Blog # 155...July 2024

HAPPY CANADA DAY!   At Thanksgiving dinner in our family, we always give thanks that none of us are in jail...take a minute today to appreciate that we're living in the best place in the world.  Even in the slammer.

Summer's always a good time for reading, well any time is good for me.  I was chasing down The Inheritance, which everyone was seeing at Toronto's CanStage, and discovered Joanna Goodman's novel, same title, different story. I'm always glad to unearth Canadian writers, liked her style and moved on to The Forgotten Daughter. It's quite a fascinating tale that incorporates two horrific elements in Canadian history - the Duplessis orphans and the murder of Pierre Laporte during the October Crisis. And, last blog I mentioned Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain and The House of Doors (Somerset Maugham and Sun Yat-sen play prominent roles in this last one) both set in his native Penang - made me long to go there. I'm not intending to make this a book review. just a heads up. 

Before you put your glasses away though, Jane Philpott's Health for All is very  important and easy to read in order to understand our healthcare system, what's gone wrong and some ways to fix it. She and Danielle Martin with her book Better Now are both brilliant Canadian physicians doing their best to preserve our threatened system. Watch for a piece in Toronto Life's September issue that will also deal with the subject.

Now for something completely different. I've written before about music, lots of times in fact. It's long been a place to seek refuge and form community, and continues to present new and interesting angles to examine. Almost every time a person with  African American roots speaks about their early influences, they mention gospel, whether it's Mahalia Jackson or Barack Obama. Now the Faculty of Music at University of Toronto has recognized the importance of the form with studies ranging from negro spirituals to mainstream contemporary gospel choir music. The early days of slavery heard workers singing in the fields, with both joy and sorrow and We Will Overcome united activists in the 60's Civil Rights movement/ Recognizing the importance of music in Black history adds a deep dimension of understanding for all of us. 

And, back to books, if any of you have read Colm Toibin's Long Island, the sequel to Brooklyn, please get in touch so we can talk about what happens next! And if you plan to read it, enjoy the wonderful voice of Jessie Buckley on the audiobook.

Reading has taken on an added importance for me lately as a break from the many worries clamouring for attention. Uncertainty one of life's most uncomfortable and scary states seems present as never before. So, I'm looking not just to be entertained and diverted but to realize, as Rebecca Solnit puts it, "hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable...the belief that what we do now matters even if how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact are not things we can know beforehand". Rebecca is very smart, I first heard of her when she wrote about Mansplaining.

So, as Bugs Bunny would say - That's all folks!  

Not quite...this just in, my friend bill bissett, poet extraordinaire and longtime supporter of people with mental health issues has been awarded the Order of Canada.  His downtown Toronto gallery and culture centre The Secret Handshake welcomes artists to share the creative stimulation and enjoyment of writing, visual and vocal arts n the company of other artists. 

See you in August.

 Blog # 154...June, 2024

Big news these days is a Canadian team joining the WNBA. Women are appearing everywhere in sports now...boxing rings, soccer fields, hockey rinks and now the basketball courts. Goody for them and for us, hope the guys will welcome them gracefully, seeing it as an addition to the sport rather than competition. The team, yet to be named, will play in the Coca Cola Coliseum, that beautiful art deco building hiding on the CNE grounds.

Thinking about women and how circumstances have changed makes me think of our dear treasure Alice Munro. I'm re-reading her stories and realize that emotions are pretty much the same in many ways as they were in the 50's when the stories were set. My  delight in  her writing makes me wonder why I waited so long to really appreciate them.

Back to the Coliseum for a minute though. Originally built in 1921 to house The Royal Winter Fair. it has a personal history for me and hundreds of others who finished every summer with a gig working at Beasley's Bingo. The horses that featured in many Coliseum activities were housed and fed in the adjacent Horse Palace, across from the Bingo where we spent our breaks, smoking and laughing, when we weren't cadging free rides on the roller coaster...we got paid a decent rate for all this fun too! The Coliseum is quite an amazing and little known venue - as well as the horse rings and basketball court, it has stages for concerts and an ice rink for minor league hockey. It's also connected to the Enercare Centre which boasts the largest indoor lake in the world for the annual the Boat Show (installed by our cousin Clint and his crew). How all these things are done beats me. 

Lots of things these days amaze me, some in a good way, others not so much - and I sometimes like writing about them. AI and other technologies are scary but have made life easier and in some cases possible for folks with disabilities. My neighbour Ed is able to live fairly independently in his wheelchair with the assistance of Alexa and some electronics. As an OT and physio, I notice these things, particularly when they're about making art forms more accessible to everyone.

So my ears perked up when I heard about a new device being pioneered at Toronto's Factory Theatre recently. Aimed at hearing impaired individuals, it involves wearing a small fairly light pair of clear glasses, not too conspicuous. There's a small screen in the upper right corner where a video of the play's dialogue being signed by the actors is being projected with the option of subtitles across the bottom. The video is timed to line up exactly with the action on stage. as are the subtitles. It works pretty well, and although I don't understand ASL I spoke to someone after the performance who does and we agreed that it was a significant move forward in accessibility. The play was Tyson's Song, written by Peter Bailey and directed by Ash Knight, Pleiades Theatre's artistic director. Pleiades is dedicated to intersectionality in theatre, a word being used now to mean inclusivity in all realms... nothing gets by me.

So, on to the month of June as the world teeters on the brink of...who knows what, but we seek solace in each other and the art of living as best we can. 

A la prochaine chicane, but wait, I've discovered a brilliant writer - Tan Twan Eng-  more about him and his books in July's blog.

 Blog # 153...May 2024

Hooray hooray, it's finally May and, as promised in #152, I've been to British Columbia and have a few tales to tell about it.

But first, to digress, something about women in history. We've all heard of Cleopatra, Eleanors both Roosevelt and Aquitaine, and our own country's politicians - Flora McDonald  Iona Campagnolo, Alexa Mcdonough, and now the wonderful Jane Philpott, with a great new book about how to fix our healthcare system. But wait a minute, how about the women backstage,  the ones we've never heard about who shaped our world too?  

A new play Women of the Fur Trade takes us back a few hundred years and gives us a peek at the time when settlers were arriving and the place of the women who were already here...those of the First Nations. Born in Winnipeg at the Vault Project, nurtured by the  National Arts Centre in Ottawa and produced last summer at the Stratford Festival, the play introduces us to three women who tell stories - some sad, some hilarious of their daily lives. Although it's set around the mid 1800's their concerns of love, loss, joy and sorrow could be today. And Lois Riel makes a dazzling appearance too.

Now about BC...there's such an indigenous presence there, and just after we arrived in Victoria, we came upon a crowd outside the BC legislative Assembly -  the Haida People in full regalia were celebrating the first reading of the bill recognizing their Aboriginal title throughout Haida Gwaii. Here's a link to more about this and a pic (that I can't seem to load after many tries!)  https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024IRR0020-000610 

Moving right along, as we did, to Campbell River - about half way up Island, as they say here. It's fishing, logging and mining territory and the town has a great small museum reflecting these important influences on life in the town...the most interesting thing for me was a life sized recreation of a floating house. These were complete dwellings built on wooden rafts, sometimes as many as a dozen, forming communities of workers and their families who could be floated from site to site to follow the work.

We were also aware of the art of survival, people appearing with tents at night after the local patrol had passed, gone in the morning. The climate is much more friendly to living rough and also to being old, so although I was at my usual level of discomfort with the homelessness, I certainly felt at home with the age cohort.

Sorry there are no pics, lots of images in my head but my energy to load them is flagging so I'm going to post this and see you in June.

 

 Blog #152...April 2024

March has come and gone with another long night of Oscars on the 10th...we usually think of it as an adult affair, but kids have occasionally taken part too. Supporting actress awards went to 10 year old Tatum O'Neil for Paper Moon  in 1993, and 20 years later to Anna Paquin who was 11 when she won for Piano.                                                                                                                                                                            

The highlight of this year's show for me (although Ryan Gosling's turn was amazing!) was the little girl who took the stage with the crew of The Last Repair Shop, winner of best documentary short.   The film opens with her talking about health difficulties in her family, how they take up so much time. "I don't know what I'd do without my music," she says. looking with affection at her violin -  repaired and provided by the LA workshop featured in the film. She wore the most beautiful frothy sky blue dress for the Oscars, I'm sure she was creating life long memories, she certainly did for me.

My friend Louise has been the manager of Fiesta Farms Garden Centre for the past few years and has made it, and the grocery store across the road, a centre of learning and involvement for the community, particularly two local schools - Essex and Hawthorne. Classes visit the Centre and contribute to decorations for seasonal events, like Valentine's Day. 

I thought they were also making an Oscar ballgown, which gave me the idea to focus this blog on kids and the Oscars...I misunderstood and it was the store staff who did the ballgown but I liked the idea about kids and proceeded with it anyway. Building on their experience creating a gown last year, staff members collected materials during the year - net bags from onions, wrappings from Mandarin oranges, colourful packaging - using their imaginations to discover what would provide background. And this was the result... did you guess that the necklace is made from grapes, reduced for quick sale!

Two very interesting films that are in theatres now will be up for awards next year...Perfect Days and The Taste of Things. They have something interesting in common, both are set in a very specific culture, with a director from a totally different background. The Taste of Things is very French - cast, setting, language, but with a certain difference, brought by Vietnamese director Tran Ann Hung. Director Wim Wenders brings his German sensibility to Perfect Days, exploring the daily life of a man who cleans Tokyo's public toilets...architectural wonders every one. 

I've yet to think of something to write about in May, so it'll be a surprise for all of us. I'll be in British Columbia at the end of April, so may appear a few days into May, and may bring some BC flavour.

 Blog # 151…March 2024

To go back to February for a moment, I’m happy to see Jen Gunter’s book Blood jump to # 1 on the non fiction best seller list. And I forgot to mention an interesting find at the McMichael…a wall of paintings by Frederick Banting, that’s right one of the founders of insulin.  Science and art together again!

In December, I wrote about Medical Assistance in Dying. It's front and centre in the news again with the controversial issue of an extension to include intractable mental illness. In January I mentioned Good Grief, a film about the death of a loved one. And I wrote a piece on death for Moods Magazine in 2011 which began “When we’re born we’re issued with a return ticket” and went on to list the ways we avoid saying die or death…passing on, kicking the bucket or, for sports fans, the final inning. I’m starting to rest my eyes sometimes with audiobooks and just finished listening to Foregone, Russell Banks' final novel, the protagonist a dying man. Banks died in January 2023 and the book came out later last year. It's the first of his book's I've read  (although I remember Atom Egoyan's film made from The Sweet Hereafter) but it won't be the last! Not that I’m preoccupied with death exactly but I am trying to desensitize myself to the thought as I move through life. 

International Women's Day is coming up on March 8, we'll be celebrating online again so we can reach many people far away. Sorry to miss the tasty dishes we used to share but hope everyone can enjoy some yummy food and maybe get together with a few friends in your own corner.  On Zoom here in the studio (my kitchen) we'll have Mary Newberry in conversation with BettyAnn Mckenzie about the book she edited on disability activist Beryl Potter, followed by Maria Meindl talking about her experience with Heart to Heart, an agency that brings groups of Israeli and Palestinian teens for a week of summer camping together in Ontario.  I'll be sending some loving and supportive thoughts to Yulia Navalnaya who is bravely taking up her late husband's work, feel free to join me.

And while we're in that part of the world, there's a new book out about the amazing Volodymyr Zelenskyy who said, when someone compared him toWinston Churchill, that  he felt more like, Charlie Chaplin.  Reminding us of how Chaplin used the power of his art to demean fascism...both Zelenskyy and Navalny bring tears to my eyes with their humour and their bravery.

So Happy Birthday to any of you who are Leap Year people and we're moving towards spring, see you again in April.

 Blog #150...February 2024

When the new year begins, as it just did, there's a sense of change in the air, often targeting our behaviour, frequently to do with eating and exercise. Makes me remember using a formal stress scale to launch cognitive groups when I was in that business. Top of the list was death of a spouse, no surprise there, but there were some seemingly positive events further down ..like a work promotion, or a marriage. What they all shared of course as well as stress was change.

I sometimes think of what's not changed or what seems to be a similar situation. Is it too much of a stretch to compare the multitude of cruel scams afoot these days - online, at the bank machine or in a car - to the sharp teeth of animals our ancestors feared if they stepped outside their cave, or even stayed inside?  But back to what has changed.

Changes come in many forms - from beginning, or leaving, a relationship or job to the more subtle changes that can emerge slowly in attitudes. The wonderful Canadian gynaecologist Jen Gunter points out in her latest book -  Blood: The Science, Medicine and Mythology of Menstruation - how, as recently as 1974,  Britain's medical journal The Lancet published a piece speculating that menstrual blood could wither plants. I know 1974! She does a great deal for women btw, with The Vagina Bible  in 2019, The Menopause Manifesto in 2021 as well as Blood in 2024.

We all had to change quickly and pretty drastically when the pandemic struck, and I was reminded yet again how important friends are. Dan Levy has just released his first feature film, pivoting from his TV success with Schitt's Creek. In Good Grief  Dan blends the sorrow brought by the loss of a loved one with the life saving support of friends. It's set in the gay community and although it portrays that community as unique, the feelings connected with grief and with the importance of friends is universal.

 And Mathew R Morris in his first book Black Boys Like Me shows how topics to write about have changed since, say 1974 (when women were wilting plants). A teacher, Mathew brings his own experience at school to share with black students in his classroom, pointing out their individuality within the stereotypes of sports and music...or crime. Good for the white kids to hear too - lots to think about here.

And finally, I was lucky to visit the McMichael Gallery outside Toronto last week - how I adore that place!  I love stepping away from appreciating Canadian art to the large windows to appreciate the beautiful Canadian landscape outside. I say lucky because the Gallery is not accessible without a car, except for a once weekly bus in the summer. And the only opportunity to eat is a rather pricey and definitely not family friendly restaurant, no spot to eat a packed lunch in the winter other than a couple of benches in the lobby.  This is such an important collection of Canadian art, including thousands of indigenous pieces celebrated in a wonderful new book, that I'm always disappointed it isn't accessible to more people.  Maybe that'll change?   And, the show I enjoyed was the work of Marcel Dzama, a Winnipeg artist influenced by Federico Garcia Lorca and Tom Thomson... I know, weird, but the resulting work is beautiful and interesting.

So, this month's blog is a bit of a pot pourri, like life these days. See you in March.

 

Blog #149…January, 2024

I’m starting 2024 with a suggestion: to replace the acronym STEM, which has flooded the field of education in the past few years, with STEAM.  So the important foundations necessary for innovation, problem solving and critical thinking would be Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. Seems obvious doesn’t it?

I’ve just read something that unleashed a flood of nostalgia -  one of the great things about books - and this may prompt memories for you too, I hope so.

When I was a kid, my best friend Barra's backyard sloped invitingly into the Don Valley. Our parents warned us not to go ‘down the Don’ as we called it, but of course we started drifting down to see what was there, being content at first to go as far as the path that stretched a couple of hundred yards through green and perfect woods, maybe originally an Indian trail.  Pretty soon, we started venturing further and further, to the railway bridge, down to the River, there was no Don Valley Parkway to get in the way, and along to the Brickworks - in full production then. We’d occasionally see a solitary shabby man and know to take off even without any street-proofing. Our little gang spent hours running, hiding, discovering plants and small animals, laughing,  poking each other and playing games we made up. Someone’s dog called Skipper was a good sport about being part of the games. I’d arrive home for supper, not feeling it was important to mention to my parents where I got so dirty.

So when I heard Lucy Black on the CBC talking about her novel The Brickworks,  I immediately got on the phone to Ben McNally and ordered a copy. Historical fiction isn’t usually on my list, but this promised to be close to home, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Alistaire and Brodie are a couple of Scotty guys who meet up at work  building bridges around Buffalo. The time is late 1800’s and Lucy Black captures the times with its differences and similarities, totally drawing me into the lives of a couple of working class immigrants more than a century ago. They become friends through a common love of fishing and on a trip over the border, they discover a place in southern Ontario with an abundance of shale and clay - the ideal materials for bricks. The story unrolls with misfortunes, adventures and ultimately their success at building a business - The Brickworks - and finding love.

 Maybe it was my Scottish roots that piqued my interest in this, or maybe the word brickworks triggered a visit to memories of running through the Don when it was wild and beautiful, and with the sense of being somewhere I wasn’t meant to be, which still has a certain appeal. Losing myself in the world offered by a book is a great way to end this difficult year.

Here's hoping for some relief from the pain and suffering of so many people in the world - abroad, here too. I'll keep blogging along, it helps me make sense of some of it and tolerate the rest. 

Wishing you health and happiness in the new year that arrives in a few days...I'm off the grid for a bit to regroup after the holidays, back in February when the afternoons will stretch out and spring will be just down the road.