Book immortalizes long-running skatepark ministry
WINNIPEG, MB—A new photo book celebrates Youth for Christ's Edge Skate Park ministry.
Released last month, The Edge 125 Pacific Avenue features more than 250 black and white photos on 128 pages. The photos feature young skateboarders, Edge volunteers and employees, as well as graffiti artwork from the time the ministry spent in an old machine shop on Pacific Avenue from 1994 until it moved to its current location in the new YFC building on King Street.
Matt Joudrey, a former pro in-line skater and volunteer at the Edge, designed the book, wrote most of the text and published it through At Bay Press, a publishing house he is involved with.
Local filmmaker Tyler Funk is creating a documentary about the Edge. Joudrey says that as the documentary was being made and Edge staff and volunteers realized how many photographs they had lying around, the idea for a book came about.
"The book is meant to represent an accurate portrayal of the Edge and its 17 years at 125
Pacific Avenue, and to represent a very unique counterculture and a very unique building and the patrons who went there," explains Joudrey.
"It's amazing that [such a] unique place is the longest-running indoor skatepark in Canada—and it just happens to be in Winnipeg, and it just happens to be run by YFC, a Christian organization, and it just happens to have people who want to work there and keep making it happen."
In the foreword to the book, Cliff Heide writes that he hopes the book will take people back to the time the Edge spent on Pacific Avenue.
"Remember those late night sessions, the dust, the tricks, and the friendships," Heide writes. "Let it help you remember how we all survived so many winters doing what we loved. And let it give you hope that the Edge will continue on doing what it always has in a new spot on 333 King Street, just with a different flavour."
The Edge 125 Pacific Avenue retails for $15.99 and is available at McNally Robinson as well as through www.atbaypress.com. The release date for the documentary film about the Edge is still to be announced.
Dear Readers:
ChristianWeek relies on your generous support. please take a minute and donate to help give voice to stories that inform, encourage and inspire.
Donations of $20 or more will receive a charitable receipt.Thank you, from Christianweek.
