OPENING
NIGHT CELEBRATION
The Cherie Smith Memorial Lecture Evening Slide
Lecture Presentation
with JOAN ROTH, New York's internationally acclaimed photographer
and author
CANCELLED
The Cherie Smith Memorial Lecture Evening was cancelled as the author
was unable to attend at the last minute.
LILLIAN
BORAKS NEMETZ was born in Warsaw, Poland where
she survived the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto and then as
a hidden child in the countryside of Poland. Her poems in Ghost
Children and the award-winning Sunflower Trilogy
explore the power of memory, as well as the spiritual and emotional
trauma suffered by child survivors of the Holocaust. She currently
teaches creative writing at UBC.
Vancouver
born poet, SHOSHANA DAYAN
will read from her debut collection of poems Soul Weave
where she explores the wonder and beauty in nature, the human
propensity for destruction and the power of love and spirituality.
She is currently working on her second book entitled The
Offering.
Coquitlam’s
award winning author ROZ DAVIDSON’s
latest poetry book, The Wizard of Roz, is in its third
printing. Dubbed the "Granny Rapper", she has been
a teacher, journalist and the originator of children and adult
musicals. Roz's Story World is being played on Canadian
and US airlines, schools and libraries throughout North America.
Born and
raised in Vancouver, BARBARA PELMAN's
earliest memories include the view of the congregation from
the choir loft where her father Pucky conducted the Beth Israel
Choir for over 60 years. Now residing in Victoria, Barbara teaches
English at Reynolds School. One Stone, her first trade
book, was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2005.
Singer,
songwriter and poet, GENA PERALA
is always out to challenge the way she and the people around
her live and think. She spent much of her childhood summers
on the carnival circuit with her parents, before settling in
Vancouver. Her writing in Keep It Together and I
am a Worst Case Scenario Type of Girl is raw, real and
relevant.
EMCEE WENDY
MORTON has written three books of poetry, Private
Eye, Undercover and Shadowcatcher and
is currently working on her memoir, 6 Impossible Things
Before Breakfast. She regularly hosts the Macombo Café
Poetry Reading Series and is West Jet's 'Poet of the Skies'
and Chrysler's 'Poet of the Road'. Wendy is an insurance investigator
with endless energy and a huge imagination.
POETRY BRUNCH
(7101) - Cost: $12 + GST per person. Register online or by faxing
a registration form to 604 257 5119. Please register early to assure
yourself a space. A limited number of seats are available. Location: L'Chaim Adult Day Centre Lounge
12:30 pm Vancouver-
born artist and children's book illustrator RAE
MATÉ has always loved making pictures. Crocodiles
Say... was published by Tradewind Books in September 2005 and
was written by local poet and teacher Robert Heidbreder. In this
interactive session, Rae will speak about the illustrating process.
She will show samples of the original artwork and other crocodile
paintings and she will read the book. Children and parents will
be invited to create their own crocodile creatures with chalk and
oil pastels on paper.
Rae Mate taught primary school before studying visual arts at Langara
College and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, graduating
with a diploma in painting in 1986. She has been painting and exhibiting
professionally since and for the past 20 years has been selling
her own line of handmade art cards. Rae has taught art to children
at Vancouver Arts Umbrella since 1997.
Admission is free. Everyone is welcome. Location: Adult Arts and Crafts
1:00 pm IMAGINE
THE IMPOSSIBLE (7102) Workshop Facilitator: Wendy Morton
When Wendy Morton’s first book of poetry, Private Eye,
was published in 2001, she was determined to find some way to turn
her poetry into currency. On a whim she called WestJet Airlines
and suggested that in exchange for flights she read and write poems
for the passengers. After a bit of urging, they agreed, and so she
became WestJet's "Poet of the Skies". She has turned her
poems into currency that has provided her with a PT Cruiser from
Daimler-Chrysler, luxurious Fairmont Hotel rooms and vitamins from
Prairie Naturals. In Alice in Wonderland, the queen says
to Alice, " Why, when I was your age, I imagined 6 impossible
things before breakfast." This workshop will give direction
to writers who want to imagine impossible things. Wendy Morton's
latest book of poetry is Shadowcatcher (Ekstasis 2005).
Creator of Random Acts of Poetry, she lives in Sooke, B.C.
and is the host and founder of Macombo Café Poetry Reading
Series.
Advanced registration
- $8.00 + GST - JCC, League of Canadian Poets, The Writers' Union
of Canada or Vancouver Society of Storytelling members, seniors
or students - $10 + GST for non-members. Please register by visiting
JCC reception, or online ,
or by faxing your completed registration form to 604 257 5119.
Cost at
the door will be $12.00 including GST. Location: Adult Lounge
3:00 pm A
CONVERSATION with STAN PERSKY (7103)
Attend a conversation with Stan Persky about writing, love, politics,
memory, and bad Jews. This lively, informal hour of talk is for
readers, writers, kibitzers, and hecklers, and is guaranteed to
make your high blood pressure worse. Stan Persky is a long-time
Vancouver public intellectual and literary activist. His most recent
book is The Short Version: An ABC Book. He teaches Philosophy
at Capilano College and lives in Vancouver and Berlin.
Advanced registration
- $8.00 + GST - JCC, League of Canadian Poets, The Writers' Union
of Canada or Vancouver Society of Storytelling members, seniors
or students - $10 + GST for non-members. Please register by visiting
JCC reception, or online ,
or by faxing your completed registration form to 604 257 5119.
Cost at the door will be $12.00 including GST.
Location: Adult Lounge
5:00 pm -
6:30 pm Storytelling
WORKSHOP (7104)
Workshop Facilitator: DAN YASHINSKY
Story is our mother tongue. We use the language of storytelling
to give voice to our history, dreams, personal memory, and imagined
worlds. In this workshop, we will explore a wide range of stories,
from family lore to traditional Jewish folktales. Participants will
share their own stories and learn at least one new story from Toronto
based Dan Yashinsky, renowned storyteller and author of Suddenly
They Heard Footsteps. Bring your favourite family proverb or
saying as a way to warm up. The aim of this workshop is to have
fun while learning about your own stories and listening to those
of others.
Advanced registration
- $10.00 + GST - JCC, League of Canadian Poets, The Writers' Union
of Canada or Vancouver Society of Storytelling members, seniors
or students - $12 + GST for non-members. Please register by visiting
JCC reception, or online ,
or by faxing your completed registration form to 604 257 5119.
Cost at the door will be $15.00 including GST. Location: Adult Lounge
6:30
pm PAPER BAG DINNER (7105)
Sign up for the workshop and stay through dinner (salmon, assorted
salads/vegetables & beverage) catered by Nava Creative
Kosher Cuisine. Deadline to pre-order dinners is Monday,
November 21, 2005 at 5 pm. The option to pre-order dinner is open
to anyone. Pick up your pre-paid dinner at Nava‘s.
Cost: $12 + GST.
7:00 pm Storytelling PERFORMANCE
(7106)
Join DAN YASHINSKY, author of Suddenly They Heard Footsteps
as he shares experiences and stories from his lifelong exploration
of the art of storytelling. A child of a Romanian Jewish survivor,
he traces his storytelling roots back to stories told - and not
told - in his family, to the epic art of Homer and medieval troubadours,
and to the ghost stories heard while working at a summer camp for
impoverished children. Entertaining and moving, this talk + telling
will show how a contemporary storyteller found his voice, learned
his art, and encountered remarkable teachers.
Advanced registration
- $10.00 + GST - JCC, League of Canadian Poets, The Writers' Union
of Canada or Vancouver Society of Storytelling members, seniors
or students - $12 + GST for non-members. Please register by visiting
JCC reception, or online ,
or by faxing your completed registration form to 604 257 5119.
Cost at the door will be $15.00 including GST.
Presented in
association with the Vancouver Society of Storytelling. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
You can also
register by visiting JCC reception or by
faxing your completed registration form to 604 257 5119.
8:00 pm Born to Kvetch with MICHAEL WEX
As the main spoken language of the Jews for more than a thousand
years, Yiddish has had plenty to lament and plenty to conceal. Its
phrases, idioms, and expressions paint a comprehensive picture of
the mind-set that enabled the Jews of Europe to survive a millennium
of unrelenting persecution: they never stopped kvetching---about
God, gentiles, children, food, and everything (and anything) else.
They even learned how to express satisfaction in the form of complaint.
In his recent release, Born to Kvetch, Toronto author Michael
Wex looks at the ingredients that went into this buffet of disenchantment
and examines how they were mixed together to produce an almost limitless
supply of striking idioms and withering curses. Michael Wex is a
performer, novelist, playwright and translator (of the only authorized
Yiddish translation of The Threepenny Opera, among others).
He has been hailed as "a Yiddish national treasure" and
is a leading light of the current Yiddish revival.
Admission is free. This reading is open to the general public and
is supported by a Canada Council for the Arts Literary Reading Grant.
Presented in association with the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish
Culture with support from the Kirman Memorial Foundation for Yiddish
Culture. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
SCHOOL
FIELD TRIPS 1:00 pm
While
forty years of living in the wilderness with Moses may have been
enough for most Jewish people, KATHLEEN
COOK WALDRON still enjoys her transition to rural
British Columbia. Much of her writing contrasts the urban life of
her childhood with her current life "in the bush." Her
book A Wilderness Passover and her short story One
Candle, Many Lights both reflect her experiences as the only
Jewish person for miles around. In her most recent book, Round-up
at the Palace, rural meets urban head-on, with the help of
a blizzard and a bull. Kathleen Cook Waldron lives in 100 Mile House,
B.C.
Admission
is free. This reading is open to the general public and is supported
by a Canada Council for the Arts Literary Reading Grant. Location: Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library
3:00 pm
Storyteller DAN YASHINSKY
began his storytelling career as a camp-counselor working with a
wild pack of eight-year-old boys. He has gone on to travel the world
as a storyteller, story-collector, and writer. This performance
includes stories from his summer camp days, and stories that he
has created and published in his recent book Suddenly They Heard
Footsteps - Storytelling for the Twenty~First Century.
"I have never sat still for so long." Student,
Northern Secondary School.
"You have encouraged our children to become keepers and
tellers of their own stories." J. Kostoff, Principal,
St. John of the Cross School
Presented in association with King David High School.
Grade 8’s from King David High School will attend this storytelling
performance. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
7:00 pm ELEANOR BOYLE is a
college educator and writer who, with co-author Harley Rothstein,
has written Effective College and University Teaching: A Practical
Guide. A passionate call for higher quality post-secondary
teaching, the book contends that great teachers are largely made,
not born, and that universities should allow and encourage professors
to learn to teach well. This highly practical book analyzes and
summarizes the principles underlying good teaching at any level
from kindergarten to graduate school, and for any topic whether
philosophy or engineering, piano or yoga. Eleanor currently teaches
at Capilano College in North Vancouver and conducts workshops teaching
faculty members how to get students involved in lectures and in
the deeper process of learning. Eleanor and Harley are inspired
by the central role of learning in Judaism, and believe that the
values underlying great teaching are similar to the values underlying
Jewish life: a commitment to learning and growth, to justice and
to truth.
Presented in association with Canadian Friends of Hebrew University.
This reading is open to the general public. Admission is free. Everyone
is welcome. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
8:00 pm LANCE
BERELOWITZ will give a provocative illustrated presentation
from his fascinating new book, Dream City: Vancouver and the
Global Imagination, which has been short-listed for the 2005
City of Vancouver Book Awards. Berelowitz offers an unsentimental
yet passionate exploration of the links between his adoptive city's
seductive natural setting, its history of speculative development
and its emerging culture of planning and design. He also makes the
startling case that Vancouver is to the Canadian imagination what
Los Angeles is to the American, a mythologized place of endless
possibilities which is being grounded in altogether more limited
social and environmental realities. Writing as a form of urban archeology,
his provocative prose digs below the surface of observations made
by local boosters and awestruck visitors alike. Berelowitz is an
award winning writer and commentator on urban planning who was the
editor of Vancouver's successful 2010 Olympic Winter Games Bid Book
submission to the International Olympic Committee. He is the founder
of Urban Forum Associates Planning and Urban Design, and lives in
Vancouver with his wife and two children.
This reading is open to the general public. Admission is free. Everyone
is welcome. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
9:30
am Vancouver
children’s author NORMA CHARLES
has written many books including All the Way to Mexico,
winner of the Chocolate Lily Award, 2005; The Accomplice,
finalist for the Sheila Egoff Award for Children's Literature, 2002;
and Sophie's Sea to Sea, winner of the Year 2000 award.
Join Norma Charles as she reads from Sophie's Friend in Need,
the third book in the Sophie series, nominated for the Chocolate
Lily Award.
It's summer 1950, and for 11-year-old Sophie LaGrange, Camp Latona
on Gambier Island promises to be pure bliss. Swimming, new friends,
it can't get any better than that, even if she does have to sneak
in her favourite Star Girl comics. But then Sophie has to buddy
up with a strange, unfriendly refugee, Ginette Berger, and things
go sour. Ginette seems to hate everything and everybody. Soon, Sophie
learns that Ginette has her own secrets and worries. And, like Sophie,
she has her own way of staying strong. A small dreidel, a treasured
talisman from her troubled past gives her courage. But, when Ginette
tries to escape from camp in a canoe in the middle of a dark night,
Sophie MUST call upon all her Star Girl pluck to get Ginette back
safely to dry land.
Admission is free. This reading is open to the general public and
is presented with support from a Canada Council for the Arts Literary
Reading Grant. Location: Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library
LITERARY
READING
CHANGE
IN SCHEDULED AUTHOR
7:00
pm
Disappointing
late breaking news! MICHAEL REDHILL HAS CANCELLED
Exciting
New Development! SCHEDULED IN ITS PLACE
Author of Shooting Water, DEVYANI
SALTZMAN
in conversation with film critic DAVID SPANER.
DEVYANI
SALTZMAN,
daughter of international award-winning Film Director Deepa Mehta,
will be joining us to celebrate the publication of her book, Shooting
Water: A Mother-Daughter Journey and Making of a Film
(published by Key Porter Books) and the release of Mehta’s
film, Water which is presently playing
at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. Join Devyani Saltzman in conversation withDAVID
SPANER, The Vancouver Province film critic,
Global Television film reviewer and author of Dreaming
in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North by Northwest,
as they discuss the making of the film and the writing of Devyani’s
book, Shooting Water. Shooting Water chronicles
a five-year odyssey which culminates in the successful completion
of the film Water in June 2004 at a secret location in Sri Lanka,
and with the reunion of an estranged mother and daughter.
Daughter
of Deepa Mehta and producer/director Paul Saltzman, Devyani was
raised in Toronto and since her parent’s divorce when she
was eleven years old, she has spent her life navigating between
two religions (Hinduism and Judaism), two traditions and two people—feeling
like she belonged to both and to neither at once. The filming of
Water was mother and daughter’s second chance. Transformative
and inspiring, Shooting Water chronicles Devyani Saltzman’s
life-changing experiences in India (and Sri Lanka), the struggle
to produce a film, and through that struggle, the emergence of a
deeper love and mutual recognition between mother and daughter.
Devyani
received a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University, specializing
in Sociology and Anthropology. She grew up on film and television
sets, and was the recipient of the Young Professionals International
Internship grant to work on a feature-length documentary in India.
She works as a photojournalist and freelance writer.
Admission is
free. Book signing to follow.
This reading is open to the general public and is presented with
support from Key Porter Books and Leonard Schein, who will be introducing
David and Devyani. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
8:00 pm Maestro
LASZLO GATI will read
from his autobiography Les Préludes: Mosaics of a Musician’s
Life and conduct the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra in a
performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the Pastorale
Symphony. In his book, he describes his childhood in fascist
and anti-semitic Romania followed by the war years during which
he endured forced labour. After the war his musical studies and
career in Budapest were interrupted by the Hungarian revolution
when he was forced to escape and even survived a plane crash near
Munich, Germany. Maestro Gati is the former Music Director of the
Victoria and Windsor Symphony Orchestras. He has been a guest conductor
of more than fifty orchestras on four continents and has appeared
with most major soloists including Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Van Cliburn
and Rostropovich. He is an Honourary Citizen of the City of Victoria
and lives in Vancouver, B.C.
The
members of the VANCOUVER PHILARMONIC
ORCHESTRA are dedicated amateur musicians whose
love of music and music-making brings them together to share the
best of classical and contemporary repertoire. Now in its forty-second
year, the Orchestra dates back to an amalgamation of the JCC Orchestra
and the Dunbar Community Centre Orchestra in the early sixties.
The VPO presents five modestly priced concerts a season. Their next
concert will be held at Shaughnessy Heights United Church, 33rd
and Granville on December 10, 2005. Check their website for details.
www.vcn.bc.ca
Advanced tickets:
$10 + GST- JCC or VPO members, seniors & students. $12 + GST
- non-members. To purchase tickets in advance, please visit JCC
reception or call 604 257 5111.
Tickets at the door: $15.00 including GST. Location: Wosk Auditorium
9:30 am SHELDON
GOLDFARB is the author of Remember, Remember,
a murder mystery set in Manchester, England during the Victorian
era. He has a PhD in English and has published two books on William
Makepeace Thackeray. When not busy at his day job running the archives
for the Alma Mater Society at UBC, he writes book reviews, encyclopedia
articles and screenplays that he hopes will one day become films.
His latest fiction features an American Jewish woman on the Canadian
prairies.
This reading is open to the general public. Admission is free. Everyone
is welcome. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
LITERARY
LECTURE & LUNCH
12:00 pm
Living Well with Arthritis and Eating
Healthily (7107)
with HOWARD STEIN Dr.
Howard Stein, Honourary Professor of Medicine at the University
of British Columbia will read excerpts from his co-authored book,
Living Well with Arthritis (Penguin Books, 2002). In user-friendly
language, the authors take readers through the steps of diagnosis,
how the body is affected and ways to manage the most common forms
of over one hundred different types of arthritis. The authors, all
Canadian doctors, describe established treatment options, including
new medications and their side effects, diet, exercise, assistive
devices, alternate therapies and joint surgery. Pain, fatigue, emotional
and social coping strategies, childhood arthritis and sexuality
are among the topics explored. This book empowers those with arthritis
with up to date and practical information in a single source. The
book covers recent advances in the field and is chock full of detailed
information not readily available elsewhere. Dr. Howard Stein provides
the answers for "Ask the Expert" on The Arthritis Society
(Canada) website.
Advanced registration:
$12 + GST - Cost includes lecture and a healthy “arthritis-friendly”
lunch. Please register early to assure yourself a seat.
To register, visit JCC reception, or online or fax a registration
form to 604 257 5119.
Presented in association with JCC Seniors and Congregation Beth
Israel. Location: Wosk Auditorium
7:00 pm
Toronto columnist,
playwright and novelist, RICK SALUTIN
will read from his most recent novel, The Womanizer: A Man of
His Time. Salutin has written biography and history, as well
as three novels, one of which, A Man of Little Faith, about
a Jewish educator who migrates to Canada from Nazi Germany, won
the Books in Canada best first novel prize. He held the Maclean
Hunter Chair in Ethics in Communication at Ryerson University from
1993 to 1995 and has taught in the Canadian Studies program of University
College at the University of Toronto since 1978. Rick Salutin was
Globe and Mail media columnist from 1991 to 1999 and is now an op-ed
columnist. His many plays include 1837, on the movement
for independence from the British Empire; and Les Canadiens,
which received the Chalmers award for best Canadian play in 1977.
His plays, which deal with Jewish themes are The False Messiah,
about Shabtai Zvi, and Nathan Cohen: A Review, about the
well-known theatre critic. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
8:00
pm Born
in 1940 in Derry, Northern Ireland, GEORGE
SZANTO is the son of Viennese refugees who fled
Hitler and anti-Semitism. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard
University in 1967, he taught at Harvard, the University California,
San Diego, and McGill University where, in 2000, he retired early
in order to write fiction full time. George was made a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Canada in 1988 and has since been named Professor
Emeritus. George Szanto's first novel, Not Working (1982)
is the story of a big city Jewish cop turned rural househusband.
His novel, Friends & Marriages, won the Hugh MacLennan
Prize for Fiction in 1995. George will read from his trilogy, The
Conquests of Mexico. The Underside of Stones, part
one of the trilogy, is the story of a Canadian who lives a year
in Mexico and finds his life and beliefs progressively subverted
and reconstituted; part two, Second Sight, exposes the
realms of Mexican wealth and politics; part three, The Condesa
of M., explores Mexico's darker religious underworld. Several
of his novels have been translated into French and Italian. He lives
on Gabriola Island, B.C. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
Admission is free. These
readings are open to the public and are presented with support from
a Canada Council for the Arts Literary Reading Grant.
9:30 am Meet
award winning Toronto author KATHY
KACER as she reads from her latest book, The
Underground Reporters (Second Story Press, 2005). This book,
geared to young readers ages 9 and up, tells the story of a courageous
group of Jewish children from a small town in Eastern Europe, who
created a newspaper during World War II, at a time when all privileges
were taken away. While most of these children did not survive the
Holocaust, 22 editions of their newspaper were hidden and recovered
after the war.
Kathy Kacer's previous books include The Secret of Gabi's Dresser,
winner of the Silver Birch award, Hackmatack Award and the Canadian
Jewish Book Award. Clara's War, winner of the Red Maple
Award and a Notable Book in the Sydney Taylor book Award and The
Night Spies, short-listed for the Red Cedar Award.
Reading from her book and using historical slides, Kathy will weave
her story around the historical events of the Second World War and
the Holocaust.
Admission is free. This reading is open to the general public and
is presented with support from a Canada Council for the Arts Literary
Reading Grant. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
11:00
am BARRY
SHELL
is Research Communications Manager in the Faculty of Applied Sciences
at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and a freelance science
writer specializing in high-tech topics. Shell created www.science.ca
now the top Google hit for "Canadian science". He has
written four books and freelances on CBC radio, as well as numerous
magazines and newspapers including the Globe and Mail, the New York
Times, and Adbusters. Barry will entertain the audience by explaining
what is involved in creating a book on scientists. He will read
an excerpt from Sensational Scientists: The Journeys and Discoveries
of 24 Men and Women of Science. The audience will be asked
to participate in a hands-on activity that demonstrates some scientific
principle related to the reading.
This reading is being attended by Grade 9 science students from
King David High School.
Admission is free. This presentation is open to the general public.
Everyone is welcome. Location: Esther and Ben Dayson Board Room
7:00 pm John Burns IN CONVERSATION WITH David
Homel & Michael Kaufman.
Georgia
Straight Book Editor JOHN BURNS
is himself the author of The Urban Picnic (Arsenal Pulp
Press, 2003) and Runnerland, a teen novel to be published
in 2007. He has contributed to the Globe and Mail, NUVO magazine,
the Toronto Star, the CBC's Arts Today, and television's Vicki Gabereau
and Mason Lee on the Edge. He has appeared as a moderator at the
Vancouver International Writers Festival, Word on the Street, and
UBC's Booming Ground. He is co-host of the CBC Studio One Book Club,
which has featured such authors as Roddy Doyle, Margaret Atwood
and Salman Rushdie.
A
journalist, editor, literary translator, screenwriter and teacher,
DAVID HOMEL, lives
in Montreal where he started to write fiction in the mid 1980's.
He won Quebec Writers' Federation Best Fiction in 2003 and the Jewish
Public Library Best Fiction award in 2004 for his novel, The
Speaking Cure. In 1995, Sonya & Jack (Harpercollins,
1995) won the Prix Millepages in France for Best Foreign Literary
Fiction and in 1993, Rat Palms (Harpercollins, 1992) won
Paperback of the Year and the Canadian book and Periodical Marketers
award. Homel earned two Governor-General Awards for translation.
In 2001 he was awarded Paris’ Prix de la Géode for
Great North, an Imax film.
MICHAEL
KAUFMAN,
winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction, has gained
international recognition for his work promoting gender equality
and working to end violence against women. He is founder and Global
Ambassador of the White Ribbon Campaign, men working to end violence
against women, which has spread to forty-seven countries. He is
2004 Laureate of UNIFEM Canada (the United Nations Development Fund
for Women). His award-winning first novel, The Possibility of
Dreaming on a Night Without Stars (Penguin Canada) has been
described by the Globe and Mail as a “wise and touching debut”
with “palpable intimacy”. His other five books are non-fiction
and focus on gender issues and development studies. Living in Toronto,
Michael Kaufman dreams of finding the time to finish his next novel,
a sweeping story of the baby boom generation in North America.
Supported by
Canada Council for the Arts Literary Reading Grants. This event
is presented in association with Hadassah-Wizo Council of Vancouver.
Admission is free. Everyone is welcome. However, as this will be
a popular event, please assure yourself of a seat by reserving a
ticket. Call the Hadassah-Wizo office at 604-257-5160. A
food reception honouring the volunteers of our community will follow
in the atrium. Location: Norman Rothstein Theatre (note
location change from printed brochure)
Vancouver-
born artist and children's book illustrator RAE
MATÉ has always loved making pictures. Crocodiles
Say... was published by Tradewind Books in September 2005 and
was written by local poet and teacher Robert Heidbreder. In this
interactive session, Rae will speak about the illustrating process.
She will show samples of the original artwork and other crocodile
paintings and she will read the book. Children and parents will
be invited to create their own crocodile creatures with chalk and
oil pastels on paper. 
IMAGINE
THE IMPOSSIBLE (7102)
A
CONVERSATION with STAN PERSKY (7103)
Storytelling
WORKSHOP (7104)
Born to Kvetch with MICHAEL WEX 
While
forty years of living in the wilderness with Moses may have been
enough for most Jewish people, KATHLEEN
COOK WALDRON still enjoys her transition to rural
British Columbia. Much of her writing contrasts the urban life of
her childhood with her current life "in the bush." Her
book A Wilderness Passover and her short story One
Candle, Many Lights both reflect her experiences as the only
Jewish person for miles around. In her most recent book, Round-up
at the Palace, rural meets urban head-on, with the help of
a blizzard and a bull. Kathleen Cook Waldron lives in 100 Mile House,
B.C.
ELEANOR BOYLE is a
college educator and writer who, with co-author Harley Rothstein,
has written Effective College and University Teaching: A Practical
Guide. A passionate call for higher quality post-secondary
teaching, the book contends that great teachers are largely made,
not born, and that universities should allow and encourage professors
to learn to teach well. This highly practical book analyzes and
summarizes the principles underlying good teaching at any level
from kindergarten to graduate school, and for any topic whether
philosophy or engineering, piano or yoga. Eleanor currently teaches
at Capilano College in North Vancouver and conducts workshops teaching
faculty members how to get students involved in lectures and in
the deeper process of learning. Eleanor and Harley are inspired
by the central role of learning in Judaism, and believe that the
values underlying great teaching are similar to the values underlying
Jewish life: a commitment to learning and growth, to justice and
to truth.
LANCE
BERELOWITZ will give a provocative illustrated presentation
from his fascinating new book, Dream City: Vancouver and the
Global Imagination, which has been short-listed for the 2005
City of Vancouver Book Awards. Berelowitz offers an unsentimental
yet passionate exploration of the links between his adoptive city's
seductive natural setting, its history of speculative development
and its emerging culture of planning and design. He also makes the
startling case that Vancouver is to the Canadian imagination what
Los Angeles is to the American, a mythologized place of endless
possibilities which is being grounded in altogether more limited
social and environmental realities. Writing as a form of urban archeology,
his provocative prose digs below the surface of observations made
by local boosters and awestruck visitors alike. Berelowitz is an
award winning writer and commentator on urban planning who was the
editor of Vancouver's successful 2010 Olympic Winter Games Bid Book
submission to the International Olympic Committee. He is the founder
of Urban Forum Associates Planning and Urban Design, and lives in
Vancouver with his wife and two children.
Vancouver
children’s author NORMA CHARLES
has written many books including All the Way to Mexico,
winner of the Chocolate Lily Award, 2005; The Accomplice,
finalist for the Sheila Egoff Award for Children's Literature, 2002;
and Sophie's Sea to Sea, winner of the Year 2000 award.
Join Norma Charles as she reads from Sophie's Friend in Need,
the third book in the Sophie series, nominated for the Chocolate
Lily Award. 
DEVYANI
SALTZMAN,
daughter of international award-winning Film Director Deepa Mehta,
will be joining us to celebrate the publication of her book, Shooting
Water: A Mother-Daughter Journey and Making of a Film
(published by Key Porter Books) and the release of Mehta’s
film, Water which is presently playing
at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. Join Devyani Saltzman in conversation with
DAVID
SPANER, The Vancouver Province film critic,
Global Television film reviewer and author of Dreaming
in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North by Northwest,
as they discuss the making of the film and the writing of Devyani’s
book, Shooting Water. Shooting Water chronicles
a five-year odyssey which culminates in the successful completion
of the film Water in June 2004 at a secret location in Sri Lanka,
and with the reunion of an estranged mother and daughter. 
Daughter
of Deepa Mehta and producer/director Paul Saltzman, Devyani was
raised in Toronto and since her parent’s divorce when she
was eleven years old, she has spent her life navigating between
two religions (Hinduism and Judaism), two traditions and two people—feeling
like she belonged to both and to neither at once. The filming of
Water was mother and daughter’s second chance. Transformative
and inspiring, Shooting Water chronicles Devyani Saltzman’s
life-changing experiences in India (and Sri Lanka), the struggle
to produce a film, and through that struggle, the emergence of a
deeper love and mutual recognition between mother and daughter.
Maestro
LASZLO GATI will read
from his autobiography Les Préludes: Mosaics of a Musician’s
Life and conduct the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra in a
performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the Pastorale
Symphony. In his book, he describes his childhood in fascist
and anti-semitic Romania followed by the war years during which
he endured forced labour. After the war his musical studies and
career in Budapest were interrupted by the Hungarian revolution
when he was forced to escape and even survived a plane crash near
Munich, Germany. Maestro Gati is the former Music Director of the
Victoria and Windsor Symphony Orchestras. He has been a guest conductor
of more than fifty orchestras on four continents and has appeared
with most major soloists including Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Van Cliburn
and Rostropovich. He is an Honourary Citizen of the City of Victoria
and lives in Vancouver, B.C.
The
members of the VANCOUVER PHILARMONIC
ORCHESTRA are dedicated amateur musicians whose
love of music and music-making brings them together to share the
best of classical and contemporary repertoire. Now in its forty-second
year, the Orchestra dates back to an amalgamation of the JCC Orchestra
and the Dunbar Community Centre Orchestra in the early sixties.
The VPO presents five modestly priced concerts a season. Their next
concert will be held at Shaughnessy Heights United Church, 33rd
and Granville on December 10, 2005. Check their website for details.
www.vcn.bc.ca
SHELDON
GOLDFARB is the author of Remember, Remember,
a murder mystery set in Manchester, England during the Victorian
era. He has a PhD in English and has published two books on William
Makepeace Thackeray. When not busy at his day job running the archives
for the Alma Mater Society at UBC, he writes book reviews, encyclopedia
articles and screenplays that he hopes will one day become films.
His latest fiction features an American Jewish woman on the Canadian
prairies.
Dr.
Howard Stein, Honourary Professor of Medicine at the University
of British Columbia will read excerpts from his co-authored book,
Living Well with Arthritis (Penguin Books, 2002). In user-friendly
language, the authors take readers through the steps of diagnosis,
how the body is affected and ways to manage the most common forms
of over one hundred different types of arthritis. The authors, all
Canadian doctors, describe established treatment options, including
new medications and their side effects, diet, exercise, assistive
devices, alternate therapies and joint surgery. Pain, fatigue, emotional
and social coping strategies, childhood arthritis and sexuality
are among the topics explored. This book empowers those with arthritis
with up to date and practical information in a single source. The
book covers recent advances in the field and is chock full of detailed
information not readily available elsewhere. Dr. Howard Stein provides
the answers for "Ask the Expert" on The Arthritis Society
(Canada) website.
Toronto columnist,
playwright and novelist, RICK SALUTIN
will read from his most recent novel, The Womanizer: A Man of
His Time. Salutin has written biography and history, as well
as three novels, one of which, A Man of Little Faith, about
a Jewish educator who migrates to Canada from Nazi Germany, won
the Books in Canada best first novel prize. He held the Maclean
Hunter Chair in Ethics in Communication at Ryerson University from
1993 to 1995 and has taught in the Canadian Studies program of University
College at the University of Toronto since 1978. Rick Salutin was
Globe and Mail media columnist from 1991 to 1999 and is now an op-ed
columnist. His many plays include 1837, on the movement
for independence from the British Empire; and Les Canadiens,
which received the Chalmers award for best Canadian play in 1977.
His plays, which deal with Jewish themes are The False Messiah,
about Shabtai Zvi, and Nathan Cohen: A Review, about the
well-known theatre critic.
Born
in 1940 in Derry, Northern Ireland, GEORGE
SZANTO is the son of Viennese refugees who fled
Hitler and anti-Semitism. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard
University in 1967, he taught at Harvard, the University California,
San Diego, and McGill University where, in 2000, he retired early
in order to write fiction full time. George was made a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Canada in 1988 and has since been named Professor
Emeritus. George Szanto's first novel, Not Working (1982)
is the story of a big city Jewish cop turned rural househusband.
His novel, Friends & Marriages, won the Hugh MacLennan
Prize for Fiction in 1995. George will read from his trilogy, The
Conquests of Mexico. The Underside of Stones, part
one of the trilogy, is the story of a Canadian who lives a year
in Mexico and finds his life and beliefs progressively subverted
and reconstituted; part two, Second Sight, exposes the
realms of Mexican wealth and politics; part three, The Condesa
of M., explores Mexico's darker religious underworld. Several
of his novels have been translated into French and Italian. He lives
on Gabriola Island, B.C.
Meet
award winning Toronto author KATHY
KACER as she reads from her latest book, The
Underground Reporters (Second Story Press, 2005). This book,
geared to young readers ages 9 and up, tells the story of a courageous
group of Jewish children from a small town in Eastern Europe, who
created a newspaper during World War II, at a time when all privileges
were taken away. While most of these children did not survive the
Holocaust, 22 editions of their newspaper were hidden and recovered
after the war. 
BARRY
SHELL
is Research Communications Manager in the Faculty of Applied Sciences
at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and a freelance science
writer specializing in high-tech topics. Shell created www.science.ca
now the top Google hit for "Canadian science". He has
written four books and freelances on CBC radio, as well as numerous
magazines and newspapers including the Globe and Mail, the New York
Times, and Adbusters. Barry will entertain the audience by explaining
what is involved in creating a book on scientists. He will read
an excerpt from Sensational Scientists: The Journeys and Discoveries
of 24 Men and Women of Science. The audience will be asked
to participate in a hands-on activity that demonstrates some scientific
principle related to the reading.
Georgia
Straight Book Editor JOHN BURNS
is himself the author of The Urban Picnic (Arsenal Pulp
Press, 2003) and Runnerland, a teen novel to be published
in 2007. He has contributed to the Globe and Mail, NUVO magazine,
the Toronto Star, the CBC's Arts Today, and television's Vicki Gabereau
and Mason Lee on the Edge. He has appeared as a moderator at the
Vancouver International Writers Festival, Word on the Street, and
UBC's Booming Ground. He is co-host of the CBC Studio One Book Club,
which has featured such authors as Roddy Doyle, Margaret Atwood
and Salman Rushdie.
A
journalist, editor, literary translator, screenwriter and teacher,
DAVID HOMEL, lives
in Montreal where he started to write fiction in the mid 1980's.
He won Quebec Writers' Federation Best Fiction in 2003 and the Jewish
Public Library Best Fiction award in 2004 for his novel, The
Speaking Cure. In 1995, Sonya & Jack (Harpercollins,
1995) won the Prix Millepages in France for Best Foreign Literary
Fiction and in 1993, Rat Palms (Harpercollins, 1992) won
Paperback of the Year and the Canadian book and Periodical Marketers
award. Homel earned two Governor-General Awards for translation.
In 2001 he was awarded Paris’ Prix de la Géode for
Great North, an Imax film. 
MICHAEL
KAUFMAN,
winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction, has gained
international recognition for his work promoting gender equality
and working to end violence against women. He is founder and Global
Ambassador of the White Ribbon Campaign, men working to end violence
against women, which has spread to forty-seven countries. He is
2004 Laureate of UNIFEM Canada (the United Nations Development Fund
for Women). His award-winning first novel, The Possibility of
Dreaming on a Night Without Stars (Penguin Canada) has been
described by the Globe and Mail as a “wise and touching debut”
with “palpable intimacy”. His other five books are non-fiction
and focus on gender issues and development studies. Living in Toronto,
Michael Kaufman dreams of finding the time to finish his next novel,
a sweeping story of the baby boom generation in North America.