By contributor Shaleeta Harper
They say it right under the name—Jumpin’ Java is a coffee and tea oasis on VIU’s Nanaimo campus. Anyone—student or professor—with an early Monday class knows how gratifying it is to snag a cup en route. Jumpin’ Java is a necessity, and the line-up between classes proves it.
Like an actual oasis, Jumpin’ Java is difficult to find if you aren’t a local. This is a campus hub, but not a place that’s easy to stumble upon if you’re an outsider. Most of our readers probably don’t have a problem finding Jumpin’ Java though—they have a problem staying ...
By contributor Philip Gordon
Diving into any title published by Book Thug always comes with a mix of fear and excitement. The small Toronto press, run by Jay MillAr, added Governor General award-winning poet Phil Hall to their staff as poetry editor shortly after releasing his 2013 collection, The Small Nouns Crying Faith. In addition to his GG prestige, his work has been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Hall carries impressive clout as a poet and instructor.
When I picked up a copy of The Small Nouns Crying Faith (Nouns for short), the cover page itself confronted me ...
By contributor Spencer Wilson
Frank Sidebottom was the alter ego of British musician and comedian Chris Sievey. Although the head used in the film is unmistakably alike to Sidebottom’s, the story manages to intertwine elements from the lives of Daniel Johnston, Captain Beefheart, and Jon Ronson (one of the co-writers who played keyboard in Sidebottom’s band). The film is quirky and fun on the outside, but underneath it is a lot of pain. By the end, Frank (Michael Fassbender) ends up embodying the struggle that comes from carrying your mental problems into your art.
Director Lenny ...
By contributor Nadine Wiepning
TheatreOne has announced the fall line up of Fringe Flicks at Avalon Cinema. The four films, carefully chosen by the Fringe Flicks Committee, are Tracks, Calvary, Words and Pictures, and Art and Craft.
“We are pleased to choose films that have not been shown in theatres or released on DVD. Our surveys have told us our audiences like independent films from Canada and around the world. They want to be both challenged and entertained, and even made a bit uncomfortable on occasion. This fall we have an adventure, a dark comedy, romance, and documentary,” ...
By contributor Jennifer Garceau
A drum beat slowly grows louder as CHLY’s “Si’ em’ nu Ts ‘lhhwulmuhw” (My Honoured Fellow Native People) radio show gets under way. It is hosted each week by Geraldine Manson, Natasha Bob, and Kenny Brault with frequent guest co-hosts such as Devon Pielle and Buffi David.
Brault is already a familiar voice on the CHLY airwaves, having previously hosted an eclectic celtic show. Brault felt it was important to honour the country’s celtic roots because he feels that “Canadians typically identify with American music and culture.” As he became more ...
One night, she sits on the dark stage in a black corset, flooded with purple light, her face and chest splattered with blood-red paint. She won’t even look up from her guitar as she strums brutally melancholic riffs. The large scale live-painting behind her shapes up a story of a dark romance.
Another night, she pours you a pint at the café where she works, then leaps over the bar, casually grabs her acoustic guitar, and co-sings “Karma Police” as the regular opening act of the Wednesday open mic.
True to her Gemini self, Alex Hicks is hard to pin down to one personality trait or ...
Having not done one since she was 10 years old, our associate editor Alexandria Stuart recalls just how dirty paper routes are.
Yes, paper routes are a dirty, dirty business. Once the writing and layout and editing and printing are done, The Navigator is still just a doorstop unless it has an audience, and to do that it needs to be in a variety of places. Many places. To that end there’s this part on the job application—the print is particularly small—and it says: “You will deliver papers.”
What they don’t tell you is that your hands will be black by the end of the process, but ...
At one point or another, we’ve all heard the “nothing to hide” argument. If you don’t have anything to hide, why are you scared of a police officer, government official, parent, looking through your car, search history, or bedroom? If you don’t have anything to hide, why is your privacy so precious? It’s this kind of logic that I imagine criminal lawyers greatly appreciate, come court date, when they have a record of their prosecutor tweeting hashtag #yoloswag before getting in a car crash.
Compared to any generation before us, it’s astounding our willingness to give up our own ...
Alexandria Stuart looks at VIU Student Union's anti-sweatshop campaign.
Raveena, 17, wakes early in a small room surrounded by her parents, grandmother, and three brothers sleeping on thin mats. The family stirs around her as she moves to the kitchen before it gets too crowded, splashes her face with water from a bowl, and grabs a slice of leftover naan bread. She takes a few hasty bites before leaving for work. Parting the curtain that hangs in the entryway, the sun takes on an otherworldly haze through the dust that’s kicked up from the road. The door covering offers the illusion of ...
By contributor Drew McLachlan
Two BC teachers are asking frustrated students, parents, and teachers to roll the dice to decide the fate of our province’s public school system with their new board game Christy’s World.
Told from the view of two disgruntled teaches, Christy's World puts players in the role of the BC Premier as she races across the province to "shut down schools, privatize the industry, and raise [her] ratings."
The satirical game was designed by Coquitlam- and Vancouver-based teachers Jean-Michel Oblette and Loren Letourneau as a means to protest the unwillingness ...
By contributor Drew McLachlan
The longlist of nominees for the Scotiabank Giller Prize was revealed earlier this month, and among the 12 books under consideration this year is Paradise and Elsewhere, a short story collection by VIU creative writing professor Kathy Page.
"A collection of dark fables at once familiar and entirely strange."
Released in the spring of this year, Paradise and Elsewhere is described as “a collection of dark fables at once familiar and entirely strange.” Although it is the first of Page’s works to be selected for the Giller Prize longlist, her 2002 novel ...
Contributor Spencer Wilson dives into the highest rated film of the year--one that took 12 years to make.
It’s easy to hear about this film and think it will come off as a gimmick: a film following a boy from ages six to 18 which uses the same cast to depict the process of aging. Thankfully, the reality is that Boyhood is a remarkable experience to witness on film.
Watching actors grow up on screen isn’t a new concept to film, the most historical example being François Truffaut’s films about the character Antione Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud), which began with The 400 ...
Contributor Philip Gordon dissects Patricia Lockwood's second book of blunt poetry.
“sext: im poetry. im dead and im inside u at all times”
Anyone who suckles even semi-regularly from the content-delivery teat of the internet should be fully aware of who Patricia Lockwood is—even if you’re not one of her 45k Twitter followers, chances are you caught a glimpse of Lockwood’s poetry when her poem “Rape Joke” went viral in July of 2013. There’s a good reason Lockwood has been hailed as Poet Laureate of the Internet—the prose poem that shot her to fame is a powerful mix of personal and ...
Contributor Shaleeta Harper reviews local cafe, Blenz.
Students are pretty well known drug addicts. Many of us can’t get through those 8 am classes without clutching a cup of caffeine. My addiction is minor compared to some of my peers, but it’s still typical to find me doing my homework in a coffee shop, the goods a few steps away at most. In a city with a university, we have quite a few local haunts, all with their own highlights, and it can be hard to know which one to visit. This year I’m dedicated to trying all of them—new ones and old favourites—and giving you the skinny on ...
Abbotsford (CUP)— Dessa Bayrock of The Cascade answers: What is a Porpoise?
The quick answer: porpoises are adorable. The longer answer: porpoises belong to the cetacean family, which includes whales and dolphins. If you’re trying to picture a porpoise in your mind, think of a broader, stouter dolphin without the “melon” lump dolphins and whales have on their heads.
Porpoises also take less kindly to living in captivity, and aren’t as easily trained as their dolphin cousins—think of porpoises as the indifferent cats of the cetacean family. Are they cute? Yes. Will they do what ...
VIU’s bookstore is offering a new student service this year with their online textbook comparison tool.
The comparison tool allows students to compare VIU pricing with online competitors making it easier for students to find the best price.
Retail operations manager, Mike Thibodeau, said this is the bookstore’s way of becoming more transparent and beneficial to students.
“We know what year it is,” said Thibodeau. “It is time to change the image of the bookstore.”
Thibodeau said on-campus book sales have been dropping steadily over the years with the availability of digital ...
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For many students, the first day of school is kind of like their New Year’s Eve (though likely a little less drunk). You make grand resolutions to actually use your complimentary agenda, hole-punch your handouts and put them in your binder right away, start working on your assignments the day of, etc. etc. In elementary school, you showed up for the first day back after summer vacation—maybe wearing new clothes or sneakers—you walked into the classroom wishing that everyone would notice the re-invented you that the sunshine, summer camp, and two months off magically created.
One of my ...
September, season of the harvest, conjures images of baskets heaped with produce, grain milled to form rustic loaves, and cups overflowing with sweet wines and ciders. We’re surrounded by abundance, the reward of spring and summer labours; we reap what we have sown, and it will nourish our bodies through the coming year. Gardeners and farmers’ market shoppers say that local, freshly picked fruits and vegetables more deeply satisfy our hunger, but the sweat on the nurturing hand is what feeds the spirit. We need much more than just food and drink to survive.
We’re complicated beings ...
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Our resident sports expert Ben Chessor counts down the craziest sports stories of the summer.
For two weeks in the middle of August, the arts scene in Nanaimo breathed and pulsed with the fourth annual Fringe, the independent theatre festival which brought together international and local artists, musicians, and theatre enthusiasts. With eight plays, 48 shows, and 30 non-theatre performances in three venues, the festival attracted over 1000 visitors, marking a 32-percent increase in attendance since 2013. The plays presented a wide spectrum of theatre genres, ranging from stand-up comedy and storytelling pieces to intense sci-fi and psychological dramas. The Navigator's Arts ...
