Out & About

I hesitate to post this after what happened in Toronto yesterday (MSN), but when I set out from downtown to cycle to the MacKenzie Art Gallery this afternoon around 1 p.m., within a matter of blocks I encountered (1) a cyclist travelling the wrong way down 12th Ave between Scarth and Cornwall (2) a cyclist travelling the wrong way down Smith St. near the courthouse and (3) a cyclist and a skateboarder travelling the wrong way on 13th Ave at Smith. Not doing the cycling/skateboarding communities in Regina any favours, guys.

Local Gallery Receives Award

Received a press release from the MacKenzie Art Gallery today announcing that it had received the 2009 York Wilson Endowment Award. The Award is administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, and is worth $30,000. The gallery secured the money with its proposal to purchase six works from Ruth Cuthand's brilliant Trading series. If you caught a show called Coming to Presence at the Dunlop Art Gallery last fall you probably remember them. In the series, Cuthand replicates through intricate beadwork the microscopic images of viruses and bacteria that Europeans introduced (sometimes deliberately) to Aboriginal people during colonization. Lacking immunity to the foreign bugs, millions of aboriginal people succombed to diseases like chicken pox, typhoid fever and bubonic plague (pictured above).

Look forward to seeing the works on display sometime soon.

Wascana Pool to Stay Open Labour Day

Just got off the phone with Bev Hartnell, Supervisor of the Leisure Centres, and she says that contrary to an earlier announcement, Wascana Pool will be staying open through the holiday weekend.

"We have had a bad bad summer and we thought things were over, and now, we were wrong," she says. "It's not over. It looks like summer's just begun. Because we've had some people who are really enjoying this beautiful weather, we will stay open on the stat holiday. So we're going to update our website and put an ad in the Leader Post and I've already changed the signage at Wascana Pool to reflect that we will be open on the 7th so that people can take advantage of this nice weather right up to the very end."

And, I would like to apologize for my use of the word "killjoy" in the headline of my previous post. Bev Hartnell was a lovely person and sounded utterly unlike a "killjoy." An extender-of-the-joy is more like it.

What Some People Won't Do to Get Out of Work

If you happen to be on the Scarth St. Mall today, make sure you look up -- way up. Until 5 p.m., Reginans who have raised at least $1500 in pledges will be rappelling down the west side of the 21-story McCallum Hill east tower. Proceeds from the annual Drop Zone fundraiser go to Camp Easter Seal. Here's a close-up of the rapeller on the right once she safely reached the ground. (Original Prop)

Rosie's Top Six on Tuesday

1. THE DE-KLEIN OF ALBERTA For the past half generation, Saskatchewan’s business leaders and right-wing pundits have campaigned to make Saskatchewan’s economy and politics more like Alberta’s. Gillian Steward says Saskatchewan should thank its lucky stars it didn’t, as Klein is totally discredited in his home province. (TorStar)

2. BYE BYE SATIRE The CRTC raps Radio Canada’s knuckles over a New Year’s Eve 2008 special that defined black people as primitives and criminals and talked about how easy it would be to shoot a black man in the White House because he’d stand out (Canadian Press). Next stop, Fox News …

3. YOU GOTTA GIVE THE PEOPLE SOMETHING GOOD TO READ ON A SUNDAY One good explanation why you can’t believe what you read and see from most news media outlets any more. (RedTory)

4. YOUR CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT AT WORK Thank you, our Lord (the Conservative one) for jacking up our phone bills. (cbc.ca via a BCer in Toronto)

5. MAKE IT RAIN ON LABOUR DAY, EASTSIDERS! Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones (Google) has signed with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (CNNSI). In other news Montreal police have cancelled all leave and will deploy extra officers on Rue Ste. Catherines on the weekend of Sept. 20 (cfl.ca)

6. ALL COLIN, ALL THE TIME Colin Thatcher has made the front page of the Leader-Post and Star-Phoenix for the past four days and the cover of this week’s Maclean’s. So it’s interesting to note that the first and (outside of prairie dog’s writers’ meetings, anyway) only journalist to call bull$hit on Thatcher’s printed paranoid pity party, Murray Mandryk, (Leader-Post) has his commentary buried on the last page of today’s print edition.