Listen: A Season of Bees

A Season of Bees

People have kept bees for thousands of years, mostly for honey, but also to support the health of their crops, as bees are thought to be responsible for 80% of pollination worldwide. But the popularity of urban backyard beekeeping has soared around the world in recent years as city-dwellers look to raise awareness of food security and ecological sustainability.

John and Dione Chisholm of Calgary have joined the community of urban beekeepers with two hives they tend on a small deck outside their second-floor window in the inner-city neighbourhood of Kensington. This spring will mark the beginning of their fourth year of beekeeping.

They just happen to live a few doors down from Monica Kidd, who visited their home-based honey operation over the course of a year.

Here is her documentary, “A Season of Bees,” with music from the Creative Commons from bensound.com and from Nick Rivera.

It aired on VOBB.org on Mar 26, 2018.

Listen: The Shoe Project 2018 – Part 1

The Shoe Project 2018 – Part 1

Every woman knows the power of a good pair of shoes, right?

While the old cliché hints at shoes as a symbol of vanity, there is a unique literacy program in Canada that builds on the bond between women and shoes as a way to allow more women’s stories to be told.

The Shoe Project has been running in Canada for 14 years. The brainchild of novelist Katherine Govier, it evolved from a gift of money from an unnamed patron into a national institution for women’s literacy and storytelling. Women who are new immigrants to Canada are invited to write a story about a pair of shoes and how it relates to their long road to a new life. The women are then mentored over several weeks and coached through drafts of their stories. They also receive coaching in performance.

Then at the end of the session, they get up on stage and read their story in front of a crowd, in English. The Shoe Project started in Toronto, went west to Calgary, and is making its way east, with stops in Halifax, Fredericton and Charlottetown.

This year’s Calgary Shoe Project performance took place on Jan 21, at the brand new National Music Centre, on the second anniversary of the Women’s March on Washington. It was part of Calgary’s long-running One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo theatre festival, and was a sold out show.

The evening and the readers are introduced by performance coach Denise Clarke. You will also hear from Shoe Project founder Katherine Govier, and participants Choden Tenzin of Tibet, Catherine Enstas of Syria, Noriko Ohsada of Japan, and Dusanka Reljic from the former Yugoslavia. Music courtesy of Aya Myana of Syria, playing the oud.

This first part of the 2018 performance of The Shoe Project originally aired on vobb.org on Monday, January 29, 2018.

Listen: A Little Fish

A Little Fish

In 2016, Monica Kidd and her family spent a month at their cabin in the Bay of Exploits. Busy working on a novel at the time, her father-in-law challenged her to write a story about the capelin fishery instead. He was upset that the capelin hadn’t rolled that year, there were no whales, and there were none to be found in the bellies of the cod.

She thought about it for awhile, and what emerged was a story about ecology and science, politics and belonging.

Here is Monica Kidd’s audio essay, called “It Rests on a Little Fish.” Music is from The Blue Dot Sessions, Dave Nelson, and Doctor Turtle, all available on the Creative Commons.

It originally aired on Voice of Bonne Bay (vobb.org) in March, 2017.

Listen: Gaspereau Press Wayzgoose Writers’ Salon, 2016

Gaspereau Press Wayzgoose Writers’ Salon, 2016

Gaspereau Press describes itself as one of Canada’s ‘most innovative and tenacious literary publishers.’ Just shy of twenty years old, it has been voted Best Small Press Publisher in Canada three times, and its books have won the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award.

Since 2000, Gaspereau has been hosting an annual Wayzgoose, which traditionally was an annual party thrown by a master printer for his workers. In more recent times, the event has become a celebration of printing and publishing in general.

For the last few years, Gaspereau has incorporated a Writers’ Salon into its annual Wayzgoose to celebrate the work of some of its writers. This year’s Salon was held at Wickwire House in Kentville, Nova Scotia, on October 22.

The Gapereau writers featured this year were all poets: Matt Robinson with some nights it’s entertainment; some other nights just work; Carmine Starnino with Leviathan; and Erin Brubacher with In the Small Hours. Monica Kidd, another Gaspereau poet, hosted the event to share. This recording first aired on VOBB radio on Monday, Oct 31. (Get comfy, it’s 52 minutes long!)