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ORANGE CRUSH

ORANGE WAVES CRASH OUT EAST

As Ontario’s NDP sees an increase in popularity, the distinctions between it and its Albertan counterpart become clear

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hile Premier Rachel Notley charmed the East Coast last week to rile up support for the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, she also flaunted another compelling Alberta export to Ontarians: an NDP government.

Ontario’s legislature is bleeding red. After nearly 15 years of

Liberal rule, the ruling majority party has accumulated a hefty share of scandals, policy troubles, and debt to fuel distaste from the electorate.

Three springs ago in Alberta, a decades-old Progressive Conservative dynasty called a snap election based on their ironclad grip of the legislature. It

suddenly and tremendously backfired on Election Day, as the PCs lost 61 of their 70 seats.

Conversely, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s path to demise in June’s election was slow and painful until 10 weeks ago, when surging Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown was ousted following allegations of sexual misconduct.

It’s the game-changer akin to Alberta’s leaders debate in 2015, when eventual Premier Rachel Notley scolded her fellow candidates and broke the race wide open.

To maintain their support, the PCs quickly propped up a leadership race that crowned populist favourite Doug Ford as the winner, presenting several issues. Ford is determined to reverse Wynne’s $6.7 billion annual deficit spending, while freezing or cutting government revenues from carbon, corporate and income taxes.

Ford is also Ontario’s Donald Trump, complete with a “drain

the swamp” mantra, and a shady relationship with the truth and media. He’s been caught bullying journalists and opponents, exposed as a drug dealer while in high school, and polls have begun to shift.

PC support has dwindled from 42 percent after Brown’s resignation to 36 percent in the latest Forum Research Poll. The biggest gainer in the latest tally was Ontario’s NDP, which jumped from 23 to 26 percent support.

Ontario’s NDP now has a golden chance to shake their thirdparty status like Alberta’s NDP did in 2015. Aside from that, however, the two NDP parties operate in stark contrast.

Led by Andrea Horwath, a 14-year veteran of provincial politics, and two years Notley’s senior, Ontario’s NDP sway further to the left. They promise universal dental-care, while Notley has merely released a fee guide to combat the highest prices in the country.

Ontario’s NDP advocate for universal pharmacare and to

“do better” on a Liberal plan for free preschool child care, all while Notley spews war against a fellow NDP premier weary about Alberta’s oil and gas pipelines.

Notley is treading carefully in a historically conservative province, inching up healthcare spending while expending most of her political capital on minimum wage hikes, diversifying the economy, and introducing a carbon tax to an electorate that rejects global warming stronger than any other in Canada.

Horwath’s spending proposals come when Ontario’s net debt is $300.2 billion, compared to Alberta’s forecasted net debt of $20.2 billion in an era of low oil revenue and the absence of a 13 percent sales tax like Ontario.

Essentially, Ontario’s orange wave appears to look nothing like the one Alberta experienced in 2015. In fact, it seems Horwath could benefit from Notley’s tutelage on responsible spending.

Mitch Goldenberg

QUEERMONTON

ACTIVISM MUST BE ROOTED IN LOVE, NOT FEAR Fighting for equal rights must be a team effort, not divided by xenophobia and hatred

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arrived in Calgary in the summer of 2000 as a graduate school recruit to the University of Alberta economics program. It was a time before 9/11, and self-obsession had taken the form of multiple selfies with pouty faces.

My first exposure to Canadians came through a gentle old lady who sported a cowboy hat at the Calgary airport. I had missed my flight to Edmonton. Being thousands of miles away from home, I was quite nervous and concerned about spending my limited dollars on new airfare to Edmonton.

But she quelled my fears, telling me that I could just take the next flight free of charge and that it would not take me long to reach my destination.

I am not sure if she is still around.

I don’t remember her name or even how she looked, but the memory of her kindness and generosity is etched in my mind. I have experienced this compassion from many other Canadians, including the Jewish psychiatrist who spent many sessions with me on LGBTQ2S+affirming hermeneutics in 2004.

It is this love over these last 18 years that has shaped my outlook of gratitude to this great country and has informed my approach towards activism.

Unlike many who were born in Canada and have not had exposure to problems in other parts of the world, I have witnessed how people are treated as second-class citizens in the rich Gulf States, and how easily they are deported for voicing an unpopular opinion. As such, I do not take freedom of expression and the right to protest for granted, nor without responsibility.

stitutional Catholic groups in rallying against same-sex marriage in 2005, and also of those who have repeatedly ignored my invitations for joint Muslim-LGBTQ2S+ community outreach over the past few years. There is simply no initiative on part of local Muslim institutional groups to meet the LGBTQ2S+ community, which would open doors for addressing the concerns of LGBTQ2S+ Muslims. Indeed, while raising concerns on racism and Islamophobia, such groups ignore their own homophobia and transphobia.

Those who are loudly stoking hatred of Muslims are afraid of demographic changes that would see them reduced to a minority.

Some who are protesting Islamophobia are failing to address the deep-rooted heterosexism that informs their scriptural hermeneutics and cultural aversion to LGBTQ2S+ Muslims.

Yet, as such groups advance their agenda in the garb of human rights or religious freedoms, they are merely addressing inner hurts and fears. This then is a problem of our age where self-obsession

leads to objectification and dehumanization of other people, and where shrill and aggressive calls for activism are more about tearing others down instead of forging communities based on common values and love.

All of this makes me reminisce of the gentle old lady with the cowboy hat at the Calgary airport and I wonder how different our Canadian milieu would be if that smile, warmth, and compassion dictated our public discourse and calls to action.

Junaid Jahangir

Unfortunately, exercise of freedoms in Canada is not always rooted in love. Often, those who loudly tout human rights usurp such freedoms to unleash a hateful narrative in Canadian spaces.

This paradox is manifest when some exploit LGBTQ2S+ or feminist issues to badger Muslims and Islam, even as their own disposition is shaped by a deeply entrenched homophobia and sexism.

Such is also true of the Edmonton ethnic groups that joined in-

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political interference

University of Alberta plays with numberS U of A leaders make budget seem more dire than it really is, for seemingly incalculable reasons

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niversity of Alberta President David Turpin has been working very hard over the past few weeks to convince anyone who will listen—from the U of A board of governors, to the mainstream media, to students and staff—that the university is in the midst of a long-standing financial crisis. And that, because of this crisis, spending needs to be cut by four percent.

Turpin has been using colourful graphs, well-prepared powerpoint slides, and fancy expressions like “authority to spend,” “structural deficit,” and “strategic initiatives” to make his case. The problem for Turpin, however, is the degree to which his graphs and accounting doublespeak largely fail to cover up the fact that there is no structural deficit or crisis of sustainability at the university, and that the spending cuts are simply not needed. Instead, what appears to be happening is that the cuts will enable the creation of something of a slush fund that will largely be directed out of the president’s office.

Here’s what it actually looks like.

The U of A has been running surpluses both in its operating and

consolidated budgets for pretty much all of the last decade, with the exception of a very small deficit during the 2008-09 financial crisis. What all of these consecutive surpluses should mean is a healthy reserve of money somewhere in the university. The obvious question then, looking at these numbers, is how Turpin manages to take a series of very healthy surpluses and what must be a healthy unrestricted reserve fund and convince the board that the university has been running a structural deficit for years, and is facing a crisis of sustainability.

Well, the first thing Turpin has done is focus on authority to spend rather than actual spending. Authority to spend is a number derived from the amount of money that university is legally allowed to spend in any given year as per various government regulations and its own internal policies. The problem is that university almost never actually spends as much as it is allowed to. Authority to spend is generally significantly higher than actual spending, which gives the sense that the university is not bringing in enough money.

The second thing Turpin has done is decide that income derived from short-term investments should not be used for operating spending. His suggestion is that because these revenues can be volatile and unpredictable from year to year, they are much better suited being taken out of operating revenues and being used instead for strategic initiatives.

This of course makes absolutely no sense. Investment income has actually been fairly consistent in recent years, and the fact that it can go up or down from year to year is no reason to simply stop using the money. Institutions, businesses, and organizations all over the world regularly use investment income for operations. Of course, taking even a portion of investment income out of the operating budget also gives the impression that the university is spending more than it brings in. It has the added benefit of creating a strategic initiatives fund that will presumably be spent at his discretion.

And the third step in manufacturing a fiscal crisis where there is none? Ignore the pro-

vincial government’s repeated commitment to provide backfill funding for the tuition freeze, and their recent vow to increase the Campus Alberta grant by two percent, and draft the budget based on a zero percent increase in the grant and no tuition back-fill. Purposefully underestimating government revenues is a great way to create a crisis of sustainability.

The focus of reaction to Turpin’s manufacturing has tended to be on his own salary and ballooning administrative costs at the university. While this avenue of critique is totally justified, and serious cuts to the number of senior administrators and their overall compensation would definitely help universities direct more funds to front-line teaching and research, focusing on it in regards to Turpin’s current budget helps to distract from the fundamental issue here.

Through budget manipulation and accounting sleight of hand Turpin has taken what is a healthy budget with consistent surpluses and significant reserves, and made it look like

a crisis of sustainability with a structural deficit and an accumulated debt. He has done that effectively enough to convince the board of governors to adopt his recommended budget, implement a four percent cut in discretionary spending, and prioritize short term investment income for use in strategic initiatives, rather than operating spending.

The key question in all of this is “why?” Has he done all of this simply to leverage the university’s position in upcoming bargaining with academic staff? Has he done it to have a pot of money that he directs and funds his priorities? Or has he done it as a way to distract from the proportion of the university’s budget that goes to central administration every year?

Whatever his reasons, what he has done is blatantly misrepresent the university’s budget to the university community, the government, and Albertans as a whole, and we should all insist that he come clean about his reasons and immediately reverse these cuts. The university and the province deserve better. It’s time we all demanded it.

Ricardo Acuña

dyer straight

Latvian language rights

Former Soviet satellite and Baltic state has rocky relationship with Russian language, but it’s a complex issue

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any countries have two or more official languages: Canada (two), Belgium (three), Switzerland (four), South Africa (11), India (23), and so on. They all have trouble balancing the competing demands of the various language groups. But Latvia has only one official language, a fact that causes the country no end of problems.

“There’s no need for a second language. Whoever wants can use their language at home or in school,” said Latvian President Andris Berzins in 2012, when there was a (failed) referendum about making Russian a second official language in the country.

But on Monday, Berzin’s successor, President Raimonds Vejonis, signed a new law decreeing that Russian will no longer be used in secondary schools.

Even Russian-speaking highschool students will be taught only in Latvian by 2021. Vejonis said: “It will make society more cohesive and the state stronger.” Freely translated, that means it will make Latvian society less Russian.

The Russian-language media exploded in outrage at the news, and in Moscow on Tuesday, the Russian Duma (parliament) passed a

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resolution urging Vladimir Putin’s government to impose sanctions on Latvia. The Russian foreign ministry said that the new measure was “part of the discriminatory policy of the forceful assimilation of Russian-speaking people that has been conducted for the past 25 years.”

That is true. The long-term goal of Latvia’s language policies is obviously the assimilation of the Russian-speaking minority—but it is a huge task. Russian-speakers were 42 percent of the population when Latvia got its independence back from the Soviet Union in 1991, and if you include those who speak Latvian at work but Russian at home, they still account for at least a third.

The discrimination has been blatant from the start. After independence, Russian-speakers whose home was in Latvia were excluded from citizenship unless they could pass a Latvian language test. About half the Russian-speaking population couldn’t or wouldn’t, so around 13 percent of the people in Latvia are russophone ‘non-citizens’ without the right to vote, hold public office, or take government jobs.

It has long been the case in Latvia that university is only free for students doing their studies in Latvian, and that primary schools for minority language groups (mainly Russian but also Ukrainian, Yiddish, Roma, etc.) must teach Latvian from the first grade. Since 2004 at least 60 percent of instruction in secondary schools has had to be in Latvian. And by 2021 it will have to be all Latvian in the high schools all of the time.

So the Russians certainly have a right to complain—but look at it from a Latvian point of view. The Latvians got their independence from the Russian empire in 1918, but were reconquered by its successor, the Soviet Union, in 1940. (The NaziSoviet Pact, the starting gun for the Second World War, divided Poland between the two totalitarian regimes, but the Soviet Union got all of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.)

The Soviet secret police then murdered or deported most of the Latvian political, intellectual and cultural elite: between 35,000 and 60,000 people.

So the Latvians welcomed the

German attack on Russia in 1941, which freed Latvia from the Soviet occupation, and many of them fought alongside the German army until the Russians conquered Latvia yet again in 1944.

By then Stalin had concluded that the Latvians were incorrigibly ‘disloyal,’ and decided to solve the problem permanently by overwhelming them with immigrants from Russia. The proportion of Latvian native-speakers in the population dropped from 80 percent in 1935 to barely half (52 percent) by 1989—and most of the immigrants never bothered to learn Latvian, because the entire Soviet Union worked in Russian.

The Latvians were on the road to linguistic and cultural extinction until they got their independence back, so you can see why they want to ‘Latvianize’ this huge, uninvited immigrant presence in their midst as fast as possible.

But now look at it from the position of the Russian-speakers again. Most of the current generation are not immigrants at all. They were born in Latvia, before or after independence,

VUEWEEKLY.com | apr 12 - apr 18, 2018

and they grew up in the familiar streets of Riga or Daugavpils, part of a large Russian-speaking community among whom they feel comfortably at home.

They have no other home.

Yet they know they will never be accepted as fully Latvian even if they learn to speak the language fluently. And since they mostly get their news and views from Russian media, which portray Latvia’s allies in the European Union and NATO as relentlessly anti-Russian, Latvian-speakers don’t even trust the Russian minority to be loyal in a crisis.

On the other hand, why should Russian-speakers in Latvia go along with measures that are clearly designed to shrink the role of Russian in the country’s life?

There is no right or wrong here.

The Latvian-speakers will have to accept that the Russian minority is a permanent presence in their country, and the Russianspeakers will have to accept that preserving the endangered Latvian language and culture comes first. They are both having trouble getting to that point, but there is really no alternative.

Gwynne Dyer

FUNGAL FEASTS

Chef Andrew Cowan’s koji-cured beef / Doug Johnson

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Koji curing, which uses a kind of mould, may seem scary, but local chefs are experimenting with its use

o call koji curing a pet project for Northern Chicken chef Andrew Cowan isn’t quite accurate. ‘Pets project’ seems more apt, considering the process involves countless mould cells that, currently, work to preserve and give funk to a slab of beef Cowan’s been preserving since the start of March.

Koji has multiple culinary uses— it’s essential to make miso and soy sauce and, recently, chefs in Edmonton have found it an interesting way to marinate and cure meats. Koji curing, in short, speeds up the dry-aging process, and—ideally—out-competes other harmful micro-organisms that would otherwise grow on a hunk of raw animal matter. That said, the meat also needs to cure in a refrigerated area.

According to Cowan, three weeks after his experimental roast began to cure, it lost 40 percent of its mass, a reduction from three down to 1.8 kilograms. The curing process dehydrates the meat, he says, which helps prevent harmful bacteria growing in and on it.

The remaining mass of muscle is dryer, harder, and a deeper shade of red-brown nestled under a white layer of mould—it’s like a traditional Italian salami. It’s saltier, too, and has a very slight kick like a blue cheese—though not as intense as Cowan had planned.

Most often, koji—aspergillus oryzae, for the scientific—is most often found on grains of rice that a person or commercial manufacturer has inoculated with the fungus. While Cowan’s using it to dry age beef, it can also be used as a kind of marinade, which tenderizes meat. The mould degrades the meat’s collagen to some extent, and leaves behind a small amount of leftover flavour, says Michael Gänzle, professor at the University of Alberta’s department of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“It’s a fairly cool translation of a traditional process to a novel product,” he says, adding that these methods don’t likely affect the nutritional value of the meat all that much, and that the process, when done right, doesn’t appear to produce harmful microtoxins. “If you cure it outside the

fridge, there can be some bacteria that comes from the meat, not the koji culture ... If it’s done in a safe scenario, I don’t see any major risks for safety.”

Cowan has made charcuterie boards for years: his collections of cured meats having made their way into some Edmonton favourites like Hundred Bar and Kitchen, and Packrat Louie. Over the years, his colleagues at these establishments have gone on to do boards of their own. Cowan’s been a lowkey charcuterie pro for around 10 years, but koji curing is something new for him, inspired by Instagram accounts and other sources online touting the method for its ease and quickness.

“It’s just a new technique I haven’t really tried yet,” Cowan says. “We don’t do a lot of charcuterie here [at Northern Chicken], but it’s something I really enjoy. I try to keep sharp at it.”

Cowan’s experiment probably won’t make its way onto Northern Chicken’s menu any time soon. Some of that comes down to avoiding run-ins with Alberta Health. Similarly, he says, restaurants looking to serve koji-cured meats should meticulously document the process from start to finish. Projects sporting black or red mould, Cowan says, should just be tossed out.

“If I do it at my house, for myself, it’s a different story. With customers, you have to be really careful,” Cowan says. “The way I explain it to people is: realistically-speaking, if it was unsafe, we’d all be dead. We’ve been doing this for centuries, and centuries, and centuries. You just have to be

careful with it, especially when you’re serving it to customers.”

Elsewhere in Edmonton, the use of koji is more established.

Biera has been making its own koji from scratch for about half a year. They order the culture online, then grow it on a food, like soybeans, and place it in a controlled environment. Over time, this becomes the miso the restaurant uses.

“I think sometimes people don’t really understand how much of a process it is from start to finish,” says chef Christine Sandford.

More recently, an Acme 140-day aged beef steak—which includes

black garlic, charred leeks and shio koji—has appeared on Biera’s menu. The shio koji (koji, rice, water, and salt), which tenderizes the meat, can also let more experimental chefs use cheaper cuts of meat. In all, Sandford has seen interest in the off-kilter ingredient grow in the city.

Sandford doesn’t think koji use is wide-spread enough in Canada for anyone to really have any regulations on it and, she says, there’s not too much that can go wrong.

Alberta Health Services has a few requirements that may pertain to koji curing, though it has nothing specific on the

process. Additionally, according to an email from the provincial organization, it hasn’t run into any establishments curing foods with koji during its inspections.

That said, the AHS requires that a starter culture comes from a reputable source and is used according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Similarly, the AHS stipulates that food should not be subject to any contaminants during the drying process, that operators are aware of all the food safety risks involved, and that the process is documented.

Doug Johnson doug@vueweekly.com

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dish 5

THAI

LIVING UP TO THE LEGACY

Sweet and sour fish, along with drunken noodles / JProcktor

Noi Thai carries on Viphalay’s history of economical and tasty food, customers just need to catch on

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aybe it was the bitterly cold evening that squared with T.S. Eliot’s designation of April as the cruelest month, but for some reason Noi Thai— which just opened in the former original location of Viphalay, on the edge of Little Italy—was completely devoid of other customers on the night co-diner and I paid it a visit. The handmade sign in the window that read “same family with Viphalay” seemed calculated to grab some of its esteemed predecessor’s prestige, but on this night we were the only takers.

Whether or not it has a connection to Viphalay, Noi Thai is just fine in its own right, solidly on the same footing as gems like Million Thai in Beverly, and Krua Wilai downtown. There’s nothing super-fancy going on, but the food is well-made, and a tad cheaper than the going rate for food of similar quality.

Indeed, Noi Thai retains some

of Viphalay’s ambience, or at least its maroon and gold tablecloths, speckless white serving dishes, and Siamese bric-a-brac.

Satellite radio provided an oldies soundtrack that ran from Skeeter Davis’ “End of the World,” to Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting,” then, suddenly, The Knack’s “My Sharona.” The stark black-andwhite menus promised plenty of variety—if not a ton of surprises—with the expected soups, noodles, curries, stir-fries, and seafood dishes represented, though a dish called “Hell’s Beef” certainly piqued my interest. That would have to wait, as co-diner was already calling out suggestions.

We settled on Thai samosas ($10) for an appetizer. They were smaller than Indian samosas, but there were 10 of them.

Spring roll wrappers supplanted the usual samosa pastry, but the interior had a nice curry flavour, with ground chicken, carrots, onions, and sweet chili dipping

sauce inside. Noi also boasts— as part of their starter menu— red wine shrimp, a Viphalay fave of yore.

Co-diner told our server, who worked our table so gingerly it seemed like he hoped we wouldn’t notice him, that we wanted our papaya salad ($12) spicy. That gave me pause, as the real stuff is so intense with raw garlic, fish sauce, lime, and lots of hot chilies it can throw my diaphragm into violent convulsions in one bite. Perhaps he noticed my apprehensive look because, though the pungent shreds of papaya, and carrot with tomato wedges harboured a distinct kick, they didn’t induce hiccups, and scorch my taste buds for the rest of the meal. A wedge of cooling iceberg lettuce was furnished as a balm, and there was a generous heap of tiny dried shrimp on the side in case we didn’t find it fishy enough.

Many think pad thai is a good yardstick of a restaurant’s abilities, but I’m more drawn to drunken noodles (pad kee mao on some menus). They’re daintier, spindlier, and slipperier than the wide rice noodles of pad thai, building within its soya-based shellac a subtler sweetness and surreptitious spiciness.

Noi’s version ($16.95) was a generous steaming heap of flavour, a big tangle of supple noodles overloaded with tender chicken chunks, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, serrated zucchini, and snap peas, scented with licorice-y Thai basil—and, oh yes, just the right touch of chili fire.

The sweet and sour fish ($15.95) was expertly fried basa in a light, just-crisp coating, copiously breaded and fried chunks of it in a sticky orange sauce with pineapple, carrots, cucumbers, celery, onions, and—surprise—a few chunks of orange. Basa isn’t the most flavourful fish in the world,

Noi Thai 10724 – 95 St. 780.423.3213 noithairestaurant.com but the combination of fruitysweet and spicy in the sauce with a pleasant sting of vinegar more than compensated, and it was especially glorious with creamy coconut rice ($5.50).

After we bagged our ample leftovers, settled up—and took more than our share of those yummy guava candies they give you in Thai restaurants—I copped a take-out menu, which might be the highest compliment I could pay. It might not quite measure up to Viphalay’s heyday in the same spot, but Noi Thai can hold its head up amidst proximal draws like Syphay and Boualouang—and, for the moment anyhow, it might be easier to get a table there.

Scott Lingley

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GOING TO ST. IVES REVIEW

OPERA

Edmonton Opera drives home themes of accountability with their season closer of Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Sat., Apr. 14 (8 pm), Tues., Apr. 17 (7:30 pm), & Fri., Apr. 20 (7:30 pm) Don Giovanni Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium From $40 Phillip Addis (singing Don Giovanni) / Supplied

H

e’s a shapeshifter, a chameleon, and he can adapt his personality to manipulate his next target with finesse and elegance.

Don Giovanni may be what you know him as, but he was first known as Don Juan.

Mozart’s powerful opera Don Giovanni is returning to its Spanish roots to match those of its director Oriol Tomas. Inspired by the original play about Don Juan, El Burlador de Sevilla (The Libertine of Seville) written by 17th century priest Tirso de Molina, Tomas and conductor Christopher Larkin bring Edmonton Opera’s season closer to sizzling Seville.

Set design by Bretta Gerecke and costumes by Deanna Finnman draw from influences of bullfighting culture, early romanticism, and Spanish surrealism to paint a fresh picture of the notorious womanizer. The action is set within an imposing bullfighting arena with towering arches, a dream-like labyrinth, and a hallucinatory graveyard filled with the skulls of bulls, instead of tombs.

Molina’s grandiose and alluring character has intrigued great minds history-wide, including the likes of Jane Austen, E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King), Alexander Pushkin (Onegin), Richard Strauss, Victor Hugo (Les Miserables), Gaston Leroux (Phantom of the Opera), and even Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

“I wanted to give him the identity of the matador for two reasons,” Tomas says. “First, the

matador has a great know-how, and he’s very precise. He knows how to attract his prey and also how to kill his prey. And I thought also because the bullfighting is a very controversial subject in Spain presently, so it is a doubleedged sword.”

This is in fact Tomas’ third staging of Mozart’s masterpiece, his first being in France (2012), and his most recent in Quebec for the Opera Festival last summer.

With an intriguing new coat of paint to tell the tale of the Spanish casanova in the light of today’s culture, the Edmonton Opera’s Don Giovanni will touch on some pressing societal issues.

At the time Molina wrote his play in inquisitorial Spain, noblemen lived without conscience or any moral sense of how their actions would affect those around them. As a way to warn them of their infernal fate, Molina wrote the character of Don Juan—a man that loses it all for the sake of his own ego and pleasure.

Tomas saw that this specific element of the tale rings very true today.

“It’s very interesting because presently with this subject—the assaults or the sexual harassment we can see in Hollywood and in other circles—even though Mozart and Da Ponte created it in the 18th century, I think it’s a very hot topic still,” he says.

Our current concepts of boundaries and respect are still blurred by people who feel they are out-

side the realms of law and ramifications, something that has carried on for 400 years at least, Molina tells us.

So where’s the hope?

This is where the whistleblowers come into Tomas’ production.

“At the very end we reverse the roles and Don Giovanni becomes the bull,” Tomas explains, adding that the women deliver their revenge in the end.

Don Giovanni is also such a unique piece because its roles are all principle characters, so the dimension must be there for all eight roles. When he works in France Tomas typically has six weeks to rehearse; with Canadian productions such as this, he has half that, but he adds that he enjoys the challenge.

When done properly, the antagonizing protagonist of Don Giovanni, played by star baritone Phillip Addis, is supported by a full cast of complex characters that truly have their own questionable motives as well.

Da Ponte’s dramma giocoso libretto smoothly trots along the drama with jokes and tidbits of humour brought with Don Giovanni’s sidekick Leporello (bass Erik Anstine) and the fiery Donna Elvira (soprano Cara McLeod), set on saving the lost lecher headed for a reckoning. The odd dash of pyrotechnics and architechtural collapse is also promised for opera goers: visualize the gates of hell operatically amplified.

Sierra Bilton sierra@vueweekly.com

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

JCLPRODUCTIONS.CA • WORLDWIDEMUSICVENTURES.COM

arts 7

PRINTMAKING

Wetland 02 / Florin Hategan

DOCUMENTING THE DAMAGED WETLANDS

Until Sat., May 12 Wetlands Harcourt House Main Gallery Free

Romanian artist Florin Hategan’s print series discusses the fate that may befall the world’s natural spaces

A

sad, but common, story appears in Florin Hategan’s Wetland print series. A space, formerly of natural beauty and ecological importance, catches the eye of a developer who, in turn, irrevocably changes it. Hategan has seen and documented this in many of his travels. For the Romanian-born artist, this

worry is all-too-familiar. When he moved to Canada in 1994, two areas near his now home of Maple, Ont—The Kotright Centre for Conservation and the Boyd Conservation Area— captured his imagination. He’s loathe to think they might meet the same fate as other green spaces around the world.

“This conservation area—I went many times there, and there were beautiful parts to it,” Hategan says.“I’m looking at them with fear, in a way, because every time a developer comes and destroys them.”

Hategan studied engineering in Timisoara, Romania, and graduated with a masters degree be-

fore moving on to study fine art. He works mostly in linocut printmaking, and started off in the field by making stark, blackand-white prints of teenagers, people in an age where they’re still dreaming and, perhaps, at their most honest, Hategan says.

From there, his artistic fascination turned to the natural world. Industrial intervention in nature often leaves land unusable for both the humans and animals that live near it. From this dissatisfaction, Hategan began documenting the humanmade changes in these ecosystems, and took from them images he would later render into his artistic works. In particular, the artist chose wetlands, as they are traditionally fragile, and vulnerable.

Though the prints depict natural settings, and though their attention to detail is prominent, the scratchy lines, and black and white relief add an air of direness to their presentation, but, Hategan says, these natural spaces are still beautiful, if damaged.

Hategan’s work has received awards in six countries, including Canada, and sit in private and public galleries around the world, and a collection of his Wetland series sits in Edmon-

8 arts

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

ton’s Harcourt House Gallery until May 12. That said, he sees some aversion to printmaking among high-art circles, and some of his work, he hopes, will dispel this notion. It’s an old practice, he says, and a very common one, which makes an exhibit stand out less among its peers.

“It’s perceived as kind of low art,” he says. “There are a lot of artists that are doing printmaking.”

But, for the artist, the world is a sometimes chaotic place.

Humanity’s role in harming the environment—and even itself—can be hard to reconcile.

Printmaking, in a way, allows him to create small, self-contained worlds that are easier to digest and have a clear moral, far divorced from the complexities of real life.

“I finished engineering, I went to science, and now I’m in art part-time. In life, the science and the logic is giving you a kind of certainty and predictability, things like that. Some things in life cannot be explained,” he says. “I cannot find the answers to many things that are going on in the world, with myself, with the people around myself.

By doing this, I am recreating a world which I can explain.”

Doug Johnson doug@vueweekly.com

THEATRE

Rebecca North, Christy Bruce, and audience volunteer Ela // Citrus Photography

ARTS WEEKLY EMAIL YOUR FREE LISTINGS TO: LISTINGS@VUEWEEKLY.COM DEADLINE: FRIDAY AT 12PM

DANCE ARGENTINE TANGO DANCE AT FOOT NOTES STUDIO • Foot Notes Dance Studio (South side), 9708-45 Ave • 780.438.3207 • virenzi@shaw.ca • Argentine Tango with Tango Divino: beginners: 7-8pm; intermediate: 8-9pm; Tango Social Dance (Milonga): 9pm-12 • Every Fri, 7pm-midnight • $15

BALLROOM DANCE ASSOCIATION • Central Lions Recreation Center, 11113-113 St • 780.893.6828 • ebda.ca • An evening of ballroom, latin, country dancing • 1st Sat of every month, 8pm (doors)

DANCE CLASSES WITH GOOD WOMEN DANCE COLLECTIVE • Muriel Taylor Studio at Ruth Carse Centre for Dance, 11205-107 Ave • info@goodwomen.ca • goodwomen.ca/classes • Every Tue, Thu, Fri; 10-11:30am • $15 (drop-in), $65 (5 class pack), $100 (10 class pack)

DIRT BUFFET CABARET• Spazio Performativo, 10816 95 St • milezerodance. com • This multidisciplinary, diverse variety show allows audiences to discover Edmonton’s most unique, challenging, and wide-ranging performances, curated by an array of artists who will share different niches within the Edmonton scene • Apr 26, 8pm • $10 or best offer at the door

EL LLANTO SE MUEVE - THE CRY MOVES

A SPONTANEOUS WHODUNIT

Undercover pits an audience detective against a murder mystery

Until Sun., Apr. 29 Undercover The Club (Citadel Theatre) Tickets start at $30

W

hile many improv shows rely on audience members for only a few moments to serve a gag, director and producer Rebecca Northan’s follow-up to her international hit Blind Date, takes a different approach. Undercover makes a single “rookie detective” the core component of the production’s 125-minute narrative conceit.

Police Sgt. Roberta Collins (Northan) hires the detective from the audience, quickly brings them up to speed on the job, and then sends them undercover to gather intel on a new criminal name in town at a private art auction on an acreage. Co-written by Northan and multidisciplinary artist Bruce Horak (who also plays Peter Vinen, the rookie’s inside contact) Undercover delivers an experience like no other.

Pronged walls swivel around the stage, first forming the borders of the police station and then the many quarters of a fictional, inherited estate somewhere in Sturgeon County. Folddown furniture, secret compartments and protruding panels add character to each room as professional improvisers work around the newbie.

The show’s first act serves to acclimate the rookie to the dy-

namic and unhinged cast at the auction (Damien Atkins especially stands out in his role as Daniel Murphy, a reportedly vengeful estate manager, bullied as a child by members of the family).

Then the second act turns the audience-detective loose on a “surprise” murder case, where they’re free to investigate however they choose. Northan and her cast offer the rookie a surprising amount of agency in the story, and the production is hilarious because of it.

The humour is initially and often born from the interactions with the rook: Riffs on the detective’s overly obvious statements or surprising questions generate gags that will never be the same twice. But the casts’ improvisation skills mesh fluidly with excellently rehearsed acting as they pull from a repertoire of available story beats—some of which are never seen if the detective doesn’t investigate a room or a suspect.

For every on-the-fly retort from the headstrong Lia Da Costa (Christy Bruce) towards the detective’s questions, you may see an impassioned display of genuine emotion from Graeme Nelson (Mark Meer). And the cast strikes a fine balance between letting the detective shape the story, and helping them along if they’re at a loss.

As only around 30 percent of audience-detectives have perfectly solved the case during

more than 70 performances of Undercover, it doesn’t matter whether the investigator is great, only that everyone in the theatre enjoys the attempt.

To this end, Undercover’s emergent plot is supported by dynamic audio effects from stage manager/sound improviser Emma Brager. They’re first introduced in a funny transition where the detective learns to mime buckling their seatbelt and closing a car door. Then, familiar flutters punctuate the plot as the rookie’s latex-clad hands rifle through props to uncover new clues.

When the detective in my show solved a major subplot of the mystery within seconds of the investigation’s start, Northan switched scenes with a coy “I have a feeling we’re going to go home early tonight.” But her intuition was a little off: Crippling indecision seized our detective when it was time to name a culprit, resulting in the first full-cast arrest in the Undercover’s history. There weren’t enough handcuffs to bind their wrists, but a cloud of smoke trailed the conga line off stage after everyone, including Collins and our rookie detective traded hits from suspect Brooke Pounsbury’s (Terra Hazelton) vapourizer.

The opportunity to experience a similar first is Undercover’s biggest attraction. And with tables in the house and drinks allowed inside, the show makes for a fantastic night out.

Kevin Pennyfeather

• Winspear Centre, 4 Sir Winston Churchill Square • info@edmontonflamencofestival.com • edmontonflamencofestival.com • The 2018 Edmonton Flamenco Festival's mainstage event.

Direct from Spain, Jairo Barrull and his company of internationally acclaimed performers bring the traditional style of flamenco puro to the stage • Apr 20, 8-10pm • $55 (via Winspear)

FLAMENCO DANCE CLASSES (BEGINNER OR ADVANCED) • Dance Code Studio, 10575-115 St NW • 780.349.4843 • judithgarcia07@gmail.com • flamencoenvivo.com • Every Sun until Jun 10, 11:30am-12:30pm

HOUSE OF HUSH PRESENTS: IT'S YOUR LUCKY DAY! • Crash Hotel Lobby, 10266-103 St • hellothere@violettecoquette. com • houseofhushapril13.eventbrite.com • houseofhushburlesque.com • Representing Lady Luck and the Roman goddess Fortuna, luck be a lady tonight • Apr 13, 7pm (door), 8-9:30pm (show) • $30 (include a complimentary feature cocktail) • 18+ only

MILE ZERO DANCE DROP-IN DANCE & MOVEMENT CLASSES • Spazio Performativo, 10816-95 St • 780.424.1573 • mzdsociety@ gmail.com • milezerodance.com/classes • Mile Zero Dance holds a number of drop-in dance & movement classes for people of all experience levels & ages; Mon: Professional Technique (10-11:30am), Contact Improv (7-9pm); Tue: Kids 6-10 (4:30-5:15pm), Toonie Yoga (5:306:45pm), Butoh (7-9pm); Wed: Noguchi Taiso (10-11:30am); Thu: Preschool 3-5 (10-10:45am), Beginner Contemporary (5-6:15pm); Sat: House (7-9pm) • $15 (regular), $12 (members), 10-class cards available for $100

SACRED CIRCLE DANCE • Riverdale Community Hall, 9231-100 Ave • edmontonsacredcircledance@gmail.com • Dances are taught to a variety of songs and music. No partner required • 2nd Wed of the month (beginners), 4th Wed of the month (experienced), 7-9pm • $10 SUGAR FOOT STOMP! • Sugar Swing Ballroom, 10019-80 Ave NW • 587.786.6554 • dance@sugarswing.com • sugarswing.com • Swing dance social • Every Fri-Sat, 8pm (beginner lesson begins) • $12, $2 (lesson with entry) • All ages UKRAINIAN SHUMKA DANCERS PRESENT ANCESTORS & ELDERS • Jubilee Auditorium, 11455-87 Ave • A project borne from a desire to connect the Ukrainian settler experience to that of the indigenous people of Treaty 6 territory. In a production to feature a cast of Shumka Dancers and multidisciplinary indigenous artists • Apr 27-28, 7:30-9:30pm • $15-$60

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

FILM DUAL SCHOOL SYSTEM IN ALBERTA • Westwood Unitarian, 11135-65 Ave • A video taken at the U of A. A discussion between David King and Kent Donlevy • Apr 13, 7pm METRO • Metro at the Garneau Theatre, 8712109 St • 780.425.9212 • metrocinema.org • Visit metrocinema.org for daily listings • Afternoon teA: Moulin Rouge! (Apr 15) • ALLEY KAT CASK AND KEG NIGHTS: An American Werewolf in London (Apr 29) • fAVA fest 2018: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II – 35mm! (Apr 19), Two Brothers, a Girl and a Gun – 25th Anniversary / 35mm! (Apr 20) • KinK on SCREEN: The Notorious Bettie Page (Apr 15) • Metro RETRO: Midnight Express (Apr 22-23) • night gAlLERY: Forbidden Transmission (Apr 14) • reel fAMily CINEMA: Jumanji–1995 (Apr 21), Paddington 2 (Apr 28) • stAff Pics: Buffalo '66 (Apr 16) • sundAy clAsSICS: Vertigo–60th Anniversary (Apr 29, May 2)

ROMEO + JULIET: LADIES NIGHT IN THE IMAX THEATRE • TELUS World of Science, 11211-142 St • Arrive early and relax with a nice glass of wine or cold beer, enjoy a sit down meal at the Purple Pear restaurant and participate in fun science activities • Apr 26, 6-10pm • $7.95$11.95 • 18+ only

GALLERIES + MUSEUMS A.J. OTTEWELL ARTS CENTRE • 590 Broadmoor Blvd, Sherwood Park • 780.449.4443 • artsoc@telus.net • artstrathcona.com • Spring Fling 2018 Art Show and Sale; Apr 13-15 ALBERTA CRAFT COUNCIL GALLERY • 10186-106 St • 780.488.6611 • albertacraft. ab.ca • Process; Thinking Through: artwork by Charles Lewton-Brain; Jan 20-Apr 21 • The Art of Hide Tanning–Tradition Inspiring The Present and Future: artwork by Amy Malbeuf and Ruby Sweetman; Apr 14-May 26; Artist reception: Apr 14, 2-4pm ALLIED ARTS COUNCIL OF SPRUCE GROVE • Melcor Cultural Centre, 35-5th Ave, Spruce Grove • 780.962.0664 • alliedartscouncil. com • Open Sculpture Show; Apr 16-May 4; Reception: Apr 21, 1-3pm

ART GALLERY OF ALBERTA (AGA) • 2 Sir Winston Churchill Sq • 780.422.6223 • youraga. ca • Songs for Pythagoras: artwork by Peter von Tiesenhausen; Jan 27-May 6 • Manning Hall: The Pre-History of M.N. Hutchinson: Site 24; until Dec 31 • BMO World of Creativity: Wild Wood; until Dec 31 • RBC Work Room: Metamorphosis: artwork by Gloria Mok; until Jul 1 • Painting Alberta, Details of Canada: artwork by William Townsend; until Jul 1 • WEEKLY DROP-IN ACTIVITIES: Tours for Tots, Every Wed, 10-11am • Youth Workshops, ages 13-17, Every Thu, 4-6pm • Kids’ Open Studio, Every Sat, 1-3pm • Exhibition Tours; Every Sat-Sun, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm • Art for Lunch; 3rd Thu of the month, 12-1pm • VIBE; 3rd Fri of the month, 5-9pm ART GALLERY OF ST ALBERT (AGSA) • 19 Perron St, St Albert • 780.460.4310 • artgalleryofstalbert.ca • Inside Out: artwork by Wei Li; Apr 5-28

BEAR CLAW GALLERY • 10403-124 St • 780.482.1204 • info@bearclawgallery.com • bearclawgallery.com • Artwork by Jason Carter; Apr 14-Apr 26 • Spring Gallery Walk; Apr 14-15 BLEEDING HEART ART SPACE • 9132-118 Ave • dave@bleedingheartartspace.com • Artwork by Stephanie Jonsson; Apr 21-May 12

BOREALIS GALLERY • 9820-107 St • assembly.ab.ca/visitorcentre/borealis.html • Fur: The Fabric of Our Nation; Apr 25-Jul 3

BRUCE PEEL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS • Lower level, Rutherford South, University of Alberta • bpsc.library.ualberta.ca • Experiment: Printing the Canadian Imagination; Apr 27-Aug 24

BUGERA MATHESON GALLERY • 10345-124 St • bugeramathesongallery.com • Presence: artwork by Jim Visser; Apr 7-21 cAVA gAllery • 9103-95 Ave • 780.461.3427 • galeriecava.com • Exhibition Of Members: Until Apr 20 • Exploration Area: artwork

by Mathieu Léger; Until Apr 20 DC3 ART PROJECTS • 10567-111 St • 780.686.4211 • dc3artprojects.com • Artwork by Aganetha Dyck; Mar 15-Apr 14

ENTERPRISE SQUARE • 10230 Jasper Ave • Rock Water Wind Exhibition; Apr 10-29; Opening reception: Apr 12, 6:30-9pm; Live music by pianist Bob Husband FAB GALLERY • Fine Arts Building Gallery,1-1 FAB (University of Alberta) • ualberta.ca/artshows • lacuna: artwork by Becky Thera; Feb 20-May 17 • BFA 2018; Apr 17-28 FRONT GALLERY • 10402-124 St • thefrontgallery.com • Connectivity: artwork by Dave & Allan Thomas; Apr 26, 7-9pm

CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 >> arts 9

ARTIFACTS

Arts Weekly

Sierra Bilton sierra@vueweekly.com

<< CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

Spring Gallery Walk / Sat., Apr. 14 (10 am – 5 pm) & Sun., Apr. 15 (12 am – 4 pm) / 124 Street Celebrate Edmonton’s art this weekend on 124 Street. Happening twice a year, the Gallery Walk, formed in 1986, was the first event of its kind in Canada. Including nine of 124 Street’s art galleries, the Spring Gallery Walk offers a chance to see new exhibitions opening at the promenade galleries as well as a chance to (hopefully) celebrate the warming weather.

From north to south, the walk includes: Bearclaw Gallery (First Nations and Inuit art and sculpture), Scott Gallery (contemporary Canadian fine art), Front Gallery (a wide range of traditional to contemporary local artists), Peter Robertson Gallery (mid-career to established Canadian artists), Bugera Matheson Gallery (strong abstracts, reflective landscapes, and eccentric sculptures), West End Gallery (Canandian art, specifically from B.C. and Alberta), Udell Xhibitions (rising local talent and well-established artists ranging multiple media), Lotus Art Gallery (ultra-local artists), and Lando Gallery (Canadian and international fine art).

Take the route north to south and end at Remedy Café for a warm cuppa, take it in reverse to end up at Daravara for brunch or the Dutchess Bake Shop for some post-walk treats, or even take a break in the middle near 106 Avenue and have some belly-warming Thai for lunch at Numchok Wilai. The options are near limitless.

2017 — 2018

season

Alberta Premiere

NORTHERN LIGHT THEATRE PRESENTS

SLUT

BY CANADIAN PLAYWRIGHT BRENDA McFARLANE

GALLERY@501 • 501 Festival Ave, Sherwood Park • 780.410.8585 • strathcona.ca/artgallery • The Art of Truth and Reconciliation: artwork by George Littlechild; Mar 9-Apr 29 HARCOURT HOUSE GALLERY • 3 Fl, 10215-112 St • 780.426.4180 • harcourthouse. ab.ca • Wetlands: artwork by Florin Hategan; Mar 29-May 12 • Citizen of the World: artwork by Sara Norquay; Mar 29-May 12

LANDO GALLERY • 103, 10310-124 St •

LOFT GALLERY & GIFT SHOP • A.J.

Hobbit House, 9016-153 St • yegpoetshouse@ gmail.com • A workshop that introduces several terse styles • Apr 22, 1-5pm • $10 (suggested donation, in support of Edmonton Poets House)

Ottewell Arts Centre, 590 Broadmoor Blvd, Sherwood Park • Sat-Sun, 12-4pm (excluding long weekends) • Artwork by Desserrie Plewis, Lynda McAmmond, Lynn Sinfield, Joyce Boyer, Kay McCormick, and Terrie Shaw; Mar 3-Jul 8

MCMULLEN GALLERY • U of A Hospital,

TALES–Monthly Storytelling Circle •

8440-112 St • 780.407.7152 • friendsofuah. org/mcmullen-gallery • Home Grown: artwork

by Elaine Funnell & Amanda McCavour; Mar 10-Apr 22

Parkallen Community Hall, 6510-111 St • Monthly Tellaround: 2nd Wed each month • Sep-Jun, 7-9pm • Free • Info: 780.437.7736; talesedmonton@hotmail.com

MUSÉE HÉRITAGE MUSEUM • St

UPPER CRUST CAFÉ • 10909-86 Ave •

Albert Place, 5 St Anne Street, St Albert • MuseeHeritage.ca • 780.459.1528 • museum@ artsandheritage.ca • Witness Blanket/Forget-MeNot Métis Rose; Apr 3-Jun 3

PAINT SPOT • 10032-81 Ave • 780.432.0240 • paintspot.ca • NAESS GALLERY: Mountain Mystic: paintings by Sandie Kanak; Apr 10-May 9; Reception: Apr 14, 1-3pm (artist in attendance) • ARTISTAN NOOK: A Feast for the Eyes: paintings by Shelly Banks; Apr 10-May 9; Reception: Apr 14, 1-3pm (artist in attendance) PETER ROBERTSON GALLERY • 12323-104 Ave • 780.455.7479 • probertsongallery.com • Fields I Figure: artwork by Graham Peacock; Apr 6-24

PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES OF ALBERTA • 8555 Roper Road • PAA@gov.ab.ca • 780.427.1750 • culture.alberta.ca/paa/ eventsandexhibits/default.aspx • Open TueSat, 9am • 150 Firsts: How Alberta Changed Canada…Forever; Until Aug 1

SCOTT GALLERY • 10411-124 St •

STRATHCONA COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES • 913 Ash St, Sherwood Park • strathconacountymuseum.ca •Hidden Treasures: Community Service Champions; Runs until Apr 20

TELUS WORLD OF SCIENCE • 11211-142 St • telusworldofscienceedmonton.com • Daily activities, demonstrations and experiments • POPnology Exhibition; Feb 9-May 6 • Terry Fox– Running to the Heart of Canada; Feb 16-Sep 16

Ave, St Albert • 780.460.5990 • vasa-art.com • Members Spring Exhibition; Apr 3-28

WEST END GALLERY • 10337-124 St • 780.488.4892 • westendgalleryltd.com • Artwork

by Bill Webb; Apr 7-Apr 19

WOMEN'S ART MUSEUM OF CANADA • La Cité Francophone 2nd Pavillon, #200, 8627 Rue Marie-Anne-Gaboury (91 St) • 780.803.2016 • info@wamsoc.ca • wamsoc.ca • RE: The Current Narrative of Collecting Women’s Art; Mar 8-Apr 20

LITERARY A CELEBRATION OF POETRY! AT RUTHERFORD HOUSE • Rutherford House Provincial

Prices do not include GST

10 arts

Supper x Club, 10765 Jasper Ave • Every Tue

SCRIPT SALON • Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 10037-84 Ave • Every 2nd Sun of the month, 7:30pm • Free (donations accepted at the door)

VASA GALLERY • 25 Sir Winston Churchill

TICKETS: $25 Student/Senior, $30 Adults, $20 Sunday Matinée at www.northernlighttheatre.com or 780-471-1586

ROUGE POETRY SLAM HOSTED BY BREATH IN POETRY COLLECTIVE • BLVD

lotus-gallery.com • Lines Of Emotion: artwork by various artists; Mar 23-Apr 30

LOTUS ART GALLERY • 10321-124 St •

780.488.4445 • udellxhibitions.com • April's Feautred Artist; Hua Jin; through Apr

7:30pm Nightly Tuesday-Sunday 2:00pm Sunday Matinée

EDMONTON STORY SLAM • Mercury

PURSE VERSE AND POCKET POEMS–POETRY FESTIVAL BYOV DROP IN POETRY WORKSHOP • Edmonton Poets House @

UDELL XHIBITIONS • 10332-124 St NW •

STUDIO THEATRE ATB FINANCIAL ARTS BARNS 10330 - 84 AVENUE

DOWNTOWN EDMONTON BOOK CLUB • Downtown Edmonton Community League, 10042103 St • facebook.com/declorg • Open to anyone who lives, works, or plays downtown and wants to meet new people, have great conversations, and read cool stuff • Every 2nd Wed, 7-8:30pm

NW • latitude53.org • Les Transformables: curarated by Eric Mattson; Apr 13-May 26; Opening reception: Apr 13, 7pm

Print-Artists, 10123-121 St • 780.423.1492 • snapartists.com • India Inked!: currated by Nirmal Raja and Santosh Sakhinala; Apr 27-Jun 2

PREVIEW APR 05

10329-83 Ave NW • 780.433.3399 • varsconatheatre.com • In the pleasant living room of a beautiful country home in the quiet village of St. Ives, England, two brilliant women exchange pleasantries over cups of tea and scones.

However, we soon realize that this is no ordinary meeting • Apr 5-14, 7:30-9pm • $32-$37

LATITUDE 53 • Latitude 53, 10242-106 St

SNAP GALLERY • Society of Northern Alberta

APR 06– APR 14

GOING TO ST. IVES • Varscona Theatre,

Janet Dunnett "The Dwindling" Book Launch; Apr 14, 2-4pm • Edmonton Book Launch: The Air is Elastic; Apr 15, 2:30-5:30pm • Steff Guilly "My Heart Full of Words" Book Launch; Apr 20, 7-8:30pm

Room,10575-114 St • edmontonstoryslam.com • facebook.com/mercuryroomyeg • Great stories, interesting company, fabulous atmosphere • 3rd Wed each month • 7pm (sign-up); 7:30pm • $5 Donation to winner

780.990.1161 • landogallery.com • April Group Selling Exhibition; Apr 4-28 • Spring Gallery Walk; Apr 14-15

scottgallery.com • Recent Paintings: artwork

by Marianne Watchel; Apr 14-May 5; Opening reception: Apr 14, 2-5pm

Directed by TREVOR SCHMIDT Starring MICHELLE TODD

AUDREYS BOOKS • 10702 Jasper Ave •

Historic Site, 11153 Saskatchewan Drive • rutherfordhousehistoricsite.org • Lisa Martin, Naomi McIlwraith, Anna Mioduchowska and Shirley Serviss will be reading poems exploring this year's theme of Family • Apr 22, 12-4:30pm • $5-$7

780.422.8174 • strollofpoets.com • The Poets’ Haven Reading Series • Most Mon (except holidays), 7pm, Sep 18-Mar; presented by the Stroll of Poets Society • $5 (door)

THEATRE 11 O'CLOCK NUMBER • The Grindstone, 10019-81 Ave • grindstonetheatre.ca • This completely improvised musical comedy is based on the suggestions from the audience who will get to experience a brand new story unfold in front of them, complete with impromptu songs, dance breaks and show stopping numbers • Every Fri BLUE STOCKINGS • Walterdale Playhouse, 10322-83 Ave • walterdaletheatre.com • A play about four young women fighting for their right to receive an education during the era of women’s suffrage • Apr 4-14

CHIMPROV • Citadel's Zeidler Hall, 9828-101A Ave • rapidfiretheatre.com • Rapid Fire Theatre’s long form comedy show: improv formats, intricate narratives, and one-act plays • Every Sat, 10pm; Sep 10-Jun 9 • $15 (door or buy in adv at TIX on the Square)

COUGAR ANNIE TALES • The Aviary, 9314-111 Ave • A one woman play about a legendary west coast pioneer settler. Cougar Annie trapped over 70 cougars, outlived four husbands, bore 11 children and carved a life out of a remote west coast rainforest bog in the early 1900s • Apr 16, 7-10pm

COYOTE COMEDY • The Grindstone, 1001981 Ave • A 50-minute long form improv show that has lots of short little scenes throughout it. A suggestion (or two) are taken from the audience and then Grindstone cuts loose • Apr 12, 7pm • $10 DIE-NASTY • Varscona Theatre, 10329-83 Ave

INFINITY • Roxy on Gateway, 8529 Gateway Blvd • How does a new Theory of Time change everything we know about ourselves? In this Dora-Award Winner for Best New Play, three brilliant minds–a musician, a mathematician, and a theoretical physicist–collide like particles, and together they learn that love and time are connected in ways they could never have imagined • Apr 17-May 6

LATE NIGHT EDMONTON • The Grindstone, 10019-81 Ave • A filmed talk show performed on stage with a live audience • Apr 14, 11pm • $12

OPEN JAM • The Grindstone, 10019-81 Ave • 780.907.2975 • grindstonetheatre.ca • Facilitated by Grindstone Theatre. Swap games and ideas and get an opportunity to play. For those of all levels • Last Tue of each month PRETTY GOBLINS • ATB Financial Arts Barns (Backstage Theatre), 10330-84 Ave • Sisters.

Twins. Together. Forever. In the middle of a cold, dark, night Laura discovers her estranged fraternal twin sister, Lizzie, howling in her living room. Lizzie’s sudden appearance loosens Laura’s grip on reality sending the sisters on a journey of tragic discovery • Apr 18-29 THE SILVER ARROW: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ROBIN HOOD • Citadel Theatre, 9828-101A Ave • citadeltheatre.com • The world premiere of a new twist on the classic Robin Hood adventure story, featuring a female protagonist and aweinspiring aerial acrobatics • Apr 21-May 13

SLUT • Studio Theatre in the ATB Financial Arts Barns, 10330-84 Ave • 780.471.1586 • northernlighttheatre.com • By Brenda McFarlane. Matilda is a woman who gives of herself freely. So freely in fact, that the senior citizens from the complex next door have her arrested for running a brothel.

During an endless night of bookings at the police station, Matilda runs a gamut of emotions: joy, regret, remorse, anger, despair and love • Apr 5-14 • $20-$25 THEATRESPORTS • Citadel's Zeidler Hall, 9828-101A Ave • rapidfiretheatre.com • Improv • Every Fri, 7:30pm and 10pm • Sep 9-Jun 8 • $15

THUNDERPROV • The Grindstone, 10019-81 Ave • A fast-paced, narrative-fuelled improv show crackling with energy and wit. Using a suggestion provided by the audience, the Sorry, Not Sorry players will explore a character-driven story, peppered with scenes that dig into the narrative’s themes and concepts • Apr 14, 7pm • $10

UNDERCOVER • Citadel Theatre, 9828-101A Ave • citadeltheatre.com • One grizzled cop. One audience-member-turned-rookie-detective. One unsolved case • Apr 4-29

UP LATE WITH DANA ANDERSEN • The Grindstone, 10019-81 Ave • The legendary, Dana Andersen, is taking back comedy in his all new, uninhibited late night talk show, Up Late With Dana Andersen • Apr 13, 11pm • $14

Undercover Citadel Theatre Until Sun., Apr. 29 Starting at $30

• die-nasty.com • Live improvised soap opera.

Join the whole Die-Nasty family REBORN, for a whole season of great artists, earth-shaking discovery, glorious music, hilarious hi jinx...but mostly Machiavellian Intrigue • Runs every Mon, 6:30pm (doors), 7:30-9:30pm • Oct 23-May 29

DON GIOVANNI • Jubilee Auditorium, 1145587 Ave • 780.429.1000 • edmontonopera.com • He’s sly, arrogant, and takes pride in breaking women’s hearts–opera’s most notorious bad boy Don Giovanni is back in all his seductive glory this spring • Apr 14 at 8pm, Apr 17, 20 at 7:30pm • Tickets from $40

FOUR BANGER FRIDAYS • The Grindstone, 10019-81 Ave • Host Simon Gorsak curates a staggering four comic showcase and plays host to the funniest people he knows from across Canada • Apr 13, 9pm • $12

FREEDOM SKETCH • The Grindstone, 1001981 Ave • Every month Ms. Perfect Boy attempts its magnum opus Freedom Sketch '90: a takedown of the current social zeitgeist that at the same time celebrates the shared human experience, all the way from the birth of man to the heat death of the universe • Apr 14, 9pm • $10

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

/ Emily Cooper Photography

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

arts 11

Top to bottom: Ludmylla, Angelo, and Victor of 3 Siblings / Supplied

VUEWEEKLY.com/FILM

FINAL PORTRAIT

FILM FEST

The best of FAVA hits on some great notes 3 Siblings Directed By Sheena Rossiter Anybody who has visited São Paulo, Brazil can tell you that homophobic and transphobic violence is a very serious problem—especially in the favelas (slums), which according to GEOCASES, a human geography case study site, makes up 70 percent of the city’s living space.

Yet, beyond this rampant violence against the queer community, São Paulo also hosts the largest LGBT Pride Parade in the world, with an estimated five million participants that grows every year.

So on paper, Brazil seems like a pretty welcoming community for the LGBT, but that’s unfortunately not the case.

This is the truth that filmmaker Sheena Rossiter and producer Sandro Silva’s 3 Siblings documentary looks to clarify. The film follows the stories of Ludmylla, Victor, and Angelo, three siblings who live in São Paulo, each withdifferent gender identities. Ludmylla was born as Leonardo, and is transitioning with the hopes to “abolish” her masculine identity forever, while Victor identifies as gay, and Angelo identifies as straight.

Throughout the 22-minute film, each character quickly but, in Angelo’s case, slowly, comes to accept their sibling’s identity while gearing up for the LGBT Pride Parade. This is an easy task for Ludmylla and Victor who have been supporting each other since coming out, but it takes time for Angelo who fits the common South American ‘machismo’ stereotype. At 31-yearsold he is also the patriarch and provider for his siblings since their mother passed.

Ludmylla and Victor have thankfully never suffered a violent situation due to their gender identity, but the film strongly portrays queer hate violence as “something that happens every day.” The film is also a tribute to São Paulo’s favela streets. Though they are slums, the filmwork paints the favelas as beautiful, diverse melting pots of inclusivity.

The goal here is to point out the positives of São Paulo, with the finest moments showing the siblings partying it up during the colourful Pride Parade. At its core, 3 Siblings is a truly enjoyable, human story.

Stephan Boissonneault stephan@vueweekly.com

FRI, APR 13 – THUR, APR 19

FINDING YOUR FEET

FRI: 7:00 & 9:30PM SAT: 1:00, 3:30, 7:00 & 9:30PM SUN: 1:00, 3:30, 6:00 & 8:30PM MON TO THURS: 7:00 & 9:15PM RATED: PG

FINAL PORTRAIT

FRI & MON TO THURS: 6:45PM SAT: 1:15 & 6:45PM SUN: 1:15 & 6:15PM RATED: 14A, CL, N

12 film

THE DEATH OF STALIN FRI: 9:00PM SAT: 3:45 & 9:00PM SUN: 3:45 & 8:15PM MON TO WED: 8:45PM RATED: 14A, CL

Tue., Apr. 17 – 21 FAVA Fest, 3 Siblings, Sophia., Peak Oil Metro Cinema at Garneau Admission by donation

Sophia Directed By Zsóphia Opra-Szabó Stop-motion animation has long toed the line between being something fun, and being something absolutely terrifying. Zsóphia OpraSzabó does well showing this in her FAVA Fest entry, Sophia, which follows the title character as she transverses her cloth, clay, and plastic universe.

This world appears to be made up of picture frames, and Sophia, apparently fretting old age, uses gusts of wind and a Mary Poppinsesque umbrella to travel from selfcontained world to self-contained world until she eventually lands in a city frame. There, she is trapped, as no wind blows, and the short’s score takes a decidedly jazzy note.

Eventually, she meets and befriends an old man who begins to court her, but she eventually decides to move on with her travels.

The old man, though, turns into a spider and traps her in a bird cage surrounded by webs. It’s honestly pretty unsettling at this point.

That’s the strength of Sophia, though. The 10-minute film wistfully displays the protagonists longing for freedom, even in a bizarre universe where everything exists between wooden borders, and where the only other person she meets apparently wants to (yikes) keep her trapped in a cage, feed her cupcakes, and stroke her hair.

When the characters do ‘speak,’ they mumble vaguely, like characters in The Sims, and most of their scarce emoting comes from bulging eyes and other non-verbal ques.

All of this, and the drab backdrops, broken up only by scant pieces of red, gives the film a surreal quality—intentional—as does the film’s kind of jerky animation—probably unintentional? At times, Sophia is strange, and sad, with hints of beauty.

At others, it is jarring, vague, and downright creepy, but that’s stop-motion done right for an adult audience.

Doug Johnson doug@vueweekly.com

Peak Oil Directed by Dylan Rhys Howard “Strike oil.” That phrase once carried the chime of hoped-for luck, the ring of money. On Oct. 3, 1930, near Henderson, Texas, as journalist Lawrence Wright recounts, that afternoon “a gurgling was heard; at eight o’clock, oil shot into the air in a great and continuous ejaculation. People danced in the black rain, and children painted their faces with oil.”

Moments into Dylan Rhys Howard’s Peak Oil—a sharp-eyed, finely allegorical short—the face of Andrew (Andrew Gummer) seems painted only with dismay, maybe flecked with resignation. He drives to the city (Edmonton) from the

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

oil-patch, then hits the bar, but the bar soon hits back. Bumping into another guy, Andrew turns, looks woefully fatalistic about the ritual he’ll have to enact, and the pair go at each other out front, on the sidewalk. Then Andrew’s truly down and out.

There’s another, far more harrowing confrontation to come, with the seemingly tranquil, comfortably urban Amanda (Mary Hulbert). (After that bar scene, would it be drilling too deep to see these coupled initials—AA— as reflective of addiction or, perhaps, an attempt at recovery?)

But Peak Oil is all about a greater reckoning—how to face the fall in fortunes? From a firetorn Fort Mac to scores of abandoned wells, the crash saw Alberta’s billion-dollar pumping industry, and its mostly male workers, hit hard.

Testosterone-whiffs of desolation and entanglement can be sensed in two striking landscape shots: Andrew pissing in an open field, a phallic, candy-striped smokestack in the distance; a barbedwire fence, one of its wire strands gnarled and twisted up, all bent out of shape, beyond repair.

And so, as a choir’s voices soar, as if in search of transcendence, the last face we see isn’t a face struck with expectation, love, or belief, but a face stricken. Like an economy. Or a province.

Brian Gibson

DRAMA

Edna Manitowabi who plays Naomi (centre) and Sladen Peltier playing young Saul (right) / Supplied

Indian Horse offers a chance to foster country-wide healing and understanding

T

he story happened so many times in our short history. As a child, Saul Indian Horse is taken from his northern Ojibway family to be placed in an Indian residential school. There Saul suffers routine emotional, physical, and verbal abuse alongside his Indigenous peers in an effort by both the Canadian government and Catholic Church to rid the child of the Indian.

In this oppressive environment, eight-year-old Saul is denied the freedom to speak his language or learn about his Indigenous heritage. It is also in this environment that Saul secretly discovers hockey, which quickly evolves into a passion and a rapidly-growing talent for the young Anishinaabe boy. It isn’t until his athletic talent and prowess is seen as a young adult that he glimpses an escape beyond the trauma that haunts him everyday.

Based upon the award-winning novel written by Richard Wagamese, Dennis Foon’s screen play adaptation of Indian Horse hits theatres across the country this weekend. In the novel, as Saul reaches the pros, the ghosts of his traumatic past haunt him and threaten his balance. Starring Sladen Peltier, Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant), and Ajuawak Kapashesit (Indian Road Trip) as Saul at ages six, 15, and 22 respectively, together the three form a character forged by the injustices done to him, which fuel his determination and spirit forward.

Directed by one Canada’s brilliant visual minds behind several awardwinning films (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri being the most recent), Stephen Campanelli (Momentum) brings the story of Canada’s swept-away past to the forefront, and in doing so tells a universal story of hope.

“It just hit me like a ton of bricks,” Campanelli says. “I knew very little about the subject matter to be honest—like wow— how could this happen in our own backyard and be kept a secret all these years?”

Growing up, Campanelli, along with the film’s producers Christine Haebler and Trish Dolman, were never taught about residential schools, in fact the subject was entirely new to them when they first stumbled upon Wagamese’s novel in 2012. This was the case for many Canadians when they first picked up Indian Horse, and still is for some.

Edna Manitowabi, who plays Saul’s grandmother (Naomi), knew of the residential school system because she attended one as a girl. In filming, certain scenes like the haircutting and the bathtub drug up unwanted old ghosts and traumas for Manitowabi to confront. At first she was frustrated by the process, but eventually found it to be healing for her.

“I think because I’ve had those strong emotions in my body all my life that it triggers right away,” Manitowabi says. “It was

almost like a sense of purging actually, a releasing of old traumas that were lodged or stored in the body for all those years since I was little.”

With ceremony weaved into the filming process, actors were able to excise past traumas and heal suppressed wounds—whether they were personal or familial—in a good way.

Frog Lake, Alberta actor Tristen Marty-Pahtaykan grew up with a grandfather—“mosóm Joe”—who attended residential schools, but didn’t ever speak about his experiences there. Before filming, MartyPahtaykan asked to sit with his mosóm to better portray his character (Buddy Blackwolf) in the film, but as a result found an ability to better understand his grandfather and his larger family.

The extraordinarily healing power of Wagamese’s Indian Horse goes beyond just those involved in the film. Screenings in First Nations across the country have seen healing as well. The hope is for this to only continue as the film is brought to theatres country-wide.

“It was something you didn’t talk about—it was taboo—and you’ll find people who won’t talk about it,” Manitowabi says. “You hear things like: ‘Get over it,’ or ‘Why cry about the past?’ but for me, it was like I had to bring it out, I had to share it. For me, the film was very powerful because it freed me, it set me free.”

Indian Horse presents an opportunity to learn our history. A history

Opening Fri., Apr. 13 Indian Horse Directed by Stephen Campanelli Scotiabank Theatre Edmonton, Cineplex Odeon South Edmonton, Landmark City Centre 9

that led to the “aggressive assimilation” policy that allowed Canadian government agents to take Indigenous children from their families to be placed in church-run industrial schools designed to forcibly assimilate. The assumption at the time was that Indigenous culture would be unable to adapt to society’s rapid modernization.

From the beginning of production through until his passing in spring of last year, Wagamese continually

echoed the sentiment: “we change the world one story at a time.” His words still ring true today at this juncture: a place for people to understand our history and actively pursue truth and reconciliation going forward. This happens first and foremost by understanding our collective history and secondly, in the way we relate to and reconcile with those we meet.

Sierra Bilton sierra@vueweekly.com

APR 12 - APR 18

PRESENTS NIGHT GALLERY ANNIHILATION THUR @ 9:30, SAT @ 4:00 FORBIDDEN TRANSMISSION MARY AND THE WITCH’S FLOWER SAT @ MIDNIGHT SCREENS IN THE METRO LOBBY SAT @ 1:00 – ENGLISH DUBBED GALLERY. TICKETS $6 – FREE ADMISSION FOR KIDS 12 & UNDER THUR @ 7:00, SUN @ 3:30, MON @ 9:30 JAPANESE W/ SUBTITLES AFTERNOON TEA MOULIN ROUGE! (2001) SUN @ 1:00 PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES OF ALBERTA KINK ON SCREEN CANCON CLASSICS THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE SUN @ 9:30 FRI @ 7:00 FREE ADMISSION PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES OF ALBERTA AIRWOLF FRI @ 9:00 FREE ADMISSION PATHS FOR PEOPLE

A CITY FOR LIFE 2018 SAT @ 7:00 LIVE EVENT

HUMBOLDT BRONCOS FUNDRAISER SLAP SHOT SAT @ 9:30 REGULAR ADMISSION. ALL BOX OFFICE PROCEEDS DONATED TO THE HUMBOLDT BRONCOS GOFUNDME. NO METRO PASSES

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

STAFF PICS / 20TH ANNIVERSARY

BUFFALO '66 MON @ 7:00 FAVA FEST APRIL 17 – 20 WWW.FAVA.CA

ADMISSION BY DONATION

Metro Cinema at the Garneau: 8712-109 Street WWW.METROCINEMA.ORG

film 13

VUEWEEKLY.com/MUSIC POST SCRIPT

ALT-ROCK

L-R, Andrew Scott, Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy and Patrick Pentland of Sloan / Vanessa Heins

Sloan’s Jay Ferguson reflects on his early record store days and the band’s ‘Cinderella story’ success

J

ay Ferguson of Sloan still remembers running around dusty record stores in downtown Halifax, reading old rock ‘n roll magazines like Creem, and dreaming of one day being in a band. At age 12, Ferguson’s love for music exploded when he was offered a job at the now defunct Ol’ Dan’s Records.

“I used to hang out there all the time—probably being a pest—there a was guy working there who got fired as I was in the store,” says Ferguson, now 49. “So the owner turned to me —it’s like a total Almost Famous kind of story—and said ‘Do you want a job?’ He gave it to me at the age of 12 and I made $3.25 an hour. It was awesome.”

That was in 1981 and Ferguson, being a 12-year-old kid who could talk your ear off about obscure Kinks records and the life

14 music

and times of The Velvet Underground, became something of a novelty for local media to enjoy.

“CBC and outlets like that would interview me about music ‘cause it was so bizarre hearing all this stuff from a child,” he says.

Ferguson eventually formed the band Kearney Lake Road with musician Chris Murphy, which became the foundation of Sloan after Patrick Pentland and Andrew Scott joined in late 1991. All of the members could play multiple instruments and decided early on that everyone would contribute to lyrics and song writing. It became a Sloan trademark.

“I think by this point in our career we sort of parlayed that as part of our identity as this fourheaded monster,” Ferguson says. “There’s not the disgruntled bass player who is not allowed to contribute his songs.

Everybody sings and writes and we share everything. It’s always been very democratic. It’s kind of like The Beatles template.

The money is split four ways and there’s not like a millionaire in the band or anything while three guys struggle to pay their mortgage.”

In the mid-1990s, Sloan was seen as the Canadian answer to the grunge movement that was consuming The United States.

With their debut full-length Smeared, Sloan’s sound was angsty, but in a Canadian fashion with hints of Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and My Bloody Valentine. It did well for them.

“It was a total Cinderella story for us in the beginning,” Ferguson says. “It was pretty outrageous being this kid from Halifax and then signing to Geffen in the States right away.”

Now Sloan has 12 albums under their belts and an impressive catalogue of songs that consistently crowned them kings of the Canadian radio singles charts.

“We never reached an an obnoxious amount of success you know?” Ferguson says. “Where you’re like: ‘OK I don’t have to do this again for a bit. I’m just going to go sit on my yacht for 30 years.’ It’s a real thing where we are constantly thinking what we are going to be doing months from now. A record, a reissue, what’s the next project?”

The band’s latest record 12, proves Sloan are still very much the kaisers of catchy rock tunes that they were in the 1990s. The single “The Day Will Be Mine,” has the same attitude as a past song like “Underwhelmed.”

“I like to think there’s a bit of inconsistent consistency to our

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

Thu., Apr. 12 (7 pm) An Evening with Sloan The Starlite Room From $25 records,” Ferguson says. “The Day Will Be Mine,” is actually from the Navy Blues era. Chris and I were doing some archiving and we found an old demo of that song that Patrick had made. The new album is a lot of brand new songs and some that have been kicking around for a number of years. It’s like ‘Oh, that didn’t work in 2010?’

Let’s dig it up now.”

The next projects Sloan will be working on are their Canadian tour and a reissue of Navy Blues which has the radio anthem “Money City Maniacs.” Come on … you know it. It’s the coke fizz song.

Stephan Boissonneault stephan@vueweekly.com

10442 whyte ave 439.1273 10442 whyte ave 439.1273

OUTLAW COUNTRY PUNK

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HIS REPUTATION PRECEDES HIM...

Orquesta Akokán

Petunia has yodelled his way into a unique and modern vintage sound

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UPCOMING

EVENTS

SOUTH EDMONTON COMMON APR 12

MULLIGRUB w/ Alloys and Doreen

APR 13

PETUNIA & THE VIPERS w/ The Rumble

APR 14

PALAYE ROYALE

WEST EDMONTON MALL

T

THROWBACK THURSDAY w/ The Sissy Fits

APR 13

LIVE BAND KARAOKE w/ The Nervous Flirts

APR 14

SAINT & THE FULL 100 BAND

For tickets and full listings TheRecRoom.com

Third from left: (Petunia) & The Vipers / Jodie Ponto

he man known only as Petunia has been referred to as the yodelling love child of David Lynch and Nick Cave, and a cross between Tom Waits and Elvis Presley if they met at Woody Guthrie’s hobo junction.

Yet, it’s hard to place him in a single box.

“It’s an apt comparison to say there are elements of what I do that can be rightly compared to Tom Waits or Nick Cave,” Petunia says. “It’d be easy to go ‘Wow, this guy has got a show that’s a lot like Blue Velvet. But then there’s lots of other elements in the show.”

APR 12

almost 10 years hitchhiking his way across Canada, cutting his musical teeth on street corners across the country.

“It’s not like I sat at home and thought ‘Oh, maybe I should start hitchhiking all over Canada and playing on street corners.’ That’s not what happened,” he says. “I was already travelling around and hitchhiking. Once I started playing music, it was just natural for me to pull out a guitar and play music on a park bench or wherever I was.”

Petunia’s vocals are extremely reminiscent of early country and

Fri., Apr. 13 (9 pm) Petunia & The Vipers The Rec Room South $15 general admission

The Rec Room is owned by Cineplex Entertainment L. P.

his band or as a solo act, he composes and musical directs for theatre companies. One of his favourite performances—which saw him composing, directing, and performing—was the contemporary dance company, MACHiNENOiSY’s Bamboozled, directed by Delia Brett and Daelik Hackenbrook.

Petunia’s latest project is a web series called The Musicianer,

“I can play just about anything you give me. It doesn’t mean I can play live for a whole song, accompanying a band, on a song I’ve never played before. [But] I can figure out any instrument you give me, and figure out how to play it.” – Petunia Petunia & The Vipers formed in 2007, and have been playing together for more than 10 years.

Known for their old-school Americana sound, and signature yodeling, the band also throws in dashes of punk rock, folk, and new rock to the mix. They released Lonesome Heavy and Lonesome, last September and according to Petunia, fans are saying it’s the best and most sophisticated album yet.

Petunia’s musical career stretches back further then the band, however. Before he was known as a musician, he spent

jug band music, channeling Hank Williams, and the Carter Family, but with more of a punk rock flair.

Despite having no formal musical training, Petunia manages to yodel like a beast, and can play a variety of instruments ranging from the guitar to the kazoo.

“I can play just about anything you give me,” he says. “It doesn’t mean I can play live for a whole song, accompanying a band, on a song I’ve never played before.

[But] I can figure out any instrument you give me, and figure out how to play it.”

When Petunia isn’t touring with

which was directed by Beth Harrington. In the show, Petunia plays Vern Lockhart—a man who’s become unstuck in time.

In the present day, Lockhart is a musician just trying to make a quick buck on the street, but he also exists in the 1920s as a yodelling musician on his way to stardom—much like Petunia.

The story follows Lockhart as he unravels the details of what’s truly going on, while highlighting a wide range of Americana artists. Sounds like the perfect role for Petunia.

Alexander Sorochan

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

music 15

MUSIC WEEKLY EMAIL YOUR FREE LISTINGS TO: LISTINGS@VUEWEEKLY.COM DEADLINE: FRIDAY AT 12PM

THU APR 12 ACCENT LOUNGE The

AwesomeHots and Mortar & Marrow; 9-11:30pm; $10; 18+ only ARIA'S BISTRO Open mic

with Garrett James; 6-10pm; All ages AUSSIE RULES KITCHEN & PIANO BAR Piano Show; Every

Thu, 8pm BAILEY THEATRE–CAMROSE

The "Better Than That" Benefit with Son of John & Karen Wagner; 7:30pm (door), 8:30pm (opening act), 9:30pm (main act) BLUES ON WHYTE Eddie

Turner; 9pm BLVD SUPPER X CLUB B**ch A Little, Wine Alot (house, hiphop and reggae music); Every Thu; No cover BRICK & WHISKEY PUBLIC HOUSE Big Rockin' Thursday

Jam & Open Mic; Every Thu, 8pm

Joe

i h c Ma

THE BUCKINGHAM B.Rich with

Music Presents Taylor Hambly, Richelle Ziola, Deoel Villamor, and Téa Gonzales; 7pm; $10 FIDDLER'S ROOST Acoustic

Circle Jam; 7:30-11:30pm HAVE MERCY Thigh Thursdays

with El Niven & The Alibi and friends; Every Thu, 8:30pm; No cover LB'S PUB Open Jam hosted

by Russell Johnston NAKED CYBERCAFÉ Thu open

stage; 7pm NORTH GLENORA HALL Jam

by Wild Rose Old Tyme Fiddlers every Thu; 7pm REC ROOM–SOUTH EDMONTON COMMON

8:30-10:30pm; $10 BLUES ON WHYTE Eddie

Turner; 9pm CAFE BLACKBIRD Around

Midnight; 8pm; $15 CAFFREY'S IN THE PARK

Vent; 9pm CARROT COFFEEHOUSE Lara Tang; 7:30-9pm; $5 (18 and under are free) CASINO EDMONTON The Last

Call; 9pm CENTURY CASINO–ST. ALBERT

Black Velvet Show Band; 9pm; Free DENIZEN HALL Champ City Soundtrack; Every Fri-Sat DUGGAN'S BOUNDARY Adam

Holm; 9pm THE FORGE ON WHYTE Electric

Six with Northern Faces, Klusterfunk & Hewson Grey; 8pm; $20 (adv), $25 (door); 18+ only

LB'S PUB The Ramifications; 9pm; No minors LEAF BAR AND GRILL Karoake at the Leaf; Every Fri, 9pm; Free ON THE ROCKS Radioactive;

9pm REC ROOM–SOUTH EDMONTON COMMON Petunia & The Vipers

and The Rumbles; 8:30pm; $15 (adv), $20 (door) REC ROOM–WEST EDMONTON MALL Live Band Karaoke with

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Main Floor: DJ Late Fee; Every Fri; Wooftop: Selection Fridays with

Remo, Noosh, Fingertips & guests; Underdog: Rap, House, Hip-Hop with DJ Teddy Plenti; every Fri THE COMMON Quality Control

Fridays with DJ Echo & Freshlan EL CORTEZ MEXICAN KITCHEN + TEQUILA BAR Resident DJs

playing the best in hip-hop, dance and classics; Every Fri-Sat, 9pm; No cover THE PROVINCIAL PUB Video

Music DJ; 9pm-2am

SAT APR 14 ALIBI PUB & EATERY Rising

Fundraiser featuring Medicine Hat Cask and a DJ; 8pm AUSSIE RULES KITCHEN & PIANO BAR Piano Show; Every

Sat, 9pm AVIARY Reggae is Tight; 8pm; $5 B-STREET BAR Karaoke; Every Fri-Sat, 9:30pm

Greatly; 9pm

STARLIGHT CASINO Steve

DEVANEY'S IRISH PUB Karaoke

Arsenault; 10pm

night; Every Mon, 9pm; Free

UNION HALL Roy Woods–Say

FIDDLER'S ROOST Open Stage;

Less Tour; 8pm; $25-$35

7-11pm

YARDBIRD SUITE Andrew

PLEASANTVIEW COMMUNITY HALL Wild Rose Old Tyme

Glover Quintet; 7pm (doors), 8pm (show); $22 (members), $26 (guests)

Floor: Substance with Eddie Lunchpail

Serenades, Lollipops & Roses– Festival City Winds Intermediate Bands; 7:30-9:30pm; $12 (adults), $5 (kids 12 and under)

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Hair of

the Dog: Wilfred N & the Grown Men; 4-6pm; No cover BLIND PIG PUB Saturday

afternoon live music showcase; Every Sat, 3-7pm BLUE CHAIR CAFÉ Sam and

Jess; 8:30-10:30pm; $10 BLUES ON WHYTE Eddie

Turner; 9pm BOHEMIA A New Rhetoric, Re-

Form, Me The Guts, Rebuild/ Repair; 8pm 8pm; $10

THE COMMON Get Down It's Saturday Night: House and disco and everything in between with Wright & Wong, Dane EL CORTEZ MEXICAN KITCHEN + TEQUILA BAR Resident DJs

9910 Catchthedaydreamer

with Coast, Write Hand, Hide, Rhythmic, Downtowndan, and more; 8:30pm; $10 (door)

WED APR 18

ALIBI PUB AND EATERY Open

CASK AND BARREL Whyte Ave

mic night; Every Sun, 6-9pm AUSSIE RULES KITCHEN & PIANO BAR Piano Show; Every

AVIARY Billie Zizi Tour Kickoff Show with Ryan McNally; 7:30pm; $10 (adv), $12 (door)

Sun, 9pm

Soundtrack; Every Fri-Sat

BLIND PIG PUB Blind Pig Pub Ham Jam; Every Sun, 4-8pm; No cover

DUGGAN'S BOUNDARY Adam

BLUE CHAIR CAFÉ Sunday

Holm; 9pm EMPRESS ALE HOUSE Bands

Brunch with Accellorosa; 9am2pm; Cover by donation BLUES ON WHYTE Eddie

The YEG Sauce 3; 9pm HILLTOP PUB Open stage

Music Series with Andrew Glover; 1pm ON THE ROCKS Mourning

STARLIGHT CASINO Steve

Wood; 9pm

Arsenault; 10pm

LB'S PUB Crank; 9pm; No

RICHARD’S PUB Live musician

STARLITE ROOM 88 Fingers

minors

Louie; 8pm; $22; 18+ only

LEAF BAR AND GRILL

TEMPLE–STARLITE ROOM

Homemade Jam; 3-7pm; Free

Falsifier, Extortionist, Born A New; 8pm; $12; 18+ only

MKT FRESH FOOD AND BEER MARKET Live Local Bands

UNION HALL Code Black;

every Sat

jam with live karaoke, hosted by the Ralph Pretz Band; Every Sun, 4-8pm SANDS INN & SUITES Open

Jam; Every Sun, 7-11pm YARDBIRD SUITE Yardbird

REC ROOM–SOUTH EDMONTON COMMON Palaye Royale and

Suite Jazz Orchestra: One For Tommy: The Music of Tommy Banks; 1pm (doors), 2pm (show); $24 (members), $28 (guests)

guests; 7pm; $12 (adv), $15 (door)

Classical

REC ROOM–WEST EDMONTON MALL Saint & The Full 100;

ALL SAINTS CATHEDRAL

9pm; $15-$20; 18+ only

ON THE ROCKS Radioactive;

WILD EARTH BAKERY–MILLCREEK Live Music Fridays;

9pm

Lackner; 7pm (doors), 8pm (show); $20 (members), $24 (guests)

9:30pm; Free

Classical

RICHARD'S PUB DJ Brad

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

Main Floor: Chris Bruce spins

SUN APR 15

hosted by Simon, Dan and Pascal; Every Sat, 4-7pm; Free

Edmonton’s Greenwood Singers presents Songs of Hope; 8pm; $20 (adult), $18 (students/seniors)

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE

Call; 9pm

DENIZEN HALL Champ City

MCDOUGALL UNITED CHURCH

sion: John Sweenie Quintet; 7:30pm (door), 8pm (show); $5

CASINO EDMONTON The Last

CARROT COFFEEHOUSE Sat Open mic; 6-10pm; Free

Bands: live music; Every Fri

FRI APR 13

Jewell Band Open stage YARDBIRD SUITE Tuesday Ses-

britpop/punk/garage/indie; Every Tue

Wong every Sat

STARLITE ROOM An Evening

every Thu; dance lessons at 8pm; Cuban Salsa DJ to follow

SHAKERS ROADHOUSE Rod

MERCER TAVERN DJ Mikey

CHURCH OF HOLY CITY Live

ON THE ROCKS Salsa Rocks:

LB'S PUB Tuesday Night Open Jam Hosted by Darrell Barr; 7-11pm; No charge

EL CORTEZ MEXICAN KITCHEN + TEQUILA BAR Taco Tuesday

SEWING MACHINE FACTORY

YARDBIRD SUITE Benny

Vinyl Night with Sheriff Taylor; Every 3rd Tue of the month

DJs

THE FORGE ON WHYTE Lost In

THE COMMON The Common Uncommon Thursday: Rotating guests each week

Circle; 7:30-11:30pm

THE PROVINCIAL PUB Saturday Nights: Indie rock and dance with DJ Maurice; 9pm-2am

Vent; 9pm

Black Velvet Show Band; 9pm; Free

Each Fri, 8-10pm; $5 suggested donation

BLUES ON WHYTE Daring

playing the best in hip-hop, dance and classics; Every Fri-Sat, 9pm; No cover

SHERLOCK HOLMES–WEM

Soul with DJ Modest Mike; Every Thu; Wooftop Lounge: Dear Hip Hop with Freshlan; Underdog: Underdog Comedy Show

TUE APR 17

HAVE MERCY Outlaw Country

Songwriter Open Mic Hosted

by Tommy Barker; Every Thu, 7-9:30pm

Main Fl: Rock N' Roll, Funk &

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Main

britpop/punk/garage/indie; Every Sat; Wooftop: Sound It Up! with DJ Instigate spinning classic hip-hop and reggae; Underdog: hip-hop open Mic followed by DJ Marack

Turner; 9pm

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Thu

Songwriter Monday Night Open Stage; Hosted by Celeigh Cardinal; Every Mon (except long weekends), 8:30pm

ROBERT TEGLER CENTRE

at the Empress; Every Sat, 4-6pm; Free; 18+ only

DJs

SIDELINER’S PUB Singer/

DJs

Bottom; 9pm; All ages

WOODRACK CAFÉ Birdie on a Branch; 2nd Thu of every month, 7-8:30pm; No cover (donations welcome)

Fiddlers Acoustic Music Jam & Dancing; 7-10pm

Emporium Big Band presents An Evening of Duke Ellington; 7pm; $22 (plus applicable fees)

SQUARE 1 COFFEE Singer/

With Sloan; 8pm; $25-$32

BLUES ON WHYTE Daring

Mike Dominey; 9pm

FIDDLER'S ROOST Fiddle Jam

with entertainment, Every Fri, 9pm

SIDELINER’S PUB Friday Night

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Wooftop: Metal Mondays with Metal Phil from CJSR's Heavy Metal Lunchbox

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Main Floor: DJ Chris Bruce spins

Womprats; 4-6pm; Free

Mike Dominey; 9pm

MON APR 16

The Western Hospitality Singers; 7pm (doors); $20 at the Bailey Box Office or online

CENTURY CASINO–ST. ALBERT

SHAKERS ROADHOUSE Rock

Fee; Every Sun

Greatly; 9pm

Sonego; 9pm

Club Jam hosted by Rodney Jewell; Every Thu, 7-11pm

SHERLOCK HOLMES–WEM

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Main Floor: DJ Zyppy with DJ Late

DJs

SANDS INN & SUITES Karaoke

Dazed and Confused - Boosh & The Dip, guests The Band, Liminal and more; 9pm; $10 (doors); 18+ only

9pm

DJs

BAILEY THEATRE–CAMROSE

CAFFREY'S IN THE PARK

ROSE & CROWN PUB Sean

SHERLOCK HOLMES– DOWNTOWN Doug Stroud;

ARCADIA BAR MS Gala

RICHARD'S PUB DJ Brad

Supply; 7pm (doors), 9pm (show); Tickets staring at $44.99

Ammar’s Saturday Sessions Jam; Every Sat, 4-8pm • Bon Jovi Tribute Jersey Boulevard with opening set by Rock Bottom; 9pm; All ages

OLD STRATHCONA PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE Swing

CAFE BLACKBIRD Kahtja + Mo;

RIVER CREE–The Venue Air

SHAKERS ROADHOUSE Mark

Classical

The Nervous Flirts; 9:30pm; Free House Party; Evrey Fri-Sat, 9pm

(doors), 9pm (show); $10; 18+ only

Star Showcase of Cooper Studios; Every Sat, 12-3pm

Thursdays with JR; Every Thu, 9pm-1am

SHAKERS ROADHOUSE Blues

16 music

BLUE CHAIR CAFÉ Rob Heath;

DJs

SANDS INN & SUITES Karaoke

Max Uhlich, Baby Jey, Bradley J. Sime; 8pm (doors), 9pm (show); $10; 18+ only

cnty.com/edmonton

Union Duke; 8pm; $25 (Students $15) at the Bailey Box Office or online

Stories & Songs with Danny Hooper; 7:30pm; $39.49

SEWING MACHINE FACTORY

Some conditions may apply. Promotion subject to change without notice and AGLC approval.

BAILEY THEATRE–CAMROSE

HORIZON STAGE An Evening of

with The Sissy Fits; Every Thu, 8:30pm; Free

Winner of the 2013 NY Comedy Festival’s Funniest Comedian Competition!

Appeared on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News!

Fri-Sat, 9:30pm

guests; 8pm; $10 (adv)

REC ROOM–WEST EDMONTON MALL Throwback Thursday

T

B-STREET BAR Karaoke; Every

CAFE BLACKBIRD YEG

Mulligrub with Alloys and Doreen; 8pm; Free

21 & 0 2 l i r Ap 5 ickets $2

AUSSIE RULES KITCHEN & PIANO BAR Piano Show; Every

Fri, 9pm

House Party; Evrey Fri-Sat, 9pm ROSE & CROWN PUB Sean

Sonego; 9pm SEWING MACHINE FACTORY

Miesha & The Spanks, All Hands On Jane, Spells; 8pm

Chronos Vocal Ensemble presents Free; 7:30pm; $15-$23 ROBERTSON WESLEY UNITED CHURCH Alberta Baroque

Music Society presents Bach - Handel; 3pm; $15-$30 (plus applicable fees) ROBERT TEGLER STUDENT CENTRE Bells of the Silver

Screen; 3-5pm; $15-$20

with resident DJs

BLUES ON WHYTE Andrew Jr Boy Jones featuring Kerrie Lepai Jones; 9pm BOHEMIA Ye Mighty Down;

7pm (doors); $5; 18+ only CARROT COFFEEHOUSE Hip

Hop Showcase featuring Locution Revolution; 7-9pm; Free DUGGAN'S BOUNDARY Wed open mic with host Duff Robison; 8pm HAVE MERCY Piano Karaoke

featuring with Tiff Hall; Every Wed, 8:30pm LEAF BAR & GRILL Wang Dang

Wednesdays; Every Wed, 7-11pm; Free ON THE ROCKS Karaoke Wednesdays hosted by ED; Every Wed, 9pm PLEASANTVIEW COMMUNITY HALL Acoustic Bluegrass

jam presented by the Northern Bluegrass Circle Music Society; Guests and newcomers always welcome; every Wed, 7pm; $2 (donation, per person), free coffee available THE PROVINCIAL PUB Karaoke

Wednesday SHAKERS ROADHOUSE Country

Jam with 4 Dollar Bill

DJs BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE Main Floor: DJ Late Fee; Every Wed

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

music 17

Miesha & The Spanks / Richard Macfarlane

PRAIRIE PUNK

THE PRAIRIE PUNK MAMA BEAR Calgary’s Miesha & The Spanks had their newest album produced by Buzzcocks’ Danny Farrant

T

he mother grizzly is one of the kindest and most compassionate animals in Alberta.

It’s playful, noble, endearing, and has a bite that can exert 1,250 pounds of pressure on a human torso, savage when the moment calls for it.

While maybe a little too David Attenborough, that’s a tight and clean description of Calgarybased guitarist and vocalist Miesha Louie and drummer Sean Hamilton, collectively known as Miesha & The Spanks. Their latest release, Girls Girls Girls, is of a similar girzzly nature.

“I had the concept of calling the album Girls Girls Girls since 2014 when it was me and a girl in the band,” Louie says. “We were just kind of throwing that around, and trying to draw attention to women playing music. Now my band is only 50 percent female, but that still meant a lot to me—to keep it at that title, and push women to the front.”

The album is a melodic, power chord laden, kick and snare sorta thing—more fun times than fistfights but comfortable in both.

The tracks range from quick and gritty sing-a-long anthems to Ramones-era doo-wop jams.

Of particular note is the production behind the record. Having met and befriended iconic Buzzcocks’ drummer Danny Farrant during the Sled Island music festival in 2011, Louie managed to recruit both Farrant and his partner Paul Rawson to work with them on Girls Girls Girls in the U.K. “It operated on this 24-hour cycle with the time change.” Louie says. “They’d go over it, send us notes, and we’d wake up the next day and start recording again. It was so cool to remove ourselves from the studio we’re used to, the teams we’re used to, and go to a totally different country, a different continent, and just live to work on the record.”

Louie might have been a comic book artist if she hadn’t been exposed to punk at an early age. Hanging out with a group she refers to as “bad girls” and by extension their skateboarding older brothers, Louie left the dream of drawing for Marvel after seeing her first live show, and moved to Calgary after high school.

With minimal musical training, Miesha & The Spanks released their first EP in 2008, and following a well-established DIY punk-rock tradition, released something new every year for the next three years. As the band’s sound became more focused, that schedule changed, as has the band’s percussionist on several occasions.

Having come up in the more confined and male space of the early aughts Alberta music scene,

EVENTS

WEEKLY EMAIL YOUR FREE LISTINGS TO: LISTINGS@VUEWEEKLY.COM DEADLINE: FRIDAY AT 12PM

COMEDY BIG ROCK PRESENTS: DEVANEY’S COMEDY NIGHT • Devaney's, 11113-87 Ave • 780.433.6364 • stephen.f.mcgovern@gmail.com • Weekly open-mic hosted by Stephen McGovern • Sep 6-Apr 25, Every Wed, 8:30pm • Free

BIG ROCK PRESENTS: URBAN TAVERN COMEDY NIGHT HOSTED BY LARS CALLIEOU • Urban Tavern, 11606 Jasper Ave • Every Sun, 8pm

BLACK DOG FREEHOUSE • 10425-82 Ave • Underdog Comedy Show • Every Thu

COMEDY FACTORY • Gateway Entertainment Centre, 34 Ave, Calgary Tr • Thu-Fri: 8pm; Sat: 7:30pm & 10pm (until Apr) • Marvin Krawczyk (Apr 12) • Tim Koslo (Apr 13-14) • Chris Sadleir (Apr 19-21)

COMIC STRIP • Bourbon St, WEM • 780.483.5999 • Vic Henley; Apr 11-15 • Chris Redd; Apr 20-22 • Elle Mills; Apr 22 EMPRESS ALE HOUSE • 9912-82 Ave • Empress Comedy Night: Highlighting the best stand-up Edmonton has to offer. New headliner every week • Every Sun, 9pm • Free

KLONDIKE MELODRAMA–A FEW GOOD MOUNTIES • Capitol Theatre, Fort Edmonton Park • 780.496.7381 • info@fortedmontonpark.ca • fortedmontonpark.ca • The adventures of constable Robert McKenzie and his brother constable Douglas Mckenzie take us back in time to the fabled Klondike Gold Rush • Apr 13-14, 7:30pm • $22 (online), $25 (door)

LAUGH STEADY • Nook Cafe, 10153-97 St • Live stand-up comedy hosted by Kevin Cianciolo • Last Fri of the month, 7:30-9:30pm • $5 (door)

18 music

and with her own name having accumulated weight in the Alberta punk lexicon, Louie has focused some of her efforts over the last five years nurturing the next generation of Mieshas in a project called Girls Rock Camp.

“It’s awesome,” Louie says.

“We’ve got a camp we run here in Calgary. We get the girls to be interviewed on CJSW. They form little bands, write songs, do lots of workshops with their instruments, make merch, and we have them record at O.C.L. studios … It’s really just like a lot about building confidence and getting girls who feel like weird girls into a scenario where every girl is weird and interesting. Everyone is just comfortable being themselves.”

With the album, the tour, the girls camp, a wedding, and a tentative plan for a tour in EuGROUPS/CLUBS/MEETINGS AMITABHA KADAMPA BUDDHIST CENTRE • 9550-87 St • 780.235.8257 • info@ meditationedmonton.org • meditationedmonton. org • Weekly meditation classes and events. All welcome • Every Sun, Tue, Thu

CARROT COFFEE FRIENDSHIP CLUB • Carrot Coffeehouse, 9351-118 Ave • Have a cup of coffee with 55+ individuals single, divorced, or widowed who are looking to make new friends with neighbours in our local communities of: Delton, Eastwood, Parkdale – Cromdale, Westwood, Spruce Ave, and Alberta Avenue • Every Wed, 1-2pm

DROP-IN D&D • Hexagon Board Game Café, 10123 Whyte Ave • 780.757.3105 • info@ thehexcafe.com • thehexcafe.com • Each night will be a single campaign that fits in a larger story arc. For all levels of gamers and those brand new or experienced to D&D • Every Tue & Wed, 7pm • $5 (with drink purchase)

DROP-IN LARP • Jackie Parker Park • westernwinds.summerfrost.ca • Battle games and fighter practice using provided safe weapon boffer. An exciting way to get exercise while meeting new people with similar passions • Every Sat, 1:15pm • Free

EDMONTON OUTDOOR CLUB (EOC) • edmontonoutdoorclub.com • Offering a variety of fun activities in and around Edmonton • Free to join; info at info@edmontonoutdoorclub.com EDMONTON PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORIAL SOCIETY • Highlands Library • 780.436.3878 • edm_photographic_hist_society_2@yahoo.ca • All interested in sharing the joys of film photography, such as experiences or favourite equipment • 3rd Wed of the month, 7:30pm (no meetings in Jul & Aug)

FOOD ADDICTS • Alano Club (& Simply Done Cafe), 10728-124 St • 780.718.7133 (or 403.506.4695 after 7pm) • Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), free 12-Step recovery program for anyone suffering from food obsession, overeating, under-eating, and bulimia • Meetings every Thu, 7pm

FORT SASKATCHEWAN 45+ SINGLES COFFEE GROUP • A&W, 10101-88 Ave, Fort

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

Sat., Apr. 14 (8 pm) Miesha & The Spanks w/ All Hands On Jane, and Spells The Sewing Machine Factory $10 at the door rope, Miesha & The Spanks are busy. But even with all of that, Louie is still finding a way to clear out room for herself and for her girls like some kind of mama bear of prairie punk.

“It’s important to me,” Louie says. “I’ve just always had this clear trajectory of ‘This is my career, and this is what I want to do.’ And I’ve pushed through all this bullshit to do it. And now that I’m doing pretty good, I can look around and see how me doing good is able to help other girls do the same thing.”

Lucas Provencher Saskatchewan • 780.907.0201 (Brenda) • A mixed group offering conversation and friendship • Every Sun, 2pm

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY VOLUNTEER INFORMATION NIGHT • Habitat for Humanity Prefab Shop, 14135-128 Ave • 780.451.3416 ext.

237 • mstannard@gmail.com • hfh.org/volunteer/ vin • Learn about taking the next steps and what opportunities are available at Habitat for Humanity • Every 3rd Thu of the month, excluding Dec; 6-7pm • Free

MONDAY MINGLE • Hexagon Board Game Cafe, 10123 Whyte Ave • 780.757.3105 • info@ thehexcafe.com • thehexcafe.com • Meet new gamers. Go to the event solo or with a group • Every Mon, 5-11pm • $5 (one drink per person)

NORTHERN ALBERTA WOOD CARVERS ASSOCIATION • Duggan Community Hall, 3728-106 St • nawca.ca • Meet every Wed, 6:30pm

ORGANIZATION FOR BIPOLAR AFFECTIVE DISORDER (OBAD) • Grey Nuns Hospital, Rm 0651, obad@shaw.ca; Group meets every Thu, 7-9pm • Free

PAINTING FOR PLEASURE • McDougall United Church, 10086 Macdonald Drive (south entrance) • 780.428.1818 • karenbishopartist@gmail.com • mcdougallunited.com • A weekly group for those who like to paint, draw or otherwise be creative on paper • Every Thu, 10am-noon SCHIZOPHRENIA SOCIETY FAMILY SUPPORT DROP-IN GROUP • Schizophrenia Society of Alberta, 5215-87 St • 780.452.4661 • schizophrenia.ab.ca • The Schizophrenia Society of Alberta offers a variety of services and support programs for those who are living with the illness, family members, caregivers, and friends • 1st and 3rd Thu each month, 7-9pm • Free

TAKE OFF POUNDS SENSIBLY (TOPS) • Grace United Church annex, 6215-104 Ave • 780.479-8667 (Bob) • bobmurra@telus.net • Low-cost, fun and friendly weight loss group • Every Mon, 6:30pm

WASKAHEGAN TRAIL ASSOCIATION GUIDE HIKE •McDonalds Westmount, 11260 Groat Road • waskahegantrail.ca • St. Albert Trails; Apr 15, 9:45am-3pm

JONESIN’ CROSSWORD

Matt Jones

“Hue Knew?”--none out of the original seven.

Across

15 Cheesemaking enzyme 16 Oolong, e.g.

17 PART 1 OF 5 of a wordplay challenge (the answer is spelled out in the circles)

WOMEN'S CRICKET • Meyonohk Elementary School Gym • incogswomens@gmail.com • Learn the game of cricket. The group plays for fun and no experience is necessary. Kids and men welcome • Apr 13, 6-8pm; Apr 20, 6-8pm

of every month • TTIQ: (18+ Trans Group) 2nd Mon of every month, 7-9pm • TRANS YOUTH GROUP & PARENTS/CAREGIVERS SUPPORT: (24 and under) 3rd Mon of every month, 7-9pm • FIERCE FUN: (24 and under) Biweekly Tue, 7-9pm, games and activities for youth • JAMOUT: (12-24) Biweekly Tue, 7-8:30pm, music mentorship and instruction for youth • TWO SPIRIT GATHERING: 4th Wed of every month, 6-8pm, gathering for First Nations Two Spirit people • MEN’S SOCIAL CIRCLE: (18+) 1st and 3rd Thu, 7-9pm, for anyone masculine-identified • WOMEN’S SOCIAL CIRCLE: (18+) 2nd and 4th Thu, 7-9pm, for anyone feminine-identified • MOVIES & GAMES NIGHT: Biweekly Fri, 6-8:30pm • ARTS & IDENTITY: Biweekly Fri, 6-8:30pm • CREATING SAFER SPACES TRAINING: Interactive professional development workshops, with full or half-day options • QUEER YOUTH MENTORING: (Youth: 12–24) (Adults 26+)

1 Brewhouse offerings 5 Pique 11 Langley or Lackland (abbr.)

14 Billiards table material

LECTURES/PRESENTATIONS COMPOSTING WORKSHOP • John Janzen Nature Centre, 7000-143 St • 780.496.5526 • compost@edmonton.ca • ereg.edmonton. ca (Course #617839) • Learn how to start composting and keep it working. Discover how compost and organic waste build soil and make gardening easier • Apr 22, 1-3pm • $10 (per family)

LUNCH & LEARN: PIIKANI DIGITAL LITERACY & CULTURAL CAMPS • Enterprise Square, Room 2-520 A & B (2nd floor) Enterprise Square, 10230 Jasper Ave • macrae@ualberta. ca • Join Piikani Elder Herman Many Guns and Dr. Rob McMahon for a presentation on the Piikani Cultural and Digital Literacy Camp, Ii na kaa sii na ku pi tsi nii kii • Apr 19, 12-1pm • Free

QUEER G.L.B.T.Q SENIORS GROUP • S.A.G.E Bldg, main floor Cafe, 15 Sir Winston Churchill Square • 780.4235510 (Sage) • tuff69@telus.net • Meeting for gay seniors, and for any seniors who have gay family members and would like some guidance • Every Tue, 1-4pm

PRIDE CENTRE OF EDMONTON • Pride Centre of Edmonton, 2nd Floor, 10618-105 Ave • Wheelchair-accessible elevator at 10610 105 Avenue • (780) 488-3234 • pridecentreofedmonton.org/calendar.html • OFFICE & DROP IN HOURS: Mon-Fri 12-7pm; Closed Sat-Sun and holidays • YOGA: (all ages), 2nd and 4th Mon

TEAM EDMONTON • Locations vary • teamedmonton.ca • LGBTQ2+ inclusive. Various sports and recreation activities. Events include: "Gayming", archery, swimming, floor hockey, volleyball, yoga, and more • Events are seasonal and can change, visit website for more details

YOGA WITH JENNIFER • 780.439.6950 • ThreeBattles.com • A traditional approach with lots of individual attention. Free introductory classes • Tue evenings & Sat mornings

Edmonton Tattoo & Arts Festival Edmonton Expo Centre Apr 27-29 $25 (general), $50 (weekend pass)

/ Supplied

20 “Bali ___” (“South Pacific” song) 21 Hamton, on “Tiny Toon Adventures” 22 Half, for openers 23 PART 2 OF 5 28 Romania’s currency 29 Six-inch or footlong 30 Hall of Fame umpire Bill 31 ___ Arbor, Michigan 32 Hiatus 34 Q followers 38 Regulation, for short 39 PART 3 OF 5 42 An eighth of octo43 Impulsiveness 45 “The Fountainhead” author Rand 46 ___ “King” Cole 47 Honolulu’s island 50 Nervous twitch 52 Easter mo. in 2018 53 PART 4 OF 5 58 90∞ from north 59 New Orleans Saints linebacker Manti ___ 60 “How can ___ sure?”

61 PART 5 OF 5 67 Pie ___ mode 68 ___ the occasion (come through) 69 Microscopic particle 70 Vancouver clock setting (abbr.)

71 “Sophie’s Choice” novelist William 72 Baker’s amts.

SPECIAL EVENTS 110TH EDMONTON KIWANIS MUSIC FESTIVAL • Alberta College Campus, MacEwan University, 10050 MacDonald Drive • 780.488.3498 • musicfest@edmontonkiwanis. com • edmontonkiwanis.com/musicfest • Over 1,700 single and group entrants entered in over 1,000 classes will perform and compete • Apr 16-30

EDMONTON INTERNATIONAL BEERFEST • Shaw Conference Centre, 9797 Jasper Ave • Covering 80,000 square feet and featuring over 500 beers, BeerFest is bigger and better than ever • Apr 13-14 • $19 • 18+ only

EDMONTON VOLUNTEER FAIR • West

Down

1 Back, on board 2 Actress Salonga 3 Spitz relatives 4 Sauna atmosphere 5 Fleischer formerly of the White House press room 6 Prepare to drag race 7 Lunch time, sometimes 8 Detach, as from a chain 9 Robert who stepped down from “All Things Considered” in January 2018 10 Dr. who focuses on the head 11 “Confessions of ___ Idol” (2009 VH1 series) 12 Physicist Enrico 13 Rudimentary 18 Is suitable 19 Yorke and McAn, for two 23 Adobe animation platform being phased out by 2020 24 Designer Oscar de la ___ 25 “Les MisÈrables” author Victor 26 “Buy It Now” site 27 “Jeopardy!” creator Griffin 33 Org. for Bubba Watson 35 Cheesy lunch counter orders 36 Not suitable 37 Part of IVF 39 Front counterpart 40 Memory unit rarely seen in the singular form Edmonton Mall Level 1 Phase 1 in front of The Bay, 8882-170 St • volunteerism@ecvo. ca • Local non-profit organizations will raise awareness for their cause and look for volunteers • Apr 14, 10am-4pm • Free

GO THE DISTANCE • TELUS World of Science, 11211-142 St • telusworldofscienceedmonton.ca/go-distance • To commemorate Terry Fox’s heroic efforts during his Marathon of Hope, TWoS will be hosting Go the Distance, an attempt to run just a small portion of Terry Fox’s ambitious route across Canada–100 km a day • Apr 12-15, 1-5pm • Regular admission LAW DAY 2018 • Edmonton Law Courts, 1 Sir Winston Churchill Square • edmonton@

Volunteers Wanted

Become a Volunteer Advocate and provide assistance to victims of crime and trauma in Strathcona County!

Please call (780) 449-0153.

Can You Read This?

Help Someone Who Can’t!

Volunteer 2 hours a week and help someone improve their Reading, Writing, Math or English Speaking Skills.

Call Valerie at P.A.L.S. 780-424-5514 or email palsvol@shaw.ca Have you always wanted to volunteer at Folk Fest, but couldn’t get past the wait list?

Why don’t you try volunteering with Heart of the City Music and Arts Festival, June 2 & 3?

We are looking for numerous types of helping hands!

To find out more, contact hotcvolunteer@gmail.com Are you an artist with knowledge to share? Then you’re in luck! Heart of the City Music and Arts Festival, June 2 & 3, is looking for 2-3 artists to facilitate a creative workshop. Open to innovative ideas!

Contact Fay at heartcityart@gmail.com

2005.

Artist to Artist

We are looking for volunteers to help us with a free service for tax season that our participants can access.

‘Make Tax Time Pay’ is through our financial empowerment program alongside E4C. The opportunity is once a week on Mondays during March and April, for approx., 3.5 hours12:00pm-3:30pm.

The easiest way to sign up is to email us enorthey@bissellcentre.org ART CLASSES FOR ADULTS, YOUTH, AND CHILDREN Check The Paint Spot’s website, paintspot.ca/events/workshops for up-to-date information on art classes for all ages, beginner and intermediate.

Register in person, by phone or online.

Contact: 780.432.0240 email: accounts@paintspot.ca

ENJOY ART ALWAYZ www.bdcdrawz.com Check the site every two weeks for new work!

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

©2018 Jonesin’ Crosswords

cba-alberta.org • lawdayalberta.weebly.com • Law Day offers opportunities for everyone to be entertained and educated about Canada’s legal system and the legal profession, including: live mock trials featuring favourite story book characters and more • Apr 21, 9:30am3:30pm • Free

SUGAR SHACK | TERRRASSE À SUCRE • Café Bicyclette, Patio, La Cité Francophone, 8627, Rue Marie-Anne Gaboury (91 St) • 780.463.1144 • lacite@lacitefranco. ca • cafebicyclette.ca/sugar-shack • A dinner in a wood fire heated outfitter tent, this rustic fine dining dinner brings a new approach to maple harvest season in Edmonton • Apr 1314; 6-9pm • $75 (gratuity and TPS included), alcohol not included

To Book Your Classifieds, Call 780.426.1996 or email classifieds@vueweekly.com

VUECLASSIFIEDS 1600.

41 Monogram ltr.

44 Cake, in Italian restaurants 48 “Zero stars” 49 Troubled 51 “Le Freak” disco group 53 Summary 54 Counts’ counterparts 55 Have ___ (stop standing) 56 Doomed one 57 British war vessel of WWII 62 ___-80 (old Radio Shack computer) 63 DDE’s WWII arena 64 Took the gold 65 Alley-___ (basketball maneuver) 66 Apt. divisions

2005.

Artist to Artist

Heart of the City Festival Society is calling all Singer/Song Writers. We are opening applications for a mentorship with Edmonton legend Bill Bourne. The successful candidate will get two two-hour sessions focused on song writing and performance and will perform with Bill Bourne at the Heart of the City Music and Arts Festival. Emailheartcitymusic@gmail.com for information.

Hey everybody! Join this summer’s Big, Big Pet Portrait Show with a 12x12” portrait of whoever/whatever your pet may be.

More information: https://www.paintspot.ca/galleri es/. Let’s cover the walls and fill the windows with portraits of pets!

It’s hear...I mean here! Heart of the City Music and Arts Festival is searching all brands of musical genres to play on the Main Stage, June 2 & 3.

Submit your information at http://www.heartcityfest.com/.

3100. Appliances/Furniture

Old Appliance Removal Removal of unwanted appliances. Must be outside or in your garage.

Rates start as low as $30.

Call James @780.231.7511 for details

3210.

Misc. For Sale

Would you like to own a vineyard in the beautiful Okanagan? I am selling our delightful organic vineyard in the central Okanagan to fund the expansion of our onsite estate winery business. We have 10 acres total lot size with a movie set farmhouse, 8 acre vineyard, and winery buildings. Our winery has a lease on the vines and buildings and would continue on site on a leasehold basis. Our asking price is $1.8 million plus benefits for the freehold in what is a solid investment.

Please call Paul on 250-809-2342 for further information.

at the back 19

ADULTCLASSIFIEDS

To Book Your Adult Classifieds, Contact James at 780.426.1996 or at adultclassifieds@vueweekly.com 9160.

Adult Personals

Attractive feminine tranny seeks fit, masculine, mature, straight man, 40+, for special friendship. Attached okay. No texts - call me at 780-604-7440 daytimes.

The truly Japanese Sensual Massage in Edmonton Beside liquor store at front

PLAY. SAFE.

9547-76 Ave. Free parking at back From 9am=11pm

Booking 587.523.6566 or 780.246.3007 | LIC#132648203-001

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SAVAGELOVE ONE NIGHT SCARED

I’m a 36-year-old straight woman. I was sexually and physically abused as a kid, and raped in my early 20s. I have been seeing a great therapist for the last five years, and I am processing things and feeling better than I ever have. I was in a long-term relationship that ended about two years ago. I started dating this past year, but I’m not really clicking with anyone. I’ve had a lot of first dates, but nothing beyond that. My problem is that I’d really love to get laid. The idea of casual sex and one-night stands sounds great—but in reality, moving that quickly with someone I don’t know or trust freaks me out, causes me to shut down, and prevents me from enjoying anything. Even thinking about going home with someone causes me to panic. When I was in a relationship, the sex was great. But now that I’m single, it seems like this big, scary thing. Is it possible to get laid without feeling freaked out?

SEXUAL COMFORT AND REASSURANCE ELUDES DAME It is possible for you to get laid without feeling freaked out.

The answer—how you go home with someone without panicking—is so obvious, SCARED, that I’m guessing your therapist has already suggested it: Have sex with someone you know and trust. You didn’t have any issues having sex with your ex because you knew and trusted him. For your own emotional safety, and to avoid recovery setbacks, you’re going to have to find someone willing to get to know you—someone willing to make an emotional investment in you—before you can have sex again. You’ve probably thought to yourself, “But everyone else is just jumping into bed with strangers and having amazing sexual experiences!” And while it is true that many people are capable of doing just that, at least as many or more are incapable of having impulsive one-night stands because they too have a history of trauma, or because they have other psychological, physical, or logistical issues that make one-night stands impossible. (Some folks, of course, have no interest in one-night stands.)

Your trauma left you with this added burden, SCARED, and I don’t want to minimize your legitimate frustration or your anger. It sucks, and I fucking hate the people who victimized you.

But it may help you feel a little better about having to make an investment in someone before becoming intimate—which really isn’t the worst thing in the world—if you can remind yourself that you aren’t alone.

Demisexuals, other victims of trauma, people with body-image issues, people whose sexual in-

Dan Savage

terests are so stigmatized they don’t feel comfortable disclosing them to people they’ve just met—lots of people face the same challenge you do.

Something else to bear in mind: It’s not unheard of for someone re-entering the dating scene to have some difficulty making new connections at first. The trick is to keep going on dates until you finally click with someone.

In other words, SCARED, give yourself a break and take your time. Also, don’t hesitate to tell the men you date that you need to get to know a person before jumping into bed with him. That will scare some guys off, but only those guys who weren’t willing to get to know you—and those aren’t guys you would have felt safe fucking anyway, right? So be open and honest, keep going on those first dates, and eventually you’ll find yourself on a fifth date with a guy you can think about taking home without feeling panicked. Good luck.

TEMPORAL SPACE GIRL

This is about a girl, of course.

Pros: She cannot hide her true feelings. Cons: Criminal, irascible, grandiose sense of self, racist, abstemious, self-centered, anxious, moralist, monogamous, biased, denial as a defense mechanism, manipulative, liar, envious, and ungrateful. She is

also anthropologically and historically allocated in another temporal space continuum. And last but not least: She runs less quickly than me despite an eight years age difference and her having the lungs of a 26-yearold nonsmoker. Thoughts?

DESPERATE EROTIC SITUATION If someone is criminal, racist, and dishonest—to say nothing of being allocated in another temporal space continuum (whatever the fuck that means)—I don’t see how “cannot hide her true feelings” lands on the “pro” side of the pro/con ledger. You shouldn’t want to be with a dishonest, moralizing bigot, DES, so the fact that this particular dishonest, moralizing bigot is incapable of hiding her truly repulsive feelings isn’t a reason to consider seeing her.

Not being able to mask hateful feelings isn’t a redeeming quality—it’s the opposite.

OPEN SNOOPS

My boyfriend and I love each other deeply, and the thought of breaking up devastates me. We also live together. I deeply regret it and am full of shame, but I impulsively went through his texts for the first time. I found out that for the past few months he has been sexting and almost definitely hooking up with someone who I said I was not comfortable with. After our initial conversation about her (during which I expressed my discomfort), he

never brought her up again. Had I known that he needed her in his life this badly, I would have taken some time to sit with my feelings and figure out where my discomfort with her was coming from and tried to move through it. We are in an open relationship, but his relationship with her crosses what we determined as our “cheating” boundary: hiding a relationship. How do I confess to what I did and confront him about what I found without it blowing up into a major mess?

UPSET GIRL HOPES RELATIONSHIP SURVIVES Snooping is always wrong, of course, except when the snooper discovers something they had a right to know. While there are definitely less-ambiguous examples (cases where the snoopee was engaged in activities that put the snooper at risk), your boyfriend violating the boundaries of your open relationship rises to the level of “right to know.” This is a major mess, UGHRS, and there’s no way to confront your boyfriend without risking a blowup. So tell him what you know and how you found out. You’ll be in a better position to assess whether you want this relationship to survive after you confess and confront.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Amateur filmmakers, porn-star wannabes, kinksters, regular folks, and other creative types are hereby invited to make and sub-

VUEWEEKLY.com | APR 12 - APR 18, 2018

mit short porn films—five minutes max—to the 14th Annual HUMP! Film Festival. The 13th Annual HUMP! Film Festival is currently touring the country—go to humpfilmfest.com to find out when HUMP! is coming to your town—and the next HUMP! kicks off in November.

HUMP! films can be hardcore, softcore, live action, animated, kinky, vanilla, straight, gay, lez, bi, trans, genderqueer—anything goes at HUMP! (Well, almost anything: No poop, no animals, no minors.) HUMP! is screened only in theaters, nothing is released online, and the filmmakers retain all rights. At HUMP! you can be a porn star for a weekend in a theater without having to be a porn star for eternity on the internet! There’s no charge to enter HUMP!, there’s $20,000 in cash prizes awarded to the filmmakers by audience ballot (including the $10,000 Best in Show Award!), and each filmmaker gets a percentage of every ticket sold on the HUMP! tour. For more information about making and submitting a film to the best porn festival in the country, go to humpfilmfest.com/submit.

On the Lovecast, Mistress Matisse explains the horrifying SESTA-FOSTA bill: savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter ITMFA.org

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ALBERTA-WIDECLASSIFIEDS •• AUCTIONS •• 2 PARCELS OF REAL ESTATE - Thorhild, AB. Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Unreserved Auction, April 25 in Edmonton.

12+/- title acres country acreage w/1648+/- sq ft home, 226.5+/- title acres farmland.

Jerry Hodge: 780-706-6652; Brokerage: Ritchie Bros. Real Estate Services Ltd.; rbauction.com/realestate.

BUD HAYNES & WARD’S FIREARMS AUCTION. Saturday, April 28 at 10 AM. 11802-145 Street, Edmonton, Alberta. Milarm Co of Edmonton Firearms Dispersal Instructed by Receivers Grant Thornton LLP, Plus Estates.

Over 800 lots - On-line bidding. To consign call Linda Baggaley 403-597-1095, Brad 780-940-8378. www.budhaynesauctions.com; www. wardsauctions.com.

UNRESERVED ANDRISHAK ESTATE ANTIQUE Collector Auction! Starts 10am Saturday, April 14th. Hwy 14 Wainwright, Alberta. Scribner Auction. 780-842-5666; www. scribnernet.com. Friday Night Coin Auction & Preview!

FARMLAND W/GRAVEL RESERVES - Sundre, Alberta.

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Unreserved Auction, April 25 in Edmonton. 156.7+/- title acres. $6,500 SLR, 2.2 million m3 proven gravel reserves.

Jerry Hodge: 780-706-6652; Brokerage: Ritchie Bros. Real Estate Services Ltd; rbauction. com/realestate.

FIREARMS AUCTION APRIL 21st - Three sessions live and online. Bidding opens April 6th. www.switzersauction. com. Toll-Free 1-800694-2609; email: paul@ switzersauction.com. Estates and collections wanted. Switzer’s - Canada’s #1 Firearms Auction.

•• BUSINESS •• OPPORTUNITIES HIP OR KNEE REPLACEMENT? Other medical conditions that led to restrictions in walking/dressing? $2,500 yearly tax credit. $40,000 refund cheque/rebates. Disability Tax Credit. Expert Help.

Lowest service fee nationwide. 1-844-453-5372.

•• COMING •• EVENTS FIREARMS WANTED for April 21st, 2018 live and online auction. Rifles, Shotguns, Handguns, Militaria, Auction or Purchase. Collections, Estates, individual items.

Contact Paul, Switzer’s Auction. Toll-free 1-800-694-2609,

info@switzersauction.com or www.switzersauction.com.

ANTIQUE SHOW - Edmonton - Western Canada’s longest running collectors show - antiques, collectibles and pop culture. 43rd Annual Wild Rose Antique Collectors Show & Sale. Sellers from across Canada. Special collectors displays. Antique evaluations by Canadian Antiques Roadshow appraiser Gale Pirie - $15 per item.

Saturday, April 21, 9AM-5PM. Sunday, April 22, 10AM-4PM. Edmonton Expo Centre. 780437-9722. www.wildroseantiquecollectors.ca.

•• EMPLOYMENT •• OPPORTUNITIES ASPHALT PAVING COMPANY long established in Edmonton requires Salesman, Foreman & Workers for work in the city. Must have extensive experience with all aspects of paving & equipment operation. 780-466-7763.

SEEKING A CAREER in the Community Newspaper business? Post your resume for FREE right where the publishers are looking. Visit: awna.com/for-job-seekers.

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Visit: CareerStep.ca/MT or 1-855-768-3362 to start training for your work-at-home career today!

•• FOR SALE •• BEAUTIFUL SPRUCE TREES. 4-6 feet; $35 each.

Machine planting: $10/tree (includes bark mulch and fertilizer). 20 tree minimum order. Delivery fee $100-$140/ order. Quality guaranteed.

403-820-0961.

METAL ROOFING & SIDING. 37+ colours available at over 55 Distributors. 40 year warranty. 48 hour Express Service available at select supporting Distributors. Call 1-888-263-8254.

SAWMILLS FROM ONLY $4,397. Make Money and Save Money with your own bandmill - Cut lumber any dimension. In stock, ready to ship. Free Info & DVD: www.NorwoodSawmills. com/400OT; 1-800-567-0404 Ext: 400OT. BULK SALE. 1,500 Metric/ SAE 11 piece wrench sets plus 12,000 single size wrenches. Sale $12,000.00.

Forward interest by email to: tkachukr@shaw.ca.

STEEL BUILDING SALE...”Big Blow Out Sale All buildings priced to clear!”

20X21 $5,560. 23X23 $5,523.

25X25 $6,896. 32X33 $9,629.

33X33 $9,332. One end wall included. Pioneer Steel 1-855212-7036.

•• HEALTH •• GET UP TO $50,000 from the Government of Canada. Do you or someone you know have any of these conditions?

ADHD, Anxiety, Arthritis, Asthma, Cancer, COPD, Depression, Diabetes, Difficulty Walking, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowels, Overweight, Trouble Dressing...and hundreds more. All ages and medical conditions qualify.

Call The Benefits Program 1-800-211-3550.

•• MANUFACTURED •• HOMES BLANKET THE PROVINCE with a classified ad. Only $269 (based on 25 words or less). Reach over 110 weekly newspapers. Call NOW for details 1-800-282-6903 ext 228; www.awna.com.

WE ARE “Your Total Rural Housing Solution” - It’s time to let go & clear out our Inventory. Save on your Modular/ Manufactured Home. Visit: www.Grandviewmodular.com or www.Unitedhomescanada. com.

•• REAL ESTATE •• 320 ACRES of good Saskatchewan land in east central Saskatchewan. 10 year lease in place paying $19,800 or 4.6%. $428,000. Contact Doug @ 306-716-2671 or saskfarms@shaw.ca.

•• SERVICES •• CRIMINAL RECORD? Why suffer employment/licensing loss? Travel/business opportunities? Be embarrassed?

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Need money? We lend! If you own your own home - you qualify. Pioneer Acceptance Corp. Member BBB. 1-877987-1420. www.pioneerwest. com.

•• WANTED •• BUYING SHED ANTLER. Paying competitive pricing.

Proper grading. All species, all conditions. Extra for trophy.

Contact Herb, 780-385-0076.

Alberta Antler.

FREEWILL ASTROLOGY ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries statesman Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States. He wrote one of history’s most famous documents, the Declaration of Independence.

He was an architect, violinist, inventor, and linguist who spoke numerous languages, as well as a philosopher who was knowledgeable about mathematics, surveying, and horticulture. But his most laudable success came in 1789, when he procured the French recipe for macaroni and cheese while living in France, and thereafter introduced the dish into American cuisine. Just kidding! I’m making this little joke in the hope that it will encourage you to keep people focused on your most important qualities, and not get distracted by less essential parts of you.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the early 1990s, Australian electrical engineer John O’Sullivan toiled on a research project with a team of radio astronomers.

Their goal was to find exploding mini-black holes in the distant void of outer space. The quest failed. But in the process of doing their experiments, they developed technology that became a key component now used in WiFi. Your digital devices work so well in part because his frustrating misadventure led to a happy accident. According to my reading of your astrological omens, Taurus, we may soon be able to make a comparable conclusion about events in your life.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In the fictional world created by DC Comics, Superman has a secret identity as a modest journalist named Clark Kent. Or is it the other way around? Does the modest journalist Clark Kent have a secret identity as the superhero Superman? Only a few people realize the two of them are the same. I suspect there is an equally small number of allies who know who you really are beneath your “disguises,” Gemini. But upcoming astrological omens suggest that could change. Are you ready to reveal more about your true selves? Would you consider expanding the circle that is allowed to see and appreciate your full range and depth?

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Playwright Tennessee Williams once spent an evening trying to coax a depressed friend out of his depression. It inspired him to write a poem that began like this: “I want to infect you with the tremendous excitement of living, because I believe that you have the strength to bear it.” Now I address you with the same message, Cancerian. Judging from the astrological omens, I’m convinced you currently have more strength than ever before to bear the tremendous excitement of living. I hope this news will encourage you to potentize your ability to welcome

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and embrace the interesting puzzles that will come your way in the weeks ahead.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Are you finished dealing with spacious places and vast vistas and expansive longings? I hope not. I hope you will continue to explore big, bold, blooming schemes and wild, free, booming dreams until at least April 25. In my astrological opinion, you have a sacred duty to keep outstripping your previous efforts. You have a mandate to go further, deeper, and braver as you break out of shrunken expectations and push beyond comfortable limitations. The unknown is still more inviting and fertile than you can imagine.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Between December 5 and 9, 1952, London was beset with heavy fog blended with thick smog.

Visibility was low. Traffic slowed and events were postponed. In a few places, people couldn’t see their own feet. According to some reports, blind people, who had a facility for moving around without the aid of sight, assisted pedestrians in making their way through the streets. I suspect that a metaphorically comparable phenomenon may soon arise in your sphere, Virgo. Qualities that might customarily be regarded as liabilities could at least temporarily become assets.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Your allies are always important, but in the coming weeks they will be even more so. I suspect they will be your salvation, your deliverance, and your treasure. So why not treat them like angels or celebrities or celebrity angels? Buy them ice cream and concert tickets and fun surprises. Tell them secrets about their beauty that no one has ever expressed before.

Listen to them in ways that will awaken their dormant potentials.

I bet that what you receive in return will inspire you to be a better ally to yourself.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In the coming weeks, I suspect you will be able to find what you need in places that are seemingly devoid of what you need. You can locate the possible in the midst of what’s apparently impossible. I further surmise that you will summon a rebellious resourcefulness akin to that of Scorpio writer Albert Camus, who said, “In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger—something better, pushing right back.”

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In 1936, Herbert C. Brown graduated from the University of Chica-

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Rob Brezsny

go with a bachelor’s degree in science. His girlfriend Sarah Baylen rewarded him with the gift of a $2 book about the elements boron and silicon. Both he and she were quite poor; she couldn’t afford a more expensive gift. Brown didn’t read the book for a while, but once he did, he decided to make its subject the core of his own research project. Many years later, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discoveries about the role of boron in organic chemistry. And it all began with that $2 book. I bring this story to your attention, Sagittarius, because I foresee you, too, stumbling upon a modest beginning that eventually yields breakthrough results.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In 20 BC, Rome’s most famous poet was Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known to us today as Horace. He prided himself on his meticulous craftsmanship, and advised other writers to be equally scrupulous.

Once you compose a poem, he declared, you should put it aside for nine years before deciding whether to publish it. That’s the best way to get proper perspective on its worth. Personally, I think that’s too demanding, although I appreciate the power that can come from marshalling so much conscientiousness. And that brings me to a meditation on your current state, Capricorn.

From what I can tell, you may be at risk of being too risk-averse; you could be on the verge of waiting too long and being too cautious. Please consider naming a not-too-distant release date.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Luckily, you have an inventive mind and an aptitude for experimentation. These will be key assets as you dream up creative ways to do the hard work ahead of you. Your labours may not come naturally, but I bet you’ll be surprised at how engaging they’ll become and how useful the rewards will be.

Here’s a tip on how to ensure you will cultivate the best possible attitude: Assume that you now have the power to change stale patterns that have previously been resistant to change.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): May I suggest that you get a lesson in holy gluttony from a Taurus? Or perhaps pick up some pointers in enlightened self-interest from a Scorpio?

New potential resources are available, but you haven’t reeled them in with sufficient alacrity.

Why? Why oh why oh why?!

Maybe you should ask yourself whether you’re asking enough.

Maybe you should give yourself permission to beam with majestic self-confidence. Picture this: Your posture is regal, your voice is authoritative, your sovereignty is radiant. You have identified precisely what it is you need and want, and you have formulated a pragmatic plan to get it.

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24 and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the wayyy the news goes

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