Living in rural Saskatchewan we did not have cable and as a result the day I watched television was Saturdays.
My brothers and I would be up at 6 a.m. to watch cartoons and then the TV would be off until Hockey Night in Canada in the evening.
In between cartoons and hockey my dad would often drive us into the city to go to the Regina Book Exchange. It was one of my favourite special treats to visit the dusty old shop and flip through the used books and comics.
We literally filled a box with enough reading material to get us through until the following week.
My father and I would be in there for hours flipping through tattered old paperbacks and yellowed comic books.
He would be looking for his Ken Follett or Tom Clancy novels while I would be looking for any spy novels or Lord of the Rings. If I was lucky I would uncover a Tintin book I did not already have.
After navigating through the shelves of paperbacks we would make our way to the comic section where he would look for Sgt. Rock, Weird War Tales, Jonah Hex or The Unknown Soldier while I would dive into the piles trying to find a new Spiderman, X-Men or Alpha Flight.
Archie comics were not allowed in our house.
The only rule my dad had was we could not buy any new comics or books — we brought back last week’s box and exchanged them for different old ones.
After our shopping spree I could not wait to get home, find a quiet spot in the house and dig into my box of literary treasure.
Wolverine was not exactly Mark Twain or Jules Verne, but it planted a love of reading I still carry today. I have graduated to novels now, but to be honest Tintin and Spiderman are still on my bookshelf.
