Hosted by Alexandre Denis

Stories by Alexandre Denis

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LOCAL

McGill College Avenue could be the next street to get a facelift in the city. Montreal’s Public Consultation Office recommends narrowing the street to two lanes to create a pedestrian plaza.

This move is one of the Plante administrations many ideas to make the city less car-centric. The idea was first announced in August but the city waited for a public consultation before moving forward with the project.

The possible changes would include widening the already large sidewalks from President-Kennedy to Sainte-Catherine. The project would take advantage of other developments in the area such as the McGill REM Station and the Sainte-Catherine redevelopment.  

PROVINCIAL

The CAQ may have won a majority last election but their ideas may not be as popular as they might have thought. A new study shows that it was a desire for change that led to victory rather than their electoral promises.

55 per cent of their voters said they voted for change. Only 17 per cent said they voted because they liked the CAQ platform. The Liberal and Quebec Solidaire voters were much more enthused by their party’s ideas. Around a third of them voted because they supported the platform.

The CAQ also has considerable opposition to it’s main ideas from its base. Around 40 per cent do not support its major promise to reduce immigration.

INTERNATIONAL

Canada is halting all deportations to Haiti due to the ongoing crisis in the caribbean nation. The island has seen violent protests in the past week calling for the resignation of President Jovenel Moise.
Ottawa has also updated it’s travel advisory to Haiti. It recommends Canadians avoid travelling to the country. Canada is currently working to get any Canadians out of Haiti. The Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince will remain closed but consular services are still available by phone or email

Graphic: Valery Lemay

For most up-and-coming artists, there’s a balancing act between channeling their influences and developing their own unique identity.  When looking back on his third and breakthrough album, Loveshit, 10 years on from its original release, Montreal singer/songwriter Jason Bajada credits the album’s success with striking this balance for the first time on record.

“I think that came about from finding my sound,” Bajada describes. “I experimented with the recordings, I had done two previous independent albums, but this record just felt like I was singing with the voice I was supposed to be singing with.  For the first time I was proud of my songwriting chops and really channeling a true emotion as opposed to mimicking my heroes.”

Released in February 2009, Loveshit is a break-up album filled with melancholic songs that never become maudlin, thanks to Bajada’s ability to write seemingly effortless melodies. This talent is displayed best in enduring songs like “Ten Days in Miami” and “Tired of Talking.”  Though greatly appreciated by Bajada, the fact that listeners connected with his contemplative ruminations on a broken relationship is a peculiar situation not lost on the songwriter himself.

“It’s the weirdest job in the world to be paying your rent with your feelings,” Bajada says.  “I think the strangest thing is being applauded for it – literally someone’s Friday evening is buying tickets and coming to see you and singing along to this sadness.  It’s such an odd way of life, and still to this day it baffles me, [but] I love it, it’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. I’ve avoided having a real job because I’ve been channeling my emotions and spending time writing music, which is such a beautiful thing, but I never get used to it.”

Loveshit was also Bajada’s first album for venerable local label Audiogram, and it secured the artist a publishing deal at a time when the music industry’s money-making days were entering decline.  While Bajada contends that being on a label assured quality control, the artist is impressed by the new generation of independent artists who are more self-motivated and self-reliant than ever.

“I find today it is too easy to put music out,” Bajada remarks, “but at the same time I feel like I meet, even through my podcast [Bajada Dialogues] or the industry, 21-year-olds who have their shit together, it’s unbelievable. They understand everything I understood only at 28, and I find that super admirable.  The Internet either dumbs down people or let’s people who use it correctly become these wiz-kid geniuses.”

To celebrate Loveshit’s 10th anniversary, Bajada has three shows planned where he will perform the album in its entirety.  However, as it’s been a minute since Bajada has played the deeper cuts off Loveshit live, the artist has been relearning his own material. He likens it to performing cover songs.  “Every song you write feels like it’s the last song you’ll ever write,” Bajada explains, “and that you don’t even know how it happened or how you can even do that. It’s like there’s some sort of weird magic that happens, and to kind of re-explore songs now that they feel like covers… you forget you could even write those melodies or certain lyrics, like ‘hang on, I didn’t remember writing that.’”

Other than the album festivities, Bajada is currently keeping a low profile on the music front.  Other than a new single, “Worry ‘Bout You,” released in conjunction with Loveshit’s 10th anniversary, his last album was released back in 2017.  Entitled Loveshit II (Blondie & the Backstabberz), the double album was a sequel of sorts to Bajada’s 2009 album and delved into the depths of his anxieties and depression after the disintegration of a relationship and a few close friendships.

Fortunately, Bajada has been in a much healthier state of mind since writing his last album.  Not only does Bajada meditate every day, the songwriter even took a trip to the Magdalen Islands for a month last summer and worked on his trade, trying to take a step back from his style of personal songwriting to work on a more observational perspective to better process his emotions.  “I kinda look up to heroes of mine like Tom Waits,” Bajada explains, “who has the perfect normal family life, but becomes an actor when he performs and channels certain past emotions and characters or writes about other people themselves,”

After over fifteen years of paying rent with his feelings, through all the turbulences love and life has thrown at him, the one thing that has stayed consistent for Bajada as an artist is the awe of crafting a song and bringing it to life, even when it seems nothing more could be wrung out of the well.

“Still to this day,” says Bajada, “nothing really makes me happier than being in studio or finding that melody at 2:00 in the morning, finalizing this demo that nobody’s ever heard except you. Just finalizing and mixing yourself, this shitty kind of demo at two, three, four in the morning and crashing into your bed and listening back or hopping out into the car to see how it sounds.  And this thing that didn’t exist 12 hours prior being this hot recipe you’re excited to release that might only come out in a year, year and a half, but just that moment of creation and finalizing something that didn’t exist a few hours prior, still to this day is the ultimate drug for me.”

Jason Bajada performs Loveshit in its entirety at Le Ministère (4521 St-Laurent) on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 8:00 p.m., $30

Hosted by Ahmad Moujtahed

Stories by Ahmad Moujtahed

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LOCAL

Montreal public-health authorities are concerned about a possible proliferation of measles cases and are warning doctors to be on the lookout for people with measles symptoms.

According to CBC, Montreal's public health agency has reached out to patients potentially exposed to measles after a woman infected with the virus visited two medical clinics in the city last week during the contagious period of her illness.

All Montrealers experiencing symptoms are urged to call a healthcare facility and are advised to stay away from school, work, or any other social settings.

NATIONAL

Following the Quebec government’s plans to increase the legal age of cannabis access to 21, the Quebec government introduced a new ad campaign aimed at focusing attention on the potential risks of non-therapeutic cannabis use.

Targeting Quebec youth, the campaign employed exaggerated depictions of cannabis risks including comically elongated necks and displaced ears followed by taglines stating “There’s no way cannabis can do this. But the risks are real and it’s not worth the risk”.

Many Canadians on social media criticized the exceptional depictions used in the ads. Some comments mentioned the fact that such campaigns are reminiscent of US conservative  anti-marijuana commercials and public service announcements from the 80s.

INTERNATIONAL

Part of CivicAction, a civic engagement organization in Canada, the DiverseCity Fellows program has been providing engaging programming for emerging and under-represented leaders.

Due to the lack of diversity of identities in Ontario’s decision-making tables, the program has appointed 30 individuals from diverse cultures enabling them to become better leaders and create change in their communities.

Individuals are selected for their leadership abilities, authenticity, and community contribution. Among the newly appointed individuals of the program is a Syrian refugee chosen to consult employment opportunities for other newcomers.

It has been said that the best lies contain an element of truth to them.

Torquil Campbell’s True Crime is built entirely out of this concept. It will leave you with an uncomfortable tension in your seat, but an eagerness to see it to the end. Despite being a one man play, Campbell never lets us feel like he is the same person. Using a small stage, a grid of lights, music and the plucking of a bass, Campbell absorbs us into his world. The play introduces us to its two main characters: Clark Rockefeller, an extravagantly extroverted figure who has a love of dogs; and our host, Torquil Campbell, an artist looking for his next muse before making a comeback into acting.  The two men have many disturbing things in common, they both lived blocks away from each other in New York, they both have a daughter and more disturbingly, they look a-like and wear the same glasses.

Campbell accompanies us slowly into his obsession with Rockefeller and his many lives, as Campbell struggles to understand the ethical implications of a relationship with Rockefeller. This culminates in a perhaps regrettable decision to visit Rockefeller in a Southern California jail, and the unraveling of our host’s mind as he becomes an entangled character in a true crime story.

It isn’t a relatable story, and it isn’t meant to be. We are living exclusively through Torquil’s eyes and body as he narrates us through a unique experience where we can divulge our perversion into crime. The story manages to go above and beyond the expectations of a one man show and makes us emotionally invested and desperate to know its outcome. It manages to question what it means to sacrifice yourself for art, what it means to be entertained and question if you really know the people around you.

True Crime was presented at Centaur Theatre Jan 8 to 27.