Just after starting the Ottawa International Writers Festival 20 years ago, the organizers launched a program that brought writers into schools in the national capital region. "It wasn't something that I, as a student in the 1950s and '60s, had experienced," said Neil Wilson who founded
By Rosa Saba Nicholas Crombach says his exhibition CAPTURED, at the Ottawa School of Art’s Byward Market gallery, represents his fascination with the relationship between humans and animals. The Ontario-born artist has used traditional and contemporary methods in the show, which includes seven almost life-size sculptures and
The global phenomeon that is Rupi Kaur strode confidently into a spoken word performance in the Great Hall of the Canadian Museum of History Sunday evening. The event was sold out and such is the drawing power of Kaur that the tickets went in a week
By Rosa Saba When writer and activist Robyn Maynard speaks, she often asks members of the audience whether they remember learning about the history of American slavery. Almost everyone puts up their hand, she says, but when asked if they learned about Canadian slavery, almost no
Seventy-nine years ago, Nazi thugs in brown shorts smashed into the businesses of Jews across Germany and Austria in the pogroms that began the spiral into the Final Solution. One of the businesses that was destroyed was a small record label founded by a Lithuanian Jew
Almost 40 years ago something profound began happening in this country. A generation of Indigenous writers, poets, songwriters and playwrights began to raise their voices. One of the most prominent members of that cohort was Tomson Highway. His plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta
Choreographers love to turn Swan Lake on its feathered ear with updated, sometimes subversive takes. But Aaron Watkin and the Semperoper Ballett Dresden have completely refreshed this most classic of classical ballets not by modernizing, but by digging up its ancient source, buried in the
We humans have separated ourselves from wildlife, as we’ve tamed many animals and, ostensibly, ourselves. Yet, what a mirror the creatures of the wilderness continue to be. We can see reflections of ourselves and our behaviour in the faces and the fates of wild animals. Do
The year 1957 was full of momentous events. In the fall, the Soviet Union started the space race with the launch of Sputnik-1, the first ever satellite. The Avro Arrow was unveiled in 1957 to the Canadian public. Leave it to Beaver debuted on CBS and
About five years ago, Ron Sexsmith, the respected Canadian singer-songwriter, woke up with an idea. But it wasn't for a song. "Sometimes you wake up and you aren't ready to get out of bed," he said in an interview, "and you lie back down and wake
