Category: Canada

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Galt McDermott and the Canadian Arts Scene.

I just learned today from a friend on Facebook that the composer Galt MacDermott died two days ago. Most people will know him from “Hair” and maybe “Two Gentlemen of Verona” but it is also worth remembering the important role he played in fostering the Canadian arts world.

In the late 50s, he and several friends produced an original musical at McGill called “My Fur Lady” that had a far reach at a time when the Canadian arts scene was almost non-existent. It was a satire about Princess Aurora Borealis of the territory of “Mukluko” and her attempts to find a husband so she could preserve the independence of her realm. The love interest is the governor-general (I told you it was satire). It is a light piece, in many ways, but it is also a touchstone of Canada as it was in 1957-58 and it was enormously successful, playing across Canada, including at the Stratford Festival. It was produced at a time when Canada was just beginning to expand into the Arctic in a big way, and in the run-up to Expo 67, when Canadians were beginning to think that they needed to develop more of a national identity. The song embedded below plays on that. An identity had to include an indigenous arts scene, not just what could be borrowed from Britain or the States and McDermott was not the only of its producer to go on to success in the arts, though the rest stayed closer to home. James Domville developed the National Theatre School and ran the National Film Board (It was under his tenure that “If you Love this Planet”  was produced. I remember being trouped into the reception room in high school where we all watched it to see how the crazy man running the States was going to kill us all). Don McSween was the administrator for the National Arts Center. Tim Porteous worked for Pierre Trudeau for many years and also ran the Canada Council for the Arts, a grant-giving organization, itself founded in 1957. 

And then there’s my Dad. My Dad was the stage manager for the production and as a result of spending all his time on that, flunked out of McGill. He ended up okay though.

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The Most Canadian Music Video Ever

Every Canada Day, I try to post a new music video that will show a little something about Canada to my friendly friends and neighbours here in the States. Every year I think I am not going to find something new (or at least new to me), and every year I am wrong. This year is no exception. It begins and ends with a loon call, and features a song sung at a cottage by Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, written by his brother, who also joins him. Enjoy and have a great day, eh?

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Canada, by Canadians

In my tradition of annual Canada Day videos, this is a kind of cool little video that I first saw shared by another Canadian expat friend on FB. The Canadian Tourism Commission asked for footage from Canadians about their country which they then strung together in a short promotional film. It may or not be a representative image of Canada — what it certainly is, is a representative image of how Canadians see their own country, which is even more interesting, to my mind.  I think it is worth asking my American friends, as your big day comes up on the 4th, if there were a such thing as a United Stated Tourism Commission (which there isn’t, of course) and it asked its citizens to come up with a video showing off your country, what would that look like? And anyone elsewhere who would like to play.

 

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We are the Beaver

I wasn’t going to post a Canada Day song today, I really wasn’t. I thought I had run through all the good ones. But then I saw this. And, well…

Happy buttertarts, everyone!

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Judith Merkle Riley dies at 68

I was very sad to learn this morning of the death of Judith Merkle Riley from ovarian cancer. When her A Vision of Light, about an unusual medieval mystic in the tradition of Margery Kempe, came out in 1989, it was a groundbreaking work, fitting an imagined character into a convincing and well-realized medieval setting. The last of her books I read was The Oracle Glass, about poisoners and witchcraft in seventeenth-century France. Like her first book its main charm was the compelling character of her female lead.

Here is her obituary in the Los Angeles Times. Sixty-eight is much too young.

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An Interview with Alison Pick

I am very excited today to be able to bring you an interview with my very own cousin, Alison Pick, about her most recent novel, Far to Go, published just recently by House of Anansi Press. It can be ordered from Canada, and will be released in the States by Harper Perennial in summer, 2011. Don’t sorry, I will be reminding you when it comes out in the States! Far to Go, inspired in part by the lives of my grandparents and my father, is the story of one Jewish family’s experiences during the lead-up to the Nazi occupation in 1939 in Czechoslovakia. Paul and Annaliese Bauer are affluent, secular Jews whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival of the German forces. Desperate to save themselves, they manage to secure a place for their six-year-old son, Pepik, on a Kindertransport to England. Far to Go is also the story of how what happened to the Bauers is remembered by those who survived, and the stories that are told about them.

The events of 1938 and 1939 unfold through the eyes of Marta, the governess, a woman uncertain of her own origins.  Why did you decide to make her the viewpoint character?

Good question. Truthfully I can almost never remember why I did anything in a particular way, beyond the fact that it felt intuitively right. But the idea of an unreliable narrator was appealing. I often turn to Jack Hodgins’ ‘A Passion for Narrative,’ – my novelists’ bible – and I think it was his suggestion to view the main characters, in my case Pavel and Anneliese, through outside eyes. That said, through the process of writing Marta grew to become a main character herself. She is a liminal character, not Jewish but close with Jews (and, as you point out, unsure of her origins, so with the possibility of being one); not the mother of a child sent away but close enough to understand a mother’s perspective. She is both on the Bauers’ side and, if only accidentally, against them. I wanted this tension to work in concert with the plot so the reader wouldn’t be certain what they could trust. The desire to keep reading would be to discover how the story turns out but also how Marta—who is still young and naïve—resolves as a person.
Continue reading “An Interview with Alison Pick”

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Happy Birthday, Canada

A lot of friends say to me, in moments of darkest despair, “Wow Lucy, you’re so cool. I think that’s because you’re from Canada. Can you tell me how to be Canadian too?” Friends, here is your chance. The hat is optional.

ETA: If the video doesn’t tell you enough about What it Means to Be Canadian, you might want to check out this post by the Yarn Harlot. Fun fact: she quotes someone I went to university with. Because everyone in Canada knows everyone else. True.

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Toronto

Porter, Streetcar, Bathurst and College, Crown and Tiger, Cloak and Dagger, Iranian Kebabs, up at dawn, Future Bakery, Liber testamentorum ecclesie ovetensis, Flip Toss and Thai, Burry and David, Cora’s, Harbord Bakery poppy seed danish, the Kitchener Picks, Indian food, the Roxton not the Rushton (or is it the other way around?), Ezra’s Pound and Alison, Polish sausage on the street (a big mistake), lots of Rachel, Monkey’s Paw, Ossington between Dundas and Queen, RCMP paper napkins (wish I had bought them now), Foxley (arctic char ceviche and lamb duck prosciutto dumplings), Clinton’s, cider all over my sweater the floor and everything, Stanley Cup, Carin and her Mum, Bar Mercurio Espresso, carrot cake, Kensington Market, Lettuce Knit, Romni Wool, hempathy, Subway, Streetcar, Porter.

Home.

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Alison Pick has Far to Go.

After sales in Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands (am I forgetting any?), Alison has cracked the U.S. market. From Publisher’s Marketplace this morning:

Alison Pick’s FAR TO GO, an epic historical novel set during the lead-up to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and the fate of one Jewish family, to Claire Wachtel at Harper Perennial, in a good deal, by Barbara Howson at House of Anansi Press.

Can a U.S. book tour be far behind? Here’s hoping for Chicago.

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Spotted this Morning

In Publisher’s Marketplace:

Dutch rights to Alison Pick’s THURSDAY’S CHILD, to Orlando, at auction, by Margaret Halton at Rogers, Coleridge & White, on behalf of Anne McDermid at Anne McDermid & Associates.

Congratulations, Alison!