Category Archives: Canada

Music Sundays | Gorgeous Dream Pop Canadian Music | Yeah!

May 5, 2019A & E, Canada, fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Music, Pop Culture, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Oshawa Ontario-based dream pop group, Dizzy, winner of the 2019 Juno award for Best Alternative Album, Baby Teeth. Dizzy was also up for the Best Alternative Group Juno.

Mid-week last week, I was listening to Gloria Macarenko’s afternoon CBC show, On the Coast (I will say, I much preferred Stephen Quinn in the afternoon, alas). Ms. Macarenko was speaking with frequent guest, Andrea Warner, who was in the studio to discuss a Canadian music group of some note, all but anonymous to the uninitiated (that’s you and me), but as presented by the erudite Ms. Warner, worthy of your time & consideration.
This past week, Ms. Warner wished to tell all of us how much she loved recent Juno award winners, Oshawa’s dream pop group Dizzy, who recently picked up the Alternative Album of the Year Juno award for their absolutely outstanding début album, Baby Teeth. Dizzy had been up for the Breakthrough Group of the Year Juno at the Halifax-based celebration, but lost to bülow, who VanRamblings also loves and has long been on our iTunes playlist. Quite honestly, the Breakthrough group award oughta have been a tie. Just below, you can hear music from bülow.

Not to confuse you, above is bülow, winners of Breakthrough Group of the Year at this year’s Juno awards ceremony. We’ll get back to writing about Dizzy in just a moment.

Since the release of Dizzy‘s début album, Baby Teeth in 2018, fans in rapture have fallen for Dizzy‘s distinctive vibe (the group has received a great deal of play on CBC Radio 2, as well as on CBC Music).
Dizzy‘s lush and low-key sonic landscape paired with evocative lyrics that run the gamut from confessional, specific and heartfelt to esoteric, universal and wry has captured the imagination of those who became aware of Dizzy‘s distinctive brand of music, and then became fans.
Vocalist / songwriter Katie Munshaw and Charlie Spencer started playing together in high school and were more of an acoustic folk-pop duo than anything fully resembling Dizzy. Over time, the two novice but ambitious musicians sought to stretch their musical chops, the two going on to form a larger, more diverse band that came to include the latter’s three siblings, all one year apart: Charlie, Alex and Mackenzie Spencer.
All the band members grew up in and around the ‘burbs of Oshawa, a city that backs onto Lake Ontario. In an interview with New Music Express last year, Alex told the interviewer that the environment in which he grew up “does have its beauty and its little moments of innocence — it’s very quiet and secluded, and that helps nurture our sound in some way.”

On Baby Teeth, it’s obvious how much creativity the band draws from their sleepy hometown. Bleachers and Pretty Thing are intricate compositions that place as much value on hushed moments as on memorable, prickly guitar parts and swooning choruses. Swim, however, bucks the trend with imaginative lines that see the band plead for some escapism: “You are the athlete / I am the astronaut, for thousands of miles I float / Still, you carry me home” | New Music Express, 2018.

So now I imagine, you want to hear what Dizzy sounds like. Here goes …

Decision Canada | Earth Day 2019 | A Present Climate Emergency

April 22, 2019BC Politics, Canada, Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Record-breaking cold temperatures across Canada and the U.S. Midwest this past winter had most easteners cranking up the heat and wishing they could hibernate.
Climate change is creating extreme conditions on both ends of the spectrum. With eastern Canada caught in the midst of a series of record cold snap throughout the winter, on the other end of the planet more than 50 wildfires were raging in Tasmania, Australia’s tiniest state. In fact, Australia has had eight of its ten hottest summers since 2005.
Last summer, the failure to pass legislation that would have reined in greenhouse gas emissions resulted in the ouster of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Meanwhile, according to the New York Times story linked to above …

” … (Turnbull’s ouster) could be a bellwether for the 2019 Canadian election, set for October 21st, in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces a powerful challenge from politicians aligned with the country’s oil industry. Conservatives have pledged to undo Mr. Trudeau’s plans to put a price on carbon nationwide if they take power. At the provincial level, Conservatives have won majority governments in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick after campaigning against the federal government’s carbon tax programme.”

Perhaps the fact that Prince Edward Island Green Party leader Peter Bevan-Baker is leading in the polls and on the threshold for a majority win in tomorrow’s 66th Prince Edward Island general election might be seen as a necessary and fitting backlash to the Trump-like, decidedly right-of-centre Conservative Party sweep that seems to have our nation in its grip.

April 22, 2019 poll for Maclean’s magazine indicates an historic win for the PEI Green Party in tomorrow’s precedent setting 66th Prince Edward Island general election.

All of which begs the question: with less than six months to go to the upcoming 43rd Canadian general election when is the Andrew Scheer-led federal Conservative Party planning on releasing the party’s climate change plan, particularly when as recently as December he refused to commit the Conservative Party to meeting Paris targets?
As the Star Editorial Board published earlier this year …

The Conservatives’ critique of carbon pricing has become increasingly incoherent.

On the one hand, they say, the Liberal plan is a tax grab. On the other, since 90 per cent of what’s collected by Ottawa will be rebated back to taxpayers and most will actually come out ahead, it amounts to “bribing people with their own money.” Again, on the one hand a levy of $20 a tonne to start is an onerous “tax on everything.” At the same time, they insist, it’s a paltry amount that won’t cut GHG emissions nearly enough. As the old joke goes, the food here is terrible — and such small portions!

Amid all this politicking and confusion, the advantages of carbon pricing continue to stand out.”

Make no mistake: the environment is very much on the minds of the electorate this year. The federal Liberal, New Democrat and Green parties have, each and every one of them, developed coherent and forward thinking strategies to fight climate change, and preserve our planet.
Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party has not.
On this Earth Day 2019, that’s something for all of us to think about.

2019: The Year of Living Ferociously | Fight Back!

January 22, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Broadview Co-op, Canada, Politics, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

ferocious
Definition: a raging of the soul, living with fierceness, determination, gravity, deliberate intention and intensity.

And so it will be in 2019, a year of progressive change unlike any other in a generation, across Canada, in British Columbia, in our little burgh by the sea, in the United States, across Europe and across the globe.
Make no mistake, though, necessary progressive change for the better will not come should we fail to band together to fight the forces of regression.

Justin Trudeau has said that the 2019 federal election will be the ugliest in Canadian history. Make no mistake, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer will make it so — aided by Maxime Bernier, the leader of the so-called People’s Party of Canada, who will force the Conservatives further to the right — focusing as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper did on “fear of the other”, as Trump has done in the United States, demonizing the Muslim population and “illegal immigrants”. According to a recent Angus Reid poll, two-thirds of Canadians believe the influx of asylum seekers into Canada is a “crisis”, with 84% of Canadians who voted for the Conservative Party of Canada of the belief that “there are too many people claiming asylum and that Canada is ‘too generous’ toward them;”
In British Columbia, voting in the Nanaimo by-election to replace former BC NDP MLA Leonard Krog (who was elected Mayor of Nanaimo this past November) starts today. In late January, it’s a neck-and-neck race, with B.C Liberal candidate Tony Harris focusing on the botched roll-out of the government’s Speculation and Vacancy Tax, which forces every British Columbia homeowner to register their home with the government — failure to do so could result in a payout of thousands of dollars for unsuspecting, unregistered homeowners. If Harris wins, we’re looking at a late winter / early spring B.C. election, which bodes ill for any progressively-minded British Columbian & a return to the bad old days;
In Vancouver, we’re sitting pretty, with a largely progressive City Council (notice the number of unanimous or near-unanimous progressive votes — on transit, affordable housing, 58 West Hastings, a renter’s office, our current climate emergency, and much, much more). The success of our City Council, though, is almost wholly dependent on a federal Liberal government, complemented by a provincial NDP government — which, for instance, have set aside $52 billion dollars on the affordable housing file alone, monies which would most assuredly be withdrawn by a right-of-centre / “the market is always right” do-nothing Conservative government, and their B.C. kin, Andrew Wilkinson and the B.C. Liberals.

Closer to home for me will be the fight in which I engage throughout 2019 against the forces of repression, intolerance, despotism, racism, homo-and-transphobia and hatred of “the other” that has defined that portion of my life, resident in the housing co-operative where I have dwelled for 35 years.
2019 is the year to fight back, to demand better, to organize, to recognize that — as is evident in the time of Trump across the United States, and across Europe — that in 2019 all of us are in for the fight of our lives.

Salmon Confidential: Dying Salmon, Destruction of an Ecosystem

November 2, 2013BC Politics, Canada, Cinema, Environment, Politics, Video & DVDRaymond Tomlin

About two-thirds of the way through Twyla Roscovich’s maddeningly compelling documentary, activist marine biologist Alexandra Morton and a few cohorts with whom she works on the study of the impact of salmon farming on Canadian wild salmon, enter the Real Canadian Superstore at Rupert Street and Grandview Highway, in Vancouver.
The scientific foray into the community involves purchasing all the salmon available at the store, in order that their purchase might be shipped to a laboratory in Europe, and another on the east coast, to test for the infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus, and other pathogens.
The result? Suffice to say that anyone who watches that particular sequence in Roscovich’s provocative documentary film — available above in today’s VanRamblings post — will never eat farmed salmon ever again.
Here’s Ian Bailey’s Globe and Mail review of Salmon Confidential …

This feisty and provocative film is spoiling-for-a-fight cinema. Someday there will be a new feature-length documentary reconciling both sides of the debate over the environmental costs of farming salmon in B.C. For now, there’s this compelling work which tilts sharply towards the wild-salmon side. Director Twyla Roscovich’s visually alluring film spotlights activist biologist Alexandra Morton as she finds B.C. salmon in the wild showing European viruses that Ms. Morton links to fish farms on the coast. Federal and industry representatives declined to sit for interviews, Ms. Roscovich has said. Still, the film serves as a forceful primer on an ongoing debate that some viewers, especially those in urban areas, may now just be catching up on. Let the debate begin after the end credits.

Hey, it’s The Globe and Mail — you expected an evisceration of the role of both the provincial and federal governments for their failure to act to protect wild salmon, or the health of Canadians? Not the world we live in.

Greg Ursic, in The Ubyssey, says about the film “Salmon Confidential is thoroughly researched, informative and so infuriating that you’ll want to throw something at the screen.” Jason Coleman, at Star Pulse, agrees with VanRamblings, when he writes …

You will never eat farmed fish for the rest of your life after viewing this. A must-see, especially for British Columbians known for world-renowned Sockeye, Salmon Confidential is a corker of a doc. It’s staggering and eye-opening to see how the business of B.C.’s natural resources and food has been tainted by government and how puppet scientists have given up their objectivity simply to kowtow to (corrupt) governments. This is the GMO monster in a different form and here the monster kills by passing on poisons and infection that are a recipe for extinction of a foundational salmon species. An important film right on par with The Cove impact-wise, Salmon Confidential is an important don’t miss it experience for all who care to listen. — 5/5 stars

Meanwhile, while our intransigent senior governments take a do nothing approach to the destruction of B.C.’s wild salmon industry, Norwegian authorities have recently ordered that some two million sea-lice infested farmed salmon in the Vikna district of Nord Trondelag be slaughtered with immediate effect after becoming resistant to chemical treatments against the sea-lice parasite. Actor Ted Danson and Andrew Sharpless, CEO at Oceana, the largest international conservation organization fully dedicated to protecting the oceans, have published a paper stating, and backing up, their contention that “farmed salmon are not a sustainable alternative.”
Enough? Whether you’re concerned for your health, wish to gain more insight into the “controversy” involving farmed salmon, or are simply interested in watching a provocative, compelling, and incredibly well-made and watchable documentary film, we would encourage you to screen Salmon Confidential — take our word for it, you won’t be sorry you did.