Here’s my video shot at the teacher rally at Nelson City Hall on March 7. Speakers included Corky Evans, Tina Colletti of the Nurses’ Union, and teacher Paul Luck. The story has comments by Tom Newell of the Nelson Teachers Association. Read it at The Nelson Daily.

In rehearsal: Allison Girvan as Persephone, Kevin Armstrong as Cerebus (Photo by Julie Castonguay)

Commissioned, composed, produced and performed by Nelson people, KHAOS Opera is getting a lot of attention both locally and in some media outside the area, and for good reason. I wrote about this recently for the Nelson Daily.

The Globe and Mail and Opera Canada will be covering the March 8 premiere of KHAOS: The Opera at the Capitol Theatre. So will three different CBC radio programs in Calgary, Vancouver and Kelowna.

Why?  Because the word is out: KHAOS is a professional calibre opera, commissioned, composed, produced, and performed by West Kootenay people.

The article contains comments from the composer Don Macdonald and librettist (writer) Nicola Harwood, as well as the operatic baritone Kevin Armstrong, recently back from ten years singing opera and musical theatre in Germany. He thinks this production is world class.

Read the full article at The Nelson Daily.

Producer Marty Horswill, Writer Nicola Harwood, Composer Don Macdonald (Photo by Julie Castonguay)

A local group caught City Council's attention this week with some original ideas about transit in Nelson (Photo by Bill Metcalfe)

I recently wrote an article for The Nelson Daily about Barry Nelson and his refreshingly original plan for Nelson bus service.

Barry Nelson says the Fair/Fare plan would have Nelson homeowners paying $60 annually in a parcel tax to cover the transit system. But that would not actually be a tax increase because it would replace the current annual payment on the transit deficit (just under $300,000) that homeowners now pay, which currently amounts to $62 per person. The plan would also include an increase in business license fees.

As part of the plan, each individual homeowner, for an extra cash payment of $40 a year, would receive a bus pass, which currently costs $600. Additional people in the home would receive a pass for $100. Businesses would receive a bus pass at no cost.

There’s more, and it’s very interesting. Read the rest here at The Nelson Daily.

Photo source: Sean MacEntee, Flickr, Creative Commons

Will European companies be allowed to bid on Nelson City Council’s contracts for construction or procurements? Will this hamper the city’s ability to buy locally? The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and Europe is heading us in that direction.

The matter was brought before Nelson City Council this week by the local chapter of the Council of Canadians, who asked Council to ask the provincial and federal government to exempt municipalities from the agreement.

I have just written an article outlining Nelson City Council’s approach to this, and you can read it at The Nelson Daily.

Photo by Marcin Kempski

Click here to listen to Keep Learning, Keep Connecting, episode 10 of Old Growth, my radio series about life after 65. (Scroll down to episode 10)

Learning about everything

The 100 members of the Learning in Retirement Group in Nelson set learning tasks for the group– learn about geology, photography, healthy aging, aquatic fitness, writing and publishing– and they go out and find someone to learn it from. They take field trips, making sure they go on a bus rather than in cars because it’s more fun that way.

Pursuing social connection

Social connection is part of the point. The four members of the group I interviewed for this show– Judy Biggin, Marilyn Pollard, Roger Oliver, and Phyllis Dale– all talked about how they had made so many new friends. They are clear that social connectedness is a social determinant of health, and they are enthusiastically pursuing connection.

Activism and excitement

They are activists too. They discuss their attempts to get more seniors programs at the pool in Nelson and to get better sidewalk maintenance in the winter.

There is a real sense of excitement in this group, and I hope this episode of the show conveys that.

Tune in

Click here to listen to the podcast of this episode of Old Growth (scroll down to Episode 10).

For a complete list and descriptions of all Old Growth shows, click here.

I produced the eleven episodes of Old Growth for Kootenay Co-op Radio on a New Horizons for Seniors grant in the fall of 2011.

Colin Stetson

He uses a couple of dozen microphones placed around the room and on his body and on his instrument and he walks around among them while playing. I don’t know what else he does, but whatever it is, it’s unbelievable that he can do it live– there is no overdubbing or layering.

Colin Stetson…

The two pieces in this podcast of Giant Steps are fairly tame compared to some on his CD New History Warfare Vol 2. I am talking about the startlingly original saxophonist Colin Stetson, who has collaborated with Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene, and Arcade Fire. And he has a solo career playing music that is quite radical (despite some roots in Evan Parker.)

…with Bon Iver 

On this edition of Giant Steps (new jazz and its relatives) I played two Stetson pieces alternating with two tracks from Bon Iver’s latest CD. Stetson plays on that Bon Iver CD so I thought it might be an interesting mix. I think it works. The show airs Mondays at 3 pm and Wednesdays at 5:30 am.

Miles from India

The show starts out with the sound of a lonely solo Indian violin. Kala Ramnath. She’s one of a bunch of Indian musicians collected a few years ago by producer Bob Belden to collaborate with a group of Miles Davis alumni to create Miles from India– Miles’ music through an Indian filter. It’s a fascinating concept and it works. One of the best things about it is that Belden does not ignore Miles’ funk period. The piece that Kala Ramnath introduces is Ife from Big Fun.

Kala Ramnath

A rich cast of Miles alumni

The only surviving member of the band that made Kind of Blue– drummer Jimmy Cobb– is on the record along with an unlikely cross-generational mix of others: Michael Henderson, Dave Liebman, John McLaughlin, and many more. It’s a double CD full of riches. Trumpeter Wallace Roney has been criticized throughout his career for sounding (too much, say some people)  like Miles Davis. On this album his job is to sound like Miles, and he pulls it off in fine style.

Vijay Iyer

Also on the show another take on India with the pianist Vijay Iyer and his piano/guitar/tabla trio from the CD Tirtha, which one critic has described as “not Indian jazz, and not not Indian jazz.”

There is some background to it. When my daughter Rosie was about 13, she and I spent a weekend at the Yasodhara Ashram on Kootenay Lake. It introduced her to some new things because we temporarily joined a group of people living a spiritual retreat life, eating silent meals together, participating in a devotional practice, and working on the grounds and buildings and fields for the sake of the community.  She is a very thoughtful person and this alternative lifestyle gave her lots to ponder.

One of the reasons it made an impression on her was that so many of the people living there were young: they were in their teens, twenties, thirties. There was some gray hair too of course but it was mostly a youthful presence.  We worked a couple of half-days– that was part of the weekend stay there.  Our job was slicing apples and canning tomatoes in the summer kitchen. This was food they’d grown there at the Ashram and were preserving.

Rosie really loved working in the summer kitchen.

Here is the video, taken in the fall of 2011. The “attitude” shown by Rosie in a couple of places is just because I didn’t warn her I was going to video her and she was a bit uncomfortable about that– actually she still really likes it at the Ashram.

Say the Names brings stories from the people who live in the towns and travel the rivers and lakes situated along the proposed route of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project in British Columbia.

Sheila Peters (Photo by Pat Moss)

Lynn and Sheila lived in Smithers when I did in the 70/80s, and they still do. Sheila has a blog about the Enbridge pipeline called Say the Names. The quotes here are from there.

Al Purdy wrote a wonderful poem called “Say the names say the names” which celebrates the names of Canadian rivers – Tulameen, Kleena Kleene, Similkameen, Nahanni, Kluane and on and on in a celebratory song.

The visit in Kelowna was the first time we had seen each other in about maybe 10 years. We were friends in the Bulkley Valley when their two boys, Daniel and Michael who are men now, and mine, Patrick who is now 27, were born.

Enbridge is planning to build a dual pipeline that will carry bitumen and condensate across hundreds of waterways between Edmonton and Kitimat. Some of these waterways are rivers like the Parsnip (or what’s left of it), the Nechako, the Morice and others are smaller creeks whose names are often known only to the folks who live along their banks or who fish in their shadows or who bend to wash or drink as they cross paths.

We were young parents of young children together. Looking back, and looking now on the street at young parents hanging out with each other and their young children, that’s an activity shared that is even more precious than I realized at the time, or than the young parents now realize perhaps.

Bill Metcalfe and Lynn Shervill 2011 (Photo by Sheila Peters)

I want to collect the names of these rivers and creeks, to collect your stories, your poems, your songs so we can collectively give voice to the land living under the line Enbridge plans to draw.

We lived those years in the territory that Enbridge will be crossing. My son was born and lived his first couple of years a stone’s throw from Driftwood Creek just above its mouth on the Bulkley River.

You can read what others have written, check out the pipeline’s route via the link to the pipeline map, post your own comments, or email me (sheilapeters900@gmail.com) your own stories and I’ll post them for you. The copyright remains with you.

Lynn and Sheila lived beside Driftwood Creek too, a few miles upstream, and still do, by the fossil beds, on the road to the Babine Mountains where we hiked and they still do. They  publish non-fiction, fiction, poetry, photography, and painting from the Northwest at Creekstone Press.

You’re invited to say something to them or me or Enbridge below. No login required, just start writing.

Ed Natyshak at the Fat Tire Festival 2009, Nelson, B.C.

“Don’t stop moving, just because you think you’re tired!”

That’s Ed Natyshak yelling at the people in his fitness class. It’s his first line in my 5-minute documentary about his classes that aired on CBC radio recently.  Click here to hear a podcast.

Ed’s are the most insanely tough fitness classes anywhere, taught from his wheelchair.

Gruelling and inspiring

I first heard about Ed’s Sasquatch Performance Training classes a while back when my friend Julia had just come out of her first one moments before, and she wasn’t looking so good. She managed to mumble something about hell.  Just been there and back, something like that. But Julia is young, strong, and fit, so I wasn’t worried. Then I kept hearing, from Julia and others, about how gruelling and inspiring Ed’s classes were.

Paralyzed by a bike accident

So I phoned Ed and proposed this radio piece. I have known him since before he became a quadriplegic in a mountain bike accident in 2005. I used to go to the Summit Gym, which Ed co-owned back then. He was a biker, rafter, skier, you name it.  I knew him as a big, brash, outgoing, stoked, physically strong, energetic, community-oriented, positive guy. And guess what. He still is. After getting paralyzed from the chest down and going through years of rehab and facing the rest of his life in a wheelchair, his personality has basically not changed. Ed said a big loud yes to the idea of the radio piece.

Non-stop and action-packed

Then I pitched it to Radio West, the new CBC weekday afternoon show out of Kelowna. Producer Kathryn Marlow said yes, but she put a time constraint on me: max five minutes. So I had to make the piece as fast and action-packed as one of Ed’s classes.

Shouting them on

The first one I attended (not as a participant!), a men’s class, really scared me, I’m not kidding. Part way through the half-hour class I was worried. How will these guys survive this? Has Ed gone completely crazy? Maybe I was imagining myself trying to survive it. It was non-stop, stopwatch-timed, and unforgivingly relentless, with Ed shouting them on, driven by very loud rock music.

Don’t stop, don’t wait, don’t ask questions, don’t think about the past, just drive forward. That’s his approach, with an underpinning of planned exercise routines he says are based on solid science.

Kootenay girls go to the top

The second class I attended, a women’s class, was the same way but it didn’t freak me out as much. I’d become acclimatized to the intensity. After it was over I interviewed the group of strong, exhilarated women about their view of Ed’s uncompromising style. I guess they are the girls Ed was shouting about during the class. “Kootenay girls go to the top of the mountain! They go right to the top! They don’t let up! Not for a second!”

You’ll enjoy hearing them talk about how they think Ed is the greatest and that they don’t think of him as paralyzed. They tell is that if a guy in a wheelchair who used to be a world-class athlete is urging you to do more, why wouldn’t you push harder than you thought was possible?

Please comment below on this post or the podcast. You don’t have to log in or anything, just start writing.