THE WEEKLY EH?! // September 26th, 2023
This week's highlight of FIVE things happening in the Kimberley/Cranbrook area + FOUR other items of some locals' interests.
Hi!
Welcome to the 26/9/23 edition of ‘THE WEEKLY EH?!’ newsletter!
Here’s Five Things
Since The 95EH Events Calendar gets updated with Kimberley AND Cranbrook area events on the regular (and it’s FREE for anybody to get their local events listed, just visit moun.town/events for the simple details), I like to do a weekly HIGHlight of FIVE things happening FOR the current week every Tuesday — because sometimes it’s helpful to get a reminder of what’s going on before ‘the week ahead’ becomes another week that’s flown by (for example: it was still summer last week this time)
And on that note:
THING #1: This upcoming Wednesday (September 27th) at the Royal Alexandra Hall in Cranbrook (from 6:30pm to 8:30 pm) Live For Local—a homegrown manifestation born from the cross-community-collaboration that is the Kimberley Cranbrook Food Hub (of which KEGG.CA, the place where I turn compost at, is a hub member)—has partnered with the Cranbrook History Centre to co-host their Ed Fest Ed Talk on Local Food Sustainability & Accessibility + Farm Feast Social (CLICK HERE for FREE registration)!
So why not go learn from some local area people working on local food sustainability & accessibility whilst also socializing with other local area people who are also interested in local food sustainability & accessibility… all while enjoying delicious appetizers made with local ingredients and freshly pressed juice (which sounds like a reason in itself to leave the house on a Wednesday night, amirite)!
THING #2: From local food to local music news: the first Locals show of the season is happening this Saturday, September 30th (“Locals” being a variety show featuring live performances from local musicians & artists that takes place in Cranbrook at the Studio Stage Door) — tickets are available at Huckleberry Books or at the door (if they haven’t sold out before you get around to checking)…
And for local action happening in Kimberley this week, Darin Welch & Lone Fir will be playing at Grist & Mash on Thursday, September 28th + Stonefire Pizzeria usually has local area acts performing on Fridays & Saturdays.
THING #3: From local food to local music to local clothing news: this Friday (September 29th), if you time things right, it would be totally possible for you to hit up Cranbrook Community Theatre’s Costumes & More Sale, which runs from 5pm to 7pm at the Studio Stage Door in downtown Cranbrook…
AND THEN… after heading casually up HWY 95A at an appropriate pace, you could also hit up Sprout Health Market & Travelling Top Ups ‘Autumn Clothing Swap’ (which is happening from 7pm to 9pm on the Kimberley Platzl):
Bonus points to anyone who hits up both clothing events via bicycle —which would be a good way to start getting your legs in shape for cross-country skiing season (I mean, it is basically almost winter), which is a good reminder that there’s a different kind of local swap happening this Sunday at the Nordic Ski Swap up at KNC Lodge (9am to 12pm):
THING #4: Top Crops annual Pumpkin Day — “We will be weighing pumpkins for who has the bragging rights to the largest pumpkin in the Kootenay's. There is fun for the entire family, live music, petting zoo and kids games, or bring down a carved pumpkin or baked good to be judged. It will be an amazing free family event for the whole community with prize money to be won. Local vendors and food trucks will be on site.” — is happening on Saturday, September 30th (starting at 9am)!
THING #5: If you were of radio-listening age in Canada in the 90s/00s, odds are pretty good that you are familiar with the name Matthew Good (because, yes, it’s the same Matthew Good from that Matthew Good Band that put out those packed-with-radio-hits albums ‘Underdogs’ and ‘Beautiful Midnight’) — WELL — that Matthew Good is coming to ring in October with a solo acoustic performance at Key City Theatre this Sunday (October 1st)!
And if seeing Matthew Good perform “band”-less is not enough musical intrigue for you to leave the house on a Sunday evening, it should also be noted that Lethbridge’s talented Shaela Miller is going to be opening the show — SO — I’ll just leave you with the music video for ‘Big Hair Small City’ below (from the wonderful country album of the same name) to give you a taste of why you might want to get your hair done up big and head to the small city that is Cranbrook for a memorable Sunday evening of live music.
Of course, there's always more than Five Things happening in any given week, including this week, so don't forget you can always punch -> moun.town/events <- into any browser window at any time and be magically taken away to THE 95EH EVENTS CALENDAR… where you can see all the other events happening this week and beyond (and please remember that you can always reach out via email to 'hey@95eh.ca' if you have something of local area interest/intrigue that you think would be a good fit for a HWY 95EH signal boost) 👍
+ Four Ehs
And because there’s always more going on than just the local area events that get added to The 95EH Events Calendar, here’s 4 other things that are proving to be top of mind for at least one local area person (ie. myself):
EH #1: September 30th is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and the RDEK has created a helpful post to share info/links to some of the events that are happening in our area (which includes events in Fernie and Invermere) — below is the event poster for what’s happening in the ʔaq'am/Cranbrook area on Saturday:
EH #2: And for those looking for ways to honour the intent behind why a country like Canada requires having a national day for truth and reconciliation, I really hope more people will invest more time looking into & facing the harsh realities of our colonialism/imperialism past AND present (and a worrisome future still built on the same ‘profits over everything’ mindset responsible for why there’s a need for a national day of truth and reconciliation in the first place). Because it’s a history lesson that is both dark and instructive to a lot of the societal problems we’re collectively up against right now.
Personally, I always recommend reading THE RED DEAL: INDIGENOUS ACTION TO SAVE OUR EARTH, as it is a richly condensed 150 pages of hard-hitting truths (from an Indigenous perspective) that’ll give your moral integrity plenty to wrestle with (I ordered my copy back in the pandemic days, when it seemed like a lot of other people were much more inspired to ‘research’ viruses, so if anyone who knows me IRL wants to borrow this book, just let me know) — BUT ALSO — you could also jump over to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and start diving into their reports AND/OR you could also register for the 4 Seasons of Indigenous Learning module from the Outdoor Learning Store (registration is open until October 15th) OR you could also check with our local libraries for recommended reads (and Huckleberry Books in Cranbrook has a bunch of recommendations on their homepage + during September 10% of their sales of all Orange Shirt Day books will go to the Ktunaxa Kinbasket Child & Family Services Society).
And if you believe you can connect to other’s stories & experiences via the medium of recorded music, back when the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was first announced all the way back in 2021, I put together a ‘95 tracks from 95 different artists’ mix cd playlist featuring Indigenous artists only (and that also comes with an ‘available on Bandcamp’ player that is free to listen to & links each track to where you can purchase music directly from the artists):
As for my overall take on “reconciliation”, I don’t think there can ever be any real reconciliation until we seriously address, individually AND collectively, the societal mindset that would do a genocide in order for the world’s powerful & wealthy to acquire more “ownership” of more land & resources in order to keep the majority of civilization locked into a greedy ego-stroking delusion that continues to chase after infinite growth on a finite planet.
Because I don’t think we’ve ever addressed that mindset properly, I just think there’s less for the-powers-that-be to do a genocide on in North America now that most of the land/resources have been “legally” claimed — so we’re told to treat it like a shameful problem from our past and asked to not think about who benefited and who continues to benefit from what was done under the banner of ‘Canada’ (although pipeline and forestry conflicts still happening on what little land remains under Indigenous care show us that there’s still plenty of unconscionable actions happening in the present that are going to require future generations to also be asked to try and “reconcile” for somebody else’s past actions/inactions).
For me, a straight-white-CIS-male-millennial living in the East Kootenays (born in Alberta), I think “land back” means giving the land back to the people who will live and work on the land together, now & going forward (and not a literal ‘everyone go back to the land your ancestors came from’ suggestion). I think it means giving the land back to a mindset that understands the vitalness of equilibrium, sustainability and collectivism. It’s about acknowledging our shared human reality/needs and giving the “land back” to those who understand the importance of having the land’s back (and standing up for all of the life that lives upon it… which I hear is how things used to be done on Turtle Island before a certain mind virus arrived in 1492).
Because, if you ask me, there can be no reconciliation from the damages caused by colonialism/imperialism if we keep grandfathering in the same colonial/imperial ways of thinking & organizing our current society — BUT — as I know all to well… nobody asked me 🙃
EH #3: And while we’re on the topic of ‘groups of humans that our society has a long history of openly oppressing’, last week saw the national ‘1 MILLION MARCH 4 CHILDREN’ protest have its own Cranbrook version + counter-protest (for context: this was that protest/movement where some parents don’t want their kids to learn about LGBTQIA2S+ stuff in school, but there’s also a major underbelly that proliferates conspiracies around groomers and porn in school and indoctrination and a whole bunch of other ignorant alt-right untruths that are demonstrably dangerous to already marginalized members of our communities).
According to my gardener-source-on-the-street Nick, there was equal amounts of protesters and counter-protesters at last Wednesday’s affair, often yelling the same thing about “no space for hate!” at each other — which is something I had a similar experience with on the 95EH Facebook after sharing this Kimberley Pride post as a ‘daily eh’ in the days leading up to the Protest v. Counter-Protest:
Look, I get that it’s not nice to be called “hateful” (or for that to be implied about you as a person) — but maybe folks could just stop attaching their name/support to these fake populist movements/convoys that keep getting folks called things like “hateful” via their open association with these groups? Especially if one truly doesn’t stand with the very real reasons that these groups are being labelled words like “hateful” by concerned individuals/communities. Because, if you have to say “well, that’s not the reason that I’m marching / showing my support for this group” over and over again (after people keep pointing out examples of harmful members/organizers), maybe take that as a sign that this is not the right group to be aligning your character with?
Because, I promise you, if there was a group of racists and/or homophobes organizing to protest the Marysville McDonalds that I was against earlier this year, I would not have aligned myself with that group (and I wouldn’t have shared their propaganda on my social media). Even if I agreed with them about not wanting the Marysville McDonalds proposal to go through. And if anyone implied that I was “hateful” because an actually hateful group happened to be against something that I was also against, I would not get mad and say that calling me “hateful” is just as hateful as the hate that the hateful group is responsible for spreading (getting into finger-pointing contests about who is being more “hateful”), I would just say that I am not with those disillusioned hate mongers. End of story. And then I’d take the time to articulate what I’m actually against and why (rather than letting some disingenuous movement built around stirring up political/cultural division speak for me).
But maybe that’s just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EH #4: Since I’ve already written more than I was planning to write in this newsletter, let me finish things off by linking to this great essay that somebody else wrote — because Cranbrook teacher Kevin Hogg’s response to people saying that these protests were not about “hate” is chef’s kiss good (I’ll share a snippet via a screenshot below for those that want a taste without clicking over, but it really is worth jumping over to FB to read in full):
Of course, there’s always more ‘eh?!’ to share than the 4 EHs that came to my mind while putting together this week’s newsletter, so please make sure to follow 95EH on the Facebook & Instagram & Tumblr (especially if you ever frequent the highway 95/a/eh area IRL where these URL signals are getting relayed from). And for more Jeremy/HI54-specific stuff, you can also follow @HI54LOFI on the Instagram & Twitter & Facebook.
Because, hey… there’s a lot of stuff going on out there, eh?!
Until next week…
Please feel free to reach out to ‘hey@95eh.ca’ if you have any questions, comments, ideas and/or schemes — and if you think you know anybody else that might enjoy receiving this weekly newsletter about “some locals’ interests” in the highway 95/a/eh area, please feel warmly encouraged to send them a link so they can have a think about signing up too!
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Jeremy // HI54LOFI