“Close Readings” by Christine Sun Kim on view in Sound Etiquette. Courtesy of Scott Kedy.

The sound of biting lips softly. The sound of bones cracking. The sound of a light that never flickers. What we hear depends on who we are.

These personal politics of sound are the focus of a challenging art exhibition in Halifax. Sound Etiquette explores the social conventions around sonic communication the hearing community might not often consider—how we speak and hear, who gets to be heard, and when we are listening. It features international media artists from Canada to the U.K. whose works convey how limiting and inaccessible speech and language norms can be.

Christine Sun Kim, one of the artists in the show, coined the term “sound etiquette,” which refers to the unspoken rules of the hearing world that Deaf people are expected to abide by. For Kim, an American sound artist who has been profoundly Deaf—unable to hear any sound—since birth, these expectations range from not slamming doors to not eating potato chips too loudly. The demands imposed by sound etiquette send a loud message to the artist: Navigate the hearing world quietly and discretely.

“All of these rules assume that Deaf people don’t also participate in the sonic landscape,” says Halifax-based curator Amanda Shore, who produced the show throughout a professional residency at the Halifax media arts organization the Centre for Art Tapes.

The presumption that Deaf people don’t have a relationship with sound means that, too often, only hearing people are deciding what content is translated for Deaf communities. In the interpretation process, sounds and meaning may be overlooked, overstated, or misrepresented. The Deaf viewer’s experience is filtered—dependent upon the perspective of the hearing captioner. “The multidimensionality of sound, or many layered sounds, are often reduced to brief captions,” writes Kim in an artist statement. “The captioner chooses which sounds to reference and which to leave out.”

Video still of “Close Readings” by Christine Sun Kim. Courtesy of artist and Carroll / Fletcher.

Kim shifts that dynamic in her work “Close Readings.” The piece consists of four screens showing popular film clips that resonate with the theme of voice, including Ghost, 2001: Space Odyssey, and The Little Mermaid. Four of Kim’s Deaf peers caption the clips and she gave her friends free reign to add whatever sound cues they wanted—literal, conceptual or abstract. They transcribe the scenes with observant, poetic captions: “soft, endearing sigh,” “the sound of blame,” and “the feeling of whiteness in the dark.” Kim softly blurs the images to encourage viewers to read the captions instead of watching and listening. “These beautiful moments that might normally get lost in translation are things that these captioners capture—like the sound of a kiss or changes in light,” says Shore. Hearing people who watch the videos encounter them through the perspectives of their hearing-impaired translators.

The other works featured in Sound Etiquette are even more abstract. Videos by Canadian artist Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay and British Afro-Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce explore language and voice as they intersect with gender, sexuality, and song. In Nemerofsky Ramsay’s video “The Last Song,” a man singing an operatic aria experiences a sudden vocal change, his voice transforming from adult baritone to youthful soprano. The performance confronts the viewer with notions of hormones, manliness, and the potential foreignness of our own voices. And in Boyce’s “Exquisite Cacophony,” a female vocalist and male rapper perform alongside one another in a 35-minute blur of slam poetry and incomprehensible babble. The piece is overwhelming, touching on challenging topics like gender norms and sexuality, then moving to another subject so quickly that language seems to unravel.

“The Last Song” by Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay on view in Sound Etiquette. Courtesy of Scott Kedy.

Both Nemerofsky Ramsay and Boyce are hearing artists, so their work was not captioned. Shore felt it was important to centre Deaf audiences by translating all English audio, so she captioned Boyce’s work herself. “I knew that decision would be a bit of a risk because Kim’s piece is specifically critiquing hearing people captioning work for Deaf audiences,” she says. “But I prioritized the fact that I wanted to make this a show where Deaf audiences could experience every work in some way. I decided to take that risk in hopes that even if the captions seemed insufficient, it would actually enhance the message of Christine’s Sun Kim’s piece.”

Shore also reached out to Deaf Atlantic and the society of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Nova Scotians to promote the show. She had ASL interpreters translating her curator’s talk and she provided text materials for each work in the show. She says these types of accessibility measures are often overlooked in the art world: “I find now that my eyes have been open to this, I’ve been noticing that galleries are falling short, particularly when an exhibition is specifically about sound or video.”

Exquisite Cacophony by Sonia Boyce MBE on view in Sound Etiquette. Courtesy of Scott Kedy.

That said, there are a handful of Deaf art groups in the country leading the way. In Quebec, Deaf theatre collective Spill.PROpagation is performing in French, English, American Sign Language (ASL), and la Langue des signes québécoise (LSQ). In London, Ont., Vibra Fusion Lab is a collective led by Deaf artists using technology to create wearable pieces that translate sound into vibrations.

Shore hopes other arts institutions follow suit, making exhibitions accessible to hearing-impaired audiences, even if a Deaf artist isn’t featured. “I think it’s a big problem that we only think about these things as arts professionals when we’re held accountable in the work,” she says. “It should be something we think about through all of the shows.”’

The store has now moved to an all-ages format, eliminating the sexually explicit videos and magazines, says Taylor in an e-mail to This.

Venus Envy has locations in Ottawa and Halifax. The shops are trans-affirming. The stores also sell books and health products around safer sex, in addition to toys, and also offerworkshops on sex education. As its website says, “Anyone who’s turned off by traditional sex shops will find us a welcoming and informative place to get cool and sexy stuff.” On October 9 Venus Envy started a Pay it Forward Campaign, offering free binders and gaffs (similar to a jock strap) through their shops. This is possible through donations (which you can make here). “We’ve had a lot of interest in our new Pay It Forward campaign that was sparked by this whole kerfuffle,” says Taylor.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

World peace aside, the idea of putting people in a room with puppies to make them happy and help them relax is awesome, and it’s being done for real at Halifax’s Dalhousie University.

facebook.com/dalstudentunion

To help students get through final exam/project crunch time, the school’s student union has organized a three-day puppy room. On Dec. 4, 5, and 6, students will be able to—for free—relieve their stress by playing with some sweet little pups.

What makes the program even greater is that it’s done in conjunction with volunteers of Therapeutic Paws of Canada, an animal therapy organization that works to bring cats and dogs to places such as retirement and nursing homes, hospitals, libraries, and, of course, schools. “The medical establishment recognizes the benefits of therapy dog and cat programs,” it says on their website. “Connections with pets helps to calm agitated residents and stimulates wonderful conversations.” In order to be part of the Therapeutic Paws of Canada, animals must be at least one-year-old; a large crowd would be too stressful for the newborn cuties. Still, Dalhousie students can look forward to playing with all sorts of dogs: there’s a Labradoodle, Sheltie, Golden Retriever, Papillon, St. Bernard, and a Dalmatian. Arf!

I can attest first-hand to the power of the pup. When I was going through a bad break-up last April, another roommate happened to be dog sitting for one of her friends, and I ended up spending a good chunk of the weekend with that little white ball of fluff named Ella. It was like she knew I was sad. At one point I was siting on my bed, not really doing much else, and she walked over to me until she was literally standing with her hind legs in my lap and her front paws around my neck. She was giving me a hug! Looking back it was actually kind of surreal. How did she know??? I haven’t seen Ella since then, but I still consider her a pal for life.

And the positive effect of cute animals goes beyond comfort; it can actually help us be more productive, too. A few months ago a study by Japan’s Hiroshima University found that looking at pictures of cute animals could actually make people work harder and improve their concentration (by 10 percent!). Experts believe this is because things that give us happiness or joy actually motivate us, and that includes that adorable video of a puppy attacking a dandelion. SO. KYOOT.

Dalhousie isn’t the first university to bring baby dogs to campus to help de-stress students, though. As the Huffington Post Canada reports, both the University of Ottawa and McGill University have produced similar initiatives. According to the Dalhousie student union Facebook page, their puppy room idea came from a student who suggested it to their soapbox—an online forum where students can suggest ideas and voice their opinions. That in itself is a really great idea. So, all in all, it seems like Dalhousie is doing some really awesome things, and that’s, well, awesome.

You know what else is awesome? This sleepy puppy right here. *Number of cute images I looked at while writing this post: at least five. This puppy playing with a lemon is particularly cute.

Now get back to work!

Details of Invisible Publishing Titles. (L-R: Bats or Swallows, Ghost Pine, Fear of Fighting, This American Drive, Rememberer, The Art of Trespassing.)

Even when it’s not faced with an uncertain digital future, the publishing industry occupies a very uncomfortable place at the intersection of art and commerce. “Intersection” may not be the right word; it’s more like art is one end of a teeter totter and money is the other, with publishing in the middle, trying to make sure neither side bounces too hard or falls off or knocks the whole thing over. It’s a tough act.

Enter Invisible Publishing. Started in 2007 in Halifax by pals Robbie MacGregor, Nic Boshart, and Megan Fildes, Invisible chucked out the teeter-totter in favour of one giant sandbox. It’s a collective, in that beautiful old lefty way; they’ve just officially incorporated as a non-profit, though that term seems a little dry for a group that has so much fun together. The three chiefs have titles, sort of: Robbie is publisher, Megan is art director, and Nic, who has decamped to Toronto, is president, a title he can’t quite say with a straight face. They all have other jobs; Nic works at the Association of Canadian Publishers, Megan as production designer at Halifax’s The Coast, and Robbie spends his days at the Halifax Public Library—which means they don’t depend on Invisible to pay their rent. In fact, Invisible doesn’t pay them at all.

That’s right: they spend their evenings making books because they want to. And that sets the tone for the whole enterprise. They don’t publish books for authors, they publish with authors; writers can participate as much as they like, as can just about anyone else who’s keen to be a part of Invisible. So people offer to help. Jenner Brooke-Berger, for example, volunteered to read the slush pile and ended up doing promo and editing. Sacha Jackson, an editor, tackled marketing. And Sarah Labrie made an e-reader case for one of Invisible’s book covers. They even have a manifesto (not a mandate, a manifesto), which includes these lines: “We are collectively organized, our production processes are transparent. At Invisible, publishers and authors recognize a commitment to one another, and to the development of communities which can sustain and encourage storytellers.” Publishing as communal act: what a brilliant idea.

Speaking of brilliant, perhaps the most important part is the work they do. The folks at Invisible publish smartly: award-winning design; a forward-thinking and successful focus on e-books, complete with a super-smart blog; distribution and marketing savvy; and, most important, a discerning eye for talent. Commercial viability isn’t Invisible’s primary concern; good writing is. They’ve published 14 books, including Devon Code’s In a Mist, Stacey May Fowles and Marlena Zuber’s Fear of Fighting, and Ian Orti’s L (and things come apart), which recently won CBC’s audience-choice Bookie award. Invisible’s most recent release is about Montreal band the Dears.

Make no mistake: publishing is no picnic these days. Books are having a tough go of it in an age where people expect to get information for free. No one is in publishing for the money, but Robbie, Nic, and Megan take their labour of love one step further and make publishing a vehicle for creating community. With that, Invisible proves that publishing is not down for the count—not in the least.

Off the Hook uses the community-supported agriculture model to keep fisheries healthy and bring fresher fish to market. Photo by Sadie Beaton.

It’s hard to find fresh fish to buy in Canada. Even in Halifax, in view of the ocean, it takes at least six days for local fillets to make it from the fishing boats to the supermarket. Now, a group of five fishers are changing the way fish are caught and sold. They’ve founded Off the Hook, an organization they call a community supported fishery, inspired by the local food movement’s community supported agriculture (CSA) plans. As with a CSA, members pay the fishers at the beginning of the season in return for a weekly share of the catch.

This close connection between consumer and fisher is new to Nova Scotia. Ever since colonial times, the Maritime fishing industry has fed the long-distance market. The fisherman relied on the fishing lord, the middle-man, to buy the entire catch. By creating the cooperative and selling directly to the consumer in nearby cities, fishers are reinventing the supply chain. They can also make more money. Whereas the price at the dock for haddock is between 80 cents and a dollar per pound, members of the group buy the fish for $3 a pound, which means they’re helping to keep the fishers on the water.

And because they have a guaranteed market, fishers are able to fish with a bottom hook and line, a method that doesn’t damage ocean habitat—unlike the commercial fishery’s trawlers that drag a large net along the ocean floor, sweeping everything up with it—a technique that contributed substantially to the collapse of the cod fishery.

The fish is good too. As people picked up their fish on one of the final days of the season last fall, they planned dinners of fish tacos and baked fish with herbs. Selling fish that’s just hours out of the water, rather than days, Off the Hook is giving “fast food” a whole new meaning for its members.

A frame from Mike Holmes' new book, "This American Drive." Courtesy Invisible Publishing.

When Mike Holmes passed through Toronto on his reading tour last fall, he warned the audience, “I’m a cartoonist, not an author.”

Holmes is, in fact, both. His latest work, This American Drive, is not just a novel with pretty pictures. Weaving traditional storytelling and elements of the graphic novel with unexpected ease, the book is Holmes’s memoir of his road trip from Halifax to his then-girlfriend’s parents’ home in Texas. Along the way he passes through the America of our imagination—full of fast food joints and rock ‘n’ roll icons.

Aside from Holmes’s dry wit and and hilarious drawings, the book is also pleasant to the touch. Its thick, textured cover and smooth cream pages alert the reader that Invisible Publishing’s books aren’t your average corner-store-comics fare. Publisher Robbie MacGregor stresses the importance of making books that are as appealing to the eye as to the brain. This small Nova Scotia publishing house makes a point of finding new authors who might otherwise slip under the radar.

Holmes says he’s never really noticed a difference between Canadians and the world south of the border—a fact he drives home in his book with a humourous illustration of the first few miles beyond the Maine border: a Tim Hortons, a Walmart, and an Irving station.

“Oh Maine. Come join us,” he coaxes from the page. “We’ll treat you right.”

Pages Books' bare shelves in its final days of business. Photo by Rick McGinnis.

On a warm night in early September, several hundred people gathered at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel to hold a wake for a bookstore.

For 30 years, until its closing at the end of August, Pages Books, located in the heart of the city’s Queen Street West neighbourhood, had been one of the premier destinations for books on contemporary art and cultural and literary theory, while serving as a major conduit for the area’s small press.

As one speaker after another shared their thoughts on Pages’ closing, it became clear that no one is certain who or what will replace the role that Pages played in the city’s literary and artistic community. No one dared suggest the massive Chapters-Indigo bookstore just down the street.

The very fact that so many people came out to lament the closure of a store is a clear indicator of how important independent bookstores have been to their local communities. Yet, for all their social and cultural impact, the future of indie bookshops is in doubt.

The independent bookseller in Canada has had a rough ride in recent years. The disappearance of Pages follows hot on the heels of the closing, earlier this year, of Toronto’s Mirvish Books, perhaps Canada’s most prestigious art bookstore. Vancouver and Halifax have also been hit by a wave of bookstore closures; the once-thriving Duthie’s Books chain in British Columbia is down to only one location closed as of the end of February, 2010.

No fewer than three major upheavals have hit the world of book retailing in the past two decades. First came the big-box book retailers, Chapters and Indigo, now united as a near-monopoly, accounting for some 70 percent of book retailing in Canada; then came the internet and online book sales; and most recently the rise of the eBook, which promises (some would say threatens) to turn the book into yet another piece of software.

It was the first of those upheavals—the big-box retailers— that did the most damage to the independent neighbourhood bookstore. Some 350 indie bookstores closed across Canada in the past decade, and, according to Susan Dayus, executive director of the Canadian Booksellers Association, much of that had to do with the arrival of the Chapters chain.

“Those closures happened very quickly when Chapters opened,” Dayus says. “The leadership of Chapters was very predatory—they opened across the street or kitty-corner to successful bookstores. And those who didn’t have strong financial backing went under.”

Chapters seemed to have tried that strategy with Pages, setting up a sprawling location one block south of the landmark bookstore. But the strategy didn’t work.

“We beat them in the sense that we survived,” says Marc Glassman, founder and owner of Pages. He notes that, as Chapters and Indigo expanded across the city and the internet attracted book buyers, Pages’ own sales continued to climb. What killed Pages, in the end, was the rent. At $270,000 a year, Glassman’s lease was simply unaffordable for a mom-and-pop bookstore.

It’s a pattern that has been repeating itself across major Canadian urban areas. “Vancouver has lost an incredible number of bookstores,” James Mullin, co-owner of Vancouver’s Tanglewood Books, said in an interview last year. “I am literally in the last building in this area that I can afford, and it’s not because of the revenue or that business is terribly poor.” High property taxes and rental costs are hard on Vancouver’s independent businesses he said.

But the CBA’s Dayus says it’s not all bad news for indie booksellers. She points to the recent expansion of Winnipeg-based bookstore McNally Robinson into Toronto, where the store is distinguishing itself by offering not only books but daily events, such as readings and signings. [Update, January 2010 — About two months after this article was originally published, McNally Robinson declared bankruptcy and closed its Toronto and Vancouver locations. It still operates its original store in Winnipeg and a branch in Saskatoon]

“There is space in the market for good [independent] booksellers, those who tweak their product mix to the local community,” Dayus says. “Through the internet, you find the book you were looking for. Through the local bookstore, you find the book you didn’t know you were looking for.”

Glassman agrees. He sees the future of independent bookstores as being “a meeting ground for artists, creators, political thinkers. Chapters-Indigo will never be able to do that. You can’t impose a grassroots sensibility on something that started as a marketing concept.”

What do these events have in common? They nearly all take place in urban ridings that are held by the NDP or Liberals, with above-average Green support.

While rallies can certainly be helpful, is the geography of climate activism in Canada enough to mobilize the right electorate, and therefore, the federal government?

A new report that hit the press this week confirmed and added urgency to what we all knew — that “the Copenhagen conference is our last chance to stabilise climate at 2°C above preindustrial levels in a smooth and organised way…If the agreement is too weak or if the commitments are not respected, we will be on a path to 5°C or 6°C.”

Sounds like a call to action if I’ve ever heard one.

But the Minister of Environment’s response in one of just the opposite. He called on patience, to wait for perhaps more than two years just for a plan. And of course there have been plans before. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party maintains a strong lead in the polls and Stephen Harper gains strength in his prime ministerial approval ratings. And as this column has said before, he’s our man in Copenhagen…or since he’s not planning to attend, his people are our people.

While the government’s inaction could be answered with any number of pejoratives, we need to focus our days on what will move him.

To borrow a saying from past Animal Alliance – Environment Voters campaigns, politicians understand politics. And politics is about moving the vote. If we’re going to do that — make climate an election issue for the Tories — there will be a real need to target the party’s voter base, and their seats.

So now the tough one: what strategy should we use if we want to do a better job selling climate as a top issue to Conservative voters?

I don’t have the whole answer, but I think we’d better start a discussion and fast. Last week I wrote on the support we must build with people of faith and spirituality. Evangelicals in particular wouldn’t hurt. But there are many more in the Tory voter coalition: big business, small business, farmers, rural Quebecers, Southern Ontario suburban residents, older folk and the Wild Roses.

To target the voters of this country who turn to Harper for leadership, it’s time to show them that it’s just not there on this issue. We have to talk up the harm that dried-up soil and empty wells could mean to rural Canada. And the benefits that a real climate plan could mean in the way of small job creation, and a livable future for their grandchildren.

And we have to spread that message to those not yet convinced, from the Tim Horton’s in Antigonish to church basements north of Kelowna.

Frame from "Picture Start," a video installation screening as part of the Toronto International Film Festival.

It’s a familiar ritual in movie palaces and multiplexes all over the country. You find yourself in a lineup for a film that you know nothing about, aside from its reputation as a remarkable new work by a hot young director from the Carpathians, or maybe Polynesia. For sustenance, you have foregone popcorn in favour of an overpriced offering from the gourmet sandwich cart; it is the only food you will eat that day. You sit down among a chattering crowd of movie-industry insiders and/or civilians who’ve taken a week off work to do just this.

When you see the film, it is moving or hard-hitting or informative or not very good. Afterward, there is a stilted Q&A with the somewhat stunned-looking director, who does his or her best to answer questions that are incomprehensible even before they are translated into whatever language is required. You leave the theatre and head directly for the next lineup. The cycle begins anew.

Festival junkies seem to love it. But the trouble with turning moviegoing into such a special event is that it makes going into a theatre on any other occasion seem distinctly unglamorous. What’s more, the ever-shrinking piece of the marketplace for non-mainstream fare is indicative of a less-welcome phenomenon: films that generate buzz and sell out venues at festivals are failing to find audiences upon regular release — that is, when they actually stand to make a buck. And festivals may be hurting as much as they’re helping.

Festival-going is certainly more feasible than it’s ever been thanks to the abundance of events throughout the country. Though the Toronto International Film Festival remains the most prominent as a star magnet, Toronto is the site of dozens of other festivals, each with a special focus — documentaries, experimental movies, movies about music, movies for kids, movies with queer content, and so on.

Montreal has a comparable diversity, including two major fests in the fall. Indeed, it recently had three duking it out—in 2004, the government funding bodies pulled their support from the World Film Festival after a battle with founder Serge Losique and got behind New Montreal Film Fest, only to see Losique emerge victorious when the newcomer flopped.

This fall also features major events in Vancouver, Sudbury, Calgary, and Halifax. Audiences in Whistler and Kingston are not deprived since they get fests later in the winter. In fact, TIFF’s Film Circuit division circulates movies to 200 groups in 164 small towns and communities so that special festival vibe can be simulated just about anywhere that has a room large enough for a decent screen and another room to accommodate a discussion about recent Central Asian cinema.

Robust box-office numbers have thus far spared the movie business from suffering the same hardships as other industries, but the situation was already bad for smaller players before the recession hit. The so-called indie film boom of the ’90s was widely pronounced dead last fall when several mini-studios devoted to specialty titles were shuttered by their corporate parents. One of the movies to suddenly be left without a distributor was Slumdog Millionaire, which was very nearly lost in the shuffle. While hits like Slumdog, Juno, and Little Miss Sunshine have still done big business in recent years, far more titles disappear without a trace. That’s especially true of little movies that don’t happen to feature the same stars as their more heavily marketed Hollywood counterparts.

This year’s been particularly brutal for anything not starring fighting robots — in the first part of 2009, only Sunshine Cleaning, a cutesy dramedy starring Amy Adams, had the legs necessary for a smaller title to do decent business. Many rep theatres that used to specialize in second-run or art-house titles have discovered they’re better off booking double bills of ’80s favourites, cult curios, or even their own mini-festivals.

Programmers, theatre owners, and distributors are understandably flummoxed by the trend that’s emerging. Nearly every city in Canada boasts an increasingly cine-literate and enthusiastic pool of moviegoers who mobilize themselves with program books and flock to their favourite festivals. For example, Hot Docs had its biggest turnout ever in 2009.

And yet those audiences seem oddly disinclined to support the very same titles when they show up at the multiplex without that frisson of excitement only a festival can provide. Yes, Slumdog Millionaire went on to Oscar glory and boffo box office after winning TIFF’s People’s Choice Award last year, but the same fate was not meted out to past winners like Bella or Zatoichi.

Of course, one easy answer is that the festival crowd has seen these movies already and doesn’t need to rush back to theatres when they get a broader release. But even so, they’re evidently not doing much to stoke that ever-important word-of-mouth buzz that replaces a proper marketing campaign for most low-budget films (which, it should be noted, generally don’t earn screening or rental fees for use in festivals).

It may seem wrongheaded to blame festival-goers for their enthusiasm — they who are already three movies deep in a five-movie day, ready to make that next great discovery—but the delicate ecosystem required to support a truly vibrant film culture demands something more of them.