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Many of us enjoy a light read to while away a lazy summer afternoon. At the Hudson Village Theatre, you don’t even have to read to have fun – you can just listen and watch as four women meet, mingle and moan – and become a family of friends.

The director, Ellen David, takes this (Jessie) Jones (Nicholas) Hope (Jamie) Wooten delightful script and gently guides the dynamic quattro of actors as they learn “what is holding you back from one’s past and self-imposed limitations towards a compelling future”.  This could be any one of us.

The performers David chose are as well cast and strong as the four sides of a square. Randa Covington (Jane Wheeler) has defined herself by her work, and doesn’t know how to re-define herself beyond that. She tries to hold on to her safe proper business countenance, but is weighed down by feeling second best in her family. Marlafaye (Lisa Bronwyn Moore) gets the classic “dumped for a younger woman” part, so feelings of anger and rejection are keeping her from moving forward. “I swear the older you get the harder it is to jump start a new life”, she says.

Dot (Kathleen Fee), the oldest of the bunch, has just lost her husband, the only man she has known, and with whom she had planned to retire. She has no idea how to figure out what comes next. Her subtle acting is deliciously wonderful as she delivers many funny zinger lines. Paula Costain as Jinx moves and talks with the right zippy attitude to convince them, as their new “life coach”, to go (as David says)” beyond their comfort zone to a brave new world where they eventually find themselves”. Jinx reminds us that her older sister (now incapacitated with dementia) taught her that “it’s the happy in life that counts”.

The set by Jean-Claude Olivier is a comfortable porch, so the women have an informal place to gently and liquidly reveal their sagas. As this is a “Sipping Society”, drinking props (by Lea Robertson) were a fun challenge due to the many iterations of serving different kinds of alcohol. Marlafaye once toasted, “Girls, here’s to living single and drinking doubles”.

There were more costume changes than you would expect (by Elisabeth De Medeiros), creating a fashion show which helped define the scenes and the forward movement of their lives.

Jamie Wooten, one of the playwrights, was a writer for The Golden Girls, so the quality of their patter and the giggly one-liners is in the same genre of that hysterical show.  When Marlafaye sees Randa’s house for the first time she opines, “Yeah, sure is a pretty place. Everything’s so neat and clean. I’m not like that. Instead of cleaning my house, I just turn off the lights”.  When Randa comments on drinking mead, “This really isn’t so horrible”, Marlafaye responds, “The very words I said on my wedding night”.  Marlafaye also says,  “Sex is like a brownie – when it’s good it’s really good. And when it’s bad….it’s still pretty good!”.

Andrea Romaldi, the artistic director writes, “friendships are our lifelines and support structures. Good friends cheer us, challenge us, bewilder us and irritate us, but ultimately they support and help us grow into our best selves”. Head out to Hudson and lift a glass to friendship.

Location: 28 Rue Wharf, Hudson, QC J0P 1H0
Phone: 450- 458-5361
Dates: til July 22
https://villagetheatre.ca/

Tags: act, afternoon, alcohol, Andrea Romaldi, artistic, bewilder, brave, brownie, business, cast, challenge, cheer, clean, coach, comfort, costume, dementia, director, double, E, Elisabeth De Medeiros, Ellen David, friend, friendship, future, genre, girl, glass, golden, Happy, house, hudson, husband, hysterical, Jamie Wooten, Jane Wheeler, Jean-Claude Olivier, Jessie Jones, jumpstart, Kathleen Fee, Lea Robertson, life, lifeline, light, liquid, Lisa Bronwyn Moore, neat, Nicholas Hope, old, one-liner, past, patter, Paula Costain, prop, read, retire, revenge, Savannah, single, Sip, sister, strong, summer, support, talk, Theatre, village, woman, women, work, world, writer, zone

Whoa, the stars were aligned at the Press opening of Hosanna. Not only was the the former artistic and executive director here, Roy Surette, who planned this production for Centaur, but the new artistic director, Eda Holmes, who was thrilled to be presenting it – but also – Maurice Podbrey (and wife Elsa), the founding artistic and executive director – AND – the author, Michel Tremblay. All were delighted with the show, as well they should be.

Writing this in 1971, Michel Tremblay was far ahead of the general population’s knowledge of the LGBTQ+ community. In the play he speaks to the gender roles imposed by society at that time, and hope for eventual self-acceptance. Holmes refers to  this in her Director’s notes: “the narrow structures of gender and identity that were available at the time”. We have to applaud his bravery.

Eloi Archambeaudoin revisits his Table D’Hote Theatre role as Hosanna, hairdresser during the day to drag queen at night. The grander Centaur stage was a tabla rosa for lighting designer Audrey-Anne Bouchard to transform Claude Lemieux-rural boy into Hosanna-drag queen, using the uncomfortable giant flashing neon sign “BEAUBIEN” (tip of the hat to Montreal), to the David statue spotlight and the overall red light district red room.

The play reveals the painful sparring between the diva and her boyfriend, Cuirette playing hardass-leather- dude style by Davide Chiazzese. He fights back at her by putting the uncomfortable problems in her face, “You go to bed with makeup on because you don’t want to see who’s underneath”.  He knows Hosanna is stuck “between a woman’s face and a man’s body”. She knows how to spit back, referring to his job as washer woman by day and cowboy by night.

Who in this world doesn’t sometimes wish they could dress up and be someone else? Hosanna hits on this when she proclaims, “I know everyone who is gay in Montreal – even when they don’t know it themselves”.

Tremblay shows us how we all work on our outsides but really need to be working on our insides. Director Mike Payette notes what a timeless story this really is, because all couples have to face “their notions of love, and how they can exist together”.

Location 453 St-Francois-Xavier
corner: Notre-Dame
Tel: 514-288-3161
Dates: til June 10
Prices: $38.50 – $51.75 (includes deals for students and seniors)
www.centaurtheatre.com
Metro: Place d’Armes

photos by  Andrée Lanthier

What can you say about a museum when the 7-year-old you are with stops in her tracks at the entrance because she’s in awe of what she sees? Imagine you are walking thru a video screen of Canadian nature: the aurora borealis, crystals, wheat fields or fire. The museum has been completely re-done, with only two of the all-time favorite exhibits remaining – the crazy kitchen (it’s still so fun watching the video monitor of “drunken” people trying to walk through) and those majestic steam locomotives.

Visiting with a group of kids with an age range of 4-13, all of them were entranced for over 5 hours. Even though it was a busy weekend day, it rarely felt crowded, since there were so many corners to get lost in. One you may not find was a favorite – go past those hulking locomotives and around a corner to look for the soundproof Sounds of Silence room. Nearby, behind those trains, are movable touchable displays called Sound by Design.

The 13-year old liked the wearable technology and how it made the great outdoors easier to enjoy. He got to test a hockey helmets ( you get to whack one with a hammer) and perused the development of beekeepers’ gloves.

At Into the Great Outdoors, I was entranced by the land-water car owned by a family who needed it to drive/float to their chalet on an island.  Though the Zoom room was noted for ages 0-8, all of the kids had fun there – especially on the climbing wall with its secret smells and in the wind tunnel. The 4 year-old was in there for hours. We even saw couples on dates walking around in there with silly grins on.

Medical sensations was scary to one of the young girls, but they enjoyed manipulating facial features and guessing what the colorful patterns were which were captured by microscopes and telescopes.

The Exploratek room is near the cafe. Here the kids can gets creative and build buildings, create tube tracks or work with a robot.  The museum helps you keep costs down by making sure there are tables and cozy couches if you want to bring your own lunch, We’d suggest you do this, sinces the line for hot food in the cafe  moved slowly. There was a good selection of healthy foods.

A few times a day there are live demonstrations – we got lucky and saw one on pyrotechnics, including a rocket firing. Three-Two-One blast-off to this interactive fun learning museum.

Location: Canada Science and Technology Museum, 1867 St Laurent Blvd, Ottawa, ON K1G 5A3
Telephone: 613-991-3044 or toll-free: 1-866-442-4416
Hours: May 1 to September 1: Open daily; September 2 to April 30: Closed Mondays
https://ingeniumcanada.org

I have not seen a nasty show since the days of Bobby Slayton, so I wondered how I would find it. I was actually very pleasantly surprised to find that the show was not so nasty,

Ari Shaffer

but WAS so funny. Don’t get me wrong – there was plenty of swearing and 4-letter words, especially f___ heard incessantly, but we found ourselves laughing out loud more than we had at the galas recently.

Ari Shaffir as host was definitely qualified and funny, with some great lines about Orthodox Jews and their clothing, and about New York City.

Robert Kelly was the first performer, and his description of potty-training a toddler brought me all the way back in time, when my toddler(s) resisted sitting down and doing their thing, preferring to sit in a dirty diaper instead. He discussed how he was taken aback when he realized that he probably has only 30 summers left in his life.

Robert Kelly

Yamaneika Saunders, herself a large person, joked about being fat and black, and had the audience in tears, especially when discussing black-boy weed.

Jimmy Carr was next, and he came out with a list of one-liners in a notebook, roasting Montreal, Donald Trump (when Donald Trump took office, little did he know), a takeoff on the word “cunt”, and pedophiles.

Godfrey followed with his comparisons of Trump and Trudeau, a diatribe about vegetarians, and his amazement about vaginas (“people actually come out of there, whole groups of people”).

The show was closed by Big Jay Oakerson covering the topic of buttf__king in prison.

Yamaneika Saunders

Jimmy Carr

Godfrey

Big Jay Oakerson

Happily, there was no serious heckling as happened the day before. If anything, the audience was standing up to urge the comedians on and to show their glee over the performances.

The show continues until Saturday night the 29th at the Metropolis, 59 Ste-Catherine St. E. Prices range from $45 to $60.

http://www.hahaha.com/en/show/nasty-show-0

Tags: Canada, comedy, JFL, laughs, Montreal, nasty

Celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday by visiting the our home and native land. Parks Canada is offering all Canadians a FREE 2017 Discovery Pass so there will be no cost to visit any of their sites. You have the option of visiting 148 locations everywhere in the country. You probably think  they’re all about national parks but Parks Canada is way more than that – their mandate includes marine conservation areas and national historic sites.

You could visit the wreck of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in Nunavut, view Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan in Kluane National park, ice fields in Jasper, our country’s birthplace within the fortifications of Quebec, Alexander Graham Bell’s inventions,  walk amongst the flower pot rocks on the ocean floor in the Bay of Fundy, Haida Heritage sites, or even Anne of Green Gables‘ writer, Lucy Maude Montgomery’s house.

Here’s a challenge: See how many of their iconic red Adironack chairs you can find and Instagram them. If you want to drool – and – plan ahead, get copies of the National Geographic books Guide to the National Parks of Canada and Guide to the National Historic Sites of Canada.

Yes, you can camp, but you can also reserve a yurt, a goutte d’Ô which resembles a water droplet, a micro cube, large modern houses called oTENTiks or be one of the first to sleep in a hanging Cocoon in Cape Breton.

www.parkscanada.gc.ca
Tel: 888-773-8888

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If  you’re in the Montreal or Ottawa area,  you are only 1 1/2 hours away from an exciting safari adventure. Parc Omega is the perfect day outing for kids (and folks) of all ages. It’s an 800 hectare park where the animals roam free and you are “caged” in your car. It’s such an easy drive to be able to come face to face with Canadian wildlife: reindeer, elk, arctic wolf and fox, bison, musk ox, turkey, boar, coyote, black bear, and many kinds of deer.

Along a 12-kilometere safari nature route which takes you past lakes, meadows, small valleys, forests and rocky hills, you meander at your own pace. You can pick up bag of carrots at the visitor center (or bring your own), and as you slowly make your way through, you are allowed to open the windows to feed the wildlife. Kids are thrilled that they do not have to be in their car seats here and can flit from side to side of the vehicle to say hello to the animals.

You tune your radio to a station which fills you in on all sorts of information about the species you will be seeing.

• We learned which males are good daddies and stay around to raise the youngsters and which ones only show up for mating season.
• I never knew that the musk oxen’s heads are strong as hammers and they butt and knock everything down. Their quarters are specially built to withstand their strength.
•  You pass by low slung “condos” for boars designed to keep the big predators out.
• Coming here in winter gives you the opportunity to see how the arctic fox blends into the snowscape.

About 2/3 through, there’s a place to stop,  get out to stretch legs and visit some wooden buildings for bathrooms, gifts, food and hot cocoa. Friendly deer are in the parking area to get a snack too – those carrots – buy lots.

This is one experience that all Canadian families should take advantage of. It’s not only educational and fun, but will bring lasting memories for the whole family.

Location: Parc Omega is a safari park in Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours, Quebec, Canada
Address: 399 Route 323 North, Montebello, QC J0V 1L0 Click for map 

Phone: (819) 423-5487
www.parcomega.ca

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It is really hard to take the boring authenticity-proving side of the modern art world and make it into a delightful audience loving (2 standing ovations on opening night) theatre piece.

Stephen Sachs, the playwright, took on the true story of Terry Horton, a former truck driver who scavenged a painting for $5 at a second-hand shop as a gift for a friend who needed cheering up. Maude Gutman, as she is called in this play, is a lover of kitsch – her trailer is overwhelmed by it (A congratulatory shout out here for the jam-packed shelves created by set and costume designer Pam Johnson, who really needed my Smart Shopping Montreal book to find all that stuff!). At a yard sale, the local art teacher noticed the painting and mentioned it might be a Jackson Pollock; and so begins the tale. Somehow Gutman managed to get a major art house in NYC to send an expert over to check out her claim.

And therein lies this sparring pied-a-deux. A foul-mouthed bourbon drinking trailer park madam vs. the snooty elitist artsy gentleman. Human authenticity versus art authenticity is set to be proven. Nicola Cavendish walks the walk and talks the talk. Her sneaker grounded stalking moves her around the trailer while her expert verbal comedic timing keeps the pace going. She even manages to give the garbage pail “a line”.

Jonathan Monro (Lionel Percy), himself a renaissance man (competitive swimmer, piano prodigy, singer, director, lyricist, actor), glides around her, expertly dodging her verbal and physical attacks. My take-away forever (as a former NYC art teacher) is the exuberant and sexually suggestive way in which Monro teaches us the how and why a Jackson Pollock painting is important – and not just a bunch of paint splashes on a canvas.

Though Percy always trusts his “first blink”, it is Nicola Cavendish who summed it up brilliantly when she observed Pollock’s paintings, “You can see that what emerges is layers and layers and layers. I think it’s a lesson on how we can learn to look more closely, whether we are talking about a piece of art or whether we’re talking about the woman who lives across the street who’s offensive.” Modern art is beyond the understanding of the ordinary citizen, and this play opens the door a crack as to what it is all about, how it works and doesn’t work. The show makes it all fun and drives Maude’s trailer expertly to the end to find out if she goes from rags to riches.

Location: 453 St-Francois Xavier
corner: Notre-Dame
Tel: 514-288-3161
Dates: Jan 31-Feb 26, 2017
Prices $28- $51
www.centaurtheatre.com
Metro: Place d’Armes

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Why not get away with your family to Almonte, ON, just west of Ottawa . The very first reason is that Ed Atwell of Healthy Food Technologies (hft) has figured out how to make low-fat donuts that are scrumptious. He “tricks” the donuts by frying them (in zero trans fat oil) for 1/2 the time and then baking them at the same temperature. Watch the video to see him explain the process he invented.

Now take a walk around the corner and pick up your to-go-with coffee at fair trade high quality Equator Coffee Roasters. They roast the beans right there, having bought them from small-scale farming communities and paid the farmers well. Do not  miss the Oh-so-Canadian maple-flavored latte. It’s worth driving there just for that! Kids can enjoy the hot chocolate.

Next you can pick up snacks for the car or yummies to take home at Dandelion Foods co-op before a 45 min. drive to Wheelers Pancake House and Maple Sugar Camp. D
andelion Foods co-op sells whole, local and organic foods and some for specialty diets. Here you can buy the famous Hummingbird chocolate bars favored by Prime Minister Trudeau. Note the PB & Joy (with peanut butter) and the spicy Mayan.  Please bring back the Empire Cheese caramelized onion cheddar cheese for me.

For lunch and fun, at Wheelers Pancake House you can visit the Maple Museum and the Chainsaw & Logging museum and the kids can have fun in the playground. Handy men and women will be mesmerized by Mark Wheeler’s dad Vernon’s collection of hundreds of chainsaws. Everyone will enjoy his “largest collection of pure maple syrup artifacts” which help explain the history of the maple sugar industry. From First Nations wooden spigots to the plastic lines of today, syrup pour-ers, molds, pails, and everything else related to this sweet topic, it’s all here at this 38-year family business. Don’t forget to leave room for the freshly made pancakes and delicious syrup right from their trees.

For the grand finale, we visited Keith and Elizabeth Adam’s alpacas and llamas at their  Serendipity Farm. For retirement they decided to raise alpacas for the fun of it. The couple exudes their enjoyment of spending their golden years with these elegant, fluffy friends. They’ll chatter about the little quirks of each of the animals as well as the work associated with raising them.

Alpacas produce fiber that is as fine as cashmere, soft, silky and much warmer than sheep’s wool, while also wicking moisture away from the body.
In their little shop you can buy scarves, gloves, purses, as well as fiber felted sheets, alpaca and fiber rovings and handspun yarn.

Leave some time too for the local shops which wind their way along the downtown streets. Yes there’s plenty to do in Lanark County for a low-key interesting getaway weekend. We are not sure how this area attracted so many hippie/free trade/entrepreneurial types who seem to care for the planet. You can feel virtuous spending time and money in this town.

Equator Coffee Roasters, 451-A Ottawa St, Almonte, ON K0A 1A0, Tel: 613-256-5960
www.equator.ca

Dandelion Foods, 541 Ottawa St, Almonte, ON K0A 1A0,  Tel: 1-613-256-4545
www.dandelionfoods.ca

Healthy Food Technologies, 25 Industrial Rd., Almonte ON  Tel: 613-256-9900
(HFT) https://www.facebook.com/HFTinc

Wheelers Pancake House and Maple Sugar Camp, 1001 Highland Line, McDonalds Corners(Lanark Highlands), ON K0G 1M0 Tel: 613-278-2090
www.wheelersmaple.com

Serendipity Farm Alpacas & Llamas,  929 South Lavant Rd, Lanark, ON K0G1K0  Tel: 613-259-3304 or 613-222-6303
www.serendipityalpacas.ca

www.lanarkcounty.ca

Tags: Almonte, Alpaca, animal, baking, bean, body, butter, Canadian, car, cashmere, chainsaw, cheddar, cheese, Chocolate, co-op, coffee, corner, county, couple, dandelion, diet, donut, downtown, elegant, Empire, enjoy, entrepreneurial, Equator Coffee Roasters, family, farm, fat, felt, fiber, finale, First Nations., flavour, fluff, food, free, friend, fry, gloves, gold, handspun, HFT, hippie, holiday, home, Hummingbird, Keith Adam, kid, Lanark, latte, line, llama, local, log, low-fat, lunch, maple, Maple Sugar Camp, Mark Wheeler, Mayan, men, moisture, mold, money, Montreal, Museum, oil, onion, organic, pail, peanut, planet, plastic, playground, Prime Minister Trudeau, purse, roving, scarves, Serendipity Farm, sheep, shop, silk, snack, spigot, street, sugar, sweet, syrup, trade, trans, trick, vernon, video, virtuous, walk, weekend, Wheelers Pancake House, women, wood, wool, work, yarn

Voiles en Voiles is a family-oriented park in the Old Port of Montreal, based on a pirate ship and consisting of aerial climbing, zipping, wall climbing and inflatable bouncing games. This is an idea of what you are up against at Voiles en voiles.

Tags: Adventure, aerial, athletic, attraction, bouncy, Canada, challenge, climb, climbing, drivei95roadtrip, entertainment, family, game, iamtb, inflatable, Montreal, Nature, old, park, pirate, port, Quebec, ship, sport, summer, theme, travelblogger, voile, wall, wall climbing, zip, zipline

View of the Voiles de voiles Pirate Ship adventure from the SOS Labyrinthe in Old Montreal. The Voiles consists of games, aerial courses and bouncy castles that can keep you occupied for hours.

Tags: Adventure, aerial, attraction, bouncy, Canada, castle, clue, course, drivei95, game, i95, interstate95, labyrinth, labyrinthe, maze, Montreal, old, pirate, port of montreal, Quebec, roadtrip, ship, travel, travelblogger, voile