July 26, 2009
The Tragically Hip at Shelburne Museum
All four Martins had a great time at Shelburne Museum this evening. The Tragically Hip were excellent, as usual, and the setting was a wonderful place to see a concert. It's always kind of a surreal experience seeing The Hip here in Vermont because, although tonight's gig was sold out, the venues and crowds are vastly smaller than what one would find in Canada. So, it always feels like a special treat getting to see them in such an intimate venue.
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May 28, 2009
Tim Hortons Nation
This blog's in hibernation mode until I get my book done, but couldn't resist stopping in to talk about coffee and donuts...
This story on a recent survey on Canadians' taste for Tim Hortons is interesting and is probably something that's bound to come up in this fall's freshman seminar "From Pucks to Parliament: Exploring Canadian Culture."
Now, if only I could convince someone in Vermont to open a Tim Hortons, something I promise to do if I ever win the lottery.
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March 2, 2009
Save Radio 3
Although we don't know for sure what kinds of cuts we'll be seeing at CBC over the next few months, it sounds like cuts are imminent. The mere mention of the potential elimination of CBC Radio 3 by one of the heads of the CBC sent shockwaves through Canada's music scene this past week.
As a Canadian living outside of the country these days, CBC Radio 3 is a lifeline to Canada's music scene. More importantly -- and I speak as a music fan, a scholar and teacher of Canadian culture, and a former musician -- Radio 3 has changed the face of the independent music scene in Canada, allowing people around the world to learn about great Canadian bands and artists to whom they would otherwise never be exposed. CBC Radio 3 makes a contribution to Canadian culture nationally and internationally that far exceeds the investment put in by CBC.
Radio 3 has also been at the cutting edge of podcasting and internet broadcasting for years now and really broke new ground for the CBC. The importance of this cannot be underestimated either. If CBC Radio wants to continue to be seen as current and cutting edge, eliminating CBC Radio 3 would almost guarantee that they would never be thought of in this way again for a long time. Radio 3 really is the success story that the CBC should be looking at as a model for other parts of their operations.
Whether you are a regular listener to Radio 3 or not (if you're not, you should be!!), please take a minute and sign this petition.
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February 23, 2009
Freedom to Read Week
It's Freedom to Read Week in Canada this week. It's interesting to take a look at their list of challenged books to see how many of Canadian literature's most canonical texts are on that list, including Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, Timothy Findley's The Wars, and Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women. Censorship at all levels is an ongoing issue. Just this past year, as discussed on this blog, there was a challenge to the presence of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale on the high school curriculum in Ontario.
It's important for us all to speak out against such challenges when they occur, but also to pay attention to the quieter forms of censorship such as when certain books are simply not ordered for school libraries (perhaps we should start protesting when certain books aren't on the shelves!) or even when teachers avoid putting particular books on the syllabus because they don't feel equipped (or paid enough) to handle the reactions that might ensue.
If you start to look through the documented cases of people trying to have particular books pulled from the shelves, you might find your anger and disbelief occasionally turn to laughter. As I was reading through a list of such cases that I found on the Freedom to Read website, I came across this entry:
Gill, John (ed.). New American and Canadian Poetry.
1994—The school board in Sechelt (BC), responding to a parental complaint, removed
this book from student use in Chatelech Secondary School.
Cause of objection—Anthology was said to present an anti-establishment view and to
present sex and four-letter words in a positive light.
Update—The school board decided, following a review, that the book should remain in
the library. The sole copy has since been stolen and not replaced.
These complaints all sound ridiculous to most people and it's easy to dismiss them. But we also cannot be complacent. Our authors deserve to be defended from such actions by all of us. So, the next time you hear of a complaint like this in your town, make sure to call up the school board or library to voice your support for keeping those works on the shelves. And, maybe plan on stopping by the library at a later date just to make sure that book hasn't mysteriously disappeared.
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December 18, 2008
Canada rocks
A good article online here from Intelligent Life about the recent rise of Canada as a musical force to be reckoned with. One only needs to start listening to CBC Radio 3 to discover just how much amazing music is coming out of Canada these days.
Speaking of discoveries, my favourite new Canadian band is called Rural Alberta Advantage. They put out a terrific album this year called Hometowns. Pick it up. You will not be disappointed. You can find an interview with them here on emusic.com, where you can download their album if you're a subscriber.
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October 6, 2008
Another historic vote for Canadians
Canadians, it's time for another important vote. Election? What election? I'm talking about Canada's Hockey Anthem Challenge!
I think many of us were skeptical about the whole contest, but the finalists are all pretty good and it really got Canadians' attention. Kudos to all of you who submitted something for that contest.
Make sure to vote soon. I think voting closes on Tuesday. Personally, my vote goes to Colin Oberst's entry. How can you go wrong with someone from Edmonton? The Edmonton Journal has a nice story today about Oberst, who teaches a grade 5/6 class in Beaumont.
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September 23, 2008
Cuts to Culture in Canada
As I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, the Conservative Party is likely a bit surprised at the vastly negative reaction across Canada to the cuts they made recently to cultural industries and artists.
It's been really great to see how artists and cultural organizations have rallied to show Canadians exactly why these cuts are so potentially detrimental to our cultural (and fiscal) well-being. This latest piece on YouTube, though not safe for some workplaces or family ears, gets to the heart of the politically motivated cuts to vibrant and successful programs such as the one that supports Canadian artists touring abroad. It's a brilliant and scathing critique.
(There's also a YouTube version with English subtitles. One of the big parts of the joke is that the song is about "une phoque," which in English means a seal. 'tit is short for petit)
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September 9, 2008
Speaking of contests
I'm not usually much of a fan of Canadian Idol, and even less so of American Idol, but I've been really taken by Canadian Idol this season. They've had a ton of great contestants and it's now down to the final two. One of the things I enjoyed about this season is that most of the finalists are also musicians and that we've seen lots of the contestants this year playing their instruments. Canadian Idol doesn't really have much, if any, of the cheesy showmanship we find on its American counterpart. The band is also much more front and centre than we see in the US show which, as a musician, I love to see.
My favourites this year have included Mookie Morris (check him out doing Valerie and Magic Carpet Ride), Earl Stevenson (who did a completely memorable version of With a Little Help from my Friends), Amberly Thiessen (she got voted out too early, but did a beautiful version of Redemption Song that stuck with me for days, as did her vesion of Everything I Own), and Theo Tams (he's had very few performances that didn't work, but his best include Collide, Heaven, and You Had Me, when he surprised everyone by finally stepping away from the piano).
Stevenson, Thiessen, and Tams are all from Alberta (go Alberta!) and so I think that split the vote a bit among the Alberta voters and gave Thiessen in particular an earlier exit than she deserved. In any case, I think we'll be seeing a lot more to come from at least two or three of these people. As for the final result goes, I don't see how it can't be Theo who wins. He's been great.
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May 22, 2008
Let the Finals begin!
I'm really looking forward to the Finals this year. Go Penguins!
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March 10, 2008
Things I love about Alberta
I was roused from my depression about the latest election results in Alberta this week by my friends Richard and Richard who sent me a link to this hot news story from the homeland:
OTTAWA (AFP) - The town of Vulcan, hidden among oil wells, wheat fields and cow pastures of western Canada, is aiming to host the world premiere of the latest Star Trek movie, a spokeswoman said Friday.
[. . .] To capitalize on Star Trek tourism, since 1993 town councilors have donned Starfleet uniforms while conducting municipal business, couples have been married here in themed weddings and one man, who never lived in Vulcan, even chose to be buried in the town cemetery with a planetary "Federation" logo for a tombstone.
To prepare its proposal to host the Star Trek movie premiere, Dickens said she inquired with fellow small town Springfield, Vermont about their experience hosting "The Simpsons" movie premiere last summer.
Riverside, Iowa and Linlithgow, Scotland, the future birthplaces of series characters Captain Kirk and Mr. Scott, were invited to participate in the film launch festivities too.
"There are some logistical issues," Dickens noted. The town has no cinema. "But we can definitely work around them," she said, indicating that the local school hosts movie nights for townsfolk in its gymnasium bi-monthly.
Ah yes, "logistical issues"... Still, logistical issues never stopped St. Paul, Alberta from building their own UFO landing pad did they? Or what about the giant Easter egg in Vegreville? Now that's the true "Alberta advantage," if you ask me.
See, I feel better already. Don't you? Thanks, guys.
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January 16, 2008
Check out Isuma.tv
In the news today:
Inuit filmmaker Zach Kunuk and his co-producer Norman Cohn grabbed worldwide attention for their film "Atanarjuat" when it won a medal at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, but neither expected the accolades and attention to trickle down to others telling aboriginal stories.That's why the two have started a new service allowing such filmmakers from around the world to share and show their work on a website that could become the YouTube of aboriginal cinema.
"(We) are an example of how you can actually succeed and find an audience in this world, but we're the only ones who have been able to do that," said Cohn.
The duo's new website, called Isuma.tv, has already gathered 100 films and videos from four countries in the four weeks since it began.
Source: Macleans
This new site is extraordinary and well worth checking out.
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December 6, 2007
18 years ago today
Every year on December 6, I mark the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre by taking a moment of silence in class after reading the names of the murdered women. Talking to my students, the vast majority of whom have never heard of the events of eighteen years ago even though it happened only about 90 minutes from here, I cannot help but compare their lives with those of the women murdered at the École Polytechnique.
People across Canada today, and especially on university and college campuses, will be marking this anniversary with speeches, candlelight vigils, and moments of silence. I hope we can all find some time in our classes, homes, or offices to remember the following young women who lost their lives eighteen years ago today.
Victims of the Montreal Massacre at l'École Polytechnique on December 6, 1989
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
In Canada, December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. Established in 1991 by the Parliament of Canada, this day coincides with the sad anniversary of the death of fourteen young women who were tragically killed on December 6, 1989 at l'École Polytechnique in Montréal because of their gender.
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November 26, 2007
Saskatchewan and the Canadian healthcare system
You never know what Google Alerts will bring up on any given day, but today my alert for "Canadian Studies" brought me to a multi-story special feature in the Billings Gazette (yes, as in Billings, Montana) on the Canadian healthcare system. The comments readers have left under these stories are equally interesting as readers debate why they should or shouldn't help pay for the healthcare needs of "the poor" (one reader's use of quotation marks, not mine). To my mind, though, the Gazette journalists get it right and they do a great job of pointing out how the Canadian health care system finds its origins in Saskatchewan, and in particular the town of Swift Current (or Speedy Creek as my dad sometimes calls it).
While some of the commenters on these stories spout myths about Canadians flooding the US system and Canadians paying 50% in income taxes, the Gazette gives a balanced take on the pros and cons of the Canadian system. They also help dispel some of these myths, though clearly many of the people leaving comments on the stories didn't fully read any of the articles. As the Gazette points out,
The tax burden for Canadians is generally higher than in the United States. Data from 2004 say the Canadian tax burden is 33.5 percent of its gross domestic product, while in the United States it was 25.5 percent. But Canadians don't have to buy insurance or pay out-of-pocket expenses for basic health care.
Canadian officials also point to the low administrative costs of their nonprofit system. Alberta health officials say a mere 3.5 percent of their public health care dollar is spent on administration.
In the United States, private health insurance companies say they spend about 15 percent of premiums on administrative costs and overhead.
There's also a good story on the doctor currently working in the fine town of Maple Creek. Originally from South Africa, he has a lot of good things to say about the Canadian system:
"The level of care you can provide for every person, for everyone, is basically the same, throughout," said Le Roux, who moved here with his family from South Africa, in part because he wanted to practice in a broad-based public health system. "You never have to think, 'Can this patient afford the ultrasound, or the CT scan or the MRI?' If I think this guy needs the CT scan, I can send him for it."
The fact that the Canadian healthcare system began in Saskatchewan says a lot about the difference a small, resourceful region can make when they find a creative way to address a problem experienced by the whole country. If you've been to Saskatchewan and met the people there, I don't think you'd be surprised to learn that Saskatchewan is the birthplace of public healthcare in Canada.
Oh, by the way, go Riders!
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November 4, 2007
The Canadian Experience: A Northwest Passages editorial
In 1995, my best friend Rob Stocks and I co-founded Northwest Passages, the only bookstore in the world to specialize exclusively in Canadian fiction, poetry, drama, and literary criticism. Since then, Rob's partner Sarah Bagshaw has taken over all the day-to-day operations of the store, while Rob and I stay involved on many fronts. One of my jobs that I don't do as well as I would like is to look after the Northwest Passages newsletter which goes out to nearly 1000 readers. It's supposed to be monthly, but recently semi-annually might be closer to the truth. At any rate, here's my editorial for this month's issue:
The Canadian Experience
10/17/2007, somewhere just south of the NY/Quebec border
I’m writing to you today from the front seat of a 54 passenger bus that is taking me, two colleagues, and twenty-nine American students from Burlington, Vermont to Ottawa. In a few hours, our group and the group from the packed bus driving just ahead of us will be sitting in Question Period in Canada’s House of Commons. Our goal in this three-day field trip, run by the University of Vermont Canadian Studies program for more than 50 consecutive years, will be to learn something about Canada, its political institutions, its art and culture, and its national identity.
As I sit on the bus watching the gorgeous fall foliage roll by as we wind our way through Northern New York state, I can’t help but wonder, as I do on this bus trip every October, just what kind of understanding of Canada my students will gain from their time at the National Gallery, the Museum of Civilization, Rideau Hall, and, of course, an Ottawa 67s hockey game. All of the eighty or so students on this trip are taking courses on Canada this fall; some are taking our larger lecture courses on Canadian history, politics, and literature while others are taking one of two first-year seminars on Canadian history and Canadian culture. As few have ever spent time in Canada before, their main knowledge of the country so far comes from what they have learned in class. Will this practical experience complement or contradict the theoretical? Will Ottawa live up to or radically differ from their expectations? How will the sights and sounds of these three days work their way into the students’ overall understanding of Canada?
Questions such as these have preoccupied Canadians for as long as the country has existed; our understanding of ourselves seems all too often to be inextricably tied to how others see us – or, more precisely, to how we believe others see us (or don’t). Think of the popular Molson Canadian advertising campaign in which “Joe Canadian” rants that “I have a Prime Minister, not a president. I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it 'about', not 'a boot'” before concluding with the exclamation “I am Canadian!”
Although witnessing Question Period in action – something I recommend all Canadians do in person whenever possible – usually reminds me that our Members of Parliament are too busy with what’s happening within Canada to concern themselves a great deal with how Canada is perceived internationally, in every one of the Question Periods I’ve attended with my students we have heard at least one angry exchange between the government and opposition parties about how Canada sets its own agenda and “will not be taking direction from George Bush!” This predictable attempt to make the government look bad in the eyes of Canadians always elicits surprised looks from my students. Although I don’t think my students ever perceive this to be “Anti-Americanism,” they are nevertheless surprised to see the degree to which the relationship between the two countries is never far from the surface of any political debate.
One thing that always strikes me during our class visits to Ottawa is that, for the most part, the entirety of my students’ knowledge about Canada has come from a single course on Canada and, for some, the three-day trip to Ottawa. If one’s goal is to give one’s students a solid grounding in Canadian history, politics, or literature, then, the stakes when planning a course or a class trip are significantly higher than when one engages in similar activities back in Canada. If one doesn’t get a chance, for instance, to spend much time with the paintings of Tom Thomson or Emily Carr at The National Gallery, or to include Margaret Laurence or David Adams Richards in one’s Canadian literature course, someone in Canada can hope that his or her students will be exposed to this content at another point in their lives, if they haven’t been already. When working outside of Canada, where the works of Margaret Laurence aren’t even available and most art history professors have never heard of The Group of Seven, one can’t help but think that if one doesn’t include something in one’s course that there is virtually no chance that the students will ever encounter that idea, historical event, or work of art anywhere else.
The design of my curriculum (and field trip itinerary) is something that weighs heavily on me, but then again it always has, long before I ever imagined I’d be teaching in the US. It’s clear to me, and is to many of my colleagues back home in Canada that, even if students may encounter other books, paintings, or arguments in other contexts, the weight that one places on something by including it in a course is hard to overcome. Regardless of how many other works one encounters outside the classroom the content we have been taught (and teach) in the classroom will almost always seem to be more “important” than what we find on our own. Even though I regularly attempt to disabuse students of this notion by suggesting alternate choices I could have made, by having the students themselves help design the curriculum of my contemporary Canadian literature course, and by requiring them to do research and report on things that I’ve left out of the picture of Canada I’ve created for them, the impact of the “official” curriculum is hard to match.
One can apply this same argument to the effect that shortlists for literary awards like the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award have on the literary landscape of Canada. As much as we might try to argue that any shortlist is simply one jury’s take on the books from that particular year, the choices that jury makes have an an impact on the recognized books and authors that can last for years to come. For many people outside of Canada especially these lists serve as a snapshot of the Canadian literary scene for that particular year, whether or not these books are truly representative of what was published in Canada during that time. Take a look at the shortlists included below. What picture of the literatures of Canada do these lists paint?
Unless you’ve read all of these shortlisted books and the many books that didn’t make the cut, it’s hard to pass much judgement on the merits or shortcomings of these lists. Awards season, though, never fails to excite readers, booksellers, and publishers (me included). And for that alone, I find it impossible to find much wrong with the whole process of literary awards or, for that matter, an intensive field trip focusing on the “most important” sites in our nation’s capital. If these create an enthusiasm that the intended audience will continue to explore in the future, then that alone makes the exercise well worthwhile.
Postscript 10/30
The trip was a huge success and since our return I’ve also hosted the Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees, Matthew Mukash, at UVM where he spoke to an audience of over 200 students, many of whom were with us in Ottawa. This great opportunity to have the Grand Chief here provided a valuable supplement to our Ottawa experience and, I hope, will mark the beginning of a long-term relationship between UVM and the Quebec Cree.
The students came back from Ottawa deeply impressed by what they saw and experienced; everyone who met them along the way, I’m equally happy to report, was just as taken by the group of American students who could tell them things like which four provinces were the first to join confederation or converse about everything from the Throne Speech to Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.
At the same time as this experience gave us all hope that these students will go on to become goodwill ambassadors for Canada as they go about their lives in the USA, we were also met with a sober reminder not only of the ongoing tensions between the two countries, but of the challenges these students will face in a world not currently enamored with the policies of the US administration. As we boarded our bus to head back to Vermont, we noticed that someone had taken a marker and written “America sucks” over the small American flag beside the bus door.
Perhaps more than all the other class trips I’ve been on, the students headed home with a different perspective of Canada, but also of the United States.
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September 26, 2007
Canadian immigration on the Daily Show
The Edmonton Oilers' own Raffi Torres makes a hilarious cameo on The Daily Show in a feature about the growing numbers of Mexicans immigrating to Canada. Contrary to the opinions of the intolerant bigot they interview as part of this segment, Canada is very happy to welcome Mexicans and any other immigrants who would like to move there. Canada needs more immigrants, and most of us believe that immigration only makes our country better and stronger. If only Raffi could have had a go at that guy... (I'm not going to mention his name or organization here). I loved how dumbfounded he was when asked to describe Canadian culture.
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September 19, 2007
James B. Douglas performance 9/25
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS: AN AFTERNOON WITH STEPHEN LEACOCK
Performed by James B. DouglasTUESDAY, SEPT. 25th, 4:00 PMMann Auditorium, Trinity Campus, University of Vermont"the most vivid recreation of Stephen Leacock we have seen... hilariously funny... captures the essence of Leacock's razor sharp wit"
The renowned Canadian actor James B. Douglas will be coming to the University of Vermont to perform an abbreviated version of his one-man play based on the life and work of the Canadian writer Stephen Leacock (1869-1944). Douglas has performed Sunshine and Shadows to rave reviews in Canada earlier this fall and takes the production to England in October. In his play we see the many sides of Stephen Leacock, who remains one of Canada's best-known writers and humorists. Following the one-hour performance, Mr. Douglas will be answering questions about his play and his own thoughts on Leacock and his work.
During Stephen Leacock's lifetime, works like Literary Lapses (1910), Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), and Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914) were international bestsellers and remain in print to this day. A famed and much-loved professor of Political Economy at McGill University, Leacock wrote over 50 books, including many collections of humorous stories, biographies of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, treatises on Canadian history and politics, and several textbooks on economics. Since 1947, The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor (which also includes a $10 000 prize) has been awarded annually to the best Canadian literary work of humor.
For more info on the location of the Mann Auditorium, read the full entry below:
Mann Auditorium is in Mann Hall on UVM's Trinity Campus.
Here's a map of the location (Mann Hall is the building with the yellow dot), followed by pictures of Mann Hall and the Mann Auditorium.
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September 10, 2007
Conquering Canada, with coffee and donuts
From this weekend’s NY Times:
OAKVILLE, Ontario — Tim Hortons conquered Canada long ago. The doughnut chain boasts one outlet for every 12,700 Canadians — by comparison, one McDonald’s exists in the United States for every 21,000 Americans and one Dunkin’ Donuts for every 56,000 Americans.
A survey this summer by a group promoting Canadian historical literacy found that 40 percent of Canadians under 34 consider Tim Hortons’ miniature doughnuts, the Timbits, a national symbol.
Tim’s, as it is affectionately known, sells 78 percent of the nonsupermarket coffee and baked goods sold in Canada.
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August 17, 2007
Canadian indie bands of the 1980s
(Artist: the inimitable Rick Clegg; source: http://www.punkhistorycanada.ca; this three-night benefit gig was put on by my pals Rob Stocks and Nick Copus in [1987]; I played on the Tuesday night as part of "i remember not," a one-time spinoff of my band Aardvark Safari)
This week's Radio3 podcast is a glorious (for me anyhow) trip back to the days where you were more likely to find me on stage than in a classroom. When I graduated from high school in 1986, I had no intentions of ever going to university. The plan was simply to keep making music. Indeed, after a year off from school altogether, I only started taking classes at the U of Alberta as something to keep my mind busy during the day while I rehearsed and gigged in the evenings. Then, I took Ted Bishop's class on the Modern British Novel (check out Ted's great book Riding with Rilke ) and Tony Purdy's class on 20th century French literature and I gradually moved to becoming more of a scholar than songwriter.
If you're into Canadian music or intrigued by the 1980s, make sure to check out the Radio3 podcast this week. Wow, does it ever take me back... I still love the song "Just Another Day" by Go Four 3, who I saw play in a memorable 1987 show at the Roxy Theatre in Edmonton, if I recall correctly. The Blue Peter track on the podcast is another old fave, too, though I've always preferred their song Don't Walk Past. The podcast also includes the quintessential Edmonton band of the 1980s and 1990s, Jr. Gone Wild. I saw Jr. play many, many times and if I were to create a soundtrack of my life between, say, 1985 and 1995, they would be a big part of it. Great to hear their song "I Don't Know About All That" again, as well as tunes by Deja Voodoo and the song "Curling" by the Dik Van Dykes.
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July 16, 2007
The Parliamentary library
One of the highlights of our class trips to Ottawa is always our visit to Parliament. For the last several years, though, our students have been unable to see the amazing Parliamentary Library. This past year, however, it was finally open again after years of being closed to the public while it was being restored.
This fascinating documentary from CBC's The National follows the unbelievably complex project that has helped to save this building for future generations. It's well worth seeing and I'll be making sure that my students watch this before our next visit to Ottawa.
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June 4, 2007
Don Cherry hits the American press (and NBC)
From today's LA Times:
There is something not quite right about Don Cherry.
It's not his trademark visage — a pugnacious mug that sprouts from one of his outrageous pink-flowered sport coats and beckons: "Go ahead, take a swing. I dare you."
It's not his oft-uttered proclamation: "I'm a redneck." And it's not his matter-of-fact self-analysis: "I can go a little insane sometimes with guys who cross me."
Rather, it has to do with what an adoring Canadian audience senses in the 73-year-old hockey analyst that perhaps he does not. Namely, his sensitivity. Oh, yes, and his vulnerability.
Eh? What? This brutish champion of hockey fights? This insulter of French Canadian and European-born players? This lout who once referred to the talented, then-long-haired Jaromir Jagr as teammate Mario Lemieux's "daughter?"
Yes, that Don Cherry. The one a poll by the CBC network identified as the seventh-greatest Canadian of all time, ahead of Wayne Gretzky.
I've written before about the experiences the poet Richard Harrison and I had trying to explain Don Cherry to a group of American students. The more we tried, the less they seemed to get it. Maybe having him on NBC briefly will help a bit. The LA Times gets it, sort of. That said, I don't think there's a much better way of capturing Don Cherry than Richard Harrison's poem "Coach's Corner" from his marvelous collection Hero of the Play.
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May 25, 2007
Poutine makes the NY Times
From the NY Times of May 23:
DURING the 2000 presidential campaign, the candidate from Texas fielded a question from Canada: “Prime Minister Jean Poutine said you look like the man who should lead the free world into the 21st century. What do you think about that?”
When George W. Bush pledged to “work closely together” with Mr. Poutine, Montrealers fell off their chairs laughing. It wasn’t so much that the Canadian leader was, in fact, Jean Chrétien, but that the “reporter” — Rick Mercer, a television comedian — had invoked the city’s emblematic, problematic, comedic junk food dish: poutine.
The article details how a handful of New York restaurants have started serving poutine. It ends by mentioning how poutine placed in the top ten of CBC's Greatest Canadian Inventions show last year. (Follow that link to see the top 50)
Whether Montreal’s embarrassing but adored junk food does take root in New York, it may never attain the status it achieved earlier this year when the CBC revealed the results of a viewer poll on the greatest Canadian inventions of all time. Granted, poutine came in only at No. 10. But it beat, among other things, the electron microscope, the BlackBerry, the paint roller and the caulking gun, lacrosse, plexiglass, radio voice transmission and basketball.
(Found via the always worthwhile Montreal City Weblog)
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May 19, 2007
One of the infrequent signs that I'm succeeding as a parent
Overhearing my five and seven year old this morning in the car debating over whether their favorite band is The Tragically Hip or Arcade Fire.
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May 17, 2007
A Canadian Icon Turns Its Glaze Southward
As many of you may know, I have a particular penchant for Tim Hortons. There's not a trip to Montreal these days that doesn't involve a stop at the Tims in Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu for an extra large black coffee and a blueberry fritter or chocolate-dip donut.
I've always said that if I ever won the lottery down here, I'd open a Tim Hortons here in Vermont. Despite Vermonters disdain for chains (Montpelier is the only state capital without a McDonalds, and South Burlington's staple Al's French Frys probably outsells the McDonalds next door by a ratio of five to one ) I think there are enough Canadians to keep a Tims in business here. I even have a great spot picked out for it here....
Thanks to the Wall Street Journal, Tim Hortons is back in the news here in the US. The WSJ published an article on the growing presence of Tims south of the border, a phenomenon about which I was interviewed last fall for a story on Epicurious.com. There's a glaring error in the WSJ story that any Canadian will be quick to catch. The first person to point out this error in the blog comments will win a free coffee from me the next time I see you....
In its home country of Canada, Tim Hortons claims a whopping 76% of the coffee-and-baked-goods market. Named for its late founder, who was an all-star defenseman for the Montreal Canadiens and Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League, the chain is so ingrained in Canada's culture that the term "double double" -- shorthand for a Hortons coffee with two creams and two sugars -- has its own entry in the Canadian Oxford dictionary.
But industry analysts say that, in about seven years, Hortons will have built as many stores as Canada can support. So, barely a year after the chain was spun off by Wendy's International Inc., Hortons is ratcheting up its U.S. expansion. Currently, most of its 340 U.S. stores are in strongholds near the U.S.-Canada border in Michigan, Ohio and upstate New York. But by the end of 2008, Hortons wants to have 500 U.S. stores -- and perhaps more, depending on if the company can make inroads in New England.
Source: A Canadian Icon Turns Its Glaze Southward - WSJ.com:
Thanks to Don Tinney for spotting this article for me.
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April 15, 2007
Wow... the day has finally come.... The Tragically Hip are in town!
This might be something that only Canadians can truly understand, but you would not believe how excited I am to see The Tragically Hip on Tuesday night at Higher Ground.
The Hip are a Canadian institution, but for far more than simply making great music. Already inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the band's lyrics touch on everything from hockey to Canadian history to Canadian literature and their sound captures in some way the essence of the entire country. More than any other Canadian band, they've built a huge national following while maintaining a rich, yet down-to-earth connection with the people and the landscape. They are poetry, they are passion, they are the puck in the net as Team Canada scores the winning goal. If that sounds hyperbolic, so be it; it's hard to talk about them any other way. Explaining the significance of the Hip in Canada to an American audience is almost like trying to explain Don Cherry to them. I've tried and failed at the latter, by the way.
For me, the errant Canuck, it just takes a few bars of At the Hundredth Meridian, Fireworks, or Yer Not The Ocean (among many, many others) to make me feel at home no matter where I am. The new album, World Container, is brilliant, by the way, and has only recently been released here in the US.
The fact that we get to see these guys in two days at a small club here, while fans in Canada have just been turning out in droves to see them play in arenas, explains what a treat we're in for in Burlington. On my way into the office this afternoon, I saw what I'm certain was their bus across the street waiting at the light. Before I knew it I was waving frantically out the window at them! With luck, none of my students were also waiting at the light.... ahem.
More to come on the Hip's visit to Burlington and my thoughts on their place in Canadian culture.
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March 30, 2007
Farewell to the Rheostatics: Dave Bidini interview on Radio 3
Today's the day.... Here's what Dave had to say about the band's final show tonight on CBC's Radio3
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March 29, 2007
Rheos countdown continues...
More articles today about tomorrow night's final show by the legendary Rheostatics.
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March 28, 2007
Stamps...
Now, let's make this clear. I like Canadian stamps as much as the next Canadian, perhaps even a bit more.
Check out these stamps of some of my favourite Canadian musicians, writers, places, and, um, cultural heroes, for instance.
(Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman, was Canadian, to answer your question)
BUT, I have to say, this would be one of the years where back in Canada you would have heard me say, "How come Americans get to buy all the cool stamps?!"
Now, if only I can find a way to buy a whole pile of Wolverine stamps to use for all of our outgoing mail from Canadian Studies!
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March 27, 2007
Farewell to the Rheostatics....
I'm very sad about the demise of the Rheostatics, one of the great Canadian bands of all time. Their final concert with band members Michael Phillip Wojewoda and founding member Tim Vesely is this week at Massey Hall in Toronto. Fans from across Canada and around the world are travelling there to attend.
The Rheostatics came to play at the Piazza Bar in Edmonton in the summer of 1987, supporting their first album. I was the house sound man for a month or two that summer and they blew me away. I've been a big fan ever since. That was a great summer.
I think the fact that all of these Canadian acts got together to do a secret tribute album to the Rheos says it all. There will be a big hole in the Canadian music scene after this, though it sounds like Dave Bidini and Martin Tielli will continue to work together.
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March 21, 2007
I guess "I am Canadian!" probably wouldn't work here...
From today's Globe and Mail:
The marketing plan began with an interesting challenge: How to market Canadian to Americans.
When Molson Coors gathered U.S. beer drinkers into focus groups and asked them what they thought about Canada, the response was a resounding "not much."
"We don't have a clear identity internationally . . .," the Canadian-born Mr. Lavoie said. "They don't think of Canada, first of all. And when they do think of Canada, they go right for the clichés."
But those clichés -- about wilderness and nice people -- are fertile ground for a beer brand.
Mr. Dolan said Americans think the ingredients used to make beer in Canada -- from water to barley -- must be more clean and pure because of the perception that Canada is home to wilderness.
"They feel that unlike some of the crowded cities in the U.S. where beers are brewed, that there's just got to be a better beer that comes from Canada because of that pristine landscape. . . Even Canadian tap water is borne from a place that's pretty pure up there," he said.
In TV ads that will run in northeastern border states, a bottle of Canadian falls to the ground and shatters. Computer generated imagery shows pristine Canadian wilderness growing out of the spilled beer.
Although I still really miss getting my Big Rock Traditional Ale back in Alberta (have you ever heard of another brewery offering such a great university lecture series?!) , I live in a state filled with great breweries like Switchback, Otter Creek, and Magic Hat. I've not actually had any Molson Canadian since I've been here, but it is nevertheless cool to see it and Labatt's beer everywhere out here. Just another thing that makes me feel like I'm not too far from home...
I can't say that this has happened to me here either... yet
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March 13, 2007
2006 Canadian census data out today...
Very interesting data is starting to emerge from the 2006 census. One of the more surprising revelations, at least to me, is that Canada had the highest population growth of all G8 countries and most of this growth has come from immigration, to Alberta and Ontario in particular. Edmonton and Calgary now officially have populations exceeding one million people and Alberta's overall population has grown by 10% in the last five years. 1.2 million immigrants have settled in Canada between 2001 and 2006, which I think is pretty great to see.
Here are a few more interesting stats from the Statistics Canada 2006 census highlights page:
- Two-thirds of Canada's population growth was attributable to net international migration, while the U.S. population growth resulted mostly from natural increase, as fertility was higher in the United States than in Canada.
- Alberta and Ontario were responsible for two-thirds of Canada's population increase. Nearly all of the remaining third occurred in British Columbia and Quebec.
- Alberta is the Canadian province with the highest growth rate since 2001. Alberta's growth rate (+10.6%) was twice the national average (+5.4%).
- In the 2006 Census, Canada had six metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people: Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Ottawa - Gatineau and, for the first time, Calgary and Edmonton. Together, this "millionaire's club" had a total of 13.6 million residents, or 45% of Canada's population.
Nothing I can see there, yet, on how many Canadians are currently living outside of Canada, but there are a lot of us as well... It would be interesting to see some sort of international census about where we all live.
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March 6, 2007
Arcade Fire
A good story on The Arcade Fire in this past Sunday's NY Times. I've heard the CD and it's really good. Definitely worth picking up.
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March 2, 2007
ESPN feature on the history of the Coloured Hockey League
Here's a great feature on the history of the Coloured Hockey League done by ESPN for Black History Month in the US. The piece features an interview with George and Darril Fosty, authors of Black Ice.
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March 1, 2007
Hockey and Canadian lit
I'm writing this the day after the NHL trade deadline, the day after Edmonton Oilers fans saw the heart and soul of the team, Ryan Smyth (sometimes referred to as Captain Canada after playing for the Canadian national team on so many occasions), traded to the New York Islanders. The fact that this came on the same day as the Oilers retired the number of the former hometown hero Mark Messier, one of hockey's greatest players of all time, added further insult to injury. Having lived in Edmonton through the trades of great Canadian heroes like Gretzky, Messier, Coffey, and now Smyth, I can say that one of the things that made these trades hurt even more was not only the realization that our Edmonton team could not afford to keep these great stars of the game but also that the only teams who could were from the United States. Smyth lived, breathed, and bled for the Oilers and I think many of us envisioned him playing out his entire career in Edmonton.
So why does that rub us the wrong way? After all, these are all teams from the same league, the strangely titled National Hockey League that lumps together two countries under one hockey nation. Well, for most Canadians, I'd guess it's because we still, rightly or wrongly, think of this as our game, a game that's been played here for as long as anyone can remember and whose reach connects people from coast to coast to coast. More than that, there's a way that the game is indelibly connected with Canadian identity in ways that no sport in no other country seems able to match. Even baseball or football in the US still doesn't cut as wide a swath through the collective imagination as hockey does for Canadians. I find this hard to put into words, especially when talking to my students and colleagues here in the US. In fact, this is the only place I've ever had to put that into words. If you're a Canadian and reading this, I don't need to say anything to persuade you of this.
I do spend a good deal of time talking about this in my freshman seminar on Canadian culture that I teach here each fall. I'm retitling this fall's class "From Pucks to Parliament: Canada's Cultural Landscape," after having called it "The Great White North" for the last couple of years, in part to reflect how much we do seem to wind up talking about hockey. It turns out that none of the students had heard of Bob and Doug MacKenzie and so didn't really get the joke; I was beginning to worry that most people reading the title without that reference in mind might have been seeing it as boasting about Canada's greatness or as some reference to a lack of visible minorities in Canada, one of the common misconceptions I routinely come across here about Canada. At any rate, one of the best ways I've found to explain some of this connection between national identity and hockey in Canada is by having the students read Richard Harrison's introductory essay from the tenth anniversary edition of Hero of the Play.
Referring to the debates in Canada over where the game was first played, Harrison contends that "[what's] important isn't where the origin of hockey is found in Canada, but how Canada finds at least part of its origin in hockey." If one searches for a mythic origin of Canadian psyche, hockey may be as good a place as any to look first. "[. . .] perhaps most important, in terms of the intensityof the origin-of-hockey debate, is that creation myth insists that the distinguishing features of a people's character are things born with them, created when the people were created. Hockey emerges in the Canadian past at the time the Canada we lived in then as separate communities was being made into the Canada we live in now as a people. In mythic terms, hockey is one of the few things that could be said to be ours from before the beginning of Canadian time" (16-17).
Harrison's work is only one of many examples of the great writing about hockey and hockey players we've seen emerge from Canada over the last few years. The non-fiction front ranges from books about the love of playing the game as an adult -- Dave Bidini's The Best Game You Can Name, the great Bill Gaston's Midnight Hockey, and Tom Allen's The Gift of the Game are some of the best recent examples -- to more reflective books like David Adams Richards' wonderful Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man Who Couldn't Play, Stephen Brunt's Searching for Bobby Orr, or Roch Carrier's Our Life With the Rocket, proving that the world of hockey writing is far more than simply books documenting the careers of particular players or teams. While Canadian fiction and poetry about hockey don't always spring immediately to mind, books like Harrison's Hero of the Play, Gaston's The Good Body, Roy MacGregor's The Last Season, Stephen Galloway's Finnie Walsh, and Mark Anthony Jarman's Salvage King Ya! top the list of the great hockey literature of our day.
Ryan Smyth's press conference today at the Edmonton Airport, said it all, both about the man and the game. Crying, shaken, and, in Harrison's words, "smiling ugly" in the way only a hockey player can get away with, Smyth vowed "I'm going to go there and do my best and make the playoffs and win that (Stanley) Cup, so I can bring it down here to Edmonton — because that's where my heart is." I can't imagine another country where this would make all the headlines, and, frankly, I kind of like it that way.
Suggested Reading:
Tom Allen, The Gift of the Game
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=0385660790
Dave Bidini, The Best Game You Can Name
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=9780771014604
Stephen Brunt, Searching for Bobby Orr
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=0676976514
Roch Carrier, Our Life With The Rocket
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=0140280073
Stephen Galloway, Finnie Walsh
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=1551928353
Bill Gaston, The Good Body
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=1551926938
Bill Gaston, Midnight Hockey
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=0385661908
Richard Harrison, Hero of the Play: Poems Revised and New. (10th Anniversary Edition)
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=0919897959
Dale Jacobs (ed.), ICE: New Writing on Hockey
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=0969466544
Mark Anthony Jarman, Salvage King, Ya!
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=1-895636-13-2
Michael P.J. Kennedy, Going Top Shelf: An Anthology of Canadian Hockey Poetry
http://www.nwpassages.com/profile_book.asp?ISBN=1894384997
Roy MacGregor, The Last Season
(currently out of print)
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February 19, 2007
Memorable moments in Canadian tv history
Had a chance to watch a bit of the East Coast Music Awards last night on CBC. It really is amazing how much great talent there is out there, including Ron Hynes, Joel Plaskett, Measha Brueggergosman, Ashley MacIsaac, and, of course, Sloan, to name but a few. As often seems to happen whenever she's involved, however, the most memorable moment came from the inimitable Mary Walsh:
Newfoundland and Labrador comedian Mary Walsh referred to the federal Conservatives as 'the arse-lickers of Satan' before introducing a performer.
The cameras then focused on Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, who had committed a faux pas earlier in the evening, when he mistakenly referred to Halifax as Toronto.
He drew a chorus of boos and was ribbed about it throughout the night.
(From the CBC's report on the ECMA ceremonies)
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