The Mitfords, one of the most fascinating families in history, get a period drama of their own
Moneyed members of the British aristocracy, David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and Sydney Bowles spawned six daughters who each led remarkably bold lives and ascended to worldwide fame — and white-hot scandal — as they rebelled against the strictures of a sexist time. (Their father, for instance, refused to send them to school.)
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CBC
2 days ago
- CBC
Extreme weather caused by climate change increasingly cancelling major events: study
Social Sharing More and more major cultural, social, business and arts events around the world are being disrupted or cancelled by extreme weather events caused by climate change, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. The study, Mapping the impact of extreme weather on global events and mass gatherings: Trends and adaptive strategies, details that from 2004 to 2024 more than 2,000 mass gatherings were reportedly disrupted around the world, with events in British Columbia accounting for 74. According to Shawna McKinley, co-author of the study and instructor of sustainable event management operations at the B.C. Institute of Technology, the number of events disrupted has increased in recent years, particularly in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. McKinley said arts, cultural and sports events are particularly vulnerable. She said there are hot spots where a disproportionate number events have been disrupted. In Canada, this includes cities like Halifax, Calgary, and Kelowna, as well as the entire province of B.C. She said in other places, hurricanes, heat and flooding are often to blame for disruptions, but in B.C., wildfires and smoke are often to blame, as well as heat. 'Things that festivals take extremely seriously' Erin Benjamin, president of the Canadian Live Music Association, said her industry is very aware of the impact that extreme weather driven by climate change is having on events. "We're really pre-occupied with the way weather is becoming more and more severe over time — everything from cancelling events to having to evacuate sites, to having to elevate and escalate emergency preparedness plans," Benjamin said. "All of these things are things that festivals take extremely seriously." She said the live music industry adds $11 billion to Canada's GDP annually and creates more than 100,000 jobs, but many organizations and festivals are operating close to the financial edge and it can be impossible to recover from a cancellation. "There is an economic aspect, there's a cultural aspect and certainly there's a social aspect, and for all of these reasons and others, we need to be very preoccupied with the impact of severe weather on outdoor concerts and festivals," Benjamin said. WATCH | Outdoor festival and events organizers are being forced to beef up insurance and plan for disruptions Extreme weather forcing changes to outdoor festivals, sporting events 12 months ago As extreme weather events become more common, outdoor festival and events organizers are being forced to beef up insurance and plan for disruptions with new safety strategies that can come at steep financial cost. She said there are organizers reacting to weather events and then there are those who are adapting to climate change. The study notes an example in B.C., the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues festival in the province's Interior. Benjamin recalled attending the festival several years ago — a particularly smokey experience due to wildfires in the area. Last year the festival was scheduled one month earlier than in previous years — in late July instead of late August — as a way to try to reduce weather-related disruptions. "Relocating on the calendar is a possibility for some folks, but not all, and it's not really a strategy that all can use," Benjamin said. Indoor mass gatherings also potentially affected Music festivals seem especially vulnerable to weather-related disruptions, as they're typically held outdoors, but McKinley said even less obvious types of events, like indoor business conferences can also be upset when things like major storms ground aircraft and attendees can't make it to to the event. She said emergencies like wildfires or flooding could also affect business events when evacuees and first responders fill up hotels and leave conference-goers nowhere to stay. McKinley said her research team gathered accounts of as many disrupted events as they could in the years studied and looked for overlaps with studies that highlighted the role of climate change causing the weather events or making them more extreme — something that occurred in 57 per cent of cases. "If we look at an area like British Columbia, you need to be anticipating escalating heat, you need to be anticipating more extreme urban rainfall events," McKinley said. "That is just going to make things a bit more unpredictable."
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Popular teacher's death darkens halls of U.K. high school
Dark Like Under is the first novel by British author Alice Chadwick, a graduate of Cambridge University and of the selective City Lit fiction masterclass. Tabbed as an editor's choice by The Bookseller, the novel has received praise in the U.K. from the Independent and British Vogue, among others. While the book is a coming-of-age story of sorts, rather than filter events through one protagonist, the novel follows multiple characters as they journey from adolescent innocence to a new understanding of the adult world. The book is set in the late 1980s in a small unnamed town in Margaret Thatcher's England, a time of austerity and class warfare. Mr. Ardennes, a popular teacher at an elite high school, has unexpectedly died, and students and staff are left to grapple with the loss. The entire story unfolds over a period of 24 hours on a hot day in late spring. Supplied Alice Chadwick Dark Like Under is a quiet book. The conflicts are understated: much is said about class in just a few words. There are several references to 'the other school' that is nearby but off limits for unstated reasons; when two characters pay it an illicit visit, the reader sees its male students playing football and shouting 'Good work in the box' and its female students wearing short, tight uniform skirts and the distinctions become clear. The divisions of race have not yet reached this community, where the outsiders are Irish and/or Roman Catholic. While there are brief mentions of apartheid, the aftermath of the Falklands War and the famine in Ethiopia, the teenaged characters are largely preoccupied with the same things that concern today's adolescents: crushes, romantic relationships, the betrayal of friends, the arbitrariness and tyranny of parental and school rules, whether to try to fit in or to rebel. These are big feelings aired within the smaller confines of the novel. A student and a teacher stand off over the wearing of nail polish. A boy sends a note to a girl and her classmates long to know what it contains. A student worries about his strict parents' reaction to his music lesson being cancelled. The school schedule ingeniously forms much of the structure of the book. The students attend art, math, chemistry, French and English classes, and in each of those, Chadwick juxtaposes the lessons being ostensibly taught with the ones being learned below the surface. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. In English class, a discussion of a John Donne sonnet, and its imagery suggesting commitment and desire, ends with the eternal question 'Is this even on our syllabus?' The teacher's response illustrates the impact of his colleague's death upon him: 'If you mean will you be examined on this? No. You will not. But should you read it? Should you engage with these ideas? As a human being, as a young man or young woman, wading, more or less innocent, more or less defenceless, into the great boiling sea of language, of literature, history, ideology, human experience and other effluents and intoxicants, yes, I think you should read it. I think you should. Because one day, even you, Nicholas, might need it. Even you one day might find yourself grabbing at a poem like a man going under.' The students experience the teachers as overbearing authority figures who nevertheless cannot give them as simple a direction as removing their blazers in the extreme heat without the say-so of the head teacher. But in their chapters, these teachers come to life as colleagues and friends of the deceased, struggling with the politics of school administration as well as their own grief and unfulfilled desires. The art teacher, who has sidelined her creative dreams for a steady paycheque, reflects that 'Conviction is a sort of energy, she can see, a force of life in itself. You can't get far without it. Things diminish, shrinking to the size of a square foot of board and painting by numbers.' Dark Like Under Dark Like Under is a wholly engrossing, multi-layered story told with a slow burn. The author's decision to take the last chapter back 24 hours (rather than the linear progression that has unfolded up until that point) in order to end the novel with a chapter from the perspective of the newly deceased Mr. Ardennes is a rare false note. Zilla Jones is a Winnipeg-based writer of short and long fiction. Her debut novel The World So Wide was published in April.
Toronto Sun
3 days ago
- Toronto Sun
WARMINGTON: New statue is turning heads while reminding that cancelling history cancels freedom
New nine-foot 'Moments Contained' bronze sculpture on display at the AGO in line with new trend of making statues cool again including ones of banished Sir John A. Macdonald Get the latest from Joe Warmington straight to your inbox Thomas J Price. Moments Contained, 2022. Bronze, height: 9' (274.4 cm). Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo by Handout / Art Gallery of Ontario It's a head turner! You are certainly not going to miss seeing this. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Called Moments Contained, this nine-foot-high (2.7 metre) bronze sculpture on Dundas St. West at McCaul St. outside of the Art Gallery of Ontario, is Toronto's newest statue. 'A celebration of shared humanity, Moments Contained is one of popular British artist Thomas J Price's public sculptures that challenges assumptions about the purpose and expectations of monuments,' says the AGO, who unveiled it Thursday evening, adding it's 'an object of great beauty' that the artist hopes 'is a gesture he hopes can lead to greater empathy and connection.' The AGO describes this fictional woman with 'a serene expression' and 'her feet firmly planted on the sidewalk, she appears outwardly confident, but the hands she hides in her pockets are visibly clenched, suggesting a tension between her inner thoughts and outward expression.' Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Said Price: 'I want people to recognize themselves and feel valued.' Following years of tearing them down, statues are back in favour in Canada again. In June, the boarding around the Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen's Park were finally removed after five years, and just this wee,k Wilmot Township voted to restore its Prime Minister's Path, including putting back up its Macdonald statue in Baden. Security at the Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen's Park in Toronto. (JOE WARMINGTON/TORONTO SUN) But with a caveat. 'Relocating the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald to a more discreet area of the park, accessible by personal choice rather than public prominence,' is how they decided to do it. It won't be front and centre at city hall as it once was. They will put him back up, but he will be hidden. Toronto did the same thing with the British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill statue at city hall – moving him from Queen St. to the far corner of Nathan Phillips Square, where few would ever go. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Statue of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald in Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday July 26, 2025. (Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun) Photo by Joe Warmington / Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun/Postm It's the same approach they take at Parliament Hill in Ottawa. The monarchs and Macdonald statues are tucked away, way in the back of the property where few people ever walk, while imperfect Liberal prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King, Sir Wilfred Laurier and Lester B. Pearson are prominently displayed. But it's certainly better than having these historic figures in storage or even destroyed and disappeared like the statue of Egerton Ryerson, whose head was taken out of town and displayed on First Nation's land, but is now unaccounted for. A man stands on the defaced statue of Egerton Ryerson, considered an architect of Canada's residential indigenous school system, as it lies on the pavement after being toppled following a protest at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 6, 2021. Photo by CHRIS HELGREN / REUTERS None of these statues should ever have been removed or vandalized. They represent our history. This new one on Dundas St. West is up front and on display for all to see and comment on, and in a free society, this is a positive thing, which is what Price was going for. His works have created a stir in both Rotterdam and New York, and this is expected to be a talker in Toronto. The AGO said it's 'the first public artwork to be acquired by the museum's Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora' that was 'made possible by the generous contributions of a group of donors, the majority of whom are from Toronto's Black and Caribbean communities.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Said Curator of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, Julie Crooks: 'With his monumental gestures, In Price creates space for discussion and for beauty.' Statue of Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier in Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday July 26, 2025. (Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun) Photo by Joe Warmington / Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun/Postm Meanwhile, at noon on this Friday, Toronto is kicking off its celebration of 'Emancipation Month with Black Liberation Flag-raising' at city hall lead by Deputy Mayor Amber Morley, Chair of the Confronting Anti-Black Racism Advisory Committee who 'will raise the Black Liberation Flag tomorrow at Toronto City Hall as August is proclaimed as Emancipation Month in Toronto.' The city in a news release said 'the Black Liberation Flag will fly on August 1 at all Toronto Civic Centres, and the Toronto Sign (at city hall) will be lit daily through the month of August in red, black and green.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Statue of William Lyon Mackenzie King in Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, July 26, 2025. J(oe Warmington/Toronto Sun) Photo by Joe Warmington / Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun/Postm Mayor Olivia Chow has 'proclaimed August 1st Emancipation Day since 1998 and Emancipation Month in August since 2019' and also 'proclaimed the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015 to 2024).' Remembering and savouring our history is as important as trying to discourage those who want to cancel or rewrite history. Macdonald, Laurier, Ryerson, McGill, Dundas or whoever should not be judged for words or actions from their time by today's standards, but should be remembered for their contributions, while their legacies can be debated. Things seem to be on a better footing in this regard as more statues are going up and more are being reinstalled. Statue of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday July 26, 2025. (Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun) Photo by Joe Warmington / Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun/Postm Special thanks need to go to Toronto lawyer Mark Johnson and his Save Our History group, the Canadian Institute for Historical Education, historian and author JDM Stewart and Wilmot Township Mayor Natasha Salonen who have all been working hard to not only restore Macdonald's name and historic place but restore the importance of history itself — good, bad, celebratory or not so pretty. The point is that statues across the country are better at getting conversations going than statues in storage sheds. The Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen's Park and the decision made in Baden are hopefully the beginning of a domino effect that will see Kingston, Picton, Montreal, Hamilton, Charlottetown and Victoria follow suit and put their statues back up as loud and proud as the AGO has done with this new towering one at the AGO. Read More World Sunshine Girls Canada Toronto & GTA Tennis
