Contributor
The story of this electro-pop duo begins with a pair of high school sweethearts and arrives now at their debut release, Goodbye Friend, Welcome Lover, which reached number two on the Canadian campus radio charts. We got the inside word from them on the music that inspires them. They started with the Delorean song, Grow [...]
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Reader Find
I really like Canadians, well the Canadians in this film — Who Loves The Sun — anyway. I don’t know if most Canadians are like this, but these characters are going through a fair bit of turmoil, however, they handle it with enough entertaining reserve to make for great viewing. It’s all done with a lightness and sense of humour that doesn’t detract from the gravity of the issues, but somehow adds complexity and depth.
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Reader Find
The very humor of Kate Beaton’s latest web comic series, Canadian Stereotype Comics, is predicated on the stereotype that Canadians are too non-descript to really have stereotypes. Plus, Beaton herself hails from the Great White North. Is that totally meta or what?
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Contributor
Inventive, quirky, and a creative force in the Canadian wine industry: this is Blasted Church Vineyards. Taking its name and imagery from the true story of a mining era church that was dismantled by dynamite then moved to town where the vineyard now lies, this small estate winery is a true tour de force. The whimsical cartoon like design, originally developed by the cool cats at Vancouver-based marketing and design shop Brandever Strategy, reinvented the vineyard a few years back, turning Blasted Church into one of Canada’s most celebrated wineries.
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Reader Find
Canadian painter Aleksandra Rdest looks to forms in nature — clouds, cells, sound waves — for a jumping-off point for her large-scale abstract paintings. The translucence she achieves with acrylic gives her pieces a luminous, backlit quality that captivates the viewer much in the way that Mark Rothko’s paintings do.
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Reader Find
Known more for its proximity to bountiful oil-fields than for its architecture, the town of St John’s, in Canada’s Newfoundland, has enjoyed a cultural revival in recent years based on a mini-economic boom and its quirky hilly terrain, upon which rows and rows of colorful houses have been built.
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Reader Find
Canadian artist Stephen Ibbott’s paintings were on exhibit this summer at Scott Richards Contemporary Art in San Francisco. He is also showing at Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal.
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Contributor
Like maple syrup and ice hockey, nothing says Canada more than poutine: French fried potatoes smothered in cheese curds and then topped with thick, rich gravy. And while most Canadians will argue that the very best poutine can only come from Quebec — where the idea was born — Poutini’s House of Poutine, in Toronto, are looking to give the Quebecois a run for their money. Mon dieu! Here, at Poutini’s House, Nick and Fred Laliberte are serving up what has been voted the very best poutine in Toronto.
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Contributor
Throw out that notion of kitschy maple syrup bottles shaped as log cabins. Canadians now have Drip: a fresh, simple design that was handled with purity and thought, reflecting the product within. These luxury-inspired bottles, reminiscent of old school medicine jars, boast copy that echoes Drip’s concept — delicate, straightforward, delicious syrup. The bottles and [...]
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Reader Find
Eve and Eryn, two amazing Free Spirit Sphere tree houses, are located in Vancouver, Canada, high up in the canopy of the West Coast rainforest. They are, as their creators describe, ‘suspended like pendants from a web of rope’ from the trees. This is a unique way of creating unobtrusive means of living amongst nature. Insulated and set up for one or two people to stay in, these spheres allow people to experience the ‘energy shift’ that occurs ‘once one breaks contact with the ground’.
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Reader Find
While a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s in NYC is a transcendent experience, its relatively high price, its enormous proportions, and the hassle of the lines and payment system of the establishment make it a rare treat. If only we all lived in Montreal, home of Schwartz’s, where they serve some of the best smoked meat [...]
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Reader Find
Canadian artist Brandon Jan Blommeart’s trash monsters lumber across beautiful landscapes, happily playing with each other as if they had inherited the earth from their human creators.
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Reader Find
Pure graphic simplicity is how Canadian illustrator Raymond Biesinger swings. Employing various textures, typography and found elements throughout his heavily conceptual creations, Beisinger presents a wonderfully consistent body of work.
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Contributor
I used to edit a free street mag in Australia called STU, so I was impressed when I came across a similarly sized one out of Montreal called SNAP!, which expertly covers fashion, art, music and other creative pursuits with a healthy focus on spotlighting local creatives. We checked in with Hannah Byrne, who along with Shayl Prisk is one of the two founders of the publication, and asked her about the spark behind the launch of SNAP! ‘Initially the spark came when Shayl and I sat down after a long day in our kitchen jobs and decided we wanted to do something different, more creative. Over the course of several months we brainstormed over lattes and pints and talked about exactly what kind of magazine we would want to read and what kind of stories we would want to tell. It was a really exciting time, starting this thing from scratch and deciding where it was going to go’.
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Contributor
I visited Toronto for the first time a couple of weekends back to check out the Luminato Festival and explore the city itself, which is being promoted as a more socially progressive and cultural alternative to other Canadian hotspots such as Montreal and Vancouver. And for good reason. Toronto is a fascinating place on many levels: from the architecture in the city center, which seamlessly combines the ornate majesty of pre-1940 buildings with the glistening facades of more contemporary designs; to the long, straight roads which defines movement though the city and contains an assortment of hidden gems; to the overall cleanliness of the streets and the overwhelming sense that a bustling creative community is doing all it can to foster the careers of others around them. It was an eye-opening experience. I left the city with a feeling that Toronto is very much on the rise, casting aside its wintry persona and thriving on the back of what is clearly a dynamic and exciting creative scene. Photos by Alison Zavos
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