The late Janet Moore, the founder of l'Arche Cape Breton who was profiled here on her death in 2010, was a huge fan of Rita MacNeil. Janet's friend Mary MacDougall arranged for the two to meet at Rita's Tea Room on her 60th birthday, in 2007. Jenn Power, Atlantic Regional Co-ordinator for l'Arche (and my daughter-in-law) described the event on her blog. Those of us who love Janet were more than a little apprehensive as we prepared for the celebration. Janet is getting old, and showing her age. As with so many people with Down Syndrome, dementia is slowly creeping in and stealing...

17 April, 2013

At Barak Obama's second inauguration yesterday, American Idol star Kelly Clarkson added a poignant chapter to the storied annals of America's least offensive patriotic anthem, My Country 'Tis of Thee. Seventy-four years ago, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson perform at the association's Constitution Hall in Washington because the celebrated contralto was African-American. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest, and weeks of controversy ensued. On April 9, 1939, 75,000 people turned out to hear Anderson sing at an outdoor Easter Sunday recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Interior Secretary...

21 January, 2013

The following death notice appeared in Cape Breton yesterday. Joseph Peter MacLean Hello, if you are reading this I am gone from the earth. I am here with my parents Charlie and Katie (Campbell) MacLean, also my baby sister Mary Margaret is here too. I never had a chance to know her on earth as she died when she was one and a half years old. I lived for 67 years, it was a good life. I enjoyed playing music and speaking my beloved Gaelic — my native tongue. I played with the Boisdale Trio, the Cape Breton Fiddlers Association, made a CD,...

14 January, 2013

Cartoonist Kate Beaton has momentarily lapsed into prose, with a story about the Canso Causeway in a new Alberta-based literary magazine called, fittingly, Eighteen Bridges. I once watched a travel show where Billy Connolly, the Scottish entertainer, journeyed across Canada. In Halifax, he expressed a distaste for the whooshing tartans, skirling pipes, and other superficial expressions of Scottishness, which he deemed tawdry and inauthentic. It was disheartening, because if he really wanted authenticity, he could have just called me up. I would have recited one of those tragic old Gaelic songs that have been a Cape Breton staple ever since Authentic Scottish...

11 December, 2012

"Will it hurt your Celtic Colours," asks Sydney-born slide-guitarist John Campbelljohn, with more than a hint of sourness, "If I paint them blue sometimes?” Rev. Greg MacLeod has long argued that the genre we think of as Cape Breton music is not simply warmed over Celtic, but an amalgam of styles rooted in Scotland but also reflecting the Central European, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and Jewish immigrants who flocked here in the early 20th Century, when the opening of the steel plant triggered a coal mining boom. Here's the latest entry in the Not-Just-Celtic roster, courtesy of a three young Capers, Kyle Mischiek,...

10 December, 2012

Joan MacDonald (in red pajamas at left) starred as an increasingly cranky Bethlehem innkeeper deprived of sleep by the continuous nocturnal arrival of pregnant guests, angels, shepherds, kings, and ultimately a baby in l'Arche Cape Breton's annual Christmas pageant, this year titled, "One Night at the Inn." The musical troop played to an appreciative crowd at the Strait Area Education and Recreation Centre in Port Hawkesbury Sunday afternoon. Coralee MacDougall (seated, centre) played Mary....

09 December, 2012

Meet Juan Manuel "Bebi" Chavez, 19-year-old cellist with the Lanfillharmonic Orchestra, Cateura, Paraguay: This cello was made from an oil can, and wood that was thrown away in the garbage. The pegs are made out of an old tool used to tenderize beef. This was used to make gnocchi. Like the Facebook group here. A longer version is here. H/T: Jenn Power....

09 December, 2012

This show is not to be missed. It's rare for a single event in Atlantic Canada to bring together so many outstanding blues musicians from here and away. Organizers Katey Day and Bearly's mainstay Richard Stephenson hope to make it an annual event, and I hope they succeed....

13 October, 2012

They're back. (In case you spent the last 48 hours in a cave somewhere, here's the backstory.)...

10 August, 2012
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