Georgia Straight - WE'RE BAAAAACK - November 24, 2022

By V.S. Wells

Shroom Boom

by V.S. Wells

IF YOU WANT TO EXPAND YOUR MIND, VANCOUVER IS THE PLACE TO BE.

From the colourful dispensaries dot ting downtown storefronts to the local online markets selling microd oses, psilocybin snacks, and spore kits, psychedelics are as much a part of the city’s fabric as CoolSculpting and Cross Fit: not for everyone, but hard to miss.

Ilayda Gökçen, president of the UBC Psychedelic Society, says Vancouver is kind of “ahead of the game in terms of psychedelics.”

The last year alone has seen a boom in people wanting to learn more. At Imagine Day in 2021, when students come to find out about on-campus clubs, “maximum 100 people” signed up to the society’s mailing list.

“This year, we had over 500,” Gökçen says. “I don’t think that it’s because we did all these amazing events that people

heard of us. I think it’s more so because people started hearing about psyche delics in mainstream media.”

2022 has been something of a banner year for Canadian psychedelics. Health Canada’s Special Access Program opened up to psychedelics in January, allowing patients with serious illness to apply for psilocybin. And in August, B.C.-based psychedelics non-profit TheraPsil threw its weight behind a court case chal lenging the Canadian government over access to psilocybin, saying the current methods are a violation of Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ guarantee to “life, liberty and security of the person.” It’s similar to Terry Parker’s 2000 lawsuit that found an absolute prohibition on cannabis contra vened Section 7 rights, which paved the way for medicinal marijuana legalization.

Long-time drug reform advocate Dana Larsen tells the Straight that while Par ker’s court case was heard in Ontario, BC was at the forefront of cannabis activism.

“Vancouver had a convergence of activism in the 1990s,” he says. “People were moving from other parts of Canada to be here.”

The Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary on East Hastings is one of several storefronts selling psychedelic mushrooms in downtown Vancouver. Photo by Jon Healy.

The city is leading a global psychedelics industry, thanks to decades of drug activism work

Legal cannabis activism, alongside drug user liberation groups like VANDU, helped to shift the local climate from one where bong shops were raided to one where most of the population supported, or at least toler ated, drug use.

Police raids are expensive to execute, and rarely closed down stores unless charges were laid—so grey-market pot shops were able to flourish. That neutral ity extended to psychedelic stores, like Larsen’s Medicinal Mushroom Dispens ary (opened 2019) and Coca Leaf Cafe (opened 2020). The dispensary sells dried shrooms, mushroom microdose capsules, and liquid LSD to members, while Coca dispenses other plant-de rived substances like kratom and peyote.

“For somebody like me, who’s very ideologically motivated, the threat of a police raid is not very big,” Larsen says. “I know that I’m probably not going to go to jail for a long time. It’s probably actually going to bring my store more business.”

The West Coast’s hippie reputation also has something to do with the city’s current psychedelic scene. Marc Caron, who has been the events organizer for the decade-old Spirit Plant Medicine Confer ence since 2017, says current discussions of psychedelics really focus on the health benefits—which is popular among the city’s wellness-driven urbanites.

“We’ve got a lot of yoga, we’ve got a lot of great spiritual consciousness community in the Vancouver area, and I think the openness of those people help bring it to others,” Caron says.

The Spirit Plant Medicine Conference, like the UBC Psychedelic Society, isn’t a space to buy drugs or talk about crazy trips where it felt like the walls were melting. Instead, it’s dedicated to those groovy ideas like mindfulness, medita tion, and personal growth.

Gökçen, who previously worked for psychedelic medicine group MAPS Can ada, says the society provides a space for people to talk about how psychedelics may have helped their mental health, but focuses a lot on non-psychedelic ways to do that.

“Most of the psychedelic work organ izations or clubs … really try to empha size the importance of mental health,” they say. “Most of our events are stuff like that. So we do events where we bring breathwork facilitators, or we are plan ning, for example, collaboration events with UBC Mental Health Initiative.”

Just as physical stores and events are dedicated to the psychedelic scene, so

too are digital ones. Flyers and stickers advertising online ’shroom sales are everywhere. One of the most prolific posters, promising a “Cosmic Travel Agency,” leads curious consumers to Dose, where dried mushrooms, microd ose extracts, and psilocybin chocolates are all up for sale.

“Although we think all psychedelics are great, mushrooms are a natural product that people are familiar with. So there’s less stigma,” Ry, a founder of Dose who asked to be referred to by only his first name, tells the Straight in a writ ten statement.

While Ry got into psychedelics in high school, he says he began growing and making products in 2016. The web store opened up in 2019.

“Most people at this point understand that it’s not only safe but has incredible potential to improve lives. Naturally, Canadians [want] to source psilocybin mushrooms to experience those benefits for themselves. So the demand has been increasing and businesses are opening to supply to that emerging market,” Ry says.

Psychedelics have the potential to be big business. Besides small local busi nesses, larger corporations are looking into research, or mass production of psychedelics that doctors can prescribe to patients. In 2021, publicly traded psychedelic companies in Canada raised around $289 million. Local synthetic psilocybin producer Optimi Health Corp. even has backing from Vancou ver’s richest man, listing Chip Wilson on its board of directors.

There are worries that as the psyche delic movement meanders towards legal recognition, it will end up repeating the mistakes of weed legalization: letting big businesses take over the market, and cutting out Black and Indigenous com munities that have used psychedelics as natural medicines for centuries.

Legalization “changed the scope of can nabis from a business and legal perspec tive,” Caron says. “There is a movement to really honour and respect the Indigenous heritage [of psychedelics] where we don’t want to overprice these things out of the market. They need to be accessible to the many. And we don’t want to see it neces sarily become overly commercialized.”

But the excitement is still there: an almost giddy joy that something once demonized is being used both for fun and for personal well-being. Or, as Gökçen puts it: “It’s becoming more mainstream to like, go do ‘shrooms at the beach with your friends.” g

Credit: Devan Francis

Metro Vancouver becomes more unaffordable (yay)

by V.S. Wells

b METRO VANCOUVER’S LIVING WAGE in creased by 17.3 per cent between 2021 and 2022, driven up by rising rents and soar ing food prices, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Al ternatives (CCPA) and Living Wage for Families B.C.

In the 14th annual report, researchers calculated that a family with two chil dren would need two full-time working parents to earn at least $24.08 per hour to keep up with the cost of living in Metro Vancouver. That’s up $3.56 from $20.52 in 2021.

“Everyone across B.C. knows that life has got more expensive,” Anastasia French, provincial manager of Living Wage for Families B.C. and one of the report’s co-authors, told the Straight. “The surprise was how much the living wage has gone up by.”

The 17 per cent increase was consider ably higher than inflation, which the B.C. government recorded at 7.9 per cent in October 2022. It marked the largest single-year jump in living wage calcula tions, which is now just shy of $44,000 per year.

“About a third of workers aren’t earn ing the new living wage,” French says. “They’re workers who are predominant ly racialized workers, new immigrants, women, all of the people who experience discrimination … It’s just shown again through these living wage calculations.”

B.C.’s minimum wage currently stands at $15.65 per hour, and legislation passed earlier this year means it will increase annually in line with inflation. But not only is the starting line nearly $10 below the living wage, the cost of living is rising more than inflation. Even Fraser Valley, the least expensive community that CCPA studied, has a living wage of $18.98—21 per cent higher than min imum wage.

Rent remains the single biggest expense at $2,186 per month, a substan tial increase over previous years. While it’s almost impossible to find a two- or three-bedroom apartment in Metro Vancouver for that price, the report notes that the figure “aggregates rent paid by long-term tenants who have benefitted from B.C.’s rent control measures and those who have recently moved and

typically pay higher rents.”

The big increase in the living wage, however, was caused by increases in food costs. Groceries are now calculated at $1,114 per month for a nutritious diet for four people, not including dietary requirements or dining out.

French says COVID-19 and climate change contributed to food price in creases, but corporate greed could also play a role.

“Supermarkets are making record profits off the back of people really just trying to pay for the essentials in life,” she says. “Lots of those people who work in those supermarkets are not earning a living wage themselves … to be able to survive and pay rent and pay for the food at the places they’re working.”

Canada’s three largest grocery store chains, Loblaws, Metro, and Empire Co., have all posted earnings t ens of millions higher than the same quarter in 2019. A recent report from Dalhousie University suggested the Competition Bureau of Canada should investigate whether grocery corporations are taking advantage of inflation to boost shareholder profits.

French says food price increases are a new phenomenon, so there aren’t yet de tailed policy recommendations for how they could be remedied. But housing has a number of provincial or policy solu tions that advocates have been pushing for years.

Rent control, for instance—tying an nual rent increases to individual units rather than tenants—could help with out-of-control housing affordability.

“There’s rent control in place to help tenants who are in their places, but as soon as they have to move or they’re evicted … the rent goes up by 10, 20 per cent,” French says. “A lot of the afford able housing stuff is so necessary, but it takes time.” Rent control, in contrast, “will really make a quicker difference.”

“There’s rent control in place to help tenants who are in their places, but as soon as they have to move or they’re evicted … the rent goes up by 10, 20 per cent,” French says. “A lot of the afford able housing stuff is so necessary, but it takes time.” Rent control, in contrast, “will really make a quicker difference.”

New premier David Eby has an nounced two credits to help B.C. resi dents with the cost-of-living crisis. All BC Hydro customers will get a one-time $100 credit, while a sliding scale B.C. Affordability Credit will give families earning up to $150,051 a tax credit.

The maximum amount will be $410 to a family with two children with a house hold income of $43,051 or less. The living household income, calculated at around $87,652 annually, is almost double the cap eligible for maximum benefit.

“The living wage actually went down in 2019, because of government policy. If they did the same kind of thing with housing, that can really make a substantial difference in people’s lives,” French says.

Eby also announced new measures designed to create more housing: amending the Strata Property Act to end age-restriction bylaws for non-senior housing and eliminate rental-restriction bylaws, and tabling the Housing Supply Act to give the province “the power to set housing targets in municipalities with the greatest need.”

The press release did not address nonmarket housing or rent control, meaning new units that may be built under the Housing Supply Act may not be afford able for workers earning a living wage.

In a written statement, the City of Vancouver told the Straight that it had taken “an active role in food policy,” citing the 2013 Vancouver Food Strategy and 2022 Vancouver Plan chapter on food systems.

“The City recognizes that increases to the cost of living affect residents’ ability to afford food,” the statement reads.

“About 10 percent of Vancouver house holds experience inadequate food access due to financial constraints, and this rate is higher among equity-deserving groups including residents identifying as Indigenous or LGBTQ2+, renters, and lone-parent households.”

The city also pointed towards its 2017 Housing Vancouver Strategy, which has approved 68 per cent of its 10-year target of 16,000 market rental homes, but only 29 per cent of its target of 4,000 developer-owned below-market rental homes. g

Fighting injustice a lifelong pursuit

By Rachel Tetrault

The first time I really understood what it meant to be Jewish was when I was 14 years old. I was preparing for my bat mitzvah, where I was to give a speech about what Judaism represented to me in front of all of my family and friends.

Before this moment I hadn’t given it much thought—I grew up in southeast Vancouver, I went to Sir James Douglas Elementary school, and I was usually the only Jewish kid in my class. I understood that we lit candles and ate gelt (chocolate coins) during Hannukkah, searched for the afikomen (matzah) during Passover, and that somehow I got to celebrate all

the Jewish holidays along with Christ mas and Easter.

So in preparation for writing my bat mitzvah speech, I turned to my family for advice. My mom suggested I read a novel geared to youth about the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and my dad suggested I ask my grandparents about some of their experiences surviving the Holocaust.

When the time came for my bat mitz vah and my speech, the main thing I had learned through my months of prepara tion was that being Jewish, to me, meant standing up to all forms of injustice. This concern for injustice continued into my adult life.

Image via Shutterstock

It’s what drove me to become a member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and to speak out as a Jew in support of Palestinian liberation. And it is indisputable that extreme injus tices are currently happening in Israel/ Palestine.

This is also what drove me to speak out against the International Holocaust Re membrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism prior to its adoption at the last Vancouver city council meeting. The IHRA definition lists the following phrase as an example of anti-Semitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

This is a very problematic and danger ous definition of anti-Semitism because it conflates critique of the state of Israel with being anti-Semetic.

You don’t need to dig too deeply to discover that the state of Israel is indeed a racist endeavor. And saying so does not make you or I an anti-Semite. Israel was formed in 1948 by driving out 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their lands and destroying 500 Palestinian villages. Israel openly privileges Jewish people over other citizens of Israel, particularly the Palestinians who make up 20 per cent of its population.

Just one example is the Israeli Law of Return.The Law of Return grants any person with one Jewish grandparent, who may have no connection to Israel or Palestine, immediate citizenship when they land in Israel. But members of Palestinian families that have lived in Israel/Palestine for hundreds of years are still not able to return to their homes. So , my husband, my two-year-old son and I can go to Israel tomorrow and be

granted citizenship, even though I’ve never been there. My grandparents were from Poland, but my Palestinian friend whose grandparents were born in Haifa can’t return at all because his family was expelled, and he’s not Jewish.

In recent years, Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights groups (no tably Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) have published reports that found Israeli laws and policy favour one ethnic group (Israeli Jews) over Pal estinians, and thus Israel is committing the crime of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Israel itself. Yet some have suggested that calling Israel an apartheid state is anti-Semitic under IHRA’s definition. Amnesty Inter national, Human Rights Watch, Vancou verites, and people everywhere need to be able to call out human rights abuses in Israel without being subjected to such false accusations and smears.

IJV recently published a groundbreak ing report on the suppression of speech on Palestine in Canada. The report features nearly 80 testimonials from stu dents, activists, and academics in Canada who have been threatened, harassed, or censored because of their pro-Palestinian advocacy, and that IHRA’s definition could increase these instances if it was widely adopted. This is why other city councils in Montreal and Calgary, the University of Toronto, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and even Kenneth Stern, the author of the IHRA(?) definition himself have either rejected the definition or cautioned against adopting it.

In the lead-up to Vancouver’s vote on adopting the IHRA definition, I was dis mayed to see a pro-Israel lobbyist attack Harsha Walia with false accusations of antisemitism on Twitter, all because she spoke out against the definition. Walia is a well-respected anti-racist and anticolonial activist. I fear that by adopting IHRA, Vancouver has only opened the door to more attacks like this against other anti-racist and pro-human-rights activists. Conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of a nation-state that is perpe trating injustice risks curbing legitimate discourse for all Vancouverites. Yes, we need to fight against antiSemitism and stamp it out where we see it—but the IHRA definition is clearly the wrong approach. g

Rachel Tetrault is a community organizer and campaigner. She lives in Vancouver with her family.

“ EXTREME INJUSTICES ARE CURRENTLY HAPPENING IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE.

illustration by Olivia Di Liberto

Let’s start with a caveat: you will make assumptions based on what follows, and I can pretty much guarantee whatever assumptions you make will be wrong. And, sorry, while it would certainly clarify things, not a lot of names will be given here, not so much to protect the innocent, but the guilty. That’s important because even the guilty had, for the most part, a streak of decency.

What the hell happened?

That’s a valid question. It’s also, weird ly, a fitting one, mostly because when I first came on at the Straight as a sup porting-cast editor, the paper was putting together a book called, for the curious, What the Hell Happened? Published in 1997, it collected 30 years of groundbreak ing writing from one of North Amer ica’s pioneering alternative weeklies. Even though I’d been freelancing at the Straight for a good two or three years, I don’t think I even got a mention in it. For which I blamed no one—I wouldn’t have included me either, even though I once wrote a Butthole Surfers review I thought was pretty good, and a Hole review that pissed half of Vancouver off.

During university, and then journal ism school, the Straight was where I always wanted to work. If you grew up in heavy-metal-obsessed Burnaby, it was one of the first and only places you could read about early punk bands like D.O.A., the Subhumans, Modernettes, and Young Canadians. In the mid-’80s, it became the place to find the city’s best young writers (you’re still missed, Dave Watson), wickedly funny illustra tors (hello, Rod Filbrandt), and top photographers (too many to list here).

When I was finally brought on staff by brilliant, visionary editor Charles Camp bell, it was like being let into the asylum in the best of ways. The Straight was filled with endlessly creative, wonderful, gor geous weirdos—a place where everyone from Portishead to Frank Sinatra to, um, Alan Parsons Project blared constantly on

the pro duction department boombox. You learned to write with a lot of noise.

A place where, on any given day, someone from that production depart ment (which was where the true cool kids worked) would ride through the editorial department in clown pants on a bicycle, singing Julius Fučík’s “Entrance of the Gladiators” (you know: “doot-dootdoodle-oodle oot doot do do”) at the top their lungs. And everyone loved it.

new day rising

work. But it was, above all, fun. So much fun it never felt like work.

And then, gradually, there was a weird cul ture shift, where the fun was slowly sucked out of things, and getting any thing new greenlighted became difficult. When was this, you likely want to know? That’s information you’re not getting unless you’re footing the bill for a night at the fabulous Keefer Bar, with the warning I can drink a lot before even thinking about cracking open the vault.

More on that in a second. First, I’m not the only one returning from the Straight you once loved; in the pages of this issue you’ll see some familiar bylines. And, because it’s always important to look forward while building on the past, some new ones. Look for that mix to continue.

But back to why you’re reading this.

In my interview before I came back on board, I was asked a lot of questions, including, “What the hell happened?” and how things might be better moving forward. What I liked was that Overstory had a vision—an emphasis on arts, music, culture, and not playing it safe—that aligned with the Straight I desperately wanted to be part of back in journalism school. And was lucky enough to be a part of for years.

A place where endlessly interesting founder and publisher Dan McLeod thankfully subscribed to the following Tina Fey theory: “In most cases, being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.”

A place where, no matter what crazy idea you came up with (Payback Time, Who Are You?, sprawling multipage Best of Vancouver Bands photo shoots, cutlines designed to do nothing other than make people laugh, and full pages of local CD reviews featuring then-un known acts like Mother Mother and Dan Mangan), you never had to worry about someone saying, “You can’t do that.” Here’s the thing—it was insanely hard

I will allow this, however: how’d you like to have someone wearing $500 dungarees and 10 Kabbalah bracelets tell you what Vancouver really wants isn’t a Georgia Straight focused on arts, music, and culture, but instead e-sports and sneakers?

Things finally came crashing down for the Straight as Vancouver once knew it this past summer. The company that bought the paper from the McLeod family in 2020 finished its 2.5 years at the helm by letting everyone go, includ ing me, and then selling it.

I subsequently got a call from the paper’s new owners, Overstory Media, asking if I wanted to come back.

Just as importantly, there seemed to be one directive during the interview that was more important than all others: to have fun.

No lie—it’s been kind of crazy since I’ve been back, to the point where I’m writing this, heinously flu-ridden, at 11:15 p.m., semi-delirious at the tail end of a 15-hour day. Which weirdly seems like a deadline-Tuesday throwback to my first years at the Straight, when you’d some times walk in at 8 in the morning and wouldn’t leave until midnight.

It was glorious, and I loved it. Like then, today it’s somehow all become fun again, mostly because it seems like anything is again possible.

by Mike Usinger

b MUSIC SECTION FEATURE, concert listings, Savage Love. In that order. Every week, and usually consumed in the same coffee shop. The Georgia Straight was the local bible for musical goings on, and nearly the only source on the matter.

Pre social media, print was the access point. It was your personal IP address where you could tap into the vein— people beyond you. Cooler than you. Folks who could name a favourite record from the broken-up band that had recently re-formed as a new genre-bend ing ensemble that you’d gladly pretend you’d heard of.

I ached to join the tornado. I’d have thrown everything I owned into the cyclone, in hopes that it would abduct

me also.

I remember when Nice, Nice, Very Nice was about to launch, and sending a cold email to the music editor, via my friend who worked at the front desk at the Georgia Straight. The subject line was “10 Reasons why Dan Mangan should be on a cover of the Straight in August”. It was the longest long shot. And it fucking worked.

I was working at The Keg still. We stocked the Straight in the bar, and a co-worker called me “rockstar” when I came in to work to see my face staring back at me. I wanted to punch him in the nose. All the work. All the heart ache. Reduced to a pejorative trope that describes the fantasy. But I didn’t want fantasy. I wanted something real. I’ve hated that word ever since.

Kyodai

It would be hard to describe to my kids now how much thumbing the local music mag meant to me as a teenager and emerging musician. I even loosely refer to it in my song, “Tina’s Glorious Comeback”. But I miss it. Discovering a band in the Straight was like discov ering a band at a listening station at Zulu Records.

I hope my boys have their own similar experi ence of discovery, in whatever medium makes sense in their teen years. I think it’s important.

Here’s to inky finger tips and perfect sips.

By Dan Mangan

b FOR SOMETHING CALLED THE STRAIGHT, the hippie paper of Vancouver has long sup ported the queer community.

The Georgia Straight was founded in 1967, two years before Bill C-150 de criminalized same-sex activity. It made history by hiring the first openly queer columnist in Canada in 1970. Kevin Dale McKeown recalled the fateful meeting in a 2020 essay:

“Are you gay?” was the first question editor Dan McLeod asked. That was easy, and maybe even fairly obvious from my puffy-sleeved turquoise pirate shirt.

“Do you know the gay scene?” That was less certain, so I lied: “Oh, yes, of course!”

“Okay. $20 a week. Have your first column in next Monday.”

McKeown’s iconic column, QQ Writes…Page 69, ran for five years between 1970 and 1975. He covered the city’s still-underground queer scene: the clubs and the hustlers, drag queens and drugs, political movements and business deal ings.

I remember read ing a smattering of them when I interned at the Straight in 2018: discussing local gay bathhouses, or compiling an FAQ of questions straight people loved to ask. In one column, he notes a drag queen had a heart attack and died on

stage. Holding that history in my hands was a gift. Reading words from people in my community from years before I was ever born reminded me of the struggles that LGBTQ2S+ people have long been dealing with. But it’s also a testament to our beauty, our persever ance: the joy we snatch in secret spaces when society tells us to keep quiet.

That work has continued for dec ades. The Straight in its earliest years had a literature supplement, founded by gay writer and literati Stan Perksy. The paper more recently has covered the corporatization of pride, and trans activists fighting for healthcare, and queer artists making damn weird shit in their Strathcona studio collectives. It wasn’t always perfect, but it was a platform long before the mic normally got passed to us.

It’s thanks to LGBTQ2S+ elders doing the work that I’m here in this industry at all, as a queer non-binary immigrant. Trans and non-binary journalists across Canada are still relatively rare, as is the case with many marginalized groups: it is difficult to break into an insular in dustry, which leads to a narrow selection of people writing stories about commun ities that they aren’t a part of. But we are doing the work—in Vancouver, in BC, across Canada.

McKeown’s column was important for establishing the Straight as somewhere that saw the LGBTQ2S+ community as part of the city: not an Other, but a Here. Here you are, in your rainbows. Here you are, in our pages. Here you are, in our city.

By V. S. Wells

b WHAT LAY AHEAD

I don’t know Vancouver without the Straight, and I’m sure most of you feel the same way. Ever since Dan McLeod started the paper in 1967, it’s been an outspoken alternative media outlet, leading the region and setting the standard

for meaningful, thoughtprovoking, and transforma tional editorial.

When our company, Overstory Media Group, became the new owners of the Straight this fall, we knew we had to honour the past, recognize the present, and evolve for the future. Today, we’re proud to bring this legacy publication into our local network and rethink what the next 55 years will look like.

Overstory launched in 2021 with the goal of strengthening communities through storytelling and thoughtful dialogue. Today our network includes over a dozen community outlets across Canada, including several across the Lower Mainland.

I don’t know how long you’ve been a supporter of the Straight – whether it’s

been the entire 55 years or if this is the first time you’ve picked up a copy. Either way, I want to say thank you. Without readers, our publications are nothing.

There have been a lot of names that have graced these pages over the dec ades, and a ton more who have been involved in the paper’s operations in some form. So many Vancouverites have had a connection here at some point in their lives. To those who paved the way here today – thank you.

Local journalism and community reporting is at a crossroads. As owners,

you either kneel to advertis ers and do anything for money, or stay true to your values, focus on quality, and not let everyone in.

We’ve chosen the latter. There are enough clicky rags in this city.

At the Straight, local arts, venues, events, en tertainment, music, food, and news commentary will be what you see –both in print and online.

Our goal is to, once again, be Vancouver’s premier destination for arts and culture.

We’re just getting started, and this is our first print edition. We’re so thankful to the many old and new partners who took

out ads to make this first run possible. Our goal is to continue printing, and we need continued support to do that.

We ask that you give us a chance, have patience, provide thoughts and feedback, and build the Straight with us.

For over half a century, the Straight was a place to discover our community, while also giving thousands of talented groups and individuals the chance to be discovered. The Straight has always done more than just publish stories – it’s a part of the city’s culture itself.

“With this issue the Georgia Straight will become another small part of Vancou ver’s history.” - Dan McLeod, May 1979.

By: Farhan Mohamed,

CEO and Co-Founder of Overstory Media Group, new owner of The Straight

Fighting injustice a lifelong pursuit

By Rachel Tetrault

The first time I really understood what it meant to be Jewish was when I was 14 years old. I was preparing for my bat mitzvah, where I was to give a speech about what Judaism represented to me in front of all of my family and friends.

Before this moment I hadn’t given it much thought—I grew up in southeast Vancouver, I went to Sir James Douglas Elementary school, and I was usually the only Jewish kid in my class. I understood that we lit candles and ate gelt (chocolate coins) during Hannukkah, searched for the afikomen (matzah) during Passover, and that somehow I got to celebrate all

the Jewish holidays along with Christ mas and Easter.

So in preparation for writing my bat mitzvah speech, I turned to my family for advice. My mom suggested I read a novel geared to youth about the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and my dad suggested I ask my grandparents about some of their experiences surviving the Holocaust.

When the time came for my bat mitz vah and my speech, the main thing I had learned through my months of prepara tion was that being Jewish, to me, meant standing up to all forms of injustice. This concern for injustice continued into my adult life.

Image via Shutterstock

It’s what drove me to become a member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and to speak out as a Jew in support of Palestinian liberation. And it is indisputable that extreme injus tices are currently happening in Israel/ Palestine.

This is also what drove me to speak out against the International Holocaust Re membrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism prior to its adoption at the last Vancouver city council meeting. The IHRA definition lists the following phrase as an example of anti-Semitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

This is a very problematic and danger ous definition of anti-Semitism because it conflates critique of the state of Israel with being anti-Semetic.

You don’t need to dig too deeply to discover that the state of Israel is indeed a racist endeavor. And saying so does not make you or I an anti-Semite. Israel was formed in 1948 by driving out 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their lands and destroying 500 Palestinian villages. Israel openly privileges Jewish people over other citizens of Israel, particularly the Palestinians who make up 20 per cent of its population.

Just one example is the Israeli Law of Return.The Law of Return grants any person with one Jewish grandparent, who may have no connection to Israel or Palestine, immediate citizenship when they land in Israel. But members of Palestinian families that have lived in Israel/Palestine for hundreds of years are still not able to return to their homes. So , my husband, my two-year-old son and I can go to Israel tomorrow and be

granted citizenship, even though I’ve never been there. My grandparents were from Poland, but my Palestinian friend whose grandparents were born in Haifa can’t return at all because his family was expelled, and he’s not Jewish.

In recent years, Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights groups (no tably Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) have published reports that found Israeli laws and policy favour one ethnic group (Israeli Jews) over Pal estinians, and thus Israel is committing the crime of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Israel itself. Yet some have suggested that calling Israel an apartheid state is anti-Semitic under IHRA’s definition. Amnesty Inter national, Human Rights Watch, Vancou verites, and people everywhere need to be able to call out human rights abuses in Israel without being subjected to such false accusations and smears.

IJV recently published a groundbreak ing report on the suppression of speech on Palestine in Canada. The report features nearly 80 testimonials from stu dents, activists, and academics in Canada who have been threatened, harassed, or censored because of their pro-Palestinian advocacy, and that IHRA’s definition could increase these instances if it was widely adopted. This is why other city councils in Montreal and Calgary, the University of Toronto, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and even Kenneth Stern, the author of the IHRA(?) definition himself have either rejected the definition or cautioned against adopting it.

In the lead-up to Vancouver’s vote on adopting the IHRA definition, I was dis mayed to see a pro-Israel lobbyist attack Harsha Walia with false accusations of antisemitism on Twitter, all because she spoke out against the definition. Walia is a well-respected anti-racist and anticolonial activist. I fear that by adopting IHRA, Vancouver has only opened the door to more attacks like this against other anti-racist and pro-human-rights activists. Conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of a nation-state that is perpe trating injustice risks curbing legitimate discourse for all Vancouverites. Yes, we need to fight against antiSemitism and stamp it out where we see it—but the IHRA definition is clearly the wrong approach. g

Rachel Tetrault is a community organizer and campaigner. She lives in Vancouver with her family.

“ EXTREME INJUSTICES ARE CURRENTLY HAPPENING IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE.

ARTS

Hille celebrates 10 years of Panto with Little Mermaid

by Mike Usinger

Because the East Van Panto has a decade-long history of creating West Coast holiday memories, it makes perfect sense that Veda Hille has little trouble coming up with her per sonal all-time favourite moments.

In the beginning, she recounts, there was Jack and the Beanstalk, which updated a centuries old British fairytale for Commercial Drive with references to Nick’s Spaghetti House, Libby Davies, and Aldergrove (which exists only because Langley needs some place to feel superior to). In the music director’s chair was Hille (turning songs like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” into “Somewhere East of Cambie”). And that’s where the local indie-pop queen remains today, decidedly stoked about this year’s East Van Panto take on The Little Mermaid.

But before we move forward to the 10th edition of what’s become a West Coast holiday-season classic, let’s revisit

the ghost of pantos past. As those who’ve seen editions over the years are well aware, audience participation is not only a major part of the fun, but pretty much expected.

During Jack and the Beanstalk local celebrities were invited to shows, where they’d be hauled out of the audience to become part of the entertainment.

“My favourite memory from that one was when Nardwuar was our celebrity cameo,” Hille says in an interview with the Straight. “It was insane. He got Miko [Yamamoto], who was playing Jack, out crowd-surfing, and gave a complete his tory of the punk rock New York Theatre gigs. It was nuts—one of the most over whelming but wonderful things that has ever happened. I was improvising punk music on a Lowery organ.”

Sound chaotic in the best of ways? Of course, that’s a thread that’s run through every East Van Panto since, with Theatre Replacement overseeing re-imaginings of fairy tale classics from Hansel and Gretel

Doing East Van Panto for a decade has taught Veda Hill to choose her songs wisely.

to Cinderella to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

“The first Panto was easy, and the stakes

were pretty low,” Hille recalls. “We were just effing around. Because we didn’t really know what we were doing, we were just having a lot of fun, is my recollection. From there it’s sort of ratcheted up every year a little bit until we got to the grandiose seven-week show we have this year.”

Directed by Meg Roe, and starring Panto alumni Dawn Petten, Amanda Sum, Mark Chavez, and Ghazal Azar bad (and newbie Andrew Wheeler), The Little Mermaid starts with Ariel (Sum) busking on New Brighton Beach. After falling for a teenage mer-person (Azarbad) she ends up chasing love under a sea populated by everyone from a possibly unbalanced evil octopus to a talking trash crab with a thing for JJ Bean cups. In between the laughs, the script by Sonja Bennett makes clever observa tions on everything from sexuality to the ruination of planet Earth.

The work that goes into getting any East Van Panto off the ground starts months and months before

opening night. Bennett began working on The Little Mermaid script at the beginning of the year, turning in a completed version in late June. Hille then, over the summer, started thinking about how to rework songs.

In the past—along with drummerguitarist Barry Mirochnick—she’s riffed on the best of everyone from Destiny’s Child and Lady Gaga to Kraftwerk, Billie Eilish, and Lil Nas X. If the songwriter has learned something over 10 years of doing the East Van Panto, it’s that it pays to pick one’s hits carefully.

“I’m always on the lookout for what will be the big songs of the year because I try to stay contemporary when I refer ence things,” she says. “Obviously there’s going to be a little Kate Bush this year—I managed to get two songs in, one of them, actually, before the Stranger Things epi sode. I have a very particular set of things I’m looking for in songs.

“What I’m looking for, number one, is a song that I want to play for seven weeks,” Hille continues with a laugh. “Selfishly, I put that first. But it also has to have a certain amount of recognition for the audience so that it’s fun. I’ll try to put some deep cuts in, but usually I try to get things that I know a bunch of the crowd is going to understand and think is funny. Also the chorus, or main hook’s lyrics of the song, has to be able to be turned into a pun that fits the script.”

Hille reports that the East Van Panto, at some point in the process, always starts to seem overwhelming.

“It can be pretty intense,” she says. “I just brought my theatre bed to the theatre because I don’t leave very much over the next two weeks. It’s a very all-encompass ing thing. Right now I have an inflatable mattress, I just bought myself a feathery pillow, and I have a bit of a chenille obses sion, so I brought my nice chenille and a sheet. On two-show days you’ll find a dressing room full of actors on various makeshift cots. Everyone ends up doing their best to rest because we have to give a lot of heavy, happy vibes.”

Hille chuckles that, early on each run, it’s all a bit like being in “Panto jail.” On that front, she doesn’t lack for East Van Panto memories.

“I was just thinking about how much older I am than when we started Panto,” Hille says. “When we started, I didn’t need a bed. But now, I gotta have some where to lie down.” g

Know Your Local (Artist): Hilary Paige

fall wildly in love with the medium. My in ner child was like, “Oh yeah, this is it.”

PLAYFULNESS

AND CHAOS COME TOGETHER

WHAT DO YOU DO?

e In my painting practice I work with ink and mixed media. I create emotive abstract art. So I begin with alcohol ink and then incorporate acrylic ink, which is more viscous and has this incredible push/pull dance with the inks and also allows me to then embed mica flakes. They look like big-kid sparkles.

In my healing practice, I’m an expres sive arts therapist, where I guide people in accessing the fullness of their expres sion and to self-source healing. I regu larly host workshops that weave in other modalities alongside exploring the inks. It all happens very organically and it’s so different session to session. Sometimes there’s free writing and poetry or sto rytelling or movement. I teach, mentor, and support rising artists who are ready to step into their own creative wisdom.

HOW DID YOU START WORKING WITH ALCOHOL AND ACRYLIC INKS?

e I began exploring inks at the same time I was in my training to become an expressive arts therapist. The exact time was the first week of lockdown. I always joke with people that it’s my pandemic hobby gone wild, but I really had my eye on it for about a year before seeing all these incredible process videos popping up on my feed. They were just so mes merizing and enchanting. Honestly if you haven’t seen it, alcohol ink looks like liq uid magic. Disney stuff.

When I finally began, I thought it was just another creative modality, another cre ative expression for me. Nothing unusual

because I’ve always considered myself interdisciplinary by nature. But then it was like nothing I had ever experienced. There is this inherent, palpable aliveness and sense of magical animated life-force en ergy in the medium—, the way it moves on the paper—,that just feels alive and elec tric and like it had a will of its own.

WHAT’S YOUR APPROACH AND PHILOSOPHY IN CREATING THESE PIECES?

e Having been immersed in so much fine art training in my younger years, art became quite serious for a while there. Everything needed meaning and pur pose. Bringing playfulness and a little chaos back was a big medicine.

Also, just making and releasing. That’s a really big one. Pulling away before I think I might be done and just putting it out there in the world. There were all of these moving pieces that quickly made me just

My philosophy, though. I call it “flow etry.” So like, “flow state” and “poetry” spun together. Where time takes on a different quality, and the density of the air even changes a little bit, and all your senses and extra sensory perceptions are heightened, your intuition is sparked up, the muse is working through you ef fortlessly. Your heart is unlocked and you’re just swimming in a place of pure possibility and everything feels so open. I believe creativity is our birthright and it lives within all of us like an endless well. And for me, I am always trying to cre ate a safe and stimulating space where people can remember that for them selves, in all of my work.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU WHEN APPROACHING THIS WORK?

e I’m very inspired by the microcosmic and the macrocosmic and the way they mirror each other. I’m a huge nerd for all things space. The celestial realms. Ga lactic wonderlands. The mystery of it all. And I am inspired to make art that feels soulful. And however that might show up for the viewer.

YOU TOOK PART IN THE EASTSIDE CULTURE CRAWL THIS YEAR. HOW WAS THAT FOR YOU?

e It was a professional highlight. The depth of connection was so beautiful, like receiving reflections in such an unfiltered and stream-of-conscious ness way, hearing what’s coming up for people in the moment, rather than, you know, in the digital space where everything can be more curated and thought out. It’s all very spontaneous in real life.

There was so much curiosity. I realized that it can take courage to step into an artist’s personal space, to share what they’re feeling. I really cherished some of the moments where people experi enced a flood of emotions and allowed me to hold space for that. My cup feels so full! Now I’m ready to introvert hard for a good week.

URL: hilarypaige.ca | Handle: @hilarypaigeart | Studio: 1000 Parker St., studio 350

Theatre Replacement’s East Van Panto: The Little Mermaid runs at the York Theatre until January 1.

Louise Lecavalier still endlessly enthusiastic

by John Lucas

SOMETIMES SOMETHING COMPLETELY PEDESTRIAN, LIKE A METRO MONTREAL SUBWAY STATION, CAN MAKE AN INSPIRING LEAPING OFF POINT FOR A GREAT WORK OF ART

It started with the single word that would become its title, Stations, but how Louise Lecavalier’s latest work took shape from there provides a vivid illustation of how the Canadian dance icon’s singular creative mind works. Reached in her hometown of Mon treal, where she is taking a rare day off from rehearsals to focus on other tasks—including an interview with the Straight—Lecavalier notes that work ing on a collaborative piece with UBU compagnie de création put her in mind of spiritual matters.

UBU’s Les Marguerites(s) was inspired in part by the story of Mar guerite Porete, a Christian mystic who was burned at the stake for heresy in the 14th century. That got Lecavalier thinking about the Catholic tradition of the Stations of the Cross, those artistic depictions of Jesus Christ on the route to his crucifixion.

And while she was ruminating on that, Lecavalier got to thinking of sub way stations, particularly those of the Montreal Metro.

“It was interesting for me that this word had something very dramatic about it and something very pedestrian, or almost casual—the day-to-day thing of the [subway] stations, no drama at all,” she says. “So I liked this word be cause of that, because it had something of being stationary; like not moving and moving at the same time, going from station to station.”

In fact, Lecavalier could have very easily given the solo piece—which she debuted on Valentine’s Day in 2020 at Düsseldorf’s tanzhaus nrw—the title Station to Station. Of course, that title was already taken. David Bowie used it for an album in 1976, the title track of which he performed on his Sound+Vision tour in 1990.

This is worth noting because the artistic director for that tour was Édouard Lock, the founder of long-running Montreal contemporary-dance company La La La Human Steps. Lecavalier was that com pany’s principal dancer and its public face from 1981 to 1999.

During that era, she worked with Bowie a number of times, including dancing a duet with him on Korean-American artist Nam June Paik’s Wrap Around the World broadcast, produced for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Lecavalier also per formed on several high-profile stops of the Sound+Vision tour and was featured

in Bowie’s “Fame 90” music video.

It was largely through these appear ances, and her performances at the 1992 concerts that would form the basis of Frank Zappa’s final album, The Yellow Shark, that Lecavalier became the clos est thing one can get to being a rock star in the world of contemporary dance. There was definitely something rock ’n’ roll about her approach to Lock’s cho reography, all fearless barrel rolls and whipping blond tresses.

Three decades later, people still want to ask Lecavalier questions about working with Bowie and Zappa. She doesn’t mind, although she does make it clear that the aforementioned “rock star” status is not something she has ever pursued; her pri ority has always been to deepen what she calls her “research” in movement.

“It was special, the immediate rap port that I had with these two amazing human beings and performers—really brilliant and charismatic and all of that,” she says of Bowie and Zappa. “So it’s very powerful to meet with people like this, and it changed my life, even if it didn’t change my research. It changed

something about my performance on-stage. It was already there, but it confirmed so many things for me.”

In some ways, Stations is a culmina tion of Lecavalier’s journey through dance. It is certainly her most personal work to date, with the 64-year-old Order of Canada recipient performing a solo show of her own choreography for the first time.

Lecavalier undeniably remains a potent force on-stage, long past the age at which many dancers would have retired. She, on the other hand, has no immediate plans to slow down.

It could be argued, in fact, that she’s just getting started. Her career in dance has spanned over 40 years so far, but it is only in the past decade or so that her focus has started to shift to choreog raphy. She has certainly had ample opportunity to learn from some of the best, not just in her long-standing collaboration with Lock, but also in her work with Canadian dancer-chore ographer (and former zen monk) Tedd Robinson.

“We had a good connection,

A rock star of contemporary dance, Louise Lecavalier has no plans to slow down at age 64.

Photo by Dieter Wuschanski.

once I got acquainted to his movement,” Lecavalier says of Lock. “What he was making was very close to me. He didn’t have to direct me in the interpretation. That’s why we continued so long to work together. And I could have continued forever; it’s just that he went towards ballet, and then I was kind of a loner in this ballet company, and this was not so interest ing for me to be with a huge group of 25 people. I prefer working with less people altogether.”

As for Robinson, Lecavalier says she felt not just a creative spark with him, but also a spiritual connection: “Tedd said to me that I was probably the only

dancer who was curious enough to move like him. I had made this strong effort to find how Édouard was moving, and I really liked that. When a movement is so special and specific, different from what you learn in dance classes, then I get intrigued, and if it talks to me, then I try it. It was the same with Tedd, he moved in a very peculiar way, and I liked it, so I learned his moves. He was surprised that I was ready to learn so many moves of his, so we created this little duet for him and me that was awkward and strange and that I really enjoyed.”

Lecavalier founded her own company, Fou glorieux, in 2006, and her tire less research continues—not just into choreography, but into every aspect of a production, from set decoration and lighting to video editing.

“Everything I discover, I take my time to discover,” she says. “Maybe in a few years I start to choreograph with other people, so it’s gonna be another chapter that opens. I feel often like a beginner, and that’s a great feeling, to feel like a beginner. Feeling like a big pro, maybe I would sit home and look at the stuff I did before. But I’m still very enthusi astic—maybe stupidly enthusiastic— about simple discoveries, and that keeps me going.” g

DanceHouse and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs present Louise Lecavalier’s Stations from November 23 to 26 at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre.

Journey into the heart of Christmas

December 14: Chilliwack Cultural Centre

December 15: Holy Trinity, New West

December 18: The ACT, Maple Ridge December 19 & 20: BlueShore Centre, N. Van December 21: St. Andrew’s-Wesley, Vancouver www.winterharp.com

2022 BC LOWER MAINLAND CONCERT DATES

Louise Lecavalier remains enthusiastic about simple discoveries. Photo by Andre Cornellier.

I FEEL OFTEN LIKE A BEGINNER, AND THAT’S A GREAT FEELING.

Louise Lecavalier

“Baby it’s cold outside. Do you put on a sweater or crank up the heat?”

e “Sweaters always! Layers are dope. They look great and you can always take em’ off if you get too hot. Help the en vironment and save yourself some cash, turn the heat down.”

- Rare Americans drummer Duran Ritz

e Put on a sweater. And thermal under wear. You wouldn’t think it gets cold in Mississippi but I grew up out in the coun try in a log cabin where - in the winter time - you put a glass of ice water beside your bed at night in the winter, you had one when you got up.”

- Vancouver-via-Mississippi ace bluesman Robert Connelly Farr

e “What I like to do as the weather turns cold is instead of cranking up the heat I crank up Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones and pour myself two fingers of Jack Daniels. Also works for extreme heat…or moderate temper atures…or basically whatever ails you.”

- John M. Hewer, janitor at Keithmas HQ

e “I’d crank on the heat because there’s nothing like being cozy and warm in your own home without having to rely on layers. I’ll worry about the electric bill later.”

- TikTok comedian and actor Davin Tong

christmas

e “Put on a sweater. Put on some pants. Put on some socks. Put on all the things that might help you get warm BEFORE you put on that heat. And I’m not just say ing this because I once lived with someone for 15 years, (who shall remain unnamed, but knows who he is), who would sit in his office writing, with the heat cranked to 78... PANTLESS! It was as if he was living his

best tropical life in Canada’s winter won derland. Now, it’s not because I was the one paying the heat bill that this bothered me. It was the idea of having to pay for what I did not want. (Like the green pep pers in a Greek salad). I enjoy a temper ature closer to 69. I’m not just saying this because of the sexual innuendo of such a figure, and I’m an old pervert... I’m saying this because it’s a temperature anyone could be comfortable in with or without pants. But if you have all the things on your body, like a sweater, and you still can’t warm up, by all means turn up the heat. But only as a last resort, and only if you’re chipping in on the heat bill, or at least look just that good without pants.”

- Singer-songwriter, artist, and all-round country queen Kelly Haigh

e “Put on a sweater because we are in a goddamn climate crisis! Heating/Cool ing account for 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and if we all kept our thermostats just a little more eco-friendly we’d make a massive difference in the future of the planet.”

- Actress and singer SIØBHAN

Kelly Haigh, who sincerely wishes you would put on some goddamn pants.

Firehall Arts Centre presents Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre’s

by Charles Dickens starring Sanjay Talwar

Victoria Times Colonist

Photography: Jam Hamidi

MUSIC

Art d’Ecco gets comfortable in his own skin

By Yasmine Shemesh

When Tears for Fears recorded 1989’s The Seeds of Love, the synth-pop duo was seeking max imalism. Co-founders Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith brought on a sprawling crew of personnel, including Phil Col lins, to realize an ambitious production vision that cost over £1 million. Smith was quoted as saying they wanted something “more colourful, something that sounded big and warm.” It was expensive, excessive, and elicited one of the most important pop songs of the 1980s: the psychedelic epic “Sowing the Seeds of Love.”

Art d’Ecco knows the obsession for technical perfection well. When some thing piques his interest, he immerses completely, a keen student until he be comes a master. So, when the Victoriabased artist decided for his latest studio al bum, After the Head Rush, he would seek out maximalism—something big, bright, and sparkly like Bob Clearmountain’s ’80s Tears for Fears productions—he dove in head-first. He had been studying new studio techniques during the pandemic, researching albums that he liked, and realized that a lot of these albums were recorded at Vancouver’s Little Mountain Studios, now called Hipposonic.

“I’m a bit of a tone chaser and I like to make a pastiche and a collage of differ ent sounds and areas,” d’Ecco tells the Straight from his home over Zoom. “I’m not trying to be a revivalist, but I’m so fascinated with the old means of produc tion that I want to see if I can run my creativity through that.”

One of the keys to the maximalism universe? Big drums. d’Ecco wanted to get that distinguishing sound Clear mountain achieved by setting up microphones in Little Mountain’s loading

bay, adjacent to the drums, for records like Bryan Adams’ landmark, Reckless. d’Ecco asked Hipposonic’s studio owner if the technique was still doable. It was. You can hear it reverberating in the glamstomp of “Only Ones” and building in intensity as saxophones and synths wind through “Palm Slave.”

d’Ecco’s discovery of rock music, as a teenager growing up in Victoria, changed the trajectory of his life. Before that, he was well-versed in Beethoven and Bach—he didn’t relate to the main stream pop of the ‘90s and the classical records were the only ones that didn’t get damaged when the family moved from Ottawa to Vancouver Island. “We’d always put on records and it was this fascinating thing, the turntable and these big black disks and the pops and the crackles,” d’Ecco remembers.

But when d’Ecco was 16, he got a job in a restaurant kitchen. His co-workers— “hard, rough-around-the-edges guys, but this warm gang of misfits that big-brother ed me”—had a collection of CDs on rota tion, including the Who, Queen, Bowie.

“When, suddenly, someone’s like, ‘Here’s this golden treasure chest, here’s the key,’ and you discover it all at once? It’s hair-raising, goosebump-inducing,” d’Ecco shakes his head. “The melodies just melted my brain.”

Perhaps it’s why moving back home affected d’Ecco so deeply. He left in his late teens to pursue music and lived in Vancouver during his 20s, establishing himself as an enigmatic and avant-garde musical chameleon, in a costume—page boy wig and glamorous makeup—that played with image and aesthetic much like his musical heroes. d’Ecco selfreleased his debut, Day Fevers, and two studio albums, 2018’s Trespasser and

2021’s In Standard Definition, on Paper Bag Records.

In the midst of all that, d’Ecco met a woman, moved to Sidney, on the edge of the Saanich Peninsula, and got engaged. The relationship didn’t survive the pandemic and d’Ecco found himself back in Victoria. The creative impact was immediate.

“I started seeing all these triggers— positive ones, like, ‘that’s where I used to drink with my friends in a parking lot on a Friday night.’ And you just have all these memories bubble up to the surface. There’s these two kinds of things hap pening: present tense and past tense all at the same time, like a freight train.”

The dialogues on After the Head Rush—carefree exuberance versus what d’Ecco calls the realization he’s an “aging indie rocker in an industry obsessed with image and youth”—lends a cheeky self-awareness to the record. The “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”-like swing of “Get Loose” captures the sweet excite ment of first love (“I can’t believe we made it here, it’s happening tonight”). Elsewhere, “Midlife Crisis” sonically per sonifies mounting anxiety as squealing instruments create a sense of impend ing doom, the lyrics cleverly addressing d’Ecco’s debut with the line, “Day Fevers was an album of mine so long ago/I can’t even pick it up off the ground.”

The singer notes he was inspired by writers like the Cars frontman Ric Ocasek

who didn’t get famous until their 30s.

”A lot of the Cars’ hits are written from the perspective of this guy who’s an outsider,” d’Ecco says. “He feels way too old to be in this young person’s game of rock and roll. And I felt like I related. But there needs to be a tongue-in-cheek element to it. Otherwise it’s like, ‘who fucking cares, man? Get over it, we’re all getting old.’ There is a wink throughout the album. There’s nothing ‘woe is me’ about this. I’m writing from a pretty honest place.”

It makes sense then that, for the first time in a long time, d’Ecco is without wig and makeup. As he faces himself— past, present, and future—he is bare, raw, in his own skin.

His previous form of expression, d’Ecco says, was a rebellion against this “masculine, laissez-faire, jeans and Tshirt, stubble-faced bro look.” But, with more fans asking about his sexuality and identity, d’Ecco realized times have changed. “I’m like, wait a minute, now, I really am the fraud here because I’m a cisgender heterosexual male,” he says.

He adds, “That’s not transgressive. Who the fuck am I to try and shock people? This isn’t 1975 anymore. It’s time to change and evolve. And that’s why I decided to—” he pulls down an imagin ary mask. “And so I did.” g

Art d’Ecco plays the Fox Cabaret on Saturday (November 26).

Art d’Ecco often leaves people wondering whether he’s packing, suffering from screaming indigestion, or obsessively checking for his wallet every six seconds. Photo by Elijah Schultz.

Bridgers points the way to a better christmas

By Chandler Walter

FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET BABY JESUS, PLEASE LAY OFF THE MARIAH TUNES THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

The days are getting darker, rent is rising, inflation is soaring, the war in Ukraine rages on, we’re heading for climate catastrophe, Twitter is burn ing, and Vancouver’s forecast calls for nothing but rain rain rain rain rain rain.

So there’s really nothing more infuriat ing than Christmas revelers insisting on a cheery attitude around this time of year—especially when that sentiment is ceaselessly blasted from grocery store speakers over the next month.

Yeah, bah humbug, whatever.

It’s just tragic that the go-to playlist for store and restaurant managers to throw on the very moment the clock strikes November generally features sickeningly Holly Jolly songs when there are plenty of other seasonally-appropriate (and not yet played to death) tunes on offer.

Especially ones that thematically fit the Sad Girl Fall we’re experiencing as a result of all that doom-and-gloom in the first paragraph.

Case in point: Phoebe Bridgers’ recently released cover of the Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine”, a song from 2000 about alcoholic tendencies around the holidays, which Bridgers—alongside her beau Paul Mescal—transforms from the original’s harmonica-soaked, gothic country into a

violin-accompanied dirge that is exactly what you’d expect from the Queen of Melancholy.

And these days it just feels a little more fitting to hear Bridgers’ soul-crushing voice lament on finding the bottom of a bottle of wine than it is to hear Michael Bublé joyously offering a cup of cheer for the millionth time.

That’s the real kicker when it comes to the usual list of songs that are queued up for the long festive season; that the only relevant theme needed to justify a spot on the list is some proximity to Christ mas. It’s how we end up with the jarring juxtaposition of slow, smooth classics like Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” being immediately followed by some up beat, closer-to-a-children’s-lullaby ditty like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Throw a few religiously-charged Jesus Birthday Ballads into the mix for good measure and you’re left with a combina tion of song styles that have no business being in the same room, let alone timezone, as each other.

But back to Bridgers.

“So Much Wine” is just the latest in a string of annual Christmas covers that Bridgers has release around this time of year (with proceeds going to charity, I should add), including Tom Waits’ “Day After Tomorrow”, Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December”, Simon & Garfunkel‘s “7 O’Clock News / Silent Night”, and McCarthy Trenching’s “Christmas Song,” all of which make for a refreshing diversion from longstanding Christmastime staples, and are gorgeous in their own right.

…And none of which you’ll find any where near Spotify’s Happy Holidays

“

CHRISTMAS IS FOR EVERYONE. IT’S MEANT TO BE SHARED.

Elizabeth Chan

Nothing says “Christmas” like a beater with two ghosts in the front seats.

The reason? Another quote-unquote Queen of Christmas made a legal chal lenge to block the trademark. Singer Elizabeth Chan, who has been churning out annual holiday records for the past decade, made the challenge, and called Carey out for the attempt in an August interview with Variety.

“I feel very strongly that no one person should hold onto anything around Christmas or monopolize it in the way that Mariah seeks to in perpetuity,” Chan said in that interview.

“That’s just not the right thing to do. Christmas is for everyone. It’s meant to be shared; it’s not meant to be owned.”

collection of playlists, which is what I’m assuming those store managers are playing on loop. The Christmas Hits list (naturally) starts with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which is expected to land on, if not on top of, the charts yet again as we get closer to the most merry of seasons.

Carey’s visit to #1 over the past three years with that now-28-year-old song wasn’t enough to secure her the trade marked moniker of “Queen of Christ mas,” however, as her application to do so was denied by the US Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month.

I’d argue that monetizing Christmas in the most capitalistic way possible is actually incredibly in keeping with the most commercialized holiday of the year, but I digress.

Maybe this will result in Carey putting out a new string of Christmas songs to a sadder tune—one that may even rival Bridgers’ haunting covers—lamenting the loss of profit from the failed trademark.

I’d give it a listen. Maybe it’d even find a spot on this Spotify playlist of holiday songs that actually fit together in a cohe sively dreary kind of way.

Maybe the manager of the local SaveOn-Foods will discover it and save us all from another *checks watch* 32 days of nonstop Christmas Hits.

But I’m not holding my breath. g

Yu Su west coast to the core

by V.S. Wells

Yu Su spent the summer playing festivals across the world, but nothing quite beats coming back home to Vancouver.

“I was away for almost four months. And then when I got home, when I landed, I just got out of the airplane and smelled the cedar and the ocean,” she tells the Straight over the phone. “I just started crying. I was so homesick.” Su, one of the city’s most interesting electronic music producers, had an un likely road to success. She was raised in Kaifeng, and grew up studying classical piano.

“Debussy is a big influence,” she says. “I realized it’s because Debussy’s composition, it’s the closest to, I think, modern ambient music. So that must have really struck me back then.”

While Su moved to Vancouver in 2013 to go to university, it took a few more years before she was introduced to the electronic music scene. Right before she was about to graduate, some friends persuaded her to go see British DJ Float ing Points (Sam Shepherd) play his first show in Vancouver.

“Some friends took me to this party, this underground party here, which was at the time the first party I’d ever been to in my life,” she recalls. “I went in without knowing anything at all. There was like zero electronic music knowledge back then. So I just went there and stayed to the end, and it was just completely lifechanging.”

Su now counts Shepherd—who, inter estingly enough, also cites Debussy as a musical inspiration—among her friends. But Su’s inspirations are all over the place: avant-garde artist Laurie Ander son, minimalist composer Terry Riley, 80s icon Phil Collins. Centuries-old trees. The West Coast landscape. Where she grew up.

Yellow River Blue, her debut album re leased in 2021 after a string of EPs, draws its name from the Yellow River that runs along Kaifeng’s north edge. Her music moves through different genres, but feels perfect for a West Coast November: it evokes winds moaning, rain-drenched landscapes, banks of grey clouds brood ing over misty mountains to the tune of moody slow-burn house vibes.

After radio station KEXP asked Su to play a live set last year, Su initially refused. “I don’t really play live, other than site-specific sound art installations,” she explains. But then she got talking to some of her musician friends, and decided to try out playing together to see what happened. “We kind of sat there for just a day and somehow figured out how to translate the album I’d written completely with computer synthesizer softwares into a band form, translating arpeggio sounds into guitar riffs.”

Now the band’s headlining Fortune Sound Club in a hometown show, and Su says there’ll be a mix of old tracks and new songs. Since the band project started, her songwriting inspirations have grown even more.

“Growing up, I didn’t have so much background or access to Western music in general, so everything I’ve been dis covering since I got into producing music has been changing. For example, I most recently got into rock music,” she says. “I listened to Nirvana for the first time, Pink Floyd for the first time.”

Working with a band means a second album is taking much longer to put together. Before, she would “go to an island, go somewhere semi-remote outside the city and sit there for a couple of weeks and just write an entire album.” But that’s less feasible with so many other people involved. It’s also the first time she’s added words to her compositions.

“I’ve never written lyrics, and English is not my first language,” Su says. “So I was kind of self-conscious about it. But then I was just like, ‘Well, it’s music. Lyrics don’t always have to make complete sense.’ I just write whatever I want.”

Yu Su & Her Band play the Fortune Sound Club on Saturday (November 26).

The Americas Research Network

Citlali: Cuando Eramos Sanos (detail) by Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez

MUSIC

opus arise rewards with repeat listens

LOCAL RECORDINGS

OPUS ARISE: THE NETWORK (INDEPENDENT)

e From the opening track, “Inner Skepticism,” on Opus Arise’s all-instru mental second album The Network, you can hear tension between a desire for a quasi-folkish tunefulness and a love of challenging, proggy inventive ness.

Moody synth intro notwithstanding, once things kick into gear, the violins and rhythm section—who share a mem ber in drummer/violinist/composer Matthew Logan—almost channel Rus sian pagan metal greats Arkona at their most propulsive. It’s catchy enough that you could probably hum along.

Then around the two-minute mark, there are unexpected turns that, on first pass, might cause irritation: unexpected notes are inserted, and the through line is challenged a bit.

That tension between the tuneful and the progressive exists on many of the songs on The Network (though not “Digi tal Soundscape,” which delivers what the title promises and screams, “get the headphones,” but maybe deserves a more ambitious name?).

Some tracks veer more to one side “Electric Jungle” is a dense cascade of layered ideas that might take more than four listens to make sense of, while “Reminiscence” seems almost senti mental by comparison (though it high lights lead violinist Michelle Gao quite nicely).

But the overall effect is of an ambi tious, artful band doing things that no one else in Vancouver is attempting: highbrow art metal for people in univer sity music programs who want to flex their chops and cut loose while main taining their GPAs. Who could object to that? Just be prepared to give it more than one listen.

- Allan MacInnis

PUNITIVE DAMAGE: THIS IS THE BLACKOUT (ATOMIC ACTION!)

e Punitive Damage has a special knack for messing with hardcore’s rigid tem plate, even while reveling within it. Take “Fool,” from the quintet’s newly released debut full-length, This is the Blackout.

The track cribs the caveman powerchording of first-wave bruisers Negative Approach’s “Ready to Fight,” and tackles the evergreen theme of sniffing out the status chasers within one’s local punk scene, but few lyricists in the genre would get as pointedly purple over their enemy as Punitive Damage’s Steph Jerkova. This particular fool, she howls, is no mere leech or parasite, but a “so cial lamprey” desperately seeking clout — a spectacularly unexpected insult to have screamed at 90 mph Punitive Damage’s purview, how ever, extends beyond scene politics. The potent This is the Blackout is a cutthroat battlercry that contends with renoviction-hungry landlords, the un endingly deep pockets of the military state, and the promise of vengeance upon one’s abusers. On the feedbackblistered “Pure Bloods / The Sixth Sun rise” Jerkova is both pissed and poetic, contrasting the uncloaking of suprema cists in-hiding with the blossoming of a people rising up to “bite the hands” of the oppressor.

While hardcore-by-nature, This is the Blackout spices up its ugliness through a mix of max-velocity missives (“Nothing”), knuckle-dragging street punk anthems (“Drawn Lines”), and the creepy-crawling, Spanish-sung “¿Que? ¿Me Tienes Miedo Ahora?” — the latter decaying towards a dungeon-echo of morose piano.

On scene-stealer “Bottom Feeder,” the band goes for broke with a mid-section of Johnny Thunders-sleazy string bend ing and a mashed-ivories performance — punched in by album producer Tay lor Young’s piano teacher mom, Teresa. It falls apart exquisitely, as if the player

was unexpectedly caught up in a raptur ously raw, rock ‘n’ roll moment. This is the Blackout, indeed.

- Gregory Adams

ANCHORESS: STAY POSITIVE (EARLY ONSET)

e Sometimes all you can do is breathe slowly and deeply to get through it all, that reality—based on the aptly named Stay Positive—not lost on Anchoress.

Written in the shadow of a pandemic that fucked with the heads of, well, al most everyone, the band’s fourth fulllength is its most meditative outing yet. Having a rough 24 hours, week, decade, or life? Singer Rob Hoover understands, using the distortion-sheened “Anxious Hum”, to howl “Today has been a good day/I wish they could all be like this/ But when you struggle with anxiety/It’s hard to stay positive.”

But hard as that might be, Anchor ess is at least up to the challenge, with Hoover sounding surprisingly at peace with it all on the pop-centric “Hydrody namic”, where he sings “Here I am hold ing hands with the great unknown/I got too comfortable where I was/I got too used to a too similar view.” Change is good indeed good, especially if it pulls you out of a place where the black days never seem to end.

As far as Anchoress goes, changes include the band’s expansion to a fivepiece, with new member Phil Jones

Like its music, Opus Arise’s band house is classier than the average metal unit’s.

joining Keenan Federico to make a twoguitar attack, the back end held down by bassist Ricky Castanedo and drummer Chris Lennox-Aasen.

The quintet still describes itself as a “punk band formed in 2010, based in Vancouver”, but that’s become a little misleading. There are moments on Stay Positive that hit as thrillingly hard as Wen dy Thirteen’s Cobalt on a killer Saturday night—“Peace Lines” kicks off like a protometal cage fight between the Jesus Liz ard and Big Black, while “Psychobabble” sticks the landing between angular agitpunk and gang-chant hardcore.

But Anchoress also showcases itself as a band that’s done an admirable job of evolving. The group proves as adept at scream-tinted emo (“Middle Manage ment at the Money Factory”) and it does lumbering, gauze-wrapped post-rock (“Canadian Pastoral).

The ultimate takeaway from Stay Posi tive—besides that is that Anchoress continues to be criminally underrated? How about this: there are moments that somehow seem important, including the “Psychobabble” lines “You’re out once again in a crowd/Your internal narrator’s way too loud.”

Not only are you not alone, but An choress seems to understand.

- Mike Usinger

city’s Michelin stars have no reservations

by William Johnson

VANCOUVER WINNERS ENJOYING THE BENEFITS OF GASTRONOMY’S MOST ICONIC AWARD

The day after being awarded a Michelin star, the team at Barbara Restaurant had almost no time to celebrate. For the first time ever, they were 100 per cent booked for their Fri day service. There was serious work to be done. And even after they navigated that evening, there would be no pros pect of resting anytime soon:

According to GM and beverage director Brayden Newberry, within 10 minutes of the previous evening’s announcement, the 14-seater was fully booked—not just for the following night, but the next six weeks, as far ahead as the restaurant accepts reservations.

“We were like, ‘Let’s just put our heads down, get into this.’ Then, you know, see what’s changed next week, then we can go from there,” Newberry recalls. But the high demand to dine at the 550-squarefoot eatery continues unabated.

“Every single day the reservations get released, and they fill up within 10 minutes, and [we’re] constantly getting emails about people asking how they can book, looking into the new year as well,” Newberry said. Barbara’s two seatings a night are packed, and staff have decided to take virtually no walkins until at least next year.

Barbara is one of eight local restau rants—including AnnaLena, Burdock & Co, iDen & QuanJuDe Beijing Duck House, and St. Lawrence—recently awarded a Michelin star. Canadian Michelin-starred restaurants have only existed since September when 13 Toronto spots were given the honour. The Michelin Guide Vancouver was announced on July 14, and the official honorees were named last month.

The distinctions come at a time when establishments are still recovering from a

perilous two years in the hospitality industry, which saw thousands of BC’s full- and limited-service eating places temporarily shut down or outright close. But as is the case with Barbara, Michelin’s impact is already being felt in dining rooms throughout the city.

Even before last month’s live Michelin

event was finished, Japanese sushi res taurant Masayoshi, which also received one star, started to see an uptick in bookings. “We got a lot of reservations… even before they revealed that we got a Michelin star,” said manager Yu Kaji wara. (Could it have been the fact that CBC prematurely published the list?) “We got fully booked to the end of the year. That’s a big change.”

The effect of a star on a nationallyknown restaurant like Published on Main is not as pronounced. It did not thrust the three-year-old eatery into a new era of impossible-to-get-reserva tions. Published had already entered that chapter of its story after landing the No. 1 spot on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list this past May.

So what excites co-owner Cody Allmin about its star—and the Vancou ver Michelin guide overall—is how it may attract culinary talent and increase

gastronomic tourism in the city. Since accepting its star, Published has received bookings from food writers from as far afield as Australia and Chicago, “which hopefully will in turn inspire travelers as well,” Allmin says. “What we’re hoping for is that when people are traveling, they’re like, ‘Why don’t we go to Vancouver, I really want to check out that place Published.’”

Another freshly starred—yet suf ficiently well-known restaurant—is Chinatown’s Kissa Tanto, which a 2018 New York Times review called “lovely” and “luxurious.” Michelin recognized it for its “ambitious kitchen” and “ming ling of Japanese and Italian cuisine,” and awarded GM Justin Isidro and his team the 2022 Vancouver Service Award.

Isidro says that, like Published, Kissa Tanto is starting to see an increase in emails from foreign tourists. “It was inter esting to see that kind of happened right away. I thought it might be something more progressive,” he tells the Straight. “But there’s a lot more curiosity, I think.”

With an increase in attention comes more demanding clientele. Published’s Allmin said his team had no intention of adjusting their program according “to the accolades we get,” but he did admit patrons are coming in with higher expectations.

“With some of the negative reviews that we’ve gotten, the thought process behind that review isn’t, ‘This was a great dinner,’ it’s ‘this wasn’t the best,’” Allmin explains. “So it’s a one-star [re view]. That’s really the only frustration, but we’re not feeling any pressure. We know what our team is capable of. We were doing it before the awards.”

To maintain its standards and keep guests happy, Barbara’s tiny team is working overtime. Newberry admits the hours have been longer, which the team is still adjusting to.

“But I think I can say for all of us,” she adds, “the energy from the guests that we’ve been having since winning the star has just been so uplifting, and so motivating. Everyone’s really excited … and I’m glad that we’re finally getting the recognition that we deserve—and we’re going to keep getting better.” g

Published on Main is where an octopus dish becomes high art. Photo by Sarah Annand.

Loving trans women doesn’t make you queer

by Dan Savage

BUT WITH THE WORLD ON FIRE, DOES IT MATTER?

b I READ YOUR COLUMN a lot and there’s a pattern I’ve been noticing. A straight guy writes in and says he’s straight and likes pussy, but he’s recently dis covered that he’s also attracted to trans women. And then they ask something like, “How should I describe my sex ual orientation now?” To which you

reply with something like, “You are straight. Trans women are women, they just happen to have dicks.” Great answer! I don’t disagree, but if I were responding I’d write, “You’re not gay, because trans women aren’t men. Trans women are women with dicks. Since you are attracted to women, you can keep on identifying as straight if that’s what feels right. Or you can identify as queer.” Queerness, as I understand it, is an expansive term that refers to anyone whose sexuality or gender expression falls outside of conventional expecta tions. To me it seems appropriate for

these straight men to embrace the term “queer.”

Mulling Over Labels

While you might think it’s appropri ate for straight men who sleep with trans women to identify as queer, MOL, lots of trans women disagree.

“It’s deeply problematic when people hear that a famous man is with a trans woman and they automatically think that he’s gay, because that is disavowing the womanhood of trans women,” Laverne Cox said during a conversation with Angelica Ross about the struggles of dat ing as a trans woman. “You can be into a trans woman and be completely straight.” (Cox and Ross spoke on an episode of Cox’s talk show If We’re Being Honest.)

So, any straight man who thought of himself as queer because he was into and/or fucking and/or with a trans woman would be guilty of disavowing the womanhood of his own partner. And any gay sex-advice columnist who urged straight men who were into/fucking/ with trans women to think of themselves as queer would be pretty quickly terfed out of the advice racket. But it does seem to me that a straight man who openly dates trans women, while no less straight than any other straight man, is defin

itely something more than most straight men—more confident, more secure in his own sexuality, more likely to be a good partner to any woman he winds up with, cis or trans.

Now, some cis men who date trans women aren’t straight; some cis men are bisexual or pansexual or omnisexual, as Cox pointed out on her show. And there are trans women out there who are queer and straight. Which is where it really gets complicated. A straight cis guy dating a trans woman is definitely in a relationship with a queer person; he’s arguably in a queer relationship himself. But being in a queer relationship—being the cis straight boyfriend of a trans woman or the cis straight wife of a bi guy or the allosexual partner of an asexual—doesn’t make a cis straight person queer themselves.

But you know what? The fucking world is on fire and if a cis straight guy who’s with a trans woman wants to identify as queer—if he wants to round himself up to queer—and the woman he’s with is okay with him embracing the term “queer” for himself, he can call himself queer.

P.S. Not all trans women have dicks.

Send your question to mailbox@savage.love Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love

Dan Savage: Among other things, it’s important for all of us to keep in mind that not all trans women have dicks.

Theatre Dance Multimedia Music Circus

NEVER TWENTY ONE SMAÏL KANOUTÉ/ COMPAGNIE VIVONS! (FRANCE)

Smaïl Kanouté’s production is a lament, a tribute and a protest. Through evocative, urban-inflected movements, three dancers pay homage to Black men who have lost their lives in New York, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg. The show has both a heartbreaking specificity and a global significance.

THE SEVENTH FIRE

DELINQUENT THEATRE / FULL CIRCLE FIRST NATIONS PERFORMANCE / PUSH FESTIVAL

(UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORIES • MST)

The Seventh Fire is an immersive audio perfor mance inspired by ceremony and created by Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen that sources traditional, oral Anishinaabe stories as a way to evoke ceremony in the everyday. Cooke Ravenbergen’s creation blurs time and space, bringing emotional and ancestral connection into being through deep col laboration with sound designer Mishelle Cuttler and a matriarchal creative team.

LE CRI DES MÉDUSES

ALAN LAKE FACTORIE (CANADA)

Powerful, seductive and ultimately unclassifiable, this performance is inspired by Géricault’s famous painting The Raft of Medusa. Choreographer Alan Lake has taken that painting’s beauty and pathos and transposed it to the stage, adding his own brilliance. Featuring ambient music, nine dancers and an ever-shifting scenography, this is a triumph of the imagination.

SOLILOQUIO

TIZIANO CRUZ (ARGENTINA)

Tiziano Cruz’s performative monologue is based on a series of letters he wrote to his mother in 2020; he uses them as a starting point for a cri tique of economic, racial and institutional oppres sion in contemporary Argentina and, by extension, elsewhere as well.

JAN 19-21 | SCOTIABANK DANCE CENTRE

JAN 25-29, FEB 1-4 | LOBE STUDIO

JAN 27, 28 | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE JAN 27-30 | ONLINE

JAN 27-29 | ROUNDHOUSE PERFORMANCE CENTRE PRESENTED WITH THE FRANK THEATRE CO.

ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA

ONTROEREND GOED (BELGIUM)

Ontoerend Goed’s palindromic take on the climate crisis uses structure as metaphor, employing rep etition and reversal to symbolize the need for a worldwide undoing of our actions. It’s an artistic intervention in a matter of the utmost importance, and it uses temporality as a provocation. As we draw closer and closer to worldwide calamity, this work asks us to rethink human possibility.

FEB 1-4 | FREDERIC WOOD THEATRE

PRESENTED WITH UBC THEATRE & FILM

OKINUM

PRODUCTIONS ONISHKA WITH ANAKU

(CANADA)

Speaking three languages, Émilie Monnet inter prets a recurring dream and transmits a message of empowerment to the audience. This mono logue performance, scored live by Jackie Gallant, portrays Monnet’s quest to reconnect with her Anishinaabe ancestry and language. Making cre ative use of live sound and visual storytelling tech niques, this is a hypnotic, cathartic experience.

FEB 2,3 | ANVIL CENTRE THEATRE

FEB 2-5 | ONLINE

PRESENTED WITH ANVIL THEATRE AND TOUCHSTONE THEATRE

SOLDIERS OF TOMORROW

THE ELBOW THEATRE (CANADA)

Alongside a Syrian-born musician, a former IDF soldier relates his actions in the army, exploring his personal culpability in the face of complex geopolitical forces in his former country–a place that he loves “with a broken heart”.

O’DD

RACE HORSE COMPANY (FINLAND)

This mesmerizing circus performance begins with an evocation of birth and follows an acrobatic man through phases of existence. There’s a strong sci-fi edge to the show, with both man and objects given symbolic weight. Brilliantly designed, beautifully scored and full of superb acrobatics, O’DD is true poetry in motion.

FEB 3-5 | ROUNDHOUSE PERFORMANCE CENTRE

FEB 4, 5 | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE

FEB 2-5 | ONLINE