Remembering with Joshua Foer at the Ottawa Writer’s Fest
We all have memories we’d like to banish from the kingdom of our minds. If you can’t think of a special one right now, don’t worry, soon a certain scent will waft through the air, a genteel fingertip will brush by an earlobe or someone will snarl behind the bulge of a maple-cream donut and […]
Rick Salutin discusses Dissent
Canadian dissent: passionate and vivacious or feeble and dormant? For Rick Salutin, a man who’s famous for brandishing a combative spur in the melee of pertinent issues, there’s a little of column A and little of column B; “There’s good news and bad news.” On Saturday afternoon, in the Main Branch of the Public Library, […]
A eulogy for Nicholas Hoare and the independent bookstore
Road signs are valuable instructional tools: they tell us what’s coming, what to expect. It’s fitting, then, that the propped up sign in front of the Nicholas Hoare bookstore a few days ago had this Robert Graves quote: “There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money.” Now somewhat old news, Nicholas Hoare […]
B.A. Johnston and the Endless Highway of Canadian Music
By Alessandro Marcon Both the best and worst that can be said of troubadour B.A. Johnston is that he sweats hard for his fans. Few entertainers are so overtly abrasive, disgusting and belligerently shirtless and yet, paradoxically, so charismatic, hardworking and flat out entertaining. Think modern day performance humour: wow this is awkward, mixed with […]
Islam, pluralism and respect: thoughts from Irshad Manji at the Ottawa International Writers Festival
By Alessandro Marcon A couple of nights ago, I was rollin’ down on Bank, jammin’ B.Blade, thinkin’ on Siggy Freud. Laid back, though pensive I was, with my mind on my Muslims and my Muslims on my mind. Not two days previous, with hand extended in fistbump position, I had found myself in the midst […]