Daily Archives: June 25, 2010

TGIF: “My Gay Son”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifUQq5p5i2g

Catherine Tate and her gay son

Sure, Toronto looks like the country’s just undergone a military coup d’etat, but soon the jackbooted security, the concrete barriers and the general misery of the good people of Toronto will be wisked aside as Gay Pride gets seriously underway.  Do you think our prime minister and his po-faced cohort might stick around for that?  It’d no doubt do them some good to appreciate that there are men in this country who can dress up like cowboys too but without any intention of getting on a horse.

Northrop Frye Sculpture News Release

Vote to Give Northrop Frye a Permanent Presence in Our Downtown!

LeBlanc Northrop Frye

Mayor George LeBlanc chats with Northrop Frye at the site of the future public art display.

The Frye Festival needs your help to win $25,000 to create a bronze life-sized sculpture of Northrop Frye sitting on a park bench reading a book outside the Moncton Public Library. As part of a national competition presented by Pepsi Canada, the Festival has submitted a proposal to win the funds to create an enduring reminder of our community’s most famous son.

Vote to Refresh Moncton! Beginning on Thursday, July 1st and running until Tuesday, August 31, 2010, everyone is invited to visit the website www.refresheverything.ca daily and vote for “Feed your imagination” in the Arts and Culture section. The winner will be chosen exclusively on the number of votes it receives, so vote daily and get your friends and family to do the same!

Public art plays a vital role in creating a liveable and beautiful city and enhances the quality of life of all its citizens. That is why Mayor George LeBlanc is all over this project: “The City of Moncton believes whole-heartedly in the value and importance of public art. A sculpture like this one would celebrate our most famous son’s legacy while helping to create a more visually rich downtown core.”

The Frye Festival, Canada’s only bilingual international literary festival, exists to “feed the imaginations” of all members of our community. While public art is not usually something that the Festival is involved in, Chair Dawn Arnold is excited about the project. “We have often thought about how nice it would be to give Northrop Frye an enduring presence somewhere in our city, and what could be more perfect than outside the Moncton Public Library? When Northrop Frye lived in Moncton from 1919 to 1929, books were scarce. For me, paying tribute to this great thinker and giving him a place of honour in our community also raises awareness of the importance of literacy in our society today. What a great opportunity for all of us to be involved and engaged in creating a more beautiful downtown and celebrating imaginations. Vote every day — every vote counts!”

People from across Canada will be participating in the voting process and competition will be tight. By registering and logging on to the web site, each person can vote for “Feed your imagination” daily. The contest is being presented by Pepsi Canada, who will distribute $1,000,000 over one year.

If the Festival is successful in winning the money, they will mount a national competition to find a sculptor to create the art. The goal will be to have Margaret Atwood, Canada’s most famous living writer and a former student of Northrop Frye’s, unveil the sculpture during the 2011 Frye Festival (April 25-May 1, 2011).

For more information, please contact:

Danielle LeBlanc

Executive Director, Frye Festival

506-859-4389

danielle@frye.ca

www.frye.ca

Another photo after the jump.

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Gay Pride Week

gay_pride_rainbow_flag_2

Today is the first day of Gay Pride Week.

This past month we’ve posted on Alan Turing who committed suicide in 1954.  Bob Denham put together a post last fall on “Frye and Homosexuality” here.

Frye in his 1952 diary made the following entry; remember that this is at a time when homosexuality was illegal and could definitively end a career — and all too often a life:

I have never myself felt any physical basis to my affectionate feelings for other men, but there must be one, and it seems to me to be as pointless to speak of all male love as buggery as it would be to speak of all marriage as legalized whoring.  When Marlowe said that the beloved disciple was Christ’s Alexis, he wasn’t just being a bad boy: the sense of his remark is that Christ’s love, being human, must have had a substantial quality in it.  (CW 8, 465)