The Banff Centre: Communications

The Globe and Mail — November 27, 2004 – Page D3.  

Mary of Canada: The Virgin Mary in Canadian Culture, Spirituality, History and Geography, by Joan Skogan, published by the Banff Centre Press, is on the Globe’s list of the top 100 books published in Canada in 2004.

Chronicling the presence of the Virgin Mary in Canada, Joan Skogan finds that she saturates the country, from an image that came in with Jacques Cartier to the prayer object of B.C. fishermen. Her book is accessible, non-academic, ranges over geography and literature (Diane Schoemperlen, Margaret Atwood, Katherine Govier and other literary Madonnas) and is “full of tender acts of mercy, gleanings from a millennium of history and brilliant flashes of insight, which taken together add up to sacred meaning.”

Boston Globe — November 27, 2004.   “A warm welcome greeted the young and personable Jupiter String Quartet at its first major Boston concert since winning the Banff International String Quartet Competition last September.”

Christian Science Monitor Blog | Verbal Energy — November 24, 2004.  
Essay about the “inappropriately disappearing” use of the most frequenty-used word in the English language, the.

The other side of the inappropriately disappearing “the” is the upwardly mobile capitalized “the.” This tends to show up especially in the names of businesses where imagination seems in somewhat short supply, e.g., a bookstore on Main Street that calls itself The Bookstore on Main Street, and insists on that capital “T.” Or some nouveau hotelier opens something called, obviously but unmemorably, The Inn on the Square.

The Globe and Mail —
November 13, 2004 (Page R8).  

“Constantinople, the multimedia music event that was given its Toronto premiere on Wednesday, is a dynamic catalogue of the polyglot music that might exist in a town of cosmopolitan character…. It may also be a piece whose governing idea is stronger than its ultimate expression. Any few minutes of Wednesday’s show could be quite compelling, but the whole lacked the instant, pervasive sense of character expressed by every interesting city…. No doubt Hatzis is a capable craftsman. He is both promiscuous and logical, though these traits are seldom applied to best effect in Constantinople. Too often the music felt like the dogged illustration of an extramusical theme, rather than its organic consequence. The piece aims for the stars, but ultimately stays solidly on Earth.”

November, 2004.   Recently playing at Purdue and in Wisconsin.

November 9, 2004 — The following sites have picked up on the Banff Mountain Film Festival news release announcing the winners, all using the spelling Odworot for the Polish word for “retreat” (the correct word is “odwrót”).

Sites picking up the story from CP with the same title as the news release: “Forgotten Polish film takes Grand Prize at Banff Mountain Film Festival”:

• Yahoo News
• National Post
• Brockville Recorder
• Ottawa Citizen
• Canada.com
• Vancouver Province

Non-CP sites:

• Globe and Mail   Decades-old Polish film wins at Banff festival
• Everest News   Forgotten Polish film takes Grand Prize
• MountEverest.net   Banff film festival: And the winner is… 35 years old!

Toronto Star — November 6, 2004.  

Constantinople has long been known as a cultural crossroads, an appropriate setting for a new work by the Greek-born, Canadian composer Christos Hatzis.… The production has been designed to travel and there is keen interest from a number of places including London, Brussels, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. Touring will start in 2005.

The Globe and Mail — November 5, 2004  
A conversation with Christos Hatzis about his piece Constantinople, which premiered at the 2004 Banff Summer Festival of the Arts.

Calgary Sun — November 4, 2004.   “Once Canada’s wealthiest entrepreneur in the oil business, Eric Harvie was on a quest to die broke — and he did. But not before the local philanthropist led a life of goodwill that included almost half-a-billion dollars in donations. And yesterday, almost 30 years after his death, Harvie finally received the recognition he deserved for his efforts with a memorial plaque that was unveiled at River Park.… [Beneficiaries] of Harvie’s generosity include institutions such as the Calgary Zoo, the Glenbow Museum, Heritage Park and the Banff School of Fine Arts.”