Tree hugging is serious business. Given that the average tree lives for over a hundred years, I can’t imagine that the occasional quickie squeeze does much to make the tree feel special. Where’s the commitment? The other alternative is to chain yourself to a tree, but that’s only one tree. You just know the others will feel left out.

Trixi Rittenhouse solved this conundrum by stationing a cadre of permanent huggers on the 14 trees that line her Mile End block. Cobbled together from recycled materials, each tree hugger is a complete and distinct character. On both the north and south sides of Labadie west of avenue du Parc and spilling out onto Hutchison, they are easily the most whimsical and unexpected installations ever to grace this “Outremont-adjacent” (in real estate-speak) neighbourhood.

Urban guerilla gardener, artist, grandmother, and long time clothes designer, Rittenhouse concocted the idea over the winter. She wanted to do something creative and concrete for Earth Day, something that signaled hope for the future. Designed and installed on her own – “except for my husband, he learned how to braid” – the creations are a reminder that trees exist independent of us and our need for urban shade. They not only make life – and oxygen – possible on this planet, they have a legitimate right to existence. Rittenhouse honours this presence.

Playful though they are, they also mask a darker concern. “I’m scared about the future, that’s why I’m trying to put a positive spin on things. We live in an industrial world where the Republicans and Stephen Harper are so awful. Doing all sorts of things all because of oil and greed. Canada has the second largest oil deposit on the planet and we didn’t even ratify Kyoto.”

Rittenhouse makes a link between this high-level greed and what happened on her street a couple of nights ago. One of her installations was ripped down by a “bunch of teenagers just passing by.” It’s all the same continuum, she says, “greed and power. Who will these kids grow up to be?”

Some people have made analogies between Rittenhouse’s installations and graffiti – that other unsolicited public art. But she rejects this adamantly and refers back to her power and greed continuum. “What do they do? They go around writing their name everywhere, defacing property, making everything uglier. They are negative and destructive, just like the worst governments.”

Future projects for Rittenhouse, a creative and prolific powerhouse, include a blog featuring her political drawings and posters, and ideas for a city-wide tree hugging project for 2013. The latter, she says, would certainly be a step up from the “stiff and boring marching” we manage today.

Originally intended to stay up only until the end of this weekend, Rittenhouse has had such overwhelmingly positive feedback she is considering waiting another week before taking them down. Be sure to walk by and say hello. Heck, why not give them a hug.

ADDENDUM: In a note from Trixi on the morning of April 28:

Last night someone stole “Hugger” Rose on Hutchison. The feet were made from  plastic President’s Choice bags with an all over print of green slogans and logos advocating  personal “responsibility” to preserve and protect  the environment, One only hopes the vandals can read:

“Till Goths, and Vandals, a rude northern race,

Did all the matchless monuments deface.

Then all the Muses in one ruin be,

And rhyme began to enervate poetry.”     John Dryden

The Blue Metropolis has experimented with venues through the years, with none ever quite sticking. Which is a blessing. Sadly, the converging highways at the Delta Hotel were more comatose inducing than inspiring. And the only thing going for the Holiday Inn in Chinatown was, well, Chinatown.

This year, however, with attendees crisscrossing all day long from room to lobby, from lounge to room, all of it perched on the corner of St Laurent and Sherbrooke at the Opus Hotel, the venue becomes it. The Blue Met est arrivé.

Medina, my medina

The Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize is given every year to an Arab author, writing in any language, who achieves excellence in their lifetime. Past winners include the Lebanese media maven and poet Jounama Haddad, and Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer.

This afternoon, the prize, sponsored by the – Stephen Harper, cover your ears – Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage was given to the charming and bitingly articulate Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian novelist and thinker.

In conversation with CBC’s Paul Kennedy, the room was packed. As befits a woman of such culture and intelligence. But, as I’ve asked before about this event, where is the Arab community? Is it too much to ask that they forfeit an afternoon at Adonis? Or, is this a reflection of a festival that has little interest in reaching out beyond the Centaur mailing list? Hard to say, but surely, with the Egyptian revolution just over a year old, I can’t help but expect more from Montreal’s Arab community.

Reality bites

Guy Rogers of ELAN spoke with Jeffrey Oliver about the overlaps between reality TV and the reality of writing. Author of the recently released novel, Failure to Thrive, Oliver has also had stints with NBC’s Big Brother, Last Comic Standing, and, most recently, Food Network.

Oliver struggled for years with the writers’ greatest enemy. No, not alcohol, but the “pressure to be deep and different.” He’s since realized that all he needs to do is just tell stories, “and that’s okay.”

He offered up his 8-point reality TV checklist and, applied to fiction writing, assured that it works wonders.

1. Write a good 2-line pitch of your story.
2. Schedule and budget both time and money.
3. Cast and know your characters.
4. Write to beats, arcs, and acts.
5. Know your location.
6. Shoot (write).
7. Edit, edit, edit.
8. Deliver on time.

Up the shore and around the bay

Mary Dalton, Kathleen Winter and Mark Callanan met with Paul Kennedy to discuss the enduring (and endearing) art of being a Newfoundlander.

As a province that for so long “punched above its weight”, it is now for the first time learning to be, thanks to oil money, one of the “haves” as opposed to “have nots.”

But Dalton insists that it was federal infrastructures, beginning in the 1970s, that set the stage for a flourishing of the arts. From arts grants, to Memorial University, to small publishers, to CBC – arts and culture rooted itself deep.

Kathleen Winter’s Annabel, set in Labrador, opened up the landscape even more. As one audience member said, “thank you so much for allowing me to discover Labrador.”

But is Newfoundland literature nostaligic, Paul Kennedy asks. Well, says Dalton, “the land is still here. The water is still here.”

Leila Marshy is Rover’s editor. Part Arab, part Newfie, she likes when she can write about both in one day.

When I was a kid, having a parent from an unpronounceable country – in those days that just meant it was made up of letters not in the word order C-A-N-A-D-A – was like a sin worse than bad hair or fake runners. Yes. Unpardonable. Certainly, no one ever asked me to make a 2 to 3 minute short video about “my Quebec roots” and then, just to make it all surreal and completely unbelievable, offered me an iPad for my efforts.

So when I happen to hear from Nikki Johnston of the Quebec Community Groups Network that their CBC co-sponsored contest is not getting the deluge of submissions they expected, I say to her: Not to worry, Rover is on it!

Kids, get off yer distracted butts and get to work. Where ever you come from, where ever you want to go, what ever you have to say, and how ever you want to say it – it’s all there to express and explore, pluck and plunder. There are no limits or rules. Point a camera at your face and tell rest of us who you are. What does it mean to be an English speaking Quebecer? What does it mean to have parents from wherever they are from? What is Quebec to you? How much do you want a free iPad?

Look at this video. How hard can it be? Get to work, country and city bumpkins. The Rover needs new distractions – uh, wants to see your masterpieces. Heck, we’ll run the top 3 as well.

Enter the contest here.

About half way through, I noticed a bruise on the actress’ thigh. I wondered if she had forgotten to cover it with theatrical make-up. Then I realized it had erupted during the course of the play. Traffik Femme may be a one woman show, but the brutality actress Nico Lagarde channels is very real.

About the horrors of female sex trafficking, the play is a searing, choking cry from its opening monologue to the last closing minute. Legarde holds the stage like a concrete pillar – defiance and swagger one second, broken shards the next. With a voice like a rasp and a thick fleshy presence, she intimately embodies the small-town Quebec woman whose years as a sex slave in Calgary has left her barely alive. Yes, Calgary.

It was important for the team behind the play, says director Lynne Cooper in a Q&A after the show, “to not set the story in Africa, or Asia, or South America. Where you’d might expect it.” Because sex slavery happens here, too. And in the next town over – anywhere you can take a bus, get a room with a lock, find the johns.

The minimalist set is effective. Four upturned metal bed frames evoke sex, pain, torture, imprisonment – anything but restful sleep. Legarde’s dancerly instincts and coiled physicality create a constant rolling momentum. The script is tight and to the point – shifting between horrible stories and glimpses of poetry. And then at one point, it all opens up for a masterful rendition of a heartbreaking song.

Originally written in French by Emma Haché, the production just finished its English run at the Segal and now returns to its original French script. Lagarde, fully bilingual, plays the role in both languages.

It’s a hard-hitting play that can leave you winded and even traumatized. That might not be your thing. But when Theodor Adorno said “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” he meant that to look away and create meaningless verse is another affront. However, to stare into the maw of cruelty and create art out of our efforts to reconcile humanity with our inhumanity, now that is something to strive for.

Traffik Femme continues in French until March 24^th. I urge you to see it even if your command of the language is not perfect. Not to mention, to support Le Trunk Collectif, the little theatre troupe that could – and does.

Traffik Femme, at the Segal Centre to March 24^th. Box office: 514.739.7944 / www.segalcentre.org

In 1997, Connie Barnes Rose published Getting Out of Town. A collection of stories set in small town Nova Scotia, they were the antithesis to my mother-goose-in-a-condo life. Still, Rose’s stories of boredom, desperation and misfit love felt like my own. I didn’t need to revisit the bars of my youth or shoot more pool; I could just read Connie Barnes Rose.

In an ideal world, I’d have a Connie Barnes Rose book for every stage of life. As it is, pacing is required: she only churns them out once a decade. And so we find ourselves looking up at the Road to Thunder Hill.

Barnes Rose, a Montrealer for the past many years now, returns to small town Nova Scotia as her fictional setting, this time a novel. Trish is forty-something and lives with Ray, who’s always threatening to leave and occasionally does, and their teenaged daughter, who may as well not be there. Orbiting this family are an alcoholic grandmother; best friend Alana; a half-sister who seems to have no business to the claim; and Bear James, Ray’s best friend.

A freak April snow storm hits one night and, with the family already scattered and barely speaking to each other anyways, Trish finds herself in the town bar, the Four Reasons, spending the night on a pool table with Bear. Reeling with guilt and uncertainty, she is eventually forced to parse her feelings in a kind of show down setting: everyone has turned up at half-sister Olive’s house to wait out the storm.

Barnes Rose writes emotional and raw scenes with a nonchalant assurance. Using flashbacks and memories judiciously, she knows how to add texture and power to a deceptively still surface. Here, Trish recalls overhearing her parents talk about her half-sister Olive.

He charged into my room like a mad bull, swinging his head looking around for me. When he saw me I stood up straight and folded my arms across my chest the way my mother did and glared at him. “Who the heck is Olive?” I expected him to really lose it, but instead I saw a pained look. When he turned away to look out the window, I knew I had discovered a new power.

The story meanders casually but with intent, never missing a detail or failing to call out someone’s shit. In clipped and assured prose, Barnes Rose uses a bullshit meter the way somebody like Dickens used morality. That is to say, mercilessly.

(Ray) must have fallen asleep on the couch after I went upstairs. I was sick in the bathroom, I guess from the booze and the rage, and when I woke up the next morning, my head and heart pounding at the same rate, I could tell he’d left for Newville before I even got out of bed. Not a good sign, I thought, if we can’t spend a weekend together without him ending up on the couch and leaving the next day. You’d think I might have learned a lesson from that, but no, the next weekend went pretty much the same way.

Continuing to rage and pile up, the weather is almost a character in itself – “the blowing, biting kind” – and no one is neutral to it. Mocking all expectations, it blocks roads and doors, forcing one person after another out of their routine and complacency. “The snow whips around the barn like angry bees and we can make out a drift halfway up the door. I’m starting to have my doubts about Ray making it home at all today.”

Road to Thunder Hill comes to a quiet crescendo ending, where the characters don’t so much find resolution as they do their own humanity. Even better, they stop beating themselves up long enough to see each other’s humanity. There’s something to be said for riding out the storm.

Connie Barnes Rose will be at Paragraph Books on Thursday, March 1st, for a reading and signing. 5:30pm to 7:30pm. For more information go here.

About a decade ago I read Robert Bly’s The Sibling Society and thought, damn, it’s time to grow up. Around that same time, Sharon Hyman put her camera on a tripod, stared into the lens, and asked the very legitimate question: What does it mean to grow up and why aren’t I doing it? Never married, childless, no discernable career, renting, she possessed none of the conventional “markers” of adulthood. She was the arrivist who never quite got there. As she says at one point,  “There are early bloomers, there are late bloomers, and then there are the never bloomers.”

Jump ahead a decade and faster than you can read a dictionary in Mandarin, Sharon Hyman, Montreal flâneure, has finally finished her film. Neverbloomers: The Search for Grownuphood, premiering Monday on CBC’s documentary channel, is Hyman’s ode to the broken record of perpetual adolescence.

It’s a charming film. Hyman is neurotic and vain enough to look natural in front of the camera. Her monologues and voice overs are witty and poignant. As fellow filmmaker Peter Wintonick, one of the friends interviewed in the film, says, “You’re a Woodette Allen.” Unlike Woody Allen, however, she can share the misery pedestal with others. Of her Neverbloomers co-filmmaker she says,  “Luckily I have my best friend Naomi (Levine), who’s always at the same place in life as me: nowhere.”

Interspersed throughout are film clips from the 1950s and 60s. Some of them home movies, showing her parents frolicking on the beach and at parties, looking happy and decidedly grown up. Other bits are from those little “educational” films which, if you went to school any time prior to 1980, must surely haunt your memories. “Popularity, what is it made of?” asks one film as a group of girls gather at a house for a party. “No,” admonishes the narrator, “girls who park in cars are not really popular.” You might like watching Mad Men, but you wouldn’t have wanted to live it.

These clips are used as a counter point to the more contemporary aimlessness of Hyman’s life. But I couldn’t help thinking that I’d be an emotional wreck too if I compared my life to antiseptic 1950s standards. As the last decade before the “birth” of adolescence, it was a kind of grown up paradise. Even 13 year olds looked grown up in the 1950s.

Everybody’s an expert in Hyman’s film about what it means to be an adult. But after the rabbi, the professor, grandparents, old boyfriends, the random woman in the doctor’s office, and the neighbours, perhaps the best advice is delivered by the perpetually elegant Guita, Hyman’s mother: “There is an art to living. You just develop that art.“

Hyman’s been talking about this film for so long that she was starting to sound like the girl who cried Neverbloomers. But not only did she prove her detractors wrong, she has produced a genuine, idiosyncratic, charmer of a documentary. I hope she makes another one. Soon. Before she’s too old.

Neverbloomers: The Search for Grownuphood, directed by Sharon Hyman, premiering on CBC’s documentary channel, Monday, 27 February, 8pm

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. He 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 “Where were you when you first heard of Jack’s death?” or tweet “I can’t bear it,” or form facebook 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 Parc 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 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, yes. But a child in a dungeon would be a little less miserable. Helping someone like that used to be a quintessentially Canadian gesture. Lately, however, it 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!”