I was punching stations on the radio the other day, when a good song stopped my restless finger. I smiled when the announcer said the song was Valentine's Day, from David Bowie's new CD, The Next Day. He's still got it. Bowie hasn't resorted to cranking out past hits on autopilot, playing the same songs […]
Please join us at North York Central Library on Friday September 27 at 7:00 p.m. to see representatives from Ballet Jörgen, Canada’s fifth largest ballet company. Watch demonstrations and learn about the life of a professional dancer. For adults, teens, and children aged 6 and up. This Culture Days event will take place in […]
"There is no such thing as an insignificant human…" Margaret Laurence At the end of a visit to the lake blessed region around Bancroft, Ontario, I gave in to the temptation of a “book sale” sign. Going to book sales far from home seems to increase the possibility of finding something rare, weird or somehow, […]
Do you have a list of books you want to read? I will never finish mine, because I’m always adding to it. And if, by some miracle, I come to the end of it, there are plenty of list books I can consult, such as, 1001 books you must read before you die, or 500 […]
Did you know that Toronto has the only public museum in Canada south of the Arctic that is devoted to Inuit art? A range of art from different regions of the vast Canadian Arctic is displayed in the cool white interior of The Museum of Inuit Art, including sculpture carved from stone, antler and ivory, […]
There’s a song on Sarah Slean’s newest CD, Land and Sea, that’s been getting heavy rotation on the radio in my head. It begins, “This place was in horrible shape, and no one wanted to see…” When I first heard this line, I thought the song was about a home that was badly in need […]
This is your last chance, opera lovers! The fourth and final Canadian Opera Company opera talk takes place on Thursday March 28 at North York Central Library. Wayne Gooding, author, lecturer and editor of Opera Canada magazine, will discuss Richard Strauss’s controversial opera Salome. Salome has had a fascinating performance history due to its controversial […]
Where does a librarian go on a night off? To a book launch, of course. Actually, it was my first. I was amazed at how many people were crowded into the room at the Gladstone Hotel – all seats were taken, and many were standing — but then, there’s a lot of buzz around Andrew […]
Like many of you, I love a good story. I am also intensely curious about how writers create stories. Where do they get their ideas? What do they read? What inspires them? To me, writers are conjurers who perform a kind of magic, creating an imaginary world that seems so real I feel as though […]
La clemenza di Tito is one of the last works Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed before his untimely death in 1791 at the age of 35, when the curtains closed on a blaze of creativity from the musical genius; in the same year he completed La clemenza di Tito, he worked on The Magic Flute and […]