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 — […]
Arts and Books
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. […]
On Sun TV and Margie Gillis
On June 1, 2011, the Sun News Network broadcast an interview with veteran Canadian dancer and choreographer Margie Gillis (see link below), which quickly turned abusive towards the guest. In a message on his facebook page, Canadian dancer Louis Laberge-Côté, currently a teacher at Nationaltheatre Manheim in Germany, offered this assessment. […]
The Protocols of Jonathan Kay
AMONG THE TRUTHERS By Jonathan Kay Harper Collins 368 pages, $32.99 hardcover, $25.99 ebook Reviewed by Frank Moher On the evening of Saturday, June 26, 2010, Jonathan Kay headed out on his bike into the streets of Toronto to see what was up with the G20. What he saw, he wrote early the next morning […]
On the outskirts of Salacioustown
ALONE IN THE CLASSROOM By Elizabeth Hay McClelland & Stewart 320 pages, $29.95 Review By Rachel Krueger The blurb-o-matics must be killing themselves over this. Alone in the Classroom has NO PLOT. Or it has many plots. A surfeit of plots. Thank god it also has ssssssecrets. (And is weirdly amazing.) It begins with the […]
