Tag Archives: Vancouver

Grant Lawrence a true Canuck

The Lonely End of the Rink

By Grant Lawrence

Published by Douglas and McIntyre

240 Pages (plus recommended reading, recommended listening, and thank yous), $26.95

Reviewed by Michael Luis

We all know the cliché of jock vs. nerd, but perhaps no more than Grant Lawrence. The 42-year-old CBC Radio personality from Vancouver details this social war in his second book, The Lonely End of the Rink.

The Lonely End of the Rink details Lawrence’s journey to love hockey all the way from his first slippery stumbles on the ice as two-year-old, to his successful run in Vancouver’s premier beer-league in his late 30s. While this makes up the majority of the narrative, Lawrence also weaves in the tale of his hometown team, the Vancouver Canucks, providing an in-depth history of their start as a 1970s expansion team, up to the 2011 Stanley Cup series.

Lawrence focusses on his relationship with grade-school bullying for the early portion of his personal narrative. Lawrence deftly describes these bullies (with names like Buck, “Psycho”, and “Gooch”): “Gooch was a Shrek-shaped hillbilly originally from the small town of Horsefly, BC.”(95).

The stories of how these bullies – almost all hockey players – treated Lawrence are gut-wrenching and portray Lawrence as an underdog we can back. “He threw my bag in the direction I was running as hard as he could…the side of my skull cracked against the thin layer of waxed linoleum covering the hallway’s concrete floor like a snooker ball being struck by a baseball bat” (73)

Lawrence’s language is simple and modest with light metaphors. While many of the metaphors are vivid and concrete, such as the snooker ball and bolas, many of them reference pop-culture, like referring to “Gooch” as “Shrek-shaped”. Considering Lawrence’s position as a media personality, their inclusion makes perfect sense. While the metaphors serve as quick referential humour, the volume of references – some of which being overly specific – can be exhausting. Some were hilarious, such as describing the bizarre opening act for Lawrence’s band The Smugglers as “a Pink Floyd-meets-The Lord of the Rings pagan rock nightmare” (119), but many felt forced and unnecessary, such as the description of “Breaking Bad-esque science-teacher glasses” (17). That being said, I laughed out loud at most.

In terms of the second narrative of the Canuck’s history, Lawrence effectively includes the information that best compliments his personal journey. For example, he focusses on the Canucks’ famous goalie trio of “King” Richard Brodeur, “Captain” Kirk Mclean, and Roberto “Bobby Lu” Luongo. Lawrence was always enamoured by the goalie position, even when disliking hockey as a teen. Since the personal narrative explores many of Lawrence’s failures, it’s no fluke that he examines the Canucks’ three Stanley Cup losses; from the optimism following the 1982 runner-up team, to the brutal riots of 1994 and 2011.

Whereas the Canucks have yet to return to the finals and achieve redemption, by the end of book’s 240 pages, Lawrence achieves his. The book is a tale of falling down on the ice, brushing yourself off, and popping back up. It’s about learning to love what you once hated, and realizing why you love what you already do. The Lonely End of the Rink’s memoir-meets-arts-meets-sports fusion isn’t as game-changing as Orr and Gretsky were, but it’s a unique personal take on our nation’s greatest passion, and definitely worth strapping on some skates for.

Michael Luis is a Victoria student, writer, filmmaker, and musician. Check him out at www.michaelacluis.wordpress.com.

Poet captures link between language and place

By Joy Fisher

Vancouver writer Daphne Marlatt took her audience on a flaneurial stroll through the history of her city and its influence on her poetry and prose in the Lansdowne Lecture that opened the Second Annual Malahat Review Spring Symposium, WordsThaw at the University of Victoria recently.

Aided by archival photographs by Philip Timm that capture the city’s early history when big timber hid the sky and streams snaked through town and more recent photographs by Trevor Martin that reflect glass-walled skyscrapers, Marlatt illustrated the constantly transforming nature of Vancouver since its incorporation in 1886.

Marlatt’s personal connection with Vancouver began when she arrived as an immigrant in 1951. Born in Australia, she moved with her family to Malaya (now Malaysia), at age three, finally arriving in Canada as a nine-year-old. Her first impressions of her new country were of the “cold clarity of the sea” and a creek that ran through the family’s yard in North Vancouver, from which she gathered a sense of Vancouver as “fluid.”

When she was a student at the University of British Columbia, a visiting professor suggested Marlatt try to write about her early years in Malaya, but it was her adopted land that captured and held her attention.

Her first published piece, an imaginative story about Vancouver pioneer “Gassy Jack” Deighton, drew on city history. Although few knew it at the time, that piece predicted the future of Marlatt’s writing life. Vancouver has been a “well-spring” for her writing since 1972, she acknowledged, and she freely confessed that, although she writes about other subjects as well, her 40 years of writing about Vancouver has been “fairly obsessive.”

She noted, however, that she is not alone in taking Vancouver as her muse.  There are many others, she insisted, listing some prominent writers including Douglas Coupland, who roamed the world before coming home to Vancouver to settle down for good. Coupland later published a book of short essays and photographs about the Vancouver skyline called City of Glass. 

A series of exits from and re-entries to Vancouver living sharpened Marlatt’s sense of Vancouver as a constantly changing city. This affected not only Marlatt’s choice of subject matter but also her writing style. For instance, in the 1970s, during a time of rapid growth in the city and change in her own life, she wrote of vacant lots and construction sites. Reading from her work, she demonstrated how the rhythms of her writing became “jumpier,” echoing the rhythms of the city life around her. Her prose was becoming more poetic, and eventually her genre of choice became poetry.

As a young writer, Marlatt delved into city archives as a way of trying to make herself feel at home in a strange new place. She acknowledged that, for her, acculturation was a long process, but by the time of her “fourth entry” into the city in 2000, after some years spent on Salt Spring Island,  she finally felt like she was “coming back home.”

As the city continues to change, she and her friends sometimes ask one another: “Do you remember what used to be there?” Often they don’t, but Marlatt insists that the ongoing transformations don’t leave her with a sense of loss, but rather with a sense of “layered richness” which she tries to embody in her poetry.

“Life’s a gift. You can either hold onto it or you can give it away,” Marlatt said. She believes in giving it away through her writing.

Marlatt’s most recent book is Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now, published in 2013 by Talonbooks.

Joy Fisher graduated with a BFA in writing from the University of Victoria in 2013.

 

Rick Estrin and the Nightcats bring the Blues to BC

By Michael Luis

After meeting in 1976 in Berkeley, California, guitarist Charlie Baty and vocalist/harmonica player Rick Estrin formed Little Charlie and the Nightcats. After taking their modern take on Chicago-style blues all over the world for over 30 years, Baty retired in 2008, but Estrin has continued to tour and record with his namesake. The award-winning group is visiting Vancouver’s FanClub on December 8th to play new tunes from their 2013 release “One Wrong Turn,” and to share some favourites from the back catalogue.

Coastal Spectator: Any notable experiences playing in Vancouver in the past?

Rick Estrin: Oh, man. I got lots of memories from playing all over Canada. For Vancouver specifically, we’ve been playing there since the 1980s. We were coming up there regularly in a time when blues had a little resurgence in popularity.

CS: For the past few years you’ve been the bandleader and namesake of the Nightcats. How has this experience compared to years past when it was Little Charlie and the Nightcats?

RE: Part of my job is still the same: writing the songs and fronting the band. But I just have more responsibilities now with taking care of all the parts of it that require feigning adult behavior (laughs). There was somewhat of a learning curve, but I’ve been around it so long. And with Little Charlie, if I ever needed to know anything, he would tell me. I don’t know if I’d call him a control freak, [but] he didn’t really feel comfortable relegating the responsibilities [like] I have.

CS: You guys recently released a record, One Wrong Turn. How did the creative process compare with past releases?

RE: Well, the creative process started the same way. It’s the same thing. I’ll write songs. J., our drummer, he’s always writing songs so that’s not a problem for him. I like to feature him on at least one song. The rest of the process is similar to the way we always did it. I write the song at home on the guitar, and I’m a primitive guitar player so in a way I have a better chance of coming up with something a little different because I don’t know what I’m doing (laughs). So I’ll come up with these things and show them to Kid (guitarist) or show them to the whole band and they would come up with ideas. On this record it seemed that every song they would come up with something that was on the same page— that was what I wanted but even better. They would add things to it that just worked and would make my vision for the song come into focus.

CS: Nice, so it was just naturally organic the way the songs all built up.

RE: Yeah, there was just a synergy in the studio this time. It’s not like I’ve never had that before, but the synergy dial was turned up to 10, man.

CS: You were recently nominated for the B.B. King Entertainer Award at The Blues Awards. Looking at its namesake, B.B. King, he’s still doing it and going strong at his old age, so is that inspiring to see as a fellow blues musician?

RE:(Laughs) Yeah, yeah. The guy that was my role model for that was a guy that actually said he taught B.B. King a lot of stuff on the guitar, Robert Lockwood, Jr. He was even older than B.B. and he was a great guitar player. He was a good friend of mine, and just a role model for me for how to be old. He would show up, and carry in his own amplifier at 90-years-old.

CS: To wrap things up, what keeps you playing the blues after all these years?

RE: It’s my life. It’s all I know. If I didn’t do that, I mean, it’s not like I have hobbies and stuff. That’s my life. I can’t imagine what I’d do without it and it’s been my life for close to 50 years.

CS: Great answer, man. Anything else you’d like to add for your fans in Vancouver or anywhere else who may be reading this?

RE: Anybody who can make the show, anyone within driving range of Vancouver, make it to the show. I guarantee you’ll be happy. I’ll personally give you your money back if you don’t leave there feeling great.

More about Rick Estrin and the Nightcats at www.rickestrin.com.

Michael Luis is a Victoria student, writer, filmmaker, and musician. Check him out at www.michaelacluis.wordpress.com.

Play refuses easy solutions

Armstrong’s War

By Colleen Murphy

Directed by Mindy Parfitt

 Revue Stage,  Arts Club Theatre Company, Vancouver

 (World Premiere, Oct. 17 – Nov. 9/13)

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

When 12-year-old Halley Armstrong comes to the hospital room to read to a convalescing Afghanistan veteran, he tries to send her away. But she won’t take no for an answer. Thus begins an unlikely relationship that eventually enables each of them to reveal hidden secrets.

Halley, brilliantly played by 14-year-old Matreya Scarrwener in her theatrical debut, is determined to earn a community service badge as a Pathfinder. She has picked Michael off the “readers wanted” list because they have the same last name. But Michael, played by Mik Byskov, a recent UVic graduate, just wants to be left to his imaginings about his friend Robbie, with whom he shared a traumatizing war experience.

As it turns out, Halley and Michael have much more in common than just their last names. In different ways, the usual routes to conventional lives have been disrupted for each and they have both become “pathfinders” groping toward an ill-defined future. Halley is in a wheelchair and, when the play opens, Michael is under his hospital bed re-living his war trauma. As they read Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage together, they gradually confront the face-saving narratives they have each invented as a means of survival and admit to each other the truth of what really happened.

Both actors responded to deft direction by Mandy Parfitt, Scarrwener catching perfectly the delicate balance of a 12-year-old between childish fantasy and brave confrontation of real life, and Byskov sending shivers down the spine when he voiced the pleading of a wounded buddy: “Killl meee.”

The play isn’t perfect. Too much time devoted to reading aloud interrupted the dramatic action, and the decision to have Halley read the dialogue of union soldiers with a Southern accent and to depict Michael as a poor reader added to the tedium because the words and meaning were difficult to understand.

The most unsatisfying aspect of this play, however, may be the fault of unrealistic audience expectations. We want transformation, to see the characters rising whole and perfect out of the fires of devastation. But life isn’t like that, and playwright Colleen Murphy won’t let us kid ourselves that it is.

At one point, in a rage, Michael tears a book to pieces. When he gives it back to Halley, it is a patchwork of taped pages. Halley is shocked, but later reports that her teacher has accepted her cover story and assured her that there is a “replacement fund for books,” That may be true for library books, but not for the books of our lives. When our lives are destroyed, Murphy seems to suggest, all we can do is patch them up and move ahead as best we can.

Neither of these characters is transformed; they both cling to whatever they can of the conventional rules of life. By the end of the play, Michael is back in uniform, ready and willing to return to war despite the horrors he has experienced.  Halley is no doubt making plans for acquiring her next community service badge.

“That’s your trouble,” Michael says to Halley toward the end of the play. “You hope too much.” So do we all, and sometimes it leads to disappointment. But Halley has the final rejoinder. She reminds Michael of the family motto she tries to live by: “I remain unvanquished.” May it be so for us all.

Joy Fisher is a Victoria writer.