The photo on the top left is the Magnus theatre in the snowstorm the night we went to see Huff.  It’s a brilliant one-man play about growing up on the rez.  Tells whites a lot about Indigenous lives. 75 tough minutes and worth it. Here’s a link to the Ghomeshi Effect which played in Thunder Bay in January.

Eaton’s downtown, is an art deco building, which has been mostly vacant for decades. Now it’s about to be sold to U-Haul.  The problem with that is U-Haul is basically lockers that store condo-dwellers’ stuff.  So lockers don’t add to good  street life, to shops, to restaurants, to good public space.   Up to now, the old Eaton’s was the home of Definitely Superior Art Gallery — an artist-run collective which has been a prominent gallery and cultural centre in the basement for 30 years.  Now it’s being evicted for “renewal”.  Omri and Larry and I drove to Boulevard Lake, not far from downtown for a bit of a walk. It was -25C, but sunny… Here’s a bald headed eagle I spied. The wonderful sculpture of a man doing Tai Chi appears in the waterfront park.  Tai Chi Master Peng You, is also a city councillor, and pushed for this addition to the park.

 RIVAL is Max and Cassie’s activist lab, at Lakehead University.  It’s a wonderful place where people meet up, and have training classes, reading circles, and discussions.  On Tuesday night there is a reading circle and we read the Reconciliation Manifesto by  Arthur Manuel, an Indigenous thinker and writer who died too early. More than 20 of us, law students, community people and readers come once a week to read, each of us take turns to read 2-3 paragraphs and then we discuss what we read when the section or chapter ends. Brilliant.  Here’s a photo of Max and Omri enjoying a joke.  I though it was a bit forward to take photos, so I drew pictures of people in the reading circle.  The top left, shows Cassie with a big scarf on.  The other photo shows Max under the white board sign.  i

With friends we are having breakfast at the well known Hoito, Finnish community restaurant.  Omri is reading in the living room and the house he shares with Max and Cassie.  And here is a better photo of the snow and light that night we went to see Huff, the play.