Leonard Cohen repays Canada Council, and then some
A BoB short: Canadian literature and music legend Leonard Cohen, awarded the Glenn Gould Prize in Toronto last night, has chosen to donate the $50,000 that comes with it to the Canada Council for the Arts. The Montreal native is the ninth winner of the honour that has been called “The Nobel Prize of the [...]
Inside Read: The Opening Act
Our Inside Read feature presents excerpts from new Canadian books we think you might want to dip into further. In The Opening Act, author Susan McNicoll offers a lively history of Canadian theatre post WW II, including the following account of Vancouver’s 1953 Tobacco Road “fiasco.” Published by kind permission of Ronsdale Press. “The police [...]
Train tour inspired by 70′s Festival Express
A BoB short: A motley of young electronic musicians led by Grammy-winning dubstep artist Skrillex, who is arguably more known for his half-shaved hairstyle, will be touring Canada via private train this summer. Accompanying Skrillex, whose real name is Sonny Moore, is indie pop maven and former Vancouverite Grimes, and American artists DJ Diplo and [...]
Fort McMurray’s Keyano College sends arts to tailings pond
By Frank Moher The sacking of four instructors in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Keyano College in Fort McMurray is creating an uproar well beyond the city better known for its resource extraction talents. Artists, of course, are well aware that their masters — whether they be cabinet ministers or academic administrators — [...]
Jan Wong’s Globe and Mail blues
OUT OF THE BLUE By Jan Wong Self-published by Jan Wong, distributed by Dundurn 264 pages, $21.99, paperback Reviewed by Brian Brennan Jan Wong was a star of The Globe and Mail newsroom, a driven, gutsy, award-winning reporter who observed the Tiananmen Square massacre at first hand, and tested the limits of Canada’s airport security [...]
The Inside Read: “Crossing the Continent” by Michel Tremblay
We’re pleased to unveil backofthebook.ca’s Inside Read, in which we’ll introduce you to new Canadian books with an excerpt that we think will whet your appetite for more. In this passage from Michel Tremblay’s new novel Crossing the Continent, translated by Sheila Fischman, 10-year old Rhéauna (based on Tremblay’s mother as a child) must leave [...]
How the Sun helped post the Playhouse’s closing notice
By Frank Moher The sudden news that the Vancouver Playhouse is closing after 49 seasons comes as a shock, of course. We assume these venerable civic institutions will somehow always manage to lumber along, despite economic downturns and hostile governments and digital depredations. This, after all, was the company that gave Canadian theatre its seminal [...]
GG gee we need to rethink this
By Frank Moher The Governor General’s Award finalists were announced on Tuesday and, as usual, I looked at the drama list and sighed. Not because I wasn’t on it — I didn’t have anything eligible — but because I was reminded once again that we don’t have a proper playwriting award in this country. Now, [...]
Where is James Moore?
By Frank Moher Two weeks ago in this space I wrote about the Conservative government’s politically-motivated decision to withdraw funding from the Toronto theatre and arts festival, SummerWorks. To recap: Last year, the company presented a play, Homegrown, that the Prime Minister’s Office decided (in advance, without seeing it), glorified terrorism. So this year, after [...]
The Conservatives’ Homegrown censorship
By Frank Moher (Update below: Jim Flaherty translated) We can now begin to see how the Conservative government intends to use its majority to chop arts funding in Canada, particularly to any artistic expression it doesn’t like or agree with. In the short term at least, it will be a death by a thousand cuts. [...]
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