Fixing the TTC

Michael Hiscock

The dead-eyed collector turns his gaze away from his newspaper to watch a token fall into its box. Riders force their way through a turnstile and race onto the platform where a screeching subway grinds into the station. The door chimes sound and the people flood into the already crowded subway. The feeble and weak are pushed aside and left behind, unable to compete. The train doesn’t get very far before it suddenly stops sending several riders toppling over. An inaudible announcement with intermittent static interruptions comes on to explain the problem.

For a lot of Torontonians, this is their average morning; the free-for-all jungle of the TTC during rush hour. Riders and transit employees have held a silent tension that has only cranked its volume since employees were photographed or videotaped misbehaving on the job. The public finally got the chance to vent their rush-hour stresses to the TTC in a series of meetings that are aimed at bringing the staff and riders together to ease the tension. The final of the three meetings took place in Ryerson’s library building.

“I think both the public and the [transit] operators need to stop taking their frustrations out on each other,” said Bob Kinnear, president of ATU local 113. “We have more in common than we don’t.”

A lot of the problems that bother riders, it turns out, also bother the transit employees. Besides Kinnear, there were four panellists representing the different spectrums of front-line employees within the TTC.

That nails on chalkboard sound of a subway pulling into the station? That drives subway operators nuts. Janet Weller, who has been a subway operator for the last ten years, became so bothered by the sound she decided to find out what causes it. Turns out that awful sound is caused by temperature change combined with small microscopic fibres being rubbed off the break pads.

“I hear that squeaking twelve hours a day,” she said.

Toronto has the least subsidized transit system in the world and it is beginning to show. Employees are coming to work ready to start their route and are given no vehicle to operate because it is broken or on another route. The employees stressed throughout the meeting that they are trying to do their jobs effectively but lack the supplies and equipment to do so.

Ron Ishmael, who has worked as a bus driver for 13 years, has been a frequent victim of these problems. The panel of employees unanimously stated that their transit fleet is aging and not being replaced, while Toronto’s population only continues to grow.

“We’re picking up more people with less vehicles,” said Brian Howard, who has been a bus driver for 11 years.

There are fewer street-cars on Toronto roads now than there were 20 years ago.

While transit operators become angry about a lack of, well, transit, 40 per cent of the people who showed up to the meeting voted through an automated poll that they felt mistreated by a front-line employee “often.” That portion of the audience made themselves known. When it came down to the last few question cards to be drawn (to speak at the meeting, you must put your name on a card that will be drawn from a hat) people began to holler at the stage.

While the panel was taking a question, a man yelled “you’re hogging the whole meeting! You did it at the last two, too!” This man was Mark Tilley, 74, and it was only two minutes after hollering that line that his name was drawn.

“I’m not here to be friendly, let’s just get that out of the way now,” he said when it came to his turn. His comment compared the current fare to 1969 when it was four-for-a dollar and he said the service should be better now that it costs three dollars for one fare. He probably forgot to consider inflation in his equation.

Another man in the same age group rose up to ask his question starting it out at: “Do you bus drivers know how to read English?” Even after they had tried answering his question he continued to point and yell from his seat. A final woman stood up demanding she show the panel pictures she took and the crowd yelled at her to sit down.

Despite the few outbursts, the meeting conducted itself well on both ends. I have to say, being a bit of a TTC hater myself, the employees behaved perfectly. Kinnear promised that there will be new programs to train customer service to a higher degree to transit staff. One consideration to promote communication is to place suggestion boxes at TTC stations.

According to the participants of the meeting, overcrowding and a lack of communication about delays and problems are the highest priority, non-employee issues. The overcrowding should be somewhat relieved due to the new Metrolinx street-cars that will be accompanying what is left of Transit City. When it comes to communication, the panel said they are often uninformed of what exactly is going on either other than what they inform the passengers.

While fare has not been a significant concern at these meetings, it is responsible for 90 per cent of passenger/employee conflict.

“The TTC is the only place where people think they can walk into a business without the correct amount of money to purchase its products - to ride the train - and still get them,” said Ishmael.

Anyone who takes public transit regularly has certainly seen at least one fare dispute taking place between a rider and an employee. Weller said a good solution would be to replace the collector with a gate or machine. If a gate asks for three-dollars and someone puts in two-fifty, there is no compromise, she said. It then becomes the rider’s fault for not having enough fare instead of the collector’s for not compromising.

The ultimate goal is to lower fares, however, said Kinnear. He said that AMU local 113 advocates for lower fares all the time and will continue to.

“We see it everyday, people scrounging up change to ride the train,” he said.

Kinnear criticized transit as being labelled a “cost” by Ontario and municipal politicians. He said transit is an investment, it generates revenue.

If this meeting proved anything, it’s that the tension between riders and workers is being caused by the same things. For a rider, the streetcar can be frustratingly late while the operator doesn’t even have one to take out. A “track-level problem” can shut down a subway station and force people on a shuttle bus, while in the meantime a subway operator might have just seen someone jump in front of their train. The lack of washrooms and their unsanitary conditions are another problem that both riders and employees deal with.

“We have to use some of the same washrooms as you do,” Weller said.

Toronto’s Transit Commission needs more transit and ultimately more money, that‘s where the real problem lies. Riders and workers need to stop bickering over student cards, nickels and dimes and start treating each other like human beings. The panel concluded by stating which routes they operated and advocated to continue communication even after the meeting. This will hopefully be a step in the right direction for the TTC to truly live up to its slogan and become “The better way.”

“I think it is important we have a system everyone can utilize and afford,” Kinnear said.

Ontario’s New Drug Wars

Michael Chu

Remember when Shoppers Drug Mart, the more than 1,100 growing and strong, used the tagline “Everything you want in a drug store and more?”

Shoppers has done a great job living up to that tagline for almost the last two decades, as they have trumpeted their successful entry into the grocery, cosmetics, general merchandise, and electronics.

Now, they and other pharmacies are crying foul with the Ontario Government’s plans to cut back on funding for what are essentially allowances on the handling of generic drugs.  These new legislation would theoretically drop the price of generic drugs by up to 50 per cent, should pharmacists decide not to tack on any additional fees for their lost profits.

According to the Ontario Ministry of Health, makers of generic drugs paid $750 million in professional allowances to pharmacies to subsidize the cost of such services as: consultation on usage and dosage requirements, home-delivery to seniors, and in-store clinic and information sessions, which was all legislated under the Ontario Drug Benefit Act and the Drug Interchangeability and Dispensing Fee act.

Additional requirements state that generic drug manufacturers must report twice a year, the amount paid out to pharmacies, how these allowances are spent in correlation to patient care, all to ensure that these allowances do not end up becoming rebates, which are considered illegal.

Ontario’s Ministry of Health, in an audit done exactly on year ago, uncovered a scheme involving drug manufacturers, wholesalers, and a number of pharmacists purchasing more generic drugs than required, claiming the allowances, and returning the drugs while keeping the allowances.  But it didn’t stop there, as the wholesaler would re-sell the generic drugs back to the pharmacy, inflating the allowances, padding the coffers of non-compliant pharmacies.

Shoppers Drug Mart has become the most vocal against the recently introduced measure by the Ontario Government to halt the $750 million in what critics call “kickbacks to the pharmacies.”  But their vocal outcry seems questionable at best and their strategies to counter this legislation are unfairly affecting customers.

According to Statistics Canada, pharmacies hold 7.5 per cent of all retail sales in Canada, and Shoppers holds a large chunk of that pie.  The day this legislation was introduced, Shoppers Drug Mart voiced their concerns, threatening closures and cutting back on service.  Shareholders responded by selling off the stock in droves, dropping the stock down 10 per cent in a single day.

All the while, Shoppers Drug Mart has continued to announce record profits, each quarter, bolstered by their success in the cosmetics and fragrance categories.  Shareholders have questioned what is really going on behind the scenes at Canada’s largest pharmacy chain, as this should really only be a minor blip in the otherwise insanely profitable operations, or shareholders realize that by lashing back against what will amount to lower prices for the consumer, customers will be turned off by this and stay away from droves.

This particular stance uncovers the fact that prescription drugs – 5 to 10 per cent of total store revenues – are still the main profit driver for Shoppers Drug Mart.

Shoppers Drug Mart has just exploited that they live off of gauging customers, and that they truly have little afterthought for their customers (let alone their employees) by threatening to lay off staff, close stores, raise prices and even halt servicing them altogether.  Not coincidentally, Shoppers started to cut store hours and halt home delivery in the very same London riding as Ontario Health Minister, Deb Matthews.

In the United States, generic prescriptions are the lifeline for millions of Americans living below the poverty line, and while brand-name prescription drugs are more costly in the United States, generic drugs are significantly cheaper there.  Most health and drug plans available to Canadians require the purchasing the generic drugs over their brand-name equivalents.  The legislation introduced would ultimately save not only consumer’s money, but also of health insurance, which is the main argument of Ontario’s OHIP, and private insurers.

“I buy the generic drugs because they are cheaper and they work the same,” says Kristen Kennedy, a third-year full-time Hospitality and Tourism major at the Ted Rogers School of Management.  Spending almost $100 dollars a month, she would welcome additional discounts to her monthly prescriptions.

“I would avoid Shoppers if I’m not going to save anything.  There would really be no point to go there,” she adds.  While Kennedy does not rely on Shoppers Drug Mart for her prescriptions, their strategy to cut services has also made her reconsider taking her cosmetics business elsewhere.

Should the price of generic prices go down, it is more than likely that pharmacies will regain some their lost allowances anyway, in the form of additional dispensing fees, not including the almost $1 billion in support pharmacies receive from the Ontario provincial government in the form of dispensing fees, mark-up costs and the MedsCheck program.

In an open-letter addressed to Shoppers Drug Mart, Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), Ryan has called upon members of the OFL in the London area to refrain from continuing their business with Shoppers.

“Despite profits that spiked from more than $300 million to $585 million over the past three years, [this] is a disgraceful way to treat your own employees that are no doubt under extreme stress at this point,” says Ryan.  “It is truly a sad statement…that you would hold ransom your own staff and the most vulnerable people in your community in your fight with the government.”

Ontario’s Smoke Free Act prohibited pharmacies to vend tobacco products back in 1993, as pharmacies decried an end to their business.  Just one year later, while 50 pharmacies closed, an additional 120 opened, negating the unfound fears of pharmacies.  While this recent legislation does dig into the core business model of pharmacists, strategizing how to overcome any shortfalls to benefit every party involved should be the road taken.  This is not the end of the world as Shoppers Drug Mart so amazingly has decried.

Hopefully Shoppers Drug Mart, and other pharmacies take a dose of their own medicine and realize that this unnecessary “first in a series” of threats will only hurt themselves in the long run, especially when others such as Metro, Costco and Wal-Mart are waiting to convert customers with open hands.

Californian band Sleepy Sun give you Fever

Michael Chu

Anybody familiar with the movie “Lords Of Dogtown” starring Emilie Hircsh and the late-Heath Ledger, will probably remember a key supporting player, the majestic soundtrack.  The soundtrack so ably augmented the mood and atmosphere of southern California in the sixties and early seventies. It was psychedelic, melodic and acidic, featuring the likes of Ted Nugent.

So what better way to start your summer than by adding the latest album from San Francisco’s Sleepy Sun?  While Fever is not necessarily a verbatim sonic tribute to classic southern bluesy Californian rock, the influences are definitely present, as they continue to bring listeners a sound that’s reminiscent of more carefree, free-spirited times.

Sleepy Sun will be playing a show at the Horseshoe Tavern on June 22. Originally known as Mania, Sleepy Sun consists of the shared vocals of Bret Constantino and Rachel Williams, Matt Holliman and Evan Reiss on guitar, Hubert Guy on bass and Brian Tice on drums.

The lead single on their new album, “Open Eyes”, starts with a guitar riff and invokes a feeling of translucent bluesy harmony as you watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. The laid-back track seems to move the listener back and forth through the salt-water tides.

“Desert God” features a bluesy harmonica solo, with a melancholy guitar loop that captures the feeling of the loneliness and barrenness of the hot desert sun. But as the track progresses, the urgency of vengeance takes the song into a different path.

Sleepy Sun’s distinctly melodic Californian brand of alterna-rock will probably invoke the interests of other artists, such as MGMT, who recently went back to their more melodic roots for their latest release, Congratulations.  With increased exposure thanks to their spring tour with the Arctic Monkeys, and increasing publicity thanks to their appearance at SXSW, this could be the record that throws them into critic’s year-end lists.

Their sound is a refreshing change from the synth-pop so prevalent in every facet of today’s music genres. Meanwhile, their mellow grooves are a welcome addition to any playlist for music lovers looking to add some relaxing sounds to their lazy summer.

Fever is available on June 1 on iTunes, and most music retailers through ATP Recordings.

Music Reviews

Stephen Carlick

MGMT – Congratulations
Indie psychedelic duo trade atmosphere for bare-bones pop complexity

Rating: B+

Kudos to MGMT for not simply cashing in one more on the Oracular Spectacular sound. To have done so would have meant another heap of money, sure. But to keep things musically fresh, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser have switched it up, and followed their flight of fancy somewhere new and infinitely more intriguing. Congratulations is musically varied where their last was doggedly persistent. It’s complex, where Oracular relied too heavily on sky-reaching simplicity. Listeners thrown off by their genre-hopping first single “Flash Delirium” shouldn’t write the song off until they’ve heard it in the context of Congratulations. In the dizzying entirety of the album the song works perfectly. The success of the album lies largely in the band’s choice of production. Pete Kember’s relatively clean, spacious production allows a glimpse of MGMT’s true songwriting potential, rather than hiding it behind layers of reverb fuzz. Oracular may have had the hippie-themed artwork, but it’s on Congratulations that the band finally lets down their hair.

Fang Island – Fang IslandUpstart quintet makes fist-pumping cool again
Rating: A-

Despite being released in February, this little gem trickled under the radar until Rhode Island power-pop quintet Fang Island took the SXSW stage in late March. Following the performance, the band quickly became the buzz-band du jour, but not without just cause. The band’s myspace refers to their sound as “everyone high-fiving everyone,” and the heap of infectious melody and triumphant riffage that is their self-titled debut does nothing to contradict that description. The band has received a number of comparisons to Animal Collective, but the comparison is lazy, relying too much on the single fact that the band members sing mainly as a group. To sound like Fang Island, AC would have to lose all pretence, pick up two more guitarists, and engage in a three-way guitar battle to see whose anthemic, pop-punk-infused riff would out-awesome whose. So while Fang Island is no masterpiece, I’ll be damned if it isn’t the most fun a band have had on record yet in 2010. Don’t miss this album, especially if the band ends up at this year’s NXNE.

Caribou – Swim
Dan Snaith gets moody and reflective on his fifth studio album

Rating: B

You’ll never quite get a finger on Caribou’s Dan Snaith. The man hops genre on every album, so while those expecting Andorra 2.0 are in for a bit of a letdown, the rest of us have nine tracks of chilled-out, electronic warmth. Befitting its title, most of Swim sounds like it was recorded underwater. The rippling of his reverb-drenched voice on “Sun,” the lo-fi speaker-pan of the bells on “Bowls,” and the melancholy warble of some kind of synthesized accordion on “Lalibela” all contribute to the warm comfortable atmosphere of Swim. The album suggests balmy summer nights by a lake more than it does robotic coldness or a sweaty nightclub. In that way, Swim is a sensible follow-up to Snaith’s 2008 Polaris Prize-grabbing Andorra. Where the latter frolicked at the beach under the midday sun, the former sits in a hammock at dusk, fondly recalling times gone by. Those engaging closely with the album might find the longer tracks just a little arduous. It may not be perfect, but Swim is the sound of Snaith stopping to smell the roses. So, enjoy it while you can. He won’t be there for long.

Hot Docs Preview

Stand out films: Babies and Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage

Amanda Connon-Unda, Culture Editor

Toronto’s Hot Docs festival is back this year with a selection of over 170 documentaries. Since it was founded in 1993 it has been an annual go-to event for many film industry delegates - last year attracting over 2000 of them.

This year Hot Docs runs from April 29 to May 9. Students and seniors are in luck if they’re wanting to check out film screenings before 6 PM. At that time tickets are free and available with a valid photo ID at venue box offices.

Below is a preview of two films that are likely to gain wide appeal at the festival.

Babies, a film directed by Thomas Balmès of France, makes its debut in Toronto as part of Hot Docs special presentations.

Whether you’re into babies or not, this film is visually awe-inspiring. From the fields and mountains of Mongolia, to the red earth plains of Namibia, to the busier city-scapes of San Francisco and Tokyo, Babies takes you on a trip around the world in its pursuit of examining the precious and challenging moments of life during the first year.

This film is sure to appeal to those who like National Geographic films or anthropology, or even those who are interested in child development. At 79 minutes long, you’ll see universal human emotion, including sibling rivalry – and all to an exquisite soundtrack.

RUSH: Beyond The Lighted Stage is sure to gain a lot of hype at Hot Docs when it makes its Canadian premiere. But it would also be nice to see it released in theatres afterward too. This film is sure to please Rush fans and should be required viewing for anyone who thinks of themselves as ‘up’ on Canadian music.

This lively film recounts the history of the Rush band members, and also accounts for the way the rock music industry worked over the last 40 years. With the rise of Rush as a modern rock band, we can see the influx of other newer popular bands, who then are interviewed in the film. A serious and astute Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, and comedic actor Jack Black are among the irreverent personages to testify about Rush’s rightful place in musical history. The film does a good job to explain why Rush was previously dismissed and often pushed aside by critics until recently.

Archival footage with Rush’s costumes and music from the 1970’s right up to their present day tour ignites the film with visceral energy like that which can be experienced in a live concert.

Sikhs Celebrate Vaisakhi

Gursevak Kasbia

Every April marks the New Year for Sikhs around the world. It is the day that the tenth master of the Sikhs created the Khalsa or “Pure Ones” as translated into English. Spring for many is synonymous with rebirth and new beginnings, and as the snow melts in Canada across the world, in India the harvest begins. For Sikhs this is a very sacred time, as Vaisakhi represents the creation of a new order by Guru Gobind Singh.

On a large hill in Anandpur Sahib India, Guru Gobind Singh demanded the heads of five people, amongst a crowd of thousands. Five men from completely different paths and castes made the call to sacrifice and followed Singh into a tent.  He gave them “Amrit” which was sugar pellets mixed in water, while reciting prayers which he commanded Sikhs to follow. He also gave five gifts to the Sikhs which included a wooden comb (kanga), an iron bracelet (kara), a small dagger (kirpan), short breaches (kachera) and told them to keep their hair unshorn (kesh) and removed all caste from those who followed the new order. His goal was to create a unified faith, whereby these five symbols must be worn and helps Sikhs lead an enriched spiritual/disciplined way of life.

The Khalsa deliberately defied the Mughal leadership of the time who demanded all forcibly convert to Islam, and promoted religious intolerance. The oath that Sikhs are to follow as laid down by the Guru include only acting in violence when all other means fail, giving generously to those less fortunate, meditating to the greater power that created us and earning an honest living. It was this truthful form of living that contributed to a great respect of Sikhs within the Punjab, even to the point where both Hindhus and Muslims who valued tolerance fought with Guru Gobind Singh against the create oppression of the times.  It just happens that Vaisakhi also is a time culturally for Sikhs and Punjabis to celebrate the harvest. Punjab being one of the leaders in grain and agricultural production in India has vast festivities, and these carry on in other countries including the GTA. In fact, on April 25, a Nagar Keertan, when Sikhs travel in a parade, concluded at Nathan Phillips Square.

All were welcome and free food was provided as the concept of langar (soup kitchen) is one which Sikhs follow devoutly.

A Beautiful Woman with Deadly Words

Elizabeth Chiang

Toronto playwright, emcee, poet, musician, and director Donna-Michelle St. Bernard is a multi-talented artist with a very packed schedule. She is a recipient of Toronto City Summit Alliance/Maytree Foundations’ DiverseCity Fellows 2010 and performed in the twenty-fifth annual Mayworks Festival, a yearly celebration of working people and their art. The festival seeks to bring together artists, social movements, community groups, organized labour and non-unionized workers in support of each other’s struggles and issues through the arts.

The Mayworks Festival hosted various events throughout the city until May 2. Donna-Michelle, also known by her stage name, Belladonna, is performing at an event called From Margin to Centre, where “marginal” identities – adopted, queer, female, sex worker, of colour, missing, HIV positive, poor – are explored. She is performing spoken word poetry from her repertoire and also reading from Oh Sudanah, her new play in development. Ryerson Free Press snagged a chance to sit down with Donna-Michelle to talk about her practice schedule, her upcoming projects, her wish-list of collaborators, and three things she would take onto a desert island:

RFP: Events like the Mayworks Festival are planned in advance. Do you do practice runs before your performances?

DM: Nope. I do not like practicing. I used to do improv, but I don’t have the skill of keeping the same lines fresh every day, which is why I don’t act. My rule is to write things that are true every time I say them. I get up there and watch the clock; I have a terror of losing my immediacy.

RFP: Could you describe your writing process?

DM: Typically, I get really mad about something and I don’t know where to put those feelings. The feeling that I’m having can usually be expressed in the form of a question, frequently “Why?” or “What the?” In theatre, I try to find the human impact of an issue and use writing as a way of understanding things. I try to make it about one person and focus on the face that comes to mind. I try to create characters… so that I can actually ask him or her something, and hopefully they can answer back.

RFP: Have you ever written a character you don’t like?

DM: No. If I assign a villain to a piece, it doesn’t always bring clarity so I have to write characters that I love and who believe in what they are doing, whether I agree with them or not. If I don’t seek to understand my characters, I can’t write them. I can’t hate my characters otherwise they turn into cartoon characters with handlebar moustaches tying girls to railroad tracks.

RFP: What are your thoughts on the role of diploma-granting theatre programs at the university/college level?

DM: I would like to say that I especially don’t understand how theatre training programs engage with people of colour, which is hardly. Conventional theatre training is bad for good egos and good for dangerous egos. My caveat would be that I have a lot of respect for people who get through that training because I admire their courage on making it through what I consider a harrowing attack on the psyche. I’ve heard endless stories about the way people are spoken to in these programs and this is something I don’t agree with; I don’t want people to be uncomfortable if it’s unproductive.

RFP: Do you feel tension between race and the other facets of your identity?

DM: I think about the burden of representation a lot because I’m of mixed heritage; my family is from Grenada but I’m Black in Canada, and not Black in Grenada. I find I have to constantly speak about diversity. An upcoming project at the SummerWorks Festival involves setting up a booth at where different individuals will represent their people as a whole – it’s very tongue in cheek, there’s an Ambassador of the Nation of Blackness – and the audience will be invited to come and ask questions. I want to make it provocative and also make it very clear how ridiculous it is to expect any individual to represent on behalf of any group of which they happen to be a member.

RFP: Do you have a ‘future collaborators’ wish list?

DM: Autorickshaw, Measha Brueggergosman, The Nathaniel Dett Chorale, and since it’s a wish list, Mos Def.

RFP: Your stage name Belladonna is Italian for beautiful woman and also refers to the deadly nightshade plant. Why did you choose this name?

DM: I wanted to have a name that my mother wouldn’t be embarrassed by! Belladonna plants can have beautiful flowers – they can be beautiful and deadly. The danger of the plant is through accident or intentional malice; the therapeutic properties are to improve vision.  It’s all about duality: I’ve got a real mean streak and it is intentional so I need to constantly court the therapeutic aspects of my personality – aspects that improve my vision – and try to stay constantly self corrective because words are powerful.

RFP: Is there anything this generation is missing, if anything?

DM: I’m going to say something maybe in dangerous words: I think that the cult of youth and the cult of individualism that North America seems to revolve around right now has robbed young people of the sense of tribalism, not in a nationalistic way, but in the sense of being part of a larger thing and being responsible to something greater. The younger generation has a different connection to their elders; the feeling I have towards my grandparents to do honourable things because I carry the family name is something I don’t see a lot of.

RFP: One final question: if you could only take three things onto a desert island, what would they be?

DM: A Bible, music – if I had to narrow it down, it’d be my GreenTaRAcd – and my mom.

Intersections: Art and Fashion

Talk by Dr. Potvin at AGO added life and humour to Tissot’s prints

Lian Novak

Intersections: Art and Fashion is the latest of a four-part lecture series at the AGO.  The series by the name of Close Encounters brings experts from a variety of backgrounds to shine a light on some of the AGOs treasured works on paper.  Several treasures are found amongst the prints of nineteenth century French painter and printmaker James J. Tissot. At 165 prints, the AGO has the second largest collection of Tissot outside of France, thanks to a gift from Allan and Sondra Gotlieb in 1994.

Dr. John Potvin, Assistant Professor in the School of Fine Art and Music at University of Guelph led the talk on Tissot.  Dr. Potvin, who looks like a hip young professor with the clothes to prove it, is the perfect fit to discuss art and fashion.  He has funny anecdotes sprinkled throughout the talk and adds his own (sometimes sassy) interpretations of the women depicted in Tissot’s prints.

According to Brenda Rix, who oversees the Close Encounters series, Tissot, whose work has been primarily known as a fashion plate, has been re-investigated in the last 20 years due to his depictions of gender roles.

Tissot was born in Nantes, France 1836 and moved to Paris in 1856.  Tissot, unlike many artists who achieved fame late in life or after death, was popular and successful right from the get-go.  Well, he was successful in terms of selling his art, but not in terms of impressing the critics who dismissed his work as populist.  Their opinion however, did not discourage Tissot, nor did he cease hanging around some of the most avant-garde artists of the time, like Manet and Degas.

The prints that Dr. Potvin discussed were divided into two sections: during his time with his one great love, Kathleen Kelly Newton, and the time after she passed.  One of the first prints that Dr. Potvin discussed was Portico of the National Gallery, London 1878.  In this etching, Tissot takes a pre-existing work and inserts Kathleen at the forefront of the picture.  She is depicted at the bottom of the steps of the National Gallery as an art student.  In fact, she was not an art student, but he wanted to illustrate that, through her role as his muse, she was an artist.  He also included her church, St. Martin’s of the Fields, in the background as another tribute to her.

After Kathleen passed away at the tragically tender age of 28 due to ‘consumption’ (which we now know as tuberculosis), Tissot became distraught and could not imagine life in London without her.  Within five days of her passing, he fled to Paris, never to return to their London home again.  He never really got over Kathleen and his Paris etchings show a marked departure from scenes of domestic bliss to scenes of high society women out in public life.

While undoubtedly a talented artist with an eye to detail, Tissot was also a storyteller and knew how to capture certain moments in time.  This is especially seen in his series of 15 paintings of the different Parisian women archetypes that he did between the years of 1883-1885.  Though his work was often published with an accompanying story; they were not necessary. Many of Tissot’s prints told a story through the facial expressions and placements of his subjects.  La Femme a Paris: Political Woman 1885 (shown left) is a good example of this.  It shows a woman from the back with her ruffled train cascading behind her, looking over her shoulder.  She is with an older suitor and all the men around her are not too discreetly looking and gossiping.  This print is about a woman who is dressed to the nines to impress her rich suitor and thus improve her position in society but also to help her suitor improve his position in society as men were judged on their success by how expensively the women they were with were dressed.

Dr. Potvin had some interesting revelations about the women in the prints.  In those days, the most fashionable and trendy women were usually prostitutes as they wanted to attract the most attention.  The richer the woman, usually the less fashionable she was.  She probably had an arranged marriage from birth and therefore did not need to attract a whole flurry of attention.  Dr. Potvin joked that rich married women did start getting dressed up after they discovered that their husbands had mistresses and they wanted to get some action of their own.

Some of Tissot’s main influences are Baron Hausmann, who was charged by Napoleon III to redesign Paris into the Paris known today and Baudelaire whose main premise was that art should be ephemeral and fleeting, yet at the same time lasting and eternal.  If one looks at Tissot’s work, this holds true.  His prints are of his time: they depict particular archetypes of women in specific scenes, yet the universality is also shown because we still love looking at beautiful fashion and many of the archetypal roles of women then, still exist today.

From high school to Ghana

Nicole Brewer

While all of her classmates were applying for university, Blaire Smith was getting ready to give up everything.

18-year-old Smith is a small-town girl from Nelson, B.C., and right after graduating from high school, she spent five months volunteering abroad at an all-girls school in Ghana. Her first week was spent with 18 other volunteers in Ghana’s capital, Accra, learning about what would become their lifestyles.

“All of the volunteers thought we had it tough in Accra. I was in a room with eight other girls, the shower was freezing cold and dribbled out, and the food was rice or beans almost every day. But once Lucy, my roommate, and I arrived in Senya Beraku, we realized how good we had it.”

The 19 volunteers were spent at Henry’s house, a representative for Lattitude Canada, the organisation with which Smith volunteered. For one week as they become accustomed to Africa, the volunteers toured Accra, participated in teaching courses, and attended talks on safety and security. Then Smith and her roommate Lucy Mason moved on to their real destination, a small fishing town on Ghana’s coast called Senya Beraku.

“There is electricity and a fan in our room, but the power tends to go out a few times daily. Our room is two single beds and three shelves for each of us. We have three plastic chairs as well. Then there’s our bathroom: There is no running water, so we have a big garbage can full of water from a local well. To flush the toilet we pour a bucket of water down the toilet. To ‘shower,’ we use a smaller bucket to wash ourselves,” Smith says in her blog, “Blaire in Africa.”

Humanitarian activism is becoming increasingly popular, and internationally, youth have taken it upon themselves to volunteer, donate, and create community activist groups. L.V. Rogers, Nelson’s only high school, is home to many an activist group: Pura Vida, an organisation to save young girls from prostitution; Keep the Beat, which raises money for War Child Canada; and Celebrate Africa, which fundraises for the Adopt-a-Village program in Sierra Leone, among others.

Although these groups are filled with passionate young people, Nelson’s size and location – small and nestled in the West Kootenays British Columbia – limits the influence of its activism. Smith chose to take matters further than Nelson could when she applied to be a volunteer with Lattitude Canada. After graduation, she wanted to travel while she decided what to do at university. She started researching volunteer opportunities, and that’s when she found Lattitude Canada. “I figured, why not do something good while I’m travelling, and have fun at the same time?” says Smith.

During her time in Senya, Smith taught at the Mother Theresa School for Girls. Raggie Johansen, in an article for the United Nations, wrote that most child trafficking in Ghana happens so that fishermen can make more profit to support their families. As a fishing town, Senya has an incredibly high rate of child trafficking, and the school was started for the girls most in need. Now it has expanded to more than 600 girls, most of whom have been trafficked or are orphans. Still, the girls are happy and grateful for the education. “They try so hard at school,” Smith says, “and it’s so backwards how the kids here [at home] don’t want to be at school at all.”

Smith was a good student in high school, liked by almost everyone, involved in extra-curricular sports, and helped out with community fundraisers. When the time came to raise money for her journey, Nelson helped her to fundraise almost $2,500. She wrote for and was written about by the town’s newspaper, the Nelson Daily News, and by the time she left there were many who were sad to see her go.

“My dad was my biggest supporter,” she says of her father, Wes Smith. “Right from the get-go, he wanted me to do it.” Her mother, Annette Smith, sister Baily, and boyfriend Cody Lees also supported her by helping with planning and fundraising.

Her mom, said Blaire, seemed more openly worried about Blaire going to Africa. Nor was she alone in questioning her daughter’s destination: “Many people I told were sort of worried about Africa, and would ask why on Earth I wanted to go there when I could go somewhere else, like Australia, with the same program,” Blaire confessed. In fact, she could have been paid to do the same work if she had chosen a different location, but Smith’s heart was set on Ghana, and after researching the country she decided it was the best place for her to go.

She travelled to Africa in hopes of figuring out what she wanted to do with her future, and the experience yielded desired results. “The most fulfilling part was just becoming friends with all the girls,” she says. “I had such an unreal time, and met some truly inspirational people. It changed every aspect of life.” Smith is now applying for a Global Stewardship program, and wants to continue to work overseas, possibly with international development organizations.

Going from a comfort-filled town in B.C. to a small fishing town in Ghana caused a huge shift in Smith’s thinking. “I now realise how little everything here matters… People work hard at their jobs to save up for material things, but the people I lived with in Africa save up for their food that day.”

It’s young people like Blaire Smith that will be the catalysts for future humanitarian activism. Organizations offer placements from one week to one year, and when volunteers like Smith come back with hearts full of compassion and heads full of ideas, they are the ones who can inspire the rest of us.

“I have different priorities now. That’s the biggest change I see in myself. I don’t just go out to shop. I’m planning another volunteer trip possibly to Madagascar or China, and can’t imagine wasting money on things that I don’t need anymore.”

The Legacy of the Bandung Conference

Norman (Otis) Richmond

It has been 55 years since so-called Third World nations from Asia and Africa came together in Bandung, Indonesia to promote economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism. History will record two Bandung Conferences:  In 2005, a conference marking the golden jubilee of the first; and the one held in April 1955, at which 29 African and Asian nations met.

Africans in North America paid close attention to this historic event.  In Toronto, Daniel Braithwaite’s organization, which had a relationship with the U.S.-based Council on African Affairs (CAA), sent a message of support.  Braithwaite was so impressed by CAA co-founder Paul Robeson that he not only started a CAA chapter in Toronto, he also named his own son Paul, currently a lawyer, in tribute to Robeson.  Other Africanists like W.E.B. DuBois, Alphaeus and Dorothy Hunton, along with Robeson, were members of the Council on African Affairs.

The idea of the Bandung Conference came from Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia.  It was conceived in Colombo, Indonesia, where the Colombo Powers:  India, Pakistan, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Burma (now Myanmar) and Indonesia (the host country) met in April 1954.  The Bandung Conference led to the 1961 creation of the Non-Aligned Movement.

The first head of state to arrive at the 2005 Conference was former South African President Thabo Mbeki.  Ironically, South Africa, along with Israel, Taiwan, and North and South Korea were all barred from the 1955 conference.  In light of tragic events of 2005, Mbeki visited the tsunami-stricken province of Aceh before he proceeded to the Conference.

I first heard about the Bandung Conference in the mid-1960s while listening to a speech by El-Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X), titled “Message to the Grassroots,” which was first delivered at the King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit on November 10, 1963.  Malcolm talked about places and faces I had never heard of, however, he didn’t get it completely correct.  There were White people at the Bandung conference.  Marshal Tito represented Yugoslavia, and there were American, Australian and numerous members of the European press at the Conference.  In fact, African American journalist Ethel Payne, who was at Bandung, pointed out, “The British had sent just hordes of correspondents, and the Dutch and the Germans and all the European countries.”

At the time of the first Bandung Conference, the North American left, in general, and the African American liberation movement, in particular, were under attack.  Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for a “red under every bed.” Robeson, “the Tallest Tree in Our Forest,” wanted to attend the Conference but couldn’t because the U.S. government had taken his passport. Ditto for DuBois.  However, several African American politicians and journalists found themselves in Indonesia from April 18-25, 1955.  Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Carl T. Rowan, Dr. Marguerite Cartwright, journalist Ethyl Payne and Richard Wright all were there.

Powell, the Congressman from Harlem, went to the Conference on a dare.  He wanted to attend the event to represent the interests of U.S. imperialism by talking about the progress the Negro in America was making.  “It will mark the first time in history that the world’s non-White people have held such a gathering,” he told reporters in Washington, D.C., “and it could be the most important of this century.”  Powell, no matter what we think of him, knew what time it was.  His appeals to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and others in the State Department were ignored. The flamboyant Powell was told the U.S. government saw no need to send an official observer to Bandung.  However, he got there compliments of the African American weekly newspaper, New York Age-Defender.

Karl Evanzz pointed out in his brilliant book, The Judas Factor, “There was at least one unofficial observer:  at the request of John Foster Dulles’ brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, a young African American journalist named Carl T. Rowan covered the conference.”

Rowan went on to become the Director of the United States Information Agency.  He also went on to alienate himself from a generation of African Americans after the February 21, 1965 assassination of Malcolm X.  Rowan’s statement after Malcolm’s death was, “All this about an ex-convict, ex-dope peddler who became a racial fanatic.”

Of the two women African American journalists at the Conference, the well-connected Dr. Cartwright represented a chain of White dailies and the United Nations.  The lesser-known Payne was the new kid on the block and represented the Chicago Defender, which was part of John Sengstacke’s chain of Black weeklies.

Payne, who went on to be crowned “The First Lady of the Black Press,” said she had little or no contact in Indonesia with Dr. Cartwright.  Of Cartwright, Payne said, “She had a desk at the U.N. and so she had quite a lot of access that I didn’t have.” However, Payne did network with writer Richard Wright, a one-time member of the Communist Party U.S.A.  After he had left the Party, Wright wrote the book, Color Curtain, about The Bandung Conference. Color Curtain was first published by University Press of Mississippi in 1956, and in it Wright wrote about the faces and places in 1955 Indonesia.  In reading his book, one can feel him learning about what would come to be called “The Third World.”

The first Bandung Conference was attended by 21 Asian, seven African and one Eastern European country.  The second was attended by 54 Asian and 52 African nations.  The Asian-African Conference has been transformed into the Asia-Africa Summit.  A recent re-reading of Robeson’s Here I Stand made me realize how important these two Conferences are to humanity. At both, questions of world peace, South-South cooperation, nuclear weapons and Palestine were discussed.

Toronto-based journalist and radio producer Norman (Otis) Richmond a.k.a. Jalali, can be heard on Diasporic Music on Uhuru Radio, every other Sunday from 2pm to 4pm on the net http://uhurunews.com/ He can be reached by e-mail Norman.o.richmond@gmail.com

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