There’s a new online arts & culture magazine in Vancouver that’s creating quite the stir. Staffed mostly by former (and recent) arts staff at The Georgia Straight — said the weekly’s new owners, MediaCentral (a condition of employment: management must show their horns at all times) “Nah, we’re not cutting arts coverage. We’re just rationalizing it, by dumping a whole lotta staff, and refocusing editorial categories by eliminating any focus whatsoever on venues and the arts”) — the glorious new Stir is the illustrious new home for arts & culture coverage in our city.
Where to find beloved Straight arts & entertainment editor, the kindly but tough Janet Smith, or bon vivant, Adrian Mack, and acclaimed journalist, Gail Johnson? Vancouver’s nascent Stir magazine is the place where you’ll find Janet, Adrian and Gail, as well as a number of other former Straight staffers, and first-rate British Columbia-based arts & culture journalists, who in Stir have created the place to be for arts coverage in our city.
And isn’t that what makes a city, culture? Otherwise, what are we but an amalgam of greenhouse gas spewing towers, and windy roads laden with too many carbon emitting vehicles. Vancouver’s many and varied arts & culture institutions breathe life and meaning into our paradise by the ocean.
In 2020, at the virtual Vancouver International Film Festival, Stir has emerged as the place for coverage of VIFF 2020.
For instance, in her enthusiastic review of Jimmy Carter: Roll and Roll President (which VanRamblings just loved when we screened it at 3 a.m. yesterday morning), Ms. Smith writes …
Jimmy Carter was cooler than you ever knew — even more so when he’s put up against the presidential candidates for the 2020 U.S. election. Turns out the man once derided as the Peanut Farmer was besties with the likes of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, both of whom sing his praises here. He also hosted regular concerts, first at the guv’nah’s mansion in Georgia, and later at the White House, after the Allmann Brothers helped propel him to election. In her fun, well-researched, and zippily edited documentary, director Mary Wharton connects Carter’s open-minded approach to music to his political achievements.
The review above is just one of many VIFF 2020 reviews you’ll find on the Stir Vancouver online website, from Janet Smith, Adrian Mack and Gail Johnson, in 2020, your go-to website for Vancouver’s finest VIFF coverage.
Here’s hoping Stir thrives long, long into the future, that Ottawa’s modernized Canadian Periodical Fund provides sustaining monies to aid Stir in its necessary endeavours, and that readers (and advertisers) flock by the thousands to Stir Vancouver, such that Stir becomes a west coast institution, a Canadian version of New York Magazine’sVulture website.
A David Eby Vancouver-Point Grey supporters townhall. Highlighted, Vancouver-False Creek NDP candidate, Brenda Bailey. Top left, Gala Milne, David Eby’s campaign manager.
On Sunday afternoon, September 27th at 4pm, Vancouver-Point Grey MLA — and, until the current provincial election was called by BC NDP leader, John Horgan, Minister of Justice and Attorney General for the province of British Columbia — David Eby, held a well-organized and well-attended Zoom campaign townhall of longtime supporters, campaign workers and campaign staff, hosted by the very bright, accomplished and talented New Democratic Party tyro candidate for Vancouver-Hastings, Niki Sharma.
Also present and accounted for: Meghan Sali (top row), host of The Dash with David Eby podcast (also available as an Apple podcast, and through the Google Play store); Vancouver-Langara NDP candidate, Tesicca Truong — acclaimed housing, community, and climate change policy strategist — to the left of Ms. Bailey; Stefan Avlijas, master of all he surveys, and BCGEU digital campaign specialist (this is not his first rodeo with the avuncular, personable and accomplished, Mr. Eby), middle fourth row down; as well as the love of David Eby’s life and mother to his two wonderful children (migosh, they’re growing so quickly — note should be made that David is an incredibly great dad), Dr. Calley Lynch; dogged co-campaign fundraiser and former director of communications with the BCNU, the highly-regarded Shirley Ross (her hubby, the very fine gentleman and oenophile, Bill Tieleman, is to be found on another screen); and bottom row, in the middle, some ne’er-do-well, we’d all be better off ignoring, old fart that he is; and so, so many more who will move the sun, the Earth, the stars to ensure David Eby’s re-election, come Thursday, November 12th, cuz the hand-counting of mail-in ballots — of which there will likely be one million — will not start until 13 days after election day, Saturday, October 24th.
As of midnight Sunday night, Elections BC reports that 406,000 British Columbians had asked to have mail-in ballots posted to them. Unlike Donald Trump’s America, we in Canada respect our sacred institutions of government, our post office and non-partisan agency, Elections BC, charged with the conduct of elections in our province, so mail-in ballots — which will achieve record numbers in the provincial election of 2020 — is a feature of our current election British Columbians are assured is fair, proper and necessary, and in the midst of an unprecedented 21st century pandemic, an absolute necessity. VanRamblings will be walking over our mail-in ballot (which we received last Friday) to an advance poll nearby us, the morning of Thursday, October 15th, because we want our vote counted on E-Day.
Advance polls, as above, will open two weeks from this Thursday, on October 15th, and run thru til Wednesday, October 21st, and will operate each day from 8 a.m. through until 8 p.m., staffed by your neighbours. Go to the Where to Vote page on the Elections BC website for more information, to have any B.C. election questions you may have answered.
For the years she sat as Chairperson of the Vancouver Park Board and as a Board Commissioner, VanRamblings had the privilege of observing the work of Niki Sharma, who we came to know as a democrat of the first order, engaging and yet no nonsense, focused always on the work of those who elected her to office (as well as those who did not cast a vote for her), extraordinarily bright and articulate, accomplished, loyal to her peers and her party, open and available to talk with anyone, any time, hard working, dedicated & a devoted public servant possessed of unparalleled integrity.
Niki Sharma is one of those once in a lifetime political figures, a change maker who works for each and every one of us, towards the creation of a better, a fairer, a more inclusive and a more just city, province and world.
And now, Niki Sharma is the B.C. New Democratic Party candidate for Vancouver Hastings. Lucky BC NDP, lucky residents of the provincial riding of Vancouver Hastings, and lucky us — every citizen of British Columbia.
Early on, when Ms. Sharma was seeking the Vancouver Hastings NDP nomination, we had naysayers call us to regale us with tales of the old shibboleth, that Vancouver’s Chinese population will not vote for an Indo-Canadian candidate. And not just that, but that the 2017 British Columbia election in the riding of Vancouver Hastings was oh-so-close, and recently retired provincial Minister for Social Development and Poverty Reduction, Shane Simpson, had just barely squeaked into office in the 2017 election.
Um. Really? The correct information as to the outcome of the 2017 B.C. provincial election, in the riding of Vancouver Hastings, is easily attainable:
The above said, the British Columbia New Democratic Party, and Vancouver Hastings NDP candidate Niki Sharma, her riding executive, and her many, many supporters are not taking anything for granted.
As is the case in every election, candidates must fight for every vote, and fight to gain the confidence of the electorate who reside in the riding where she or he is seeking to become the British Columbia Member of the Legislature representing the interests of the good citizens of the riding, where s/he has come forward as a candidate for the party supporting her / his provincial riding candidacy.
All of which is to say, if you have the time and the energy, if you can spare a few dollars, supporting Niki Sharma’s, David Eby’s, Brenda Bailey’s and / or Tesicca Truong’s candidacies, there is no finer activity to which you might dedicate yourself than playing a role in ensuring the election to office of any one of these outstanding BC NDP candidates. As for VanRamblings, we are donating one per cent of our annual gross income to supporting BC NDP candidates in the current British Columbia election — you should, too.
And, finally for today, this: as was the case in New Brunswick in their provincial election earlier this month, and as will be the case in Saskatchewan, in their scheduled election next month, candidates for office in the various political parties will be, and are, pooling their resources, and working closely as teams of (most generally) three candidates for office.
VanRamblings has learned that in 2020, Vancouver-Point Grey NDP candidate David Eby, Vancouver Hastings NDP candidate Niki Sharma, and Vancouver Fairview NDP candidate George Heyman will work closely together, in some cases combining election operations staff and office resources, less for budgetary considerations and more as a practicable initiative responding to the exigencies and demands of our current pandemic — which, by the way, is not going away anytime soon, so that now, this very moment in our pandemic, is the best time to conduct a provincial election, to ensure that the citizens of our province have at the seat of power in Victoria, a government that best represents their interests, will best respond to their and our collective health needs, and are best able to rebuild an economy that serves all of us, and not just the wealthy few.
The Magnitude of All Things, director Jennifer Abbott’s devastating NFB co-production about personal and planetary grief, premièred at VIFF’s Vancity Theatre, with Abbott and co-producers Shirley Vercruysse and Andrew Williamson in attendance. #VIFF2020.
The Magnitude of All Things (Canada). Truth telling, a call to action, and gorgeously filmed by cinematographer Vince Arvidson, Sundance and Genie award-winning director Jennifer Abbott (The Corporation) offers viewers an intimate and emotional punch-in-the-gut with her new documentary. The Magnitude of All Things draws intimate parallels between the experiences of grief — personal for the filmmaker in coming to terms with the passing of her sister, and planetary, as Magnitude takes us across the globe to witness planet Earth in crisis: from the catastrophic fires Australia suffered at the end of 2019, to the devastating role our current climate emergency has played in destroying a southern hemisphere eco-system, the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, the rising sea levels drowning the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati, to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest arising from the grievous policies of Brazilian and Ecuadorian presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Lénín Moreno, the struggles of the Indigenous peoples who are waging a desperate battle against oil and mining extraction and, at home, how the melting ice in the autonomous Newfoundland and Labrador Inuit community of Nunatsiavut has permanently altered the landscape.
Lest you believe The Magnitude of All Things to be a polemic, didactic filmmaking regurgitating what you’ve heard before, allow this writer to assure you that is not at all the case. Rather, Magnitude is a film about battles waged, lamentations of loss, and raw testimony that coalesces into an extraordinary tapestry, woven together with raw emotion and staggering beauty, a film that transform darkness into light, and grief into action.
The Magnitude of All Things. A film by Jennifer Abbott. An NFB & partners production.
John Ware Reclaimed (Canada). A genealogical exploration of the life of 19th century Alberta cowboy, John Ware, that seeks to reclaim the narrative of his life, filmmaker and historian Cheryl Foggo expands on the work she undertook in mounting her 2012 award winning play, John Ware Re-imagined, as she re-examines the history of Alberta’s famous early black folk hero and Prairie cowboy, who was rugged, independent & black.
From a story written by Omayra Issa for CBC Saskatchewan …
“It is a history that has been erased,” says Foggo. Both sets of her maternal grandparents came to Saskatchewan from the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century. Three generations lived in the province before moving to Alberta, the family eventually spanning across the 3 Prairie provinces.
Foggo’s ancestors were among the 1,500 to 2,000 African American farmers who came from the southern U.S. from 1905 to 1911 in search of a better life and a place that was less hostile and dangerous than Jim Crow America. They established five small pioneering communities: one in Saskatchewan and four in Alberta. Their story is steeped in slavery, racial segregation, and the fierce desire for emancipation.
Foggo has been reclaiming her family history for decades. More recently, she has been doing the same for an iconic Black figure on the Prairies, John Ware.
Ware proved himself to be a charismatic man and a highly skilled rancher. He owned two ranches, ultimately reaching one thousand head of cattle. He also pioneered irrigation in the region. Legends of his talents as a horseman were known in Indigenous communities on Treaty 7 territory, where he was close friends with chief Crowfoot of the Siksika First Nation.
John Ware’s story is a fundamental Prairie story and an indelible thread in the Canadian narrative. “It is important to connect John Ware to the Black history that was here in his time, carried on, and has been here from that time forward,” Foggo told CBC Saskatchewan journalist, Omayra Issa.
Some years ago, as I have written previously, my friend J.B. Shayne was in my home, and scanning my vast CD collection (we’re talking the early ’90s here), he commented, “Do you realize that 80% of your record collection features female vocalists?” In fact, the percentage of female singer-songwriters in my music collection is probably closer to ninety per cent.
Today, I present a couple of songs from my iTunes / Spotify music collection by artist Regina Spektor, who although she hasn’t achieved the mainstream success of a Fiona Apple or a Tori Amos, nonetheless deserves much more recognition for her weighty, low key 19-year career than it’s earned to date.
Whimsical, with great melodies and brilliant songcraft, Regina Spektor’s music is simply beautiful, both lyrically and musically, with an almost angelic quality to them, showcasing always her distinctive vocals and winsome piano talents, a storyteller of the first order, a singer-songwriter brimming with personality, and more than capable of conjuring up moments of wisdom, maturity and magic, in a career deserving of celebration and recognition, that is uniquely — and unmistakably — hers and hers alone.
Samson was initially recorded as the first track for Regina Spektor’s second album, Songs, which she recorded in one take on Christmas Day 2001. In 2006, Ms. Spektor re-recorded the song for her album Begin to Hope, which, unlike Songs, had a major label backing. And, the rest is history.
Regina Spektor’s best songs tweak inviting melodies with bits of eccentricity in rhythm and vocal cadence, resulting in music that skilfully hits emotional buttons without coming across as formulaic. Laughing With, which was the first single released from her fifth album, Far, doesn’t quite play to those strengths, but instead opts for a modern balladry that is, as you will hear, ideally suited to our trying and most difficult pandemic times.
