inhalo

24th Question.

Now this is more of a prompt for dialog than a question but here goes....First of all, I am an artist......more specifically an illustrator. Currently I design t-shirts for Harley-Davidson digitally, however I was muralist for a while and also dabbled in stained glass. I am just kind of generally wondering what your thoughts are on art in Canada. ANY THOUGHTS? I have been to Toronto and picked up the strong artsy vibe and I hear that B.C. is artist friendly. Remember I am in Wisconsin......not exactly New York or LA. So even if the only artist you know is the crazy lady down the street that sells paintings of her cats to church goers......I want to hear about it. Again I have no direct question in mind here. I am looking for what you think of art in Canada.

P.S. Thanks again guys you are teaching me a lot!

kramus

I notice that in the different interest courses I take and in the various small galleries scattered about here in the boondocks that you will see interesting and strong work everywhere. Unfortunately unless you end up in an area with a well developed artistic community (not where I am, unfortunately) those gems are scattered rather widely. Lots of grassroots interest all over the place, leavened with some exceptional talent here and there. If you like to hang out with senior ladies wielding watercolour brushes you are in for a treat

__________________
And now to disengage the clutch of the forebrain ...
I'm going with this - if you like artwork visit http://markfineart.ca

cellophanedeity

Like Kramus said, it really depends on where you are and what you're looking for.

We have a lot of "Canadian Art" which pretty much means "based on nature or animals or native culture, and is the least shocking stuff you'll ever see, ever." But outside of this, Toronto (the only real city I've been to ) has an awesome art scene. We even do pretty well as far as street art goes.

__________________
who am I to refuse the universe?
-Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

inhalo

25th Question.

Hrmmmmmmm. Did art talk scare you guys off? Anyway on to the next question. Structures in Canadian High School. What classes are elective and what are required to graduate? The should be slightly different by region. Are arts and music being cut to keep sports? What else is going on in education?

Charlatan

I don't know what's happening in High School these days... I haven't been in high school for almost 20 years... I will ask around.


With regards to the art question... the more urban you get the more "artsy" you will find it... by this I mean you can find thriving artist communities (much like you would in LA, San Fran, LA, etc.

There are also alot of rural areas with great artist communities (some are artisans and some are craftspeople). In the hills around my cottage, near the small towns of Killaloe and Wilno (in the Ottawa Valley) there is a thriving community where you can find a number of galleries and studios with everything from photography and paintings to sculpture, glasswork and pottery.

Cheap rural housing can let artists live a good life off their work.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Lead543

WOOOHOOOO! I can answer the high school question. It's different in every province. In Alberta, you need 100 credits to graduate. Credits vary depending on the length of a class. The average 5 credit course is 6 times a week. In Grade 12 you need 5 30 level courses to graduate. I have Art 30, Biology 30, Math Applied 30, Social Studies 30 and English 30-1. The Math program in Alberta is split into two streams, Pure and Applied. Pure is the difficult math, like calculus? algebra? and Applied math is hands on, life skills math. The English is in two streams as well, -1 and -2. The -1 is the higher end one, you NEED this to pursue post secondary. What I described is what you need to graduate and go onto post secondary. There are lower level courses you can take which will get you your diploma. Elective courses, well, all I can think of are things like Foods, Business Management, Shop, etc. As far as Arts and Music goes, EVERYTHING is being cut. In my old school however, sports teams earned their own money for travel and expenses. My old school also had a budget for the musical programs and anything above that budget was fundraised for. There are schools here that focus less on academics and more on Art. That's just Alberta however, high school education differs A LOT from province to province.

Martian

Arts are big in certain areas and not as much in others, just like any other part of the world. Montreal is a big art town and you got the right impession of Toronto. They both have a jazz festival every year and are generally pretty artist-friendly. In my town, which is very industrial, art takes sort of a back seat.

In terms of high school, I don't know what it is in Ontario anymore. It's just recently been changed so that there's no grade 13 and I know they have to do community service now, but apart from that I don't know what the requirements for graduation are.

cellophanedeity

In Ontario's highschools you need to have thirty credits to graduate. The manditory ones are as follows:

1 PhE
1 French
1 "Art" (music, drama, visual, etc)
1 Geography
1 Canadian History
3 Science (one upper year)
3 Math
4 English

I believe the rest are options. The options include:
religion, fashion, writer's craft, other histories, philosophy, literature, languages, technology courses, soc/anthro/psych courses and a bunch of other things as well.

__________________
who am I to refuse the universe?
-Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

Janey

Just to add to the Ontario points above, the curriculum has been going through a change for the past few years, so that the 5th year of highschool (old grade 13, or the OAC year more recently) has been dropped. Students graduating from Ontario highschools now have to conform to the new curriculm with it's mandatory credits as described by cellophanedeity.

In addition, all students must pass a Grade 10 literacy exam to get their diplomas. they have 3 attempts to pass (note the grading on this exam is pass/fail). If they do not pass it in 3 attempts, no diploma.

also mandatory, is the 40 hours of community service, alluded to by martian. All students receive a 'passport' or log, in which they keep track of community volunteering, all activities which have to be approved by the principal of their school. the hours are logged, and signed off. If they do not have 40 hours by the end of grade 12, they do not get their diplomas.


One of the big impacts of reducing the number of years in highschool to 4 (grade 12 matriculation) has been universities grappling with the influx of young frosh. It's not rare to see kids who are barely 16 in first year, with adults because they have progressed quickly through highschool. But the majority of frosh are now 17 instead of 18.

Yakk

Inhalo, the black font is nearly unreadable with the default TFP skin -- or at least the TFP skin I'm using.

Artists: well, there is alot of potters in Waterloo, and over in Stratford there is an 'art in the park' tourist-trap thing near the festival.

HS: I don't know the current system around here. =) Typically it changes every 5 or so years as a new administration head comes in and wants to leave a mark. =p~

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

inhalo

26th Question.

Plain and simple. What makes you most proud to be a Canadian?

Yakk

Our fair country, Canada, is north of USA.
Our Maritimes are lovely and our prairies give us hay.
Oh, you might think you Yankees are better than us Canucks.
Well, we don't need no microchips inside our hockey pucks.

We know that you've got Disney World,
and you keep it very clean.
Well we don't have Bob Dole,
but we can drink when we're nineteen.
We may watch your TV shows for hours and hours and hours.
We'll give you Alan Thicke, but Shania Twain is ours.

Chorus:
We're proud to be Canadian.
We're awfully nice to strangers, our manners be our curse.
It's cool in many ways to be Canadian.
We won't say that we're better, it's just that we're less worse.

Your beer's not too tasty and your weather can't be beat.
We all fly south in the winter time to escape the snow and sleet.
We're pleased to say that we've enjoyed all your southern charms.
But we get sunburnt when we exercise the right to bare our arms.

(Chorus)

Alanis Morrisette she is our latest pride and joy.(ohh)
She used to sing about high school dances and chasing after boys.(yeah)
But now she is fed up(fed up) and about as angry as can be.
She's got one hand in her pocket, and the other's on guard for thee.

We're proud to be Canadian.(Proud to be Canadian)
We're awfully nice to strangers, our manners be our curse.(we're just to darn nice)
It's cool in many ways to be Canadian.(it's cool cause its cold up here)
We won't say that we're better, it's just that we're less worse.

We're proud to be Canadian.(proud to be Canadian)
We're awfully nice to strangers, our manners be our curse.(Can I get the door for you ma'am?)
It's cool in many ways to be Canadian.(it's cool cause it's cold up here)
We won't say that we're better, it's just that we're less worse.

(Proud to be a Canadian, arrogant worms)

When i look around me, i can't believe what i see
it seems as if this country has lost it's will to live
the economy is lousy, we barely have an army
but we can still stand proudly because canada's really big
we're the second largest country on this planet earth
and if Russia keeps on shrinking, then soon we'll be first!
(as long as we keep quebec)

The USA has tanks, and switzerland has banks
they can keep them banks, they just don't amount
cause when you get down to it, you find out what the truth is,
it isn't what you do with it, it's the size that counts
most people will tell you that france is pretty large
but you can put fourteen france's, into this land of ours!
(it'd take a lot of work, it'd take a whole lot of work)

we're bigger than malaysia, we're most as big as asia
we're bigger than australia and it's a continent
so big we sell them butter, to go see one another
but we often go to other countries for vacations
our mountains are very pointy, our praries are not
the rest is kinda bumpy, but man do we have a lot!
(we've got a lot of land, we've got a whole lot of land)

so stand up and be proud and sing it very loud
we stand out from the crwod, cause Canada's really big

(Proud to be a Canadian, arrogant worms)

But, honestly, I'm proud of my country, not for being a citizen of it. Pride for being a Canadian -- I was just born here, that is no virtue.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

CandleInTheDark

I don't hold pride in something I had no choice in.

__________________
Where there is doubt there is freedom.

inhalo

Staying is your choice, is there pride in you choice?

CandleInTheDark

Staying isn't a choice, as it's hard to leave when for the vast majority of your life you've been under the 'control' of your parents.

That said, since I don't know any country any differently how can I have pride in staying? I did not create or construct Canada. It's just land with political borders. Pride in your country is as misplaced as pride in your sex, or race.

__________________
Where there is doubt there is freedom.

OFKU0

That's a good question. Even though it is hard for me to express my proudness in word form, the best example is when I am in other countries and am asked where I come from. I inherently feel proud of my country and proud to be apart of my country as a whole.

I think it is the different cultures and ethnicities that make up Canada. Sounds strange but whenever every culture in the world can live in a space and all get along, I feel there is alot of worth in that.

Of course there are things I'm not proud of in my country, but that is mainly political and/or bureaucratical. And that's minor lack of proudness.

One area I am not proud of, and no offence to anyone, is the rampant pro Canadianisms attached to sporting events. Someone winning a medal in the Olympics or a hockey team winning a world championship means nothing to me. Great individual or team efforts to win and good for them, they deserve it. But I get really tired of people accusing me of not being patriotic or proud of my country because I couldn't give a rat's ass about sporting events. Wanna make me a proud Canadian. Fucking get off your asses and VOTE. That's it.

__________________
" In Canada, you can tell the most blatant lie in a calm voice, and people will believe you over someone who's a little passionate about the truth." David Warren, Western Standard.

Janey

the last provincial election here was a really exciting time. People were abuzz. Everybody was talking about finally getting rid of the party in power (insert your choice of small L liberal or small C conservative - they are so much similar, that you might as well call them the Conserverals).

Finally people had a chance to get up and excercise their right to change the government. As a Canadian I am extremely proud of our long standing peaceful tradition of democracy. It had been a long long stretch of PC mandate and the populace was ready for a change, to vote in another government, maybe one that did not keep every promise like the incumbants did successfully.

And Voila! election day arrived, and Ontario did it! we changed the government! (well in name only - there is very little different between the red & blue boys). But wait, could it be true??? THE LOWEST VOTER TURNOUT IN HISTORY??? WTF???

I'm with you OFKUO. We have a country that is the envy of the world. yet, the majority of people are too bloody lazy to take an interest in voting.

I'm glad when I hear westerners whine about the federal elections and how their votes are meaningless after Ontario votes anyways, at least it shows some electoral intelligence. There is absolutely no excuse for not excercising your duty to vote.

- climbing down off of my rant-box.

inhalo

I don't mean to pry or instigate, I come from similar beliefs......but I also remove myself from beliefs a lot and play devils advocate. So I must delve further in my response. First off, the hardness of leaving does not equal lack of choice. It may sway your choice but it does not make it. If the control your parents keep is forcing you to stay it must be because you take pride in your family. If not, you would have no problem abandoning them. Being a Canadian is enabling you to be close to your family......is there no pride in that?

I do not believe that having pride in being a Canadian has to be the misplaced pride that you speak of. I could be, but unless you are in the military, government, or sports why would it be? I am looking for YOUR reason for being a proud Canadian.

Perhaps you are like me. I do not feel proud to be American in most senses. What I am most proud of was that I grew up in poverty with a single mother on welfare.......and my Mom was able to get an education, and then pass that privilege on to me. This can not happen everywhere. At the same time I hate almost everything that outsiders associate with American pride.

samiam

Being a slow responder, I would like to give an answer to Question 24. There are vibrant art communities in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria that I know of. The size and acceptance of a wide variety of art and media seem to be based on size of population. If you want a better sense of what is doing, look up galleries in each city and see what type of work they are exhibiting. This may omit the smaller galleries that will exhibit lesser known artists, but a little Internet research should give you an idea of what is going on.

Charlatan

I am not always proud of Canada but there are a lot of things that we do that make me very pleased...

Some of the things that make me proud:

*Our progressive politics (even our right wing is more left than the mainstream US).
*Universal healthcare
*That we are a mosaic rather than a melting pot... this is a very tough way to run a nation and is the main reason for much of our hand wringing over what it means to be a Canadian. Canada is the only nation in the world like this and as a result, I see us as the great nation building experiment. (I see us as less like the Europeans in this case than the Americans could ever dream of being).
*The fact that we have solved our differences peacefully. We are a nation without a civil war, born of diplomacy and compromise (the issue of Quebec is a work in progress as I see it and will be resolved amicably in the end). Not really all that many newly minted nations that can say this about themselves.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

inhalo

28th Question.

If you were to pick one person (or animal or thing) that best represents YOUR opinion of Canada.......What would it be?


Why?

BigBen

Well, Tommy Douglas, the whole "Father of Medicare" thing;

But I would pick my great grandfather. Coming from Ireland, running from the law, and homesteading on the prairies. Living in a sod hut, breaking ground, making a new home from nothing.

We are a tough stock, Inhalo. We don't show it, and we like to downplay our strengths. We are ready to party as soon as the music starts, and then get ready for another day of work when the sun comes up...

Those newfies are fucking crazy though. Stay away from the coast. You will thank me later.

__________________
3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

Charlatan

The stereotype is the beaver and it isn't as bad as one might think...

Beavers are:

1) Very quiet. You rarely notice them until you are right on top of them and then they slap their tale on the water, warning everyone else that there is danger
2) They work... like... well... beavers. We are a hard working nation
3) When cornered and when neccessary, beavers will fight. They are not to be messed with...
4) They know how to keep warm in winter...

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

kramus

I think that Pierre Elliot Trudeau was a classy world-class leader. He showed intelligence, style, humour, independance and grit.

__________________
And now to disengage the clutch of the forebrain ...
I'm going with this - if you like artwork visit http://markfineart.ca

cellophanedeity

I think I'm going with kramus on this one. I'm really sad I missed Trudeau, he seemed like a really cool guy.

Martian

I don't think Canada can be related to any one person or animal. Trudeau isn't a bad choice, but even then I don't think it's quite right. There's just too rich and diverse a cultural heritage here to boil it all down so simplistically.

I know, it's not a fun answer, but that's just how I feel.

inhalo

29th Question.

Perhaps this is the best question I can think of.....If you you had no family, no friends, and nothing tying you down....where in the vast land of Canada would you live......then tell me why?

Janey

Oshawa. It's just so damned exotic!

Charlatan

I would love to live in the Muskokas or Kawarthas and have an apartment in downtown Toronto.

I love BC but Vancouver just doesn't have the culture I crave (unless I decide I want to kayak and rock climb for the rest of my life).

Alberta is nice but suffers the same issue as BC.

Montreal runs a close second to Toronto but hands down I love my city. That said, I still want to live on a lake in the country... preferably one that doesn't allow powerboats and my nearest neighbour is a lake away

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

inhalo

Can you elaborate on this "culture" you crave, so I can get a better idea of where you are coming from?

BigBen

I would live in the north for the summer. There are pike there that are the size of my leg... no shit. There are some incredible fly-in fishing camps up north that you are actually the only one on the lake! You like rugged, you will never see anything like it again.

Too cold in the winter, though. I would have said Vancouver until a couple of months ago. Beautiful place, and everybody is soooo laid back. I have recently changed my mind, when in Montreal at the end of March. It was exotic, vibrant, european, cozy, every warm and welcoming pronoun you can think of.

__________________
3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

inhalo

Two of you have already used the word exotic in describing places in Canada. I guess when I think of exotic places...I think of places like Thailand, Seychelles, and Madagascar. What the hell is so exotic up there?

Janey

I love Montreal too, I could spend time there. I have lived in Vancouver, and I do not find it laid back at all. There seems to be eco-angst going on, where everybody is trying to out-green each other, to the point of actually refusing the insulated cup guard on their Starbucks, regardless of the way the cup wobbles in the holder of the Acura SUV...

All kidding aside, even though Van is gorgeous, I could only take it for about 6 months a year. After that I would live in a city like Montreal, where the laid back attitude is old and established. Laid back in the sense of live and let live.

Toronto is a good choice too, cause i am living here now. But I would enjoy the weather here more in the summer and fall.

Charlatan

Not enough live theatre, clubs, museums, etc... It is just too eco-centric... not a bad thing, just not my thing.


There is a lot that is exotic in the North. I am not familiar with West's north but in Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec you will find the Canadian shield and it is just awesome in a lot of places... I would put some of the areas head to head in a beauty contest with Thailand any day...

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

BigBen

__________________
3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

Martian

Janey - Tell me you're joking about Oshawa.

Oh, wait. I mean -

Come see the awe-inspiring GM plant and the majestic smoke stacks. Spend time with the friendly homeless population! Revel in the glory of the Oshawa Centre, a whopping two storeys of mall-rat packed, Old Navy clone store fun!

Anywhere in Canada? Well, it's a tough call, as there's a lot of places I haven't been, but there was some really nice country in the Algonquin direction when a buddy and me took a road trip up there last week. I suppose that would be a good place to settle down.

Charlatan

Oshawa is the great unappreciated city of Canada... It is my favouritre place to bypass on the 401... (I like the bridges).

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Janey

I've been told (many times) that I have a cornball sense of humour. I think that was just a polite way of saying 'annoying'.

having said that, martian, you paint a pretty picture of the might and majesty of GM by Lake...

Sticky

Where is question 27?

__________________
Sticky The Stickman

Charlatan

That Sticky... such a stickler.

Question 27 is only for those of us who are cool enough to rate being asked question 27... sorry to hear you didn't stack up Stinky...

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke