The film by Osgoode grad Chris Hope (JD ’04) offers a moving account of Japanese Canadian detention during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes of his grandmother, Nancy Okura.  Hope spent more than ten years working on the film, which he also produced. Osgoode alumnus Anwar Deeb (JD ’04) composed the film’s original music.

Right: Osgoode Hall Law School grad Chris Hope with his grandmother, Nancy Okura.

"Most people my age have the beginning of a pension," said Hope, whose day job is as director of business and legal affairs for Alliance Films Inc.  "I have a film; a massive debt, and, thankfully, a very patient wife."

Hope was able to attract community support to raise about 25 per cent of the overall budget, which allowed him to complete the film by the April 1 gala date.  The film is now ready for distribution and broadcast.

His goal is to screen the film in schools across Canada. "The Japanese Canadian Internment story is one in which Canadians are painfully under-versed,” he said. “Hopefully, by presenting it in the first person with my grandmother, it will resonate on a more personal level than the few paragraphs in a history textbook that most of us experienced, and probably quickly forgot."

Hope says the universal message contained in his film is that everyone needs to take the time to learn the history of those closest to them, and not hesitate in the sharing that history.

“By openly discussing such stories, we may collectively learn from our past, regardless of racial, cultural, religious or political boundaries,” he said. “Knowledge and familiarity with ‘the other’ is the enemy of discrimination, so it is critical that that knowledge is constantly nurtured and encouraged."

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The lively young repertory company of the Department of Dance is presenting an engaging collection of contemporary choreography by established and rising dance artists. The show, which opened Thursday, runs Friday, March 23, and Saturday, March 24, at 7:30pm.

Dancers, Anastasia Feigin and  Nikolaos Markakis in 'Tangled Rags'. Photograph by David Hou

“I feel the members of the 91��ɫ Dance Ensemble are among the hardest-working people at this University,” said YDE’s artistic and managing director, Professor Holly Small.  “With occasional blood, plenty of sweat and not a few tears, the ensemble has achieved a level of excellence of which 91��ɫ can rightly be proud.”

The program opens with Suddenly Everyone…,  a piece that ranges from highly structured to completely free improvisation. It was created collaboratively, with the YDE providing the movement and music, and Small contributing structure and direction.

Set to a mix of music from the films Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins, 91��ɫ dance Professor Darcey Callison’s Down The Road takes inspiration and physicality from the rabbit holes and yellow brick roads encountered in life.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine is a surprising, demanding trio choreographed and performed by YDE members Yvon Allard, Miles Gosse and Nikolaos Markakis.

Undergraduate student Anne Goad’s It’s Just What You Do is a duet about true love, inspired by the choreographer’s grandparents and their 69 years of marriage.

Shae Zukiwsky, a PhD candidate in dance, joins the YDE in the performance of his new piece for large ensemble, Resistance. Through the work, he explores the concept of being an outsider and how he could move from within that – seeing as he can’t seem to move from it.

91��ɫ dance student Tracy Day in Small's 'Tangled Dances'

The program culminates with Small’s Tangled Rags, a suite of three tender, soulful dances that the choreographer has dedicated to her father. The work is set to Three Rags, a composition by the late Canadian composer James Tenney, who taught in 91��ɫ’s music department, in a recording by pianist and 91��ɫ music professor Casey Sokol.

Tickets for the YDE show are $20 each, or $10 for students and seniors. Tickets are available by calling 416-736-5888, visiting the Fine Arts Box Office, or at the door.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The conference will take place March 23, from noon to 6pm, at 152 Founders Assembly Hall, Founders College, Keele campus. It is hosted by H20Congo, a non-governmental organization started by 91��ɫ alumni Barbro Ciakudia (BA Hons. ’11) and Nancy-Josée Ciakudia (BA Spec. Hons. ’08), and 91��ɫ.

Cuneyt, a singer, and Hamna Mughal, a human rights activist and poet, will kick off the conference, followed by talks with Nythalah Baker, senior adviser, education & communications for 91��ɫ's Centre for Human Rights, and Professor Justin Podur (left), the Faculty of Environmental Studies graduate program director. Podur will give an overiew of the confict in the DR Congo and provide the historical context, as well as show a video he's put together.

Podur has written on political conflicts and social movements and has reported from Palestine, Haiti, the DR Congo and others. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Haiti's New Dictatorship: From the Overthrow of Aristide to the 2010 Earthquake (Pluto Press).

Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize winning film, , shot in the war zones of the DR Congo in 2006, will be screened in the afternoon. The documentary breaks the silence surrounding the tens of thousands of women and girls who have been kidnapped, raped and sexually tortured in during the DR Congo’s ongoing civil war. In the film, rape survivor and filmmaker Lisa F. Jackon talks with activists, peacekeepers, physicians and with the rapists themselves. She travels to remote villages to meet rape survivors who have been shamed and abandoned, providing a piercing, intimate look into the horror, struggle and ultimate grace of their lives. 

Two more speakers will take to the floor, including Jim Karygiannis, the  Liberal member of parliament for Scarborough-Agincourt. There will be storytelling by Ellias Nabutete, singing by Kasim and Blandine, poetry by SobAbu, as well as dancing by Fumu Jamez and the Maria Bahru dance company.

For more information, visit the Centre for Human Rightswebsite.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Established and emerging artists in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts bring their collective talents to a riveting new production of a baroque classic: Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. This epic story of love and betrayal plays out at the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre on 91��ɫ’s Keele campus for two performances only, March 1 and 2.

Lead artists Joseph Farahat and Charlotte Gagnon

Based on a chapter from The Aeneid, penned by the Roman poet Virgil in the first century BC, Dido and Aeneas recounts the tragic tale of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the Trojan hero Aeneas. Dido loses her heart to the fierce, handsome warrior Aeneas after he is shipwrecked on her shores, only to be devastated when he abandons her to continue his quest to find Rome.

This story of doomed love has resounded through two millennia. 91��ɫ’s production, a collaboration between faculty and students from the departments of Music, Theatre and Dance, is a strikingly contemporary but timeless re-imagining. Thirty performers play the characters as well as the place, forming a living set on an otherwise empty stage.

“T�󾱲� Dido project is the realization of a dream I’ve had since I joined 91��ɫ,” said Professor Catherine Robbin (left), who heads 91��ɫ’s classical vocal music program. “There’s so much talent and expertise in our performance programs, and it’s a joy to bring it together in an opera production. The experience of combining our creative energies is tremendously exciting and rewarding, both for the students involved and for those of us who teach and work professionally in the field.”

An internationally renowned mezzo soprano, Robbin fills the dual roles of music director and producer for the production. She is no stranger to Dido and Aeneas, having sung the title role in the 1982 Stratford Festival production, which earned her critical accolades as  “a voice which is unquestionably the greatest, in its range, that Canada has produced in several decades” (The Globe and Mail). Her discography features many baroque composers, including Purcell, Handel and Vivaldi, in collaborations with leading conductors such as Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock and John Eliot Gardiner.

Presiding over the orchestra pit for 91��ɫ’s Dido and Aeneas is Robbin’s Music Department colleague, award-winning choral conductor and composer Professor Stephanie Martin (above). Martin, who serves as music director for the historic Church of St. Mary Magdalene and conductor of Toronto’s Pax Christi Chorale, directs the 16- member 91��ɫ Baroque Ensemble.

The stage director is theatre Professor Gwen Dobie (left), who brings extensive directing credits in contemporary opera and theatre to the table. Dobie‘s most recent productions include ���������������dzپ���ܱ� and Sound in Silence for her company, Out of the Box Productions; the Canadian premiere of the Danish opera On this Planet by Anders Nordendoft; and the world premiere of the opera Eyes on the Mountain by Canadian composer Christopher Donison.

Susan Lee (BFA ’90, MFA ’10), an alumna and current faculty member in 91��ɫ’s Department of Dance, brings her long-standing interest in interdisciplinary collaboration to Dido and Aeneas. In a performance career spanning two decades and three continents, Lee has originated roles in almost 50 world premieres by some of Canada’s most highly acclaimed choreographers. Her own choreography has been described as “… a tour de force of magic and mystery” (The Globe and Mail). She brings that magic to bear on this production, contributing original choreography to the work.

Starring in the role of Dido is fourth-year music major Charlotte Gagnon. Gagnon recently won first prize at the Newmarket Voice Festival Senior Scholarship Competition, as well as two awards for opera performance and the prize for outstanding performing ability and career potential in classical singing. She also placed second in her class at the 2011 National Association of Teachers of Singing Ontario chapter competition.

First-year music student Joseph Farahat sings the role of Aeneas. Both young artists are studying with eminent soprano Norma Burrowes in 91��ɫ’s classical vocal performance program.

In total, the cast for Dido and Aeneas features 21 singers, four actors and five dancers. Not only performers, they also play an active role on the production side. Dressed all in white, they have designed their own costumes based on their personae in Purcell’s opera – or  in the case of the non-speaking roles, inspired by characters drawn from the classical literature of five centuries, who were betrayed or betrayers in their time.

Eschewing a physical set, Professor Elizabeth Asselstine, chair of the Department of Theatre, and Professor William Mackwood, who teaches design and production in the Department of Dance, have created elaborate lighting and projection designs for the show. Working with a technical team of four theatre students, they paint the white-costumed canvas of the performers with evocative colour and special effects.

Tickets are $17, or $12 for students and seniors. For tickets, contact the Box Office at 416-736-5888.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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From investigating how typography could reduce medication errors to using math as a tool to teach jazz, Faculty of Fine Arts scholars and practitioners have a fascinating array of research projects to share during the Fine Arts Research Celebration Monday, Feb. 6.

Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation, and Barbara Sellers-Young, dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, are co-hosting the event, which takes place from 2 to 4 pm in the McLean Performance Studio, 244 Accolade East Building, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend the free celebration, but an RSVP is requested. You can RSVP or call Lia Novario at ext. 33782. Light refreshments will be provided.

Right: Nancy Latoszewski performing

The program features a live dance performance, film clips and four presentations that showcase some of the diverse academic and applied creative work being done by Fine Arts faculty and graduate student researchers.

“T�󾱲� research celebration highlights multi-disciplinarity in the Faculty of Fine Arts, from dance to music to digital media and beyond,” said Haché. “We invite the 91��ɫ research community to join us to learn more about the exceptional research activities taking place in this Faculty.”

“The arts are so much more than entertainment,” says Sellers-Young. “Arts and culture are at the heart of our day-to-day lives, and those who are engaged in the arts – as practising artists, theorists, historians, critics and many other ways – play an important role in shaping civic society and addressing the critical issues of our day. The presentations at the Fine Arts Research Celebration illustrate this engagement and the diverse contributions our researchers are making.”

Visitors to the Fine Arts Research Celebration will be greeted by clips of visual arts Professor Katherine Knight’s vivid feature documentary, . Knight’s film follows the renowned Canadian artist as she prepares massive new works depicting archetypal cities and familiar, yet disquieting, landscapes for two 30-year retrospectives – one at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and another at the National Art Gallery in Ottawa.

Left: Wanda Koop in a still from the film KOOP: The Art of Wanda Koop

Drawing the viewer into the framework in which the artist works, the film explores the science of vision, colour and perception – including Koop’s visit to 91��ɫ’s Centre for Vision Research to have her vision tested in the 3D Vision Research lab. (See YFile story Feb. 22, 2011.)

Design Professor will present a talk, titled “Evaluating Graphic Design for Patient Safety: An investigation of the Use of Typographic Principles to Differentiate Look-Alike Medication Names”.

She was the principal investigator on a recent study conducted at Toronto’s University Health Network, investigating how the principles and practices of graphic design and typography might be used for interventions intended to help health-care professionals make accurate medication selections.

Right: An example of using Tallman lettering with parts of the word enhanced to help distinguish it from similar medication names

“We know that look-alike, or orthographically similar, medication names are one of the causes of medication errors,” says Gabriele. “Tallman lettering (enhancement of words by changing parts of the word to capital letters) is currently recommended to help differentiate similar names.”

In her new study, she tested tallman lettering applied to look-alike medication names alongside other ways of enhancing names using three different scenarios. “Results indicated that tallman lettering might not be as effective as previously reported,” she says. “The research also revealed the importance of designing and testing interventions for specific users in contexts that reflect actual situations and activities in practice.”

In his lecture-demonstration “Music is Math: An effective Approach to Teaching Jazz Improvisation within General Music Education”, Professor Ron Westray��(����ڳ�), 91��ɫ’s Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz Performance, explores how the mathematical qualities inherent in western music can be used as a tool for ear training through music improv.

“You can view the chord-to-scale relationship in jazz improvisation as virtual data that can be transposed throughout relative and absolute functions, much like basic math,” says Westray. “Translating music into math helps demystify simple improvisation. It levels the playing field and makes it easier for non-specialists to teach jazz improv.”

Westray, an internationally known jazz trombonist, will illustrate the concept by means of a PowerPoint presentation punctuated with live performance examples, including the participation of jazz majors from the Department of Music.

Digital Media Professor Mark-David Hosale will discuss “Nonlinear Narrative as a Conceptual Framework for Media Art”, with an overview of the core technical and esthetic motivations unpinning his work as a media artist.

Right: Digital media art by Mark-David Hosale

“The approach to addressing narrative issues in my work is derived from thinking of narrative as a model of knowledge,” he says. “I see the stories we tell each other and ourselves as an expression of what we know. From this perspective, my works can be understood as knowledge spaces that are a conceptual reflection of a modern understanding of knowledge and nature, which is inherently nonlinear.”

The challenge of capturing the qualities of nonlinear narratives has led Hosale to develop an abstract model useful in the conceptual analysis and practical development of his work. In his presentation, he will explain how the model is based on a composite of operations, structures and characteristics that provide the governing principles behind a software framework and hardware platform.

Canadian dance history is the focus of the presentation by dance Professors Darcey Callison and Carol Anderson, and Professor Emerita Selma Odom. They will read excerpts from their contributions to , an anthology to accompany an exhibition of the same name organized by Dance Collection Danse in partnership with the Theatre Museum of Canada.

During the 1970s dance boom, audiences worldwide flocked to performances. Artists were energized and innovative. In Canada, dance finally found an intellectual home in universities across the country. The decade was also defined in Canada by political, social and cultural debate inspired by second-wave feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, separatism and nationalism.

How was this turbulent decade reflected in dance? How did the major issues and ideas of the day inspire or influence dancers and choreographers, and how did they respond? Renegade Bodies: Canadian Dance in the 1970s explores how the art form contributed to, and was informed by, this vibrant zeitgeist.

Moving from the page to the stage, dance MFA candidate Nancy Latoszewski will perform a five-minute excerpt from her solo dance, Carriage. The work revisits the challenge she faced in transitioning from the life of a prima ballerina to motherhood. While intensely personal, the work also speaks to the wider experience of undergoing a tremendous life change. Through her choreographic and performance research, with works such as Carriage, Latoszewski investigates how danced narratives can communicate personal stories and contribute to current interests in oral history and storytelling.

In addition to the public presentations, there will be a display of books and materials in other publication formats.

Visitors will have the opportunity to engage with other research projects by Fine Arts faculty on Fine Arts Research Day in Vari Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 29, from 10am to 2pm, as part of 91��ɫ’s Research Month.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The exhibition Will Munro: History, Glamour, Magic is about the history that Toronto artist based his work on and the history he was – his glam subjects and the glamorous one he was – and the magic dimension of his last work. Munro, who was a DJ, music promoter, activist, queer community catalyst, and visual artist, died in 2010 of cancer. He was just 35 years old.

To celebrate his legacy, the AGYU opens a major retrospective exhibition this evening from 6 to 9pm with a celebration in the gallery space. All are welcome. The exhibition continues until March 11.

Above: Will Munro: History, Magic, Glamour, installation view, AGYU. Photograph by Cheryl O'Brien, courtesy Art Gallery of 91��ɫ

Will Munro: History, Glamour, Magic  concentrates on the multi-media work Munro produced after graduating from the Ontario College of Art & Design University (OCADU) in 2000, from his first exhibition Boys Do First Aid (2000) to his last, Inside the Solar Temple of the Cosmic Leather Daddy (2010).

It also captures his various signature underwear work (his handcrafted underwear made from heavy metal concert T-shirts); the banners of legendary queer performers such as Klaus Nomi and Leigh Bowery; his stitching collaborations with West Side Stitches Couture Club, Jeremy Laing, and others (which includes the restaging of The Pavilion of Virginia Puff-Paint, his collaboration with Laing made for the AGYU in 2004); his experimental films; the multitude of hand-made silkscreen posters that accompanied his DJ’ing and music promotions at his nightclub venues Vazaleen, Peroxide, No T.O., and Moustache. The dynamic exhibition will be punctuated by a collection of never before seen ephemera and archival material that stitches together the many vibrant activities of this non-stop artist. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Salah Bachir and Jacob Yerex.

Above: Will Munro: History, Glamour, Magic, installation view, AGYU. Photograph by Michael Maranda, courtesy Art Gallery of 91��ɫ

In conjunction with Will Munro: History, Glamour, Magic, AGYU continues to celebrate the legacy of Toronto’s feminist and queer communities with a series of collaborations, specifically commissioned projects and new alliances.

Get on the AGYU Performance Bus

Artist and DJ Syrus Marcus Ware turns the AGYU's Performance Bus into his memory of a circa 2001-2002 Friday night Vazaleen party that was hosted by Munro and artists Miss Barbrafisch and Rawbrt at the Elmocambo. Tonight, gallery guests can ride to the AGYU for the opening reception on a free performance bus departing OCADU at 6pm.

AGYU and the Feminist Art Gallery

An initiative between AGYU, Feminist Art Gallery (FAG) and The Power Plant, CInenova: All Hands on the Archive develops a dialogue between the work in the London-based feminist CInenova film and video collection and Toronto’s long-rooted feminist and queer histories as a means to access, activate and animate.Visit website for more information on the month-long project including: opening night screening on Feb. 3 at The Department, 1389 Dundas Street West at 7pm that has been curated by CInenova Working Group member Emma Hedditch; An Audience of Enablers Cannot Fail sessions at FAG 25 Seaforth Avenue, side gate, on Feb. 4, 11, 18, and 25; and the closing party featuring a commissioned performance by Sharlene Bamboat, and special screening curated by artists GB Jones, Alex McClelland, Leila Pourtavaf, and Lex Vaughn on March 4 in the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom (1214 Queen Street West) starting at 8pm.

People, Power, Magic

In this AGYU “in-reach” project, Toronto artist John Caffery engages queer and trans youth through a direct dialogue with Munro’s ideas and artwork. Caffery was close to the source as a friend and collaborator in the West Side Stitches Couture Club and, like Munro, his practice moves across multiple communities and media, locating his aesthetics and politics in textiles, film, and music (his band is Kids on TV).

This collective, multi-disciplinary program features Caffery working with many members of Munro’s army of lovers – frequent collaborators and friends – including artists Scott Miller Berry, Lorraine Hewitt (aka Coco La Crème), Luis Jacob, Jeremy Laing, and Zavisha, as well as the Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance, the recipients of the first annual Spirit of Will Munro Award. People, Power, Magic is dedicated to creating real opportunities for self-expression in order to provide a space for outcasts and freaks to thrive without fear. Program presented in collaboration with Supporting Our Youth (SOY).

The Art Gallery of 91��ɫ is a university-affiliated public non-profit contemporary art gallery supported by 91��ɫ, The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, and its membership.

The AGYU is located in the Accolade East Building, 4700 Keele Street Toronto. Gallery hours are: Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm; Wednesday, 10am to 8pm; Sunday from noon–5pm; and closed Saturday. AGYU promotes LGBT positive spaces and experiences and all events are free and open to everyone.

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The event, Queering Theatre in Toronto, will take place Thursday, Jan 5, 2012, from 2 to 4pm in Winters Senior Common Room, 021 Winters College, Keele campus.

Right: Marie Rickard

Newton, a recently appointed Winters College Fellow, is the founding artistic director of Ecce Homo Theatre. His newest musical, , is scheduled to run from Jan. 5 to 15, 2012, as part of the 2012 Next Stage Theatre Festival at the Factory Theatre in Toronto.

Written and directed by Newton, Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert, introduces the audience to Montreal’s Peter Flinsch, a theatre designer, visual artist and gay survivor of Nazi Germany, who was arrested in 1942 for kissing a friend at a Luftwaffe Christmas party. It takes in everything from the cabarets of 1920s Berlin and the battle over gay marriage to the office of the Prime Minister, and is billed as a provocative expressionist cabaret.

“The goal of my work is to balance politics and entertainment, to combine dance, music, text and design into a total theatrical experience in the hopes of challenging my audience intellectually and emotionally,” says Newton.

“I agree with Schiller's notion of the stage as a moral institution and I endeavor to create work on big themes for troubled times. My output as a playwright and director with Ecce Homo Theatre seeks to achieve intimacy through artifice using a queer aesthetic as a tool for destabilization, to draw attention to hypocrisy and deflate the un-ironic. As one of my former teachers, Charles Marowitz, once said, “Laughter can be a hammer-stroke in the hands of deft satirists.”

Newton is a contributor to the forthcoming collection, TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work (Intellect Ltd.), edited by 91��ɫ theatre Professor Judith Rudakoff.

His previous work includes three consecutive productions for the SummerWorks Theatre Festival in which he was playwright and director of The Pastor Phelps Project: a fundamentalist cabaret, The Ecstasy of Mother Teresa or Agnes Bojaxhiu Superstar and Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert. Newton’s work has also been performed at the Rhubarb Festival – Leni Riefenstahl vs the 20th Century – and the Victoria Fringe Festival – Woyzeck Songspiel.

In addition, Newton was a participant in the inaugural presentation of The Ark at The National Arts Centre English Theatre in 2006, and is a past member of the BASH! Emerging Artist Program at the Canadian Stage Company, the Ante Chamber Creator’s Unit with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Director’s Lab of the Lincoln Center Theater.

He has also served as apprentice director for the Ensemble Studio of the Canadian Opera Company for its 2009-2010 season, where he directed a production of Pergolisi’s La Serva Padonra. Newton’s recent work includes a stint as director/dramaturge for Bella: The Color of Love with Teresa Tova and Mary Kerr at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. It was a commission for the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.

The show is being supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Next Stage Theatre Festival and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The 91��ɫ professor received the $10,000 prize Oct. 20 at the 2011 ceremony at the annual Mayor’s Arts Awards Lunch. More than 300 artists, business leaders, cultural professionals and community builders gathered for the event.

"I feel elated to have received this prestigious award,” says Sankaran. “It is great to be recognized in a big way. Such recognition only encourages an artist to go even further and enhances the quality of the artistic community as a whole."

The Toronto Arts Foundation cited as a globally respected artist, composer, educator and cultural ambassador, who consistently demonstrates mastery, creativity, ingenuity, humility and devotion. Since his professional debut at age 13, he has had a prolific international performing career, appearing as a featured musician at major music festivals and cultural events in Europe, Australia, North America and Asia, including the World Drum concerts at Expo '86 (Vancouver), Expo '88 (Brisbane) and Expo 2000 (Hanover).

Left: Arts award winners, from left, Alan Convery of the TD Bank, 91��ɫ's Trichy Sankaran, Michael deConinck Smith and Deborah Lundmark of the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, filmmaker Adam Garnet Jones and arts administrator Jane Marsland

As an active contributor to the music scene in Canada, Sankaran has also composed a dynamic body of work that bridges the musical traditions of India and the West. Collaborations include performances with new music, jazz, Western classical, world fusion and Carnatic and Hindustani musicians, such as Zakir Hussain, U. Srinivas and Hariprasad Chaurasia. 

Other finalists for the Sherrin award were pianist and music director Andrew Burashko, and singer-songwriter Rita Chiarelli.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Those questions and more are at the core of Making the Scene: 91��ɫville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s, a new book by 91��ɫ postdoctoral fellow published this month by the University of Toronto Press.

The book examines the history of Toronto's countercultural mecca, 1960s 91��ɫville. Henderson narrates the development of the 91��ɫville scene from its early coffee house days when it was frequented by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to its drug-fuelled final months.

A cultural historian Henderson is a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of History in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

“I have always found myself drawn to that form of cultural rebellion. I admired the perhaps oversimplified idea of a peace and love movement, and I really loved the music that had been produced from within the ranks of the counterculture,” says Henderson, a self-professed neo-hippie. “So, when I was thinking about how to approach Canadian cultural history, I just aimed straight at this era [the 1960s] and the people I'd always found to be fascinating.”

Left: Stuart Henderson

The true story of the 91��ɫville scene, says Henderson, is about people trying to find a space in which to "perform" a hip identity and stretch the confines that they felt had been imposed on them by society, their parents and other sociopolitical pressures. "They were all looking for something real, something authentic. In their search, they uncovered some pretty amazing stuff and had some really interesting experiences," he says. "But authenticity is elusive and certainly fleeting. It's all about the journey, not the destination, as it turns out. A central point I want people to recognize is that 91��ɫville was not a 'hippie' place. It was a place that came to be closely associated with 'hippies' but people who fit that mold were never the only people hanging around there."

In Making the Scene, Henderson takes a new look at the hip mecca and gives a voice to people not typically heard in the popular stories associated with 91��ɫville – women, working class youth, business owners and municipal authorities. Members of biker gangs, working class kids (who didn't look much like "hippies", says Henderson), media types, store owners, gallery people, artists and musicians were the 91��ɫville neighbourhood. "All of these people were there and few of them would count as 'hippies' in any conventional definition, then or now," he says.

He explores how the 91��ɫville neighbourhood came to be regarded as the symbol of hip Toronto in the cultural imagination. Henderson argues that the popular association of 91��ɫville with the flower power generation was more accurately a close association with the widespread anxiety in the mid-1960s over the "degeneration" of the middle-class baby boomers into unproductive members of society.

The expectation of the time was that the working class and racial minorities would be rebellious and problematic, says Henderson. "The fact that these [hippies] were middle-class teenagers from the suburbs who were dropping acid and growing their hair and losing their virginity was what kept journalists and municipal authorities up at night."

91��ɫville in the 1960s, he says, was always more complicated than the 91��ɫville hippies.

In writing the book, which sprouted from his PhD dissertation, Henderson says there were many memorable experiences. "I got to spend some time with [writer and activist] who was a hero of mine. She was an astoundingly committed philanthropist and activist, and she always positioned herself at the forefront of battles to protect people from a system which had forgotten them," he says. "We spent an afternoon together a few months before she died and I was just so appreciative of her desire to participate in this project at such a late stage of her illness. I'll never forget that when I asked her why she was willing to come talk to a stranger under these circumstances, she just said: 'Oh, well, I trust the process. Write a good book'."

His next project involves a cultural history of the communal residence and alternative education experiment of the era, Rochdale College on Bloor Street. "I am writing a sequel of sorts to the 91��ɫville book. I am working on a book on Rochdale College and what I have termed 'hip separatism' in the 1970s," he says. "While 91��ɫville saw people performing cultural difference right there in the open," he says, "Rochdale remained closed to outsiders and tourists and represents a certain retreat from the integrationist, even evangelical, politics of '60s-era hip youth."

Despite his fascination with the 1960s, Henderson says that if he could dine with anyone, dead or alive, his choice would be Canadian artist Tom Thomson. "I have some good buddies who died too young. It'd be nice to see one of them again, but how do you choose? So, I'll be a Canadian cultural historian and say dinner over a campfire with Tom Thomson somewhere in Algonquin Park on a star-filled night. But mostly because I really like camping."

Henderson is on Twitter under the handle .

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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And yet, most regular people don't know that the track even exists.

"If I went to my local grocery store here and stopped 20 people, if I found one who knew about it, I'd be shocked," said Grammy Award-winning 91��ɫ music Professor Rob Bowman [Faculty of Fine Arts], who's been lecturing about Rocket 88 since 1979. "It's definitely not as well known as Elvis's hits or Jerry Lee (Lewis)'s big hits, or Rock Around the Clock. This is (before) the massive explosion.... You don't hear it as a golden oldie. You listen to oldies radio, and you'll hear Hound Dog, you'll hear Great Balls of Fire, you'll hear Maybellene by Chuck Berry, you'll hear Little Richard's Tutti Frutti – you won't hear Rocket 88.”

Other elements of the song were different as well.

As Bowman explains it, the song's whole groove is underpinned by riffs, which were derived from the blues tradition and became a crucial element in rock music.

"(The song's) significance on white teenagers in '51 probably wasn't huge, but it was a huge record on the black charts," Bowman explained. "I mean, some white hipsters who were listening to black radio at the time did hear it, and I think it had a big influence on those musicians."

"Besides its significance historically, it's just an unbelievably great, exciting record," Bowman enthused. "This record's got distorted electric guitar, it's riff-based, it's got the honky tenor sax tradition encoded within it, it's got boogie-woogie piano, it's got lyrics that are a series of sexual automotive metaphors, and it's at a souped-up tempo.

"What's not to love?"

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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