E-mail A Friend Tell a friend about the information found on this page by sending them an e-mail.   Your Name: Your E-mail:   Type an e-mail address, then click add: Add a Personal Message: (Optional)

December 2008 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: The year of getting closer Feature: Hungry as a bear Feature: Plight of the bumblebee Feature: The messenger The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte

Indie band Arcade Fire performs at the Ukrainian National Federation in Montréal in 2007. (Photo: Ryan Remiorz/cpimages.ca)

RESEARCH
Montréal’s indie scene
What can we learn about a city by understanding the local music scene? Thomas Cummins-Russell, a master’s student at Montréal’s Concordia University, is using his background in geography to examine the attributes of the independent music industry that are unique to his city.

With the global success in recent years of indie rock bands such as Arcade Fire, Montréal’s music scene has been thrust into the spotlight. And Cummins-Russell is studying how it has evolved, with the assistance of a $5,000 Maxwell Studentship in Human Geography, awarded annually by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

So far, he has completed nearly 40 interviews with Montréal’s independent musicians in a variety of genres — from indie rock and jazz to world and electronica — as well as with others in the local music scene, including sound engineers, promoters, producers and label owners. “Many tell the same story,” he says. “To survive in the business, they needed to diversify. Many musicians play in different bands and also go into things like booking, promoting and managing. More connections in the industry lead to more gigs.”

Cummins-Russell joins a number of geographers who are studying the cultural economy of cities, focusing on industries that have emerged in recent years to replace the declining manufacturing sector in some cities of the developed world, such as clothing manufacturing in Montréal. Among the rising creative industries are multimedia, video games, dance and drama. He hopes to be among the first to study the music business through this lens.

His analysis will centre on local factors, such as Quebec’s unique political climate and Montréal’s bilingualism, to determine their role in how the music industry works. Few cities in the world have two dominant languages with such a large bilingual population, says Cummins-Russell. His research reveals that while audiences and venues are often split along linguistic lines, this does not necessarily apply to musicians. “Music is a language that can be understood by anyone of any language,” he says. “It allows musicians to collaborate, whether they are anglophone or francophone.”

top

EXPEDITIONS
The North through Afghan eyes

Afghan photojournalism student Farzana Wahidy (ABOVE) turned her lens on the landscapes and people of Baffin Island, Nunavut, including these residents (TOP) motoring around the hamlet of Qikiqtarjuaq. (Photos: Farzana Wahidy)

On Baffin Island, Wahidy began a personal and professional journey filled with firsts. “For the first time in my life, I wasn’t concerned about how I was wearing my head scarf and clothing,” she says. It was also her first group trip and the first time she had travelled in mixed company. Far from cellphones and internet access, it was her first time without regular contact with family members back home. And she discovered a completely new subject upon which to cast her lens. “I want to see how climate change affects my people too,” says Wahidy. “Lack of water is one of the biggest issues. People are really suffering in my country.”

RESEARCH
Power of the pen

German prisoners of war take a break from their duties at a lumber camp in northwestern Ontario. (Photo: Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society)

“The response I got was unbelievable,” says Ramsay who, for her master’s thesis at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., interviewed several of the people who sent letters. She talked not only with former POWs but with a former prison-camp guard, men who toiled as teenaged labourers in lumber camps and residents who recounted childhood memories of encountering prisoners on their way to school.

All the POWs she spoke with returned to Canada after they were repatriated to Germany at the end of the war. “They claimed that from the moment they left Canada, they were trying to get back,” says Ramsay, who presented her findings at The Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s Annual General Meeting in November. “They spoke very highly of the area where they worked. And almost all of them went back to paying jobs in the lumber camps where they had been interned.”

top