Culture
Creative Connections
From Prince George to Prince Rupert, creative folks join forces to enhance their respective cultures, and northern BC culture as a whole. Collaboration at its best in three northern communities.
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Perception Problem
Prince George’s reputation for crime is a harsh reality for some and a bizarre background for others.
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The Grizzly Business
One of BC’s iconic creatures, the grizzly bear is responsible for a significant portion of our province’s economy. The question is: should we shoot bears with guns or cameras, or both?
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True Coldness
It is being on the edge of everything; being in the North, experiencing true coldness, even fleetingly from the deck of a cozy home in a warming climate.
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Orchestra North: summer music program is serious fun
The audience hushes as the conductor and co-director stride down the aisle. At the front of the room, the orchestra members fall quiet.
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The Collections Renewal Project: Bringing the past to light
I’ve poked around in museum backrooms throughout BC’s Northwest; wearing those white gloves while sifting through old papers in archives and artifact storage rooms.
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Smokin’ Good Fish: Many ways to smoke a salmon
A slight breeze rustles the aspen leaves, and on it drifts the distinct scent of a northern summer. It could be a campfire or a Bar-B-Q, but when the days are long and when the salmon are running, the smell of smoke carries with it the flavour of curing fish and the promise of good eating throughout the winter.
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Growth in aboriginal tourism means cultural opportunities for visitors
Anyone who considers Canada a dull and uncultured country clearly hasn’t experienced the rich heritage of northern BC, where hundreds of First Nations communities provide the region with a history rooted several millennia into the earth and traditions that significantly pre-date European arrival on the continent.
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Stone women: The water girls
what is it with us water girls always looking for the current in the current, the secret in the water that is the water…
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How Raven found his lunch: Stories across cultures of an eternally hungry bird
Corvus corax. We-gyet. Trickster.
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Northern landscapes on the big screen: Local filmmakers raise awareness through imagery
In a place where our day-to-day lives are lived between a vast network of grand landscapes, it’s easy to appreciate the North’s natural environment.
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Artists put creative talent toward social justice
A crowd files through the narrow entrance to the Old Church in Smithers, one by one unpeeling layers of sweaters and coats that protected them from the cold.
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A buffet of summer music
Heading to a music festival often means embracing all styles and genres of music.
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Lost in definition Art lives in Smithers
The creative process is a great and beautiful mystery.
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Music for Life: Festivals in Northern BC
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
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Midsummer Festival, 30 years on: the stuff of legends
It’s 8 p.m. on a Monday evening, and in the Stokes’ kitchen a Midsummer Music Festival meeting has just wrapped up. A teapot and half-empty wine bottle sit on the table. But what flows most generously are the stories.
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Don’t Mess with the Estuary: Skeena mouth threatened by development near and far
Over the past few years, protection of the Skeena River has received a lot of attention.
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Sustainable Mining in BC: Does it really exist?
Sustainable is a word used everywhere these days, thrown around like a corporate-world Frisbee: sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, sustainable communities. But sustainable mining?
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Enter the DJ: Electronic music in the North
The room is dark. It’s hot and humid from the combined body heat of hundreds of people crammed into a small space.
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Fishnets and kneepads: Derby’s unique style rolls north
Booty blocking, fresh meat, fishnet burns: you’re unlikely to hear these terms in any other team sport. Then again, few athletic pursuits are quite like roller derby.
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Surprise Home-birth: Baby Carter arrives in a hurry
Amanda Lewis never intended to have a homebirth.
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Dirty Dirt: The legacy of contaminated sites
Have you ever driven by a vacant site in town and wondered why it was empty? Maybe the buildings have been torn down but nothing’s going on.
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Confessions of a homeschooling geek
People all over British Columbia homeschool their children, but here in the North it seems at times to be a bit of an epidemic. If you don’t homeschool, you might assume that the reason lies in some defect in the northern schools, or in the geography of remoteness, or even in a deeply-rooted religious fanaticism that you never noticed before. But none of these theories really proves out. Somewhat mundanely, in the end it’s just that the same qualities which draw a person to the north also draw him or her to homeschooling: independence, resilience, a kind of indifference to isolation, and a delight in making your own—well—entertainment.
READ MORE➦May/June 2017
The Collaboration Issue
