St. Lambert Masonic Temple to finally become a cultural centre

Interesting news from St. Lambert in October that the old Masonic Temple is finally going to be renovated.


Carte postale International Fine Art., Collection Michel Pratt, from the south shore history site, marigot.ca.

According to an article by Arpon Basu in a local paper not available online, the announcement, at the final meeting of the previous St. Lambert Town Council, came as a surprise to council observers. This after years of indecision on the project, which could serve as a 'Dummies' guide on how to take a situation with great potential and achieve nothing.

My interest in this project is due to the fact that the former (and now future) Masonic Temple, which was originally built as the St. Barnabas Anglican Church, has been envisioned as a cultural centre for a number of years now. We actually toured the building ourselves with a real estate agent retained by the Masons many years ago.

This kind of a project, located in such an historic and attractive building in a key strategic location in the middle of the St. Lambert village, could have been (and still could be) a godsend for artists and cultural groups from St. Lambert and all over the Montreal region, Quebec and Canada. Under the new agreement, the building will be re-acquired from the city by the Freemasons, renovated by them to the tune of at least $500,000 and leased to the City of St. Lambert for $50,000 a year. The building will be used again as a Freemason lodge, however the city will have full access to the premises on a reported 24/7 basis.

Why did this not happen 15 years ago or longer, when the Freemasons first started looking into trying to sell the building? Who knows, exactly? Anyway, the city finally did acquire the building around 10 years ago and there were plans worked up to convert the whole thing to a cultural centre at great expense. Certain funding opportunities were apparently at hand, according to a conversation I had a few years ago with former St. Lambert city councilor Marc-Andre Croteau. However, among other things, the Parti Quebecois' city merger program got in the way.

Parti Quebecois forced merger with Longueuil killed this project

St. Lambert was forcibly merged with the City of Longueuil and everything fell apart completely. Finally, the de-merger went through, and another few years later, we finally get a deal done.

Meanwhile, all the artists and performers are 15 years older and the building still hasn't changed a bit, excepting a couple of measures against the weather, and a portion that was condemned and demolished.

Children have grown up without access to this potentially wonderful facility. Somewhere there is a junior accountant or salesperson who might have been inspired to become the next Guy Laliberte. Somewhere there is a failed artist, making ends meet by housekeeping or raking lawns, who just needed that one opportunity for exposure that the Masonic Temple project might have offered them over the past 15 years. Somewhere there is a world-class artist who might have moved right into St. Lambert and inspired one and all with their virtuosity, if only there had been such a wonderful facility here.

Somewhere, there is a phantom catalog, of all the exhibitions and concerts, plays and presentations, that might have been.



T.O.S.H., Qualicum Beach, B.C. - community owned multipurpose arts centre.

Here is a somewhat similar project, of which many variations exist in Canada, to give you idea of what might have been and what could still be. It is The Old School House, in Qualicum Beach, B.C.

Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the '60s

I was thrilled to come across this review of Vancouver art in the 60s, entitled Ruins in Process.

This is a great example of the type of work that needs to be done to further the prospects of Canadian art internationally.

By exploring the work of these Canadian artists more deeply, and getting more a an understanding of how these peoples' work affected the work of subsequent generations, we are able to enrich the Canadian art milieu as a whole.

It is not so much a matter of nationalism - it is more that the art world is broken down by country to a large extent and that the artists of each country do stand on the shoulders of their compatriot artists of the past.

OECD Says Traffic Congestion Costing Toronto - But What Are They Measuring?

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development thinks Toronto can speed up its productivity by putting tolls on its roads.

The 213-page OECD report on the region's economy was released Monday during a global cities forum at the Toronto convention centre.

The report shows that Toronto ranks well down the list in terms of city productivity growth between 1995 and 2005 and that Vancouver and Montreal are similarly low placed.

The OECD outlines four main policy issues and, arising from these, makes five main recommendations in the report:

• Boost innovation, by focusing on niches, university-firms linkages and cluster development and by phasing out subsidies
• Addressing obstacles to the acknowledgment of foreign skills, for example by bridging education programs and internships
• Tackle transportation challenges by creating incentives for reducing car use, access to additional revenue sources, longer term funding commitments by federal government for investment
• Apply a green overlay to the Toronto region’s competitiveness agenda
• Intensify strategic planning at the level of the Toronto region

It should be noted that, of the 32 cities included on the productivity growth chart, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver make up three of the bottom nine cities. Given that none of these three cities appear to be doing all that badly, in relation to many of the higher-ranked cities, such as Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, etc., I have to wonder just how valid this whole exercise is.

Could it be that this survey is giving higher ratings to cities that had bigger 2005 bubbles and whose economies have actually now collapsed to a far greater degree than Toronto, Motnreal and Vancouver? Qutie possibly. Indeed, I don't even know how important "productivity growth" from '95-05 really is, considering the magnitude of the recession of '08.

How much of the so-called productivity growth shown is based on overblown bubbles and trickle down from Iraq war spending? Very hard to tell.

It is also noted that the key recommendations make no mention of culture.

At this point I think the OECD needs to get back to the drawing board.

Not that I don't believe traffic congestion is a major problem in Toronto. =) And toll roads, as they suggest, could be a darn good idea.

Toronto Hamilton Pan Am Games & Edmonton Expo 2017 update

OK so this is how our "Major International Events" are shaking out. Hamilton/Toronto wins the Pan-Am Games. To be honest, I don't remember even seeing a report on the Pan-Am Games since I was a kid.

One thing's for sure though, these Pan-Am Games (in 2015) are about to become the biggest thing that ever hit us now that they're in Toronto!

BTW Toronto invested millions into *considering* a bid for the world expo 2015, before finally missing the deadline to confirm intention to bid.

There is still a hopeful section on a Toronto website entitled Major International Events that continues to give the impression Toronto has a bid alive for it.

Then Toronto/Hamilton looked into hosting the 2017 (smaller) Expo in conjunction with Canada's 150th birthday. Also interested were Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, and perhaps others.

When it came time to confirm intentions with Heritage Canada only Edmonton and Calgary announced, Calgary's announcement coming as a surprise. Calgary pulled the plug on its bid a couple of days ago.

* * *

Edmonton's Gigantic Challenge
The Alberta Tar Sands Public Relations Disaster

Edmonton is now the only city in the running to become Canada's official applicant for Expo 2017 and needs to put a proposal in to Canadian Heritage by the end of November.

If done right - it could be a great thing. Expo 67 added $2.5 B to our tourism balance sheet over 1966. Expo 86 added $1.5 Bil over the previous year. There could even be more to it than that, with the 150th birthday tie-in - but Edmonton has a weak underbelly.

Normally, you would understand that Edmonton would have a somewhat tougher time to promote itself than, say, Montreal or Vancouver. But you would start off thinking about stuff like gateway to the north, land of the Klondike, land of the midnight sun and soon your imagination would be rolling and Edmonton could be made to look pretty attractive... and it is, truth be told.

That was then - this is now: The real challenge for Edmonton going forward is going to be the public relations disaster that is the Alberta Tar Sands. Canada was royally skewered in Barcelona this past week over its greenhouse gas emissions policy - and if people in Edmonton think anyone watches Fox News in Europe to get the "pro-tar" "pro-smog" "pro-carbon" propaganda side of things, then maybe I could get you a good deal on some beautiful oil rights in the Ottawa Valley.

If anyone at Canadian Heritage is awake, they may even just pass on ratifying Edmonton's bid. Save them the expense and embarrassment. Although this is unlikely under a Harper government, of course. So, depending on which cities are bidding against Edmonton, we will see what happens. I have a feeling there will be a lot of international resentment towards Alberta - it will be interesting to see how Edmonton plans to overcome this.

X&-cuse me& Can Someone Please Fill in the Wikipedia Page for Iain Baxter& Thank-you&

N. E. Thing eye Candu 4U?

yeah

Fill in the wikipidi Ah entry 4 Iain Baxter& OK.

"This courage business is important because I think we as a people, even more than the Americans, lack it. We are clever, imitative(?), but we seem to wait for someone else to show us the way, then we follow him, instead of carving out a path for ourselves. Just at the moment I can't think of a single creative work that can be credited to a Canadian... in art, architecture, literature, engineering or anything else..."

- David Milne, Palgrave Ont. Jan. 7, 1932

Iain Baxter& has always been an artist who showed the courage to search for his own way ahead and Canadians can learn a lot by following his career.

No need to even mention that, in these days of twentysomething youtubers racking up millions of hits, it might be worth saving a couple of minutes for the achievements of one of early pioneers and practicioners of conceptual art.

Cultural Resplendence: Re-Affirming Art as an Economic Force in Canada

Does art have the power to drive a country's economy? It is becoming more clear that the answer is yes.

For this post I refer back to my post of April 9, 2009, where I discussed the dismal showing of Canadian visual artists in the context of worldwide auction sales.

Checking the top 500 best-selling artists for the past year, I counted only five Canadians and none in the top 100. I also did a rough calculation showing that the Canadians' sales accounted for probably only .1 % of the total auction sales of the top 500.

I also noted that:

France, for example, is the world's #1 tourist destination. It also has +/-7 of the top 20 worldwide artists, in terms of '08 auction sales...

...you cannot deny the obvious - that France's cultural profile is hugely important for its prosperity and vitality as a nation and that its visual artists are a huge part of that profile.

When I wrote that part I was perhaps overly conscious that some people might consider it quite the stretch to attribute France's world leading tourism position with its world leading cultural position.

The correlation seems too strong to simply ignore, yet... the assumption is completely unscientific and could be a total coincidence, in theory.

Now, I find, my position is shared by none other than one of Canada's leading authors, Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi and winner of the Booker Prize for the same book.

Martel is also the writer of the website, What is Stephen Harper Reading?, and the book of the same name, in which Martel sends a book to Stephen Harper every two weeks, along with a letter giving a brief description of the book and random comments. In the section of the site entitled "The story behind this website", Martel describes how he got the idea for the project.

In a nutshell, Martel and 49 other eminent Canadian artists were invited to Ottawa for the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council. Martel and the other artists noticed how few government representatives made time for the event and how disinterested Harper seemed to be.

"We should have been prepared. How many Members of Parliament do you think showed up at a reception the previous day on Parliament Hill meant to be a grand occasion on which the representatives of Canada’s people would meet the representatives of Canada’s artists? By my count, twenty, twenty-five—out of 306—with only one cabinet minister, the one who absolutely had to be there, Bev Oda. There we fifty stood around, for two hours, waiting. Each one of us was a symbol for one year of the Canada Council’s fifty. I, for example, represented 1991, the year I received a Canada Council B grant that allowed me to write my first novel. I was 27 years old and the money was manna from heaven. I made those $18,000 last a year and a half (and compared to the income tax I have paid since then, an exponential return on Canadian taxpayers’ investment, I assure you)," Martel reflects.

"By comparison, the equivalent celebration of a major cultural institution in, say, France would have been a classy, flashy, year-long, exhibition-filled affair, with President Chirac trying to hog as much of the limelight as possible. No need to go into further details. We all know how the Europeans do culture. It’s sexy and important to them. The world visits Europe because it’s so culturally resplendent. Instead, we milled around, drank our drinks and then petered away in small groups."

This is what really caught my eye:

The world visits Europe because it’s so culturally resplendent.

Culturally resplendent.

That's one thing that Canada is not. It could be. But it's not.

Indeed, in Conservative circles, I imagine the words "culturally resplendent" would be considered profanities!

This is something we will have to get over. This is something for us to shoot for... cultural resplendence.

Canada's endless coastline - what are the benefits?

According to Natural Resources Canada, Canada has 243,042 km of coastline - way more than any other country in the world. The entry goes on to explain that "coastline" is in fact a lower number than "shoreline", because in some cases the measurement of "coastline" may skip over certain small bays whereas "shoreline" gives the more accurate measurement.

According to Wikipedia, Canada has 202,080 km. of coastline and the country with the next largest amount, Indonesia, has only 54,716 km. Anyway, regardless of who or how it is measured, clearly Canada is way ahead on this resource.

This may be the one natural resource that we have in the most abundance in comparison to the other countries of the world. Canada also has more surface area of water than any other country, and is obviously the second largest country of all.

The reason Canada's coastline is so long is first of all because of the large number of islands in the far north as well as the fact that we border on three oceans, not to mention the vast coastline of Hudson Bay.

Anyway, ever since I became aware of this strange phenomenon, I have been thinking that it would be interesting if someone would figure out how we could take advantage of this asset. I must admit I have thought about it a little and haven't come up with anything.

It would stand to reason that we could run a lot of tidal power stations - although a lot of the coastline is frozen over for a large part of the year. Offshore wind generators would be another thing. Maybe fish farms? These are the obvious suggestions. What about innovations?

Another related characteristic: The huge amount of salt water contained within the borders of Canada. Canada's internal marine waters are vastly larger than any other country's.

This needs to be further considered.