And welcome to Summer’s prelude in Canada, when the Sun’s promise of scorching days to come lay ill-disguised behind the last of the Arctic chill, as wheeling migrant birds fill blue-becoming skies. Now too is the time itinerant buskers, balladeers, troubadors and trobairitz tune their travel plans and settle bookings for the hay-making season peeking just over the horizon.
David Rovics is just such a one readying for the road, (though perversely an antipodean Winter’s sojourn). But that suits to a tee the contrarian instincts of a social critic who, while treading the plank of multitudinous stages and wearing out rugs at home concerts from here to Timbuktu, has too found the time to write countless essays on a wide breadth of topics examining and trying the logic of life in these our strange times.
David Rovics in the first half.
And; Canada’s recent federal election returned a minority government, the third in the last four polls. Despite the stalemate though, this election was not short of high drama and stunning reversals; reversals that portend nation-changing developments perhaps in the near future. Besides three (and a half) of contending party leaders losing their home riding seats, the greatest twist in the electoral plot is the rout of the perennially third place finishing New Democrats, (and incidental erasure of the Green Party of Canada).
Alex Tyrrell is leader of the Quebec Green Party. He’s a long-time critic of the federal Green’s leader, cum co-leader, Elizabeth May, (the last Green standing in the Parliament). Tyrrell says, of the Green Party of Canada’s many mistakes, “…changes they made to the party’s worldviews did not resonate with anyone.”
Alex Tyrrell and Whither the Green agenda in Canada? in the second half.
But first, David Rovics and Musical Travelogues past and to come.
Songs: ‘This Is What Genocide Looks Like‘
‘Mahmoud Khalil’
‘As We Watched a Million Children Die’
Artist: David Rovics
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, broad/webcasting since 1999. Check out the Archive at GRadio.Substack.com, and the GR blog at: https://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/ and on Telegram at: https://t.me/gorillaradio2024