Leather Pass Chronicles

News Views and little known truths from the Canadian Rockies... 

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FEBRUARY 2007

JANUARY 2007

A year to bond and Juan Helluva Night

DECEMBER 2006

Victorias Secret, Caribou and Indian Giving

NOVEMBER 2006

OCTOBER 2006

Community museums are key to culture 

The Who, Trailer Park Boys and Mel Hurtig

SEPTEMBER 2006

Tom Thomson and the Pine Beetle

Is that a Mexican Flag on the Banff Springs?

Green Party on the right track

AUGUST2006

Neufeld Watchel and Watchel

UNESCO's Indigenous Peoples Day

Heritage Day

JULY 2006

From Fiddler on the Roof to Fiddler on the Rails

Traditions made new again, First Nations art

JUNE 2006

Bikeology and Caribou

MAY 2006
Centennial Dollars well spent...

On MountainTop Rock

OCTOBER 2006

Community museums are key to culture

Conservative government made to stand by their election promise

Updated: October 25th, 2006

OTTAWA, Ontario - Museums across Canada breathed a sigh of relief this week when the Harper government was called, and responded by rescinding, on the cuts they had made to museum funding in last months budget.

This is exceptionally good news to smaller community museums as they are often a cultural core in small towns.  "If we go to any small town in Canada and ask people in the town about their tourism strategy, what do they point to? They point to their museum. Every small town knows that culture is what brings in tourists and tourists play a major role in the ability of our smaller communities to survive," says NDP MP Charlie Angus.

The Yellowhead Museum in Jasper certainly fits that scenario.  Jasper's business community offers tourists many great services but fails to fulfill on the cultural front.  Not having a permanent year round town site gallery or arts centre means that the gallery space in the town's museum is priceless - to the residents and the visitors.  There are not many places in any community that can show you the history of an area as well as the way it is seen through an artists eyes.

The Alpine Club of Canada recently took 'seeing through an artists eyes' to new heights when honouring the 100th anniversary of the club.  Artists were chosen to accompany climbers to the peaks and the resulting artworks are on display at the Whyte Museum in Banff until January 14th 2007.  Among the artists chosen were two Jasper artists Leona Amann (on the right) and Michael Petersen (on the left).

Leona Amann will also be showing works at the Jasper Museum November 3rd to December 3rd.

Jasper does have two other gallery spaces.  One is run by the local artists guild in the Heritage Firehall during the summer with irregular programming during the winter.  The other, Mountain Galleries, is a year round gallery located at the Jasper Park Lodge and is well worth a drive across the river!

The Who, Trailer Park Boys and Mel Hurtig

Decisions Decisions

Updated: October 8th, 2006

EDMONTON, Alberta - I live in a small town - deciding what to do with my day is pretty easy - stress free existence.  The stress kicks in when I am faced with deciding what to do when I get 24 hours in the city!

This dilemma arose Friday night when I was faced with three choices - The Who were playing at Rexall Place , Trailer Park Boys new movie had opened in the theatres and Mel Hurtig was being honoured for the 50th anniversary of the original opening of his first bookstore in Edmonton.

I quickly found out that tickets available for the sold out Who concert were being 'made available' at about $300 a ticket.  A little out of my budget.

The release of 'Trailer Park Boys - The Movie' struck me as proof yet again that independent film production in Canada is sadly subjected to what the American cultural machine dictates as amusing.  (how's that for an opinion!) 

So, since I have often found Mel Hurtig's writing interesting and as you can see by past postings here - I do feel like a Nationalist in theory...I went to see Mel.

Hurtig brought Edmonton - actually Western Canada - the first bookstore between TO and Vancouver 50 years ago.  He brought Edmontonians WO Mitchell and Farley Mowat...and the Canadian Encyclopedia. 

Today you are most likely to find Hurtig still writing about National issues.  One such issue is that of weapons in space.  And as Audreys Bookstore filled with authors like Peter C. Newman, Rudy Wiebe and Alice Major the days news filtered in of the push by the Canadian Senate to relaunch talks to join the race to put weapons in space.   So while we honoured the man for his 50 years of promoting Canada it was brought to his attention that he is not done yet.

Senator Doug Roche read from Fridays Globe and Mail the dismal news of the Canadian Senate push to have more military funding spent on initiatives like the American anti-missile sheild program.  This suggestion to spend brought forward in the same week that funding was slashed to Canadian literacy programming is atrocious.  Sharon Budnarchuk of Audreys Bookstore tells us, "One in three Canadians are illiterate today."  

So while the tshirt offered a little light reprieve from a serious issue...I sure hope we havent heard the last from people like Hurtig and Roche.