Touring Green – Blog 43: Sudbury to Parry Sound (July 11)
Today was the longest bike of the tour (I secretly know this because I may or may not be writing this blog at the end of the tour); 168km. This was a long bike coupled with the fact that I played music until 2:15am the night before, tear-down until 3:00am and fell asleep around 4:20am.…
Touring Green – Blog 42: Sault Ste Marie to Sudbury (July 8-11)
From Sault to Blind River and then on to Espanola where, here, I was welcomed by a wonderful woman who was a B&B owner as well as Antique Photographer by hobby (I got to get a cool press shot out of it too with my synth and period costume: Continuing on to Sudbury, I played…
Touring Green – Blog 41: Wawa to Sault Ste Marie (July 5-7)
Well, after Marathon, the other performer (coincidentally also named Rich) drove me to Wawa where I performed at this fantastic kayak/outdoors adventure retreat called Naturally Superior. Being used to people not looking at me while I perform because of the sync, it was not problem that here people are able to look out onto Lake…
Touring Green – Blog 40: Nipigon to Marathon (July 3-4)
Today’s bike to Terrace Bay (where a hopeful run-in with Canada’s fantastic Meligrove Band was to occur) was interrupted by a very welcomed lift to Marathon bike the local High School music teacher who knew I was biking in and was told could offer a lift into Marathon early to meet the fantastic people putting…
Touring Green – Blog 39: Thunder Bay to Nipigon (July 2)
Today I biked past the end point of Canadian legend Terry Fox and his inspiring run against Cancer. I continued and biked on to Nipigon biking over large hills along the turquoise water of Lake Superior. “Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way!” – Dr. Seuss 🙂
Seriously perturbed person
To the editor, The leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico recently met at the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello, Quebec. The lack of transparency at these meetings has raised lots of questions and concerns: What effect will continental integration have on the sovereignty of Canada? Why are these meetings being held…
Park it
To the editor, There have been news reports within the past year about accidents in crosswalks, global warming, etc. One area of concern for people including myself is the lack of safety in shopping mall and plaza parking lots. In the summer time, during storms or other times when shoppers are lazy, we see cars…
Tim’s tops
To the editor, Tim Bousquet’s articles—such as the “Save our shores” cover story, August 9, and Sustainable City—have turned your newspaper into a high point of my week. He very powerfully describes the province’s climate crisis, highlighting both the complacency and ignorance of our provincial government by telling the community what needs to be done.…
Hair today, punch tomorrow
Dear Celine, cut your little boy’s hair please. No rat-tails or faux-hawks either, no matter how much little (or big) Rene-Charles begs. Be strong like I know you can, you warrior, and pick up those shears! Be a role-model for the hirsute children of Michael Jackson, Kate Hudson, Elle Macpherson and Cindy Crawford. You can…
Horse play
Most bands spend lots of time naming themselves, but apparently it’s not as hard to find a tour tagline. Greg MacPherson and Horses’ current east coast trek—including a stop at the Attic August 23—was christened the We Quit Our Jobs and Moved to Another City for a Woman Tour, but not before they came up…
Dual Doull
John W. Doull Bookseller’s neater sister is now chock full of books, officially open and sporting a clever name—The Jade W. The new store’s name is a sly shout-out to the aforementioned John W. Doull Bookseller, the secondhand shop that owner John Doull has been running on Barrington for the past 20 years. But Doull…
If a tree falls…
Two weeks ago, a plot of land in the south end, on Regina Terrace just off Beaufort, included a grove of venerable oaks. The oaks had seen over a century of human progress, withstanding everything from property development to Hurricane Juan. Some had trunks thicker than two people could hold hands around. Now they’re gone,…
Elephant march
“I was talking to someone about a white elephant table at a flea market or something,” says local author Ryan Turner, “and what a white elephant table is, is a place where people go to find a mixture of different treasures. And The White Elephant Cabaret, the name had a mystique that I like.” He’s…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Get ready to go out with a bang, Libra, says Rob Brezsny.
SAVAGE LOVE
I am a single guy…never good with women…not many girlfriends…I didn’t have sex till I was 31…but all my life I’ve had this strange fetish…I love to be shampooed with lots of lather and suds, suds in my eyes, nose and mouth. I have been trying to find a female partner to shampoo me…I am…
MOVIE REVIEWS
Stardust The subtitle of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, the illustrated novel the film is based on, is Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie, and is totally without irony. Such stories, I suppose, are a respite for those who find the world outside the magical kingdom a chore. I don’t believe in “faeries” and have…
Tossed around
“In a way, any small Canadian independent film requires an enormous amount of energy from the director, and I’ve seen that from Atom”—Egoyan—”and Jeremy”—Podeswa”—and Amnon”—Buchbinder—”and every director I’ve worked with over the years. It’s part of how we hustle our films, it’s a very door-to-door salesman sort of job.” Camelia Frieberg is talking about her…
The Hollywood shuffle
Music fell because it was destined to. And until the digital age, the format wasn’t the point. Records were released on vinyl first, which morphed to a clunky version of the cassette, the 8-track, which was eliminated completely upon the popularization of tapes, which are now novelty items in a sea of CDs. (Before Sam’s…
With fear and favour
Now that Conrad Black has been convicted of corporate thievery, we might ask whether the journalistic system he presided over is itself a gigantic fraud. Black once owned daily newspapers in every major Canadian city. He also founded the National Post. He used his papers to push for tax cuts for the rich, privatized health…
Special ’ops
It’s been 40 years since a group of married Dalhousie University students founded the Halifax Student Housing Society and built what has been, and still is, the only student housing co-op in town—the 112-unit Peter Green Hall on Wellington Street. But if Bridget McConnell, Jason Pelley and Rachel Derrah have anything to do with it,…
A dirty shame
Maybe you missed it, but last week Rodney MacDonald voted in favour of global warming. At a Moncton conference called in part to address environmental issues, Nova Scotia’s premier joined up with his counterparts from Alberta and Newfoundland to kill a plan to impose a national “cap and trade” system to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas…
Claws for applause
The Eastern Shore doesn’t have quite the cachet with tourists that the South Shore does; no small towns renowned in the way of Chester, Mahone Bay or Lunenburg. It’s a shame, because the Marine Drive (as the map calls it) has a charm all of its own. Local artists’ shops and fresh fish takeouts dot…
Seusscycle
“Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.” —Peter S. Beagle About a month-and-a-half ago, this quote would have come quite in handy,…
