Look closely at the paintings by Janet Vanderhoof and one experiences light in the contrast of bright colors, particularly red. Light radiates thinly through her cityscapes. Allow your eyes to linger and you discover how the light shifts, moving among the pedestrians in a crosswalk, reflecting and refracting through the streets of Chinatown, or is held in the petals of flowers.
Michael Palin: Monty Python is to Canada what Jerry Lewis is to France
During the latter part of June this year I had the privilege of spending 48 hours in Toronto with one of Britain’s top comedians, Michael Palin.
To be Loved — Part 2
Mumbai, the city of dreams, draws thousands of rural Nepali villagers every year to the already overcrowded streets with rumours of well paying jobs, hospitals and schools. These rumours travel on the backs of distant relatives and friends who send back stories of their success, whether true or not, luring families with bright hopes and dreams.
“It’s like watching the Aurora Borealis”: A Profile of Meryl Streep
Throughout her career, Meryl Streep has found a way to fully inhabit every character she portrays so that who we see in the film is not Streep but the “quirky little universe” she has created.
“This Language-Soaked Life” Part Four
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 […]
“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 […]
“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 […]
“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 […]
Father Goose is Alive and Well
George Burden discovers that Father Goose is alive and well and living in Canada. His real name is Bill Lishman and you’ll read his story and say, “Oh, I know about him.”
Guitars in the Woods
Darcy Rhyno gets to know guitar maker Russel Crosby who, with his beautifully-made instruments, excels at his craft — yet he struggles to get the word out from his house in the Nova Scotia woods.