This weekend’s weekend video features Toronto activist and singer Faith Nolan, with a rousing song about Viola Desmond. I found out about Faith’s connections with Nova Scotia while reading Before the Parade, a great book by Rebecca Rose about LGBTQ activism in Halifax in the seventies and early eighties. Watch the video and buy the book!
“And for all sixty years of their lives together every Christmas was more than Christmas because each one was imbued with the joy they’d felt that first Christmas Eve as they walked down that rural road, the snow, like grace, floating down around them.” Another lovely story by Catherine Banks, about poverty, love, and yes, Christmas.
A bit of a book review, and an interview with Anne Bishop, who wrote the wonderful novel Under the Bridge, set in Halifax in the mid-nineties, one of these times in history when activism had real energy.
Four Canadian letterpress printers, from Nova Scotia, Alberta, and British Columbia, created 5×7 postcards with their responses to the 30th National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Sets of five postcards each are for sale, with all proceeds going to local groups raising awareness of gender safety.
The Bus Stop Theatre is hosting its annual holiday gift basket auction.
Documentary filmmaker Alex Kronstein reviews Icebreakers, directed by Sandi Rankaduwa, a short documentary about a rising teen hockey star from Cole Harbour who is Black and dreams of playing in the NHL.
Nothing like a good old fashioned anti-war poem on Remembrance Day, and local poet Charlie Toth delivers.
Remember the ones have fought bravely
Think hard before sending more in,
The meat grinder that is war time
Doesn’t care if you have mother or kin.
Filmmaker Alex Kronstein reviews a National Film Board short by Jason Young, about the secret work that East Dover blacksmiths John and Nancy are sometimes called upon to undertake for the RCMP. He likes it a lot!
It’s that time again. The Canadian Labour International Film Festival comes to the Bus Stop on November 12. The Halifax screening will feature five international short films celebrating workers. Free admission! Free popcorn!
Alex Kronstein reviews I Am Skylar, a short directed by Rachel Bower, about a young transgender woman from Cape Breton.