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Highlights for "Joy of Canadian Words" April 25th, 2006 - Christ Church Cathedral

Tue, 2006-04-25 02:11 — Todd Wong

Highlights for

"Joy of Canadian Words"

- fundraiser event for

"Save Kogawa House"


7:30pm

April 25th, 2006

Christ Church Cathedral

Georgia and Burrard

We have invited actors and cultural celebrities to help us read some of Canada's most important literary works. We started with the Literary Review of Canada's 100 Greatest Canadian Books Ever Written, which included Obasan and we allowed the presenters to find what moved them.

Introduction by Bill Turner
The Land Conservancy of BC

Sheryl McKay, CBC Radio Host of "North By Northwest"
Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery

Joy Coghill, actor
Emily Carr’s "Klee Wyck" and P. K. Page’s “Planet Earth”

Doris Chilcott, actor
Alden Nowlan poems

Leora Cashe, jazz gospel singer
songs by Leonard Cohen

Rhonda Larrabee, chief of the Qayqayt First Nations
"Coyote and the Enemy Aliens" by Thomas King:

Bill Dow, actor
“The Promised Land” by Aron Buchkowsky,

Bill Dow, Manami Hara, Hiro Katagawa, Maiko Yamamoto (actors)
“Call My People Home”by Dorothy Livesay (radio documentary poem)

Marion Quednau of the Writers’ Union of Canada
    The significance of Kogawa House

Joy Kogawa
"Obasan"


This promises to be an incredible event.  All the pieces just fell into place.  The actors have found some incredible moving literary works.

Sheryl McKay starts things off with "Ann of Green Gables" a beloved Canadian institution with contemporary parallels to Joy Kogawa's "Naomi's Road" in that an opera has now been written and performed, and like Anne's House in PEI, people are now making pilgramages to Kogawa House.

Joy Coghill is a treasured actor and arts advocate.  By choosing to read Emily Carr's Klee-wyck, Joy has found a parallel in that Emily Carr's childhood home has been turned into a heritage site.  Hopefully Kogawa House will be the same.

Doris Chilcott has chosen to read some poems by Alden Nowlan, who had been a writer-in-residence at many places throughout Canada.  We hope to create a Writers-in-Residence program for Kogawa House.

Dorothy Livesay wrote "Call My People Home", for a CBC radio documentary that critized the internment and dispersal of Japanese Canadians in 1949.  This will be read by actors Bill Dow, Manaimi Hara, Hiro Kanagawa, Maiko Bae Yamamoto.

Thomas King wrote an incredible short story about the mythical Coyote playing havoc with the internment of Japanese Canadians and the confiscation of their property in "Coyote and the Enemy Aliens."

Leore Cashe is an incredibly gifted jazz and gospel singer. She has picked two songs by Leonard Cohen to perform.  "Hallelujah" and "Dance Me to the End of Love"

And then there is Joy....