The Banff Centre: Communications

Calgary Sun — March 3, 2005.   Five families who nurtured the province as it grew were saluted last night at a special centennial edition of the 18th annual Pinnacle Awards.

Hy Belzberg has held prominent leadership roles in the Jewish community and his wife of 56 years — Jenny Belzberg — has devoted her creative and fundraising talent to numerous boards and committees, including the Banff Centre, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Art Centre in Ottawa.

The Globe and Mail — March 23, 2005.   Lloyd Montour, a member of Canada’s ill-fated rowing team at the 1952 Olympics, has died in Duncan, B.C. He was 79. Mr. Montour worked for many years in Alberta at the Banff School of the Arts, now the Banff Centre.

Government of Canada — March 16, 2005.   Minister of Canadian Heritage and Minister responsible for Status of Women Liza Frulla today announced the appointment of Mary E. Hofstetter of Banff, Alberta, as a part-time member of the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Edmonton sun — March 15, 2005.   The Edmonton Opera’s new season will feature the familiar and far-out, as announced yesterday by artistic director Brian Deedrick.

First up is John Estacio’s Filumena (opening November 29), which premiered in Calgary in 2003. Set to a text by prize-winning playwright John Murrell, it tells a true story of Italian immigrants living in the Crowsnest Pass in the 1920s, of passion and murder, and of the last woman to be hanged in Alberta. It was received enthusiastically in Calgary and Banff performances, and Estacio was the Edmonton Symphony’s composer-in-residence for several years. Soprano Laura Whalen, who sang the title role in the premiere, will star.

Canada NewsWire Group — March 1, 2005.   The Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), is pleased to announce that Sara Diamond is the incoming president of Canada’s largest university of art and design. Following OCAD’s recent, unprecedented physical transformation, Diamond will now lead the university through a programmatic transformation to become a world leader in graduate research and advanced education in art and design. Diamond, who will join OCAD on July 1, 2005, leaves her position at The Banff Centre, Alberta, where she is director of research and artistic director of the Banff New Media Institute. Diamond has a diverse practice. She is internationally respected as an artistic director, educator, researcher, critic, video artist, television and new media producer/director, and curator.

This news also appeared in the
Toronto Star.

Canada NewsWire — March 10, 2005 The Jury for the 2005 Elinore and Lou Siminovitch Prize in Theatre was announced today. The $100,000 prize will be presented this year to a playwright who has made a significant contribution to theatre in Canada. The jury will consider nominations received by May 11, 2005. Included on the jury:

Maureen LaBonte — A dramaturge, teacher and translator of more than 25 Quebec plays, Mme. LaBonte is programme dramaturge at the Banff PlayRites Colony.

Globe and Mail — March 5, 2005   Sara Diamond, the artist and educator, and soon-to-be president of the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, has her own website: www.codezebra.net. This should come as no surprise. Technology, after all, is her thing. She’s coming to OCAD from the Banff Centre, where she ran the division of media and visual arts from 1994 to 2003. She also founded the New Media Institute there in 1996, an international think-tank on technology and art. And she’s an artist with a penchant for developing technologies, from her earliest days in the 1980s (working with the first colour 3/4-inch videotape) to her current interest in Java-based software and biometric sensor technologies. When it comes to the digital world, there’s not much that gets by her.