A camp counsellor named William Shatner

By Adrienne Clarkson - Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 4 Comments

In Adrienne Clarkson’s new book, Room for All of Us, the former governor general weaves the personal stories of new Canadians with chapters on the conflicts that displaced the people and prompted them to seek a new home. In one of the most poignant entries, she details the early life of Fred Bild, a long-time employee of the Department of Foreign Affairs, former ambassador to Thailand and China, and Holocaust survivor. When Bild was six, his father was grabbed off the streets of Brussels; 30 years later he found out he had died in Auschwitz. His mother, who gave birth to his baby brother after her husband disappeared, decided to hide both boys, relying on the Red Cross to protect them for the remainder of the war. Bild spent two years on a farm near the small Belgian village of Lubbeek, spoiled rotten by eight brothers and sisters, none of whom had any children. In this excerpt, Clarkson describes the boy’s reunion with his mother.

***EXCERPT***

Then one of the people who had helped bring him to Lubbeek went to find Fred’s mother. He had written her letters, which were sent to the abbé in Malines, and the abbé would get someone in Brussels to deliver them to her door. Every couple of weeks, she got a letter from her little boy, but he never got anything back from her—it was too dangerous for him to be receiving any letters, and she had no idea where he was.

Eventually, she arrived at the village. It was a very traumatic moment for nine-year-old Fred: although he hadn’t forgotten his mother, two years had passed and he had been very happy with his adopted family. But he did realize that in some way he was happy to see her. The worst thing was that now he’d have to go to school. His mother stayed for a couple of days and then left again to try to find his little brother, whom she had sent into hiding when he was 10 months old. She told Fred he would have to stay where he was because she couldn’t get ration stamps from the Resistance anymore and she had no income. She told him to be good and that she would come to visit him whenever he had holidays.

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The voice of the new

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Adrienne Clarkson profiles NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan.

Rathika says that many in the Tamil community are very politicized because they were forced to leave a country that for two generations suffered from civil war and unrest, but that others want to disengage when they come to Canada; they’ve already had too much politics. She wants to show them that politics is differ-ent in Canada: constructive and inclusive. Rathika identifies with other women who come from the Subcontinent – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka – and she is keen about getting other women from the communities she knows – Filipinas, for example – to run for elected office, because that’s how we’ll be properly represented in our parliaments and legislatures. She is the voice of the newest of Canada, and that voice is strong, loud and clear.

David Johnston keeps calm and carries on

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Blair Gable

Standing on the steps of Parliament Hill, behind a thin wooden podium, David Johnston is delivering his 123rd speech as Governor General. The occasion is the Canadian Police and Peace Officers’ 34th Memorial Service. He speaks carefully and deliberately. “I would like to pay tribute to all of the men and women in uniform who made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our communities safe throughout our history,” he says, his words echoing off the buildings of downtown Ottawa. “On behalf of all Canadians, I am grateful for all that you have done for this country.”

He returns, walking purposefully, to his seat. Later he will lay a wreath and afterwards he will greet family members of the fallen, visit briefly the memorial behind Centre Block and then slip inside for a reception in the Hall of Honour. The next morning he will fly to British Columbia, the 10th province to officially make his acquaintance (having been to the Yukon and Nunavut, he has only yet to visit the Northwest Territories). On Oct. 1, he celebrates his first anniversary as the Queen’s representative.

It has been a quiet start to his term. Though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, presented with a chance to rebut that adjective, he declines. “I don’t have any rebuttal,” he said in an interview last month. “I regard myself as a quiet person. As a university president for almost 27 years, [I learned that] quiet and steady and robust in the importance of the institution are good approaches.”

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Former GG continues to rack up public bills

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:56 PM - 25 Comments

Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson has billed the government for more than $500,000 in secretarial help since leaving her post, the Toronto Star revealed Friday. Clarkson’s office defended the payments. The former GG gets hundreds of letters and dozens of requests for speaking engagements related to her time in the job every month, a spokesman said. NDP MP Pat Martin called the payments “ridiculous.”

Toronto Star

Stephen Harper and constitutional convention

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 9:48 AM - 54 Comments

Tom Flanagan, a former advisor to Mr. Harper, is asked for his opinion on the 2004 gambit.

Asked if Mr. Harper might have had a different motivation for sending the letter to Ms. Clarkson — one other than ensuring that she explored the option of Conservative-led minority if Martin’s government fell — Mr. Flanagan replied: “I can’t see what other point there would have been in writing the letter except to remind everybody that it was possible to change the government in that set of circumstances without an election.”

Meanwhile, John Geddes talks to Don Desserud, who finds Mr. Harper’s understanding of convention to be “odd.”

"An odd (!) understanding" of how Parliament works

By John Geddes - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 8:29 PM - 68 Comments

As I did yesterday, I turn to Prof. Don Desserud, the University of New Brunswick expert on our parliamentary system, for insights into what is being said by Stephen Harper about that much-debated episode in 2004—you know, back when he was cooperating, but not coalition-conniving, with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.

This time, I asked Desserud about the prime minister’s fuller explanation today of what exactly he had in mind when he signed that joint letter to the governor-general with the NDP’s Layton and the Bloc’s Duceppe.

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Harper's version

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:17 PM - 88 Comments

Though it’s not reported exactly what question was put to him, Stephen Harper seems to have explained this morning what he meant when he asked Adrienne Clarkson in 2004 to consider her “options.”

“What was the option? The option was very clear. It’s the option we did. Which was as opposition leader I was seeking to put pressure on the government to influence its agenda without bringing it down, without defeating it and replacing it.”

Harper said that at the time, Martin was saying that any change in government policy, no matter how small, would be treated as a confidence measure and he would go to the governor general. “My position was if he did that the governor general should come to us. I would have told the governor general we in fact are not trying to bring the government down. All Mr. Martin has to do is sit down and talk with us. And I’m sure we will find a resolution.”

This, though it would seem to involve dabbling with the confidence convention, is similar to what Mr. Harper said when asked in 2004 about the letter to the governor general and whether he was interested in forming government. Except that at that time, he described the possibility of forming government as “extremely hypothetical.” Both Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe maintain Mr. Harper was interested in the possibility of forming government at the time, despite being one of the “losers” of the 2004 election.

Nonetheless, if this answers the first of those two questions for Mr. Harper, that leaves only the second in need of a response.

Two questions for Stephen Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 60 Comments

In light of all this confusion surrounding Mr. Harper’s previous practice and present stance on parliamentary cooperation, there are perhaps two questions that might (need?) be asked of the Conservative leader for the sake of clarification.

1. What “options” did you intend the Governor General to consider when you, along with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, wrote to her in September 2004?

2. In 1997, you said if the Liberal majority government of the day was ever reduced to a minority government, there would be an opportunity for one of the other parties “to form a coalition or working alliance with the others.” In 2004, during your news conference with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, you were asked if you were prepared to form government and said such a scenario was “extremely hypothetical.” You and your party now argue that only the party that wins the most seats can form government. Why and when did your views change on the functioning of our parliamentary system?

What was Stephen Harper up to in 2004?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 9:01 AM - 230 Comments

In response to the charge yesterday during Question Period that the Harper government had shown contempt for democracy, John Baird offered the following.

Mr. Speaker, it is the leader of the Liberal Party who is showing contempt for Canadian voters. He does not accept the fundamental democratic principle that the person with the most votes wins elections. He wanted to establish a coalition government with the Bloc Québécois and the NDP and now the coalition is back again. That shows utter contempt for Canadians.

Mr. Baird’s invoking of fundamental democratic principles was particularly noteworthy in light of what Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe had said two hours earlier in their respective news conferences. Continue…

What was Stephen Harper thinking in 2004?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 9:01 AM - 59 Comments

On September 9, 2004—two and a half months after that year’s federal election—Stephen Harper appeared at a news conference alongside Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe and NDP leader Jack Layton to announce what Mr. Harper would describe as a “co-opposition” agreement. The three presented a series of reforms intended to give the opposition parties more power in Parliament as Paul Martin prepared to lead Canada’s first minority government in more than two decades.

Mr. Harper, Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton had also sent a letter to the Governor General—Adrienne Clarkson at the time—to suggest that, should Mr. Martin seek to dissolve Parliament, she should “consult” with the three opposition leaders and consider her “options” before exercising her authority.

Below you will find an audio recording of that September 2004 news conference in its entirety.

At the 11:20 mark, the three opposition leaders are first asked to explain their request that the Governor General consult with them—specifically whether they are prepared to form a government. Continue…

Duceppe's version

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 5:10 PM - 0 Comments

John Geddes has related a recent conversation he had with the Bloc Quebecois leader.

After the government side made much of the story today, Mr. Duceppe also discussed the issue—and what happened between he and Stephen Harper in 2004—with reporters after QP. Here are his English comments. Continue…

Notes of artichoke with a hint of GG

By Pamela Cuthbert - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

John Ralston Saul

Pssst, this just in: Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul are farmers. Yes, famous for their support of small-scale, artisan food producers, the couple have joined their ranks by bringing their own product to market. Sublime Olive Oil, a grassy, cold-pressed, single-estate oil that sparkles in the light, is produced on their property in Provence. And the regal pair has not farmed out the work, as the Prince of Wales Duchy brand of organic foods does, but instead taken a hands-on, slow process over a decade, to rehabilitate two neglected olive groves with the aid of friends, neighbours and family. “We wanted to produce an olive oil that is as natural as possible,” says Saul. “I’m a great believer that food is about agriculture.”

While the former governor general works the groves too, especially at harvest time, Sublime is primarily Saul’s project. The award-winning essayist and long-time environmentalist practises in the field what he preaches at the podium. “We don’t irrigate. I’m totally against it,” he says. They don’t spray, except for minimal use of a copper mixture, traditionally considered organic.

They add only one other thing: certified organic fertilizer. Saul reports that the fertilizer will be replaced this year with horse manure, which is more natural. “And local!” he adds with a laugh.
Mostly, the 325 trees have been brought back into production by pruning. “If you just prune you can deal with disease. It works, and I think the trees are happier,” he says. The olives are picked by hand—and quickly, so as to retain the full flavour of the fruit. The harvest is a communal activity, a ritual where pickers are given one litre of oil in exchange for their labours. “It takes you back to the idea that gathering fruit is a cultural event,” comments Saul. The pressing is done traditionally with a stone press.

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Olympic aftermath, The man with the ‘golden arm’ and did Tea Partiers scald David Frum?

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 2, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 24 Comments

Olympic aftermath Olympic ice dance champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir ended their storybook season in Turin by winning their first World Championship last week. Virtue, 20, and Moir, 22, whose fiery on-ice chemistry does not extend to a romantic relationship away from the rink, say they’ve yet to decide if they’ll compete next year. In another graceful move, John Furlong, the head of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, travelled to the mountain village of Bakuriani, Georgia, to attend the memorial service for Nodar Kumaritashvili, the 21-year-old luger killed in a training crash on the Whistler track. Furlong said he saw hundreds of condolence letters from Canadians and others when he visited the family. Nodar’s father, David Kumaritashvili, said during the service his son’s death shouldn’t discourage others from practising luge.

The man with the ‘golden arm’ James Harrison of Australia received a life-saving blood transfusion as a 14-year-old. Since then, he’s returned the favour in spades. Now, age 74, he’s approaching his 1,000th blood donation. He earned his “golden arm” nickname because his blood contains a rare antibody that can save babies with Rhesus disease, a deadly form of anemia. His blood was used to develop a vaccine called Anti-D. Health officials estimate that Harrison has saved some two million babies from death or brain damage.

Did Tea Partiers scald David Frum? The fallout continues after Toronto-born conservative commentator David Frum was shoved last week from his right-wing perch at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank in Washington. The firing came after the one-time speech writer for George W. Bush blogged that the Republicans blew the health care debate with hysterical rhetoric and a refusal to negotiate compromises with the Democrats. “We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” wrote Frum, who blames Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the likes of the hard-right Tea Party faction for marginalizing the party. Frum says pressure from donors forced the AEI to end their seven-year association—a charge denied by the institute.

Toronto girl wins a logomachy L-o-g-o-m-a-c-h-y (a dispute about words) is just one of the puzzlers 11-year-old Laura Newcombe had to spell to win the Canwest Canspell National Spelling Bee for the second year in a row. Laura credits her knowledge of Greek and Latin root languages with helping her win the $15,000 education award. She and 11-year-old Scott Xiao of Burnaby, B.C., bested 250,000 students to make the finals in Ottawa. The two duelled for nine rounds before Scott stumbled on “normancy” while Laura correctly spelled “lidar”—a radar-like system that uses laser light.

Invasion of the body scanners A female security officer at London’s Heathrow Airport has proven privacy experts right: the controversial full-body scanners that “see” through clothing to look for weapons are open to abuse. Jo Margetson, 29, says a male colleague took her picture as she walked through one of the machines. She says John Laker leered at her and made lewd comments about her body. “I’m totally traumatized,” Margetson told Britain’s Sun. She is considering a lawsuit. Laker was given a harassment warning, and may face further discipline.

Earth Hour was the cat’s meow Barry Penner, B.C.’s ever-earnest environment minister, set the stage for a romantic Earth Hour dinner with his wife, Daris. Electric lights were off in the spirit of the energy-saving event and the house flickered with the glow of candlelight. All went well until their five-year-old cat, Ranger, brushed against a candle. “Suddenly there was a poof of smoke,” and a very “disgruntled” cat, Penner told reporters. Ranger suffered no serious damage. “His hair is a little bit singed and his pride is somewhat affected,” says Penner. The couple opened windows to rid the house of the smell of burnt fur. Using an electric fan, of course, was out of the question.

You’re offside, Mr. Rogge International Olympic Committee chairman Jacques Rogge better keep his head up and his stick on the ice. His doubts about the future of women’s Olympic hockey raised the ire of former governor general Adrienne Clarkson. Hours before Canada’s gold-medal win in Vancouver, Rogge questioned if women’s hockey can remain an Olympic event if Canada and the U.S. are the only teams in serious contention for the championship. Clarkson, who created the Clarkson Cup championship to foster the women’s game, says the sport needs more time and resources to grow outside North America. She said that, and more, in a letter mailed to Rogge. Rogge didn’t respond to Clarkson’s “shot across the bow,” as she put it, so she wants Canada’s ambassador to Switzerland to hand deliver her missive to IOC headquarters. The future of women’s Olympic hockey can’t be decided in a closed meeting of a committee of the male-dominated IOC, she says. “This cannot be just a one-sided announcement. There has to be dialogue.”

Math is its own reward Reclusive Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman has won a US$1-million prize for solving the “Poincaré’s conjecture,” one of seven fabled math problems that have eluded experts for a century. If the conjecture—a complex piece of abstract mathematics dealing with shapes that exist in four or more dimensions—is beyond the comprehension of, well, almost everyone, so is his response to the prize money, offered last week by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Perelman has so far refused to accept the money, even though the unemployed former researcher at the Steklov Mathematics Institute lives in a tiny apartment with his mother in St. Petersburg. The 43-year-old has also turned down all math-related job offers over the past four years. Leave self-promotion to those who seek it, he told London’s Telegraph. “I do not regard it as a positive thing.”

School’s tree policy is barking mad A woman who rescued a five-year-old boy stranded for 45 minutes in a tree at the Manor School playground in Melksham, U.K., wound up in trouble with school authorities and the local police. Kim Barrett, 38, a part-time cleaner, was chastised for trespassing on school grounds after seeing the boy safely back to class. Head teacher Beverley Martin said health and safety rules prohibit tree rescues. “Our policy when a child climbs a tree is for staff to observe the situation from a distance so the child does not get distracted and fall.” Barrett says no one was watching the boy. “When I took him in they had no idea he was missing.”

A former press baron takes on the Globe Fallen press baron Conrad Black, whose current address is the Coleman Correctional Facility in Florida, lashed out at the Globe and Mail on Saturday for claiming he and his wife, Maclean’s columnist Barbara Amiel, have lost their Palm Beach mansion. The property, assessed at US$32 million, was transferred to Black­field Holdings, a Connecticut-based investment firm, to settle an $11.6-million mortgage on the property. It is for sale at an undisclosed price. Black used his column in the National Post to “rebut almost all” of the Globe story. He called Blackfield the “technical owner,” but “I retain an interest in the house and full flexibility to sell or reassert that interest.” The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the appeal of his convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice.

This diva’s not for dissing Did Justin Bieber, the 16-year-old international pop sensation from Stratford Ont., really insult überdiva Mariah Carey? For a brief time, Britain’s Sun quoted the baby-faced singer as saying Carey is past her best-before date. “I don’t love her new music. It’s not the same,” he allegedly lamented. “It’s like Michael Jordan coming back to the NBA. She is past her best.” Two things suggest the quotes were too juicy to be true: 1) they’ve been hauled off the Sun’s website; 2) Carey hasn’t ripped out his tonsils.

‘Purple Rain’ man bleeds red ink Prince, the musician formerly known as a taxpayer, is listed as a tax delinquent in Carver County, Minn. Officials estimate that Prince R. Nelson and his company, PRN Music, owe US$450,000 to state and other government bodies. He’s also on the hook for the equivalent of US$3 million in damages after a Dublin judge held him liable for cancelling a 2008 concert on short notice. The Purple One lived in Toronto’s tony Bridle Path neighbourhood after marrying Manuela Testolini of Don Mills, Ont., in 2001. He returned to the U.S. when the marriage ended five years later.

A hard day’s night, says the nanny Heather Mills, the ex-wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney, is back in a courtroom, and the experience is proving as unflattering as her divorce proceedings. She is being sued by Sara Trumble, a former nanny to the estranged couple’s daughter Beatrice. Trumble claims that Mills was “rude and horrible” to her staff. “I wasn’t the only person who felt that at that time,” she testified. “It’s just that nobody else will stand up.” She said Mills was a generous employer who grew angry and demanding after the marriage breakup. Trumble’s duties included blow-drying Mills’s hair and giving her “nude spray tans,” she said. She was once called in from her maternity leave and ordered to tell a video crew “how wonderful Heather was,” she said. Trumble returned after that leave to find she’d been reassigned to a cleaning job. She is suing for sex discrimination, unfair dismissal and changes to her employment terms. Mills has yet to testify. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” an angry Mills whispered to her lawyer.

Paul and me and one last song. About dying.

By Dan Hill - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 6 Comments

Paul Quarrington and I are driving to Kingston to do readings at a prestigious book event. Close friends since 1965, we are an odd pair on this brilliantly sunny morning in the spring of 2008. Paul has this nagging cough, and a hoarse voice, which I assume to be singer’s anxiety, as we were both slated to buttress our book readings with a handful of original songs. While I am physically healthy, I’m an emotional train wreck: going through what can kindly be described as an intensely manic period, talking faster than Howard Stern on speed. Leaving Toronto, Paul asks me a question about a certain bestselling female author’s sexual proclivities. I enthusiastically venture an opinion. Or rather a soliloquy. I’m still talking, three hours later, as Kingston looms ahead. And no closer to answering.

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The marriage of institutions

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 8:27 PM - 0 Comments

The Dominion Institute and The Historica Foundation of Canada merged to create Canada’s largest history and citizenship organization: The Historica-Dominion Institute. A reception was held in the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in Toronto. Below is board member Rick Mercer.

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Newsmakers of the week

By Lianne George - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 4 Comments

Seal of approval

Inuit leaders are delighted by the positive publicity that Governor General Michaëlle Jean has attracted to the seal hunt ever since she appeared on camera last week snacking on a freshly slaughtered pup. During a visit to Nunavut, Jean partook in the skinning of a seal with a traditional ulu blade, and sampled a piece of its heart, calling it “fresh” and “delicious.” (According to Jean, this delicacy has the texture of sushi, but with a meatier taste.) One restaurant in Montreal told the CBC that sales of its seal appetizer have doubled since the video emerged. Adrienne Clarkson—in Nunavut last week, like Jean, for a symposium hosted by her husband John Raulston Saul—doesn’t see what the big deal is. She’s been eating raw food in the region for almost 40 years, and it never made headline news. “It’s nothing new to me, okay?” she told reporters. “I have a lovely sealskin coat . . . I’ve eaten raw food since 1971—and there you are.”

She said she wanted a revolution

For the first time since Sara Jane Moore, 77, was imprisoned for attempting to assassinate president Gerald Ford in 1975, she admitted last week that her actions were “a serious error.” Back in the mid-’70s, Moore, then a 45-year-old single mother, says she became caught up in the anti-Vietnam War protest movement in California. “I became immersed in it,” she told Matt Lauer, the host of NBC’s Today Show. “We were saying the country needed change. I genuinely thought that [shooting Ford] might trigger that new revolution in this country.” It was on Sept. 22, 1975, that Moore fired on Ford as he greeted a crowd in San Francisco. She missed his head by mere feet. After serving 32 years in jail, six of which she spent in solitary confinement, Moore was released on parole in 2007. Over time, she said, she “began to realize that I had let myself be used.” When host Lauer asked her why she was speaking out now, she said, “I think that one gets tired of being thought of as a kook, a monster, an alien.”

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Oh yeah, well, I sleep under a seal skin duvet. So there.

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 3:33 PM - 19 Comments

Adrienne Clarkson is unimpressed.

“I’ve eaten raw food here since 1971. It’s nothing new to me, okay?” Clarkson told The Canadian Press this weekend. Both women were attending an arctic gathering hosted by Clarkson’s husband John Ralston Saul. ”I have a lovely seal skin coat. . . I’ve eaten raw food since 1971 – and there you are.”

Canada’s own medical marvel

By Lianne George - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 4 Comments

Toronto Star

On March 31, 1938, Mao Zedong, a young Communist revolutionary destined to bring about generations of social trauma, invited Dr. Norman Bethune to visit him in his quarters in Yan’an, China, for a conversation that lasted until early morning. In the weeks leading up to this visit—now forever enshrined in Chinese lore—Bethune, a brilliant and intrepid Canadian surgeon, traveled great distances, often on foot and under attack, helping Mao’s Communists fight fascism by tending to wounded soldiers and civilians, the only foreign doctor among 13 million Chinese.

After Bethune’s death a year later (he cut his finger on a patient’s bone shard and the wound became infected), Mao eulogized Bethune in a lengthy letter that schoolchildren would be required to memorize, word for word, for decades. In her new biography, Extraordinary Canadians: Norman Bethune, Adrienne Clarkson, Canada’s former governor general and a veteran journalist, revisits the story of the man a billion and a half Chinese came to know as Pai-Chu-En—White One Sent.

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The Whistler Film Festival: the Hot Tub of Canadian cinema

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 12:18 PM - 2 Comments

Why do I keep coming back to the Whistler Film Festival? The cynical answer would be: it’s the skiing, stupid. And yes, for the past four years I’ve been attending this event, the skiing has been remarkably good for early December. But this year the snow is sparse. And it’s been raining steadily. So for the first time, I’ve come to Whistler and not put on a pair of skis.  But this festival is still well worth the trip.

Each year I attend much larger film festivals in Toronto and Cannes—massive engines of publicity and marketing that launch some of the year’s most important films. But a small, growing film festival can afford a luxurious, salon-like intimacy, and a sense of magic, that’s long gone from these juggernauts. Whistler’s festival has that. It’s the kind of event that makes film folk nostalgic for the pioneering days of Sundance or TIFF.  It goes by in a flash, just four days from start to finish. But there’s a terrifically dynamic vibe here. Aside from the slate of public screenings, Whistler throws together filmmakers from far and wide like no other film festival of its scale in Canada. You might call it the hot tub of the Canadian film industry. (I’m speaking metaphorically; I have  not actually stepped into a hot tub here, although there’s one steaming into the night air just below my hotel room window.)

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Who gives the Governor General advice?

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 7:24 PM - 15 Comments

In the summer of 1999, Adrienne Clarkson and her husband John Ralston Saul spent a long—and presumably rather dull—week prowling the stacks of the Metro Toronto Reference Library, looking for the type of books that few people read, and even fewer write. The former television personality had accepted Jean Chrétien’s offer to become Canada’s next Governor General. And even though the appointment wouldn’t be made public until early fall, Clarkson, a keener of long-standing, wanted to get a better idea of her new job’s duties, powers and responsibilities. It was tough sledding. “Luckily, we already owned former Governor General Vincent Massey’s autobiography, and a collection of his speeches, and The Biography of Georges Vanier, by Robert Speaight,” she writes in her 2006 memoir Heart Matters. “But there was absolutely no literature on what a Governor General actually did once installed in Rideau Hall that wasn’t connected simply to the opening and closing of Parliament, the reading of the Speech from the Throne, receiving state visitors and ceremonies like the Order of Canada.” Continue…

Blindness, deafness and babbling zombies

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 11:27 PM - 0 Comments

One of the maddening things about TIFF, at least for a journalist trying to cover it single-handedly, is that most the action is front-loaded into the opening weekend. That’s when the big, star-driven movies premiere. The Hollywood studios invite a horde of North American press into town for junkets to promote these prestige pictures , and many of those same journalists have gone home by Tuesday or Wednesday. Which means if you want to get maximum media exposure for your film, you need to show it on the opening weekend. Which makes for a hectic time, to say the least. All this is by way of an apology to say it’s hard to find time to see all the absolutely unmissable films, interview all the absolutely irresistible stars and find time to blog on a daily basis. You’re always running to catch up to a festival that seems to be forever sliding through your hands.

It certainly doesn’t leave much time for parties, even though there are enough of them that you could make collecting bold-face names over cocktails a full-time job. Everyone keeps asking me, “Are you having fun?” Well, I don’t like to complain about life in the fast lane. Hey, I’m not in Afghanistan. But no, it’s not a whole lot of fun.

Last night, however, after screening my last movie, I did force myself to attend a party, even though I wasn’t in the mood. I thought maybe it will be like having sex when you don’t feel like it: it will turn out to be just what the doctor ordered. Continue…