Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2018-04-26, Page 5Other It's simply not feasible - The annual Hot Docs documentary film festival opens in Toronto this week. It's celebrating its 25th anniversary. It shouldn't be. They have the paper to prove it. I loved the story told by Paul Jay, the festival's founding board chair in a history of the festival published in this past Saturday's Globe and Mail. The idea for the festival came after a group of documentary filmmakers had come together to form the Canadian Independent Film Caucus to support each other's work. The group had little money so Jay proposed holding a documentary film festival to raise money. Everybody else thought it was a lousy idea — the vote was 11-1 against it. So Jay figured he'd do it himself with the help of one employee — who was put in charge of raising the money necessary to pay her own salary. They got a $10,000 grant from Kodak to fund a feasibility study. Jay paid $2,000 to an "expert" to conduct the study, and used the other $8,000 to fund the initial festival. "At the first gala dinner," Jay told the Globe, "I said, `Tonight, I'm going to reveal the results of the feasibility study'. I opened the report's last page which said: 'Not feasible'." I can't help wondering how many things we enjoy today would never have happened if feasibility studies had been necessary before they began. I certainly know many of projects I've been involved in starting would never have happened if some rational third party had cast a deciding vote through a feasibility study. Back in the summer of 1972 the foundation for the Blyth Festival was laid when Helen Gowing, president of the old Blyth Board of Trade, decided Blyth Memorial Hall should be spruced up so the first Queen of the Fair Writing that My editor Shawn and I bounce a lot of ideas off of each other when it comes to what fmally makes it in each edition of The Citizen (and other publications we have a hand in producing). I count myself fortunate because I know a lot of other people who work under their bosses. When it comes to Shawn, however, I feel like we are a team and the product we put out truly reflects the good relationship between us. Take these spaces for example. On the "Other Views" page, each column of The Citizen for the past several years has either been tied to, or influenced by, conversations we have throughout the weeks before they appear. Some weeks, we can pretty much end up writing a column together, talking about things we both encounter, and one of us decides to write it down. This week, as a prime example, I recognized a conversation Shawn and I had on Monday when talking about councillors who aren't seeking re-election when I proofread his column (obviously before I had even penned mine). Unfortunately, I recognized something else when I was reading Shawn's column and that was the "boy who cried wolf' parable. If you haven't read his column yet, you probably should. What follows will make more sense with that lens in place. I try, when I write, to maintain this balance of not being too negative for too long when it comes to my column because, as Shawn points out in his column, having a default setting of always being outraged results in people not taking that outrage seriously. So, to address the big, angry elephant in the room, I want to say that I can be described as dour a lot of the time, but don't judge my overall mood by the columns I write here. Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk competition for the Blyth Fall Fair could be held there. She simply put out a call for volunteers who showed up to clean and paint. That summer, another guy notorious for rushing ahead without a plan brought a group of Toronto actors to Huron County to talk to farmers in Goderich Twp. and create The Farm Show. I accidentally bumped into Paul Thompson in Clinton and wrangled an invitation to the first performance in a barn at Holmesville. I also told Paul about what people in Blyth were doing to clean up the theatre and tried to sell him on a plan to make Blyth the summer home for his Theatre Passe Muraille company. That never happened because cleaning up Memorial Hall wasn't enough. It needed a fire escape and a new roof structure and it took until the spring of 1975 to be useable. By that time Theatre Passe Muraille had a summer base in Petrolia. But in March, James Roy, a young Blyth - area native who had studied theatre and worked with Paul over the winter, contacted me about starting a summer theatre in Memorial Hall. Young and foolish, we had the Blyth Festival launched in a single weekend, recruiting willing board members and setting the ball in motion for a first production in July. I'm not sure we'd even heard of feasibility studies in 1975. Good thing. No expert would ever have found the concept feasible — let alone really holds Denny Scott Denny's Den For example, over the past several months, I've had some definite finger -wagging to get out of my system, especially when it came to local councils and councillors (and snow removal). If your only interaction with me is reading my columns, you might get the feeling that I'm a pretty negative guy with sudden bursts of self- humour. I don't know that I can argue against that, to be honest, but I don't think it's the full picture. See, when I decide to put something in this space, it isn't driven by my average emotions, it's driven by what I've experienced in the past week that led to what I'd describe as an emotional spike. When North Huron Council, for example, shot down Councillor Brock Vodden's request to research increased snow removal in Blyth, after tripping over snow banks for several months, I definitely had a sudden and intense emotional reaction. As a reporter, however, I can't let that be a part of the story I write. I have to bury that emotion until I find an appropriate outlet for it. That outlet usually ends up being something constructive (like writing a column about it) or destructive (like ripping apart cardboard boxes for the recycling into much smaller portions than is generally necessary). Similarly, when good things happen, I can't write somewhat objectively about them, although allowing myself to just be generally happier when I get good news probably THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2018. PAGE 5. Views except. the idea of putting it together in four months. Feasibility studies, like business plans, make sense. They force you to look at the situation from all sides before diving in. But I wonder how many projects deemed feasible have still failed because they didn't have that driven, mad genius that often makes something successful against the odds. The Blyth Festival would not have been successful not only without the hard work of James Roy and Anne Chislett and numerous dedicated volunteers, but even moreso if Roy hadn't decided to adapt the stories of Harry J. Boyle for the Festival's first production of Mostly in Clover (and assembled a creative team to make it a play that excited the public). For years Paul Thompson made administrators at Theatre Passe Muraille yank their hair out in frustration at his by -the -seat - of -his pants leadership style, but he not only created iconic plays like The Farm Show and 1837: The Farmers' Revolt, but he raised enough money to buy a Toronto building that is still that theatre's home 40 years later. One of the world's most powerful corporations began in a fit of pique in a Harvard dorm room when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook to get back at a girl who rejected him. It took years before Zuckerberg's team figured out how to use the social media platform to make money — and now it's a financial juggernaut. I hate to knock feasibility studies. They're rational and make perfect sense. I'd have been saved a lot of money over the years if some of my projects had been given a stiffer test of their feasibility. Still, I also know that creative genius and dedicated, talented people can make crazy ideas work, even if they're not feasible. Just ask the folks at the Hot Docs festival. • up a mirror wouldn't kill me. Probably. What that means, however, is that I carry around some anger, pretty often honestly, and the longer I carry it, the more likely it's going to be the target of this space. However, I get the feeling, after a couple recent conversations, that people think this column is a self-portrait; a cultivated image meant to show my true self, and that true self is an angry one. That's not really the whole story, or the whole portrait, as it were. Really, what it is is more of a snapshot of how I'm feeling about a particular issue at a particular time and, unfortunately, my emotional spikes tend to revolve around negative experiences. Like I said, it wouldn't be wrong to call me dour. If people begin to think that I've got a short fuse and walk around ready to explode, those explosions are going to be paid less and less attention, like the boy who cried wolf. And, if I'm honest, I can't fault anyone for jumping to that conclusion with the amount of negativity that can enter this personal writing. I'm not the sum of my editorials here in The Citizen — that I promise you. I smile, quite a bit. I joke a lot, even if most people don't appreciate a pun as much as I do. I am, by my estimations, a guy who spends as much time as I can indulging happier times to stop myself from becoming a grumpy, curmudgeonly old man (although I will happily admit to wanting people in golf carts to stay off my lawn). Why am I tackling this? Well I'd like to think that most of the serious, local issues I tackle herein are important, but I've come to the realization that I may be giving off a very negative image of myself. That's not the case, usually. You can approach me. I can be a pretty open guy. Don't hesitate to get in touch and don't worry, I promise, odds are, I won't bite. Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense Simple, but significant Huron East Councillor Kevin Wilbee announced last week that he would not seek re-election due to an increased workload and longer travel times from his new London location. I, for one, can say he will be missed around the council table. Wilbee's fellow councillors appreciated him for his expertise (he's a lawyer by trade) and his youthful perspective on all matters municipal. I appreciated him not only for his willingness to listen but also for his lack of whatever gene that lives in many politicians (starting locally and working all the way up) that causes them to weigh in on every topic — no matter the circumstances or their level of expertise (or lack thereof) on the issue at hand. As a young councillor with no political experience, Wilbee listened more than he spoke. As someone who has watched various councils work (and not work) for a dozen years, I have always found that the key to success as a new councillor is to listen. It's not unlike starting a new job; you don't walk into your new workplace on the first day and start telling veteran employees what they've been doing wrong. If you do, don't expect your suggestions to be met with enthusiasm. Furthermore, only speaking when you have something of value to say eliminates the "boy who cried wolf' factor from your statements. If you're outraged all the time, that becomes your norm. A lack of outrage then becomes the exception that causes others to take note. Similarly, if a councillor purports to be an expert in most fields or lends his "educated" opinion to every topic that crosses his desk, that opinion becomes less and less important. Those who watched the television series Mad Men — often regarded as one of the best of all time — will know the mantra of advertising design genius Donald Draper, who encouraged those around him to make things "simple, but significant" when it came to design or a message. Funny enough, Draper only speaks this line once over the show's seven seasons and it's not even in reference to his work. His firm has landed a large account and a co-worker asks what he'd like to drink. Draper, who favoured Canadian Club neat (no ice, no water, no soda — no nothing), asked that his drink be simple, but significant. He did, however, live his professional life according to that principle and we could learn a thing or two from him. There's a journalistic maxim that isn't far off from Draper's. "Keep it simple, stupid", or the KISS principle, is a cornerstone of journalism, but has been adopted throughout many other industries in an effort to keep things clear. But, back to Wilbee. Like Draper, we could learn a thing or two from him. He spent his four years on council listening to and learning from those who had been there longer than he had. Then, when he felt he had a handle on a subject or had a point he felt capable of making, he would speak up. And, when he spoke up — because he hadn't spent the previous three hours bloviating just to hear the sound of his own voice and see his name in the newspaper — people would think he had something to say and they would listen. This isn't so much a love letter to Kevin as it is a reverence for the way he conducted his business over the past four years. With an election in a few months, I'm sure many of us are hoping for some new blood around our respective council tables. The best we can hope for is in a new councillor is a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn and the ability to discern a positive statement from noise pollution.