Toronto’s Nuit Blanche is an all-night arts festival with “a mandate to make contemporary art accessible to large audiences, while inspiring dialogue and engaging the public to examine its significance and impact on public space.”

However, despite these admirable intentions, Nuit Blanche’s corporate presence is simply too great. After all, Nuit Blanche, as the countless promotional posters endlessly repeat, is officially called the “Scotiabank Nuit Blanche.”

For those interested in a non-corporate alternative to Nuit Blanche that also celebrates art and showcases some of Toronto’s lesser-known artists, there is another event called “Les Rues des Refuses” or The Street of Rejects. Creator and curator Stephanie Avery describes the event as “realizing the spirit of Nuit Blanche…of making art more accessible and interesting for people.”

After her art installation didn’t make it into the 2008 Nuit Blanche, Stephanie did not back down. Determined to display her art, Avery decided to find and connect with other artists that weren’t officially part of Nuit Blanche but still wanted to share their art with the public.

This Saturday, October 3rd marks the 2nd annual Les Rues des Refuses. The primary goal, says Avery, is to “create publicity for alternative pieces that otherwise would be discovered only by happenstance during Nuit Blanche.” Sonya JF Barnett, Les Rues des Refuses media maven, firmly believes that “artists who aren’t as well known need some kind of voice,” which their alternative event provides.

This year’s Les Rues des Refuses involves a growing list of more than 30 artists. Like Nuit Blanche, some exhibits will be displayed all night. The program schedule is available on Les Rues des Refuses’ website and in artsy shops around Toronto (try Hartbeat 960 on 960 Queen St. W.) Avery and Barnett carry all costs associated with organizing and promoting the event, proving that corporate sponsorship is really not necessary. The response so far has been amazing; “people in general seem to react in such a positive way,” says Avery.

Artists that want to be part of this event are encouraged to consult the website or email Stephanie at ruesdesrefuses at gmail dotcom. It’s not too late to be part of the online program schedule.

Avery and Barnett were looking for an alternative to a corporate event and ended up making their own. “If you want something done,” they tell me, “you need to do it yourself.”

"A View of the Taking of Quebec, 13 September 1759" an engraving by Laurie and Whittle. Image courtesy National Archives.

I feel like I’ve been re-reading the same article all week. Politicians quoted in The Globe and Mail, National Post and others talk about this weekend’s Le Moulin à Paroles like it’s the last nail in Confederation’s coffin.

“There was the death of a man. These were tragic events,” Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, Josée Verner told the Globe when explaining why a public reading of the Front de libération du Québec’s 1970 manifesto is inappropriate.

Most of the articles focused on the pros and cons of reading the manifesto. The “pro” camp says it’s a chance to finally see it for what it really is, almost 40 years later: out-dated Marxist drivel. The “cons” see it as an affirmation of the separatist message and violence.

This debate isn’t really about separatists versus Canadians. This is about the right a group of festival organizers has to choose the material they feel best exemplifies the spirit of Quebec in the 250 years since the Plains of Abraham. Simply put, this is about free speech.

Despite what you’ve read, it’s not the only reading at the weekend-long spoken word event. It features 100 speakers reading recipes, novels, theatre pieces, poems, songs, a botany text and two other manifestos: those of Louis Riel and Louis-Joseph Papineau.

Riel sentenced Thomas Scott to death in 1869, for showing a disrespect to his provisional government, which would later become Manitoba. Disrespect wasn’t a capital offense under Riel’s government, but he felt it the only way to send a strong message to Canada.

Papineau lead the Lower Canadian Rebellions of 1837 against British rule in Quebec. Papineau and his Parti Patriotes wanted to keep French revenues out of the pockets of British politicians and to gain greater control of civil affairs in Quebec. A Montreal subway stop, several parks, and a federal election riding bear his name. His home is a national historic site.

The major difference between the FLQ manifesto and those of Riel and Papineau is that the latter are so far in the past that they are little more than dusty facts to most of us. 1970 is not so far removed from our collective memory. To my mother’s generation, the events of October 1970 are real memories, just as my generation will remember September 2001. To Quebecers, these memories are made all the more real by their proximity.

The FLQ bombings and the death of Pierre Laporte are part of a dark time in Canadian history. Reading the manifesto may offend some, but it’s a part of our history nonetheless.

Dianne Trottier, a 33-year-old tenacious journalist killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street in her electric chair. CANADIAN PRESS/CBC

While cyclists in Toronto rallied to remember Darcy Allan Sheppard, the cyclist killed after allegedly being dragged along Bloor St.  by a car driven by former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant, another car accident was causing comparative degrees of outrage at the eastern edge of the country…

and this one embodies my worst fear.Toronto resident Dianne Trottier was described as  “feisty” and “outgoing” whether she was chasing down a story as a producer for CBC News: Around the World, or chasing accountability when it came to disability issues. While crossing a crosswalk in Fredericton, New Brunswick on Aug. 29,2009 in her electric wheelchair, she was hit and killed instantly by a hit-and-run driver.

While it has me shaking my head that this senseless tragedy was made worse by a driver who was cowardly enough not to stop and face the music, I found myself knowing full well that this could have just as easily been me. It was a deep-in-the-bones realization.  The type that strikes you in the middle of the night as a single-digit-age kid, when it suddenly dawns on you for the first time that one day, any day, by virtue of the fact that you are a living being, you will die and there is nothing you can do about it. I’d call it a kind of out-of-body chill.

Trottier’s death just reaffirmed something I’ve always felt with some certainty since I moved to Toronto in August 2003. If Vegas odds-makers were taking bets on the circumstances of my death, the line on “Getting Hit by a Car While Navigating a Crosswalk” has got to be 2:1. After all, I’ve had so many close calls already.

I’ve lost count of the number of times a car has turned into the middle of the crosswalk, while I’m half way to the other side and the walk sign is on. So many times I look up only to find some dumbfounded, apologetic driver behind the wheel, while I’m thinking about lodging my cane through his windshield.  What about those times a car has sped through the crosswalk without looking back as I’ve already started my journey. Luckily, they’re close enough to shave the hairs off my chest, but that’s all. Had I been going just a little bit faster, I could have been the next casualty, just like Dianne.

Patience is a virtue, but so few drivers actually use it. Combine that with the fact that scooters  and electric chairs are silent, have low visibility and are lower to the ground than a bike or a pedestrian and you have a wicked recipe for street pizza. Don’t even get me started on what happens in cases where the battery happens to be low on power—that’s when you really start to put your life in God’s hands. Plus, just because cars yield for you on one side of a crosswalk, doesn’t mean cars in oncoming lanes won’t try to overtake them. My friend told me this is illegal, but you wouldn’t know it on Toronto’s streets. What about the guys who force pedestrians to bob and weave between the cars because some driver finds himself parked in the centre of the crosswalk? Some drivers even make it worse by backing up into the car behind them to try and let you through, only to exacerbate things thoroughly.

I’m so afraid, that when crossing the street with able-bodied people, I find myself on the inside lane. I figure the more able-bodied pedestrians I can put between me and oncoming traffic, the better the chances a car will hit them first and their bodies will shield me slightly from impact.  So if you’re walking with me and I let you step off the curb first, it’s probably because I’ve set you up to be my sacrificial lamb in case of emergency.

I learned pretty early on that sometimes survival of the fittest doesn’t necessarily refer to physicality.

While cyclists fight for more bike lanes and respect on Toronto roads, unless something in Toronto traffic changes, the next time you see me I may be splayed out between the yellow lines under a white sheet.

These kinds of problems have been around for years, of course, and the most visible public activism around bikes and cyclists’ rights have been the Critical Mass bike rides, where groups of cyclists take an unplanned route through the city, filling at least one lane of traffic, to prove the point that, as the Critical Mass slogan goes, “We’re not blocking traffic—we are traffic.”

However, Critical Mass has also driven away some cyclists who don’t like the tone of the rhetoric or the behaviour of the participants. One of the Critical Mass refuseniks, Jennifer Watkiss of Vancouver, recently started a new bike ride that aims to be a more polite alternative, called Critical Manners.

The first ride, on August 14, attracted about 100 cyclists. Reviews on the group’s website were generally positive, but not without criticism: Changing traffic lights splintered the mass into several groups, and a varied body of hand signal knowledge resulted in a few close calls when inexperienced cyclists stopped suddenly. The next ride takes place on September 11.

Q&A:

This: What made you want to start Critical Manners in Vancouver?

Jennifer Watkiss: The idea came about for the Vancouver police when the Vancouver Police issued their first-ever warning about a Critical Mass ride, for the July 2009 ride. The June ride had had a number of altercations, they had blocked off one of the major arteries in and out of town, and the July ride was set to come up on a long weekend, being the last Friday of the month. So the VPD issued a warning. I was explaining what the ride was to a friend of mine who had been out of the country for the past ten years, and was wondering what the fuss was all about. I’d always been frustrated with Critical Mass, thought it wasn’t the right thing to represent cyclists in Vancouver and hasn’t been for quite a while. So I was explaining to him what this was, and looking up the origins of Critical Mass found Critical Manners, which started in a similar response in San Francisco in, I believe, 2007. So I thought, wouldn’t that be a nice thing to do, and I figured I’d suggest the idea and, you know, 10 friends would show up, but cyclists in Vancouver really jumped on the cry and started to invite their friends, and pretty soon we had about a hundred people come out for a ride about three weeks ago.

Other than the people who came out to ride, what kind of response have you heard?

Most of the feedback has really come from cyclists who are frustrated with Critical Mass. It’s gotten a reputation for being quite antagonistic, and it’s sort of the most noticeable bike protest in Vancouver. So motorists are frustrated with it, and a lot of other cyclists are frustrated with it because they don’t want to be painted with the Critical Mass brush. Because the general consensus is that Critical Mass riders—or that cyclists, because of Critical Mass—are sort of kamikazes and civil disturbers. The biggest response was from cyclists, and then the media really picked up on it, because with the [VPD’s] announcement to stay out of downtown, a lot of people were really, really offended by that, rightly so, because why should they be held hostage downtown by a couple thousand cyclists who think they should have the right to block off traffic without any sort of plan, one Friday every month, especially considering the level it had gotten to.

What are the differences in terms of the actual ride? How is Critical Manners different from Critical Mass?

This is really about taking a positive action to show that something different can be successful. So there are two core differences: one is that Critical Manners has a planned route. One of the biggest disruptions with Critical Mass is that without a planned route—just the people in the front at any given time decide where to go—it throws off traffic, because no one knows where to avoid. Either you avoid the entire downtown core, or you just kind of cross your fingers that you don’t cross their path. So there’s that one. We always have a planned route, so that if anyone should feel the need to avoid us, they can. It’s also a courtesy to the city, there are lots of events that go on, and we don’t want to clash with film shoots, or other special events that people are planning, or road closures. The other thing is we truly ride as part of traffic. So we don’t take up a whole lane of the road, we ride as you would expect cyclists to ride every day. That’s largely single file: mostly because that’s part of the law in B.C., it’s part of the Motor Vehicle Act that bicycles are not supposed to ride “two abreast”, is the specific wording, and bicycles are to ride as far to the right as is practical. Often that means bike lanes, otherwise it’s to the right hand side of the road, that magic sweet-spot where hopefully you won’t get hit by a door opening in front of you, or crushed by traffic that’s going the same direction.

What we’ve seen in the last week, [with the Darcy Allen Sheppard case] is that the low-level, simmering antagonism between cyclists and motorists has boiled over in the last couple of days. Did you feel the same level of ambient hostility to you, as a cyclist, from motorists before you started doing Critical Manners?

Quite a lot. I’ve commuted almost every way you can think: bike, transit, car, walking, and I know, before I started biking regularly about four years ago, I was one of those drivers who thought, “Ugh, bikes, they’re horrible.” Just as a general sentiment I was willing to paint cyclists with the brush of acting like the laws didn’t apply to them. I’ve certainly felt that same hostility now as a cyclists, despite doing my best to try to ride within the rules of the road, in a safe and respectful manner. And I know other people do too, but there is certainly that low-level antagonism here, and there has been for quite some time. It’s one thing that keeps people from getting into cycling, is they just don’t feel safe. The cycling resources are getting better, but it feels still like “Bikes vs. Cars,” instead of everyone sharing the road. So Critical Manners is certainly a step to try to alleviate that, to put out some respect from cyclists for all road-users, in the hopes that will generate a bit more good feeling from everyone.

Some of the sentiments we’ve heard around here in the last few days are that people don’t want “good feelings”—what they want are hard-enforced laws, better bicycle infrastructure that will make bicycling safety the default rather than the exception on city streets. Critical Mass had always been what people felt was a necessary piece of civil disobedience in order to call attention to these issues. Do you think there’s legitimacy to that?

Absolutely. When the mass rides started, I certainly think they went a long way in drawing attention to cyclists, and saying “We’re out here, and when we get together as a group, we’re not small.” Vancouver, I feel, has gone quite a long way over the past few years, of trying to implement cycling infrastructure. The biggest problem with Critical Mass as it stands right now is that it has gone beyond bike activism and it’s attracted anarchists, basically. I’ve heard the sentiment often that “I love Critical Mass and I love to disturb the peace,” in words that aren’t quite that diplomatic. So there are also a number of cycling organizations that are doing what I think is a correct next step, and Critical Manners certainly follows with them, in saying, “Let’s use the bike resources, or ride as safely within the law as we can,” and when that’s not working, let’s demonstrate that to the city. Our city council right now is quite committed to bike resources, so let’s go out and show them we need new cross-town routes. We have a lot of North-South routes but only one East-West route that’s designated with a bike lane. We need more dedicated bike roads, not just bike lanes. Things like that. The Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition organizes rides to evaluate the current state of bike routes, so they go out and ride and say OK, this route has had a lot of increased traffic over the last little while, it’s less safe for bikes, or if new lights have been put in or not. There’s a lot of work going on in terms of continuously evaluating and improving the cycling infrastructure, and a lot of people don’t see that, because all they see is a mass of beer-drinking, pot-smoking, crazy people on bikes screaming at them.

Vancouverites attending National Aboriginal Day events in 2006. Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Freedryk.

It’s only fair that the 11-day Celebrate Canada! festival should kick off with National Aboriginal Day. After all, what better way to commemorate this crazy multicultural mosaic of a country than by launching its celebration in honour of the first people to make it awesome?

We’ve compiled a list of things to see and do this weekend. Just click through after the jump to see the list.

The following is a sample of the weekend’s upcoming National Aboriginal Day celebrations, by region:

Atlantic Region:

Antigonish
National Aboriginal Day Celebrations
June 21, 2009
Paq’tnktk Powwow Ground
Antigonish, Nova Scotia
Contact: Rose Julian, 902-386-2781

Charlottetown
National Aboriginal Day Celebrations
June 21, 2009
Confederation Landing
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Contact: Jamie Gallant, 902-892-5314

Fredericton
National Aboriginal Day Celebrations – Union with our Elders
June 21, 2009
St. Mary’s First Nation
Fredericton, New Brunswick
Contact: Allan Polchies Jr, 506-458-9511

St. John’s
National Aboriginal Day Celebrations
June 21, 2009
St. John’s Native Friendship Centre
St. John’s, Newfoundland/Labrador
Contact: David Penner, 709-726-5902

Ontario Region:

Toronto
Kahontake Kitikan Celebration- National Aboriginal Day Recognition
June 22, 2009, 12:00 – 3:00 PM
St George Campus, University of Toronto
(East side of Hart House)
Contact: rochelle.allan@utoronto.ca

Ottawa
Family Fun Day – National Aboriginal Day
Sunday, June 21, 2009, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
National Gallery of Canada
Ottawa-Gatineau (NCR)
Web: The National Gallery of Canada

Noongam Traditional Powwow
June 19-20-21, 2009
Dow’s Lake
Ottawa (Ontario)
Web: Noongam Traditional Powwow

Prairies Region:

Calgary
Celebrate Aboriginal Awareness at Heritage Park Historical Village
June 21, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Heritage Park Historical Village
Calgary, Alberta
Contact: Jo Morris, 403-268-8556
Web: Heritage Park Historical Village

Edmonton
Weekend Festival – Day 1
June 20, 2009 (noon – 6 pm)
Alberta Legislature Grounds, 10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta
Contact: Heather.Poitras@ainc-inac.gc.ca, 780-495-6728
Web: City of Edmonton: National Aboriginal Day

Weekend Festival – Day 2
June 21, 2009, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Alberta Legislature Grounds
Edmonton, Alberta
Contact: Mary Dion, 780-452-6100
Web: Metis Child & Family Services Society

Regina
Regina National Aboriginal Day Celebrations – Wascana Park
Sunday, June 21, 2009  10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Wascana Park, near Royal Saskatchewan Museum
Regina, Saskatchewan
Contact: Orenda Yuzicapi, 306-596-5131
Web: Regina National Aboriginal Day Celebrations

Winnipeg
National Aboriginal Day – Time to Celebrate
June 21, 2009 10:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Indian and Metis Friendship Centre, 45 Robinson Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Contact: Clayton Sandy (Event Coordinator): 204-945-8319
Web: National Aboriginal Day – Time to Celebrate

British Columbia Region:

Vancouver
National Aboriginal Day Celebration
June 23, 2009, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
745 Clark Drive
Vancouver, British Columbia
Contact: 604-872-6723

Kamloops
National Aboriginal Day – Simon Fraser University (SFU)
June 21, 2009, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
McDonald Park, North Kamloops
Kamloops, British Columbia
Contact: 250-828-9799

Quebec Region:

Montreal
Solstice des Nations – Open to all
June 21, 2009, 10:00 a.m.
First Nations Garden, Montréal Botanical Gardens
Montréal, Quebec
Contact: Land InSights, 514-677-1377 (Info-festival line)
Web: First Peoples’ Festival 2009

Trois Rivières
Benefit day for the future Native Friendship Centre
June 21, 2009, 11:00 a.m.
Espace de créativité émergente l’App’Art, 45 St Antoine
Trois-Rivières, Quebec
Contact: 819-694-1843

Nunavut Region:

Arctic Bay
RCMP Barbeque
June 21, 2009
RCMP Detachment
Arctic Bay, Nunavut
Contact: S/Sgt Steve Wright, 867-975-4413

Iqaluit
Alianait Aboriginal Day Concert
June 21, 2009
Nakasuk School Parking Lot
Iqaluit, Nunavut
Contact: Heather Daley, 867-979-6468
Web: Alianait Arts Festival

A much more extensive list can be found here.

And of course, you must be dying to know, which word was the lucky winner?

Web 2.0. That’s right, of all the delicious, erudite, decorous, grandiloquent, and downright abstruse words in the English language, Web 2.0 is magical number 1 million. They wanted to choose something timely, Payack says, so people could look back hundreds of years from now and find reflected in that one single word an entire cultural moment. The words that cluster around 1 million, which were considered and then rejected for the place cultural immortality, also say much about who we are, and apparently don’t want to be remembered as: Jai-Ho, for example-999,999; N00B-999,998; carbon neutral-999,995; octomom-999,993. And of course, 1,000,001, Financial Tsunami. That’s two words, which confuses me, but moving on…

As this multicultural bunch of words indicates, the growth of the English vocabulary is also intrinsically linked to its increasing global spread. Some 1 billion people worldwide speak English. That’s still slightly below Mandarin, but this figure does not include the 750 million more who can’t claim fluency but likely understand English well enough to listen to some English news or talk to an American tourist. At minimum, the ready supply of recent college grads with a lust for travel and a need for cash guarantees this number will continue to grow. Yet one question remains, more disquieting than any of the rest: As English enjoys laudable growth in both its vocabulary and its global reach, is it also fulfilling its most lofty ambition of bringing the world closer together?

Amongst my demographic of the young and university-educated, it’s almost impossible to find someone not at least conversational in English. Yet while for most people of my generation, the world has become a linguistically borderless place, most of us still choose to friend and marry within our own cultural circle. My South American friends say it’s because others don’t dance as well or understand family in the same way. My Turkish friends say friendships and relationships require a high level of mutual respect and deference. My European friends look for the romance of difference, where I want the stability of compatibility. We are accustomed to thinking of these as the kind of broad, cultural generalizations open communication will allow us to erase. But this is not my voice. It is the confident, fluently English voice of friends from other cultures, and right now they are using it to articulate their differences.

A recent headline in Foreign Policy speculates: “The key to U.S. world domination: We speak English.” The continued spread of English will ensure the long-term survival of U.S. values, like peace, democracy, and the free market, the article suggests. There are any number of problems with that statement, but the one that bothers me most is the suggestion that a common language is somehow enough to save the world. As children we learn language through fairytales, which makes words seem like magic. Eventually we realize that words themselves are static, and our imaginations are responsible for creating magic. Now too we are poised to comprehend each other, without truly understanding one another, unless we see that a common language is not the end but the starting point.

So happy 1 million, English. May you truly be the vehicle by which we change the world. And may I also live 114 years so I can one day get around to learning what number 999,988, chengguan, means.

Photo credit Melanie Gordon

What was shocking, fascinating, a little destabilizing though was that these pieces didn’t just depict free; they were free. Yes, people could take home a piece of original artwork for $0. Well, there was a “creative exchange” element in which the person who received the piece was asked to write an e-mail or letter back to the artist. But there was no payment in the way we usually understand it: the way that pays grocery bills, rewards labour and creativity, and often makes art seem so completely inaccessible to most of us.

Catherine Mellinger, a local textile artist who organized the exhibit along with her friend, photographer Melanie Gordon, explained the system to me. People came early in the day and signed up to receive red stickers. About 75 people signed up for a total available 50 stickers (and pieces). Then, at 3 o’clock people could come back and put a sticker to claim their pieces. The only qualification was that the project’s organizers would not mediate disputes. If two people wanted the same work of art, they would just have to sort it out themselves.

It was an accidental social experiment that apparently reflected well on humankind, or at least the particular segment of it that was wandering around the Distillery District for Doors Open Toronto, an event where some of Toronto’s most prominent historic sites open their doors to the public for free, on a Saturday afternoon. There was no clumping around a single prized piece. People spread out pretty evenly over the different pieces – freed from the strictures of cost, apparently there is a natural diversity of tastes. Some came early to stake out their claim, but even they seemed willing to negotiate. Many of the people who took part in the exchange were artists themselves, who are normally among the last people with the money to build an art collection. Others, like me, happened on the event while wandering around the Doors Open festivities, and had probably never before imagined owning a piece of original art for themselves.

Photo credit Melanie Gordon

It was just one of the much-needed doses of optimism that seem to be popping up, as people explore what can be done without money in a time when there is much less of it. But it still begs the question: is free fair? It’s hard making money as an artist, Mellinger conceded, and not everyone felt it was right to add to that the pressure to give work away for free. As a journalist, I don’t need to be told twice about the perils of giving work away for nothing.

Free theatre in the park, free museum and art gallery admission, free newspapers and magazines, free yoga, free live music. Last week’s cover story in New York Magazine celebrates the growth of accessible arts and culture in a city that one year ago was still all about money. It could, the magazine says with uncharacteristic earnestness, usher in a kinder, gentler, more egalitarian era for New York. I hope that last weekend’s exhibit at the Case Goods Warehouse, and what seemed to my eye like the general popularity of Doors Open, are signs that Canadian cities are not far behind. But I also hope, as the magazine failed to address, that when there is once again more money to go around, many of us will be willing to repay the favour to these artists, musicians and writers a bit more literally.

The Octopus Project puts on a free exhibition – though not always with free artwork – every two months, based around a particular theme. They’ll be taking a break in July, but should be back in September. For more information go to octopusproject.ca.

When: Wednesday, April 11th – 7:30 p.m.
Where: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre Auditorium, 1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver
This presentation will feature frontline photos of Canadian troops in combat, and behind-the-scenes images of an imperiled people. Vancouver photojournalists Leslie Knott, Jared Ferrie, and Ethan Baron will provide a window into a land where beauty and hope struggle against violence and injustice, and where Canada is embarked on a controversial military effort to bring stability to a country shattered by three decades of war.
Tickets are $15 at the door, and all money raised will go directly to CW4WA (Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan) and will be used to fund educational projects and schoolteachers’ salaries in Afghanistan.