
Royal Canoe performing at the Forks on January 31
Last night we joined the online premiere events for the documentary Glacial. On January 31 and February 1 Winnipeg band Royal Canoe performed a concert at the Forks on instruments made of ice. Every musical sound they made was created with ice in some way.

Drawing by Jonathan Dyck used with his permission
The documentary film shows how the ice for the instruments was harvested from the lake at Fort Whyte. We get an inside look at the process of the band figuring out how to design and build the instruments. We see how they rehearsed in an unheated train car down at The Forks.

Our son with his band Royal Canoe just before their phenomenal show on ice instruments at The Forks in Winnipeg in January 2020
Prior to the documentary premiere last night, the Royal Canoe Band members interviewed the different people who helped them stage and plan and design their show. It was a phenomenal effort by lots of really creative people. The Winnipeg Free Press had a great article about the documentary. You can see Glacial here.
My $200 cheque and a personal letter from the premier of Manitoba arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Everyone over the age of 65 in our province received this money to help us weather the COVID-19 crisis. I understand that some seniors are struggling financially but many of us receive pensions and no longer have to worry about house payments or the expenses of children and their educations. We have health plans to help us cope with medical expenses. I do wonder if these cheques shouldn’t have been targeted at seniors who have a lower income level and the rest given to young people struggling with job loss, late rent payments and child care stresses, but perhaps it was easier to just send them to everyone over 65. The premier suggests in his letter that if we think others could use the money more than we can, we should donate the money to charity. I will do exactly that!
Our bike ride yesterday morning was freezing but we did make one stop. We were driving down Dufferin Avenue and we smelled COFFEE! We discovered the Black Pearl Coffee Company where they roast about fifteen different kinds of coffees. Dave who is the coffee maker and coffee connoisseur at our house just had to go inside. He bought two kinds of Black Pearl Coffee for us to try.
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