first draft of his first novel.

        The one-year residency at Trent reinforces his sense that he made the right decision to say goodbye to a law career. He'd tested the waters long before as a freshman at McGill when the University of Waterloo's New Quarterly printed his short story, Call Roxanne. It was a "tremendously validating kind of moment" and the "first step to taking myself seriously as a writer." After Kiss Me, his collection of 13 short stories, came out in 1996, he expected little fanfare. But in short order, the Ontario Arts Council gave him a grant, Maclean's magazine fingered him as one of 100 Canadians to watch and Berton House in Dawson City invited him to be writer-in-residence over the summer. Now he's ensconced in the guest suite at Champlain College. "Everything flowed" from the publication of his book. Though he earns pocket money writing book reviews and essays for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and other major newspapers, he feels "lucky to not have to labor at a day job and fit writing into evenings and weekends."

        The working title of his novel-in-progress is Lost Girls, a novel about the reaction of a mid-northern community to the murder of two young girls. "It's based on a composite of all too frequent events in North America," including the Paul Barnardo murders which "got me thinking about the potential for tremendous violence in a sanitized, white collar world."

         As writer-in-residence, Pyper is also available to talk to students about their own writing projects. He is offering seminars about the mechanics of creative writing every second Wednesday at 7 p.m. (Call 742-2378 to confirm dates.) "It's the way you say it, not what you are saying that's important," he says.

        Pyper is also organizing two evenings -- one per term -- of authors reading. The first on Nov. 17 explores the theme Is There A Canadian Comic Writing Tradition? It will feature novelist Russell Smith reading from his forthcoming Noise in Champlain College senior common room at 8 p.m. Smith won a Governor General's Award in 1994 for his first novel, How Insensitive. Pyper will also read from Kiss Me. It will be a reunion of sorts. Smith and Pyper were included in Maclean's list of 100 Canadians to watch and share the same publisher, Erin-based The Porcupine's Quill. The theme of the second term evening might focus on young urban writers, says Pyper.

Honors for engineer of Faryon Bridge
Morden Yolles, the engineer who designed and built Faryon Bridge, will receive a 1997 Toronto Arts Foundation award for architecture and design at a ceremony today.

        The award includes a three-minute profile celebrating his work, which includes the atrium at BCE Place in Toronto. Yolles is distinguished among engineers for his concern about esthetics.

        He was particularly proud of the Faryon Bridge, says foundation director Gregory Nixon. The supporting concrete beams of the bridge twist 90 degrees between the base and the arc, an unusually complicated design called a hyperbolic paraboloid.

        Yolles was also a pioneer in the use of concrete. He was the first in Canada to build with a rubble aggregate -- a combination of concrete and pebbles -- used to build Champlain College. (Yale University was the first in North America to use the material.)

Faryon Bridge