Author Archives: Andrea

Novella captures migrant’s dilemma

 The Lebanese Dishwasher
By Sonia Saikaley
Published by Quattro Books, 146 pages, $14.94

Reviewed by Lynne Van Luven

Born and raised in Ottawa, Sonia Saikaley’s work stirringly represents her Middle Eastern heritage.  In the past year, Saikaley has published both a book of poems (Turkish Delight: Montreal Winter, Tsar Publications) and The Lebanese Dishwasher, which was a co-winner of the Ken Klonsky novella contest.

Through its compression, The Lebanese Dishwasher captures the marginalized but intense life of a 30-year-old immigrant named Amir. The action alternates between his earlier youth in Beirut and his current life in Montreal, where streets are slick with ice and opportunities fall far below his expectations. Not only is Amir unhappy in his work, he is at odds with his very being. For his whole life, he has fought against his nature, attempting to deny his own homosexuality, a situation made more acute after he is violently raped by a male neighbour when he is 12. As he turns 30, Amir faces increased pressure to mimic the norm his family expects: he is constantly urged to  “find a nice Middle Eastern girl,” and get on with raising a family.

For five years he has been trapped in a dead-end dishwashing job in a Middle Eastern restaurant, where his only offer of friendship comes from one of the cooks, Saleem. The tension within the contemporary narrative escalates when Saleem invites Amir to his home for dinner. Over the food-laden table, Amir meets Rami, who is Saleem’s nephew, recently arrived in Canada. As the pair’s sexual attraction blossoms, so does Saleem’s rage and disgust.

In addition, Amir has a casual sexual relationship with Denise, who loves him as an exotic and calls him her “Arabian prince,” but expects far more from him than he can deliver. Yes: complications.

Sonia Saikaley writes affectingly about immigrants who struggle to survive and to attain some modicum of the freedom and “good life” that impelled them to emigrate. And she captures with courage and clarity the patriarchal nature of many of her male characters who see women only as domestic slaves and the bearers of the children necessary to perpetuate the family line. In such men’s eyes, any hints of homosexuality are beyond abhorrent. Young men who do not flaunt their interest in women are suspect, little better than “dogs.”

Amir, like many migrants, thinks often of his former life, where the violence of his shrill mother is offset by the peace he experiences with his loving grandparents when he visits their farm and helps them pick olives and figs. The richness of Amir’s lost life contrasts strongly with the grime and drudgery of his Canadian existence.

The Lebanese Dishwasher showcases Saikaley’s talents well; I look forward to reading more of her work.

Irish comic adapts to local scene

Dylan Moran
Produced by Westbeth Entertainment and Mike Delamont
Farquhar Auditorium, June 30

Reviewed By Curran Dobbs

I was not sure what to expect of Dylan Moran’s show at the Farquhar Auditorium at the University of Victoria. I had never seen Moran outside of Shaun of the Dead and had never seen him do stand-up comedy. I admit I could have researched him more on Youtube but my hypothesis, valid or not, was that going in a little bit blind would help prevent establishing bias.

Moran began his set with the Canada jokes (and a few American jokes because, if you’re going to make jokes about Canada, America will enter it sooner or later). He managed to squeeze a Rob Ford joke in there. It’s a common tactic for touring comics to make with the local humour, and it wasn’t a bad thing here. He would get bigger laughs later on when the audience was warmed up.

The rest of his show was predominantly social commentary with topics ranging from science vs. religion, guns, technology, politics (left and right comparisons), pop culture, age, evolution, and gender. The overarching theme of the evening was escapism. I’m guessing he is probably aware of the irony of discussing escapism at a comedy show.

Throughout the show, Moran read the audience, asking us at one point whether we leaned more towards science or religion, getting the sense that we veered more towards the left politically and adapted his comedy to fit the audience. At one point, he mentioned that his Irish upbringing made Conservatism part of who he was, stating that if he witnessed an Irish Catholic Cardinal in an argument with a scientist, he’d instinctively side with the one not dressed like a wizard. Reading a crowd is a comedian’s job–and he did so brilliantly.

Occasionally, the jokes came too quickly for me: I was  not used to his heavy accent and missed,what he  said. Given the laughs from the rest of the audience,  others did now share my own hearing problem.

The next time Dylan Moran is in your area, I suggest you catch him. Tickets were moderately priced but affordable.

Curran Dobbs is a writer for The Derwin Blanshard Extremely Classy Sunday Evening Programme and a stand up comedian.

Film reminds: Pride is a global movement

Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride
Directed by Bob Christie
Reel Queer Film Festival, Vic Theatre, Victoria
June 30, 2013

Reviewed by Andrea Routley

It was a quiet evening at the Vic Theatre, not surprising for a Sunday night in Victoria. Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride was the final screening at the first Reel Queer Film Festival, organised by the Victoria Film Festival. I almost didn’t go because I was sucked into a TV series on DVD. But I thought, “Do I want to watch HBO actors call women cunts all night, or deepen my understanding and appreciation of a global human rights movement that has secured my legislative freedoms?” Yeah. I should go.

In this feature length documentary, director Bob Christie follows Vancouver Pride Parade director Ken Coolen, along with several VPS colleagues, as they travel to places where Pride is still steeped in protest, and even where queer sexualities are still criminalised. The group experiences first-hand the violent threats of anti-gay protestors in Warsaw, Moscow, and Budapest, and witnesses Equal Ground’s kite-flying Pride action in Colombo, Sri Lanka, an event which is only advertised after it has happened in order to protect those brave enough to attend. In Sri Lanka, homosexuality is still punishable with up to ten years in prison, and “curative rape” is a “common practice.”

Beyond Gay connects the Pride celebrations in cities like Toronto and Vancouver to a wider global movement with a call to action to support human rights around the world. Ken Coolen, a likeable big guy with a gentle demeanour, meets courageous activists around the world. In Moscow, he praises the group, led by Nikolai Alekseev, for their bravery, asserting, “You are not alone” as he shares a binder full of signatures from Canadian government officials for the Declaration of Montreal on LGBT Human Rights. The fear is palpable in many scenes, especially the action in Moscow where secret locations and meeting spots were necessary simply for a small group of people to stand outside the Tchaikovsky Conservatory with rainbow flags, and then walk 120 feet before dispersing to avoid violence. The anti-gay protestors and media showed up at the decoy location. Violence erupted when a Pride organiser responded to a media question by affirming that he was with an LGBT organisation. He was immediately pushed, and beaten.

The film is full of these heart-breaking struggles and testimonials, as well as awe-inspiring triumphs. Energetic club music scores much of the film, suggesting urgency while also evoking the intensity of Pride celebrations, and its origins in Stonewall. The music was at times heavy-handed: sombre piano music scores moments of reflection, which causes them to verge on campy. In these scenes, I think a “moment of silence” in the music would have been more effective, an austerity to convey the coarse reality of the human rights violations.

The motivations for the film are easy to understand. Pride celebrations in North American have come under much criticism for their commercialisation, which many feel demonstrates how we have “lost our way.” I often hear people cite A&W’s visible parade sponsorship–a restaurant that assigns heteronormative gender roles even to hamburgers– as an example of all that is wrong with Pride today. This year in Victoria, one group responds to the current state of Pride by hosting Alt Pride Community Festival, which was “formed as a reaction against experiences of oppression, exclusion, and lack of accountability during pride events and within queer communities.”

I’m not sure how I will feel about Pride this year. Things have changed a lot since I first marched in a Pride Parade. It was 1997, and I was sixteen. I walked behind a float blaring “We Are Family,” a drag queen in a purple spandex gown and silver wig waving to the crowds. But the cheers always swelled for us, the youth group, the only LGBT youth group I knew of, one which met at Bute and Davie in Vancouver’s West End Friday nights. (To attend, I had to travel for three hours on public transit, with no way of getting home before the buses stopped running.)

That was the first and only Pride Parade I marched in. This right to assemble and celebrate our diversity is one that many of us take for granted.

Andrea Routley is the editor of Plenitude Magazine, Canada’s queer literary magazine.

Beach’s poetry plays with Bond myths

The Last Temptation of Bond
By Kimmy Beach
U of A Press, 114 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Cornelia Hoogland

Pop-culture heroes such as James Cagney and James Bond are Kimmy Beach’s passion. In her new book of poetry, Beach facilitates her readers’ insider looks into Bond’s vast and colourful life: into his rooms; “Night[s] In The Life;” and into the Bond props of guns, alcohol and women. Alternately, she places Bond outside the safe confines of his cinematic/Internet world, into that of the sometimes narrator, One, and her sidekick, The Other. Or she moves into an alternate reality–the domestic (human) world that Bond hasn’t (until Beach) led.

The sections in which we meet Mrs. and the twins suggests the books’ underpinnings in Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ, a book that considers the dualities of Christ as saviour and human being (and as referenced in Beach’s title). Just as easily, Beach drops One into Bond-type scenarios that (seem to) absorb her. One tells Bond near the end of the book, “You really should know how often you didn’t make me come.”

As a publication within U of A Press’s Robert Kroetsch poetry series, the book’s freedom of movement among genres and voices honours Kroetsch, who would have appreciated both the elevation and the reduction (but not the demise, Bond is eternal) of the cultural hero. The cover (Robert0 Conte’s angel) is stunning. Alan Brownoff should be in the running for Alberta’s Book Awards in book design–and The Last Temptation of Bond in the poetry category.

From the start, through highly detailed second-person, as well as third-person prose, Beach pulls her readers into the world of Bond and his women. Another strategy, dramatic scripts (including stage directions), allows Beach to bring Bond the cultural hero into the living room of One and The Other, the fictional women who watch Bond movies and who ultimately laser Bond up the middle. This play among fictional characters into what the reader understands as “the present” or perhaps even “real life” is effective. For instance, One’s high antics imperative: “Don’t pause,” is dismissed by The Other who pauses the movie and grabs two mini-glazed doughnuts. These gals will eventually be joined by a cast of Bond women who serve as the Greek chorus at Bond’s demise.

The power of this book is its confident enjoyment within fictional and imaginative realities. Beach’s writing aims to give readers as direct an experience of its content as possible; often, it accomplishes this by thrusting the readers–an implied “you”–into the over-the-top scenes. “On the vanity next to the bed is a brown box . . . Pick it up and carry it to the edge of the bed. Lift the brass clasp.”

The book calculatedly engages its readers on an experiential level and demands readers’ responses not only to its content but to the ways the content is delivered. Its light touch is always tongue in cheek; these are never real people, but, rather, highly entertaining cinematic fantasies. Very sexy.

Cornelia Hoogland’s latest book is Woods Wolf Girl (Wolsak and Wynn, 2011). “Sea Level” is forthcoming with Baseline Press.

 

 

Books and coffee symbiosis thrives

Pictured: Authors Elizabeth Woods, left, and Linda Foubister at Moka Coffee House

By Barbara Julian

What is it about books and coffee? The literature-latte marriage originated back when many a writer lived in a garret and had to meet friends in public places. Literary conversation flowed while a drink could be eked out for hours.

“Back when”? What has changed? For at least some low-income scribes, a friendly local café is still social space, performance space and even, what with portable digital devices, office space. Under the influence of caffeine, wine, beer or whatever else stimulates the brain cells, writers and readers use cafes for book chat, gossip and increasingly, for selling. The rise of the independent author-publisher has created a need for novel marketing and distribution strategies, although printing by author and hawking books in the public marketplace are not new. The past is the future.

Where official arts bureaucracies have dropped the ball, many cafes in Victoria have responded to the demand (you’d think their counter staff include secret scribblers or something). As well as hanging paintings, Serious Coffee on Cook Street hosts the Pen In Hand reading series, Moka House on Hillside hosts Planet Earth Poetry, and Moka House on Fort is now home base for the Victoria Independent Authors and Publishers Association, giving local writers a few shelves on which to display their books–as does the Oak Bay Marina Coffee House. Let’s raise a mug to them all.

The idea is that customers peruse the books while sipping and contact author-publishers directly if they want to purchase. In this age of e-books the whole bookshop model stands on shaky ground, and the cafe/publisher symbiosis is just one emerging creative ad hoc book promotion arrangement.

Whether it’s Sartre and de Beauvoir debating at the Les Deux Magots, Hemingway scowling at La Rotonde, Susan Sontag being analytical at Café Loup or Dorothy Parker witticizing at the Algonquin, we all harbour images of the “literary café.” Many of the famous ones are now merely tourist spots, but Victoria’s cafes harbouring book nooks are for locals. The books are there discreetly and the readings just for fun, but any exposure for new and unknown (as well as better-known) authors is welcome.

Some people like tweeting, but others still prefer real-world contact with writers and readers. Our book-housing cafes are appreciated by those who cannot afford to buy every book they want but relish the chance to dip in or hear them being read from for the price of a coffee. Then there are the authors sipping in dark corners, clocking whoever is examining their books. (Note to patrons: keep your voice down–you never know when you might be providing dialogue.)

The café meanwhile is happy to draw in customers however it can. Nobody in either the café or the book trade is rich, both existing in over-crowded landscapes. A cross-species symbiotic relationship makes sense–and those who naturally keep their head in a book and a mug in their hand, are grateful.

 Barbara Julian has published Childhood Pastorale: Children, Nature and the Preservation of Landscape under her own Ninshu Press imprint.

Zen of the street

Chase the Dragon 
By Chris Walter
GFY Press, 247 pp, $15.98

Reviewed by Yasuko Thanh

Vancouver punk-band biographer and novelist Chris Walter’s latest book Chase the Dragon centres around Dragon, the protagonist, who earned his nickname for once being “dragged-in” through a doorway. The expression functions as a street metaphor for smoking heroin, “chasing” the smoke as you heat the drug on tinfoil. Throughout the course of the book, a death metal musician and a hit-man with OCD chase Dragon, literally. But Dragon is also being chased by his addictions and a past that’s gaining on him.

Walter’s matter of fact, straight-up style conspires with a darkly comic tone to offer us characters from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) in a manner reminiscent of Margaret Laurence’s strongest characters–they often ought to be despairing, but aren’t. No Pity Parties here.

This tightly plotted page turner is liberally dosed with a kind of Zen of the Street enlightenment. Yet Walter avoids the misstep of romanticising the skids. His gift is the ability to avoid judgement of the marginalised, showing us how circumstances may force people to live in the now. People make do because they must. Like Dragon, Walter has been around. Like Dragon, Walter understands the upshot to having no life is a potentially greater capacity for selflessness.

Walter pokes holes in the sugar-coated and sentimental rescue by a guardian angel of It’s a Wonderful Life when Dragon risks his life to save a drowning boy. It’s not a wonderful life but real life, and any sudden reversals of fortune are sure to remain cosmetic as Dragon is a man who can’t escape what he’s got coming.

Walter presents his characters stripped bare, standing in the cold. He glosses over nothing, giving us the ugliness of people. Like Dickens, he’s a chronicler of place and time, and his hard-earned realism conveys the freedom of having nothing left to lose.

I asked Walter  if he thought his subject matter makes his work hard to read: “‘Gritty’ subject matter is what I do. I’m beginning to hate that adjective, but I rely on black humour to make hard subjects tolerable, enjoyable even. If readers are bombarded with too much ugliness they will lose interest and stop reading. I want them to laugh despite themselves, and they should then feel slightly guilty for having done so. I want to invite strangers into my head and show them all the rooms, even that creepy, unfinished attic. I don’t want to write about easy, feel-good subjects; I want the reader to think.”

To describe the residents of the DTES in a tragic, sentimental, or villifying light is, at the least, in bad artistic taste. At worst, it could be argued, such representations in popular culture are dangerous, perpetrating stereotypes that lead to dangerous stigmatisation and create the kind of climate from which nearly fifty women could be abducted from the DTES.

Walter’s trademark black humour is rapidly earning him cult hero status. A literary outlaw, he never preaches. “Outlaw literature goes against the grain of the established literary industry,” Walter says. “Outlaw literature does not rely on government funding or grants and springs from a desire to speak the truth without fear of offending anyone. Outlaw literature is not subtle. Outlaw literature exists separately from the mainstream. That being said, I never use that term to describe my work. I prefer to call my stuff street lit because it sounds less pretentious. I don’t swing a sword; I sit behind a desk.”

The writing occasionally stumbles, with lines such as, “Like the cop to the doughnut, junkies were drawn to addiction and madness.” But what he brings off makes pointing out such mistakes seem petty. Chase the Dragon is an accomplished feat of realism. Can Lit is lucky to have him.

Catch Chris Walter at one of his island book launches:

Nanaimo: The Cambie, July 5, 8 pm. Copies available for $10 (only at launch).

Esquimalt (Victoria): The Cambie, July 6, 9 pm, with music by The Capital City Stalkers and The Role Models, $10 at the door or $7 advance.

Yasuko Thanh’s short story collection, Floating Like the Dead, was recently nominated for a BC book prize.

Aging punk makes great country songs

Eddie Spaghetti
The Value of Nothing (Bloodshot Records, 2013)
Produced by Jesse Dayton

Reviewed by Blake Morneau

Has modern radio ruined the very idea of country music for you? Are you put off by the stereotypical conservative undertones of modern country music? Do you like a fatalistic punk sensibility but prefer your musicians to deliver it with some laid-back, west coast affability? Do you like the music you listen to to be direct–straight, no chaser?

If you answered, “Yes,” to any or all of the above, then Eddie Spaghetti’s The Value of Nothing is for you!

On his fourth solo offering, Eddie Spaghetti, the front-man from Seattle rockers the Supersuckers, delivers up an unpretentious collection of songs that straddle the line between his punk and country roots. There’s a sort of restless resignation that runs through these songs as Spaghetti sings his world-weary tales of courage, hard-living laziness and, most poignantly, coming to terms with himself as he journeys through the aging process, getting close to the half-century mark.

Growing up in Tucson, Arizona, Spaghetti was surrounded by country music that he tried desperately to avoid, or at the least ignore. Rebelling heavily against the suffocating culture that country music provided, he got heavy into metal and punk music, eventually forming the seminal punk-metal hybrid, the Supersuckers. He couldn’t deny his roots and started stepping back into the waters of his past in 1993 with the Junkyard Dogs, a Supersuckers country side-project. Though they only released one full-length album, it reinvigorated another aspect of Spaghetti’s musical background and luckily for listeners, it’s a path he’s continued on since.

Spaghetti’s growly drawl bring a surprising humanity to slightly misanthropic tracks like “People Are Shit” and “Empty,” a song built around the defeated refrain, “I’m empty, got nothing inside/Totally blank and completely dry / I’m empty, take a look in my eyes / Don’t listen to me ‘cause it’s all lies.” To be able to tow a line of empathy without ever falling into pity with such self-indulgent wallowing is a wonderful trick that requires a certain lyrical honesty. It’s a quality that Spaghetti has in spades.

It’s not all doom and gloom on The Value of Nothing. Spaghetti gets downright happy singing about matrimonial love on “You Get To Be My Age,” going so far as to knowingly wink at the fact when he sings “It might sound kinda cheesy but I’m happy when you are happy too.” The winning slacker-anthem “Waste of Time” wittingly pokes at the lazy life of a disaffected stoner-sort over a raggedy country stomp to charming effect.

Eddie Spaghetti starts the last track of the album, the aching ballad to aging, “When I’m Gone,” with the declaration, “I’m in decline, on the backslide/decadent, degenerate, the worst you might ever find…” It’s a hard statement to believe after a record’s worth of strong, steady songwriting filled with piss and vinegar and it’s a statement I can say I hope isn’t true.

Blake Morneau is a lover of aural pleasure who has been writing about his passion for nearly two years. Follow him on Twitter @MusicRags

Thumbs up for Theatre of Disapproval

Theatre of Disapproval: PGC Conference and AGM
Keynote Speaker: David Henry Hwang (left)
Sponsored by the Playwrights Guild of Canada

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

When Rebecca Burton, Membership and Contracts Coordinator for the Playwrights Guild of Canada, visited my fourth-year playwriting workshop this spring, I signed up for the Guild newsletter and soon learned the theme of the guild’s annual conference, to be held May 31-June 2 in Toronto, would be Theatre of Disapproval. How could I resist?

The conference did not disappoint. Held in Hart House on the University of Toronto campus, the conference showcased the struggles of dissenting and minority playwrights who write on the edge in today’s Canada.

The panel on “Censorship and Self-Censorship” was led by Mark Leiren Young,  also a University of Victoria graduate, who has written extensively about censorship as a playwright, journalist and satirist. Panel members included lawyer-playwright Catherine Frid and Carmen Aguirre. Frid incurred the wrath of, among others, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who accused her of being “soft on terrorists” because of her play Homegrown, about Shareef Abdelhaleem, one of the “Toronto 18” Muslims accused of terrorism. Aguirre, whose book Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter won the 2012 Canada Reads competition (but not before she was called a “terrorist” by a panel member), has written over 20 stage plays to date. She spoke both of censorship and the impulse toward self-censorship after surviving censorship.

“The Cultural Experience: Mine vs. Ours,” moderated by Ravi Jain, gave voice to Tara Beagan (free as injuns), Anusree Roy (Brothel #9) and Marcus Youssef (The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil). Drawing on their plays, the panelists considered the challenges inherent in representing one’s own culture for a larger audience.

The final panel, “Exploitation vs. Exploration,” was moderated by Catherine Hernandez. Panelists Lyle Victor Albert, Audrey Dwyer and Spy Denomme-Welch considered when, if at all, it is appropriate to use the story of others whose cultures, abilities or sexualities are not that of the playwright.

This last question could have been addressed—but was not—by keynote speaker David Henry Hwang, author of  the Tony-award winning play M. Butterfly, which was loosely based on the relationship between a French diplomat and a male Chinese opera singer who purportedly convinced the diplomat that he was a woman throughout their 20-year relationship. Instead, Hwang focused on his failures and what he learned from them, an encouraging lesson for any budding playwright.

Student membership in the Playwrights Guild is relatively inexpensive, and, although students don’t have access to all PGC materials, access to the calls for submissions, competitions, awards, jobs and residencies for playwrights is valuable — almost as valuable as the lesson in courage delivered by the playwrights on the front lines. Check out the Playwrights Guild at www.playwrightsguild.ca.

Joy Fisher graduated from UVic in June 2013 with a BFA in Writing.

Readers, buy this mouth-watering treat

Island Wineries of British Columbia (updated and expanded)
Edited by Gary Hynes
Contributors from EAT Magazine
Photographs by Rebecca Wellman
TouchWood Editions, 256 pages, $29.95.

Reviewed by Candace Fertile

This book was first published in 2011 and won the 2012 Gourmand International Wine Books Award for Canada, among other accolades. That a revised edition was deemed necessary is a testament to the growth in wine-producing on Vancouver Island.

The volume is a visual treat that will whet anyone’s appetite for the marvels that can be produced in our own back yard, from the Saaanich Peninsula to Sooke to the Cowichan Valley and beyond. Port Alberni has wineries. Saturna and Saltspring have wineries. So much is happening in regard to local food and drink, and Island Wineries of British Columbia provides an excellent introduction not only to wine from grapes, but also to wine from other fruit, plus mead, cider, and spirits. There’s even a selection of recipes featuring local ingredients—and suggestions for wine pairings. Chai Tea Honey Cake with Summer Fruits (suggested beverage—Venturi-Schulze Brandenburg No. 3 or a sparkling wine or blackberry dessert wine) is next on my baking list.

Hynes has assembled a huge amount of information by various writers, experts in the topics and, perhaps even more important, lovers of the local. Larry Arnold gives a short history of Island wines; Adam Tepedelen describes the Island wineries, often by using the words of the growers and vintners. Jeff Bateman, Treve Ring, and Adam Tepedelen explain the varieties of grapes; Julie Pegg gives us recipes sources from local restaurants. Kathryn McAree suggests some touring routes, and the volume concludes with a list of restaurants featuring Island wines.

Island Wineries of British Columbia is useful for beginner and expert alike, and the gorgeous photographs of Rebecca Wellman add to the mouth-watering effect. This book is marked by the sheer exuberance of the contributors: drink and food are pleasures, and to explore the pleasures of Island offerings is relatively easy. And the overall message is that what we have here is different from what is available from other wine-producing areas. The terroir changes the taste, as do the weather and the skills of the wine-maker. Over and over, wine-makers assert the challenge of making wine in BC. The growing season is short compared to, say that of the Okanagan. But the mild winters create an advantage in protecting vines. White wines, especially bubbly, tend to be more successful than red, but the local growers and vintners are in a constant state of experimentation and openness to what may work.

And the wine world on the islands is new. While people have made wine for ages, the business of it is only about twenty years old. What is being made is remarkable and testifies to the dedication of the people involved and the natural gifts of the regions.

Island Wineries of British Columbia would make a lovely gift for those interested in local fare. Buy one for yourself and one (or more) to give away.

Candace Fertile is a voracious reader who also enjoys food and wine.

Innovative documentary screening this week

Girl Rising
Thursday, June 20, 7 pm
The Caprice Theatre, Victoria
Sponsored by Dwight School Canada
Admission by donation

The movie tells the stories of nine girls from different parts of the world who face arranged marriages, child slavery, and other heartbreaking injustices. Despite these obstacles, the brave girls offer hope and inspiration. By getting an education, they’re able to break barriers and create change. Each girl’s story was written by a renowned writer from her native country.

From Academy Award-nominated director Richard E. Robbins and the award-winning Documentary Group, in association with Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions comes Girl Rising–an innovative new feature film about the power of education to change a girl–and the world. Girl Rising is powered by strategic partner, Intel Corporation, and distribution partner CNN Films. Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchette, Selena Gomez and other A-list actors contribute voice performances to the film,which features original music from Academy Award winner Rachel Portman, in collaboration with Hans Zimmer.

The film spotlights unforgettable girls like Sokha, an orphan who rises from the dumps of Cambodia to become a star student and an accomplished dancer; Suma, who composes music to help her endure forced servitude in Nepal and today crusades to free others; and Ruksana, an Indian “pavement-dweller” whose father sacrifices his own basic needs for his daughter’s dreams. Each girl is paired with a renowned writer from her native country. Edwidge Danticat, Sooni Taraporevala Aminatta Forna and others tell the girls’ stories, each in it’s style, and all with profound resonance. These girls are each unique, but the obstacles they faced are ubiquitous. Like the 66 million girls around the world who dream of going to school, what Sokha, Suma, Ruksana and the rest want most is to be students: to learn. And now, And now, by sharing their personal journeys, they have become teachers. Watch Girl Rising, and you will see: One girl with courage is a revolution.