Volume 6

I lived out of a suitcase for 3 years. I kept landing in Halifax and the Nova Scotia area. I worked with a lot of talented people, good people. I saw work from some of the theatre companies: Ship’s Company, Festival Antigonish, Two Planks and a Passion, and more. I hung around the Atlantic Fringe Festival, which had a vibrant, fun energy. Halifax is the home of Neptune Theatre, the biggest theatre company in the Atlantic Provinces. At the time, there was a booming TV and film industry. The theatre community was warm and welcoming. Halifax was just big enough, and not too big.

Let’s try to imagine how people who are not part of the theatre community might feel about going to see a show. They might not even realize it’s going on. Or maybe they do realize, but they don’t feel welcome. My boyfriend didn’t see much theatre in Halifax before we started dating. I asked him why. He said the independent theatres seem to a lot of people to be “prohibitively cool”, which isn’t, I don’t think, the kind of cool we’re going for.

Robert Borden ran on a campaign of "A White Canada," directed against Aboriginals and Chinese immigrants in British Columbia. This campaign delivered every single federal seat in BC to the Conservatives, and Borden defeated Wilfred Laurier's federal Liberals in 1911.

I already fear that post-election moment when politics begin to re-retreat into the scenery of our lives, instead of continuing to occupy the central role they’re currently playing.

During the campaign, Justin Trudeau announced with fanfare in September that he would DOUBLE the Canada Council as part his campaign platform. If they keep this promise we could be looking at a much larger, completely redefined national arts funding organization in the matter of a few years. On a macro-level, in terms of reinvigorating and redefining Canadian culture, it is a once in a generation opportunity.