Author: Mark Wihak
-
In the footsteps of Celine and Jesse
There are films that place walking at the heart of the story. Two favourites that feature characters on foot are Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), in which the main characters Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) get to know one another while walking around nocturnal Vienna, and Before Sunset (2004), when the two characters…
-
I’m walkin’ here!
If you’ve walked in a North American city, there’s a good chance you’ve witnessed and/or experienced something similar to that of Ratso and Joe in Midnight Cowboy – a driver makes a right hand turn without looking for pedestrians. In Canada, there are an average of 300 pedestrian fatalities every year, and thousands of injuries…
-
Ken Wilson – Pedestrian
It was such a pleasure to talk with Ken (aka Dr. Ken Wilson). I’ve known Ken for a couple decades and I have seen how walking has become a vital and creative component of his life. He’s been very generous in sharing the sources of his walking knowledge, and introduced me to a range of…
-
Walking The Bypass
Congratulations to Ken Wilson on the public launch of Walking The Bypass, published by University of Regina Press. Ken’s book evolved from a series of walks he took during the pandemic lockdown, and in its manuscript form Ken received the City of Regina Writing Award in 2022. Dan Piepenbring writes about Walking The Bypass in…
-
The marketing of 10,000 steps
We walk for a variety of reasons: transportation, exploration, contemplation. Over the past decade there has been a lot of attention paid to walking as a form of exercise, and the idea that one needed to complete 10,000 steps a day to get a worthwhile health benefit; Reddit’s walking forums are full of anxious posts…
-
Laura Pfeifer – Pedestrian
I really enjoyed talking with Laura about her passion for cities and walking. I first met Laura around 2010 at a Jane’s Walk, which Laura brought to Regina and organised even after she moved away from the city. Laura’s Regina Urban Ecology blog and related activities, which ran from 2009-2015, documented really interesting discussions and…
-
Johnny Strides
Johnny Strides is the handle of John Hicks, who’s been posting videos of his walks – mostly in Toronto but elsewhere as well – since before the COVID pandemic. His YouTube channel has thousands of videos and he’s adding more on a daily basis. In an interview with Spacing Magazine in 2024 he said “I…
-
Flânerie
I was first introduced to the word flâneur and the ideas behind it in grad school. In learning about it, I realised in many ways flânerie described behaviour I’d be pursuing for some time: leisurely strolling through cities, observing the variety of activities an urban environment offers. It’s one of the things I most enjoy…
-
Walking across Britain (from your sofa)
The Canadian province of Saskatchewan – where Project Pedestrian originates – is 651,036 square kilometres, with a human population just north of 1.2 million. The island of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) is 209,331 square kilometres, with a human population just over 65.5 million. Perhaps this explains why there are so many British TV shows devoted…
-
Tasha Alexson – Pedestrian
I met Tash a couple years ago when she took an introductory filmmaking course I was teaching. In that class she made a lovely short film that really captured the sense of a flâneuse, a woman exploring a city on foot. When I started working on Project Pedestrian, I knew Tash was one of the…
Project Pedestrian 