On this week’s show, I talk to the former Executive Director of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 20 years after the AHF’s founding.
Ottawa
Looking back on this week’s Truth and Reconciliation final event
It’s a sunny Tuesday in Ottawa, and I’m having shawarma with my son on Bank Street. We are the only customers this late in the afternoon. On the TV there’s a live broadcast from the nearby Delta Hotel, where I… Read More ›
My Truth, My Reconciliation
Will Canadians learn anything of useful value from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada? Will they even be interested in doing so? These and other questions are on my mind as I prepare for the final closing events of… Read More ›
Bloomistry Live at Raw Sugar Cafe | 10.10.2009
Bloomistry live at the Raw Sugar Cafe, Ottawa, Canada. October 10, 2009 Audience recording. Dmitri Koev, bass; Simon Meilleur, drums; Terry Calder, guitar, b. vocal; Wayne K. Spear, guitar, vocal. CBC radio’s Amanda Putz had just done a feature on… Read More ›
Bloomistry Live at Kaffé | 23.10.2009
Bloomistry live at Kaffé 1870, Wakefield, Quebec. October 23, 2009 Audience recording. Dmitri Koev, bass; Simon Meilleur, drums; Terry Calder, guitar, b. vocal; Wayne K. Spear, guitar, vocal. We did a bunch of shows at Kaffé 1870, a bar in… Read More ›
Bloomistry Live at Westfest | 12.06.2010
Bloomistry live at Westfest, Ottawa, Canada. June 12, 2010 Soundboard recording, MP3 (320 kbps). Dmitri Koev, bass; Simon Meilleur, drums; Terry Calder, guitar, b. vocal; Wayne K. Spear, guitar, vocal. Westfest is a yearly Ottawa music festival started by Elaina… Read More ›
Bloomistry Live at Zaphod | 03.15.2010
Bloomistry live at Zaphod, Ottawa, Canada. March 15, 2010 Soundboard recording, MP3 (320 kbps). Dmitri Koev, bass; Simon Meilleur, drums; Terry Calder, guitar, b. vocal; Wayne K. Spear, guitar, vocal. Playlist 1. Trigger of Your Soul 2. As Far As… Read More ›
Full Circle: download and read the story here
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Romeo Dallaire and the 80/20 Rule
THE DATE WAS Thursday February 15, 2007, and I was on my way to a parliamentary Senate breakfast on Ottawa’s Wellington Street. With me was the former long-time CBC national reporter, Whit Fraser, a man who is never lacking for… Read More ›
What Did the Prime Minister Really Know About Bruce Carson’s Past?
MEET BRUCE CARSON, as early as the 1970s a compulsive thief and fraudster and, in more recent decades, a fixture of Parliament Hill. He is the man who today begs the necessary question, Who exactly has failed to do their… Read More ›
Rock On, Rock Off: Reflections of an Ageing Musician
TEN YEARS AGO, in 2003, an acquaintance of mine named Elaina Martin created Westfest. This free-of-charge Ottawa street music festival first took place on June 12, 2004, the year that Jane Sibbery was the headlining act. Elaina was then, as… Read More ›
Rob Ford is an Effect, Not a Cause, and We’ll Survive Him
AS I WRITE this it is impossible to say whether the drama surrounding Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s alleged new high constitutes an actual new low, but drama does seem to be the word of the moment. Exactly one year ago… Read More ›
Abortion, Augie and the March for Life
SUBMITTING MYSELF TO the Ottawa weather, which today possessed all the charm of wet underpants, I lingered while the wind carried my way the Parliament Hill speeches of the March for Life assembly. In the middle of one characteristically sonorous… Read More ›
The Once and Future Liberal Party of Canada
A FEW DAYS to the weekend’s Liberal policy convention, I had a conversation with the former deputy prime minister of Canada at his Ottawa home. Most of it a trip down memory lane (Herb Gray, now 80, holds the record… Read More ›
Living in the Age of The Endless War
ON A WALL at the National Capital’s War Monument are inscribed these words, past which I walk each day and derived from the ninth book of Virgil’s Aeneid: “nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo.” Here I shall provide some… Read More ›
