'Hey, what's going on with this

TV?'
Reporter picks Grey Cup game to test a device
that turns off TVs anywhere, anytime
ALEXANDRA GILL
Globe and Mail Update
November 23, 2004 at 11:48 AM EST
VANCOUVER
I like to live dangerously. So when I received my very own TVBGone, a
small, universal remote control that turns off almost any television
with a simple click, it only seemed fitting that I head out to sports bars
during Sunday's Grey Cup game to play with this popular new gadget.
I arrive at the Quay, a cozy Yaletown eatery, just as the British
Columbia Lions and Toronto Argonauts are kicking off. The Quay isn't a
sports bar for serious football fans. It's really a wine bar and
restaurant. The establishment does, however, boast three large
plasma-screen TVs and I thought it would be a safe place to begin
testing my toy without causing a riot.
On Sunday afternoon, the lounge is packed, but there are only two
guys sitting up front at the bar. I pull up a stool behind them and
order a drink. A few minutes later, I pull a small plastic black gizmo
attached to a keychain out of my purse, turn around slightly as if I'm
about to pose a question to the person beside me, stealthily slide the
remote under my armpit, aim it at the TV and click.
It takes about 45 seconds for the device to flash through the 209
infrared trigger codes that control most television models in North
America and Asia. And then the screen goes black.
At first, the two guys at the bar don't even notice. They just keep
staring at the dark screen in front of them. About 20 seconds later,
one of them casually takes a swig from his beer and slowly turns
around to see if the two other TV screens have also crapped out. They
haven't.
"Hey, what's going on with this TV?," the Lions fan calls out to the

bartender.
"Give me a second," the nonplussed employee replies, and then
finishes serving another customer before switching the set back on.
A delayed reaction is typical, says Mitch Altman, the 47-year-old San
Francisco-based computer engineer who invented the keychain
remote, which sells for $14.99 (U.S.) and is only available through his
website (http://www.tvbgone.com ).
"People just keep staring at the TV as if nothing happened," he says,
laughing. "Isn't that bizarre?"
Some might find it bizarre, or even rude, for people to go around
turning off TVs for no good reason, but Altman (who doesn't own a
television set) says TVBGone is a public service, of sorts, that is
intended to free people from the mind-numbing hold of the
omnipresent TV glare that seems to have invaded every pub, urinal,
waiting room and airport on the planet.
"I call it a personal safety device," says Altman, the founder of the
Silicon Valley data-storage maker 3ware. "We're bombarded with
media wherever we go. Now we have a little more control over it."
Altman has been toying with the concept of TVBGone since the early
nineties. One day, he and his friends found themselves at a
restaurant, mindlessly staring at a TV in the corner and not paying
attention to one another. Finally, they began chatting about how great
it would be if they could turn off all televisions and Altman began
wondering if it would be possible to string together a series of power
commands in a single-use remote.
Altman says he probably would have let the idea die, but his friends
kept hounding him about it. Two years ago, he began tinkering away,
pumping about $150,000 -- his entire life savings -- into the project.
On Oct. 19, Wired News posted an article about TVBGone on its
website. Altman was inundated with more than 1,000 orders that day,
before his own site crashed. A torrent of press coverage soon followed,
including articles in People magazine and The New York Times. Since
then, Altman has sold 12,700 units all around the world and his Hong
Kong manufacturer is ramping up production to keep pace with
demand.
"There are probably only a few wackos like me who don't have a TV,"
Altman says. "But now everyone's talking about how much they hate

TV. I think it's cool that people are asking all these big questions about
the TV's presence in our lives, probably for the first time since it was
invented."
Back at the Quay, my TVBGone has stirred up some lively
conversations, and a lot of laughs at my table. "I think it's weird to
have so many TVs in a bar," says real-estate agent Blake Lilly, as I zap
off the second set, then the third.
The boys at the front bar are looking slightly annoyed, but they still
have no idea that I'm behind the prank.
Altman agrees that is TVBGone raises some tricky ethical issues.
"I would never turn off a TV if someone's actively watching it," he
explains. "I might ask them to turn it off, but I wouldn't be devious
about it."
Still, he compares the encroachment of television to second-hand
smoke. "It affects everybody's space. It's a choice, yes, but whose
rights are being violated?" Besides, he adds, a TV set can always be
turned right back on. "It doesn't hurt anyone."
And although he's received many requests for a CellphoneBGone, he
says the concept would be much more difficult to implement.
With mischievous visions of writing this story from jail, I cab it over to
the Shark Club and throw caution to the wind.
Now this is a serious sports bar. It's wall-to-wall TVs (I count 26) and
they're hanging in every corner. The problem is, there are so many
TVs here that when I zap my clicker and turn one off, people simply
shift their gaze to the next one without even pausing to pick up a
chicken wing. Nobody complains when three of 12 sets behind the bar
suddenly go blank.
I meet an off-duty cop and show him my gadget. He's not impressed,
but doesn't report me to the uniformed officers patrolling the front
door when I brazenly pull my TVBGone right out in the open and twirl
around zapping like mad, trying to find the hidden infrared receivers
for the giant projection TV.
"Don't turn that off," he admonishes, shaking his head as he walks
away.

"Hey, what do you got there?" Samson Doll asks I saunter up to the
bar, clicking away at one stubborn set. "I'll help you out," he says with
a laugh, after I explain. "I'm losing big money on this game. Might as
well have some fun."

The man in the mirror: Peter

Pan
It's no secret that Michael Jackson identifies with
the fairy-tale boy who never grew up. But the
darker undertones of that century-old story are
closer to the troubled pop star's current reality
than you'd ever imagine, ALEXANDRA GILL writes
ALEXANDRA GILL
April 20, 2004
VANCOUVER
Once upon a time, there was a cute little boy who sang like an angel
and boogied as bad as James Brown. His name was Michael Joseph
Jackson, but his father called him Big Nose.
Joseph Jackson wasn't necessarily a mean man, as far as tyrannical
stage dads go. But he was a poorly paid crane operator with a large
brood of children to feed. Luckily, it was a talented brood, Michael
being the best singer of them all.
Every day after school, Joseph marched his boys into the living room
and made them rehearse until they collapsed from exhaustion. This
was very hard on Michael, he being the youngest. On weekends,
Joseph would drag the Jackson 5 to Chicago, where his soulful sons
played smoky bars alongside drunken comics and aging strippers.
Michael enjoyed this life about as much as he enjoyed being called Big
Nose. The little boy vowed that when he got older he would make the
world a better place - and surgically reshape his nose.
Eventually, Michael became one of the most famous singers of all

time. He sold millions of albums and earned billions of dollars, but still
wasn't happy. So Michael decided to create a fantasyland theme park
called Neverland, where he could pretend to be a little boy again.
Children from far and wide came to Neverland to ride the Ferris wheel
and pet the giraffes. Some even slept over. Michael said he only felt
comfortable in the company of children. That, however, made a lot of
people uncomfortable.
On Nov. 18, 2003, 70 members of the Santa Barbara County sheriff's
department and district attorney's office raided Neverland. The King of
Pop has since pleaded not guilty to seven counts of molesting a child
under 14 and two counts of giving the child an intoxicating agent. In
recent weeks, a grand jury in California has been hearing testimony
about old and new child-molestation claims against Jackson, with a
pretrial set to begin on April 30.
Goodnight, Michael. It's time to grow up.
"I'm Peter Pan in my heart," Jackson told British journalist Martin
Bashir in an explosive TV documentary that aired last year. Jackson
also admitted on-camera that he sometimes shares his bed with young
boys, including a then-12-year-old cancer survivor, the same boy at
the centre of the current molestation charges.
Many dismiss the Peter Pan analogy, yet the dark undertones of author
J. M. Barrie's life and his famous play, which celebrates its centenary
this year, are closer to Jackson's current reality than most would ever
imagine.
Let us begin with the Scottish author, who will be feted later this year
with a film biography starring Johnny Depp. Barrie was an odd-looking
man. Only 5 feet 5 inches tall, he had a gnomish figure, wore a huge
droopy mustache, and is said to have looked somewhat like a stunted
walrus. Although one of the most renowned writers in Edwardian
society, he suffered from excruciating shyness. He took photographs of
bare-bottomed boys and always lived in homes overlooking children's
parks.
In Andrew Birkin's biography, J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real
Story Behind Peter, Barrie is portrayed as a sad man haunted by a
tragic childhood. The author's older brother, David, died at 13 in a
skating accident. Barrie, who was 6 at the time, used to snuggle into
bed with his inconsolable mother, and even mimicked his dead brother
to cheer her.

In 1894, Barrie married actress Mary Ansell. The marriage was never
consummated and eventually ended in divorce. "Barrie's impotence
was much rumoured in his lifetime, one wag dubbing him 'the boy who
couldn't go up,' " Birkin writes.
Sound familiar? A few months back, Jackson's former wife and the
mother of his two eldest children revealed that they had never actually
had sex. In court papers filed over a custody dispute, Debbie Rowe
claims she was artificially inseminated by an anonymous sperm donor.
Even Lisa Marie Presley, who once insisted she and Jackson enjoyed
normal relations as man and wife, appears to be backpedaling these
days.
In 1897, a chance encounter in London's Kensington Gardens led
Barrie to the Llewelyn Davies family. He cultivated a tight friendship
with the mother of these five boys - George, Jack, Peter, Michael and
Nico - and showered his surrogate family with holidays and gifts. He
spent extensive time alone with the boys, paid for their tuition at Eton,
and eventually adopted them after their parents died.
The boys were the inspiration for Peter Pan, which evolved from an
earlier story called The Little White Bird. In it, the adult male narrator
undresses a boy, bathes him and invites him into his bed.
Birkin believes Barrie's affection was harmless. "Barrie was a lover of
childhood," he writes, "but was not in any sexual sense the pedophile
that some claim him to have been." The last surviving brother, Nico,
once told Birkin: "I don't believe [Barrie] ever experienced what one
might call a stirring in the undergrowth for anyone - man, woman,
adult or child. He was an innocent."
Peter Pan, in the minds of most North Americans today, is usually
associated with the lighthearted fantasy Walt Disney created for his
1953 animated film. In England, however, where the play has been a
staple of children's theatre since it premiered at London's Duke of York
Theatre in 1904 (Barrie later published it in novel form), it has
provided a field day for Freudians.
The original Never-Never Land was a dark and disturbing place where
foul-mouthed fairies tortured little girls, lascivious mermaids tried to
seduce little boys and dimwitted fathers morphed into swashbuckling
murderers.

Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up, was an irresponsible egocentric
with a profound death wish. "To die will be an awfully big adventure,"
Pan exclaims at the end of Act III, as a hungry crocodile with a ticking
time bomb of a heartbeat circles menacingly.
In Barrie's mind, childhood was a very scary place and eternal youth, a
mixed blessing. Many have compared Pan to the ghost of Barrie's dead
brother, or the child he never had.
In the first draft of Barrie's play, Pan was the villain, "the demon boy"
who lures little boys and girls away from their homes in the middle of
the night. Captain Hook, the pirate goaded to frenzy by Pan's
cockiness, was only introduced later as a theatrical device to help
stagehands change scenery.
Given Jackson's affinity for the myth, some might wonder if he has
projected his own father onto Hook. In Jackson's present-day drama,
however, Hook is perhaps better represented by Santa Barbara County
district attorney Tom Sneddon. Mark Geragos, Jackson's theatrical
lawyer, has often accused Sneddon of being obsessed with revenge.
(Sneddon also investigated the first molestation charge against
Jackson 11 years ago, which was settled out of court.)
Pan, like Jackson, is an adept vocal impersonator. (Jackson's insiders
say he only affects his high falsetto in public.) Both are strangely
obsessed with their weight. (The feather-light Pan insists his heft is the
same as a real boy; Jackson is said to be anorexic). Both are also very
good at make-believe. Jackson might look like a disfigured Hollywood
matron whose facelifts have stretched her skin to the snapping point,
but if he says he's only had two surgeries, well, of course it must be
true.
Like Jackson, the storybook Pan did indeed share a bed with his gang
of Lost Boys. In their underground home, they all piled into a Murphy
bed at night like a "boxful of sardines."
Unlike Jackson, the cozy sleeping arrangement did not raise any
eyebrows in Edwardian society. If there is any sexual innuendo in the
story, it has to do with the relationship between Wendy and Peter, who
pretend to be mother and father. Wendy's intentions are mature, but
Pan is completely perplexed.
"You are so puzzling," he says to Wendy. "Tiger Lily is just the same;
there is something or other she wants to be to me . . . but she says it
is not my mother." Pan's childlike innocence harkens back to Jackson's

teen years, and the persistent reports of well-meaning young women

who tried to pop the singer's virginity. According to one tabloid story,
he and Tatum O'Neal were seen together at a party for Rod Stewart.
When the young actress took Jackson's hand and marched him toward
the bedroom, he turned and fled in terror.
Michael Jackson has often compared his relationship with Elizabeth
Taylor to that of Peter and Wendy. But these days, as the former film
goddess stands by Jackson in all her overweight, depressed, eccentric
glory, Taylor more resembles Tinker Bell, the moody fairy who is prone
to calling everyone "You silly ass." At the end of the story, Tinker Bell
is the only friend Peter Pan has left in Never-Never Land, but even she
flames out eventually. After Peter Pan defeats Hook, Wendy and her
brothers go back home and take the Lost Boys with them. Mrs.
Darling, Wendy's mother, offers to adopt Pan too. He refuses and flies
away.
"No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man," Pan taunts.
"I want always to be a little boy and to have fun."
Pan never is caught and never grows up. Jackson might consider this a
promising omen. But as the grand jury sits and the media hounds
circle, the disgraced pop star should take heed of Barrie's telling
notation.
Peter Pan's so-called freedom, wrote the author, "is only his greatest
pretend."

Drilling for culture

Sure, oil-rich Calgary is booming economically but

what's the city's arts scene like? Will all those
Imperial Oil employees who are being transferred
from culture-rich Toronto soon be complaining
their new home is a cultural backwater?
ALEXANDRA GILL reports from Cowtown
ALEXANDRA GILL

October 30, 2004

CALGARY
Welcome to Skew, Calgary's newest commercial contemporary art
gallery. It's opening night of the Wet Paint group exhibit, and the hotpink abstracts blazing off the showroom's snow-white walls are nearly
as bright as the mood.
Over in one corner, gallery-owners Emily Barnett and Bart Habermiller
are chewing the fat with Mark Lawes, artistic director of Theatre
Junction, an award-winning company that recently bought the Grand
Theatre -- and is now restoring the historic downtown landmark to its
former glory as a sorely needed, 400-seat performing-arts space.
Up at the bar is Ryan Scarff, a local architect recently returned from
Poland, where he and the Alberta-based Great Escape Memorial
Project Committee are building a chapel to commemorate the 76 Allied
airmen who bravely busted loose from the Stalag Luft III prison in
1944.
The saloon-side posse includes Todd Towers and Tim McCool of
Farmboy Fine Arts, the Calgary-based interior-design company that
just furnished the ambitious new W Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, with
1,400 wall sculptures and photographic triptychs, all custom-designed
and manufactured in Alberta.
So when did these Prairie doggies start riding so tall in the saddle?
"We're all a bunch of cowboys," Towers says of Calgary's tight-knit
artistic community. "We can go as high as we want."
To say culture in Calgary is booming as fast and furiously as the
regional economy would be a slightly windy tale. But after 10 years of
government cutbacks, and many more years standing in the shadows
of Edmonton, creative types here are as restless as a hen on a hot
griddle.
Too bad the provincial government of Ralph Klein, flush with the
surplus of its oil-patch revenues and now campaigning for a fourth
consecutive term, doesn't seem to give a hoot about the artistic
renaissance sprouting up in its own pasture.
"Calgary is at a pivot point," says Lance Carlson, the new president of
the Alberta College of Art and Design. A critic and writer for many

esteemed arts magazines, and a former vice-president of the Kansas

City Art Institute, Carlson moved to Calgary from Los Angeles just
three months ago. "I would not have come to Calgary," he adds, "if I
did not absolutely believe culture here had reached a crucial moment
of qualitative and quantitative growth."
Traditionally, Calgary has not been known as a hotbed of culture. For
years, it played second fiddle to Edmonton, home of the provincial
museum, Alberta's first symphony orchestra, opera company, public
gallery and folk festival, as well as Canada's first international jazz
festival and a world-famous fringe fest. In fact, Calgary didn't begin to
come of age until the 1985 opening of the Centre for the Performing
Arts, now called the Epcor Centre. It has spent the 20 years since (and
the last five, in particular) trying to catch up to its rival.
Yes, Edmonton has the Fringe. But Calgary has One Yellow Rabbit's
High Performance Rodeo, an annual jamboree of theatre, dance,
poetry, music, radio drama, video art and spoken word. It's also got
the Alberta Theatre Projects PlayRites festival of new work; a vibrant
puppetry community; Loose Moose (the originators of improvisational
Theatresports); plus numerous small experimental theatre groups such
as Virgin Stones, Art Visuale and Bubonic Tourist.
Granted, Calgary has no large contemporary-art gallery for travelling
exhibits; the civic art collection doesn't even have a permanent home.
And only one of its artist-run centres, the Truck Gallery, can afford to
rent downtown.
Still, the city can rightly boast of several world-class cultural gems:
the Esther Honens International Piano Competition, the International
Organ Festival and a folk festival that's become far more lively than
Edmonton's. And the list doesn't stop there. Calgary has just enjoyed
the most prosperous year of film production in five years. Bookpublishing companies are growing. Last spring, Avenue magazine beat
out a slew of Vancouver-based startups to win the award for best new
entry at the Western Canadian Magazine Awards. And earlier this
summer, the city's literary community lassoed Toronto poet Christian
Bk, a Griffin Prize-winner, as an associate professor at the University
of Calgary's English department.
Perhaps most importantly, the city itself has just approved a new Civic
Arts Policy that will create Calgary's first official, professionally run
lobby group for the arts by amalgamating two volunteer-run agencies,
which had previously distributed arts funding on behalf of the city, into

the newly created Calgary Arts Development Agency. It will also have
a full-time administrative staff and an appointed board to assume
responsibility for planning, funding and leading civic arts initiatives.
"We have the talent, we have the money and we have the brains,"
says Yves Trepanier, owner of Trepanier Baer Gallery and an active
community leader. "Now that the debate around fiscal responsibility is
over, and we've become the first debt-free province in Canada, we
have to start asking the really hard questions about what we want to
be when we grow up."
For his part, Minister of Community Development Gene Zwozdesky
(whose portfolio includes culture) says his government has made some
moves to encourage growth in the arts. "Since I became minister in
March of 2001," says Zwozdesky, "I nearly tripled the budget for the
Alberta Film Development Corporation, and I've been able to get a 10per-cent increase for the Alberta Arts Foundation" -- albeit, he notes,
after funding had been frozen for 14 years. Others point out that even
those increases barely compensated for inflation, and that the entire
pot is culled from lottery funds rather than general revenues.
There's no doubt Calgary has what it takes to buck it from cultural
backwater to Canadian powerhouse. With 500 Imperial Oil city slickers
heading from Hogtown to a new Cowtown headquarters by next
summer -- all of them accustomed to the possibility of feasting at a
world-class chuck wagon of culture -- the city is riper than ever to
explode onto the cultural map.
Still, the story of how that might be managed remains to be told. Colin
Jackson, Epcor Centre president and all-round czar of Calgary's
cultural community, says the city's rapid growth has ignited a struggle
for its soul.
"You see it in the cowboy myths," says Jackson. "On the one side,
there's the popular image of the cowboy, defined very much by John
Wayne. He's a man of few words, who solves things with his fists and
rides off silently into the sunset. This version of the myth is very
libertarian, almost sociopathic in its selfishness. The other story is
about the cowboy who is highly egalitarian and exceptionally creative - you can't be all the way out on the range and not be someone who
can't rethink a problem and find new solutions. He's generous,
engaged, and takes responsibility for others in the community.
"That's a nice story," Jackson says of the latter. "I like that one. But

which will dominate?"

With his faded denims, pointy-toed boots and tousled hair, Jean
Grand-Matre cuts a curious portrait of the creative cowboy. Fresh
from Alberta Ballet's annual general meeting, the Quebec-born artistic
director straddles a chair in a quiet studio, takes a swig of red wine
and gets ready to talk turkey.
"You want the honest-to-goodness truth? Calgary is booming
economically. Culturally, it's booming -- but at a slower pace. It
reminds me of Montreal 25 years ago," says the 41-year-old director.
A former dancer with Ballet British Columbia and other Canadian
troupes, he made his mark as a choreographer with Frames of Mind,
danced by the National Ballet of Canada and nominated for a Dora
Mavor Moore Award in Toronto in 1993. That led to commissions with
Stuttgart Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
"This city wants to be cosmopolitan," asserts Grand-Matre. "It's a
young city. There are a lot of people moving here. And it has rich
folklore. The problem is, the MLAs are way behind. The provincial
government's relationship with culture is non-existent. They don't
participate. They're not proud of it. We need more holistic politicians
who are not afraid to say the greatest human achievement is cultural
expression. Alberta is on the cusp of living the exotic life. Now they
need to bite in and suck the juice right out of it." After making that
dramatic statement, Grand-Matre stands up suddenly. "Come on," he
says, "drink your wine. I want to introduce you to someone."
Out in the main rehearsal space, volunteers are stacking chairs from
the general meeting while board directors, staff and a few sweaty
dancers -- who had performed for the meeting -- mill around
discussing Dangerous Liaisons, the risqu season opener. In the corner
stands a giant billboard that features a defiant ballerina flying through
clouds against a bright blue sky: Ready to Soar is the name of the
upcoming fundraising campaign.
Three years ago, the ballet was staggering under a $475,000 debt. For
the last two years, it has accrued substantial surpluses -- $266,000
last year alone, thanks in part to a 9-per-cent subscription increase.
This season, however, will be different. To prepare for Alberta's
centennial celebrations in 2005, the Jubilee Auditoriums in Edmonton
and Calgary are undergoing a joint $60-million facelift and are closed
for the year. As a result, Alberta's sole ballet company has lost both of

its performance spaces, and will be trying to make up the difference

with longer runs in smaller venues. Subscriptions are already sliding.
The Jubilee closure has also displaced Calgary Opera, which in recent
years had been one of the city's most profitable arts companies while
simultaneously broadening its programming mandate, most notably
with the development of Filumena, a homegrown opera that debuted
to an ecstatic reception in 2003. With the Jubilee situation, the
company decided to cut back on programming and downsize its budget
by $900,000 for the year.
The company perhaps most precariously affected by the Jubilee
closure is the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. Although the CPO calls
the Epcor Centre home, in normal years its musicians also play in the
Jubilee pit for both the ballet and the opera. Without that work this
year, the Philharmonic stands to lose approximately $400,000 in
income. That's a substantial chunk of cash for a company painstakingly
resurrected from a near-death bankruptcy two years ago.
While the CPO is back from the brink -- in August, the company posted
its best operating surplus, $135,000, in a decade -- clearing out a
$1.5-million deficit has not been easy. The three-year plan has
involved a 20-per-cent wage cut for staff and musicians (which is
eventually to be restored), a severe downsizing of operations and a
reduced concert schedule.
The CPO's road to full recovery is still paved with speed bumps. Last
year's marketing plan, which emphasized single-ticket sales over
season subscriptions, failed miserably. And despite a sold-out audience
for the renewed Mozart on the Mountain concert in Canmore, Alta.,
last month, a Light Classics concert at Calgary's 2,000-seat Jack
Singer Concert Hall on Thanksgiving weekend was less than half full.
Mike Bregazzi, the retired oil exec hired on as the Philharmonic's new
CEO, is still convinced that an expanded repertoire with more pop
concerts, a broader outreach program and a growing reserve fund will
help turn the organization around. But he says it would have helped if
the province had provided some sort of Jubilee compensation. "We
seem to be talking to deaf ears," says Bregazzi. "We've heard some
sympathetic murmurings, but nothing concrete."
So what does the man whom Grand-Matre suddenly introduces me to
as "a modern Medici" think of the government's attitude toward the
arts? "Uh, I've got to be careful," says D'Arcy Levesque, director of
public and government affairs for energy giant Enbridge Inc., a

director-at-large for the ballet, and chair of the board at the Alberta
College of Art and Design. Many in the arts community tout him as a
corporate leader who really cares about culture and who carries clout
with the Klein government.
Instead of answering the question about the government directly,
Levesque points to a book that has become a bible of sorts for the arts
community these days. Alberta's Camelot: Culture and the Arts in the
Lougheed Years is a passionate, 240-page memoir by Fil Fraser, a
former filmmaker, broadcaster and chief commissioner of the Alberta
Human Rights Commission.
Published last year, the book is an ode to what it depicts as Alberta's
golden era, from the early '70s to the mid-'80s, when oil revenues
were gushing, and the arts received more support on a per-capita
basis than anywhere in Canada, albeit with Edmonton benefiting the
most. "The government treated culture as if it really mattered," writes
Fraser, who concludes that the Lougheed government's most valuable
innovation was a program of matching grants that led to
unprecedented support for the arts from the private sector.
Contrast those halcyon days with the current government's approach.
When Klein came to power in 1992, his government folded the
Department of Culture and Multiculturalism into the new Ministry of
Community Development, began winding down the matching-grants
program, and dismantled a number of funding agencies with a
determination that was "almost gleeful in its bloody-mindedness,"
writes Fraser.
Last summer, when the provincial government issued a survey asking
Albertans how future surpluses should be spent, arts and culture
weren't even offered as options to be ticked off by respondents. "You
can't include everything," insists Minister Zwozdesky, a former music
director with Alberta's renowned Ukrainian Shumka Dancers. Perhaps,
but despite the omission, more than half the respondents -- 165,000
out of approximately 300,000 -- marked arts and culture under the
"other" category. If re-elected and appointed to the same cabinet
position, Zwozdesky says he plans to complete an economic survey of
the arts which he has already begun, to determine how the dollars will
be dispersed.
"More than half indicated this was a serious area for future
investment, and I agree," adds the minister. "The arts are big
business. They breathe a lot of oxygen into daily living, and they don't

always get the credit they deserve." What remains to be seen is

whether he can get his cabinet colleagues to agree.
Back at the ballet, Levesque remains hopeful. "There are a number of
corporate leaders in this province who are committed to changing the
government's mind about the importance of arts and culture to our
community," he continues. "Because at the end of the day, when all
the office towers are cleared out and people head home to the
suburbs, if you didn't have arts and culture keeping the flame alive,
the city would be like a man without a soul."
This week in Globe Review, Alexandra Gill will write about the rebirth
of Calgary's Grand Theatre and the death of the city's dream for a
modern-art gallery.