CANADA 150: Two long strange trips
It looks like each of us is going to celebrate Canada 150 Day in our own way – or not, as the case may be. It’s a free country. Edmonton novelist Janice MacDonald is marking the occasion with a new book called Confederation Drive, detailing two cross-Canada journeys: One the author and her mom took […]
RACISM: Is it awkward yet?
To the woman who demanded to see a white doctor in Toronto, to the men who brandished Confederate flags in a Muslim neighbourhood in Edmonton, to the people who hurl N-bombs on the streets, the #MakeItAwkward campaign doesn’t want to hate you. They just want to talk. Meeting hate with hate isn’t getting us anywhere. […]
PLAYBILL: One Pride, many voices
It is that time of year again, when a young man’s (or young woman’s) fancy turns to love – even love that does not hesitate to dare to speak its name, to modernize an old saying a bit awkwardly. In our free country, of course, so many are daring, which is why we have the […]
Flailing Festivals in Flaming Flinders!
It may seem like outdoor music festivals are dropping like flies – but that’s because there are so many of them. Some are bound to die. But while public confidence has been eroded from the recent cancellations of the Pemberton Music Festival in B.C. and the Fyre Festival in the Bahamas, most of your favourite […]
Last Toke in the Big Pink
With weed about to become legal in Canada, I’m comfortable with a full disclosure: I smoked a lot of dope inside MacEwan University’s Jasper Place building when I was a music student there in the early 1980s. After a farewell party on April 28, the campus will be abandoned, the arts programs moved downtown. A […]
April Fool’s Day cancelled
Because we have reached a tipping point in society where there is more fake news than real news – and not only is the fake news more popular but it often reveals more truth than real news, fiction being less strange than truth – April Fool’s Day has been cancelled by Order of the Government. […]
Edmonton folk singer on a roll
Maria Dunn will use some of the $8,000 she won for the Edmonton Music Prize to travel to Ottawa in April for the Juno Awards – where her album Gathering is nominated for Traditional Roots Album of the Year. “It warms my heart,” Dunn says of the recent double honour, and this is no faint […]
AGLC lifts ban on underage musicians
Coming soon to a bar near you – younger bands. The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission announced on Friday that the regulation prohibiting minors from performing in licensed taverns has been removed, effective immediately – and after only 10 years of being the biggest pain-in-the ass rule for musicians not old enough to drink but […]
Walterdale cancels Othello over racial tempest
It’s clear that society isn’t ready to see a white woman play a black man on stage – if it ever will be. After an uproar that was said to include threats, the Walterdale Theatre has cancelled its upcoming production of Shakespeare’s Othello, which was to open Feb. 8. At the centre of the tempest […]
The lonely death of Ricky Jordahl
Whyte Avenue has lost one of its most beloved street characters. The body of homeless man Richard Lyle Jordahl was found early Thursday morning, on a pile of pallets in the alley behind a strip mall where he often slept. There was no report of the fatality on the Edmonton Police Service news release feed, […]
Edmonton Journal arts section gutted
Arts journalism in print form in this city has taken a terrible hit with the sudden departure of two of the Edmonton Journal’s veteran columnists. Theatre writer Liz Nicholls and music writer Sandra Sperounes and have both taken buyouts and will leave the paper on Dec. 2. The owners PostMedia announced in October it was […]
Thieves try to sell Alfie Myhre back his own instruments
This one is going into the Dumbest Crooks file. The home of Edmonton music legend Alfie Myhre was broken into last week. Among the items stolen was a fiddle worth $12,000 and his 1929 banjo worth about $7,000 – two of his favourite instruments. It was a devastating loss. Fortunately, in a stroke of brilliant […]
