Latest news with #MainstreetNovaScotia
CBC
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
A Halifax woman found an unproduced play written by her grandfather. It opens next month
Social Sharing Halifax professor Karen Harper never met her grandfather. But after discovering an unproduced play he wrote in the 1950s in the attic of her parents' home in Ontario, she made it her mission to bring it to the stage. Harper's grandparents, Gladys Isabel Mackenzie Harper and Wallace Russell Harper, were physicists who married while studying at the University of Cambridge in England in the late 1920s. While she knew her grandmother well — and was deeply proud of her groundbreaking work as a woman in the male-dominated field of physics — her grandfather died before she got a chance to know him. She knew him mostly as a professor who wrote textbooks, but never as a creative writer. That made the discovery of his work a surprise. "I've always looked up to my grandmother, but now I'm getting to know my grandfather as well," said Harper. Play unearthed by father For many years, the play collected dust in a crawlspace at her parents home in Georgian Bay, Ont. Harper's father rediscovered it as he geared up to move into a retirement home. "It was really important for him to go through it with me and to pass on the knowledge," she said in an interview with Mainstreet Nova Scotia on Wednesday. The box included poems, a manuscript and an unproduced play, inspired in part by her grandfather's work as a physicist. The play explores what happens when a man who works at a nuclear power station and his cat become exposed to radiation. "It's exploring the safety of nuclear energy, but also there's a sense of humour about the play as well," she said. Opens next month After reading the play, and being struck by its quality and resonance, Harper decided to try to see if anyone would be willing to mount a production. "I couldn't believe that my grandfather put so much time and effort into writing this," she said. "I just felt like I almost had a responsibility to … carry through and to see it performed." After attempting without success to get something off the ground in Halifax, she reached out to the University of Cambridge. She soon found a group of students eager to take it on. Approximately 70 years after it was first written, Not for a Cat: A Play for the Nuclear Age will premiere there on April 5. It will be followed by a discussion by Cambridge academics about the history and science behind the play. Harper will be in the audience that night.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'We are Canadian': 25 years later, Joe Canadian is back with a new patriotic video
The man behind an iconic Canadian beer ad is back, 25 years later, with a new patriotic rallying cry. But this time, it's not about selling drinks. Jeff Douglas, from Truro, N.S., became a national sensation after starring as flannel-wearing Joe Canadian in Molson Canadian's 2000 ad "The Rant," which was a huge success for the beer company and popularized the slogan, "I am Canadian!" On Wednesday, a new video appeared on YouTube featuring Douglas, back on stage in flannel, this time defending Canada from attacks by U.S. President Donald Trump, before launching into a similar string of boasts about his home country. "They mistake our modesty for meekness, our kindness for consent, our nation for another star on their flag," he says into the microphone after showing photos of Trump. "And our love of a hot cheesy poutine with their love of a hot, cheesy Putin." Titled "We are Canadian," the clip sees Douglas chest-thump about Canada with increasing intensity to applause from an invisible crowd, in front of a screen beaming bits of Canadiana, from ketchup chips to beavers to hockey players. The video had more than 43,000 views on Douglas's YouTube page by Wednesday evening, after being up for seven hours. Douglas, who became a staple on CBC Radio in the years since the 2000 ad — he's currently the host of Mainstreet Nova Scotia — said the video was produced by an anonymous collective of Canadian creatives and advertising professionals, all of whom donated their time and resources to get 'er done. It comes at a time of surging patriotism, when Canadians are boycotting American goods and booing the U.S. anthem at sporting events, amid a heated trade war with the U.S. and Trump's threats of annexing Canada as the "51st state." Douglas talked to CBC last month about the 2000 ad's recent resurgence in popularity, after it started turning up on TikTok. He said he had fond memories of the beer ad and was glad to see it resonate with people, but that he had also learned more about the darker aspects of Canadian history in the years since, and worried about the country sliding back into "blind patriotism." While "We are Canadian" is just as fiery and unapologetic as the ad he made in his 20s, it does briefly acknowledge a more mature outlook on national pride. "Are we perfect? No," he yells, while the screen flashes an image of a Mohawk land defender facing off with a Canadian soldier during the 1990 Oka Crisis. "But we are not the 51st anything." WATCH | Douglas reflects on his 2000 Molson Canadian ad:
