Who's Left and Who's Leaving

A trip up to Fort McMurray...

2011-07-06T11:41:00.003-06:00

This past weekend I visited for the first time Fort McMurray, the epicenter of the oil sands project in Alberta and the region that most people probably think about when they hear Alberta. I was really going up there for the Alberta Provincial Swimming Championships (weird location - I know) but I did take a quick drive north of the city to see one of Syncrude's tailing ponds.

It was pretty disgusting to see what these developments actually look like in real life, not just on the TV or in the newspaper. It was also really cool to know that I have now been to the places that they talk about so often on the radio. So now when I hear "Fort McMurray" on the radio I'll think of these photos, as I will forever have these images engraved in my memory.

Awesome Belts by Ryaton Leatherworks!

2011-06-26T13:55:00.003-06:00

I have added a new belt buckle to my growing collection today, this time one made by my friend Greg Morgan, who is Ryaton Leatherworks. Greg makes amazing belt buckles, belts and has recently started working on making shoes - all out of leather. A few weeks ago I had asked him to make me a belt as a sort of memento of Edmonton before I leave for Winnipeg this summer. I sent him some ideas and pictures (I had in mind a compass-like design for the belt buckle) and also asked if he could inscribe the words "Edmonton 2001-2011" along a belt that I could purchase as well. In just a couple of short weeks Greg had everything that I had asked for ready and I went this morning to pick up the belt and buckle from his shop.

To learn more about Greg and Ryaton Leatherworks you can visit his website at www.ryaton.com.

The Edmonton Journal also wrote an article about Greg a few weeks ago that you can read at http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Handtooling+leather+labour+love/4846373/story.html.

I won't be wearing a suit to my grade 9 "grad" this Tuesday as some of my friends are - but instead now I'll have something even cooler to wear!

Gay Pride Edmonton 2011!

2011-06-12T19:53:00.004-06:00

Oh boy, I'm really embarrassed now... I haven't posted on my blog in over 2 months!!! This summer though it is my goal to try and revive my blog and try my hand at some more photojournalism. To kick this new era of my blog off here are some photos from this year's Edmonton Pride Parade which took place yesterday.

Our city councilor Ben Henderson has pride!
A reminder of Israeli apartheid...
Pretty darn awesome.
LGBT community of Fort MacMurray... that would be pretty hard...
Also pretty darn awesome.

As the school year draws to a close and summer begins I will be trying to post on the blog more often, so don't forget about me just yet!

YouTube Channel

2011-04-01T17:55:00.004-06:00

Hey everyone!

I know that this is my first post in a very long time, but I just wanted to let you know that I now have a YouTube channel. You can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/IsaacSTWMusic. I'll be posting mostly videos of me performing, such as a performance that I did of a Sigur Ros song at a benefit concert in January.

I will be trying to post more soon, but I just have been very busy with swimming, music and life in general. I'm sure that I'll have lots of stuff to write about though as the election gets closer. For example...

Here's an article about how Harper has a five question limit per day: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Stephen+Harper+refuses+explain+limits+media+queries/4536394/story.html

I mean, who does he think he is?! The prime minister of Canada or something? The good thing though is that as Canadians see more of Harper they seem to like him less and as Canadians see more of Ignatieff they seem to like him more.

One thing that will be interesting to see is how Linda Duncan will do in this election (after she won by only 1% against Rahim Jaffir in 2008, becoming the only NDP MP in Alberta). There is of course a new Conservative candidate in Edmonton-Strathcona for this election... and from what I've heard of him so far, he doesn't seem like a majour improvement from Jaffir.

Anyway, as the election comes closer I'll try and post some more stuff on here. Also, I have a few performances coming up (a school talent show thingy and another benefit concert) that I might post videos of on my YouTube channel, so check it out!

My Top Albums of 2010

2011-01-23T10:00:00.002-07:00

To tell you the truth, I didn't really listen to that much new music in 2010. I was more preoccupied with discovering and re-discovering older music rather than going out and buying new albums. For instance, (for those who know me this will be no surprise) this year after my inspiring trip to Iceland I discovered the quirky Icelandic musician Bjrk and I soon developed quite the obsession with Iceland's most well known person. At another point in the year I "re-discovered" Canadian power-pop icon Sloan. I may have possibly set some kind of record for listening to their song "Snowsuit Sound" over 20 times in one day. Later on in 2010 I discovered the band which may have changed my entire life. My obsession with this band has continued on into this year and I sit here right now typing this obsessively listening to all their albums on repeat. For those who know me, you will of course know that I am talking about Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. I'm not sure what happened during my trip to Iceland in August, but I somehow developed an odd attraction to anything Icelandic.

I did however listen to some new albums that came out in 2010. Here is a list of some of my favourites (in no particular order) with a link to my favourite song from that album:

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs; favourite song: "We Used to Wait" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLjrQ3cwzJ4&ob=av2nm

Vampire Weekend - Contra; favourite song: "Holiday" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vraoiVCDdaM

Stars - The Five Ghosts; favourite song: "Dead Hearts" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfYK8wvvU90

Jónsi (lead singer of Sigur Rós!) - Go; favourite song: "Go Do" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYb2Q3DvLNE

The National - High Violet; favourite song: "Bloodbuzz Ohio" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfySK7CLEEg

Now I've gotta go back to listening to some more Sigur Rós (I hear that they might have a new album coming out this year)!

The Concert of a Lifetime : Weakerthans @ Burton Cummings

2011-01-01T21:59:00.003-07:00

A few weeks ago the Weakerthans played a series of four concerts in their hometown, one for each of their albums. Their last concert was at the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg was without a doubt a once in a lifetime experience. The band played all four of their albums in a row to a hometown crowd, from their most recent album Reunion Tour to their first album Fallow.

I have been a Weakerthans fan since 2005 when I saw them perform at the Edmonton folk fest. For some reason or another, my nine year old self really liked their music and I have been a huge fan ever since! Perhaps this was because of their interesting lyrics or their Canadianess, but whatever the reason, they remain to this day to be my favourite band. I saw the band again when they came to Edmonton but I have always wanted to see them perform in their hometown, so for me that Saturday night really was the concert of a lifetime.

It was great to hear the Weakerthans play in Winnipeg, especially in such an historic theatre as the Burton Cummings. I’ve always wanted to hear John K Samson perform his song “One Great City” and hear him sing the lines the Guess Who sucked and I hate Winnipeg in this theatre along with hundreds of other Winnipeggers. I had been looking forward to that song in that theatre for the weeks leading up to the concert, and when the moment finally came it definitely didn’t disappoint.

For some bands, where you see them perform doesn’t matter, but for a band like the Weakerthans it’s different. The fact that I was seeing them perform in Winnipeg was what made the concert so great. I think that this is because Winnipeg is featured in so many of the Weakerthans’ songs. Not only that, but what is also special is that this band seems to share a very strong connection with their hometown audience because they can relate about so many of the same feelings.

For instance, in their song that I had previously mentioned “One Great City” at first glance seems like a song talking about how the band hates Winnipeg. However if you know Winnipeg then it is obvious that John K is singing about the unique love-hate relationship that Winnipeggers have with their city. The stereotypes often associated with Winnipeg may be true; cold winter and lots of mosquitoes in the summer, but many people living in Winnipeg would never dare leave because of their strong attachment and deep feelings for the town.

This concert definitely required a lot of stamina, both for the performers and the audience. Imaginary Cities (also from Winnipeg) opened for the Weakerthans and after their one hour performance the main act played for another four hours! Nearing the end of the night, John K. Samson stated that they would never do this again, so all those people at that concert really made Weakerthans history! However from my perspective, even though the concert was a bit lengthy, it was definitely worth it.

Ecuadorian Feast #1

2010-12-24T12:13:00.005-07:00

I held my first fundraising dinner for my trip to Ecuador on Wednesday with much success! We only invited about 8 people but everyone was very generous and I raised $250 after one evening! I am now well on my way to raising the $3500 that is needed to pay for the trip. I just want to thank everyone who came to my dinner once again for your generous donations!
I served a three coarse meal, all of which turned out very well. The meal started off with a plantain soup and corn bread, plantains are a very popular food to cook with in Ecuador. Next I served black beans with rice, which is a very common dish throughout Latin America. To finish off I served an Ecuadorian-style lemon curd with vanilla ice cream (I'm not so sure if the ice cream is all that Ecuadorian but the lemon curd sure is!)

I was asked numerous times for the recipes to these dishes, particularly for the plantain soup and the lemon curd. So for all those people who asked, here you go!

Plantain Soup (Serves 4) -

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery rib, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 -4 1/2 cups stock/broth
2 green plantains, peeled, quartered lengthwise & thinly sliced
1 bunch cilantro, stemmed and finely chopped
1/2-1 teaspoon cumin
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat.

Add onions, carrots, celery and garlic.

Cook, uncovered for 3-4 minutes until onions are soft but not brown.

Add stock/broth and bring to boil over high heat.

Add plantains, cilantro, cumin and bay leaf.

Season with salt a pepper.

Return to boil.

Reduce to medium-low and simmer, uncovered for 40-50 minutes or until plantains are very tender.

Remove and discard bay leaf.

Transfer half the soup to a blender and puree until smooth.

Return pureed mixture to pan.

If soup is too thick add more stock/broth.

Season with more salt/cumin if desired.

Lemon Curd (Serves 8) -

3/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup lemon juice, fresh
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 cup water
1 lemon, zest of
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Mix the cornstarch in the water.

Put all the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.

Pour from the blender and into a saucepan and cook over a low heat until it thickens.

I will be holding one (possibly two more dinners) to fundraise for my trip in the new year.

Good luck with the recipes!

127 Hours... What Would You Do?

2010-11-28T10:16:00.007-07:00

Last night at the Garneau Theatre I saw what is definitely one of the best movies that I've seen this year. 127 Hours starring James Franco tells the true story of Aron Ralston, the mountain climber who was trapped for 127 hours while hiking in Utah. In the end Ralston had to cut off his arm in order to escape the boulder that was trapping him in the canyon. The move was extremely realistic (I noticed this after watching a few interviews with Aron Ralston himself) and quite terrifying at some parts.

Directed by Danny Boyle, the same guy who directed the multiple award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours is bound to be a success. Also similar to Slumdog Millionaire, this film's score was composed by A.R. Rahman and was also pretty amazing.

What was so interesting about this movie was that the whole audience knew going into it that he would eventually cut off his arm. However, when the time for that came, the audience still let out an audible gasp. In an interview about the movie, Aron Ralston said that he didn't want the film to be a horror story and to give people nightmares, but for it to be more of an inspiring movie. Well I think 127 Hours did just that, with many thanks to the acting of James Franco.

Also similar to Slumdog Millionaire, this movie is currently only playing at the Garneau here in Edmonton (Slumdog also started out only at the Garneau). But I predict that, just like Danny Boyle's previous film, 127 Hours will become an enormous hit and will soon be playing at theatres around Edmonton! Though it was very nice to see this film at the beautiful Garneau Theatre...

This movie was definitely a 5 out of 5 for me, and probably one of the best movies that I've ever seen. However the thing that I kept thinking throughout the movie and even after it was over, was what would I do in that situation?

I'm Eating a Cookie!

2010-11-21T21:53:00.003-07:00

Alberta Health Services President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Duckett made Alberta proud on Friday. After an important meeting to discuss the state of Alberta health care was asked questions by the media but repeatedly responded with "I'm eating a cookie!" You really have to watch the video to see how crazy it is...

Stephen Duckett was brought here to work with Alberta Health Services all the way from Australia and is being paid big bucks too! But for what... so that he can talk about his cookie? There is something seriously wrong with that picture...

Live Review: Dan Mangan at Myer Horowitz Theatre

2010-11-20T09:02:00.004-07:00

Vancouver folk rocker Dan Mangan was in Edmonton on Tuesday night playing a sold-out show at the Myer Horowitz Theatre. He was performing on his “Peculiar Travel Suggestion Tour” during which he will be performing in the four western provinces. I was introduced to Dan Mangan’s music relatively recently, but I am already a huge fan and he definitely didn’t disappoint when I first saw him live!

Opening for Dan were two bands; The Crackling and The Burning Hell. The Crackling is a new project created by three people who also play in Dan Mangan’s band. The lead singer plays the drums in Mangan’s band so during The Crackling’s concert he switched it around and brought out Dan Mangan to play drums for him. And from my seat, he sounded pretty good!

The Burning Hell was quite different musically, and was in fact very comedic. During the show lead singer Mathias Kom said that they had once been compared to Moxy Fruvous. I would agree but would also say that they were similar to Geoff Berner but with a ukulele instead of an accordion.

Going into Dan Mangan’s performance my friend had said that she wanted to hear three songs of his; "Sold," "Basket" and "Robots". Well, Dan Mangan must have read our minds as he played all three of those songs and many more excellent tunes. He played an inspiring live show that included some great trumpet playing and an awesome acoustic performance of "So Much for Everyone" at the end of his show.

What I liked about this concert was that each of the three musical acts got everybody in the audience participating. Each one of them had the spectators singing along in at least one song, whether it was just a few words or a whole chorus. For me the best part was when Dan Mangan played his song "Robots" and had a whole bunch of people from the audience come up on stage to play, sing and dance with him. Then of course the whole audience also sang along to the chorus of “robots need love too.”

Another thing that I noticed was that each band talked about how welcoming Edmonton is for performers and musicians. Dan Mangan spoke fondly of his last time performing in Edmonton at the Haven Social Club while he was sick with the flu. However he said that even though he had the flu, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! I know that all bands probably feel obliged to compliment the city that they are performing in, but these three bands seemed like they really meant it!

What really struck me while watching Dan Mangan on stage was that he really does seem nice, nice, very nice. So I think that he is definitely very deserving of all the popularity that he is getting. Last time he performed in Edmonton he played at the Haven Social Club, this time he played a sold out show at the Myer Horowitz, so where will he be performing next? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I couldn’t think of a nicer guy to be playing a full house at the Winspear.

That article was also posted on SEE Magazine's GigBytes blog. Here are some links to songs that I talked about in the article: Sold, Basket, Robots and So Much for Everyone.

Iceland's Emotional Landscapes

2010-11-05T15:30:00.002-06:00

Just a short video with some photographs and video footage that I took on my trip to Iceland during the summer. Iceland was amazing, and snorkelling in between the continents at Silfra was probably the coolest thing that I've ever done!

Iceland's Emotional Landscapes from Isaac Wurmann on Vimeo.

The video is set to the music of Icelandic musician Bjork, who is definitely the most well known Icelander that there is. She is a musician who I have really been liking these past few months!

Stars' Halloween Performance @ The Winspear

2010-11-01T16:01:00.006-06:00

This year hundreds of people spent their Halloween at the Winspear, and for a very good reason! Indie rock band Stars from Montreal were in town last night and put on a very good show for all those who were willing to give up partying on All Hallows’ Eve. Opening for Stars was the also Montreal-based band Young Galaxy.

I had not previously heard of Young Galaxy, but I liked what I heard last night! Throughout the concert Stephen Ramsay (lead guitarist and vocals) constantly reminded the audience that “even though we’re in a nice theatre, this is still supposed to be a rock concert!”

And rock out they did! All members of the band seemed very into the music, including Edmonton-raised bassist Stephen Kamp and lead vocalist Catherine McCandless who actually broke her tambourine during the performance. Although they tried to come across as a more rock influenced band, my favourite song of their performance was their slower and more melodious song entitled “Firestruck”.

After the intermission came the act that everyone was waiting for. At the beginning of Young Galaxy’s performance the “shoebox” shaped Winspear was nowhere near full, but throughout the opening act more people started to come in and by the time intermission came around the Winspear was packed with people! It surprised me that there was such a large turnout on Halloween night, but I guess those Stars fans are dedicated!

Lead vocalists Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan burst onto the stage at the start of their performance. They immediately began throwing roses into the crowd and yelling at everyone to get onto their feet – now that’s an entrance.

Throughout the rest of the concert the crowd stayed on their feet and the band members kept throwing roses at the audience. It gave the concert a much more intimate feel, like we were on the same level as the band and we weren’t just sitting down passively listening. I think that it takes a great band to be able to achieve that feeling.

From my point of view in the audience I could tell that there were many people in the crowd with me who really know Stars’ music very well. Apparently Amy Millan could also tell this because near the beginning of the performance she remarked that “it feels like you’ve been with us for a very long time.” Because of this long relationship that so many people have had with the band the crowd was really involved. During songs like “Take Me To The Riot” and “Dead Hearts” the whole crowd was singing along.

Just as well though the crowd was able to be quiet and really enjoy the nice acoustic performances such as the song “Ageless Beauty” which feature Amy Millan on vocals and Evan Cranley on acoustic guitar.

Upon reflection it seems very fitting that Stars’ concert was on Halloween. Their newest album is called The Five Ghosts and numerous songs of theirs have somewhat Halloween-ish titles. For example “Dead Hearts” and “I Died So I Could Haunt You.” While my friends in Grade 9 and from my Junior High school were out trick or treating I can’t think of any other place that I would rather have been on October 31^st.

That article was also posted on SEE Magazine's Gig Bytes blog. Here are some links to some of the songs that I talked about in the article: Firestruck, Take Me to the Riot, Ageless Beauty (acoustic) and Dead Hearts.

Here We Go Again...

2010-10-27T16:00:00.007-06:00

Earlier this week a large group of ducks landed in a Syncrude tailings pond in Northern Alberta. Does this story sound familiar? Well it should... the exact same thing happened in 2008. What's even worse is that this year's duck-landing happened just days after Syncrude was fined over 3 million dollars for the previous duck-landing. Syncrude has recently stated that 350 birds have now died after landing on the Mildred Lake tailings pond on Monday night.

What is even more astounding is that this event has happened less than a month after Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized NDP MP Linda Duncan, saying that she was trying to shut down Alberta's economy by suggesting that we slow down development in the oil sands. Well maybe that seems like a better idea now, doesn't it Harper?
So if this keeps going on like it has been of late, how long will it take for people to realize that perhaps this is not the best idea? What more needs to happen to convince people that maybe searching for more environmentally friendly sources of energy are better for us in the long run? I guess for now though we'll just have to wait around until the next batch of ducks are killed in our quest for oil in the tar sands.
For more info check out http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/299493. Or you can just listen to the radio or watch the TV because hopefully we will soon be hearing about how Syncrude will be punished for their second round of duck killing.

First Snow!

2010-10-25T15:33:00.003-06:00

It was the first day of snow here in Edmonton today. I was hoping that the weather might hold out until November and after Halloween, but I guess that just wasn't meant to be. It sure was fun to bike to school this morning though! I think I'll try and bike through the winter... but I guess we'll see how that goes. Biking home from school was pretty nice though, it wasn't too cold but everything was coated with a nice layer of white. Some of the leaves were even still on the trees!

According to Todd Babiak, the snow is good for you, really! http://tinyurl.com/289l3yd I guess it might feel good after you've spent a year in snowless north-western France!

Well I guess that's what you get for living in Edmonton... Welcome back winter!

Ecuador!!!

2010-10-24T14:10:00.003-06:00

It's official! I will be going to Ecuador next summer to volunteer with Free the Children with my friend Zoë. During our 18 day trip we will be helping to build a school in the Chimborazo province. Before that though we will spend a few day exploring old Quito and taking a quick visit up to the Equator. At the end of our trip we will be spending a few days at a retreat in the Amazon rain forest.

Free the Children is an organization that was started by Craig Kielburger in 1995, when Craig was only 12 years old. The aim of FTC is not only to provide education for children in developing countries but to also involve children in their efforts to do so. There are also trips for youth to Kenya, Arizona/Mexico, India and China.

Our trip leaves on August 10, 2011 from Montreal, and I can't wait! I'm not sure how I am going to get through this year knowing that during the summer I will finally be going on this trip that I have been wanting to go on for so many years?!
The trip is pretty pricy though, about $3500, so I have a lot of fundraising to do. Zoë and I will be hosting a few dinners throughout the year to raise money for the trip and I also have a couple of part time jobs that will pay for a fair amount of the trip. All the work will definitely be worth it though, it's gonna be the trip of a lifetime!

Blogging Around the World

2010-09-20T15:42:00.002-06:00

Have you ever thought about leaving everything at home and travelling around the world for a year? Well some family friends of mine are doing just that. They started off their trip in Iceland before going to England and then exploring Europe before visiting India, Egypt, the Middle East, Turkey and the Baltic states.

To read more about their travels and to learn about life on the road please check out a blog written by Sam, who's my age: http://samaaway.blogspot.com/. Sam's blog provides a unique perspective that shows what it's like to travel the world as a teenager. He posts great stories from his trip and some great pictures!

Interview with New Orleanian John Boutte

2010-09-10T18:43:00.004-06:00

I'm finally getting around to putting this amazing interview with John Boutte on my blog! It was probably the best interview that I've ever done and John Boutte also told me that I was the best interviewer that he's ever had. He was also a great interviewee which made for a great interview! Hopefully this with also be posted on SEE Magazine's Gig Bytes blog shortly.

New Orleans has long been known for its music and festivals and is often referred to as the “most unique” city in the United States. Unfortunately, this distinctive city has also experienced more than its fair share of disasters in the past few years. At the Edmonton FolkFest this year, New Orleans native John Boutté played for his first time at Edmonton’s festival, and I had the chance to talk with him about his music as well as his interesting birthplace.

“New Orleans is such a beautiful musical city, we’ve got jazz of course, but we also dance the bamboula, we have the French Opera House, we have Spanish influence, classical music, marching band music and gospel of course. So the whole amalgamation of these sounds is just kind of like a backdrop, it’s like the highway, you can always hear it passing,” Boutté spoke fondly of his hometown during an interview at the FolkFest.

In the past five years, New Orleans has been hit hard by many disasters. The 2005 hurricane season was particularly difficult for the city with Hurricane Katrina striking the city in August and Hurricane Rita postponing restoration of the city when it hit in September of the same year. More recently, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico affected the city when oil washed up on wildlife refuges and seafood grounds on the Louisiana coast.

However through all these disasters, the people of New Orleans still keep coming back home, “I think we have no other choice,” explains Boutté, “there’s no room for us anywhere else, where are we going to go? I don’t think that anybody from New Orleans wants to live in Kansas, I mean Kansas is okay, but New Orleans is the centre of the universe... for me.” After Katrina, John Boutté was one of the first musicians to come back. “The Katrina event, I’d like to call it... it just really made me appreciate what we had, because sometimes you have things but you don’t appreciate it until it’s almost gone.”

In the case of two of the worst disasters that New Orleans has experienced over the past five years, people have been blaming the government. “I think that we always like to point the finger at the government, but we are the government. We’re the ones who put them in office.” John Boutté also explained to me that he has a “large scepticism” towards larger organizations like the government or the church. “Katrina was a ‘SNAFU’, people out there know what that means, that’s a ‘situation normal all f***ed up.’”

Even though he says he is sceptical of large organizations such as religion, one event that effected Boutté’s music was singing in the church choir while he was in the military. “I was trying to improve my social status from ‘very poor’ to just ‘slightly poor.’ And it really opened up my repertoire to more gospel music.” he told me as his explanation for why he had joined the military. “It’s not for everyone though, especially not for people who just want to shoot somebody.”

John Boutté has been playing music since he was quite young, starting with the cornet when he was eight years old. When asked what made him want to become musical he replied laughingly, “It’s like asking me why am I black, I can’t help it! I was born with this feeling to make music ever since I was a kid.” One story he remembers was that when he was a kid, he would sing the same songs over and over and over again, just to annoy his siblings. “It would drive my sisters and brothers up the wall,” he explained to me, “and I realized, ‘Wow! There’s something to this, I’ve got power in this voice!’”

I too have been playing music since I was around his age, and after every interview at the FolkFest this summer I asked for some words of advice. I did the same with John Boutté because I definitely wanted to hear what he might have to say. John spent a day with Stevie Wonder when he was younger, and so he gave me some advice that Stevie had given him years earlier. “He said these two words that were very befuddling at first. He said ‘patience’ and ‘determination.’” And those are two words that I will remember in the years ahead as I explore the world of music and as I continue playing my own music.

Brown Doesn't Mind Joni Mitchell Comparisons

2010-08-10T10:14:00.001-06:00

At this year's Edmonton folk festival, I will be writing regular updates from the festival for SEE’s Gig Bytes Blog. I will also have an article published in next week’s SEE Magazine. This article is cross posted from SEE's Gig Bytes Blog...

Emerging artist Colleen Brown performed for her first time at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this year. Since her second album released in 2008 she has been growing more popular with the help of many radio personnel including Rich Terfry (a.k.a. Buck 65). I first heard Colleen play at the Winspear opening for Hawksley Workman at his Edmonton concert. She was amazing, and I was very excited to hear that she would be at the FolkFest!

Performing at the Winspear, she spoke about how she used to work in the box office there. She was ecstatic about playing there herself and one could see that she was genuinely happy. “That was really amazing for me,” she told me in an interview earlier on today, “and I have to say, I don’t think that I’ll ever experience that again.”

Brown has grown enormously in popularity over the past couple of years, and now is being compared to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. “I really like both Joni and Gordon,” Colleen explained, “but I do make my own music and I want to be recognized as an artist in my own right. But when somebody says you sound like Joni Mitchell you say ‘thank you, very much.’”

This was Colleen Brown’s first time performing at the Edmonton Folk Festival, but she had gone to the FolkFest before as an audience member. I just can’t imagine how it would be to be a part of the music at the FolkFest after watching the music for so long! However even though she was performing she still was listening to music she informed me. Sarah Harmer, Brandi Carlile, Colin Hay and Levon Helm were her picks for this year’s festival.

Playing music since she was six years old and writing songs since she was twelve, Colleen always thought that she was going to be a musician. “I think I always knew that I was going to be a professional singer, but I just didn’t have any expectations.” And she’s always writing music, sometimes even on the high level bridge! “I find that when I go out walking, that’s the time that I’m most creative.”

“The album sounds like some of the best music you heard on pop radio back in the ‘70s... I love this album,” spoke Rich Terfry, host of CBC Radio 2 Drive, of Colleen Brown’s latest album. This advertising by Rich really does work, Colleen told me. At a concert that she was playing in Toronto there was a considerably larger crowd than other at other concerts all because Terfry had encouraged people to go to it.

Colleen Brown plays the guitar and the piano, just like I do, so at the end of the interview she gave me some pieces of advice. “Do great work and everthing else will fall into place,” some advice that her friend had first given her. She next gave me some colourful advice from her former mentor. Colleen explained how he would get in her face and point his finger at his nose, and then finally he’d tell her, “don’t f*** up!”

Saturday Photos

2010-08-08T12:56:00.003-06:00

Workshop with Colleen Brown, Patrick Watson and Basia Bulat.

Working.

After my interview with John Boutte.

Sarah Harmer.

Brandi Carlile.

FolkFest 2010: One Big Old Goofy World!

2010-08-07T14:15:00.002-06:00

Maybe the best thing (and definitely my favourite thing) about folk festivals are the workshops. This is when two or more artists share the stage and perform together. These are great because the artists usually start out playing their separate songs, but by the end of the session, they are almost always playing together. Only at workshops like these would you finds an American folk-rock band on the same stage as two throat singers from Nunavut and an Arabic-Spanish musician from the UK.

These workshops began yesterday afternoon with one called “Big Old Goofy World” on stage 6. Sharing the stage was Tom Russell, Calexico, Natacha Atlas and Tanya Tagaq. This workshop epitomized the whole spirit of the folk fest and by the end everyone was playing together even though many of them had never met each other before!

Joey Burns, lead singer of the Tucson, Arizona band Calexico is great in these workshops. I think that he has even said that they are his favourite part of folk festivals! Two years ago I saw Calexico playing a workshop with The Weakerthans at the Winnipeg FolkFest. That performance was equally as amazing as the workshop yesterday afternoon mainly due to Burns’ ability to muck in with other musicians and create a new sound.

Going into the “Big Old Goofy World” session, I was unsure of how it would work with throat singers Tanya Tagaq and her cousin Celina Kalluk. When they were playing alone it was amazing, it was so unlike anything that I had ever heard before! What was really incredible was how they incorporated throat singing into the songs that other musicians were performing. I was surprised by how great Arabic music sounded with a little bit of Inuit throat singing thrown in!

What’s great about folk festivals is that if you’re not looking forward to a particular artist going into the event, you are still bound to like the music. Sometimes coming out of the festival you’ll even have a new favourite musician! I think that this is all thanks to workshops like this one. Often this is also where the performer’s personality comes out most, which might just make you enjoy their music even more!

See you on the hill!

Friday Night Photos

2010-08-07T10:28:00.002-06:00

Workshop with Tanya Tagaq, Tom Russell and Calexico.

Workshop with Lucas Chaisson, Patrick Watson, Kate Reid and The Waifs.

The hill at night.

Calexico.

Sacred FolkFest Traditions; Tarp Running

2010-08-06T17:01:00.003-06:00

The Edmonton FolkFest is about more than just the music, it’s about the whole experience. For me a main part of the experience is the colour lottery, a time when hundreds of people gather in a small, cramped corral. Each person is given a lottery ticket with a performer’s name on it and a number. If your performer is called first, you get to be in the first group to run your tarp. If your performer is the second called, you are in the second group etc. The number on the ticket indicates what number you are in your group.

On Saturday and Sunday the colour lottery starts at 7 in the morning, which means that you have to wake up at 6 after staying out until 12:30 am at Gallagher Park. For many people, this probably sounds crazy... and you know what? They’re probably right, it is pretty crazy, but it’s worth it! It’s worth it if after spending half an hour in close quarters with other caffeine fuelled folk festers your performer is called first.

For my family and friends, the colour lottery has become a tradition. After the lottery on Saturday and Sunday morning we go for breakfast at the nearby Humpty’s. The coffee there is pretty bad, but you’ve got to stick to tradition! After breakfast all of us (usually ranging between 6 and 12 people) return to the hill to watch the tarp run. It may not sound like much, but the tarp run is way more exciting than the Stanley Cup playoffs or the FIFA World Cup!

If we get first colour then our tarp runner gets to be bagpiped down the hill to place our tarp. This moment may be the most exciting part of the FolkFest. Our whole group stands at the top of the hill craning our necks to try and see where our tarp runner placed the tarp, the anticipation is sometimes too much! Our group takes tarp running so seriously that we call our runner “Tarparanjuat: The Tarp Runner”, based off of the movie “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner”. She even has a t-shirt with the name printed on it!

This year I’ve noticed that many things have changed surrounding the tarp run. The security especially seems way tighter; they wouldn’t even let us cheer on Tarparanjuat! Our group of regular FolkFest-goers fear that this will now affect the performance of our tarp runner because she won’t be able hear us cheering for her. It won’t matter today though because we got first colour at the lottery!

See you on the hill!

Thursday Night Photos

2010-08-05T22:40:00.006-06:00

Patrick Watson.

Gord Downie.

Ben Harper.

G'Night everybody and I'll see you on the hill tomorrow!

FolkFest 2010, Day 1: Thursday Night Main Stage a Must-See

2010-08-05T17:29:00.002-06:00

At this year's Edmonton folk festival, I will be writing regular updates from the festival for SEE’s Gig Bytes Blog. I will also have an article published in next week’s SEE Magazine. This article is cross posted from SEE's Gig Bytes Blog...

Of all the main stage line-ups at this year’s Folk Festival, tonight’s is by far the one that I am most looking forward to. Four very respected performers will play the main stage tonight.

Opening up the festival will be Patrick Watson, followed by Canadian icon Gord Downie. Next performing will be English folk singer Kate Rusby, and to finish the night off, former Wednesday night headliner Ben Harper will perform.

California-born, Quebec-raised Patrick Watson is probably the artist that I am most looking forward to seeing at this year’s festival. I first heard of Patrick Watson in 2007 when his album Close to Paradise won the 2007 Polaris Prize. He has since come “into the light” for me again after I saw a video on YouTube of him playing a great duet with Lhasa.

Watson's 2009 album Wooden Arms was also a finalist for that year’s Polaris Prize. Perhaps my favourite song of Watson’s is on off of Close to Paradise called The Great Escape, which I tried to learn on piano.

Gord Downie is a Canadian icon, and his band The Tragically Hip is one of the most famous Canadian bands ever. The Hip has received 14 Juno Awards over the years and was inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame as well as the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

I think that the reason The Tragically Hip has become so famous is because Gord Downie’s lyrics really resonate with Canadians. He uses real Canadian stories in his songs, and because of this my mom swears that the song Wheat Kings is about my great-grandfather who was the chief commissioner of the Canadian Wheat Board (minus being a killer of course).

Kate Rusby is an artist that I am not very familiar with. The only time that I have really heard her name is when it has been mentioned in the media, so I'm excited about hearing her for the first time today.

Rusby was born into a musical family and learned to play the guitar, fiddle and piano at a young age. She's quite well known among folk fans in Britain and has won 4 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

To finish off Day 1 of the festival I feel that Ben Harper’s performance is sort of a gift. Harper (not to be confused with Stephen) was originally going to play the Wednesday night show, but has been moved to Thursday night.

One of the reasons Ben Harper gets so much respect is because of the sheer amount of activism he does: he participated in Vote for Change and contributed his song "Oppression" for the CD For the Lady in 2004. He is part of No Nukes Group and participated in Songs for Tibet in 2008. And besides all this he is also a 2 time Grammy Award winner!

Tonight’s main stage performance is bound to be something special. Sharing the stage will be a Polaris Prize winner, a Juno Award winner, a BBC Radio 2 Award winner and a Grammy Award winner! So for all those attending the folk fest tonight, you are in for a treat.

See you on the hill!

No Sweat!

2010-07-26T08:17:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I was excited about buying shoes. I was at a store called "The Shoe Doctor" in the awesome community of Wolseley, Winnipeg, a store where they sell different brands of shoes that aren't Nike or Adidas etc. One of the brands of shoes that they sell is called "No Sweat", which is an organization that makes "100% union made apparel" which includes shoes. "No Sweat" also makes other clothes such as t-shirts, sweaters etc.

I bought a pair of black, converse-style shoes that are 100% union made in Indonesia. This means that "No Sweat" employs people who desperately need these jobs and who will be treated fairly. This means no child labour and no 16 hours work days.

To learn more about "No Sweat" visit their website: http://www.nosweatapparel.com/index.html

Another interesting shoe brand that I found at "The Shoe Doctor" was "Oliberté", which, similar to "No Sweat" fairly employs people in developing countries, for "Oliberté" they mostly employ people in Ethiopia. "Oliberté" is a bit more expensive than "No Sweat" and unlike "No Sweat", they only make shoes. The shoes that they do make though are made from premium leather from Ethiopia and rubber from Liberia.

To learn more about "Oliberté" visit their website: http://www.oliberte.com/home/

The reason why these two companies are able to do such great things is because they do not spend money on advertising, and so they encourage people to spread the word. By writing this, I hope that someone will go out and but a pair of "No Sweat" or "Oliberté" shoes that really will make a difference in the world.

The Interesting Politics of Iceland

2010-07-12T11:39:00.003-06:00

Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland recently had a municipal election in May of this year. A new political party that was running to be elected was the Best Party, whose original goal was to satirize Icelandic politics. The party's platform consisted of things like "free swimming for everyone and free towels", "free bus rides and dental services for children and the poor" and to "listen more to women and old people." Well low and behold, the Best Party won the latest municipal election in Iceland's capital city, and now comedian Jon Gnarr is the mayor of Reykjavik.

Here's the campaign video for the Best Party, featuring the song "The Best" by Tina Turner:

If only Canadian politics were this interesting!!!

To learn more about the Best Party, visit their website: http://bestiflokkurinn.is/. Warning: it is in Icelandic!

I will be visiting Iceland for one week at the end of this month, and I am getting extremely excited about my trip! I will soon write a post about all the things that I hope to do in Iceland, and about more interesting things in Iceland's capital city of Reykjavik such as the world's best hot dog stand!

G20 Protests Continue

2010-07-11T09:07:00.002-06:00

In Toronto there are still many protests taking place even though the G20 summit ended two weeks ago. This time though, they are not simply protesting topics that would be talked about at the summit, but how the police responded towards protesters during the weekend of the summit in Toronto. Yesterday (Saturday), around 1,200 marched from Queen's Park to the Toronto Convention Centre to protest how the police and the Canadian government is handling the aftermath of the G20. It's not just rowdy protesters who are angry though, Shanaaz Gokool, the head of Amnesty International Toronto thinks that more needs to be done in handling reviews and investigations into the police. Over 1,000 arrests were made during the G20, which makes that weekend the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

I've posted some things regarding the G20 and my feelings about it on Facebook and I've gotten many responses saying that the police presence was completely necessary. And I agree. The police presence was completely necessary, but the way that the police acted, was completely unnecessary. There are many videos on YouTube circulating of violent arrests made by the police, but there was one video that really caught my eye:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII

This short 31 second video shows a large group of protesters singing O Canada in front of a large group of police. Near the end of the song, they sit down, clearly showing that they are peaceful. As the song ends, police charge the crowd, shoving them back and pushing many people over. Could they not have simply said "please, move?"

Canada is not a police state, but from looking at some videos posted during the G20 in Toronto, that was kind of hard to tell.

I also understand that there were some violent protests that happened during the G20 where police cars were actually set on fire, and yes, those are the people who the police should be arresting and spraying tear gas on. But the people yelling "we are peaceful, how 'bout you?!" should not be arrested just for expressing your opinion. In connection with my class video project that I made on human rights, I think that many human rights were violated two weekends ago. Mainly by the police towards the protesters and I think that something like that is unacceptable in our society.

My New Obsession...

2010-06-21T15:14:00.003-06:00

I am in the midst of exams right now, so I’m very busy, but I want to share this amazing song with you!

Last week on CBC Radio 2 I heard a song by poet Shane Koyczan. He recited his poem We Are More at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Opening Ceremonies and is now my favourite poet!

I am obsessed with his song This is My Voice which isn’t the same poem that I heard on CBC, but is off the same CD and I think is better!

I hope that you like it as much as I do!

G20 Police Presence to Exceed Vancouver Olympics

2010-06-15T08:05:00.003-06:00

At the G20 Summit in Toronto this year a "small army" is being brought in to protect the leaders of the world's 20 most powerful countries from rowdy protesters. However, this protection seems to have backfired as now more people are protesting because of the high security in downtown Toronto! A three meter high, 3.3 kilometer long fence with ring the convention centre in downtown Toronto and anyone who lives or works inside the fenced off area will have to enter through security checkpoints.
“This is Toronto and not Tiananmen Square,”activist Greg Thomas said speaking to a group of protesters, “We are asking if body bags are included in that billion-dollar security package.”
Another expense that has been causing quite the uproar is a 1.9 million dollar fake lake that will be built inside the convention centre. This lake is being built so that the leaders of the G20 countries can experience Canada in the safety of the air conditioned convention centre without having to go outside into the crazy streets of Toronto and the terribly dangerous country of Canada. Isn't Ontario called "lake country" or something like that, according the the wikipedia article about Ontario, that province has over 250, 000 lakes!!! So is it really necessary to build an expensive man-made lake when there are thousands of free lakes all around you?
All in all, I think that the G20 summit in Toronto is a bit outrageous. All I can say is that I'm glad that I went to Toronto two weeks ago, before all this craziness started, and that I was able to see the CN Tower without having to go through a security checkpoint!

My Experience Doing the Barefoot Challenge

2010-06-01T16:29:00.002-06:00

I have so far survived the challenge this year, but it's still not over! I still have to go and see my physiotherapist tonight in barefeet.

The rest of the day was quite successful though, a whole bunch of other people from my school also went barefoot for the challenge! To start the day off, I rode my bike to school with barefeet, which was actually quite challenging. The bike pedals were digging into my feet and the bumpy roads of Edmonton didn't really help. School wasn't much of a challenge in barefeet, since we pretty much just sit there all day... gym was a different story though. We had gym outside today and running outside on the rocky, bumpy ground was kind of hard on the feet. The grass was nice though, and once you got used to it, it was fine. However, at lunch I definitely saw the negative side effects of going barefoot. A classmate of mine accidentally slammed a door into my foot and now I have a big blood blister on my big toe. It doesn't actually hurt that much... but it's just kinda gross!

After getting the blood blister, I saw how much going barefoot can effect someones life. For the people who can't afford shoes, this can actually be quite dangerous, especially in the environment that they may be living in!

I felt that through this challenge people were educated about the lives of people living in poorer, developing countries. After doing this challenge, I hope that many other teens will realize how lucky they are just to have the basic necessities like shoes.

Barefoot Challenge 2010

2010-06-01T08:12:00.003-06:00

This year I have successfully convinced my principal to let me go barefoot for Bilaal Rajan's barefoot challenge. I am going barefoot for one day, today, to raise poverty awareness.
Today is also International Children's Day and Bilaal Rajan is encouraging as many people as he can to kick of their shoes to feel what it's like to not be able to afford shoes.

I printed off a poster for the challenge and then pinned it onto my back before getting ready to bike to school barefoot!
I will be adding more information after school about how my day going barefoot went and felt like, so stay tuned!
For more information about Bilaal Rajan's barefoot challenge, visit http://makingchangenow.com/

2010 Edmonton Folk Fest Line Up Released!

2010-05-26T12:19:00.002-06:00

I just got back from my first news conference ever, the media conference to release this year's line up for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival.
Edmonton Folk Fest producer Terry Wickham had a lot to say regarding this year's festival. Some artists playing this year's festival include Calexico, Gord Downie, Sarah Harmer, Ben Harper, The Waifs and Patrick Watson. Wickham announced this Ben Harper would actually be playing Thursday night on the mainstage, instead of playing the Wednesday night benefit concert. This is because he (Terry Wickham) didn't think that Ben Harper could bring the 10, 000 people that they hoped to attract to the Wednesday night concert. Instead, Wickham is searching for a bigger artist to play Wednesday night, though he thinks that the Wednesday night concert this year just wont work out.
Terry Wickham also stated that he thinks that this year's festival will have one of it's strongest World Music section yet! Some World artists include Aterciopelados from Columbia, Debashish Bhattacharya from India, Te Vaka from a Samoa, Cook Islands, New Zealand and Tuvalu and, Aurelio Martinez from Honduras.
Another thing new to this year's festival will be street performers entertaining people while they wait in line to get into the festival. This was announced at the press conference as well and a few specific performers were mentioned. I think that this will be a great addition to the festival as waiting in line for hours can get a bit boring!
Now I've got to go back to school, but I will try to post more information when I get home. For more information about this year's festival, visit efmf.ab.ca.

What do Human Rights mean to you?

2010-05-12T21:42:00.002-06:00

A video that I made for a school project researching the question "what do human rights mean to you?" I interview many people of different backgrounds for this project and tried to include a mix of teenagers and adults.

I hope that you enjoy the video!

What do Human Rights mean to you? from Isaac Wurmann on Vimeo.

Thanks so much to everyone who I interviewed!

GELA Prison Committee Book Sale

2010-05-03T17:00:00.003-06:00

The GELA (Greater Edmonton Library Association) Prison Committee works with the Edmonton Institution for Women in their library.

All the proceeds from this book sale on this Saturday and Sunday will go towards the Edmonton Institution for Women.
I'll be there, so you should come out too!

L53 Every Victim Matters Art Show

2010-04-19T21:44:00.004-06:00

This evening was the opening of the Latitude 53 art show called Every Victim Matters. This art show featured the art work of over 60 Edmonton area youth (aged 12-24). The works of art addressed different topics such as poverty, violence and peer pressure to go with National Victims Awareness Week.

A classmate of mine, Rebecca, had a piece of art in this show. Her piece of art was called "Victim Words."

What I found interesting was that some pieces of art showed the environment being destroyed. This showed that not only can humans be victims, but the environment is a victim as well.

Did You Really?!

2010-03-19T17:18:00.002-06:00

Did you really, M. Bredeson?!

Today I received a letter from M. Bredeson, the Executive Correspondence Officer for Stephen Harper in response to my letter to Harper regarding the detention of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay for Amnesty International's Write-A-Thon. In the letter it read:

"Dear Isaac:

On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your recent correspondence regarding the detention of Omar Khadr at Guanatanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Thank you for writing to share your views with the Prime Minister. You may be assured that your comments have been carefully received by this office.

Yours sincerely,

M. Bredeson

Executive Correspondance Officer"

But did you really, M. Bredeson? Or is this just what you tell everyone? Personally, I'd like to see some proof that my comments have been "carefully reviewed by this office."

Young Artists for Haiti - Wavin' Flag

2010-03-12T15:52:00.002-07:00

Here's a great version of K'Naan's song Waving Flag performed by many young Canadian artists in support of Haiti.

It's great to see artists such as Sam Roberts, Serena Ryder, Hawksley Workman and so many other great Canadian musicians come together to perform this wonderful song for Haiti. My one disappointment was at the end... where Justin Bieber got to sing the last line!

For You, Mr. Stelmach...

2010-03-09T08:03:00.003-07:00

Well apparently premier Ed Stelmach hasn't seen any pictures of the approximately 1, 600 ducks that died after landing in a Syncrude tailings pond in northern Alberta. Somehow this seems impossible as these pictures have been on the front page of pretty much every newspaper in Alberta, and video footage of the ducks dying has been shown on pretty much every news station in Alberta.

Well here you go, Mr. Stelmach. Here are the pictures that you have somehow missed while going about your daily life. Here is evidence showing how the oil sands are destroying our environment, in more ways than just climate change.

The picture was taken of a duck actually in the tailing pond, shortly before it died.

To learn more about this topic, please visit the article in the Edmonton Journal about how "Stelmach hasn't seen duck images". Sheesh... really Stelmach?

A Morning at Boyle Street

2010-03-03T15:50:00.007-07:00

Last Friday I spent my morning at Boyle Street Community Services in downtown Edmonton. I volunteered there in the Youth Department for my community service hours that I have to do for school. It was a very interesting and eye-opening experience and I will definitely volunteer there again.

Boyle Street is an inner city service that works to connect people living in poverty with the things that they need. Social workers there work with people who are often ignored, face discrimination and have been marginalized by the larger society. I volunteered with the Youth Department because a friend of mine, Matt McCoy, works there.

I started volunteering there at 9:00 AM, right at the beginning of the day. I was first sent to work on organizing pamphlets that help people with what they need like staying healthy, legal resources, and other important things while living on the street. Many of the pamphlets were running low, so I went to StreetWorks to collect more copies of pamphlets. StreetWorks is an organization in Boyle Street that does a needle exchange, but that also publishes pamphlets and other information sources in a way that is understandable to the people who need the information the most.

Later, I went on rounds with some social workers at Boyle Street to check to make sure that all of the people who came there were doing okay. We walked around in the central area and outside the building to make sure that nobody was doing drugs on the property as well. It was very interesting to talk to the people who came there, and who worked there. I talked to one person who was a sort of "counselor" for the people, and he seemed to specialize in aboriginal people who went through the residential schools. He said that he likes to think of the people who come to Boyle Street as part of the community and then help people find ways out of doing drugs or alcohol.

It wasn't a very busy day at Boyle Street I was told by Matt, especially not in the Youth Department. So, for the final minutes of my visit there, I found myself playing the piano and guitar with the community. It was quite interesting to see some hidden talents in people that one might not have expected.

In all, it was a very interesting and eye-opening experience. I was perhaps a bit hesitant at first to volunteer at Boyle Street, and I didn't really know how things would work, but in the end everything worked out fine. I will definitely not hesitate to volunteer there again in the next few months.

To learn more about Boyle Street Community Services, visit their website.

A Night of Freedom

2010-02-28T13:38:00.003-07:00

Last night was the "Freedom Ball", an event at the Art Gallery of Alberta organized by the Edmonton Public Library to celebrate Freedom to Read Week. First of all, I do not think that they should have used the word "ball" to describe the event. I had imagined it as being a lot more free (pardon the pun) where one could wander about the art gallery and then also listen to the DJs and watch presentations. Instead, it was very structured and it was held in a sort of presentation room in the basement of the art gallery. However, it was still very excellent, just not exactly what I had expected!

We got to the event at 8:00 PM (one hour after it actually started) in the middle of the concert of the rap/hip-hip band called the People's Poets. The People's Poets were excellent, and in the end we ended up buying their CD. They are from Chile, but they now live in Edmonton and they write and rap about social justice issues and consider themselves as "raptivists". I was even pleasantly surprised to hear an excerpt of one of Che Guevara's speeches as a part of one of their songs!

Visit the People's Poets website to listen to some of their songs online.

After the People's Poets, there was the presentation of the "Freedom Movie". This was a movie filmed by various people around Edmonton. It was a compilation of interviews of citizens of different backgrounds answering questions such as "What does freedom mean to you?" and "What do you think you take for granted?".

It was very interesting to hear what people had to say in response to those questions. What was also interesting to see was how open people were to respond to the questions.

In all, it was a great night and I thought it was a great activity to celebrate our freedom to read! Perhaps next year though, just don't use the word "ball" to describe it.

My Top 10 Canadian Singles

2010-02-25T13:25:00.004-07:00

Last weekend's episode of CBC's The Vinyl Cafe featured the host, Stuart McLean listing off his top 10 Canadian singles of all time. Stuart McLean said that he was asked to come up with this list by Bob Mersereau, who is an arts journalist and author of the 2007 book The Top 100 Canadian Albums.

Today, I am going to present you my list of the top 10 Canadian singles of all time. Many factors were included in coming up with this list. Of course how much I like the song is a factor, as well as the amount of impact these songs have had on the Canadian music world. What I also considered in choosing these top 10 singles were how "Canadian" these songs and artists were. So here we go...

Number One: Heart of Gold by Neil Young off of his album Harvest (1972). This song if probably Neil Young's most well known song, and his album Harvest was listed as number one on Bob Mersereau's top 100 Canadian Albums list. Here's a video of him performing this song live in 1971, when this was still one of his new songs! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh44QPT1mPE

Number Two: A Case of You by Joni Mitchell off of her album Blue (1971). This song is probably one of Joni Mitchell's most famous songs, and was in fact number two on the top 100 Canadian Album's list. Here's a link to a video on YouTube of her performing this song live (it's pretty quiet, but it's a great quality recording!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QZioxCg20I&feature=related

Number Three: Wheat Kings by The Tragically Hip off of their album Fully Completely (1992). This was the first song that I ever heard by The Tragically Hip and it is a truly Canadian song that speaks of the vast prairies. Here's a great live, acoustic version of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JjX-F7AFso

Number Four: Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen off of his album Songs of Love and Hate (1971). I've always loved this song by Cohen, and it's one of my favourite's by him. Here's a great live version of this song from 1979: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrMR9lEeJEU

Number Five: Body’s in Trouble by Mary Margaret O’Hara off of her one and only album Miss America (1988). Mary Margaret O'Hara is truly amazing! She has released only one album, yet that album is up there in the top Canadian Albums list, and you could probably count the number of performances that she's done on two hands! I was lucky enough to see her perform live at the Edmonton Folk Fest a few years ago. Here's a link to the music video for this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z14wPTz6PdY

Number Six: Record Body Count by Rheostatics off of their album Melville (1991). I was introduced to Rheostatics a few years ago, and this was the first song that I heard from them. It's short, but great! Here's the promo video for this song (the quality's not too great): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_j7FUGV22I&feature=related

Number Seven: Hallelujah covered by k.d. lang off of her album Hymns of the 49^th Parallel (2004). This is an absolutely amazing, and probably the best cover of Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah. Hallelujah is Cohen's most covered song. Here's a live version of her singing this song in 2005. She also sang this song during the Opening Ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE

Number Eight: My Favourite Chords by The Weakerthans off of their album Left and Leaving (2000). I first saw the Weakerthans perform at the Edmonton Folk Fest a few years ago and they instantly became my favourite band! I love this song because it's very simple, but also very great! Here's a link to listen to this song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkBMpngSy3Y&feature=related

Number Nine: Underwhelmed by Sloan off of their album Smeared (1992). For some reason, Sloan seems to me like a truly Canadian band. This was the first song that I'd ever heard by this Halifax band. Here's a link to a video of the band performing this song on a TV show in 1992: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4VfIGhw4-I&feature=related.

Number Ten: Through and Through and Through by Joel Plaskett off of his album Three (2009). This is the most recent song on my list. I was lucky enough to interview Joel Plaskett at last year's Edmonton Folk Fest and this is probably my favourite song by him. It's a real "road trip" song, and it has a great music video! Here's a link to the music video for this song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlNvx2Zl_0M

So those are just my top 10 Canadian singles of all time, or at least from 1971 to 2009. If you have any other ideas or if you'd like to share some of your favourite Canadian singles, just comment at the bottom.

So long for now!

Happy Freedom to Read Week!

2010-02-23T20:44:00.003-07:00

That's right, this week is the annual Freedom to Read Week, a week to celebrate freedom of expression and to encourage Canadians to think about intellectual freedom. This week is celebrated all across Canada with many events in majour cities.

Freedom to Read Week is very important because even in Canada in 2010, many books are still being challenged and being banned in many libraries across the country. As I looked at a list of books that were challenged or banned, I noticed that many famous books that are used in teaching or books that are now celebrated as classics are in these lists. For instance, books such as To Kill a Mockingbird (by Harper Lee), The Catcher in the Rye (by J.D. Salinger), Lord of the Flies (by William Golding), Of Mice and Men (by John Steinbeck), many novels by Mark Twain and the list goes on and on. Even some quite modern books and series that many children and teenagers read have been challenged such as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, and Philip Pullman's the Golden Compass and the other two novels in that trilogy.

Even many magazines and newspaper have been asked to be banned from many libraries across the country. The magazine Maclean's was challenged in 2007 for being "islamophobic" after publishing an excerpt from the book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. The Edmonton newspaper VueWeekly has also been challenged many times.

It seems as though the main reasons that books are found offensive by some people are centered around religion and sexuality, and books are mainly reported by parents who are worried about their children reading books about those topics. I disagree with the banning of books because I think that people should be able to choose what they read, and if you don't believe in what a book is writing about, then just don't read it! It's as simple as that! I especially do not agree with books being banned simply because parents do not want their children to read about topics such as homosexuality or atheism. Challenging books like that seems extremely ignorant and parents who challenge books like that probably shelter their children too much from the rest of the world that they do not believe in.

All around Canada events are being held to celebrate Freedom to Read Week. Here in Edmonton, one main event being held is the Freedom Ball which is being held by the Edmonton Public Library at the Art Gallery or Alberta. This event is on February 27th and to learn more about it, visit EPL's web page about it. To learn more about Freedom to Read Week, visit their website and to see a list of books that have been challenged or banned, visit their list of "challenged books and magazines." I might be going to the Freedom Ball this Saturday and if I do, I'll be sure to write about it on my blog. But until then, Happy Freedom to Read Week!

My 2nd Olympic Experience

2010-02-21T20:11:00.002-07:00

On Friday I went to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics for the second time. This time, I was going after winning the ATCO Celebrating Excellence contest in which I had to write an essay about how I celebrate excellence in school, swimming and all other parts of my life. ATCO awarded a one day trip to the Olympics to one boy and one girl in each Provincial constituency in Alberta. What's amazing is that I was the boy winner for Edmonton-Strathcona, and the girl winner was Jade Robinson, who was also in my class! During the very exciting 20 hour day, we went to a hockey game between Sweden and Belarus, visited Alberta House for lunch, got to explore busy downtown Vancouver, and go to the Victory Ceremonies for that night. All that, and then to come back at 2am in time to get up for swim practice at 6am!

Our day started at 7am at the airport where I met up with my friend Jade who was the other winner in my constituency.

When we arrived in Vancouver, we immediately were bussed to go see the Olympic Torch. This time, we were able to see the torch a lot better than when I was in Vancouver the previous weekend. I'm not sure if we were just in a different place, or if they actually lowered the fence or something, but we got much better views of the torch which was great!

As we walked to Canada Hockey Place to see the hockey game, we were quite the site with many dozens of people walking down the street wearing identical red jerseys. Some people actually stopped to take pictures of us as we walked through downtown Vancouver!

It was very exciting to be in GM Place (renamed Canada Hockey Place for the Olympics) during an Olympic hockey game! The game was also a lot more exciting and interesting than I had anticipated! I thought that Sweden would win be a landslide, but Belarus actually played quite a good game. Sweden was winning 3-0 halfway through the game, but then Belarus started to pick up the pace and soon the score was 3-2. You could hear everyone cheering for Belarus to tie up the game so that we could see an overtime win, but Sweden scored the last score which ended the game at 4-2.
I noticed and learned a few things during the game. First of all, did you know that Ice Hockey was first played at the Olympics during the 1920 Summer Olympics?! Also, I noticed that during the game between plays, ABBA seemed to be the music of choice, probably because that band's home country was playing the game.
It was quite exciting and after seeing that hockey game, I was surprised to find myself watching the Canada vs. USA game tonight, which, to mine, and probably the rest of Canada's disappointment, we lost.

After the game, we were taken to Alberta House for lunch and after that, we had 2 hours of free time to roam downtown Vancouver. My mom and I walked up Robson street and wandered around the busy Granville street to see the activities there. All over downtown there were Canadian flags hanging from buildings to support our athletes.

The whole experience was great and very exciting, but there were some things that were disappointing and that made me question the whole consumerist approach that the Olympics have taken on in these past few years. For instance, during the second intermission of the hockey game, I tried to phone my dad, which proved to be quite difficult. This was because neither my mom or I have a cell-phone and GM Place didn't seem to have any pay phones! We later learned that all the pay phones were actually covered up because the pay phones were Telus phones, and Bell is the sponsor of these Olympics. This meant that I had to use the Information Centre's phone.

Of course, there were also many other eye-opening things that I noticed, such as many protesters downtown, which I will write about in a post once the games are over. All in all however, it was a great experience and it sure was a lot of fun!

I'm Back!

2010-02-18T21:22:00.003-07:00

I'm back! After a long, four month break from writing on the blog, I'm back and I'm going to try and write a lot more now! I had to take a break while finishing up my final edition of my newspaper Die Zeitung. Now that I'm done the newspaper for good (or at least for a year or two), I'll be putting a lot more time and effort into the blog, so keep checking in once or twice a week!

A lot has happened in the past four months, a bit too much to try and do a brief summary, so I'll just start with what's happened to me so far in February. On Tuesday I returned from Vancouver to visit my dad. This visit just happened to coincide with the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and it was cool to be able to go into downtown Vancouver to see some of the free events and pavilions. We didn't see any Olympic events, but it was interesting to see how the whole thing was being run and how it effected downtown Vancouver.

It was very unfortunate that on the first day of the Olympics, the day of the Opening Ceremonies, the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died while doing a training run on at the Whistler Sliding Centre. This event seems to have cast a shadow over this year's Olympics, and it was very sad to see an Olympian die so young and before he had a chance to compete. However, the tribute to him during the Opening Ceremonies was very good, and I think that the Vancouver Olympic Committee dealt with this tragic event very well.

On the second day of the Olympics, I went downtown to visit the Canada pavilion and to check out some of the other events available to the public downtown. There was one thing that I noticed right away - the incredibly long line ups! To get anywhere it seemed like you had to get into some sort of line up! I guess that's just what happens when a city hosts the Olympic games though. The pavilions were great though! They were quite interesting and I thought that they represented our country and our provinces very well.

The next day I went into Richmond to see the O-Zone Celebration venue where you can watch live events and go to a skating rink. What I realized that day was that Vancouver should not host the Winter Olympics. It was a very summery 15 degrees outside... in February! Perhaps the Summer Olympics would've been a better choice for Vancouver. The skating rink at the Richmond O-Zone was great however, and later we took the SkyTrain to see the Olympic Flame downtown. The Flame was a huge disappointment. Not only could the public not get within 25 meters of the Flame, but it was also fenced off and the fences were covered with a fabric so that the public couldn't even see the Flame! I've heard that now they removed the fabric and made a viewing area for the public, but still many, many meters away. That just didn't seem like it went well with the whole Olympic spirit!

Another note about the Olympics - YAYYYY!!!!! So we've finally won a gold (now in fact three gold) medal at an Olympics at home! Congratulations to Alexandre Bilodeau, the first Canadian to win a gold medal on home soil!!! It really seems like the first gold could not have gone to a nicer guy, he really deserved it.

Tomorrow I'll be heading off to the Olympics once again - this time to see an actual event - after winning the ATCO Celebrating Excellence Contest in which the first prize was a one day trip to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics! I had to write an essay about how I celebrate excellence in school, in swimming and in my community and submit it to ATCO. There are 166 (I think?) youths going from Alberta - a boy and a girl from each political constituency - going to the Olympics and the boy and the girl in my constituency, Edmonton-Strathcona, are in my class! I'm the boy and my friend Jade Robinson will be going as well! We will both be going to the Sweden vs. Belarus hockey game, as well as to Alberta House for lunch, and to a Victory Ceremony at BC Place in the evening.

I will be posting an update after my second visit to Vancouver as well as some pictures from both trips - so check in sometime this weekend!

Stand Up Against Poverty

2009-10-16T17:13:00.002-06:00

Today, my school participated in the Stand Up movement, which is an event put together by the organization Make Poverty History. I read the Stand Up Pledge over my school's PA system during the morning announcements and asked everyone to stand up as I read the pledge. Here is the pledge that I read:

STAND UP PLEDGE

We are standing now with millions of people around the world
on this historic day, to show our commitment to the fight against
extreme poverty and inequality. We only have six years left to the
2015 deadline to realize the Millennium Development Goals.

Today, we Stand Up together to say to our leaders:

Act now to achieve and exceed the Millennium Development Goals.

Commit to bold leadership at the G8/G20, to combat extreme poverty,
transform global economic and financial systems, tackle the impact of
climate change on poor countries and eliminate poverty in Canada.

We will continue to Stand Up, not just today but every day, to say:
No more Excuses, End Poverty and Inequality Now!”

In total we got approximately 600 people to stand up as I read the pledge, and I put our contribution on the Stand Up Map on the Stand Against Poverty Website.

Celebrate For Change!

2009-09-06T10:37:00.004-06:00

Yesterday was my 13th birthday, and I celebrated by having a "Celebrate for Change" birthday. This is where I asked all my friends to bring money instead of presents, I will soon donate that money to Free the Children. "Celebrate for Change" is a fundraising event with Free the Children, and the premise is that there are 50 million children born each year who's births aren't recorded. So official these children are "invisible". Often, these children are forgotten, and they end up in dangerous situations of child labour. For more information about "Celebrate for Change" and about Free the Children, go to the Free the Children website at http://freethechildren.com/.

I tried to invite as many people as possible, so that I could raise as much money as possible. In the end, we raised $550, $50 over my goal!!! It was a great party and everyone had a lot of fun.

Setting up for the party. I put maps up everywhere around the back yard, all the maps were of places where Free the Children worked.

We had lots of fun at the pool part of the party.

Rebecca with cape, guitar, and friends.

We didn't have any candles, but the sparkles worked out just fine.

The group photo at the end. In the end, 21 people came!

This was an amazing experience, and it was so cool to see everyone so into the fundraising part. We also made two big posters that has everyone's name on it that we will send to Free the Children with the money. Thank you so much everyone for coming, it was so fun!

Wawa, North Bay

2009-08-15T20:20:00.003-06:00

This evening we made it to North Bay, Ontario. This is our third day driving in Ontario, and all of our driving's been through Northern Ontario. After spending 3 days in pretty much empty Northern Ontario I have already begun to notice how much space we have in Canada. I mean I knew this already, but the drives that I've done before have mostly been between Edmonton and Winnipeg, and even through the prairies there are towns located all the way along the highway. In Northern Ontario it seems like there could be many many kilometers in between towns of only a few hundred people. It's kind of amazing to experience that.

In the past two days we drove between Thunder Bay and Wawa and between Wawa and North Bay. Here are some pictures of those drives...

Right after leaving Thunder Bay we stopped at the Terry Fox Memorial. After driving farther east in northern Ontario it was amazing to think that Terry Fox had run all that way with just one leg.

Near Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park we stopped at the longest suspension bridge in Canada. It's 150 feet longer than the Capilano Suspension bridge, but not as high. There were two suspension bridges there, one longer and one shorter, here's a view of the shorter bridge and of the canyon from the longer bridge.

The next day after leaving Wawa we stopped in Lake Superior Provincial Park to see the Agawa Bay Pictographs. Here's one that was probably made between 150 and 400 years ago.

At the pictographs I jumped in the water to swim around the rock face to see some more pictographs at a cove only accessible by water. Swimming in Lake Superior was amazing, the water was cool and unbelievably clear.

Driving through Sudbury we had to stop at the giant nickel. This nickel is the largest coin in the world!!!

Tomorrow we will be driving to Ottawa and staying there for 2 nights. We are getting a private tour of the Parliament Buildings and Senate, and will be going to the National Art Gallery and the Museum of Civilization.

I will be posting a full photo album documenting our trip to Quebec after we get back to Edmonton.

Stay tuned for more updates about Ottawa!

Yorkton, Winnipeg and Thunder Bay

2009-08-13T20:21:00.003-06:00

This evening we arrived in Thunder Bay on the third day of our road trip to Quebec City.

We left Edmonton early in the morning after a late night at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. That day we drove to Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and the next day onto Winnipeg, Manitoba. We stayed in Winnipeg for the full day the next day as we had family there, but then the next day (today) we left to Thunder Bay. What we wanted to do on this road trip was take our time while driving and stop at some of the roadside attractions and "Big Things" that towns have as mascots or attractions. We also tried to take a picture of all the "welcome" signs for towns and provinces that we drove through.

Here are some pictures of our trip so far, but I will be posting a full photo album at the end of our trip.

We stopped at a ghost town in Saskatchewan. It used to be a CN Train station.

In Langenburg we stopped at a huge swing off the highway (you can't see, but it probably about 10 meters high!). It was attached to the ground though, so we couldn't actually swing on it...

We stopped at a small town in Saskatchewan called Elfros that apparently has a big Icelandic history. I knew that Manitoba had Icelandic history, but I had no idea that Saskatchewan did too! Here is an Icelandic monument in the heart of small town Elfros.

On to Ontario (I did take pictures of Manitoba, I will post them later)! In Kenora we had to stop at Huskie the Musky. It's huge!!!

Just before Thunder Bay we stopped at Kakabeka Falls. They were amazing, and we took tons of pictures. I will put some more up later.

Tomorrow we will be going to Wawa, Ontario and then onto North Bay. Stay tuned as I will be posting more pictures and my thoughts on our big road trip to Quebec soon!

One More Post... Steven Page and Danny Michel... One More Memorable Moment for the Folk Fest

2009-08-09T23:01:00.005-06:00

I think everyone here who stayed for the final main stage performance at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival may have just witnessed one of the most amazing moments in folk fest history.

Steven Page, the headliner for Sunday nights performances brought out another Canadian musician, Danny Michel in the middle of his set. He said it was to pay tribute for the musicians that we have lost this year. Danny Michel started playing guitar and they began playing a great rendition of Michael Jackson's Billy Jean. The performance got the whole crowd cheering and singing along.

Danny Michel rockin' on stage to Billy Jean.

Steven Page doing his version of the moonwalk.

All three of them (Danny Michel, Steven Page and the cellist, sorry, I don't know his name...) performing on the main stage during the last performance (well except for Four Strong Winds of course) of the 2009 Edmonton Folk Music Festival.

Steven Page and his cellist.

As for the rest of Steven Page's performance tonight, it has been absolutely amazing! He is playing at the folk fest with a cellist that is touring with him, and between the two of them the music that they produce is awesome! He has been playing some Barenaked Ladies songs, but also some originals as well.

OK, now this is my last post. Stay tuned for more updates, this time about my road trip to Quebec.

So to all the folk festers, I'll see you next year!

Final Post for Folk Fest 2009

2009-08-09T19:12:00.005-06:00

I'm afraid that I will have to cut my live blogging short for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival 2009. We have to go home earlier tonight to start packing for our big road trip tomorrow. Me and my mom are starting a road trip to Quebec tomorrow (we will be driving to Yorkton tomorrow). I will be posting more about the road trip as we go along (it will be a 3 week road trip).

But more about the folk fest... Israeli band the Idan Rachiel Project just finished playing their concert on the main stage, and they were amazing. I did have an interview with Idan Rachiel himself, but things just didn't work out. They blended traditional Israeli music with Ethiopian music and many, many other genres. For part of their concert, they brought out someone from the band Arrested Development who performed on the main stage over lunch time. Together they blended even more cultures and genres to sound excellent! I might be posting a whole overview of the folk fest tomorrow, so tune in at least once.

I will be putting most of my interviews and a few reviews in my July/August issue of Die Zeitung. So if you haven't subscribed to my newspaper or bought just that one issue, please do so so that you can get full interviews and more awesome coverage.

And as I said I will be going on a road trip tomorrow, the destination is Quebec City. It will take 3 weeks there and back, but I will try and post updates every few days.

So please keep reading my blog and thank you very much to everyone who tuned into Who's Left and Who's Leaving for their live folk fest coverage.

Here are some pictures that highlighted my folk fest weekend...

Watching and interviewing 13 year old Quinn Bachand, who plays some awesome guitar! Check out my interview with him in the July/August issue of Die Zeitung.

An amazing shot of the downtown Edmonton skyline from the Edmonton folk fest site.

Neko Case playing the main stage with her drummer in the background. She played a great show, and she was way better live then on the CD.

Johnny Flynn, a new favourite of mine. He is absolutely amazing and I need to get his CD, but they're all sold out of the merchandise tent!!!

Iron and Wine playing main stage last night. He was also very good and played some great guitar.

So that's all for this year... I'll see y'all next year!!!

Joel Plaskett Talks About His New CD "3"

2009-08-09T16:09:00.002-06:00

Today I got my 3rd interview of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival with Nova Scotia musician Joel Plaskett. He told me a bit about his new CD 3, his inspirations and about traveling. This will be my main interview for the coverage of the folk fest in my July/August issue of Die Zeitung. Here's some highlights of the interview.

His new CD 3 is all about 3s. It includes 3 CDs, and most of the songs titles are a word or phrase repeated 3 times. "It's a traveling record so it's kind of about going away, being alone and returning home. It's a long record because I wanted it to feel like a journey."

In many of the songs there are also phrases that are repeated, like the Berlin wall and good things come... "It's good things come to those who wait, but as the songs came it was good things come to those who run, and good things come to those who roll."

Joel Plaskett also travels a lot, mostly all over Canada, and because Canada is so big, I thought maybe the audiences could be different in different provinces or cities. "Well there's maritimers all over Canada, so they make a lot of the shows feel very much like home."

I will be putting some pictures up later, but now I have an interview with Israeli musician Idan Rachiel. So stay tuned for highlights from that. If you would like the whole interview with Joel Plaskett, subscribe to my newspaper Die Zeitung or buy the July/August issue of Die Zeitung if you haven't done so already.

So stay tuned if you weren't able to make it to the folk fest. But if you are here, I'll see you on the hill!

The Next Generation... (Danny Michel, Joel Plaskett, Sierra Hull, Johnny Flynn)

2009-08-09T14:28:00.003-06:00

The morning of the last day of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival brought another great workshop. The workshop was titled "Next Gen" and included Danny Michel, Joel Plaskett, Sierra Hull, and Johnny Flynn).

This was another awesome workshop, especially as it included three of my favourite performers here at the folk fest, Johnny Flynn, Joel Plaskett, and Danny Michel. With this workshop they artists mostly kept to their own songs, and didn't provide the musical "fusion" so much, but they still did a little. And with these musicians, I think it was the perfect amount of "fusion".

Danny Michel was pretty much same old same old, which is fine... his same old same old is pretty good. He started off by playing some songs about not wanting to have to sing and perform at 11:00 AM, and then after that still stuck with the whiny songs :).

Joel Plaskett was really great. He played some songs that I had never even heard of, which was awesome! He played pretty much the whole set slow soft songs, he said it was to wake up. I want to mention that I'd been up since 6:00 AM for the colour raffle, so I had already woken up a long time ago!

Johnny Flynn was excellent, as usual. He started off with what he said was the saddest song he knows. He then went into a song about football. "What do you people here call it?" he asked. "Soccer? That's stupid...". He was absolutely amazing and made me want to buy his CD even more, though unfortunately all this CDs were sold out!

Sierra Hull, a bluegrass musician from the US was surprisingly OK. I'm not a huge fan of bluegrass, but with Sierra Hull played an amazing group. Everyone in her group was extremely talented.

In other news, I interview Joel Plaskett about an hour ago. I will be posting some highlights of the interview on my blog shortly. In about an hour and a half, I will be interviewing Israeli musicians Idan Raichel. So stay tuned throughout the rest of the day for one of my busiest days at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival yet.

For those of you who weren't able to make it to this year's folk fest, stay tuned! If you were able to make it, I'll see you on the hill!

Iron and Wine Provides a Great Show Saturday Night

2009-08-08T22:25:00.003-06:00

The third performance of Saturday night at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival was Samuel Beam, better known as his stage name Iron and Wine. Beam provided a great mix of songs including slow, soothing songs, and faster, more upbeat songs. Iron and Wine met my expectations for sure, at least in the performing aspect.

But, I also heard from other media persons at the Edmonton Folk Fest that at Iron and Wine's last performance, he did not let the media in the area in front of the stage to take pictures for the first 3 songs, like he and all the other artists are doing here. Samuel Beam's excuse for this was that the clicking of the cameras bothered him, but I hardly believe he could even hear the cameras from the stage. Also, Iron and Wine did not do interviews with any media people. So, Iron and Wine did meet my expectations for the performing aspect of the night, but not other aspects.

Still, he performed a great show and I'm sure that the whole crowd was pleased with his performance. His voice is absolutely amazing, it can be soft and soothing, yet strong and powerful at the same time. He was all alone on the stage, just him and his guitar, yet his music was so powerful it could be heard all around.

That's my last post for tonight. But please tune in tomorrow for updates and reviews of Sunday workshops, highlights of an interview with Joel Plaskett, and reviews of main stage performances. Tomorrow the main stage performance that I am particularly excited to see is the Idan Raichel Project.

To for those of you who weren't able to make it to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this year, tune in tomorrow for updates. And for everyone, good night!

A New Folk Fest Favourite (Johnny Flynn)

2009-08-08T19:19:00.003-06:00

After today's workshops and main stage performances I must say that I have a new favourite from the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. His name is Johnny Flynn and he's performing with his band the Sussex Wit. I saw him in the workshop that I wrote about earlier, and I saw him on the main stage this evening.

I also got a spur of the moment interview with Johnny Flynn which sent me scrambling to think up some questions to ask him in 10 minutes. I figured out some questions and I think the interview went rather well. Here is a preview of the interview that I will be putting in my July/August issue of Die Zeitung.

Johnny Flynn's first instrument was the violin but he can now play the guitar, mandolin, banjo and even more! Before he was a musician, he was a stage actor, and a lot of his songs are inspired by literature, especially that of Shakespeare.

Johnny Flynn singing on the main stage, his voice was also great and unique.

"Sometimes Shakespeare feels to me like an extremely complex and metaphorical poem," Flynn said in the interview. As for how his previous life as an actor has effected his songwriting, "Sometimes I try and use the same things to write as songs as we would to work on a play," he replied.

The Sussex Wit's great keyboard player!

I wondered what he thought about the use of classifying music by genre, as his music is very unique, and doesn't really have a distinct genre, "I really only think the use of classifying music by genre is if you're going to try and find a band in a record store. I really don't like it when someone says 'oh you should quit this for that'".

Cello player for the Sussex Wit.

If you want to read more about Johnny Flynn and hear about the rest of the interview, subscribe or buy the July/August issue of my newspaper, Die Zeitung if you haven't already.

Still coming this night is Iron and Wine, which will probably be a fantastic performance. So stay tuned if you're not here at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, but if you are here at the folk fest, I'll see you on the hill!

13 Year Old Quinn Bachand Rocks the Stage With Fiddler Ashley MacIsaac

2009-08-08T14:32:00.003-06:00

Earlier today Ashley MacIsaac played his concert with 13 year old guitar accompanist Quinn Bachand. The followings are highlights from an interview I did with Quinn earlier today.

Quinn grew up as part of a musical family. "I started playing violin because my two sisters were also playing violin", he said. One of those sisters is Qristina Bachand, who is also a great traditional Celtic fiddle player. Qristina and Quinn often play together at Celtic music festivals.

Quinn, a guitar and violin player who started playing music when he was 6 years old, met Ashley MacIsaac this march, and has been playing concerts with him every once and a while ever since. "I've been listening to him all my life" Quinn said about MacIsaac, who mainly plays traditional Celtic music. Quinn also plays Celtic accompaniments on guitar. Celtic may seem like a strange music choice for a teenage but as Quinn told me, "I just get inspired by Celtic music."

Ashley MacIsaac performing at his concert on a side stage on Saturday at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. His fiddle playing is so full of life, and even though I am not usually interested in traditional Celtic music, his fiddle playing was mesmerizing.

"I also like jazz, and some classic rock", Quinn said, so Celtic is not his only music choice. And, as he said, "I can't imagine my life without music" and I guess that means jazz and classic rock, not just traditional Celtic.

Quinn playing guitar was Ashley MacIsaac on Saturday at their concert on a side stage at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. I also play guitar, so I feel like I can truly appreciate Quinn's ability on the guitar, and he is amazing. His guitar playing is also very rhythmic, so it almost seems to serve as the rhythmic section for their songs aswell.

I will be putting my full interview with Quinn Bachand in my next issue of Die Zeitung, which will be coming out at the end of August/beginning of September. If you have not bought the single copy of the issue or the full subscription of Die Zeitung, please do so.

In other news, I got a very spur of the moment interview with Johnny Flynn, who played at the workshop I wrote about this morning. Johnny Flynn is also playing main stage tonight, so I will put some more pictures up and a review later tonight. Playing main stage tonight will also be Iron and Wine, so stay tuned for that too.

So stay tuned for more live updates if you weren't able to make it to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this year, but if you were able to make it, I'll see on on the hill!

"Talkin' Bout Our Generation"

2009-08-08T12:44:00.003-06:00

I just got back from what I must say was one of the best workshops at any folk festival I have ever been to. The workshop was called "Talkin' Bout Out Generation" and featured Joel Plaskett, Johnny Flynn, Jill Barber and Ben Sures. I really enjoyed Johnny Flynn, Jill Barber, and of course one of my already favourites Joel Plaskett.

I thought that this workshop was really great because it combined the artists performing there own songs alone, and them performing together. Joel Plaskett and Jill Barber, both coming from Nova Scotia, were great together and played many of each others songs together.

Jill Barber singer on stage. She had a great and unique voice. Her music is kind of hard to describe. I guess you could say it was folk rock, but whatever it was, it was excellent!

Joel Plaskett playing a tiny keyboard that he bought at Value Village during his song Rewind, Rewind, Rewind from his triple album 3. Jill Barber joined Joel in this song and it sounded amazing!

Johnny Flynn, joined by his band the Sussex Wit, was also very good! His music was also very unique, mixing folk, country, blues and rock. It was an amazing fusion of genres and it all came out into excellent music.

All of them joined in the end for one song. Together it was mega-amazing, with all their amazing musical powers all blending into one :). It was fantastic.

Johnny Flynn is also playing on the Main Stage tonight at 6:00 PM, so visit this blog for a review and update about that show. Also playing tonight is Iron and Wine, who will probably also have an excellent show.

So for those of you who weren't able to make it to the festival, stayed tuned, but for those of you who are here, I'll see you on the hill!

Neko Case the Star of Friday Night's Performances

2009-08-07T23:04:00.005-06:00

Neko Case's performances tonight at the Edmonton folk fest was absolutely amazing. She showed great personality on stage and of course performed a great show. I haven't heard a lot of Neko Case's music, but from what I've heard on CD and live, I can definitely say that she is a performer that is much better live.

Neko Case's voice is also amazing. Cory, a musician and friend of mine (who was also part of our alliance in the colour raffle ), once said, "Neko Case has the best voice that country music has ever seen", and after hearing her live, I might have to agree with him.

Her personality also shone through in her live performance. Before each song she told us what inspired the song, or what the song was about. Usually they were very interesting... and sometimes a bit strange too. For one song, she told us that it was about her first boyfriend that she ever had... and he was invisible. Seeing her live and hearing what she thought that the song was about, really added to the experience, and you could enjoy the music more.

Neko Case singing on stage. As I said, her voice was amazing, possibly one of the best voices in country music...

Neko Case and band performing on stage. I saw her on a side stage earlier, where it was just her and one of her guitar players, and I must say that I enjoyed her music much better with the whole band.

OK, first of all, I am very proud to have taken this photo. Here's what I think is an excellent photo of Neko Case singing and playing guitar, while Neko Case's drum player plays drums in the background.

I think this is going to be my last post of the night. But tune in tomorrow for highlights from my interview with 13 year guitarist Quinn Bachand. I will also be posting highlights from Saturday workshops and one or two posts about the main stage performances.

So tune in tomorrow if you weren't able to make it to the folk fest, but if you are at the folk fest, I'll see you on the hill!

Good night!

Friday Afternoon Workshops (Joel Plaskett, Kathleen Edwards, Neko Case...)

2009-08-07T21:00:00.004-06:00

The workshops at the folk fest started today. For those of you who don't know, a workshop is a concert at a smaller stage that usually has 2 - 4 different artists performing at them. It's great to learn and hear about new music, and hear everyone performing together, to create a musical "fusion".

The first workshop I went to today, was with Joel Plaskett, Alex Cuba, Chloe Albert, and David Francey with Dave Swarbrick. I mainly came to this workshop to see Joel Plaskett, but also became to know and enjoy Alex Cuba and Chloe Albert. This workshop was really great in hearing all the artists performing together. At some points during the performance, you could hardly tell who was part of what band!

Joel Plaskett and his father Bill Plaskett. They played lots of songs from Joel Plaskett's newest album 3

The whole stage with Joel and Bill Plaskett, Alex Cuba and band, Chloe Albert and David Francey with Dave Swarbrick and band.

The second workshop, which was right after and at the same stage as the first, had Kathleen Edwards, Neko Case and Chuck Brodsky. I really enjoyed both Neko Case and Kathleen Edwards at this workshop. What was different about this one from the first, though, was that they all played their songs separately, there was no collaborating or "jamming", which was really great too, because we really got to know each artist.

Kathleen Edwards, who played some great tunes including a "child friendly" version of her song the Cheapest Key that she had to write for CBC Kids.

Neko Case with Paul Rigby (I think...). They played some great, soft, country songs that I quite enjoyed.

I also wanted to let everyone know that I did get an interview with Joel Plaskett. The interview will be on Sunday at 1:30 PM, so stay tuned that day for some highlights of the interview.

For those of you who weren't able to make it to the folk fest, stay tuned for more live updates from the festival. And for those who are at the folk fest, I'll see you on the hill!

Thursday Kicks Off What Should be a Great 30th Edmonton Folk Festival

2009-08-07T09:07:00.005-06:00

Last night was the first "real" (yes, i know, it was also on Wednesday) day of the 2009 Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Four performers shone last night, including Breabach, Kathleen Edwards, Steve Earle and Boz Scaggs.

Breabach from Scotland kicked off the night with some traditional Scottish folk music. With double bagpipes a fiddle and a guitar, this band really filled up the stage, and the whole festival grounds with their fast rhythms and energy.

Coming from Ontario, Kathleen Edwards was up next. She put on a great show, with a mix of country, rock, and folk. Right from her first tune that she played, you could tell that the crowd was really into it. I think that possibly Kathleen Edwards could have been one of the performers at this years festival that people hadn't really heard of before, but now she might be one of their favourites. She played some great songs from her latest album Asking for Flowers such as The Cheapest Key, I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory, and title track, Asking for Flowers.

Steve Earle from the US took the stage next. In his music you can really tell that he writes from experience. He's a political activist and prison survivor and that really shows in his lyrics. Though his music was technically "country" it seemed like the kind of country that I could deal with and actually like. Earle was all alone on the stage, but his music was very powerful and you could hear it all through the hill.

Another American, Boz Scaggs was up next. And surprisingly, he felt like one of my favourites of the night. His songs were very 70s and kinda cheesy as my mom said, but even she had to admit that he put on a great show. His songs were a bit jazzy and seemed very traditional rock and roll... with a bit of folk mixed in I guess. We had to leave about 10 minutes before the end of his show, and even as we were walking to his car, we could hear his one last, long drawn out encore.

I put some pictures of the performers last night, but here are some pictures of the folk fest in general.

Folk fest goers watching the stage.

The hill full of people.

The full of people at night, lots of people had their candles out already. I was hard to get a good shot of this, as you can see...

Now I gotta go to a traditional Friday morning High Level Diner breakfast, but stay tuned for more updates later, and if you're going to the folk fest today, I'll see you on the hill!

First Confirmed Interview / Final Thursday Night Performances

2009-08-06T22:11:00.003-06:00

First off, I have been confirmed an interview with 13 year old guitar accompanist for Ashley MacIsaac, Quinn Bachand. Quinn and his sister Qristina (18) have already put out a CD called Relative Minors and have accompanied many well known musicians such as Ashely MacIsaac at this year's folk festival. I will be doing an interview with Quinn on Saturday at 2:00 PM, so make sure you check Saturday night for parts of the interview.

The last two performances of Thursday night at the Edmonton Folk Festival were country/folk artist Steve Earle and folk/rock artist Boz Scaggs. Here are some pictures of the performances, but remember to check out a full article about Thursday night's performances tomorrow morning.

A close-up of Steve Earle playing guitar. I don't usually like "country" music, but this seemed like the kind of country that I quite liked.

Steve Earle was all alone on the stage, yet his music was still very powerful.

A nice shot of the Edmonton downtown skyline as seen from the Edmonton Folk Fest.

A close-up of Boz Scaggs. Some of his songs sounded quite jazzy, but some sounded more like rock and roll or folk.

A saxophonist that played an amazing solo in one of Boz Scaggs' songs.

So check in tomorrow morning for a full review of tonight's performances, and stay tuned for all my other posts, especially my Saturday interview with 13 year old Quinn Bachand.

Good night everyone but check in the rest of the weekend!

Kathleen Edwards Mainstage Thursday Night

2009-08-06T20:16:00.003-06:00

Kathleen Edward's main stage performance at this years folk festival just finished. Still coming tonight is Steve Earle and Boz Scaggs.

I took some pictures of the performance, but I will put a full update and article about Thursday night's main stage performance tomorrow.

The stage and festival goers, we were not that far from the front!She was great as she played many songs from her latest CD, Asking for Flowers.

A close-up of Kathleen rocking the stage. Her personality really shines in her live performances, as well as in her lyrics.

The whole band performing. Though she is listen as "Kathleen Edwards", a band performed with her. Together with the band it was an excellent show!

So stay tuned for more updates tonight, and a full article about today's performances tomorrow morning.

Also, if you're at the festival and like Kathleen Edward's performance tonight, she is playing a working shop with Neko Case tomorrow (friday) on Stage 6 at 7:30 PM.

For those of you at the festival, I hope you're enjoying it so far, and I'll see you on the hill!

Edmonton Folk Fest!

2009-08-06T16:02:00.002-06:00

I really did want to post this before now, maybe a week ago, but I guess I found myself busier than I had thought.

Today, tomorrow, and this weekend I will be at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. This year is the 30th anniversary of the festival, and it looks like it will be great. Like last year, I have organized to get a media pass for the festival, so I will be hopefully getting a few interviews for the blog and my next issue of Die Zeitung. I will be posting regular updates throughout the festival from the media tent, for those who were not able to make it to the festival.

For those who are going, I just wanted to let you know some of the artists and workshops that I'm looking forward to this year. I'm really looking forward to Kathleen Edwards, Joel Plaskett, Iron and Wine, Great Lake Swimmers, and Neko Case.

Some of my picks for workshops to go to this year are:

Friday Stage 6 at 7:30 PM, with Kathleen Edwards and Neko Case.
Pretty much all the sessions with Joel Plaskett on Saturday.
Sunday Stage 3 at 11:00 AM with Chumbawamba and Arrested Development.
I'm also really excited to see Kathleen Edwards on Main Stage tonight, Neko Case on Main Stage tomorrow and Iron and Wine on Main Stage on Saturday.

So please, if you were not able to make it this year, or are interested in seeing what's happening at the folk fest this year, please tune in regularly to my blog. If you are going to the folk fest - I'll see you on the hill!

CIBC Run for the Cure 2009

2009-08-05T16:51:00.001-06:00

This year my friend Rebecca and I have organized with my school, McKernan Junior High, to do the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure. The walk/run will be on Sunday October 4th. The Run for the Cure is held annually across the country to raise money for breast cancer research.

Please help create a future without breast cancer by making a donation today. Your donation will be directed towards research, education and awareness programs. To donate please visit my fund raising page: https://www.cibcrunforthecure.com/html/personal_page.asp?track=3366766&languageid=1

Thank you. I appreciate your support!

New Die Zeitung!

2009-05-27T12:34:00.005-06:00

Hello everyone, good news!

There will be a new Die Zeitung this year, as I have worked out a plan with my school to write my issues of Die Zeitung as part of school work.

For those of you who haven't been reading my blog, or haven't known me very long, Die Zeitung is a newspaper that I have been doing since 2005. I write mostly about the stuff on my blog, but I am personally a lot more proud of my newspaper when they come out. Also, on many of my newspaper there are special interviews or reviews. I wrote 4 issues in 2005, 1 in 2006, and 4 in 2007. I have been very busy over the past two years so I have been too busy to write any, but I am very excited now that I have made an agreement with my school so that I can fit newspaper writing into my very busy life.

I will be definitely be sending out an issue at the end of June, and I will most likely also being sending out issues at the end of August, October, and December. These four issues that I will trying to do will make up the 2009 Editions of Die Zeitung. I haven't decided the price to order all four of them, but I am thinking that it will be around $20 for all four issues.

If you would like to subscribe to all issues or just one of the 2009 issues of Die Zeitung, please email me at isaac.wurmann@gmail.com and letting me know if you would like me to mail you a paper copy, or email you a "green" copy.

Also, to anyone who is just new to Die Zeitung, and has never seen any of my newspapers before, you can email me and I will try to get a back copy of Die Zeitung to you ASAP.

The money that I make from these newspapers will go to a school trip to France that I have in grade 9 or fundraising and awareness campaigns that I will do in the future.

Please subscribe!

Canmore Disk Drop

2009-05-11T21:30:00.003-06:00

On Sunday I did my third disk drop (After Edmonton and Winnipeg), and it was in Canmore. I did the drop when I was coming back from Golden to Edmonton, and I dropped it off in the visitors center on a pile of magazines.

Here are the tracks that I put on the CD:
1. Cruel - Calexico
2. When These Mountains Were the Seashore - Hawksley Workman
3. Left and Leaving - the Weakerthans
4. Grapevine Fires - Death Cab for Cutie
5. Brainy - the National
5. Black - Okkervil River
6. Nine in the Afternoon - Panic at the Disco
7. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa - Vampire Weekend
8. Record Body Count - Rheostatics
9. Sleeping Sickness - City and Colour
10. Archaeologists - Wintersleep
11. Just - Radiohead
12. Broken One - Luke Doucet
13. Someday - Brett Dennen

I know that some of the tracks on this CD are the same that were on the Winnipeg CD, but I had to make this whole CD while on the road through BC and Alberta.
So, I hope that whoever got this CD likes it, and if you are the one who got it, please comment on this post to let me know.
Thanks!

Boyle Street Shoe Drop-Off

2009-05-07T19:22:00.003-06:00

Today me and two of my friends (Rebecca and Zoe) went to drop off the shoes at Boyle Street that I said I was collecting a couple weeks ago.
Boyle Street is a centre in downtown Edmonton where homeless people can go to eat, get stuff (like the shoes that we donated), or just to stay warm during the winter. When we were there my mom's friend Matt, who works there, gave us a tour of the place.
He started off at the youth section, where he works. He explained to us that the youth part is for people aged 14 to 24, but is mostly used by people who are over 18 years old. What I found interesting was that Matt told us that when they try to help people who come in who abuse drugs, or do other stuff like that, they do not right away tell them to stop doing drugs, they just try to make it safer for them by giving them clean needles or something.

Then after that he went to showing us the room where Child and Family Services is, which, interestingly, is right in Boyle Street. This is interesting because some of the people who go to Boyle Street that have children may think of Child and Family Services as "the baby stealers" or something. So, now Child and Family Services has taken a new approach where, for instance, if they go into a house and see that the family has no food, they wont just take the children away. Instead, they will try to understand why they don't have food, and then help them to get food.
Then, Matt took us to see the place where the homeless can go and get food. There were quite a lot of people there, but Matt told us that it was fairly empty. He said that some mornings, there can be 300 people eating there!
I thought that the tour was very interesting, and was an eye opener to how some people in our own city live.

Oh, and of course, the shoes! Well, after a couple weeks of collecting shoes from school, my mom's work and family members, we ended up collecting around 50 shoes!
So, I thought that this was a great experience and I thought it was great to bring my friends along for them to help in this experience aswell. I hope that maybe in the future, like possibly even next year, I might be able to get my whole class to come and help out for a couple hours at Boyle Street.
By the way, Boyle Street has a new website: http://www.boylestreet.org Check it out to learn more!

We Have to Act Now!

2009-04-21T11:59:00.003-06:00

I hope that after watching this video, Bilaal's inspiring words will have an impact on you, and perhaps you too will join the Barefoot Challenge this week. It's about raising awareness for people who do not have simple necessities such as shoes. It's about really understanding what other people are going through around the world, so we can better realize how lucky we are to live the life that we have. It's about possibly helping people who live in extreme poverty, after we have, literally, walked a mile in their shoes.

Disappointment Today

2009-04-20T17:46:00.002-06:00

Today was a disappointment with the Barefoot Challenge. At school, my teachers and principal did not let me go barefoot. I was in fact sent to the office, for voicing my opinions. I thought that it was very unfortunate that there were administrative rules that have been put in place to not let students do this kind of stuff without teacher involvement. There was also some health issues with going barefoot, even though I think that this is kind of the point of this challenge, as many millions of people around the world are also facing health risks due to improper footwear.

After the fact though, I am now thinking that I maybe should have let my principal know about this beforehand, I had let my teacher know, but I guess that was not enough.

One good thing came out of today though, the other kids in my class really helped me out in trying to do the right thing. They helped me try persuade our teachers to let us go barefoot for poverty awareness. Unfortunately though, our attempts failed, but I really think I got my classmates thinking about why we were trying to do this.

So I will still be doing the Barefoot Challenge, but I guess I will not be able to go barefoot in my school.

I am not giving up though! This week I am going to try and have a sort of "shoe drive" where I collect shoes from my classmates, and then I will donate them to the Bissel Centre, Boyle Street and the Mustard Seed. (I will be doing this after school hours and outside of school grounds) If you are reading this and you live in Edmonton, if you would like, you could also drop some shoes off at the Legal Resource Centre (where my mom works) at #201 10350 124th Street, in Edmonton.

To learn more about the Bissel Centre and the Mustard Seed, go to: http://www.bissellcentre.org/donations.htm (the Bissel Centre) and http://www.mustard.ab.ca/content.php?ID=65 (the Mustard Seed).

If you live in other cities, or even perhaps other countries around the world, if you would like to be a part of this, please search your community for places to donate footwear.

Thank You.

Barefoot Challenge

2009-04-19T12:20:00.004-06:00

12 year old Bilaal Rajan from Ontario will be going barefoot this week to raise awareness that many people around the world don't have such necessities as shoes. He also wants many other people to go barefoot as well this week, for an hour, a day or even the whole week.
I will also be going barefoot this whole week, and I hope that everyone who reads this will too, or at least for an hour or a day or two.
The point of this challenge is mainly to raise awareness. Bilaal is sure that once people walk barefoot for some time, they will finally realize how hard it is for so many people in underdeveloped countries to go about their lives.
Bilaal Rajan himself started fundraising when he was 4 years old, since then, he has raised millions of dollars to help people around the world. He has even seen first hand the effects of not wearing shoes after going to Tanzania, Malawi and rural Mexico.
I am hoping that many people will go barefoot this week and help raise awareness.
To learn more about Bilaal and the Barefoot Challenge go to: www.bilaalrajan.com/blog

Snow

2009-04-14T19:27:00.002-06:00

It snowed in Edmonton today - CRAZY. It is April, isn't it? It was supposed to snow 20 cm last night and today all together!!! It is all gone now though, I just hope it is for good...
Oh, and by the way, I don't think I ever mentioned that there was an interview with me in KidzWorld magazine for this month's issue. I think that is why there are now so many young followers who have recently started their own blogs. I would just like to correct some things in my interview, though - I am still 12, not 13!!! Also, the swim club that I am in, is not a Junior High club, but instead it is Penguin Swim Club, just thought I'd mention that.
Anyway, otherwise great interview:) And also, thanks for all the new readers of my blog!!!

Operation Disk Drop

2009-04-10T16:47:00.002-06:00

Hello all!
I know it's been a while since I last posted, but I have been quite busy.
I'm just posting to talk about the Operation Disk Drop. This is the same one that I talked about last year, when I dropped a disk off in Edmonton. But today, I dropped another CD off in Winnipeg (I am there for Easter), at the Forks on the 4th or 5th floor of the big tower, leaning against the window. If you found that CD, please comment to let me know that you got CD, and if you like it.
Tis disk that I dropped off in Winnipeg today is actually the start of a project I'm doing to try and drop CDs off in every city that I visit.
I will post some more about this new project and the Operation Disk Drop, including cities I will soon be dropping off CDs in.
To learn more about Operation Disk Drop, go to the Hours website.

The Best Photo of Obama in Ottawa

2009-03-02T15:05:00.002-07:00

Self explanitory.

Know Your Rights!

2009-02-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a cool video of the complete Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I think it's important that everyone knows these rights so that they realize when these rights are being broken. It's important for people to know that these rights aren't being followed in some countries so that they can maybe do something about it.

New Tailing Ponds Regulations

2009-02-10T12:00:00.002-07:00

Sorry, I'm a bit late on this topic, you've probably already heard of it, but I'd just like to add some things.
In case you didn't know, some new regulations have been put in place to make the tailing ponds used by the oil industries in northern Alberta to become greener. Even though this sounds kind of good, many environmentalists aren't happy. There has been a law in place for 40 years that says that any land that has been used by oil companies must be returned to their original state. But, in those 40 years, no land has been replaced. So, if no one followed that rule, how do we know they are going to follow this one?
Also, this regulation says that oil companies must reduce the fine particules in the tailings water by only 50% in 4 years. OK, yes, that would be a huge improvement, but who knows how many more incidents like this one will happen in 4 years?
So, yes, it could be great if the companies actually follow these legislations, but don't you think some steps should be in place to eliminate the waste being produced in the first place?
For more information about the new regulations, here's a news article about it: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Technology/Tailings+ponds+green/1251260/story.html

Did You Know?

2009-02-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is a interesting/overwhelming video that asks many questions. Did you know that by 2049 $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species? But what does it all mean?

RMR: Canada Explained

2009-02-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

Here's Rick Mercer's "Canada Explained" part on tonight's episode. This is a good lesson for those who don't know how Canada's Parliamentary System actually works!

Get Educated

2008-12-09T19:26:00.001-07:00

My mom works for the Legal Resource Centre and they recently put out some new infromation on their websites about the Coalition Government idea and about the Prorogation of Parliament.
I thought that I'd post them on here because it seems like too many people (especially too many people in Alberta aka. the Alberta separatists) are saying things about this even though they don't know much about it.
Here's some FAQs about the 2 topics: http://www.law-faqs.org/wiki/index.php/Coal
Here is a special article explaining about what has been happening in Canadian politics lately: http://www.acjnet.org/nanews/default.aspx?id=22893

Also, there is the Amnesty International Write-a-thon tomorrow! This is where people from all over the world write letters to important people in different countries asking them to be fair to their people. I encourage everyone reading this to please write a few letters.

What Does All This Mean?

2008-12-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

I’m back on the topic of the coalition government idea here in Canada. Before all this happened, I had no idea what a coalition government was. But now I’ve researched it, at least a little bit. So now I’ll just tell you what I think about this idea.

I think that a coalition government would be a good idea. It would allow all the parties to express their ideas and opinions and bring forward their ideas the loudest.

Also, if there was a coalition government with the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois parties, my MP, Linda Duncan would definitely play a big role in it because she is the only non-Conservative MP in Alberta.

Also, this coalition government idea has been proven to work! Germany has had many coalition governments over the years. The FDP (a German political party) had a coalition government with the Germany Green Party from 1998 to 2005. And at different times, the CDU/CSU (another German political party) had a coalition with the SPD (yet another German political party) and the CDU had a coalition with the FDP.

So, I don’t really have that much information about this topic, but I have enough to voice some starting opinions. I will write more about this as the coalition government idea progresses.

Some Cool Music

2008-11-30T20:39:00.001-07:00

Along with writing more on this blog, I have also started to write more on my other blog: The Circle of Music. So if you like this blog, and you also like music, you might like The Circle of Music too. So please check that out every so often.
Go to: http://thecircleofmusic.blogspot.com/ to check it out.
Thanks.

Some Political Numbers

2008-11-29T10:52:00.002-07:00

OK, I know, I haven't written on here in a while. I am very sorry, but I have been extremely busy, what with school, swimming, and other events.

There have been some interesting developments in Canadian politics lately. I'm sure most of you have heard about the possibility of a coalition government in Canada. And some of you may have heard about what Jim Flaherty said a couple days ago in response to this new idea. Pretty much what he said was: This is the government that Canada has voted for. Well, I'm sorry Mr. Flaherty, but you're wrong. Over half of Canada didn't vote for Stephen Harper and his government, and I've got the numbers to prove it. I will talk more about the coalition government idea and what it means later, but first, here is some proof that Canada doesn't want the Conservatives in government.

Well, because of Canada's lack of proportional representation in the way we choose our MPs, there are some unfair things going on. Here is a short table of the parties in the last election, the seats they got, the percent of the vote they got and the number of votes they got. Canada's population is 33,442,000, but only 13,832,972 votes were actually cast. This is because of the amount of eligible voters, and the amount of people who actually chose to vote.

Party	Seats	% of Vote	# of Votes
Conservative	143	37.63	5 205 347.3636
Liberal	77	26.24	3 629 771.8528
Bloc Quebecois	49	9.97	1 379 147.3084
NDP	37	18.2	2 517 600.904
Independent	2	0.65	89 914.318
Green	0	6.8	940 642.096
Other	0	0.51	70 548.1572

So that means that 8 627 624.6364 votes in the last election were against the Conservative's 5 205 347.3636 votes. So Mr. Flaherty, not all of Canada voted for the Conservatives in the last election.

Something interesting you may notice is that there were 2 Independent seats voted for in the last election, but there were only eighty-nine thousand, nine hundred fourteen votes. But there were no seats for the Green party, even though they had many more votes than the Independents, nine hundred forty thousand six hundred forty-two votes. Same thing with the Bloc Quebecois and the Green party. The Bloc Quebecois only had 3 percent more of the vote than the Green, but the Bloc had 49 seats and the Green none.

As I said, I will definitely write more about the possibility of the coalition government, but right now, there are some numbers to try and wrap your head around.

Tomorrow...

2008-11-02T09:00:00.005-07:00

First of all, I am very, very sorry for not posting in more than 2 weeks. I was just very tired after all those posts about the election. And of course, I was very busy with school, swim meets and other stuff.
But what I'm going to talk about now, is tomorrow. Tomorrow is another very important election. For all of you people who don't know (how could you not), the US election is tomorrow. Of course, that is the political race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Last time when George W Bush won by 51% over Democrat John Kerry. When George Bush won that election, people just went crazy. How could George W Bush win again?!
I'm hoping after this election there wont be another website like this: http://www.sorryeverybody.com. Yes, after the last election, many Americans were so ashamed that George W Bush had won that they felt they needed to apologize to the rest of the world for what they had done, or rather what the people who voted Republican had done.
Now for this election, there is another big political race. For this one, many people are saying that it will be a landslide victory for Barack Obama, but could that really happen. Well, I can't vote, and I'm not an American anyways, but if there are any Americans who can vote who read this blog, please vote for Barack Obama and the Democrats tomorrow.
And if you need anymore reason to, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY. (It is also posted on the right hand side).
So, just like the Canadian election, I will be blogging about the election tomorrow. Definitely not as much because A. it's hard for me to get the results over the computer and B. I don't know a lot about American politics.
But still vote and tune in.

Pulling Ahead!

2008-10-14T22:24:00.002-06:00

I am very sorry for only posting about my riding Edmonton-Strathcona so far, but it is very exciting. Linda Duncan is in the lead right now by a full 1% and 400 votes exactly. It is very close and anything could happen, but I'm hoping for the best.
In some other ridings, the results are as follows (both are close races between NDP and Conservative):
In Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar Conservative Kelly Block is winning by 0.8% over the NDP Nettie Wiebe.
In Vancouver Island North Conservative John Duncan is winning by only 0.2% over NDP Catherine Bell.
On a different note, it looks like this is the lowest voter turnout in Canadian election history. For Canada there was an overall voter turnout of 58%. And in Alberta, unfortunately it was even less.

Some Close Races

2008-10-14T21:36:00.002-06:00

In which the Conservatives could lose!!!!!!!!!!!
Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar: NDP Nettie Wiebe is winning by only 0.14% over Conservative Kelly Block.
Vancouver Island North: NDP Catherine Bell is winning by only 2% over the Conservative John Duncan.
Western Arctic: NDP Candidate Dennis Bevington is winning by only 4% over the Conservative Brendan Bell.
Those are all only ridings where the winner so far is only labeled as "leading". But also it looks like maybe Linda Duncan may have a chance. (this is me being very, very hopeful) Oh wait! Linda Duncan is now 0.4% ahead of Rahim!!!!!!!!!!
More update soon!

Sorry Everyone

2008-10-14T20:57:00.003-06:00

Blogger was down for an inconvenient time at 9:00 for 25 minutes. So I was unable to post. All I know is I will go cry as Linda Duncan was not elected. And I have heard that she will not run again in the next election because she has been working hard since the last election to win this one. Now that she didn't it is all very depressing here at Who's Left and Who's Leading headquarters.
Time to go cry.

Time to Start Crying

2008-10-14T20:32:00.002-06:00

Yes, I just got home from my swim practice and looked at the sad results. It looks like another Conservative minority, but a bigger minority. That unfortunately is my blogs prediction: a bigger Conservative minority.
Here are all the things to smile about:
1. All of NFLD is Conservative free.
2. uhhhh....
3. ummm....
Yes, unfortunately, there is not that much to smile about so far.
Here are all the things to cry about:
1. The Conservatives have gained many seats in Ontario.
2. Elizabeth May lost.
3. The Liberals so far hae lost 26 seats.
Sorry but that's all I have so far.
I will be live blogging more soon, now I just need to collect more information...

Vote, Then Tune In!

2008-10-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

Don't forget to vote today! To figure out where your nearest voting stations is, go to elections.ca
Then, come back and watch the results and tune into my live blogs of the election. I will be at swim practice until 8:00 PM but then when I get back I'll get right on the live blogging.

I will try to focus and write about the closest races in one riding from each province.
These are probably the ridings that I will be focusing on:

BC: Vancouver Island North - In the last election the NDP candidate Catherine Bell won by less than 1% more than Conservative John Duncan.
AB: Edmonton-Strathcona (My riding) - This is one of the closest races in Alberta. Last election the NDP Candidate Linda Duncan lost against the Conservative Rahim Jaffer by 9% but in some latest polls it shows Linda Duncan gaining some votes.
SK: Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River - This is a VERY close riding! In the last election Liberal candidate Gary Merasty won against the Conservative by only 0.43%!
MB: Saint Boniface - Liberal candidate Raymond Simard won by only 3.5% over the Conservatives Ken Cooper.
ON: Parry Sound - Muskoka - This is definitely the closest riding I have seen so far! The Conservative candidate Tony Clement only won by 0.04% against the Liberal Andy Mitchell.
QB: Ahuntsic - This another close riding involving the Liberals. The Bloquebecois candidate in the last riding, Maria Mourani, came in a bit more than 1% more than the Liberal candidate.
NB: Tobique - Mactaquac - Conservative Mike Allen won by only 0.70% over the Liberal Andy Savoy.
NS: West Nova - Liberal candidate Robert Thibault won by a little more than 1% over the Conservative candidate Greg Kerr. I will of course also be focusing on Elizabeth May's riding but I do not have much information on that riding right now.
PEI: There isn't exactly a close riding in PEI, it's all Liberal. I will though be posting if PEI turns out again to be all Liberal.
NFLD: Random-Burin-St. George's - This is the closest riding I could find in Newfoundland. The Liberal candidate Bill Matthews won by 5% against the Conservative Cynthia Downey.
ARCTIC: The arctic too isn't really close. But it's all Liberal and NDP! I'll let everyone know if it stays that way!

Now let's all sit back, relax and enjoy the election. Well at least try to, then celebrate after you see the results. (hopefully)

For All Those Who Want Harper Out

2008-10-13T16:00:00.000-06:00

Here's a fun mix tape that I made on MixWit. It's full of great Canadian music for you to listen to while reading all my live-blogs of the election tomorrow night.

Here's a track listing of the tape with a description of why the songs are important this election.

1. The Reasons by The Weakerthans. There are lots of reasons this election. Reasons why you picked the person you're voting for. The reason why you even chose to vote!
2. Autumn's Here by Hawksley Workman. Autumn is here this election and I feel this song is all about how it's OK to cry, no matter what reason. Just like this election I might just cry if the Conservatives win a majority... And of course there's that reference somewhere in the middle about Stephen Harper's sweater.
3. 7/4 (Shoreline) by Broken Social Scene. Broken Social Scene is a collective of many talented musicians. In this election it is more important than ever before to work and think together in many ridings if you want to kick the Conservatives out.
4. Real Estate by Cadence Weapon. The title says it all really. Real estate and affordable housing is a very important topic in this election. And also as many of my readers are from Edmonton they will be interested to know that Cadence Weapon is actually from Edmonton.

5. Bad Time to be Poor by Rheostatics. Once again, the name says it all. Staying on the topic of affordable housing and the poor, as these are very important issues in this election, this song is once again very important.
6. Comin' Home by City and Colour. This isn't exactly about the election but it talks about places all across the country. I think that elections are a special event that includes the whole country so this kind of fits...
7. The Butcher by Final Fantasy. Owen Pallett is very different, he started doing this kind of stuff when he was quite young. Personally, I think that he is a very good role model, but sadly he's probably the kind of person Stephen Harper doesn't seem to value.
8. Iron Grey by Geoff Berner. This song once again doesn't have that much to do with the election but Geoff Berner does. I've met him and seen him perform many times. I always think it's amazing how brave he is to speak out about the government and issues that matter to him.
9. Archaeologists by Wintersleep. One of my latest things that I've posted was about how none of the Conservatives answered questions for Make Poverty History. Well I think that the chorus really speaks for those Conservatives as they sing: "don't speak to me now!"
10. Strange Days by Matthew Good. Matthew Good is very outspoken about his thoughts about politics through his blog. I think that also the title of this song reflects what's coming for us in the future, some truly Strange Days.
11. Where and When by Hayden. I hope everyone knows where and when to vote tomorrow!
12. If Rap Gets Jealous by K'Naan. K'naan is from Somalia and this song talks all about the struggles and what he had to go through when he lived there. He now lives in Canada and tells everyone about how we need to help the people over there. (Sorry about all the swears)
13. Blood's Too Rich by Luke Doucet. I don't really know about this song, about what it's got to do with the election. It's a great song though by a great artists who's lived all over Canada!
14. You Have a Choice by Various great Canadian artists. No explanation needed. My favourite line though is: "Not just dressing it up in a sweater."

So now just kick back, enjoy the election (or well, maybe not enjoy depending on the results...) and listen to some great Canadian music.