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| #5426 - 09 May 2014 - 20:25:21 |
13 May 2014
20 January 2014
23 December 2013
Selected Articles From PAX Quarterly Magazine
Noëls Made New Again*
Illuminating the world through music is a familiar aspect of the Christmas season. As a child I could barely contain the excitement and anticipation that came with carol singing: early morning choir practices at school, preparations for the Sunday School Pageant, and playing favourite Christmas records on the HiFi at home all conspired to impress joyfulness on my childish heart. A notable favourite was a recording of French carols and what I could not understand linguistically was communicated to me through the irrepressible exuberance of the melodies and voices.
These dance-like themes are wonderfully displayed in this year's Christmas Eve Mass setting by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704). As a young man, Charpentier left Paris to study music in Rome and returned three years later, inspired by the relatively new forms of opera and oratorio and able to synthesize the Italian and French styles effortlessly. He was highly competent in all the musical genres of the day, but was destined to struggle for recognition at the court of Louis XIV and in the popular theatre due to the monopoly held by the more famous and powerful Jean-Baptiste Lully. After the death of his patroness, Mlle de Guise, he dedicated his attention to sacred music -- for which he is still best remembered -- at a time when most serious composers had stopped composing new masses. His method was to approach the Mass in the musical language of the secular and vernacular motet, and this ability to combine popular and liturgical forms was timely and effective.
The Messe de Minuit pour Noël was composed circa 1690 for the Jesuit Church of St. Louis in Paris where he was mâitre de musique. It is entirely based on a group of traditional French noëls (carols) cleverly arranged together with some newly-composed material and crafted into the text of the Mass. The focus on the Christ-child is enhanced by the address to the newborn Jesus throughout the setting; the contrasting of upper and lower voices along with the additional voices of the orchestra (flutes, strings and organ) also contribute to the liturgical structure.
The integration of various carols into a sacred context was common in the day. But then individual carols might be sung separately, or else used as a springboard for ornamentation and parody. In a display of originality, Charpentier based the entire Mass on these beloved melodies while maintaining their integrity and developing the connective harmonizations out of the carols themselves. With their themes of simple country life and child-like trust and joy incorporated into the liturgy of a deeply spiritual feast day, the noëls were made new again.
Although very little of his music was published in his lifetime, it has since seen a significant revival in the late twentieth century -- a renewal. He remains accessible to modern musicians and audiences alike and is currently the most recorded French composer of the Baroque period.
Charpentier's work is being performed this year at St. James' Midnight Mass of Christmas.
* PAX: No. 21, Christmas 2013
30 September 2013
Selected Articles From PAX Quarterly Magazine
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| No. 3468 - 14 Aug 2013 - 06:35:45 |
250 Powell Street*
Reconciliation is a weighty word. It implies action and outcome, and requires courage, vision, rectification, commitment and cooperation. The act of making things work better and establishing friendly relations is its foundation, achieved principally through listening.
In the spirit of the times, Vancouver City Council is involved in the reconciling of its architectural and planning past, with a $2 million grant awarded to a project on St. James' very doorstep in which a former jail will be transformed into real homes.
Anyone who has looked out the windows of the Bishops' Room on Gore Avenue may have noted the brick and concrete edifice across the way. Richard Henriquez designed this striking and unique building in 1972 for use as the Remand Centre. The former jail has been empty for over a decade; and for just as long, it has been the vision and goal of his son (and lead designer of the Woodward's redevelopment), Gregory Henriquez, to re-purpose this building into quality mixed-income housing.
After years of discussion and negotiation with collaborators, a plan was formed so that a provincial asset could be recycled into a community asset, and new social housing built at a fraction of the cost of a new building. The project is slated to begin early in 2014, with BC Housing providing the major funding and the Bloom Group (former St. James' Community Service Society) overseeing management: anticipated completion by mid-2015.
250 Powell Street will have seven floors of housing with 81 studio units and 14 one-bedroom units, for a mix of people on income-assistance, working individuals, and couples with low to moderate incomes. An additional 37 units will be run by ACCESS BladeRunners who assist mostly aboriginal, homeless youth aged 15-30 with life-skills and work-ready training for the construction industry. Their participation in this community project deepens the level of social commitment and increases the likelihood of success for those at greatest risk in the Downtown Eastside.
The on-going competition for available rental space and real estate is heating up, as the downtown core continues to redefine and revitalize itself while at the same time putting pressure on issues of accessibility, inclusivity and affordability. Although the area is in the grip of a transformation, it remains to be seen if those in power are motivated to embrace the disparate and incompatible elements and reconcile a balance that benefits all.
This creative rapprochement of city, province, designers and social service societies is poised to benefit the community at large, and provides a timely contribution to the momentum of this Year of Reconciliations.
* Previously published in PAX: Michaelmas 2013
03 September 2013
How To Rebrand The Remand
No. 0215 - 10 Jul 2012 - 08:40:10
No. 0271 - 18 Jul 2012 - 21:34:09
Vancouver
Over the next year we will be witnessing the transformation of this former jail on Gore and Cordova into "housing that makes caring homes" under the watchful eye of The Bloom Group (formerly known as The St. James Community Service Society).
01 January 2013
23 December 2012
Selected Articles From PAX Quarterly Magazine
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| No. 0147 - 27 Jun 2012 - 15:31:47 St. Jean de Brébeuf Church, Cayer, Manitoba |
The Huron Carol*
The history of the Huron Carol is a Canadian story that has journeyed over four centuries an,d three cultures, from oral tradition to a place in the hymnals and songbooks of congregatiuonbs and schools across this country.
In the early seventeenth century, founder Samuel de Champlain envisioned a new people born uniquely of this continent through the intermarrying and sharing of common spiritual and cultural values. It was a long way from the forced conversion and institutional racism introduced and practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, Jesuit missionary to the Huron, penned the original words in Wendat/Huron in 1643 and set them to a popular French song called La Jeune Pucelle. It tapped into Huron traditional values while teaching the Christian story. In spite of Brébeuf's martyrdom and the final scattering of the Huron people during the Iroquois uprising in 1649, the song lived on in oral tradition until its transcription into Wendat. It came alongside a French translation by Paul Picard, a Franco-Huron notary who worked with Fr. Etienne de Villeneuve, S.J. He was the last Jesuit to serve the Huron, and he left behind many manuscripts and transcriptions of their hymns and chants, including the Huron Christmas Carol. The song prevailed in post-conquest Québec, and it was known orally for another one hundred years until it was published in the Noëls Anciens de La Nouvelle France by Ernest Myrand in 1899. In that same year, while working in Québec City, historian, journalist, and choir director Jesse Edgar Middleton discovered the publication and took it home to Toronto. In 1926 he published a free translation of the song from French into English, called "Twas In The Moon of Wintertime, and asked his fellow choir director, Healey Willan, to provide an arrangement from the folk song for the pageant Brébeuf. The version in our hymnal is a later Lutheran arrangement.
I was very young the first time I remember hearing and singing the Huron Carol at a Christmas Eve service and it was a transcendent moment. The setting of the Nativity scene was familiar and relevant: cold and sparkling in the moonlight and warmed by furs, this child belonged to me.
Last year I received a family book about my maternal grandmother's ancestry going back over 400 years. Among my many grandparents, a few stand out -- including the Algonquin warrior and clan chief, Charles Secham Packarini, who was nursed by Jeanne Mance in her Hôtel Dieu in the new town of Montréal in 1643. She also sponsored the young warrior at his baptism that year, and he went on to witness the many baptisms and marriages of his clan family, including the marriage of his granddaughter Marie Mitouamegoukoue to Frenchman Pierre Couc dit La Fleur in 1657. Two hundred years later their descendant, and my grandmother's father, was born in La Prairie, Québec. Narcisse Cayer left Québec for Manitoba in 1880 and started a new family chapter. In 1910 he led his growing family and a small band of Franco-Manitoban and Métis families north to the western shore of Lake Manitoba, where a ranching community exists to this day. What remains of my great-grandfather is a headstone in the graveyard of the little Roman Catholic church he built in 1933. The church stands on the prairie landscape, decommissioned and with a crypt still full of water from last year's flood. Its name is St. Jean de Brébeuf.
Mutual respect for the spiritual and cultural traditions of the three founding peoples of our nation lives in my own family and in this hymn, the Canadian Christmas carol.
* PAX: No. 17, Christmas © 2012
In the early seventeenth century, founder Samuel de Champlain envisioned a new people born uniquely of this continent through the intermarrying and sharing of common spiritual and cultural values. It was a long way from the forced conversion and institutional racism introduced and practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, Jesuit missionary to the Huron, penned the original words in Wendat/Huron in 1643 and set them to a popular French song called La Jeune Pucelle. It tapped into Huron traditional values while teaching the Christian story. In spite of Brébeuf's martyrdom and the final scattering of the Huron people during the Iroquois uprising in 1649, the song lived on in oral tradition until its transcription into Wendat. It came alongside a French translation by Paul Picard, a Franco-Huron notary who worked with Fr. Etienne de Villeneuve, S.J. He was the last Jesuit to serve the Huron, and he left behind many manuscripts and transcriptions of their hymns and chants, including the Huron Christmas Carol. The song prevailed in post-conquest Québec, and it was known orally for another one hundred years until it was published in the Noëls Anciens de La Nouvelle France by Ernest Myrand in 1899. In that same year, while working in Québec City, historian, journalist, and choir director Jesse Edgar Middleton discovered the publication and took it home to Toronto. In 1926 he published a free translation of the song from French into English, called "Twas In The Moon of Wintertime, and asked his fellow choir director, Healey Willan, to provide an arrangement from the folk song for the pageant Brébeuf. The version in our hymnal is a later Lutheran arrangement.
I was very young the first time I remember hearing and singing the Huron Carol at a Christmas Eve service and it was a transcendent moment. The setting of the Nativity scene was familiar and relevant: cold and sparkling in the moonlight and warmed by furs, this child belonged to me.
Last year I received a family book about my maternal grandmother's ancestry going back over 400 years. Among my many grandparents, a few stand out -- including the Algonquin warrior and clan chief, Charles Secham Packarini, who was nursed by Jeanne Mance in her Hôtel Dieu in the new town of Montréal in 1643. She also sponsored the young warrior at his baptism that year, and he went on to witness the many baptisms and marriages of his clan family, including the marriage of his granddaughter Marie Mitouamegoukoue to Frenchman Pierre Couc dit La Fleur in 1657. Two hundred years later their descendant, and my grandmother's father, was born in La Prairie, Québec. Narcisse Cayer left Québec for Manitoba in 1880 and started a new family chapter. In 1910 he led his growing family and a small band of Franco-Manitoban and Métis families north to the western shore of Lake Manitoba, where a ranching community exists to this day. What remains of my great-grandfather is a headstone in the graveyard of the little Roman Catholic church he built in 1933. The church stands on the prairie landscape, decommissioned and with a crypt still full of water from last year's flood. Its name is St. Jean de Brébeuf.
Mutual respect for the spiritual and cultural traditions of the three founding peoples of our nation lives in my own family and in this hymn, the Canadian Christmas carol.
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* PAX: No. 17, Christmas © 2012
10 August 2012
11 July 2012
Prairie Love
No. 0153 - 28 Jun 2012 - 13:58:15
More fun with iTouch camera apps.
I regret not taking more panoramic shots with this less than excellent camera but I intend to expand my knowledge of wide-angle and panorama shooting before I return to my beloved Canadian Prairies next year on the way to Montréal.
08 July 2012
Roger's Pass
No. 9492 - 01 Jul 2011 - 13:59:16Here is a photo of Rusty and a glacier, taken at the pass last Sunday.
The prairie is a spirit and
the mountains are an event.
01 July 2012
Canadian Icon - Lake Louise
No. 0163 - 01 July 2012 - 10:47:25
No. 0164 - 01 July 2012 - 10:50:25
Where else to be on a national holiday but one of the top tourist destinations. I was just passing through but inspired, with my free park pass, paper flag and lapel pin courtesy of the feds at Banff National Park gate that morning, to make a stop with thousands of others. By the time I left they were parking down the side of the mountain for their classic photo-op.
Happy 145th huzzah, Canada!
28 June 2012
Pilgrimage - Part two
No. 9067 - 28 Jun 2012 - 14:59:13
In the copse up ahead is the house in which my mother spent a dozen years of her childhood. I visited it with her 18 years ago and even though it had already been abandoned to the elements we were able to enter and go up the stairs to the little room she used to share with her two sisters. Unfortunately the photographs I took inside the house did not turn out and I must rely on my memory to recreate the place that nurtured my mother's shared remembrances of a
depression-era upbringing.
The homestead was built on another's land, a tenancy farm, after her family lost their land in Cayer due to the 1929 stock market crash. It was situated a few miles north of Gilbert Plains, a small town on Highway 5, north of Riding Mountain National Park and west of Dauphin in Manitoba. The relocation precipitated their eventual departure from the prairies and permanent move west to British Columbia 13 years later, at the end of World War II.
In the copse up ahead is the house in which my mother spent a dozen years of her childhood. I visited it with her 18 years ago and even though it had already been abandoned to the elements we were able to enter and go up the stairs to the little room she used to share with her two sisters. Unfortunately the photographs I took inside the house did not turn out and I must rely on my memory to recreate the place that nurtured my mother's shared remembrances of a
depression-era upbringing.
The homestead was built on another's land, a tenancy farm, after her family lost their land in Cayer due to the 1929 stock market crash. It was situated a few miles north of Gilbert Plains, a small town on Highway 5, north of Riding Mountain National Park and west of Dauphin in Manitoba. The relocation precipitated their eventual departure from the prairies and permanent move west to British Columbia 13 years later, at the end of World War II.
Nos. 9012, 8989, 9000, 9032, 9002, 8992, 9014, 9020 - 28 Jun 2012
A thicket of poplar trees has grown tightly around the little house my grandfather built for my grandmother - out of sight as if a Sleeping Beauty. I could not see it when I first drove by and only spied part of its fallen roof after I turned the car around. With some difficulty I breached the barrier of little trees to discover the roof had collapsed through the second floor and through the first where once stood the parlour and all is sinking into the cellar.
A tree grows through the front porch.
A thicket of poplar trees has grown tightly around the little house my grandfather built for my grandmother - out of sight as if a Sleeping Beauty. I could not see it when I first drove by and only spied part of its fallen roof after I turned the car around. With some difficulty I breached the barrier of little trees to discover the roof had collapsed through the second floor and through the first where once stood the parlour and all is sinking into the cellar.
A tree grows through the front porch.
Nos. 9041, 9037, 9024, 9025 - 28 June 2012
No doubt my grandparents would be puzzled and fairly amused at my sentimental feelings for this pile of rotting timber. It is my understanding that, once the decision to leave was made, they left and never looked back. And yet, as a second generation survivor of the Great Depression, I feel as though I too know that house from hearing my mother speak of it often and lovingly
when I was young.
Old farms die like this on the prairie - slowly and with plenty of melancholy.
No doubt my grandparents would be puzzled and fairly amused at my sentimental feelings for this pile of rotting timber. It is my understanding that, once the decision to leave was made, they left and never looked back. And yet, as a second generation survivor of the Great Depression, I feel as though I too know that house from hearing my mother speak of it often and lovingly
when I was young.
Old farms die like this on the prairie - slowly and with plenty of melancholy.
27 June 2012
Pilgrimage - Part One
No. 0147 - 27 Jun 2012 - 17:45:30This is the church that my great grandfather built - St. Jean de Brébeuf.
I was unable to visit the Cayer District, Lake Manitoba last year due to the 2011 flood situation. The strong winds that have been lately will go a long way to drying out the land however the basement of the church is full of water and nothing will be done while it remains de-commissioned.
Nos. 8795, 8826, 8864, 8907, 8911, 8912 - 27 Jun 2012
I would like to buy it and turn it into an art gallery or museum
but the chance of visitors at the end of a 35 km gravel road and
north of the 51st parallel (next stop, Crane River) is slim.
26 June 2012
St. Vital
No. 8710 - 25 Jun 2012 - 19:35:53
No. 8694 - 25 Jun 2012 - 19:32:26 * No. 8695 - 25 Jun 2012- 19:32:33
Euro Cup inspires the neighbourhood after dinner.
Euro Cup inspires the neighbourhood after dinner.
25 June 2012
Panorama
No. 0126 - 25 Jun 2012 - 11:35:09The cemetary at Cathédrale de Saint-Boniface on Taché Avenue is stretched and flattened with the aid of a camera app.
Left of centre in this image and encircled by stone is
the grave of Louis Riel.
24 June 2012
Summertime, Manitoba
No. 8666 - 24 Jun 2012 - 10:53:25Some part of the Cayer family has lived in Winnipeg for over 130 years.
23 June 2012
Wilson
Nos. 8523, 8531 - 22 June 2012 - 17:32:32Wilson is an American Robin who lives in my cousin's Calgary backyard. He was born with only one wing and one good leg. He has wisely chosen their home as a refuge and was so named by Leslie's daughter.
21 June 2012
Golden Morning
No. 0119 - 21 June 2012 - 05:34I took this image with an iPod Touch and using an app that makes up for the questionable quality of the camera in the device. Five minutes after taking this, on my way out of town, I was forced to turn back due to a mudslide that had only just happened on the Trans Canada Highway. Re-directed to Calgary through Radium Hot Springs added one hour plus to my travel time but resulted in an easier drive.
20 June 2012
Leaving Vancouver
No. 0100 - 20 Jun 2012 - 07:15:27Leaving Vancouver for a couple of weeks means saying goodbye to, among other things, great coffee. I am on my way to Winnipeg for a quick visit and will be at the mercy of Starbuck's and Tim Horton's coffee for the near future. This is a Photosynth image of the JJ Bean cafe on Railway in downtown Vancouver.
14 June 2012
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