J&L BooksThe author and journalist Adam Gilders contributed to the very first issue of The Walrus, an article about a fanatical German sub-culture of Wild West re-creationists — Gunther and Hans dressing up in cowboy hats and feathered headdresses. It was a story about identity and the strangeness of life, themes that would crop up in his later contributions to the magazine, too. When Gilders passed away in 2007, succumbing to a brain tumour at the age of 36, he had published twice more in the magazine, reportage about a feral boy on the island of Fiji and a shimmering piece of fiction titled “Barnyard Desires,” in which a rodent infestation is a harbinger of a tenant’s own tunnel-like self analysis.
For those of use who knew him personally — in my own case, through this magazine — the news that we would publish one of his stories was always an exciting time. He was one of the new Canadian voices that the magazine was seeking to discover, in many ways typifying the idealism that many of us felt in the year of The Walrus’s launch. However, Gilders’ writing always operated on a much less grand scale, particularly his fiction, where each sentiment was an exercise in concision. In fact he was known to work and re-work each sentence laboriously, a self-styled perfectionist of the minutiae of language.
Another Ventriloquist, a posthumous collection of Gilders’ short fiction to be released this evening in Ottawa, and in Toronto tomorrow, showcases this approach to a tee. Some stories are only a few sentences in length, witty fragments that focus on the irregularities of life. Others, such as the longer “One Theory About My Marriage,” offer acerbic scenes of everyday Ontario (Gilders grew up in Ottawa and later lived in Toronto). (more…)
Earlier today, education theorist William “Bill” Ayers delivered a pre-recorded keynote lecture to the Worldviews Conference on Media and Higher Education. While it’s only about an hour-long flight from Ayers’ home city of Chicago to Toronto, where the conference is being held, his lawyers advised him not to bother attempting the trip. He has already been denied entry to Canada on two separate occasions — first in Calgary in 2005, then again in Toronto in 2009 — and his legal advisors determined that he’d be turned back again should he try to re-enter.
Although the American-born professor is a world-renowned expert in teaching, curriculum planning, and education reform, his career trajectory is notably different from those of his peers. Before taking on graduate studies, Ayers was a co-founder of the Weather Underground, the 1970s activist network that planted small homemade explosives at government sites including the US Capitol and the Pentagon. After re-emerging into mainstream life, Ayers became a distinguished professor and senior scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (He retired in 2010.) While he feels uneasy about such pompous titles, he outright rejects the other label by which he is sometimes identified.
“I still find it annoying that ordinary, intelligent people make me justify the fact that I’m not a terrorist,” Ayers tells me, speaking on the phone from his home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighbourhood. Nobody was ever killed by a Weather Underground operation — the group phoned in bomb threats prior to each attack, leaving enough time for an evacuation — and Ayers insists that the destruction of public property shouldn’t be equated with terror. He was nevertheless targeted by a hostile media campaign in 2008, as the American right exploited his connections to fellow Hyde Park resident Barack Obama. The media blitz reignited Ayers’ notoriety: he still finds himself explaining to student protesters at campus speaking engagements that he is not a murderer. (more…)
Spoons, “Nova Heart” (1981)
With its ethereal guitar line, pulsating drums, and Gordon Deppe’s haughty tenor, “Nova Heart” remains an iconic track from the new wave era. This Burlington, Ontario band generated a string of sleek singles, but it would never top this one.
Rational Youth, “Dancing on the Berlin Wall” (1982)
References to the atom bomb and Len Deighton’s fictional spy Harry Palmer make this a synth-pop meditation on the Cold War. It’s although worth noting that the song’s peppy electro beat predated Afrika Bambaataa’s seminal “Planet Rock” by at least a couple of months. (more…)
Canadian Notes & Queries 80: The Gender Issue, Taddle Creek No. 26: Summer Issue, Granta 115: The F Word“If I were a man, and cared to know the world I lived in, I almost think it would make me a shade uneasy — the weight of that long silence of one half of the world.” — Elizabeth Robins, 1907
Recently Good Magazine published an article with a simple solution to inequity on conference panels. What if white men refused invitations to panels that don’t properly represent the diversity of their industries? The idea was so basic, yet I had never even considered it. Usually when I see five men on a magazine, marketing, tech or publishing panel, I criticize the organizers: “You couldn’t find a single woman?” I ask. It never occurred to me to question the participants.
Good broke it down:
“Why don’t the white men who are asked to engage in this nonsense simply stop doing it? The boycott is a protest with a long history of success. If white, male elites started saying, ‘I will not participate in your panel, event, or article if it is all about white men,’ chances are these panels and articles would quickly dry up — or become more diverse.”
But why not take this ingenious idea even further? Since literary publications so often struggle with gender disparity, in their contributor lists and mastheads, in the books they review and the viewpoints they include, why don’t men who consider themselves allies to equality simply refuse publication? Why doesn’t the “How do we fix this?” question include the responsibility of male writers, not just male editors, in its solution? Why shouldn’t writers cultivate a list of publications they will and won’t submit or pitch to on the basis of equity? (more…)
Click here to view the full gallery of Joanne Tod’s “Portraits of the War,” from the July/August issue of The Walrus magazine.
Tanisha Evans
Danielle ScottPortraits from “Spark”Can art bring strangers together? Perhaps in some situations, as acclaimed photographer (and friend of The Walrus) Nigel Dickson recently discovered while mentoring at-risk youths in Toronto.
“It was up at the Jane and Finch area, where, to be honest, I’d never been before,” says Dickson. “[The youth] were from three different high schools and different gang neighbourhoods. These people would never have met if they didn’t have this group to come to.”
The “group” is Shoot With This, a film mentorship collective that helps prospective imagemakers develop their creative talents and professional skills. Dickson, an eighteen-time winner of National Magazine Awards, has had such big names as Christopher Plummer, Michelle Obama, and Pierre Trudeau sit before his lens; working with the collective’s young charges was an altogether different project for him. Their collaborative result is “Spark,” a group exhibition that pairs Dickson’s portraits of such Canadian celebrities as Arlene Dickinson and Colin Mochrie with photographs made by teens shooting under his direction.
“We got some good results. A couple of them were already into it, but most of them knew nothing about it,” says Dickson. “We ended it with six photographs that I thought were quite good. Three people in the group showed extreme promise, so who knows, they may go on to develop that.”
“Spark” is on display at The Al Green Gallery in Toronto until June 9.
Simon PulsiferStornowayWith another month begun, many Canadians are once again practicing the common ritual of settling into new rental and temporary homes. One notable Canuck, however, is biding his time to make a move that seemed unlikely, if not impossible, only a few years — and several federal elections — ago.
Jack Layton has already moved on up in Canadian politics, becoming the Leader of the Official Opposition during last month’s Conservative landslide. Sometime after Parliament breaks for the summer, he will become the first NDP boss to take up residence in Stornoway, the thirty-four-room mansion that serves as the opposition leader’s official residence. (First, though, he’ll need to figure out where it is: as recently as May 23, Layton denied knowing the house’s exact location.)
Built for a grocer in 1913, Stornoway sits on nearly one acre at 541 Acacia Avenue, in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood. Early on, the house switched hands a few times before being loaned to Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, who lived there in exile during World War II. In 1946, a private trust fund was set up to purchase Stornoway and house the leader of the opposition in style and dignity. When that money ran out in 1970, the government bought the property for the excellent price of $1. (more…)
ECW PressMy dear Julie,
This morning on my walk I watched a house catch fire. I was walking down the empty road, staring at my black shoes turning brown with dust, and something made me turn and stare through the shimmer of heat. I knew that I should be in the Gulf Hotel, working at my desk, constructing a virtual version of this day and of this place to wire around the world. I looked back at a house that I had just passed and I saw nothing, just a flat roof and some broken windows. Then it seemed as if the roof were rising. I thought I saw black birds escaping, but it was smoke and ash, and in the time that it took for the dark transformation of those birds the house suddenly caught — struck like a giant match — and it was blazing in the middle of the morning beside an empty street. Blazing away and all the air above it turned black and I thought of the bedsheets catching fire inside and writhing across the mattress, and the white pillows smoking, and the curtains evaporating.
I thought of your necklace with the cherry wood beads. I thought of a song that I memorized in high school. I thought of the little plastic boat that used to float in the tub with you, holding your perfume and your scented oil. I thought of you sitting in the tub with your face flushed and your hair in a ponytail, and you covering your teeth to laugh. I stood and I watched the house fall in upon itself the way that my thoughts were falling in upon themselves. I felt thirsty and my eyes stung.
Here, I should tell you, crows fly into ruined houses and spend the night. My easy rhetoric does not dispel the ashes. In the day there are, of course, loud noises that you would find unbearable and I have become somewhat hopeless at my job. The waves break before the shore and I imagine what it must be like to live here always, drifting through the hot and noisy days and sleeping through the quiet dreadful nights and feeling no ambition, no ambivalence beyond the war. It seems as if people have ceased to be like living things, like animals, and now we only tread through time. We are detached from ourselves. Every action and reaction here has politics. And so you think before you buy three bananas and a loaf of bread whether it is right. Do I need three bananas today or should I buy just one and another tomorrow? Should I buy twenty? What will happen? (more…)
Frank NoelkerPepper
My Time with the Chimps appears simultaneously on The Walrus Blog and Andrew Westoll’s The New Animalist. To read more about Andrew’s book, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, click here.
In the early years, Gloria invited some of the lab technicians who used to work with the chimpanzees to visit Fauna. Although these visits were ostensibly for the good of the chimpanzees — some of them had built genuine friendships with the techs — Gloria had an ulterior motive for them. She wanted to know the truth about life inside biomedical laboratories, the truth the researchers and companies don’t want the public to hear. And she quickly discovered that when lab workers are off the clock and experiencing extreme emotions, they often feel like sharing.
“When people come here, they tell me stuff,” she says. “Horrible stuff. Chimps with no fingers left because they’ve chewed them all off. Chimps with concussions from hitting the ground after being darted. Chimps who have such horrible wake-ups from anesthesia that they nearly kill themselves as they thrash around their room. Did you know the only time the chimps were allowed pain medication was after they’d had their vasectomies? They weren’t even allowed a Tylenol, because it would interfere with the science.”
Gloria collects these stories obsessively. They are crucial pieces of ammunition when it comes to swaying public opinion and getting the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act passed into law. But she also collects these gruesome tales because she is terrified that no one else will.
“Over the last twelve years, I’ve realized you can’t force people who worked in the lab to speak out publicly,” she says. “You can’t. Because they live in purgatory, in their own little hell. Most of them will never be able to deal with what they saw, what they did, what they were a part of – the crimes they committed against the chimps.” (more…)
Do you like poker? Toronto filmmaker Matt Gallagher does. He’s long been a decent player, and now that he’s broke — small child, recession — and apparently lacking in transferable skills, he decides to try it on as a career. He becomes a grinder.
A grinder, we’re told, is someone whose sole source of income is poker. Gallagher’s Grinders follows two of them: Danny, a well-intentioned, alcoholic dad, and Andre, a clown (“Mark, I love your money, bro! Oh, I love your money!” he declares after a win at the table, pouring the loser’s chips all over his own head). Both are found nightly on Toronto’s underground circuit, which appears robust. They play from 10 pm until 7 am, after which, bleary eyed, they might go to a casino to play more poker, or perhaps pick apples with the family. Both are overweight, speak in a Trailer Park Boys–like patois, and favour t-shirts emblazoned with gangster imagery and/or cartoon characters. Neither is proud of what he does for a living. Andre refers to himself throughout the film as a degenerate, warning us not to be fooled by his “beautiful house” and “two beautiful dogs”; Danny constantly reminds himself, and us, that he’s doing this for his daughters, whose pictures he keeps on the table when he plays. (more…)
Singer Miriam Makeba, known as Mama Africa, died in November of 2008. Ten months earlier, I saw her perform at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, Spain. At the time, I didn’t understand what I was witnessing — the denouement of a fifty-year career, the last tour of a woman whom millions would mourn as a saint. Makeba, a South African political exile, American civil rights activist, stateswoman, and brilliant musician, was a hero of the pan-African movement of the 1960s and ’70s, and an influence on virtually every South African singer who has followed her.
In 1959, Makeba appeared in the anti-apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa. The filmmaker, American Lionel Rogosin, brought her to Cannes for the premiere. Come Back won the Critics’ Award; Makeba became an instant phenomenon, playing around New York and London, appearing on television, and recording under the guidance of Harry Belafonte, whom she’d met in the UK. However, when she tried to return home in 1960, she found that her South African passport had been revoked. Unable to re-enter her country, she lived in exile until Mandela was freed thirty years later. In the meantime, she introduced South African music (and, to a large extent, politics) to the West.
Mama Africa director Mika Kaurismäki grew up listening to Makeba’s songs on Finnish radio. His feature documentary almost wasn’t made, as Makeba passed away just before filming was scheduled to begin. Kaurismäki pursued the project anyway, partly from an urge to preserve the singer’s legacy. The film doesn’t suffer at all for the lack of its star — Makeba comes across intimately, her story as affecting as if she’d told it herself. Kaurismäki pieces her life together from interviews with Makeba’s grandchildren, former band members, friends, and prominent admirers, along with an enormous amount of wonderfully remastered archival footage. The portrait that emerges is of a woman without fault: a role model in the strictest sense. (Mama Africa mentions only two of Mama Africa’s five husbands.) This may be an unapologetic love letter, but few will object.
“Funemployment,” “affluenza,” “recessionista,” “staycation” — the recession of 2008 and 2009 introduced a host of strange slang into the common vernacular. With Recessionize! For Fun and Profit! 15 Simple Steps!, Toronto filmmaker Jamie Kastner invents his own term, albeit ironically, he says.
“The way [this recession] was being covered, I realized, was part of the story and part of the event itself,” says Kastner. “The way it was being ‘cutesified,’ basically, and how it was being spun into almost a feel good story or a good news story even though it’s the worst imaginable news.”
Recessionize! premieres at this year’s Hot Docs film festival in Toronto (see sidebar for showtimes). Kastner’s previous documentary Kike Like Me, about Jewish identity, was among the best-attended and most talked-about films at the 2007 festival.
Kastner’s new film opens with archival footage of Great Depression–era New York City. Men in suits are climbing onto high window ledges as people below gawk and take photographs. In a voiceover, the director explains that, contrary to popular belief, these were not rich bankers jumping. Rather, it’s suicide rates among the middle class that increased during the Depression, as they have every recession since. In making Recessionize!, Kastner says he hit the road “to find stories to inspire my fellow middle class children of the free market not to jump.” (more…)
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