So much of the history of Canada is the history of the newcomer; because few written records exist of the Indigenous peoples in this country before the Europeans arrived, our impressions of our nation are almost always seen through the eyes of people experiencing each other’s culture for the first time.  No where is that more clear than at the Canadian Canoe Museum, which chronicles the individual struggles and  triumphs of people making their way through the land with little in common besides their mode of transport – the canoe.  

In comparison with the well-documented and celebrated histories of many nations, where rulers and armies race triumphantly across the imagination, Canadians often feel our history isn’t that exciting – where is our Taj Mahal, our Great Wall, our thousand-year tradition of literature? Faced with such magnificent accomplishments, we sometimes feel that there’s nothing in our past worth noting.  Which is why visitors to the Canadian Canoe Museum often find themselves surprised and overcome with pride when they view the exhibits, and realize that our history is as fascinating and filled with thrilling stories as any.

For new Canadians, there’s a sense of shared experience – those early explorers and fur traders left their families and culture to try and find success and good fortune in a new world, one full of uncertainty and new experiences.  There’s the welcome and guidance which the Indigenous peoples of North America offered to these newcomers, without whose assistance many early settlers would certainly have failed.  There’s the sense of adventure, of learning new languages, customs, and lands.  It’s a familiar story to people who’ve made the courageous choice to start a new life here in Canada, and a central part of the story of this country.

Far from being merely a building filled with artifacts, the museum is a house of stories; walking through the exhibits, both new Canadians and those who were born here feel a sense of connection to the people who built this country, to their hopes and dreams and vision of the future. You gain a new understanding of Canadian culture and values, and how those came to be.  Though the canoe is a simple vessel, it has shaped our cultural identity, and you don’t need to paddle – or even to have set foot in a canoe – to find a personal connection to the people whose livelihoods depended upon them.

A recent visitor to the museum from India wrote in our guest book “Your attempt to preserve the past only intensifies our desire to make Canada our home.” This comment touched the heart of many museum Staff members and Volunteers, and reaffirmed our goal to connect Canadians and those who love Canada to their heritage.  While those who’ve lived in this country many years may have taken our culture and history for granted, the Canadian Canoe Museum allows us all to see as it really is – something to celebrate, to appreciate, and to take pride in.

The Canadian Canoe Museum is open 7 days a week, and admission is free when you show your Peterborough Welcome Pass.  Come and connect to our shared heritage, and tell your friends and family about your museum experience!

To read the article as it appeared in the Newcomer Bulletin, please click here.

I live in Peterborough, ON, a mid-sized city with a bustling heritage downtown, a penchant for hockey, a lively arts scene, a smallish university and a college.  Bethune Street runs along the west side of downtown proper, and in terms of the revitalization of the downtown, it’s a bit of a problem child.  Once the edge-of-town railway corridor for trains bound to nearby Lakefield, it’s extra-wide for most of its length. Though where it runs through the old north end it’s mostly residential, down closer to the commercial district it’s industrial, rough-looking, and derelict in places.

This is a big problem for the city.  It seems innocuous enough until you really start thinking about it, but with the mighty Otonabee River on one side, downtown Peterborough sort-of has its back against a wall.  On the other side of the river, there’s East City, jurisdictionally a part of the City of Peterborough but realistically (and historically) a place unto itself.  With only the Hunter Street bridge as access (especially now, with the train bridge closed to walkers and cyclists), downtown is mostly speaking to the rest of Peterborough. To the north, it’s limited by a block of massive heritage institutional buildings, such as City Hall and the Armories, which are beautiful but put act as a barrier between the shops and cafes of the downtown and the heritage homes of the old north end.  To the south, there’s a slow trickle of business and some opportunities for development, but once you get to King Street and the Dieter and Darcy’s building, you’ve hit a wall in terms of how far pedestrians feel comfortable walking, with George Street at it’s busiest and a series of large-scale modern buildings that sit too far back from the road or have too few windows to make walking pleasant.

To the west, Bethune stands like a no-man’s-land between downtown and the affluent neighborhoods of The Avenues. Its presence drags down the streets around it, creating a barrier of run-down heritage homes, unfriendly industrial spaces, and a sense of emptiness that discourages people from hanging out or even walking through. Much as I love urban decay and the visible layers of built heritage, I think the city’s health will be best supported by some big changes – and they’re already under way. I often walk or cycle down Bethune, and it’s been fascinating watching these small changes impact the neighbourhood for the better, and encourage the kind of growth that will keep the downtown bustling.

Throughout the course of The City Walker project, however long that is,  I’ll be talking about Bethune Street, Peterborough, and other cities, and thinking about what makes a streetscape and a city a liveable, healthy place that fosters community.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback – leave a comment below to let me know what you think!

Elementary school had been, for me, completely brutal.  Our family moved to the village when I was in kindergarten, and in a place where many families could trace their roots back generations, we were strangers. And from that point, until my graduation in grade 8, I was a social pariah, an easy target for bullying, a weird girl in hand-me-down clothes who loved books and knew nothing about sports.

People often speak about the idylls of childhood as though kids are innocents, and being one is an unrelenting exercise in pleasure, play, and freedom from responsibility.  I can’t identify; childhood for me was an endless round of fears, from what new taunting, theft, or physical violence was going to be inflicted upon me at school, to the ever-present money problems at home that formed the backdrop to everything else.  When I look back, I remember stress, anxiety, and depression; I retreated further into my books and was dragged resisting out of bed in the mornings to go to school.  On the walk, I would often daydream about falling and breaking a leg, the idea of avoiding school for a week so appealing that I longed for injury.  

I didn’t have anything that I’d call a ‘friend’ in elementary school, so there was no one to turn to in moments of fear or frustration. The teachers were either oblivious or complicit, with the exception of Mr. Kelsey, whose classroom was a refuge of learning in a desert of stupidity.  In one memorable incident in Grade 5, my teacher called me a liar in front of the class for insisting that there was such a thing as a sand dollar - despite the fact that I was holding a photo of one. Every interaction left me bewildered and afraid.

Look, I don’t know what kind of kid I was – maybe I was annoying, or odd, or whatever – but no one deserves the kind of treatment I got.  I often left school in tears, sometimes sneaking back home after my parents had left for work.  My attendance record was awful.

When the opportunity came up in Grade 8 to audition for the Arts Program at PCVS, I leapt at it – in my case, I was certain that the devil I didn’t know couldn’t be any worse than the devil I was already subjected to.  I knew I couldn’t continue on with these same tormentors at TASSS; I couldn’t even contemplate a future where I rode a bus and went to class every day with these horrible kids.  The very thought induced a despair I can’t articulate. Getting accepted into the program was the best news I’d received in my young life.

Going from being the lone weird kid at a rural elementary school to being one of a group of weird kids at an urban high school was a freedom that I had longed for but never imagined could be mine. Intellectual pursuits were encouraged, being cultured was admired, and my hand-me-downs suddenly were transformed from the markers of a poor kid to vintage cool.  I went from being the kid who’d been skipping school since Grade 1 to having perfect attendance in Grade 9.  A quick five-minute walk brought us to all the theatre, visual art, and culture we could ask for. I felt like Cinderella, stepping into the Prince’s ball.

Sure, there were still bullies; we got called ‘Art Fags’ more times than I could count, tripped in the hallways, taunted and pushed.  But we outnumbered them, and my new freedom gave me the confidence to stand my ground and face them down.  In 1995, when PCVS established its Anti-Bullying Committee (a group of parents, teachers and students that I’m proud to have been a part of) and surveyed the school, we were surprised to learn that the majority of students felt safe and had little to report. From what I understand, they’ve continued to nurture that kind of environment, a place where students of all types can find a place to fit, to learn safely, to grow into adults who go on to shape not just our immediate community but also the national dialogue.  While bullying has become a high-profile issue in the past few years, PCVS has been proactive in dealing with it for nearly twenty.

When I heard that they were talking about closing a local high school, I didn’t worry much about PCVS; every argument, from capacity to student performance to good city planning stood behind keeping my alma mater.  When I heard that they were leaning towards closing TASSS, I felt that they were making the right choice.  A dated building from the late 60s, with asbestos and sinking architecture in the suburbs of Peterborough, TASSS was operating at half-capacity.  It made perfect sense.

But in what seemed like a fairly sudden turn, the Trustees voted to close PCVS.

Like many in the community, I was stunned.  The arguments for closing PCVS seemed senseless – one trustee mentioned the lack of playing fields (students have used Nicholls Oval without problems for decades), another cited the absence of a robotics program.  Protests began immediately, and involved the whole community – from downtown merchants to community members, alumni, and current students.  The suggestion that the Integrated Arts Program would be moved to TASSS was met with fear as TASSS students began writing threats and insults online.  A rally to protest the decision at Queen’s Park in early December drew 500+ participants, and despite freezing rain and raspy voices, remained loud and strong for hours. A video created by PCVS alums Brown Meadow Bird and Jared Raab drew tens of thousands of hits over a few days, now standing at 126,000 and climbing, and brought national and international media attention to the proposed closure.

The Ministry of Education has appointed a facilitator to review the decision, and money brought in through a fund-raising concert is going towards a legal challenge.

I’ve heard a lot of people’s opinions about the situation, and a lot of angry reactions to the idea that Peterborough needs PCVS, and while I can answer their arguments from an urban planning, financial, and academic standpoint, today I prefer to say simply, from my own experience, that I needed PCVS.  Kids like me need PCVS still.  It saved my life and my future.  It put me in a position to become a confident and competent adult. While the arts are central to my life, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I had through the Arts Program, much more than that is the safe space PCVS gave me to dream, to attempt, to accomplish and to flourish.

As long as I have breath to use, I will protest and work against any acts or decisions that lead to the end of that safety.

In the words of the PCVS school song:

Lift up your heart and let our your voice,
Here we belong and here we rejoice,
Fighting, Singing, Marching, Swinging,
Onward to Victory! 

This has easily been one of the busiest years of my life, and I’m thankful to have come through it with relative equanimity. A busy year at the museum meant that I’ve run more discrete events this year than I’ve ever done before, and I’m proud of that: receptions, exhibit openings, memorial events, National Canoe Day all came off well.  Dan teamed up with boxer Manny Paquiao to record and release a new version of ‘Sometimes When We Touch,’ and we re-designed Dan’s website, which made April and May a month where I’d come home from work and immediately start work again.  The festival was beautiful, with a near-sell-out crowd for the Good Lovelies, great weather and music all weekend, and our biggest attendance yet (and our most beautiful graphic design ever!).  When it looked like Artsweek was in danger of folding, I broke my ‘no new volunteer projects’ rule to make sure it went forward, and while I wished for better attendance, it was a great program of really solid local arts producers who got paid decently for their work.  The Ontario Council of Folk Festivals conference was a lot of fun, and getting to host a workshop and present the Contemporary Album of the Year award at the Canadian Folk Music Awards was awesome.

I also bought myself cross-country skis and a bicycle this year, and have quietly become one of those annoying bicycle people who are so fanatic about the sense of freedom you get while riding around the city that you wish they’d shut up already.  I’ve gotten better at playing ukulele, I started going to the Improv drop-in at PAPA, and I auditioned for Pride and Prejudice (and got a call-back, though it’s not for another week).  I went to four weddings and saw beloved friends get hitched in the most beautiful setting imaginable. We got four little chicks from the local co-op in the Spring, and now get four eggs a day and endless entertainment from our pullets.

There’s been heartbreak and stress, too, that I’m not going to re-hash, but I have a pretty good life, and I’m grateful for it.  I have a family that are willing to jump in and lend a hand when I need help, and friends whose successes and triumphs I’m excited to watch.  I’ve got a grouchy, paranoid black cat who sometimes curls up in my lap, purring.  I’ve got jobs I love and enjoy, and now, as I pass on the mantle of festival ED, I’ve got the free time to pursue my own artistic endeavors.  There’s a lot more that I want out of life, but I recognize that what I’ve got now is pretty wonderful.

In 2009, I promised myself a few things for the decade that I hoped would lead to a better life, and better circumstances, than I was in at the time.  When I look back at where I was a mere two years ago, I feel like I’ve progressed leaps and bounds.  So instead of making flat-out resolutions for 2012, here’s some guidance (for myself) for the year ahead:

Advice

A lot of people I know are happy to dish out advice, solicited or no, and I’ve allowed the opinions of friends and family to steer me wrong in the past.  Most of it is given with good intentions, but almost all of the advice I receive isn’t relevant to my situation or goals.  One of the most successful strategies I’ve used in the past few years is to consider the source. Does that person have a life I want to emulate? I mean, I may like you, but I doubt I want to be like you.  Lots of people give me advice based on how they think I should be, how they want me to be, how their life is, or conventional wisdom.

But I’m not conventional – I don’t want kids, I abhor empty status symbols (big weddings, big cars, big houses, anything with a logo), and I have a strong conviction that you can make a lot of money while loving the work you do and being a decent and ethical human being. So the social pressure to ‘settle down,’ find a mate, and get a ‘real’ job doesn’t apply (yes, some people that I know appear to think that working for a respected national museum doesn’t count as a real job – I think it’s because I like it so much, and obviously, any job that’s fun can’t be real).

Enthusiasm

I love people who express enthusiasm, whether it be about their own projects or someone else’s. The only thing better than having my own exciting project to enthuse about is hearing someone else get excited about their’s (within reason, of course: we’re all guilty of going on a bit too much sometimes). I’m starting to think of cool as a social disease; someone who reacts coolly to every plan, goal, and accomplishment, even their own, is a terrible person to be around.  Yes, sometimes enthusiasm makes you seem goofy, and if you’re over-sensitive about your dignity, it must be terrifying.  But lack of enthusiasm is a deep, bottomless pit of hipster emptiness, and it’s contagious.

I want to be surrounded by people who genuinely love what they’re working on, and who don’t cut down the people around them in the name of cool. If that means that all of the people around me in future are awesome, excited dorks for their work, that would be grand.

Drafts, re-writes, rehearsals and corrections

Something I’ve known about myself since I was a very young woman is that I like process.  I love strategy and revision. I love developing ideas and editing.  As an actor, I love rehearsing more than performing (I really love performance, but rehearsal is better).  In a city whose arts community makes a virtue of slack, revels in instant art, and brags about not rehearsing, I’ve struggled to find like-minded collaborators or a place to fit, and it hasn’t really worked out.  I feel like that’s changing – the arts community is changing (and it’s about fucking time), and my own prospects are changing.

Time, of course, has been a huge factor in keeping me from being able to devote myself to my own artistic process; for the past eight years or so, the folk festival has sucked up a lot of my available time, along with other volunteer commitments.  But yesterday I started a new project, a podcast about urban planning in our fair city (yes, you don’t think that sounds fascinating, but it’s what I think about most of the time). And yes, the first pass is about as rough and useless as it could possibly be, but the germ of the idea is there.  It needs a lot of work and thought, from the actual content of the podcast itself to delivery methods and promotion.  You won’t see the product any time soon, but it’s coming.

Improv

Oh my god, do I ever loathe improv; I’m so bad at it.  But it’s good - reminding myself how to fail and keep on going and fail some more and keep on going and try a bad idea and throw it away, over and over.  It’s simultaneously horrible and… well, I was going to write awesome, but it’s not. It sucks.  It’s like the part of a workout at the gym where you just want to lie down and die, but you keep going anyway.  I hate it I hate it I hate it. But it teaches me a bunch of lessons that I need to keep learning. So I should be going to the Improv drop-in – if not weekly, then as often as I can manage.

Acting

Theatre was the only thing I did from about the age 14 to my early twenties, when I flunked out of theatre school because I hated it so much.  It’s my first love, and nothing else comes close.  To have spent so many years not acting has more to do with how horrible theatre school was for me than anything else, but I’m over that now, and there are opportunities to be onstage or in front of the camera springing up.  Nothing makes me as happy or challenges me as much, and it’s high time I get back in the ring.

Writing

A few years ago I found myself trying The Artists’ Way, a book for blocked creatives who want to get moving again.  It introduced me to the concept of the Morning Pages, three pages of longhand writing that you do once a day (I’m not a morning writer, but that part’s not important).  When I remember to write every day, I know myself better, and the better I know myself, the more likely I am to make choices which support my overall well-being.  I’m a bit of a compulsive writer anyway, but I’m not always writing to a purpose, and when I stop writing daily journals I tend to drift away from my goals.

Friends

People think I’ve moved out of the city, and there’s a good reason for that; I’ve been too busy to anything but work, and I almost never see anyone unless we’re working together. I miss my friends, near and far, and I need to get out more, both here in town and in Toronto, Cobourg, and around the world.  I want to travel more, and have time in that travel for hanging out instead of just working and running.

I want to say thank you to everyone who helped me this year.  I achieve nothing on my own, and without the help of my friends and family, I’d be no where.  I need people who understand, or who try to, and support me, and get what I’m trying to accomplish, and I’m very lucky to have those sorts of people around me (and not very many who are the opposite).  People who put up with my flaws –  I think out loud, and talk too much, and interrupt too often; I endlessly delay making definite plans to get together because I’m not sure when I’ll have time; I never return phone calls or email; I don’t say thank you enough, though I am really, really grateful; I show up and drink all of your whiskey; I take charge, even when it isn’t my place to do so; I’m always the last one to leave the party; I tend to make my opinions sound like facts and facts sound like the word of god.  There’s more, I know.  My imperfections are legion. And you guys put up with me anyway; it’s pretty amazing.

Maybe those are resolutions; whatever they are, I hope my life over the next twelve months and beyond will be guided by them.  There are so many things I can’t plan for, and no one knows what the future holds. I’ve had a crazy year, a busy year, an exhausting year, but it’s been chock-full of work I’m proud of.  My heart is full of love and gratitude, my head is full of plans and goals, and my life is full.  Perhaps it’s greedy to ask for more, but I’m going to do it anyway.

So to everyone, near and far, I wish you a very happy and prosperous new year; may 2012 be the year that exceeds your dreams.

If you’re the glass half-empty type, it only takes a glance around to see that we’re in bad times.  Ecologically, financially, politically and socially, there’s a lot of fodder for thought, protest, and despair.  And yet I feel hope.  I look around at the world, I watch video of Pete Seeger at Occupy Wall Street singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ I see people giving each other a hand up when they’ve stumbled, I see people taking the time to make things with their own hands instead of feeding the corporate greed.  And I hear a lot of really, really good music.

We’re just weeks away from the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and this year I’ll be taking part as the host of a workshop called ‘Good songs for Bad times’ with fabulous artists Dave Gunning, Evalyn Perry, and Melissande.

Featuring performers from diverse musical styles and backgrounds, we’ve got one brief hour to talk about the Good songs they’ve written during or about Bad times. You can join us at 1pm on Sunday, December 4 in Alumni Hall in the Victoria College Building at the University of Toronto. Tickets for the workshops are $15, or in combination with your Gala ticket, $50, and you can purchase them here.

I’ll be at the Gala as well, presenting the award for Contemporary Album of the Year – you can watch the live broadcast Sunday, December 4 at Roots Music Canada.

Lastly, I have the honour of being nominated for the CFMA’s 2011 Unsung Hero Award, which is a pretty nice thing.

Would you like to learn more about the artists who’ll be taking part in the Good Songs for Bad Times workshop?

Evalyn Perry

Called “equally funny and dangerous” by CBC Radio, award-winning songwriter, poet and ironic social commentator evalyn parry is gifted with a sharp pen, a quirky musical sensibility and a wicked sense of humour. From 19th century cycling heroines to 21st century sailors; from “feminine protection” to bottled water to the quest for the Northwest Passage, evalyn’s outspoken creations hold out a powerful vision of social and personal change, while her irreverent wit holds nothing sacred.  Fierce, funny, poignant and provocative, over the past decade parry has toured music, storytelling, pride, poetry and theatre festivals across the continent, taking her unique perspective on the world and transforming it into art that spans genres, genders and generations.

Melisande

Sultry in both official languages, Melisande holds her audience in the palm of her hand throughout her performances.  While Quebecois traditional music has a strong place in her life, she embraces a diverse range of influences and styles, blending them like a well-seasoned soup into songs with broad appeal, deftly delivered.  On stage, her presence is warm, engaging, and energetic, a performance which doesn’t stop merely at delivering songs – she engages the listener in a tacit dialogue.

Dave Gunning

Firmly rooted in the East Coast tradition of songwriting that hearkens back to the traditional music of the region, Dave Gunning blends the past and the present in songs that feel as familiar and welcome as a beloved and well-worn sweater on a cold day.  As accolades pour in, Gunning stays true to himself, his songwriting never swayed by concerns about marketing or genre – he writes what he’s prompted to write, and allows those songs to stand on their own.  Finding inspiration and motivation in the people and stories he knows, Gunning’s works often speaks of hard times and bleak days, but never leaves the listener without the sense that all is not lost; the next day might dawn brighter.

You can join us at 1pm on Sunday, December 4 in Alumni Hall in the Victoria College Building at the University of Toronto. Tickets for the workshops are $15, or in combination with your Gala ticket, $50, and you can purchase them here.

I always feel a bit gormless for a while after the festival, not really sure what to do with myself and not terribly focused.  After a year of planning, of having my schedule revolve around the festival, the weekend itself goes by so quickly that it seems like I missed it.  Can we go back? Can we slow and stop time so that I can talk to a few more people, hear a few more acts, get a few more things done?

It’s also a relief, I won’t lie – we pulled it off, another great year, and while our ambition always outstrips our abilities, it’s impossible to doubt that this was one of the best years of the festival in memory.  Some years it rains, some years technical things go wrong or acts don’t live up to your expectation or volunteers flake out and don’t pull their weight.  This year, the weather was lovely, the events ran so smoothly that it felt weird, the musicians were terrific, and our Coordinators were on their game.  Everyone was happy, great to work with, and responsible.  It was, in a word, charmed.  Lots of work, still, but work where the payoff was a great festival.

It’s bittersweet for me, because this is my last year as Executive Director of the festival. I wear multiple hats, so I’ll still be involved – most notably as Artistic Director for one more year – but for the past five years, I’ve had the opportunity to shape the vision of the festival, to lead a great team of committed, pleasant, and talented people towards a festival that embraces a wider audience and that has a growing reputation in Canada.  It’s both difficult and exciting to let that go. I’m not sure what my life is like without the festival at the centre of it.

I first volunteered for the festival as a parking attendant in the late nineties.  Later, I came on board as the Coordinator for the Artisans Village, and after a break, as the Coordinator for the Club Crawl.  Watching Aengus Finnan and crew as the Shelter Valley Folk Festival took shape, I got a lot of ideas about how we could change our festival to be better, and I put my name forward as Director.  I remember the feeling of panic and fear when the AGM was over and I’d been voted in; I’d never done anything like this, never put myself forward for anything this big, and I wasn’t certain I could pull it off.

I remember PFF 2007 like it was a dream; it still seems like a shining moment to me, mostly because of the stellar lineup and the euphoria of everyone on our team over making it work.  It hasn’t ever felt quite like that again – every year has been different, but that one was striking because so many of the Coordinators and the Board were new, and the look in in everyone’s eyes when the festival was over was one of wonder and excitement. And exhaustion.

We’ve made a lot of changes to the festival since then, dropped things that weren’t working, added things that seemed to be missing, and worked hard every year to make sure this is the best festival we can present.  Despite being one of the lowest-funded folk festivals in Ontario and probably Canada (mostly because we’re one of the last free folk festivals in Canada), we put on a great show and this year, over 10,000 people came out and enjoyed it.

That’s not to say that getting here has been easy; honestly, I can say that there’s been hard times throughout my run as a festival volunteer (the PFF has no paid Staff).  Lots of times I’ve been angry or stressed beyond what I thought I could bear.  I’ve heard things about myself through the grapevine that have been heart-breaking in their misunderstanding of my intentions.  I’ve had people I considered friends do things that were painful and upsetting, and I’ve seen enough unprofessional behaviour for a lifetime.

The goal has always been to raise the bar for arts and events in this area.  Peterborough has great energy, good artists, and a wellspring of ideas, but they’re stifled by lack of confidence and professional rigour.  They’re willing to accept low pay, poor performing conditions, and little respect because they don’t have the confidence to try harder and ask for more.  People don’t like being challenged on this; it’s been the status quo for so long, and habit and familiarity has made it difficult to combat.  I feel that it’s getting better, and I think the festival has had a strong impact on that by bringing in great emerging artists from across the country.  These acts are new, but they rehearse, write, perform, and approach the business of music with a professionalism that belies their short time in the business.  They bring musical sounds and influences from other cultures and scenes, and hopefully inspire local artists to add new sounds and ideas to their own repertoires.

I’m proud of this, and I’ll continue to be proud of this.  I’m proud of all of the work we’ve done with the festival over the past five years.  And I’m excited for the future – both to see what my life is like when the festival is no longer the centre of my year, and to see what is accomplished with the festival in the future.

This year marks a change; a change in personnel, a change where five years of strategizing and planning have paid off, and now it’s time to think ahead another five years, and to bring in fresh minds and ideas.  This festival exists only because so many volunteers are so willing to give up their own time to make a dream happen – the idea that a community can come together without boundaries, without huge corporate sponsors, in the spirit of local multi-generational celebration and cooperation to create an event that is uniquely Peterborough in its shape even while it welcomes people from beyond our city.  The idea that you can run a professional urban folk festival where a friendly, relaxed atmosphere pervades everything.

It’s exciting and satisfying, and I can’t think of a better way to have spent my time over the past 5 years than to help make this happen.

I had a variety of reactions to that, from ‘Pssht, get over it,’ to ‘No, seriously dude: get over it.’ I know Hip-Hop and Rap have a low reputation amongst the Folk community, though I’d underestimated how reactionary and unwelcoming some people would be.  I don’t have much patience with people who write off a whole genre of music, especially those who haven’t really given it a listen.  You may hear that all Rap is about violence, drugs, and hos,* but if you actually like, listen to it, you’ll find that even when that imagery is in heavy use, there’s a lot of other stuff going on. “Rap music is the continuation of the Folk tradition,” I’d say, generally to raised eyebrows and shaking heads.

Which is why, watching one of last week’s episodes of The Colbert Report, I was so excited by and exchange between Stephen Colbert and Talib Kweli that I leapt up and danced around punching the air for a couple of minutes. You can watch the exchange (in Canada) by clicking here, but I’ve transcribed it:

Colbert “What is Rap, really?”

Kweli “Rap and… Hip-Hop… is a vehicle, it’s a tool for expression, and it’s more Folk music than Folk music actually is, because it’s speaking – ”

Colbert “It’s more Folk than Folk?”

Kweli “That’s right – because it’s speaking the language of regular folk. Y’know what I’m saying? When Folk music got popular, it’s ’cause it was stripped down,  it was in the language of what people actually said; and that’s what hip-hop does very well.”

There are plenty of Folk artists currently writing and performing whom I quite like, and whose music I find relevant, but as a whole, the Folk music scene can be a toothless, bland beast malingering on the opposite side of the politics it once espoused. It’s not really anyone’s fault; there are a lot of babyboomers in the Folk scene, and they got old.  Nostalgia has overruled their sense; Stephen Harper can plonk out ‘Imagine’ ’till the cows come home, but I like to ‘imagine’ John Lennon spitting in his face while he does.

Folk music had a lot to say, once, and was powerful in its delivery, but that was more than 30 years ago, before I was even born.  Folk music now has lost its power by avoiding politics and focusing on romance or the supposed simplicity of an earlier time, a nostalgia for things that never existed.  When it does deal with social or political subject matter, it’s often the politics of the 60s, or too preachy, simplistic, and heavy-handed for most audiences.  When I want to hear about things that are relevant to my life and the world I see around me right now, I turn to Rap and Hip-Hop.  Because the torch that Folk let fall has been picked up by the rappers and DJs; they’re talking about people struggling to survive in a hostile environment, about how they and their families and friends respond to social injustice, racism, and hard financial realities.

Folk music was the music of poor people, people who lived close to the means of production, who earned their meagre pay by mining or farming or rough, physical labour and yearned for a day when things would be more equal.**  The reality these days is that the working poor are in call centres and bargain stores, a time when being poor means you’ve never been to a farm or had the opportunity to grow or make something tangible with your own two hands.*** The wheel has turned quickly; the sympathy of the people isn’t with unions – which are pretty well seen as rich fat-cats and corrupt representatives that protect the upper middle-class at the expense of quality and fairness – or with the issues of the past.  It’s with the rise of a relatively-unprotected, urban existence, where the difference between making rent this month and living in serious debt is largely outside of your control in an almost Dickensian way.

Rap and Hip-Hop are as much a comment on and a protest against these conditions as they are a celebration of getting out of them.  And when you listen to what have been classed as ‘Conscious‘ rappers, you hear progressive views on community, equality, social justice and protest that seem to be the direct inheritors of the folk movement – or perhaps, more than inheritors, because they have raised some pretty rudimentary ideas up into adulthood.  There aren’t so many of those easy slogans or simple answers that Folk music has often fallen back on; the politics are complicated.  As a Feminist and someone who leans towards pacifism, I find the sexism and violence in some rap music problematic, but it doesn’t keep me away from the genre, nor does it change the fact that some truly great artists are people whose views I don’t share.

After Shad K performed at the Peterborough Folk Festival in 2008, I had people from all walks of life, ranging in age from their twenties to sixties, come up to me and with wonder in their faces tell me that they had no idea they could like Rap music.  It’s one of those rare victories that I’ve savoured ever since; tuning other people in to the amazing and important work being created by Rappers and Hip-Hop artists is a pleasure and a privilege.  And when you open your ears to something new, you might find yourself more familiar with the feeling of community, struggle and and passion than you’d have imagined.

*The word is used to illustrate opinions,with all respect. Do your thing, ladies.

**I have thoughts about how the middle class of the 60s romanticized poverty and the “simple life” much like the French aristocracy did in the 1700s, but that’s a topic for another day.

***Being able to afford chickens and have a yard where I can keep them, and grow vegetables, is a privilege I’m aware of; I have a complicated relationship with the urban homesteading trend, because I’m reasonably certain that this back-to-the-earth stuff is aristocrats playing at being milkmaids.  I can’t shake that sense of romance myself, but I do know that it’s pretty well bourgeoisie bullshit.

Behind the Keene Hotel was a chicken coop; a pretty sturdy, impressive thing with a fenced-in yard overgrown with vines.  I idly wished for the days when they kept chickens there, but didn’t pursue it; the new administrators were taking things in hand, and attendance was improving.  There was less time to poke around and daydream.  But I think the idea of chickens stayed with me.

A few years ago, I saw a news report about backyard chickens in Toronto; I saw the small backyard and the cozy coop – an Eglu – and the seed of an idea that had laid dormant in my mind burst forth.  But time and money haven’t been plentiful in the past couple of years; I had to wait. As the snow began to recede this year, it occurred to me that the time was probably right to pursue my own little flock.

So in late March, after doing some reading online, I went down to the local Co-op and ordered 4 chicks from Frey’s Hatchery – two Rhode Island Reds, two Black Stars.  And then, instead of settling down to wait, I fussed over the things I needed to buy.  I read and re-read articles, forums, and posts.  I scrounged for tips.  And I came up with lots of divergent opnions, and no decent guide for my teeny flock.  So I thought I’d write about the process myself, partly to record what I did, partly to help other small-flock owners with their first order of chicks.

Obviously, I’m a total newbie at this, so I can’t say I’m any authority; please be sure to consult widely before taking the plunge yourself.

It is legal?

In my area, as far as I understand, the bylaws regarding chickens say that you can keep them, as long as they’re pets rather than livestock.  I think it would be great if the City of Peterborough changed the rules to reflect current mores; in the past, keeping a kitchen garden or livestock was considered ‘common’, and that just isn’t so anymore.  Provided that people are responsible flock owners, there’s no good reason that you shouldn’t be able to keep laying hens.  I’m interested in working with other local chicken-keepers to propose to council that they change the bylaws; until that time, my pullets are pets.

Costs

At the scale that I’m working with, this may not be an economical venture in the short-term, especially when you factor in electricity.  With a larger flock, you can recoup some of the costs via farm gate sales of eggs. However, there are a lot of one-time purchases, and if I keep on with keeping chickens, it’s potentially a worthwhile investment. So far, here’s what I’ve spent:

$28.00  Chicks (4 – shipping, taxes, small order fee)
$1.68  Chick waterer (the kind you screw on a mason jar)
$1.13 marbles to put in the Chick Waterer so they won’t drown (doesn’t actually seem to be much of a concern)
$12.42 Chicken Feeder (3lb hanging type)
$38.13 Heat lamp, and 175 W bulb, cheap thermometer
$13.49 Chick Starter Feed (25kg bag)

Brooding Pen

I read about a thousand posts and articles about brooding pens, fretting over the size, etc.  What I used in the end is a small home-made animal cage that we had kicking around, built of wood and chicken wire, set up in a part of the sewing room that isn’t high-traffic but is high visibility.  It measures 1’6″x2′, and seems to be more than enough space.  I’ve lined the bottom with paper towel, underneath which is chicken wire, and then to protect the floor I lay down some newspapers.  I read somewhere that chicks have an easier time sleeping under a red heat lamp, so chose that colour.  Now day and night our front window is lit red, which in our neighborhood might easily lead to misunderstandings, so we’ll see!

Fiddling with the damned heat lamp and thermometer was an exercise in frustration; I switched thermometers and have mostly been adjusting to suit the chicks, rather than the suggested temperature.
The cats were initially fascinated, but are now pretty blasé.

Arrival

I got a call from the Co-op on April 5 saying that my chicks would be in the next morning between 9am and 10am.  I made my final adjustments to the brooding pen, putting in the feed and the waterer, and adding a teaspoon of sugar to the water, which I’d been told to do the first time to pep them up after the trip. I popped over at lunch on April 6 and picked up the smallest of a pile of cheeping boxes, stopping quickly on my way to the car to take a look.  When I got them home, I turned on the heat lamp, and grabbed each chick one at a time, dipping their beaks in the water to teach them where it is before releasing them. They settled in right away, figuring out where the feed and water was in no time, cheeping softly and walking around the pen.

The next day, one of the chicks was emerging as the bully of the group, pecking at the others, and one was missing a patch of feathers; bad signs.  I took a look at our little fuzzy friends, and it turned out that three of them had blocked cloaca, a problem which reoccurred over the next day.  Known in backyard chicken circles as ‘pasty butt’ (a phrase I type reluctantly because it sounds so cutesy), this is the result of diarrhea drying and blocking the orifice that chicks use to eliminate waste, known as the cloaca or vent.  I’ve read that diarrhea in chicks happens as a result of stress or medication, and I tried two complementary cures: first, gently wiping the cloaca with a paper towel and warm water to loosen the dried stool, which took a little patience but wasn’t difficult.  Secondly, I added a teaspoon of plain, unsweetened yoghurt to their feed, mixing it well.

I’ve read that chicks would normally obtain probiotics from pecking at their mother’s droppings, but since these chicks are hatched in an incubator, they have no source of probiotics.  If I’d know this in advance, I probably would have set out some of the yoghurt mash earlier.  In any case, the mash seems to have cleared up the problem; the bully chick, of course, is the one who had no difficulties with diarrhea. We’ll keep doing it every other day for a week or so; the chicks love the mash, so at least they get a bit of a treat with their treatment.

5 days old

Today my chicks are 5 days old, tentatively named, and thriving.  They’ve already developed wing and tail feathers and are starting to look like birds rather than chicks, flapping their wings to get away when you try to hold them.  It’s pretty adorable to see them stretch a wing, or lean back to send a sip of water down their throats.  I’ve set up a couple of roosts in the pen, but they’re not quite at the stage of wanting to roost yet.  They’re developing fast, but they’re still babies, and if you can get one to gentle in your hand she’ll often fall asleep there, nodding off like drowsy babies of all sorts will.

We’re not very far in, but so far they’ve been very little trouble.  We change the bedding in the pen about once a day, and usually clean the waterer about that often as well.  We’ll upgrade to hay or pine shavings as bedding soon.  They’re very quiet for the most part, and at worst there’s a gentle cheeping in the background. I don’t find, with this few birds, that there’s much of a smell, but that may change as they get older. I’ve got weeks to go (thankfully) until I’ll need to have the coop built, but I’ve got a spot and a design picked out, and I’m hoping to do it with reclaimed wood and keep costs low.

Everyone in the household is invested in this project; from the cats to the humans, there’s a lot of interest and excitement.  While I’m paying the costs associated, others are helping out by cleaning the pen and getting the chicks used to being handled.  Only a few days in, there’s already a lot of affection for our little flock, and I look forward to watching them grow into mature birds.

I’m happy to try to answer any questions you have about raising chicks – though it’s early days yet, I feel like I’ve learnt a lot.

*I’m happy to report that, in addition to having a terrific garden at Fitzpatrick House, the Lang Pioneer Village chicken coop was cleaned up and inhabited by a small flock last time I visited.

The thing about roller derby is, at the beginning at least, a really open sport.  It’s growing in popularity, but still relatively few people have played.  The skill level varied, at Friday’s practice, from a few women who’d played before to those who’d rarely (if ever) skated.  It’s a bit of an outlay for skates and protective gear, but people of all ages and body types are welcome; you don’t have to be young or athletic, or have a certain build or height.

For someone whose team photo is pretty tough and whom I imagine is a hellion on the track, Lucid Lou is a patient, affable teacher whose ability to really communicate the basics makes her an excellent coach.  I watched her talk new skaters through their very first movements, correct mistakes in a constructive way, and stay supportive of the newbies while pushing the more experienced skaters to new skills.

Over the course of the two-hour practice, I went from loving shooting the women ((so much more fun than shooting a person at a mic, no matter how interesting their talk or how good their music), to envying them and wanting to get out on the floor myself.  There’s something so powerful about roller derby; it combines so many things I admire.  They seemed transformed from regular people with kids, jobs, and student debts to tough, physically resilient women moving with power and some grace (the grace will increase; give them time!).  It was inspiring to see so many women of such different backgrounds and physicalities out on the floor, looking strong and confident.

In a time when so many women are reaching back to an imagined ideal housewife of the 50s (I like that aesthetic too, but do your politics have to match your outfit? Those crinolined, white-gloved ladies were second-wave warriors in the 60s, y’know),  it’s nice to see women of all sorts reaching occasionally for their inner Tank Girl. That, to me, is the essence of feminism; to sometimes be a mom, sometimes a bookish Star Wars nerd, sometimes a tough bitch on wheels, but having the choice to decide to reject whatever parts of the archetype don’t work for you.  To define yourself as a multi-faceted individual, rather than be defined by some things you do or choose.

In short, it was awesome.  You won’t find me lacing up anytime soon (I have kind-of a busy year ahead of me), but I’ve been bitten by the derby bug.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFKIYO3OpF4]

There’s lots of praise in the comment section about the way she’s evoked the city.  But I read it, and I don’t see Peterborough there at all.  I see a generic small Ontario city, coated in a thin veneer of Peterborough, just enough to give you a vague idea or a sense of homesickness. It comes across as a sweet small town, a quiet, idyllic backwater that overwrought Torontonians can fantasize about retreating to.*  The writer and I live a few kilometers away from one another, but what it’s like for me, living here, is a completely different thing.

Our house is in the old north end, on the edge of the student ghetto. It’s half-way up the hill, sometimes called Smith Town Hill.  Our neighborhood is full of century homes in a mix of conditions, a part of town that just won’t gentrify.  Your bike gets stolen from your front porch.  But even the neglected homes have a a fading respectability and grace; those whose owners care for and love their homes have a neighborly comfort and beauty.  Bastions of community in an area where absentee landlords own too much, these homeowners refuse to pack it in and move to an easier, ‘nicer’ part of town.  Maybe they can’t afford it, or maybe they feel the way I do, but I think they’re fighting the good fight, keeping heritage buildings and the old north end livable.

Petty crime is high here, but I always feel really safe.  I walk alone a lot, and often late at night, but I always feel that help is within call.  Students are up until the wee hours, and there are a lot of eyes on the street at any time of day.  From our front windows, you can see out over the old parts of the city: the Quaker Oats factory,  East City rising from the river, Armour Hill. And from our house, you can walk pretty much everywhere.

If you wander downhill and over to George Street, you’ll find Garden 579, a lot that lay vacant for years before a community garden project asked the landlord for permission to use the space. There are community gardens all over town, all a part of the Peterborough Community Garden Network, but Garden 579 has a place in my heart because it’s not merely that wonderful thing, an urban greenspace, but also a gathering place and a labour of love.  Hosting potlucks and open jams, workshops and community feasts, it’s a place where even the most marginalized can feel welcome. You can see the work that they’ve done with few resources, the decorative and useful things that they’ve created to make the lot more than just a garden.

If you keep walking east, you can take the London Street footbridge over the river and into the park that once was a rail yard. On the banks of the mighty Otonabee, there’s an island where you can wade out into the river or relax in the shade.  It’s not obvious from the Rotary Trail, but it’s not exactly a secret, and it’s one of the most beautiful spots in the city to spend a sultry Summer afternoon, basking in the gentle breeze off of the water.

There’s a myth about Peterborough, that just like Rome we were built on seven hills (I can only think of three that might count). When you start poking around, there are plenty of local myths, legends, and stories – the midnight ride of Red Dog Ray, the witch-burning on Armour Hill, the ghost in the basement of the Purple Rooster.  Local historians pay them no mind or dismiss them as nonsense, but I like them; our oral culture is stuck on these stories, and since we keep repeating them, they must mean something to us.

I’ve heard it said that back in the days when it was called “The Electric City” (because, when electricity was new and expensive, Peterborough had it in spades), it was also a thriving centre of the sex trade (something that never seems to make it into the tourism brochures or panegyrics on local historical figures).  Those second and third floors of the downtown heritage buildings are full of long, narrow rooms with peeling wallpaper that seem to evoke late-19th-century brothels in my mind.  If you start paying attention to the history of what’s now the Entertainment District, you’ll find that a lot of those buildings were hotels with saloons on the ground floor.  The last hold-outs from those heady days of the ‘Gay Nineties‘ (1890s, that is) are The Red Dog Tavern, The White House Hotel, and The Montreal House,  all seedy dives to greater or lesser degrees, all with their own charms.**

I’ve climbed those stairs to the studios on upper floors downtown – solid, well-built stairs to cold rooms where artists paint and musicians rehearse under bare bulbs.  I’ve set myself down on a grubby futon and passed a bottle of wine from hand to hand with friends in the dark of night.  You can hear the city hum while the windows rattle and shake with passing traffic, and the odd drunken student goes woohooing away up the street below.

When you step outside, sometimes the air smells like maple syrup and oatmeal cookies, and sometimes it smells like candy.  That’s Quaker Oats, the factory on the river.  When you smell that delicious air, you should stop and give a quiet sigh of thanks that we’re an oatmeal town rather than a pulp and paper town.
On my way to work, I walk by the Victorian-Industrial architecture of the Canadian General Electric Corporation and its neighborhood, an area I’m becoming increasingly interested in.  Both of my grandfathers worked there; half of the city’s grandfathers worked there.

I love our old neighborhoods.  I’ve watched and worked over 20 years as the arts community, the student population, and our oddly passionate city bureaucrats have transformed a dying heritage area full of bingo parlours and dollar stores into the thriving heart of the city once again.

Down on Lansdowne, you can get every generic experience you’re looking for.  You’re in Anytown.  There’s the mall recently updated to look even less like anywhere in particular, and the big box stores, and the crap chain restaurants and fast food and the comforting monotony of sameness.  There’s nothing Peterborough down there, except for the Saturday Farmer’s Market, and hockey and lacrosse (at which we, as a city, excel most years).  I’ve walked those store aisles until I’ve forgotten a little of who I am and where I was.

One Winter night I stood in the falling snow in my backyard and heard faintly through the snow-muffled air the sound of the clocktower striking eight.
One Summer night I was walking home up the hill, and all at once there was a chorus of windchimes from every porch, though the air was still and close.

From my house on the hill, it’s a fifteen minute walk to some of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, made by real chefs who are passionately, feverishly concerned about their food.  There’s great live music, terminally underpriced, and theatre, terminally over-acted.  There’s a distinct visual tradition here, an artistic style that impresses me with its depth and humanity.  There’s The Market Hall, under the clock tower, with acoustics so lovely that being in the theatre is a joy whether on stage or in the audience.

Our Mayors bluster and fuss, our arts community praises itself until all critical thought is treason, and our best and our brightest can’t afford to live here and put food on the table. I won’t deny that Peterborough has problems.  Often enough I’m furious, or sad, or just sick to death of this little town, sometimes so small-minded and petty.

But there’s a magic here too, one that’s kept me here despite my best intentions, one that draws people back when they move away.
No one really wonders why I stay.

* I take issue with a lot of things in her article, but the one that sticks out for me is this idea that there are Hell’s Angels in our Santa Claus parade.  I missed this year’s parade, but I suspect she’s talking about the Peterborough Harley riders float. Do these pictures from the 2009 Santa Claus parade look like an organized crime syndicate?

**I’ve never had time to do any concrete research, but it’s something I’ve always been curious about.  If anyone can point me towards more information about Ptbo’s less official histories, I’d be glad to talk to you!

*** I’ve used a lot of other people’s photos as well as my own in this article; please hover your mouse over the images for the photo credit, and click for the original.  They’re great photographers, and you should check out more of their photos!