Guelph Politicast

End Credits #315 - October 4, 2023 (It Lives Inside)

This week on End Credits we get spooky. Halloween is around the corner, and by "around the corner" we mean in the next several weeks. True, there's still a whole month to go before the day, but we begin this episode by visiting a streaming channel that's spooky 365 days a year. And then, in the review, we get spookier still with one of the latest horror movie releases.
This Wednesday, September 27, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss:
Three From Shudder. It's our first show for October, which as you all know is Halloween Month. (Yes, it's a month now.) Did you know that there's a whole streaming channel dedicated to the horror genre? There is, and it's called Shudder. On this channel there's literally a world of horror from movies that count as classics to new stuff that might be the classics of the future. This week, we're each going to pick three movies from Shudder you should check out before the 31st.
REVIEW: It Lives Inside (2023). How does that song go? "Every single one of us has a devil inside." It turns out that that there's some truth in that in Hindu mythology, which is the the basis for the new horror movie, It Lives Inside. Sam is just a high school-aged daughter of Indian immigrants trying to fit in, but her former-BFF Tamira has issues and they all come down to what she has inside some cloudy looking mason jar. In his first film, Bishal Dutta taps into a lot of anxieties around clashing cultures and immigration, but does that translate into a scary movie?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #391 - A National Park (If We Can Keep It)

Since it closed in 2000, the Ontario Reformatory, and the 108 hectares that surround it, have been the source of much conversation, optimism and fantasy. We got the Guelph Innovation District Secondary Plan, we’ve got a Heritage Conservation District Study, and now we’ve got a project to turn the area into a national park. Is creating a national park the end game for the OR Lands we’ve been looking for?
Creating a National Urban Park system was an initiative started by the federal government in 2021, when they pledged $130 million to create 15 sites across Canada with local partners. To become a national urban park, any proposed site has to meet three criteria: it has to conserve nature, connect people with nature, and advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. The OR Lands check all three boxes. 
Now, you may be thinking that the OR Lands are already well protected by various heritage designations, but it's the connections to Indigenous heritage that are the most at risk;  an old accessory building that was home to a program that helped Indigenous inmates work through their trauma and led many of them to overcome a life of substance addiction and crime. The proof is there in murals on the wall, in the basement of a building that’s outside the current heritage protections for the rest of the site.
With that heritage at stake, we turn to an expert. Former chair of Heritage Guelph P. Brian Skerritt is leading this effort to turn the OR Lands into a National Urban Park and he joins us on this week's podcast to tell us about it. He'll talk about why the OR lands are the best candidate for a national park in Guelph, the difficulties in accessing the Indigenous history on the site, and what Skerritt would ideally like to see on the property in terms of ensuring that all the heritage there is preserved.
So let's talk about making a national urban park on this week's Guelph Politicast!
You can learn more about the creation of National Urban Parks at Parks Canada website. You can add your name to a petition in support of the OR Lands Urban National Park at the petitions page of the Our Commons website. The Heritage Conservation District Study is in it’s second and final phase, and you can learn more about that on the City of Guelph’s website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #443 - September 28, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, it all just blew up! It was kind of cruel last week when Ontario's premier came out and apologized for a two-month old scandal on show day, but it was well-timed for the start of the fall session, which we will talk about on this show. In other news, Parliament Hill was not to be outdone in controversy and if you have "100-year-old Nazi" on your Bingo card, we've got good news. And finally, did you know there's an election in Manitoba right now?
This Thursday, September 28, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Fall Out? Boy. It was a bit of a shock last Thursday when Premier Doug Ford came out and apologized to trying to peel off portions of the Greenbelt for redevelopment and said that he would keep his promise and leave it alone. And that was the end of that, right? Not quite, because the opposition parties still want answers and now all eyes are turning to the Ontario government's deal to redevelop Ontario Place and the potential skulduggery there. Otherwise, how was the first week back at the legislature?
Did Nazi That Coming. An appearance by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons on Friday made news, but not the type anyone wanted. Applause was offered for 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka as a veteran of war against Russia, but what no on apparently realized was that he was a member of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division. You know, a Nazi. House Speaker Anthony Rota has fallen on his sword for the matter, but are the implications bigger than one parliamentarian?
Kinew Trip? Advanced polls are open and everyone in Manitoba is counting down to next week's general election, while the country might actually be counting down to the election of the country's first Indigenous head of provincial government. NDP Leader Wab Kinew looks like he might be leading his party to a victory on Tuesday, making history and defeating the incumbent Progressive Conservatives in the process, but what does he have to do to seal the deal, and what happens next?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #314 - September 27, 2023 (El Conde)

This week on End Credits, we get a jump on Halloween month with a vampire tale. But lest you think this is some horror movie like Last Voyage of the Demeter, it's got a very pointed historical and political point of view. We're going back to Netflix to review the new political satire El Conde, and along with that, we're going to discuss other similar satires.
This Wednesday, September 27, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
Satire Power. So this week we're talking about a political satire, but that doesn't mean a laugh-out-loud comedy. No, sometimes a political satire holds up a dark mirror to the audience and makes them confront a certain reality under the veil of jokes and silliness, and sometimes it borrows from the occasional silliness of our politics and takes it to the extreme. For this week's show, we will talk about some of our favourite satires, from the silly to the serious.
REVIEW: El Conde (2023). Director Pablo Lorrain has done a couple of very stylistic bio-pics with Jackie and Spencer, but those were a warm up for the creative license taken with El Conde. You may think that Augusto Pinochet died in 2006, but in this movie we see the "reel" Pinochet, a 300-year-old vampire in hiding with his greedy family, ungrateful wife, and Russian man servant Fryodor, who's also a vampire. It's a bit weird to take the (after)life of a brutal dictator and turn it into a Universal Monster Movie, but is Lorrain able to make that shot, or will it bounce off the rim?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #390 – How to Cover a Protest in 2023

For years, Guelph has been a hotbed of protest, a very politically inclined city on a variety of issues including climate change, poverty, workers rights, equality, Black Lives Matter, and the systemic abuse of Indigenous peoples. Last Wednesday, direct action was on display again as people gathered in Market Square, but this was a protest completely unlike any other in a number of ways, and we need to take a moment to unpack things.
To recap, last Wednesday morning about about 250 people gathered in Market Square under the banner called “1 Million March 4 Children" to address concerns about sex education, plus parental rights and input. On the other side was a crowd nearly three times the size who had their own concerns that terms like "parental rights" were thinly-veiled attacks on queer youths by erasing them and their identity from schools and the greater community.
For added difficulty, the “1 Million March 4 Children” featured some holdovers from other protests in recent years like anger about mask and vaccine mandates, which no longer exist, or concerns about the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, who have to influence on education policy in Ontario. How do you approach a protest based on misinformation, and how to you talk to the people turned by that misinformation and suspicious of journalists covering the story?
Troy Bridgeman knows something about that. He's a freelance journalist working in Guelph, and if there’s a protest in town, you’ll probably see Troy there with his camera. He's going to talk about how the “1 Million March 4 Children” was a different kind of protest to cover, and the strangeness of having two protests happening at the same time. He will also discuss how people live different lives online, what will happen next with this movement, and what he plans to do with all those hours of protest footage.
So let's talk about protesting and covering a protest on this week's Guelph Politicast!
 You can find Troy Bridgeman’s work on Guelph Today and other Village Media sites, and you can follow him on Twitter at troybridgman. You can also check out coverage of last week’s "1 Million March 4 Children" and the counter-protest at the Guelph Politico main site.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #442 - September 21, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph things get serious. Well, they're pretty serious every week, but it's not every week that we're talking about a foreign government allegedly killing a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. And to think we were going to start this week with talk of grocery prices... So there's that, plus we'll talk about the seasonal return of COVID-19 and in local news, we will turn to one of our city councillors about some of the latest doings at 1 Carden Street.
This Thursday, September 21, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Modi Operandi. It wasn't the bombshell we were expecting as the fall session of Parliament opened. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the June killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh Khalistani separatist in Surrey, was connected to the Indian government. The announcement helped explain the seemingly frosty relations between Trudeau and Narendra Modi a couple of weeks ago at the G20. But how will this impact Indo-Canada relations, and the India's broader role in world affairs?
Face/Cough. It's cold and flu season again, and you should probably add RSV and COVID-19 to that cadre. It's probably safe to say that COVID-19 never left us, but now we're feeling it's embrace again, especially after Dr. Theresa Tam did a media conference while wearing a mask. As we start fall, the number of COVID cases is definitely going up, the last boosters are on the wain, and nobody's wearing a mask anymore. Are we ready for the next wave?
Eastbound and Downer. Last week at Guelph City Council, they had a big meeting about housing and the gaps in social services. The desperation of the housing situation in Guelph is apparent, but the solutions seem a lot harder to find. We're going talk about that this week with Councillor Cathy Downer, who's also going to talk to us about the fights to protect heritage, next week's debate about parking minimums downtown, and, just in time for Homecoming, we will cover some town and gown matters too.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #313 - September 20, 2023 (Theater Camp)

This week, End Credits is all about the craft. You can have the best script, the greatest cinematography, and state-of-the-art special effects, but it means nothing without the actors to bring it to life. That's what Theater Camp does, it celebrates the actors, and their eccentricities. And speaking of celebrating actors, we're also going to talk about one of Peter's favourites.
This Wednesday, September 13, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Denzel's Hidden Gems. Now in theatres is Denzel Washington's new movie, The Equalizer 3. An improbable hit at the box office, it's a simple action movie about one man cleaning up an Italian town of mafia corruption. It's proof of Denzel's staying power and strength as a movie star that he can still make a splash without indie clout or big visual effects or even spandex and a cape. This week, we will pay tribute to Denzel by shining up some of his hidden gems.
REVIEW: Theater Camp (2023). Every kid loves camp, and if you're not especially into sports or boating or other feats of athleticism, you can always go to theatre camp. Well now there's a movie of the same name. Largely improvised and staged like a documentary, Theater Camp takes us to AdirondACTS summer camp where beloved founder Joan is in a coma due to the ill-advised use of a strobe light. With the camp under threat of foreclosure, the summer program perseveres with the only thing that matters: A love of the arts. But do we rise in applause?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #389 - It’s In the Code

Have you heard there’s a housing crisis? It’s pretty much all anyone can talk about, which is understandable, and the causes of the crisis are many. But have you thought about the Building Code? Chances are you haven’t, but this important document meant to govern our health and safety indoors might have some holes in it, and it might be causing complications that are getting in the way of desperately needed new units.
The Building Code, you say? We often talk about it like there's just one, but there's the National Building Code, the latest version of which was finished in 2020 but not published until 2022. Then, there's the Ontario Building Code, which needs an update based on those NBC changes, which is currently underway. Meanwhile, the OBC is based on the one previously established one in 2012, and there's stuff in the OBC that the NBS doesn't deal with like more stringent durability standards.
And that’s just the beginning of our drama because there’s a building code for how you build a residential building and there’s a building code for how you build an office building. There’s one for how you build a three-storey apartment building and there’s one for how you build a four-storey apartment building. How does that affect affordability? It's because our building code might be getting in the way of making more of that mythical "missing middle."
To learn more, we turn to Toon Dreesson, president of Architects DCA in Ottawa and past president of the Ontario Association of Architects. Dreesson will take us step-by-step through the process of how the building code makes a simple three-storey apartment project more expensive and more dense, plus he will talk about the overlapping demands of all the various building codes and building code updates. Dreesson will also tell us if we can balance the needs of the code and the needs for affordable housing.
So let's get into the code on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
You can learn more about Toon Dreesson’s professional work at the Architects DCA website. You can also follow him on social media @toon.dreesson on Facebook and @toon_dreesson on Twitter. You can read Dreesson’s piece from the Globe & Mail earlier this year called "Canada’s building codes and standards need to get with the times" on their website here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #441 - September 14, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're bring it home! The news that is. Of course, that's also the new catchphrase for the all-new, all-different Conservative Party who had a very newsy policy meeting in Quebec City last week. A little to the west in Ottawa, a couple of people once supported by the new leader of the Conservatives are now on trial, and we will discuss that too before finding an Ontario mayor not named 'Guthrie' to fill our interview slot this week.
This Thursday, September 14, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
The Pierre Up There. The Conservative Party of Canada had their policy convention last week, and that policy seems to be saying no to vaccine mandates, gender affirming care, diversity, and the carbon tax. There was also a call to defend what might have once been called "Old Stock Canadians" and a lot of lingering upset about the redesigned passport. You don't have to be a political genius to recognize American right-wing grievance politics, so is this how Pierre Poilievre intends to win?
Wellington Street Legal. We're now in the second week of the trial against "Freedom Convoy" organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber who are facing charges that include mischief, counselling others to commit mischief, intimidation and obstructing police. At stake is whether or not Lich and Barber have any criminal liability for the events of Winter 2022 in downtown Ottawa, but this is only the beginning of their legal struggles. We'll talk about the latest from the trial.
A Ward Season. Last month at the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the province's big city mayors were led into talks with the Ontario government by Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, the chair of the OBCM. This was after Premier Doug Ford put her on blast for not being a team player on housing, so Ward joins us this week to talk about recent events, Burlington's challenges on housing, and the recent decision to pause the provincial review of regional governments like Halton.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #312 - September 13, 2023 (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny)

This week on End Credits, we're going back to the well. For the review this week, we're going to catch up on one of the summer hits we missed with the now home video release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And speaking of sequels, we will celebrate the second entry in a horror movies series by talking about our other favourite horror movie #2s.
This Wednesday, September 13, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Scream Two. This past weekend, The Nun II was number one at the box office. The latest offering in The Conjuring universe of films is just the latest successful horror sequel, which got us thinking about all the other great horror movie number twos (or part twos). The part two can make or break your franchise, so on this week's show we're going to look back at some of our favourite second entries in various scary movie institutions.
REVIEW: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). This summer, Indiana Jones came back to theatres for one last ride, and... things did not go as expected. It wasn't the big hit of summer, not even close, but that doesn't mean we should write off Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Now available on VOD, we will take another look this week at Dial of Destiny and determine where it stands in the pantheon of Indiana Jones movies, and whether there is any place in the modern movie eco-system for an archaeologist/adventurer anymore.
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.