Profiling people in the Yukon arts scene whose jobs normally don’t put them into the spotlight.
Your first perception of Duncan Sinclair may be of a reserved, buttoned-down guy – a civil servant, most likely. You wouldn’t be wrong. Sinclair spent decades in the territorial public service, rising through the ranks before retiring in 2002 as top dog of the Yukon Development Corporation. Next time you see him, he has …
On her first day as a government arts consultant in 1987, Laurel Parry was ushered to a desk that held a typewriter, a large black ceramic ashtray, and an in-box loaded with letters and materials from Yukon artists. “The job had been vacant for quite awhile and the sport consultant had been pinch-hitting, so I …
Michele Emslie doesn’t even try to disguise her enthusiasm for her job as an arts administrator. “ I love art. I love artists. I love what they give to the world,” she declares. The Yukon Arts Centre’s community programming director is proud to live in a “fairly isolated and remote” place that “can boast a …
The way Greg Hakonson tells it, the Dawson City Arts Society (DCAS) had its beginnings in a chance encounter with his across-the-street neighbor, artist John Steins. “We started chatting, and decided we should build an arts society,” Hakonson says. “He was coming at it from the arts side, and I was coming at it from …
Greg Hakonson – One Man’s Dream Of The Arts As An Economic Engine For Dawson City Read More »
There’s a moment near the end of the TEDx talk Andrea Simpson-Fowler gave in Whitehorse last year that explains in a nutshell what her life’s work is all about. “Kids can become extraordinary people with unique skills, while learning how to build, how to share, how to create, how to engage, how to manage and …
Andrea Simpson-Fowler has a Passion for Dance — and for Building Communities Read More »
Dan Sokolowski doesn’t disguise his fascination with the Dempster Highway area. “There’s something in the air that makes you feel the people that have been before you, or the caribou that have been through there, but you can’t see,” he says.“I think there’s lots of good old ghosts and spectres that are somehow affecting everybody …
Dan Sokolowski Can’t Stay Away from the Dempster Read More »
Al Cushing sits on a bench in historic King’s Square in Saint John, New Brunswick, reminiscing about his high school grad party on this very spot. It was a blistering day, and the hotel where the event was scheduled had no air conditioning. “We were going to die of heat prostration,” he recounts. “One of my classmates was a son …
When Patti Flather left Vancouver for the Yukon, she had no thoughts of becoming a playwright, let alone co-founder and artistic director of a busy theatre company. “It was not at all part of life,” she says. “My parents were not theatre goers. I had one wonderful teacher in elementary school who did drama with …
For Patti Flather, Gwaandak is about building connections by sharing our stories Read More »
If it’s April and you’re hoping to hear Barbara Chamberlin perform, forget about it. “April is just a killer month,” she says. “I wouldn’t even try to play out that month. It would just be too hard for me.” So what makes April the cruelest month for the Whitehorse musician, teacher and choir director? Well, …
A high-school excursion to a Toronto production of Peter Shaffer’s play, Equus, is what triggered David Skelton’s fascination with theatrical design. “The set and the costumes were just so evocative, so simple, so full of meaning, and just so functional. Scene starts, scene ends, move, move, move, quickly, quickly,” Nakai Theatre’s artistic director recalls. “I …
If you ask Andrew Connors to explain the appeal of film, the answer is simple and direct. “It transports me,” he says without hesitation. A self-professed “art nerd” who loves to read, Connors sees a strong parallel between the storytelling power of film and that of books. “It transports people into other worlds in that …
Andrew Connors behind the camera or behind a desk Read More »
Tourism officials in Barbados market their island as “Distinctively Charming”. But when Mary Bradshaw was weighing the option of a Barbadian internship against one in Whitehorse, she opted for the distinctive charm of the Yukon. “I figured, ‘Oh, I can live anywhere for six months, and it’s the same time zone as where my family …
Mary Bradshaw sees her curator’s role as a bridge between artists and the public Read More »
Jenny Hamilton didn’t waste much time heeding Horace Greeley’s advice to go West young. She was just 14 days old when she arrived in Whitehorse with her parents from her Prince Edward Island birthplace. A few years later, she attended in pre-school in a Porter Creek building that was not yet known as the Guild …
Jenny Hamilton is usually behind the scenes at the Guild Hall… but not always Read More »
