Author Archives: Andrea

Challenges and opportunities facing the Haida Nation

The Political and Economic Challenges and Opportunities Facing the Haida Nation
Tuesday, April 30, 1:45-3:30 pm
First Peoples House, UVic

The presentation will be conducted by Peter Lantin, President of the Haida Nation. In attendance:

Trevor Russ, Vice President of the Haida Nation
Guujaaw, Former President of the Haida Nation
Robert Davis, Executive member of the Haida Nation
Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson, White Raven Law Corporation

Moderator: Dr. Brent Mainprize, Gustavson School of Business

Debut album complex and precocious

Mo Kenney
Mo Kenney (New Scotland Records and Pheromone Recordings, 2012)
Produced by Joel Plaskett

Reviewed by Natalie Zina Walschots

Waverly, Nova Scotia’s Mo Kenney displays precocious emotional awareness and subtlety on her self-titled debut. Released jointly on New Scotland Records and Pheromone Recordings, Mo Kenney alternately soothes and challenges, sweet but never saccharine, smirking but not impertinent. The album was produced by Joel Plaskett at his studio, Scotland Yard,  where Kenney has been collaborating since 2011. It also features Plaskett’s  input on guest vocals and instrumentation. Kenney and Plaskett co-wrote the songs “Scene of the Crime” and “Deja Vu.” While Plaskett’s influence is undoubtedly deeply felt, it is Kenney’s voice and vision that ultimately shapes the album.

And speaking of voice, there is no doubt that Mo Kenney’s vocals form the centrepiece of this album. The most immediate point of comparison is Cat Power, but her tone is at once deeper and more buttery, recalling an early k.d. lang. Emotive, expressive and deeply sensual, her voice leads the listener like a golden thread through the narrative of each track, adding cheeky defiance to “Sucker,” languid poise to “The Great Escape” and a complete re-interpretation of the David Bowie track (and only cover on the album) “Five Years.”

Though only twenty-two now, Kenney has been writing songs since she was much younger; indeed, the album’s plaintive opening track, “Eden,” was originally set down when she was only sixteen. It’s not necessarily her talent that seems remarkable–it’s not unheard of for skill to bless the young (and Kenney has been studying music since she was a very small child)–but her clarity of vision and direction. These songs have a sense of unity, sophistication and drive. While certainly Kenney has had the benefit of powerful guiding forces, such as Plaskett and Ron Sexsmith, her character and her heart define this debut: both as calming and stormy as the sea, complex as the sweet sting of salt water.


Natalie Zina Walschots is a music writer, poet, journalist and editor based in Toronto, Ontario.

A few gems at WORK

WORK: Annual UVic BFA Visual Arts showcase
April 19-27, Visual Arts building, UVic
Free and open to the public

Reviewed by Blake Jacob

The annual UVic Visual Arts showcase, WORK, is taking place until April 29. The show is curated beautifully in the many spacious rooms of the Visual Arts building, and features projects of over 40 undergraduate students. These are young artists who are finding their way, so the works on display demonstrate various levels of maturity. However, interspersed among the studies of marijuana paraphernalia and photographs of pensive-looking cheerleaders are a few unique gems.

One outstanding work is a series of untitled portrait photographs by Claire Aitken. The artist’s knowledge of light and shadow led to the successful execution of captivating photos. The portraits are black and white and  displayed in oversized frames. Several groups of showcase attendees lingered at length near these portraits, discussing them animatedly. It seemed clear that this work was well-received.

Another remarkable piece is an untitled painting by Mia Watkins. The painting is beautiful and jarring at the same time. The artist is attentive to detail and chose a fantastic color palette. Unfortunately, the lighting in the area was a bit dim and didn’t give the piece the justice it deserved.

A third noteworthy work is Brittany Giniver’s portrait series “My Mother at 21.” The work is a series of photographs which are recreations of the subject’s mothers. The subjects are styled, posed, and dressed similarly to the subjects of the original photographs, composed in matching settings. Some of the subjects look very much like their mothers; when they are posed in the same setting, the photos beg a double-take. Other subjects are so dissimilar in appearance to their mothers that the juxtaposition provokes thought. It would have been powerful to see more non-white families in the series, but the work still raises questions despite its lack of diversity.

The showcase is worth a visit to see the memorable pieces that stand out from the crowd.

Blake Jacob is a Vancouver Island poet whose essential nutrients are optimism, wordsmithery, and captivating melody.

 

Québecoise fable charms reader

The Douglas Notebooks
By Christine Eddie, translated by Sheila Fischman
Goose Lane Press, 178 pages,  $19.95

Reviewed by Arleen Paré

Charming is the word. The Douglas Notebooks is a charming story captured in a small, charming book. Fable-like and bitter-sweet, the narrative ends on page 160; the last eighteen pages constitute a useful set of endnotes entitled “Credits (in order of appearance).” Despite its size, Notebooks packs an ambitious punch. It not only tells the magical story of Douglas and Éléna, it also critiques a period of historical resource, urban and social development, describing the effects of human greed. At the same time it reveals the effects of the Holocaust on one of the main characters. None of the topics is out of place in this tale; they fit together to complete a very satisfactory read.

In addition to Christine Eddie’s deft integration of characters, plot and history, she seduces the reader with language. She writes, “After his second winter in the woods, loneliness fell on Romain like a bear on a butterfly,” using imagery so arresting that the reader is able to absorb the full weight of his sadness. In another chapter, Éléna reassures Douglas (aka Romain) that she loves him despite his difficult childhood by saying, “I would have liked you even if you were an earthquake.” Later, in the city, “the buildings pour their staircases onto the sidewalks.” This translation by Sheila Fischman, a well-established, award-winning Québecoise translator, is so convincing one could easily imagine it was originally written in English, except that the language is curiously heightened, enriched by a generous sprinkling of fresh poetic idioms.

The two romantic characters are misfits who find each other in a thick forest. They triumph over mean family backgrounds and physical challenges. Although the whole book is sweet (and I mean that only in the best sense of the word), the beginning is the sweetest and most poetic part of the book. I wanted it to go on and on–like a fairytale. But the story divides in two. Tragedy, also known as reality, crashes into their idyllic home. The fallout, the rest of the story, revolves around Rose, the daughter of Douglas and Éléna.

It is a fable, a fairytale with a substantial measure of contemporary social criticism. Like a good fairytale, it is hard to determine exactly where it takes place, which should make it solidly universal. And although it might be universal, somehow the place is important. I wanted to know where the story was happening. The place names are mainly French; I kept, picturing small villages on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. This is part of the mystery. Nevertheless, wherever it really does take place, it is well worth the read.

Arleen Paré is a Victoria writer whose forthcoming book of poetry, Lake of Two Mountains, will be released by Brick Books in Spring 2014.

Triple Book Launch in Victoria

Launch of Three New Books
Sunday, April 28, 4 pm
Fernwood Inn, 1302 Gladstone Avenue
Victoria, BC

Everyone welcome

Dede Crane, Every Happy Family (Coteau Books)
Jay Ruzesky, In Antarctica: An Amundsen Pilgrimage (Nightwood Editions)
Marita Dachsel, Glossolalia (Anvil Press)

Eating for a Healthy Planet

Eating for a Healthy Planet: A Conversation with Canadians
Monday, April 22nd, 5-6 pm
UVic Fine Arts Building (facing the Phoenix Theatre), Room FA103 (ground floor by entrance)
Contact: Holly Cecil, cecil@uvic.ca

This one-hour documentary was produced as part of the UVic Human Dimensions of Climate Change program. The UN Food & Agriculture Organization and numerous other international studies report livestock agriculture as responsible for almost one-fifth of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the emissions from all the world’s forms of transportation, combined. A dietary reduction in animal products is one of the single largest ways you can help reduce your carbon footprint. Worldwide, initiatives such as Meatless Mondays in 24 countries are impelling a sea change in the way we think about food and its environmental impacts. Why do none of our government initiatives on climate change say a word about it? The film looks into Canada’s misleading reporting structure of greenhouse gases emissions, and also includes interviews with several Canadians who each discuss personal commitment to different levels of reduction: from ‘locavores’ and flexitarians to vegetarians to vegans.

Veggie video sure to satisfy

Trent Freeman
Hot Spot for a Hobo

Reviewed by Andrea E.

Sliced and diced vegetables are the stars of fiddle player Trent Freeman’s music video, Hot Spot for a Hobo. One of the six music videos nominated for a Vancouver Island Music Award (VIMA), it has flawless timing—Freeman’s fiddle and the camera move in perfect time with arranged, cut, transformed, and beautifully lit vegetables and fruits. These seeds, roots, tubers, and flowers of vegetables are melodious, and surely organic, for not only do vegetable-fruit puppets play instruments made of themselves, but they also move, respond, and cavort to Hot Spot for a Hobo’s jazzy melody.

Freeman’s album Rock Paper Scissors (2012) is also nominated for VIMA for Instrumental or Experimental Album of the Year (one of three in this category). “Hot Spot for a Hobo” is the second song off this album which twenty-four year old Freeman chose as the signature music video. Freeman explains, “the sound of chopping knives and the aggressive drum beat” were twin sounds he heard in the writing of “Hot Spot for a Hobo.” Logically, as Freeman “has played with food all his life,” this led to the concept of a vegetable-puppet video narrative, “a brain-wave that might be fun.” A day was used to create the vegetable-fruit puppets, they “rested overnight in the fridge,” and the following day the improvisation began.

With the assistance of his cousin Adrian Murray, Freeman directs, shoots and edits (with a Canon T3i) the video, demonstrating that to be a joyful artist is to first understand your art. The result: this crystal-clear video, sliced and arranged by Freeman, is the most musically and visually aligned of the six nominees.

Trent Freeman is one of those adventuresome musicians who returned to BC with an added layer of sophistication and finesse. The Hot Spot for a Hobo music video reflects Freeman’s artistic growth, and his quirky-sharp humour.  And there are riddles in this video, too–here is a clue from Freeman: “Are the puppets relaxing or being boiled?”

Trent Freeman will be playing the Vancouver Island Music Festival July 12th -14th

Andrea E., aka Country Heart, is a fourth-year UVic writing student who lives for any sound with a twang or a slide in it. You can hear Country Heart on CFUV later this spring.

At the Mike: Rubinsky, Dower and Shea

At the Mike Reading
Tuesday, April 23, 7 pm
Chronicles of Crime
1048 Fort Street, Victoria, BC
Everyone Welcome

South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky
In her new story collection, award-winning author Holley Rubinksy delves into the lives of those coming face to face with personal truths that require resilience, humour and the ability to change. With a clear eye for the complexities of the human heart, her stories take the reader to deeper understandings about the nature of love, loss and longing. Spare and rich with wit, the stories in South of Elfrida celebrate the act of self-renewal.

“The descriptions are exquisite, as are the details of the characters’ lives. Holley Rubinsky is wise in the ways of the world and in the complications of the yearning heart.”—Alistair MacLeod

Holley Rubinsky is a Canadian fiction writer living in Kaslo, a village in the mountains of British Columbia. She is the author of At First I Hope for Rescue (Knopf Canada; Picador in the US), Rapid Transits and Other Stories (Polestar), and Beyond This Point (McClelland & Stewart). Winner of the $10,000 Journey Prize and a Gold Medal for fiction at the National Magazine Awards, her second book, At First I Hope for Rescue, was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Holley was the host of The Writers’ Show, produced by CJLY, Nelson. Her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women. Please visit www.holleyrubinsky.com.

Click here for more about South of Elfrida.

Stony River by Tricia Dower
Set in a decade we tend to think of as a more innocent time, Stony River shows in dramatic and unexpected ways how perilous it was to grow up in the fifties. Here are absent mothers, controlling fathers, biblical injunctions, teenaged longing and small-town pretense. The threat of violence is all around: angry fathers at home, rough boys in the neighborhood, strange men in strange cars, one dead girl and another gone missing.

“Think Mad Men but even madder.”—Toronto Star

Tricia Dower was a business executive before reinventing herself as a writer in 2002. Her debut novel, Stony River, was published by Penguin Canada in 2012. Her short-story collection, Silent Girl (Inanna, 2008), was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. She won first prize for fiction in The Malahat Review’s 2010 Open Season Awards. Her short fiction also has appeared in The New Quarterly, Room of One’s Own, Hemispheres, Cicada, NEO, Insolent Rudder and Big Muddy. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, Tricia lives and writes in Brentwood Bay, BC. Website: www.triciadower.com.

Click here for more about Stony River.

The Unfinished Child by Theresa Shea
Marie MacPherson, a mother of two, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at thirty-nine. When she enters the world of genetic testing, she is entirely unprepared for the decision that lies ahead. With skill and poise, debut novelist Theresa Shea dramatically explores society’s changing views of Down syndrome over the past sixty years.

“Raise[s] compelling questions about moral responsibility in a 21st-century world.”—Publishers Weekly

Theresa Shea has published poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and articles in a number of Canadian magazines and journals. Born in Maryland and raised throughout the United States, she moved to Canada in 1977 and currently lives with her husband and three children in Edmonton, Alberta. Follow Theresa on Twitter at @sheatheresa.

Click here for more about The Unfinished Child.

Drop by for an evening packed with great stories and conversations. Everyone Welcome. Free admission. Cash or Debit sales only.
For more information, contact Chronicles of Crime at 250-721-2665 or Brindle & Glass at info@brindleandglass.com.

Singers elegantly recreate early music

Stile Antico
Passion and Resurrection: Music for Lent and Eastertide
Alix Goolden Hall, Victoria Conservatory of Music

Reviewed by Konstantin R. Bozhinov.

Stile Antico’s recent interpretation of Renaissance vocal masterworks was elegant and polished without sounding too pompous. The singers combined great ensemble work with artistic awareness and deep understanding of the music.

In his introductory remarks, one of the singers called Goolden Hall a “rather intimate space.” Smaller than Wigmore or Carnegie Halls, the space is just fine for twelve a capella singers. The group’s  crystalline sound and vibrato was typical of the English choir tradition,  a sound established by the Tallis Scholars and King’s College choir a few decades earlier. This aesthetic can come across as restrained and conservative, but Stile Antico’s version suggested precision and attention to detail. Clarity of diction reinforced ensemble cohesiveness, although the style of the music dictates independence of each of the parts.

The program consisted mainly of English 16th century composers, interspersed with Spanish and French pieces. The concert was themed around Lent and Easter and most of the text was in Latin. Pieces by John Taverner, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd showcased the best musical achievements of the English Renaissance, while Spain was represented by Cristobal de Morales and Tomas Luis de Victoria. The only French pieces were by Crequillon and Lheritier. Since the overall style of the music was the same, Stile Antico provided diversity through insightful interpretation.

John McCabe’s Woefully arrayed, written for Stile Antico, was a surprising modern end to the first half of the concert. The performance was top notch, but the composition itself did not fit the overall program. The second half balanced this deficiency through more elaborate dynamics and musical detail. The last piece was the brief but virtuosic In resurrectione tua by William Byrd, a fine way to end. The encore offered Thomas Campion, a slightly later composer with a distinctly different style.  Its brief phrases and lack of voice independence almost mocked the complicated polyphony of the entire program, showing that there is beauty in simplicity.

To my ear, the group creates a brilliant Renaissance sound I’d call elegant and refined. Stile Anticoi is well on its way to becoming a leading early-music a capella group.

Konstantin R. Bozhinov is a Ph.D. student in historical musicology at UVic, as well as a professional performer on the lute and baroque guitar.

Steph MacPherson plays it safe

Steph MacPherson
Bells and Whistles (Cordova Bay Records, 2012)

Reviewed by Noah Cebuliak

Victoria Singer-Songwriter Steph MacPherson is up for three VIMA’s this year: BC-wide artist of the year, Island artist of the year, and Island pop/rock album of the year, for 2012’s Bells and Whistles. MacPherson has been working hard since 2009 to develop her own brand of infectious, radio-friendly folk-pop and is rightly gaining more notoriety for her efforts.

Bells and Whistles is Steph MacPherson’s debut full-length and was released in Canada last April, and in the United States this January. It’s an album that solidifies MacPherson’s direction and musical intent firmly in the mainstream, for better or worse, and demonstrates her ability to consistently write hooky and accessible songs. Bells and Whistles is exquisitely produced–I could not find one technical error throughout the course of the album. Her voice is perfect and mixed well, and her backing band and arrangements are equally tight–a clearly curated vision of a solid pop album made manifest.

I envy and honour MacPherson’s work ethic and her polish. At the same time, this is an album I can’t really dig into. Maybe that’s because it doesn’t offer much beyond the surface. It’s catchy and some of her lines were rotating in my head for days, but during the same period of listening to Bells, I was tethered to a host of other acclaimed albums, including: Lianne La Havas’ Is Your Love Big Enough, Wake Owl’s Wild Country, and Brian Blade Fellowship’s Perceptual. Comparing albums across genres is a dangerous move, but necessary I feel. And Bells and Whistles didn’t stand up. My attention went elsewhere. Maybe it’s because every song on the record sounds mostly the same, or doesn’t satisfactorily address themes of real depth, or because MacPherson’s voice is just a bit too affected (read: Sarah MacLachlan). There’s no room for mistakes, for the human quality, for vulnerable edge, that elusive puzzle piece I found on the other albums mentioned above.

Steph MacPherson could take her obvious well of talent to the feet of Neko Case or Kathleen Edwards and really learn to integrate her hooks and charm into something original and compelling. Bells and Whistles borders on an alternative country sound much of the time; I think she would do well to push it over the line. How would a Randy Travis or George Fox-produced sophomore LP from MacPherson sound, for example? Or a dusty, open and unhindered live-to-tape approach? I wonder if MacPherson has listened to Nebraska. Can someone get this woman a 4-track?

Bells and Whistles is a good album. And that’s just it. I long to see the gritty side of MacPherson—the dangerous, the unreserved—in future releases. If MacPherson can let herself go just a little bit, she’ll be onto something fresh and original. Feist’s Monarch wasn’t exactly a portent of what was to come either, so I remain hopeful, if not slightly impatient.


Noah Cebuliak is a Montréal-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who leads the indie-folk-pop trio Ghost Lights. He independently released his debut EP in November 2012. Check out www.ghostlights.ca.