300 Kids Create an Opera
The argument started over a game of kickball on the school playground. Two popular kids, Nick and Laura, were declared captains and took turns choosing players. When the teams were complete, the [...]
Music
Music
The New National Music Centre
I’ve known about the National Music Centre for a long time. I helped dig pianos out of the mud there after the flood of 2013. Their old building hosted a collection of odd but memorable musical [...]
By Glenn Dixon
The Long View
There must be a rule that you’re not supposed to ask executives at a commercial country music awards show to think about the oil companies in their stock portfolios. Corb Lund broke that rule. [...]
A Dose of Song
They enter the room in ones and twos, choosing spots around the semicircle of music stands while the pianist repositions her instrument for a better view of the action to come. This could be any [...]
Prodigal Band
When Nils Edenloff was a high school student in Fort McMurray, there was a minor scandal one summer involving a gaggle of teens who decided to ride their bicycles to Edmonton. It was received [...]
By Chris Turner
Both Sides Now
The winter of 1970. In “Room at the Top,” a coffee house about seven storeys up in the frigid night sky of Edmonton, a couple of folksingers are tuning up their guitars while their drummer is [...]
One of Our Own
At first the music sparkles with energy, the orchestra generating dazzling colours and frenetic movement. The solo pianist inscribes razor-sharp chords, echoed by fluttering gestures in the high [...]
Westbound Train
In the summer of 1970, a 12-coach train painted with day-glo hippie flowers carried Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Band, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Buddy Guy and other folk-rock and blues icons [...]
Healing Sounds
She sits on an office chair—the kind that swivels around in all directions—and suggests starting the session with a piece by Joni Mitchell. An audience of 10 wheelchair-bound, brain-injured [...]
By Kim Gray
How Do You Grow An Opera?
A dozen years ago, over a few beers, Robert Kroetsch and I were talking about the Crowsnest Pass. “Ach!” he said, “I’ve got to stay away from that place! There are just too many stories there!” [...]
By Peter Oliva
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The Story of Joseph Lewis
In 1799 Joseph Lewis, a Hudson's Bay Company employee, arrived in what is now Alberta. He was 27 years old but his life had already been crammed with adventure.
Born in 1772 in Manchester, New Hampshire, at 20 he’d made his way to Montreal, where he joined the North West Company ...
Kenney’s War on Workers
My wife and I spent our last day of our summer vacations in 2019 on a picket line with healthcare workers at Edmonton’s old General Hospital. Most of the cleaners, healthcare aides and nurses at the information picket were women of colour. Like public-sector workers across the province, they were ...
Just Transition
There were times when I was taking home about $3,500 a week.” That was in the oil sands, during the boom before 2014. Lliam Hildebrand was a young welder who had come to the Athabasca oil sands for work.
Before that, the Victoria, BC, native spent his first eight years after high ...