A little over a year ago, a 26 year old street seller in Tunisia set himself on fire. The breadwinner for a family of six siblings, Mohammed Bouazizi worked so his sisters could go to university. Harassed daily by police and the municipality, on December 17^th he had reached his limit. With his produce and scales confiscated yet again, he stood outside the governor’s office shouting, “how do you expect me to make a living?” Then he doused himself with gasoline and lit a match.

The fire spread around the world, beginning with the fleeing of the Tunisian president, to the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square, the resignation of the Yemeni prime minister, on to the Occupy Wall Street in the US and the thousands of other occupy movements worldwide, including Montreal.

But now it is Christmas. With only a few exceptions, tents across Canada have been cleared out of city parks and squares. The global movement that once looked like a political tsunami has leveled out. For many, it is back to business. Or, more precisely, back to shopping.

I am always torn at Christmas, now more than ever. The nostalgic pull of lights, carols and stuffed turkey can barely hold their own against harsher economic, social and political realities. Maybe the multiple train wrecks in slow motion – the climate, the economy, our democratic rights – are trying to tell us something. You think? Are we listening? Or are we too busy maxing out our credit cards at Walmart or Future Shop. Because really, what’s global collapse when you got a Sony Bravia to watch it on?

Christmas occupies us. We are pre-occupied by it, our attention hijacked by the bright shiny baubles and the tinkling music. For many, our childhood enchantment with Santa Claus will remain the greatest spiritual connection of our lives. As adults, the last minute visits to the shopping mall will be the closest we’ll come to a pilgrimage. But like a huge cardboard box that holds a tiny present, the Christmas joke is on us.

The thing about the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements were their attempts to bring us back to basics. To remind us that life is better if we cooperate, share wealth, challenge hierarchies. To encourage us to trust in the integrity of our own histories and futures of our own making. To wipe away the obfuscating barriers of middle men, dictators, and the false gods of rampant consumerism.

What is Christmas, then? How can we occupy it? Over the next two weeks, Rover writers will be taking a moment to reflect on Christmas and the concept of “occupy.” For Martyn Bryant, that means taking a closer look at the many myths with which it shares its history. For Gina Roitman, Eric Hamovitch and Sujata Dey, the central narrative is one of being an outsider. For Catherine Averback, it is a return to family. For Ehab Lotayef and Mark Paterson, angry poems and poignant stories must be told. And read on, there are more.

For me, Christmas is an opportunity for change and rebirth. A gift is not something we tick off a list, but that which we give of ourselves. A little boy drumming. An offer of help. Forgiveness. And it’s a reminder of the sacrifices we are sometimes called upon to make in order to realize a greater potential. Because sometimes the simple flick of a match or a single star in the sky really can change the world. If you let it, that is.

Leila Marshy is the literary editor of The Rover.

You came to the party. You saw the art. Now catch the video.
The address that has come to be known as the Van Horne Terminal Iron Works building was overflowing this past weekend with art lovers, artists, art hangers on, and art.

PHOTO Credit: Boletus, by Isa Dawson

Rover would like to take this opportunity to warn you that Art can be very bad for your child’s health. This handy illustration will help you keep track of the warning signs. If you have reason to suspect that your child is being pushed towards Art by either peer pressure or surreptitious Art viewing, it is important to take action as soon as possible.

Be warned that “Art Fair Parties” – such as the one being held by Rover on Friday night at 135 Van Horne from 6 to 8pm – are prime Art nurturing grounds. At such gatherings you can see full-fledged Artists (and their lovers) discussing composition or trading dirty vernissage stories. Worse, studies have shown that some of them are there only for the finger food and free wine.

But Rover can help you through this introductory stage. The more you know about Art and its deleterious affects on you and your children, the better armed you will be for the future. We will not stand in the way of your Ikea print buying. No. Some things are truly sacred.

PHOTO credit: College for Creative Studies (collegeforcreativestudies.edu)

Every now and then a film comes along that is a game changer. Michael Moore’s Roger and Me was that in 1989. His guerrilla filmmaking anticipated the collapse of industrial America as well as the rise of the next wave of people power. Last night I sat in a packed Cinéma du Parc and thought, this is it. Hugo Latulippe’s République: Un abécédaire populaire is the next game changer.

Over the period of a few weeks in April, 2011, Latulippe brought together over 50 of Quebecers from various sectors of society: unions, politics, health care, theatre, film, academia, community activism, and so on. Interviewed in stark black and white, the subjects, including Claude Béland, Francine Pelletier, Julius Grey, Nancy Neamtan, Lorraine Pagé, Steven Guilbeault, Pierre Curzi, Dominic Champagne, Françoise David, and more, speak to various themes and concerns. The bottom line question for them all is, where are we going as a society?

The answers are deeply disturbing. “Just look at Laval!” says one, disgusted. “That says it all.” The consensus is, we’ve lost our way. We’ve contracted from the socially rich post Quiet Revolution years – years that brought us Cégeps, Hydro Québec, CLSCs, the richest arts and culture scene in Canada – to the vast parking lots of Walmart. “To be rich is not to have more things,” says another. “To be rich is to live a deeper life. We must destroy Dollarama.”

Luc Ferrandez, Projet Montréal mayor of the Plateau, speaks stirringly: “We focused so long on language but in the process we’ve lost the country. We became American. We need to look at the land and remember who we are.” Comedian Christian Vanasse says, “We’re a northern country, we should know better how to live here. We could lead the world in solar, wind and geothermal power. Instead, we have a complete lack of imagination. We’re digging for shale gas, crisse.”

Poetically paced and with a subtle soundtrack, the film is framed by a grave entreaty to wake up before we destroy everything, including our souls.

République brings to mind another game changing work, Speak White. Michèle Lalonde’s great rage-filled 1968 poem, and the NFB film that followed, channelled the national aspirations of that era. Forty years later, it’s a very different kind of nationalism and very different kind of rage. Quebecers are facing challenges much larger than language and cultural identity; we are now confronted with the survival and stewardship of the entire planet.

Go see Republique. Just go.

At the Cinéma du Parc until November 3. In French only.

Leila Marshy is the Literary Editor of The Rover.

Inside the Mile One Centre in downtown St John’s, the sight lines are great no matter where you sit. The pregame entertainment is simple – two grown men grinning like 6 year olds bounce onto the ice and take their place at a row of pucks as an MC in a sweatshirt encourages them to aim for the net. Their success rate is about 2%. The crowd roars.

I started resenting the NHL when my kid came of hockey-going age. Not only did I desperately want her to play hockey, I wanted to share the supposedly quintessential hockey experience with her: going to a Habs game. But time and again I couldn’t justify the ridiculously high ticket prices. As for the tickets I could afford, not only would I have to buy them in July, I don’t own a telescope. Might as well watch it on TV. And I’m sorry, but that is just wrong. And on this I will come out of the closet: I am the 99% who can not afford to actively participate in our national game.

If hockey really is about ponds and kids lacing up on frosty mornings and working class families cheering on their city’s team and players whose salaries don’t put them in league with Donald Trump, then I am in the right place. I am watching the St John’s IceCaps.

The AHL affiliate for the newly returned Winnipeg Jets, the IceCaps were brought to Newfoundland by former premier Danny Williams. This is the man who, as Tory leader of Newfoundland, removed Canadian flags from government buildings to protest Ottawa and then launched the Anything But Conservative campaign.

When it was confirmed that Atlanta was giving up its Thrashers and sending them back home, Williams swooped in with a proposal to relocate the minor league team, the Manitoba Moose, to St John’s. Six months and one name contest later, the IceCaps are squaring off against Maine’s Bridgeport Sound Tigers.

Glenn Stanford, partner and COO of the IceCaps, says that it’s about time. He was around in 1991 and helped put together the AHL Maple Leaf’s for St John’s. After that run he went to the US. “When I was in Idaho, hockey was behind football. Behind even high school football. It’s just not an American passion. But it’s our passion.”

Almost overnight, that passion turned into a done deal. “There are already 5000 season ticket holders in a building that only holds 5800. All of our suites are sold,” Stanford says.

Meanwhile, down behind the penalty box two guys are wearing body suits in the colour of the unofficial but popular flag of Newfoundland, the “pink, white and green.” You see it flying around the city here and there, a reminder of a golden era when Newfoundland wasn’t just somebody’s have-not province. Whether than golden era ever existed is, of course, another matter.

But for Mark Hoskins, watching his first pro hockey game ever, “there’s a sense of optimism that hasn’t been here in this province in a long, long time. The return of hockey to St John’s is the most obvious sign yet of our changing place in Canada. It’s a great time to be a Newfoundlander.” Lace up, me by’s.

Leila Marshy is the literary editor of The Rover.

In 1970, when the term “Canadian cinema” was very much an oxymoron, Don Shebib made a film called Goin’ Down the Road. About two hard scrabble Maritimers who seek their fortune – well, minimum wage jobs – in Toronto, it doesn’t end well. Dreams are dashed and Joey and Peter, two fish out of water, turn to desperate measures.

A decade or two later just about my entire cohort of Anglophone filmmakers, artists, writers, and musicians left Montreal for their own goin’ down the road moment: fleeing the PQ and Bill 101 for the media and money in Toronto, Vancouver and LA.

But now, hanging around at the screenings of the St John’s International Women’s Film Festival I can’t help but marvel at the turn of affairs. Familiar faces are everywhere: Newfoundland filmmakers who had settled in Montreal in the 90s and 2000′s to practice their craft have now returned home to a stronger economy, a vibrant community, and a flourishing film scene. To top it off, sprinkled among them are former Montrealers and Torontonians who now live here, drawn to another kind of richness.

Noreen Golfman, founder and Executive Director of the St John’s International Women’s Film Festival, is originally from Ville St Laurent. Offered a job at Memorial University in the late 80s, she figured she’d stay a year and then return to Montreal. “But I fell in love with St John’s and Newfoundland and have been here ever since.”

Clearly appreciated in her milieu, Golfman’s influence in St John’s cannot be underestimated. “We love her,” I heard time and again. And especially, “we love her aerobics classes!” Yes, the English professor also wants you to shake your booty.

“I feel the love of this community,” says Golfman. “I grew up in a so-called distinct society in a crazy province with complex social relations between various tribes. Well, this is just on a smaller scale. I got it right away. I felt really at home uncannily quickly. If you don’t have this experience you end up leaving. If you get it, you dig in.”

And dig in she did, founding the SJIWFF in 1989. Since then, it has established itself as one of the longest running women’s film festivals in the world. This year, like all years, audiences are out in full force to watch a rich array of international, Canadian and local films. Attending the screenings and enjoying the scene as much as anyone are the various corporate and government sponsors.

“Our politicians and bureaucrats get the arts,” says Golfman, “They understand and support everyone. Not just financial, it’s moral support too. I sometimes say it’s like living in a feudal kingdom but we like the king.”

Now that the glittering kingdoms we’ve been attracted to all these years are losing their allure and moxy, it won’t be surprising if more than a few Torontonians and Montrealers set out up the road to seek fame and fortune on the rock. A different kind of fame, the respect of your peers rather than adulation of the anonymous, and fortunes measured not in dollars but in sense. But all of it rich nonetheless.

“It’s been a kind of joke of the festival that filmmakers come here, buy a house, and stay,” Golfman says. “So we tell our government funders that we’re also really good for immigration and population growth too. Look around, it’s true.”

Leila Marshy is the literary editor of The Rover. Her mother left Newfoundland to marry one of them foreigners and has been living it down ever since.

Everyone’s saying Jack Layton was a warrior. But while war metaphors make good homage and headlines, they feel paltry and rote in the wake of his death. Okay, he fought the good fight, he fought cancer, he fought for a better country. But what endeared Layton to Canadians, especially Quebecers, was not that he was a warrior. Maybe we’ve had enough of warriors and tough talkers in this province. Maybe what people saw was that Jack was a lover.

He was a man who smiled warmly, laughed genuinely, and gave great big bear hugs. He loved his wife passionately. When he said he loved the planet and wanted to protect it, you believed him. How many politicians, when they say they want to sit down with Canadians, you not only believe it but can imagine it?

While Harper was out war mongering and playing dirty, Jack was reminding Canadians that we actually like each other. That, in spite of politics and grudges, we could pull together. His played his one note – “we all stick together and no one is left behind” – until it became music. He cared about working families, seniors, young people, the sick, the unemployed, the homeless. His rhetoric didn’t draw from battle, but from community.

Nor did he appeal to Quebecers by playing up the faults and weaknesses of the Bloc. Instead, Bon Jack made politics look fun, like something you could be proud of. Oh, you want the best for Quebec? You want to build more than you want to destroy? Well, why don’t you just run for a seat in my party and we can go to Ottawa together and make a better world!

Easy as pie, as it turned out. While we railed a little against the mass of unknown and untested young people (young people!) we sent to Parliament, it also kind of took our breath away. In Jack’s world there was no question too stupid, no player too inexperienced, no hope too unrealistic. He somehow believed that if you met people where they lived, around their kitchen tables, you could build a party. This is not warrior politics, but friendship politics.

Why else would we turn out in droves, wearing our hearts on our sleeves, to publicly mourn the leader of the opposition? Why else would people ask on facebook “Where were you when you first heard of Jack’s death?” or tweet “I can’t bear it,” or form groups such as “Let’s get the CN Tower orange on Saturday night to remember Jack Layton.” Why else, for crying out loud, would Quebecers turn out to sing This Land is Your Land on Park avenue? As a commentator wrote in l’Actualité, “He was not the first Canadian politician to tell us he loved us, but he was sincere.”

Finally, Jack Layton didn’t just die of cancer, he died with cancer. He let the illness render him down to an essential: pure love. “I experienced this incredible sense of joy,” he’s quoted in the Gazette saying back in April. “Where is that coming from? … The next morning we had all these emails, people saying they had been praying for me and that I was in their thoughts.”

That love, that glow, was evident throughout the campaign. Jack was enjoying himself, he was enjoying every encounter, every debate, every handshake, every new face. He was loving every minute of it. Politics wasn’t a zero-sum game for Jack Layton, but an opportunity to spread joy, hope, and a vision for the country.

We have lost a great man. But more precisely, we have lost a man who became great because he let himself embody love. Let’s remember what that looks like. At the very least, we’ll know when it’s not there.

“The rock solid belief that by working together there is no challenge that we cannot overcome. That is the core of what it means to be Canadian. In a country as fortunate as ours, nobody should be left behind. These are core Canadian values.” Jack Layton, Vancouver, June 2010

I pretty much came of age in the Empress Theatre. It was Cinema V in the 1980s, one of many busy repertory cinemas in the city, and I sold popcorn while putting myself through university. I also – working alone I swear – undercounted popcorn cups, let friends in for free, watched the audience through the screen, and was introduced to more drugs than you can find at Jean Coutu. Oh, and caught a few movies too.

Built in 1927, the Art Deco theatre was the only one in Canada to sport the Egyptian motif – having been inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. First a vaudeville then a dinner theatre, it was Cinema V from the 1970s to the early 90s. Stripped down, cemented over, and split in two, its original idiosyncratic beauty had been all but obliterated.

Abandoned since 1992, the Empress has almost risen many times, only to fall again. Consortiums, restoration projects, and architectural plans have come and gone and it seemed to live only in the addled memories of former hangers on and its NDG neighbours.

Who knows what’s next for the old Empress, whose destiny is once again up for grabs. The NDG council votes tonight to seize it from the non-profit Empress Cultural Centre board. Meanwhile a group Save the Empress is calling on supporters of the theatre to attend tonight’s meeting and oppose the takeover.

Emmanuel Hessler of BisFilms shot the short film, The Empress, earlier this year. It is part of a larger community project, Imagining NDG.

Update: The borough of NDG did indeed vote Monday night, August 15th, to wrest the Empress back from the Board. What next is anybody’s guess. Peggy Curran gives a pretty good rundown of the theatre’s history and how it got to where it is.

“Cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, mesclin, green peas…. and corn!” Laurence Chediak of Le Zigoto Café on ave du Parc buys her fixings twice a week at the Marché Fermier on St Dominique and St Joseph. Originally an initiative of the Maison de l’Amitié on Duluth, the Marché Fermier is now just one of the many city-wide outdoor markets, some of them thanks to the efforts of Projet Montréal.

Montreal used to be ahead of the game with just the Atwater and Jean Talon markets. But the past couple of years have seen an explosion in local food awareness and food health and safety. Not to mention, with all the food scares and recalls, we seem to have reached a tipping point with regards to big agro business. Next step soylent green?

But with over 50 outdoor farmer markets dotting the island, chances are there is a local market in your neighbourhood. These are men and women from Chateauguay, Ormstown, Mirabel, Hemmingford, Île Perrot, Rigaud, Mont St-Grégoire, Mercier, and anywhere else you can scrape together an acre and handful of seeds. Or not. Santropol Roulant’s Pocket Market features a cornucopia (how nice to use that word unmetaphorically) of products cultivated on their rooftop gardens.

If dividing your attention between farmers is not your thing, you can get up close and personal with just one. With over 100 farms participating in Quebec’s network of Community Supported Agriculture (here or here), subscribing to a weekly year round food basket beats the zombie fluorescence of Provigo any day.

Aside from the obvious health benefits, these initiatives support the local agricultural economy and help ensure that the rural land surrounding Montreal and other urban centres remains not only agricultural but in the hands of small farmers. With developers, speculators, and industry increasingly targeting some of the most nutrient-rich tracts of land in the province – and subsequently poisoning it – our local farmers need our business more than ever.

Here is a short list of some of the markets around town. Find a market near you by visiting the Marchés des Quartiers site.

Marché Fermier
Parc Lahaie (5039 St-Dominique)
Thursdays 3pm to 7pm
Sundays noon to 4pm
June 23rd to October 23rd, 2011

Marché Solidaire Frontenac
Ontario and Iberville
Saturdays 10am to 5pm
July 9th to October 16th, 2011

L’Autre Marché Angus
William Tremblay (coin André Laurendeau et Augustin Frigon)
Fridays 3pm to 7pm
June 17th to September 30th, 2011

Les dimanches Bio à Outremont
rue Dollard (corner Van Horne)
Sundays 10am to 4pm
August 14th to September 25th, 2011
Du 14 août au 25 septembre

Santropol Roulant Pocket Market
Corner of Milton and Ste-Famille
Thursday 4:30pm to 7:30 pm
July 21st to September 22nd, 2011

McGill Farmers’ Market
McTavish Street, McGill Campus
Thursdays noon to 5pm
September 8th to October 27th

Marche Citoyenne de la Petit Bourgogne
1845 rue St-Jacques (Corner des Seigneurs)
1st and 3rd Saturday of the month, 9am to 1pm

Marchés Saisonniers d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville
Parc de Mésy (12120 rue Grenet)
Saturdays 10am to 2pm
August 14th to October 2nd

Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Market
109 rue Ste-Anne
Saturdays 9am to 2pm
Year-round

I grew up camping. Two weeks every summer, rain or shine, we’d pack the trunk, pile the roof, and cram four carsick kids and two overwhelmed parents determined to “be Canadian.” We’d hit the road until we found a campsite that offered a wilderness experience — plus above ground pool, electrical outlets, laundry service, and bingo hall. If I had known the word “skanky” then, I might have used it.

Still, there’s something about the musky smell of tents and the night sky magnetic with stars that stays with you forever. By the time I had my own kid, camping included portaging, off-road sites, moose sightings, and fishing for your dinner. We haven’t exactly visited every one of Canada’s 13 National Parks, but after discovering the National Parks Project, I wish we had. And then I think, oh, it’s still August, maybe there’s time.

In 1911, the Canadian government created the world’s first national parks service and gave it an agency, Parks Canada. Today, it oversees 41 parks and reserves in every province and territory in the country. To celebrate its centennial, Parks Canada partnered with FilmCAN, Primitive Entertainment, and Discovery Canada to create a unique multimedia project.

From May to October of 2010, small groups of filmmakers and musicians scattered throughout the parks. Their mandate was to collaborate on short films and soundtracks that reflected their experience of the landscape. The results are currently being broadcast on Discovery channel, one film per week over many weeks.

I don’t have a TV, but I’ve been hooked on the film and sonic collaborations online. A compass on the home page spins through the parks. Once “inside” a park, you can choose to see the resulting film or photos. The music is available to download and the artists and their bios are featured.

The music and the films are, in a word, mesmerizing. The collaboration between filmmaker Catherine Martin and musicians Jennifer Castle, Sebastien Grainger, and Dan Werb in the Mingan Archipelego, for example, captures the islands on the lower north shore in a kind of slow ecstasy. Titled “Quand j’aurais vu les îles,” it’s a ghostly approach to a landscape almost out of reach.

Other collaborations are equally captivating. Sarah Harmer, Bry Webb and Jim Guthrie provide the soundtrack for Scott Smith’s “Looking Around Without Blinking,” shot in BC’s Gwaii Haanas park. The Kouchibouguac project features the efforts of filmmaker Jamie Travis and musicians Casey Mecija, Don Kerr, and Ohad Benchetrit. Melissa Auf der Mar turns up in Newfoundland’s Gros Morne, Old Man Luedecke gets down and twangy in Cape Breton, and Rollie Pemberton (rapper Cadence Weapon) remembers the buffalo in Alberta’s Waterton Lakes National Park.

Funded entirely from the public purse and intended for the “public good,” there is something almost old fashioned about this project. Certainly, it can’t have very much to do with the Harper Administration (is that what we’re supposed to call it?). I can only imagine this project was given the green light before anyone had a chance to pencil in a “no.”

Instead, this project is all about “yes.” Yes to art and interpretation. Yes to spending our public monies on ourselves and the beauty of the land around us. Yes to doing it just because. Yes to letting the musicians and filmmakers, for once, be our spokespeople. I don’t give a shit what John Baird thinks about our forests. But I am better off for knowing what Olge Goreas & Jace Lasek of The Besnard Lakes have to say about the Yukon’s Kluane National Park.

Grab it for ourselves, that’s what I’m left thinking. Grab our little corner of drop dead gorgeous wilderness and protect it, sanctify it, immerse ourselves in it. We might still recognize it – and ourselves – a little longer if we do.

How are we to watch this film? Where were we before the theatre darkened? Did you know it would be like this? Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life is so over the top, so grandiose, so keen, stretched and expansive that if I didn’t absolutely love it I would hate it. Or sleep through it, as my companion did.

Origin of the universe? Got it. Dinosaurs at play? You betcha. Bullying father with a 1950s brush cut? Of course. The ice age? Modern skyscrapers? Heavenly afterlife? Sibling rivalry? Yes! The only other artists I can think of with such a range are the authors of the books of Genesis and Revelations.

And like those chroniclers, Malick is sincerely concerned with our place in the universe and our relationship with a higher power. The film opens with a female voice (Mrs O’Brian/Mother) musing about Grace and Nature. “The nuns taught us there were two ways through life – the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.”

The core of the film is inhabited by a 1950s suburban family. Brad Pitt, as the bullying Father, and Jessica Chastain as a rather idealized Mother, are the emotional centres around which their three young sons orbit. Jack, played as an adult by Sean Penn, is the child most victimized by his father. His struggles with his own nature, and with finding grace, are exquisitely portrayed.

The dramatic narrative section of the film takes about an hour – easily vying with some of the best films I’ve seen. Ever. I am not sure if Malick, along with everything else, is given enough credit for his work with actors. The delicacy with which Pitt, Chastain, Hunter McCracken (Jack) and Laramie Eppler (second son, RL) play out their struggles is fierce and resonating. There are no gestures, words, or camera angles wasted.

Malick’s distinctive use of stream-of-consciousness voice-overs goes back to his first film Badlands. While it kind of gummed up the works of The New World, it brought a deeper resonance to his depiction of migrant workers and war, respectively, in Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.

The voices in The Tree of Life belong, at various times, to each of the main characters. While they do not add to our understanding of the story – which, admittedly, is opaque – they echo familiar Malickian concerns: “I will be true to you. Whatever comes.” “How do I get back to where they are?” “I didn’t know how to name You then.” The whispers seem to be a reminder that life exists above, behind and beyond the merely visible.

To underscore that point – Malick’s driving operandi since his first film – the film is stretched out to include the origin of the universe, the reign of the dinosaurs, and visions of the afterlife – and the final bestowing of grace. Shot using classic FX techniques as opposed to CGI, Malick collaborated with Douglas Trumbull, who had helped Kubrick design and imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey. Trumbull retired in 1983, but returned to work with Malick.

The (long!) coda at the end of The Tree of Life required a fair bit of suspension of this reviewer’s critical faculties. Sean Penn on his knees on a beach where his entire – otherwise dead and departed – family and a few angels frolic is a bit much.

But it also put me in mind of the early months after 9/11 where, in the wake of the tragedy, more than one person declared “the end of irony.” Big real life had trumped facile irony and cynicism.

Maybe that’s what Malick is demanding: that we suspend urbane criticism and sophistication and let life in all its enormity wash over us. Whether or not all the parts of the film cohere or even make cogent sense is irrelevant in the face of such ambition. Worked for me. My companion, however, exacted a few drinks to make up for all the mud, volcanoes, and velociraptors.

There’s a short story by Ursula K LeGuin called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In it, the citizens of Omelas enjoy utopian happiness. But the price they pay is that each generation a single child is chosen and kept in unbelievable misery and isolation for its entire life. Citizens are told this fact around the age of 12.

This shocking news is accepted as necessary to the harmonious society. At the very least, citizens resolve to live their lives in such a way that the child’s suffering is “worth it.”

But every now and then, someone leaves. Unable to reconcile the condemned child’s misery with their own happiness, they simply, eventually, walk away.

I’m reminded of this story when I read “Why I quit my job,” a blog post by Kai Nagata that’s currently making the facebook rounds and trending on Twitter. The former CTV Quebec City Bureau Chief, “master and commander of my own little outpost,” had it all. But, disillusioned with television news in particular and the media in general, he decided that the “ends no longer justified the means.”

And those means? The media is an insatiable beast, Nagata discovers, whose MO is increasingly to “tell less truth and make more money.” Newsrooms hire their broadcasters “using a skewed, unspoken ratio of talent to attractiveness.” Even the CBC, instead of holding the private networks to higher journalistic standards, is forced to compete for “the lowest hanging fruit” in a “race to the bottom.”

This vicious cycle “creates things like the Kate and Will show.” In a week where real news happened around the world, Canadians were treated to “wall-to-wall, breaking-news coverage of a stage-managed, spoon-fed celebrity visit… to a former colony.”

Along with the profit motive, the context for all this is “the near-paralysis of progressive voices in broadcasting.” While the US may have Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, or Keith Olbermann to “unravel (right-wing) ideology and act as a counterweight,” Canadian satirists are either non-existent or “toothless and boring.”

But wait – what’s a 24 year old, fresh out of school and suddenly “making good money, with comprehensive benefits and retirement options,” gonna do? In the 1960s the disenchanted may have “turned on, tuned in, and dropped out,” but these days facebook pages and petitions seem to suffice. After all, how’re you going to afford that G4 iPhone if you quit your job?

But Nagata is choosing to walk away. He’s walking away from his opportunity to profit from “the direction taken by Canadian policy and politics in the last five years;” walking away from the “war going on against science in Canada;” walking away from a Canada whose values are “increasingly unrecognizable from an international standpoint;” and walking away from Harper’s “dogmatic refusal” to do anything about climate change.

Finally, he’s walking away from the journalist’s new role to broadcast “useless tripe, or worse, stories that actively distract from the massive projects we need to be tackling instead of watching TV.”

It is inevitable that Nagata’s rejection of the hand that fed him has become in itself a media story – some of it deliciously bitter. At the very least, it proves that “people will still read a 3,000 word essay.”

Maybe walking away is the Canadian way. I can’t see us massing in huge numbers at Parliament Hill to dethrone Harper, or threatening his increasingly heavy security detail. But I would like to imagine us, one by one, grappling with our conscience to better “effect meaningful change in the world.” And if that means walking away from the stains of our privilege, so be it.

If the citizens of Omelas all left, after all, they might be a little less happy. But a child would be a little less miserable. A kind of Canadian reasoning that, unfortunately, seems to be going the way of the dodo.

Great literature engages the world, challenges preconceptions, and is often created at some risk – whether external or emotional – to the author. It usually arrives at my doorstep in a manila envelope, complete with press release, praise from well-known personalities, and boasting of a shortlist or two.

But it’s never come wrapped in a ribbon in the hands of a shy 12-yr old girl who announces, “This is from my mother.” The mother, in turn, says a little while later, “The author was kind enough to sign it for you. She lives just up the street, you know.”

Recently, a Mile End/Outremont referendum revealed a deep chasm of misunderstanding and intolerance in the hood. On the one side, an energetic group of people whose long-standing opposition to the various “infractions” of their Hassidic neighbours culminated in an opportunity to finally send a message: NO to the enlargement (by 400 sq ft) plans of a certain dilapidated synagogue.

On the other side, a Hassidic community whose very insularity made it a visible target, and the few of us who woke up – though not in time – to the serious frivolousness of the charges.

Rapprochements between the Hassidic community and their neighbours may be few and far between, but they are not unprecedented. First published in 2005 in French (translated by Pierre Anctil) as Lekhaim! Chroniques de la vie hassidique à Montréal, the short stories were subsequently published in their original English as Rather Laugh Than Cry.

The pseudonymous Malka Zipora, mother of twelve, has been living in Outremont for over 30 years. The 25 stories, with titles such as “Challah for the Sabbath,” “Grit Your Teeth – and Smile,” and “My Kreplach Don’t Leak Anymore,” are whimsical sketches of a busy – and to the rest of us, mysterious – life.

Not surprisingly, many of the tales centre on the foibles of raising a house full of children. “It starts when Sheindl’s friend Raizy buys a goldfish,” writes the author in “A Fishy Story.” From there little Sheindl schemes until her parents cave in. But not before Zipora shares a tip: “Now here is some simple advice for all you parents: Get a lawyer.”

The advice goes a little broader in “Chicken Soup for America.” Here, Mrs Kluger, “a short, frail woman who has managed a family of fourteen” is the perfect foil to Bill Clinton – if he can get a word in edgewise.

“As I was saying,” he interrupts, “about nuclear energy…”
“Yes! Yes,” nods Mrs K with enthusiasm. “I use that new clear spray for the bathroom!”

Annoyed, the President of the United States begs her understanding for the nuances of politics and the many lobby groups he must contend with. But she cuts him short: “Listen boychik. If anyone knows about lobbying, it’s me. I’ve been lobbied for the past forty years. Yitzak wants a bike. Sara wants a pyjama party…”

Others, such as “Summing up a Story” frame tiny moments, in this case a young son learning how to multiply, with almost Tolstoyan gravitas. But rather than weave out 500 pages of generations and their come-uppances, she simply concludes with: “This story reminds me how delicately parents must tread, and how fragile we are.”

While she doesn’t answer some of the more prurient questions readers may have – What is Hassidism? Why those clothes? Is it true that you (insert just about anything here)? – her understated elegance goes a long way (not to mention an 8-page glossary). In “Memories, Memorials and Shavuot,” she has this to say about the community’s elders: “This aged and bent generation is a living reminder that the attitudes and philosophies of mankind are frail at best or dangerous and destructive at worst. It was civilization’s leaders who applied the noble concept of cleansing and purity to kill the sick, the elderly, the mentally incapacitated, and the sub-human races. This purification could have continued until only evil remained.”

So, for some Hassidim, the particular practices of their faith represent a bulwark against the untrustworthy affairs of “civilized” societies. In which case, it can be argued, it’s a positively enlightened and progressive response to potential annihilation. Sounds good to me.

Through some risk to her own reputation and standing in the community – she has never revealed her true identity – Malka Zipora opens a door and engages with the world. And I think that’s pretty great.

Leila Marshy lives down the street from the author but likes to think that Malka Zipora could be anybody.

A video portrait of Montreal artist Adad Hannah, as captured by the ELAN series “Recognizing Artists: Enfin Visibles!”

The votes were counted and we now officially have more tolerance for the sex shop down the street than for an insular well-meaning community in our midst. Not to pit one against the other (talk about dirty fight), but at what point do we stop measuring “progress” by metres of fabric?

Unlike a few hundred years ago, when Europeans scoffed at the “naked savage,” today the impetus to cover up is equated with prudery, oppression, backwardness, lack of choice, or ignorance. Making, of course, the urban twelve year old girl the epitome of enlightenment. With her tween-size thong, padded bra, short shorts and skimpy camisole, she clearly speaks for the entire history of western liberal values.

I say this because the way the Hassidim dress came up a number of times as I went door to door campaigning for their right to add a 10-ft extension to a small synagogue. But the women are over-dressed! Did you see the mens’ hats! Why don’t they let their children wear “regular” clothes! People wondered why they were “allowed” to live in our midst with such antiquated habits, customs and choices.

It’s not my place to defend their choice of dress. But would we even notice them, let alone be “offended,” let alone hold them accountable to the voting whim of their neighbours, if they dressed like “us”? Their very visibility made them the lightening rod for a rather smug group of people (including an Outremont borough councilor, whose daily presence on our street has me wondering about her orphaned constituency back in Outremont) who catalogued and publicized every possible infraction.

The damage was done. Even though the renovation plans were perfectly within all City norms, the repeated use of the word “illegal” (illegal parking! illegal air conditioners! illegal music!) succeeded in creating an impression of an illegal people. And when you do that, I don’t need to tell you, bad things happen.

But in the losing of a referendum, we gained a community. In one short week of going door to door, talking on the sidewalk and spreading the word, we got to know each other as neighbours, as regular people, as friends. This was so beyond the scope of Mr Lacerte’s imagination that he continues to accuse us of being funded by Cossette. But in his five years of slipping explosive tracts in people’s mailboxes and ringing their doorbells, one Hassidic woman told me, he never once rang their doorbells or gave them his propaganda.

To most people, no doubt, this little struggle of ours on Hutchison street between Fairmount and St Viateur, to quote Bogart, “don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Fair enough. But the thing about communities is they grow. You start with a tiny hill of beans and the next thing you know you have seeds for acres of gardens.

Les Amis de la rue Hutchison (Friends of Hutchison Street) was born one afternoon just over a week ago because Kathryn Harvey and I needed a name to go on our flyer. Now, it’s the beginning of a new rapprochement between the Hassidic and non-Hassidic communities.

In this era of frenzied social media and globalization, I hope it’s a reminder that real community is also just the person next door, who ever they may be.

Leila Marshy is the Literary Editor of Rover. As a Palestinian, she would like you to know that some of her best friends are Hassidic. Contact Les Amis de la rue Hutchison at ruehutchison@hotmail.com.

A Swiss friend of mine participates in referendums a few times every year, responding sometimes to up to 50 separate questions. Deciding everything from the price of butter to revising employment insurance to membership in the UN, these votes call upon its citizens to partake in defining the shape of the country. When I asked her if there are ever referendums like the one taking place this coming Sunday in Mile End, she said “Never!”

On Sunday, June 19^th, a referendum will be held for a group of residents to determine whether or not a small synagogue will be “allowed” to proceed with its renovations. That this vote must take place is the result of a concerted lobby on the part of a handful of people. In the fracas, the city administration has thrown its hands up in the air, “leaving it up to the citizens to decide.” I’m not much of a Catholic, but I know I’ve read those words before.

We know well in this province how referendums can whip up emotions, encourage us vs them mentalities, and spell disaster for the “losing” side. But it is one thing to vote on the future of a province – it’s a big girl, it can take it – but it is quite another to let individual citizens decide the fate of their neighbours.

The Gate David synagogue is a small, old building that serves about 50 Hassidic families. They first drew up plans to renovate in 2004. Many revisions later, the city approved the plans in 2010. However, if it weren’t for the barrage of petitions, flyers and demonstrations, I would be hard pressed to even tell you where the synagogue is.

Much of the opposition has been spearheaded by Pierre Lacerte, whose blog is so replete with sarcasm, innuendos, and lies that it can almost be called hate literature. Yet, he is quoted at face value by the media and allowed to determine the tone of the “conflict.”

Because he and his comrades come door to door at such regular intervals, I have made efforts to understand their opinions. But it’s a hard thing to listen to when such words eventually turn up in the conversations as “those ethnics,” “they are a threat,” “next thing you know it will be a mosque and Muslims,” and “reasonable accommodation has gone too far!”

This Sunday, at the Mile End library on Avenue du Parc, residents of Hutchison street (between Fairmount and St Viateur) and Avenue du Parc (between Fairmount and Bernard) will be asked to decide whether or not the renovations to a decrepit building can go ahead.

I don’t know about you, but as an eligible voter, this doesn’t so much feel like democracy as an excuse for a lynch mob mentality. There are building and zoning laws and regulations to which these reno plans comply to a T. The immediate neighbours have agreed to the plans. Anything else is an excuse for racism.

NOTE: Both Daniel Sanger, in the comments below, and Alex Norris, Projet Montréal councillor for Mile End, have added some needed nuance to my position. That being said, it remains a delicate thing when the future of a community, in the guise of building permits, is left up to the whim of its surrounding neighbours. There is nothing ambiguous about whether or not this renovation adheres to zoning bylaws. What is ambiguous are the motivations of a vociferous opposition who will not be content even if they do succeed in stopping the renovation. All I can ask of them is, what is next on your agenda? And who is going to stop you?

The province that previously voted Bloc has now voted en bloc and sent more NDP deputies to Ottawa than in the entire history of that party. It’s an unfamiliar landscape all round: both the Bloc and Liberal parties have been sent packing – and MPs representing untold years of experience and expertise – while many of the NDP reps are going to be sent to Politics 101 classes. Recipe for disaster or ingredients for success? I hold my breath for the latter.

One of the constituencies trounced by fresh NDP blood was Jeanne-Le Ber – the riding that includes St Henri, Point St Charles, Little Burgundy and Cote St Paul. Liza Frulla made her career here; more recently it was Bloc territory, held by Thierry St Cyr. But the orange crush rolled in and now it belongs to Tyrone Benskin, the man formerly known as the director of the Black Theatre Workshop.

Shot before the campaign was a twinkle in Jack Layton’s eye, this video is from ELAN (English Language Arts Network) as part of their series, “Recognizing Artists: Enfin Visibles!” A little portrait of our man in the southwest.

Emma Ruby-Sachs, young lawyer and first time author, reads from The Water Man’s Daughter. Based on visits to Africa in 2003 and 2004, this first novel weaves together the stories of three women, each of whom is struggling with decisions that will change the course of her life.

Ruby-Sachs, also known to some as the daughter of well-known Canadian lawyer Clayton Ruby, was in Montreal a couple of weeks ago. Once again, Drawn & Quarterly is THE place to go for cutting edge, relevant, and happening writing.

Look for our upcoming review of The Water Man’s Daughter on The Rover.

10 actors. 25 writers. 1 night in Montréal. The worlds of fiction, theatre, music – and now film – overlapped in Marianne Ackerman’s Imagine Montréal. Staged for the second time on at the Blue Metropolis on April 29, the words were culled from over two dozen works by Montreal writers published since 2000. All set here, Imagine Montréal portrays a city about to fall and about to fly. A contradiction we know all too well.
With special thanks and mention to ELAN and Blue Metropolis.

At the age of 30, Rupinder Gill realized she never rode through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair. Ok, not exactly, but Disneyworld and summer camp were tied for a close second. On the Outside Looking Indian is Gill’s year of living dangerously, the year she decided to do everything her traditional parents had kept her away from. Rover tracked her down and talked about that year and the book that came out of it. Anissa Khan, a Concordia University student, spoke to Rupinder Gill one rainy Montreal day in March.