Back in February, Director and CEO of Canada Council for the Arts - a governmental entity which supports the arts and literary scene in Canada through grants, services, prizes and payments - issued a letter to the community in which it announced that the Council will be lowering its spending incrementally over three years, as part of the federal government’s Refocusing Government Spending initiative, for a grand total decrease of $9.88 million.

Y’all, I went with the flow, and it took me where I needed to go. Considering how I regularly preach my personal brand of spiritual surrender (a mish-mash of things said by far wiser people than myself), it seems only fair to keep you abreast of the results in my personal life.

I recently got together with local musicians Debbie Christ and Booster Fawn to talk about their projects, their upcoming mini-tour, their plans for the future, and staying sober in a city that loves to drink.

It was a genuine pleasure having coffee with Wine and Halva’s playwright and director, Deniz Başar and Art Babayants, respectively. The title of Başar’s script comes from a poem by Arkadaş Zekai Özgür, a queer, Turkish communist who ultimately died in his mid-twenties after being arrested and brutalized by police.

The majority of my favorite Montrealers are from away. When questioned about this, it took me a minute, but I came up with what I believe to be true: transplants to our fair city come here because they love the variety of Laid Back and World Class that we have to offer.

Held Wednesdays at the charming Notre-Dame-des-Quilles in the Mile End, the Polycule set out to provide a safe space where queer, trans and BIPOC performers would be welcomed to try out new material of any artform in a weekly open mic.

The hospital closed in 2017, bought in part by the City of Montreal with a plan to transition the site into a “shared public space”. The reinvented space, now called the Cité-des-Hospitalières, had strict guidelines when considering who would occupy the space, including preserving the spirit of the grounds, and responding to the needs of the community.

As you know, I generally like to say (or try to say) something profound in my essays. I like to bring the personal to the point of universality, and then shrink it back down to a pocket sized concept you can integrate into your life. In reality though, sometimes the real life shit closes down the uh, Idea Station, and my train of thought goes elsewhere.

My first experience with FringeMTL was in 2013. I’d not been living in Montreal long at this point, and at the time I was focused on poetry and spoken word performance. I wanted to get involved with something theatrical, and took the opportunity to audition for a production in that year’s program.

According to the Oxford dictionary, busking is defined as “the activity of playing music in the street or another public place for voluntary donations.” People have been busking for hundreds of years, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of (regardless of what your family says).