From 1975-77 Maybin, still a “non-professional,” taught English as a volunteer for the Immigrant Services Society (ISS) in Vancouver. His students were South Asian women, many of whom had recently arrived and were illiterate, terrified, and desperately in need of language skills that would enable them to navigate the nightmare of shopping for meal ingredients […]
Three Icons of American Cinema in 1967
Two seminal American films were released in 1967; each dealt with the issue of racism and each featured one of the biggest stars in Hollywood at the time. Both were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture; one of them won the award. The films were In the Heat of the Night and Guess […]
“This Language-Soaked Life” Part Three
Following an unrewarding series of “language” lessons with a Japanese university professor, who, while collecting a fee from the student, spent most of the lesson time talking about “the intricacies of Shakespeare’s plots in English (his speciality),” Maybin opted for a radically different approach to learning Japanese: he began to study sado, the Japanese art […]
Big Ego Chases American Dream: A Review of “The Pursuit of Happyness”
The DVD of this film was given to us as a gift by a departing homestay student; it was one of several movies he gave us, all of which he had seen and loved, and which he thought we would enjoy as well. The very large difference in age and character between us should have […]
“This Language-Soaked Life” Part Two
The Language-Soaked Life Part One. At 19 he spent six months in Malaysia, where he lived for a time in an Iban longhouse in Borneo, sleeping under a basket of human skulls; spent a weekend at the mountaintop palace of the Sultan of Kedah; endured buffalo leeches crawling up his legs in a rice paddy […]
Nixon’s Final Humiliation: A Review of “Frost/Nixon”
As with Another Year in 2010, my favourite movie of 2008 was one that was for the most part overlooked, in this case Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon. In 1977 brash and ambitious British talk-show host David Frost (played by Michael Sheen) managed to convince disgraced former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) to grant a series of […]
“This Language-Soaked Life” Part One
It’s 8:00 AM and Canadian expat Don Maybin has just arrived at Café de Crie, his favourite coffee shop in Fujisawa City south of Tokyo. As soon as the coffee shop staff see the tall Canadian coming through the door they begin preparing his regular breakfast: a cup of Darjeeling tea and a fuwa fuwa […]
The Bloody Road to Boredom: A Review of “Bonnie and Clyde”
Following the release of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, Bosley Crowther, film critic of the New York Times for 27 years, wrote a short but devastating review. In it he called the movie “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as […]
A Delightful Christmas Chestnut: A Review of “A Christmas Carol”
Perhaps the greatest joy of the Christmas season for a young person lies in the delicious anticipation, in the events, rituals, traditions, and the sounds and smells that contribute to the build-up of excitement that peaks on Christmas morning. For us as children, decorating the classroom in late November, buying and trimming the tree in […]
A Life of Service, To An Empty Ideal: A Review of “The Remains of the Day”
I love the writing of British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Of the several novels I have read, The Remains of the Day, the story of a blindly devoted English butler whose misguided loyalty to his profession and to his master have led to a wasted life, is my favourite. The Remains of the Day won the […]
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