Bill King Photography

Lately, at the Redwood Theatre Centre for the Performing Arts, I have found myself drawn not merely to the expected spectacle of staged performance, but to those fleeting, peripheral moments where motion spills beyond choreography and into something less obedient—something closer to madness. It is there, in that unstable border between intention and accident, that the visual mind begins to anticipate rather than simply observe. Such was the case on a recent Friday night, when the circus returned to this 112-year-old institution, and the familiar rhythms of performance gave way to something more restless, more intoxicating.

The Redwood Theatre itself carries the sediment of Toronto’s entertainment history within its walls. In the early decades of the twentieth century, it stood as a vessel for vaudeville, hosting a rotating constellation of music, dance, and acrobatic acts that defined the cultural appetite of the time. Its façade, preserved in archival images, speaks to that era with quiet authority. Yet, like many such spaces, it did not remain fixed in purpose. By the 1940s and 1950s it had become a cinema (1920’s silent movie theatre), and later, stripped of spectacle altogether, it served as a department store warehouse until the close of the 1980s. That it should re-emerge in 2005 as a hub for aerial circus arts feels less like reinvention and more like a return—an echo of its earlier life, refracted through contemporary practice.

It is within this layered environment that Escape Productions presented Consumed: Circus of the Seven Deadly Sins, an immersive work that resists passive viewing. The evening did not so much begin as it enveloped. Framed within the imagined architecture of “Club Inferno,” the production invited its audience into a space where moral binaries dissolve and indulgence is rendered not as caution, but as invitation. The Seven Deadly Sins, so often deployed as warnings, appeared here as charismatic intermediaries—hosts who guided rather than judged, who enticed rather than condemned. One was not asked to watch, but to yield.

For the observer behind the lens, this posed its own set of demands. The act of moving between video and still photography became an exercise in negotiation—each choice carrying the risk of forfeiting a moment irretrievable once passed. There is a particular tension in that oscillation: to commit to motion is to abandon the still, and to capture the still is to fracture the continuity of movement. And yet, within that tension, something resolves. The resulting images—particularly in black and white—strip the performance of its ornamental distractions, revealing instead the underlying architecture of bodies in space, of effort, of gravity resisted and briefly undone.

Escape Productions, still a relatively young collective, bears the marks of its origin story with a certain defiance. Founded in 2024 by artists whose professional lives exist outside the circus, the company operates within the margins of conventional time. Their rehearsals, often confined to Sunday evenings, suggest a discipline shaped not by abundance, but by constraint. It is perhaps this very limitation that sharpens their work. Their debut production, ESCape, achieved a sold-out run and was described in terms that juxtaposed the banal with the uncanny—corporate satire colliding with ritualistic unease. That early success did not settle their direction; it emboldened it.

With Consumed, the company ventures further into thematic darkness, constructing a performance that is as much psychological landscape as it is physical display. The apparatuses—silks, straps, rope, hoops, chains, and pole—function not merely as instruments of technique, but as extensions of narrative. Each discipline articulates a different register of experience: the slow unraveling of control, the assertion of dominance, the vulnerability inherent in suspension. Dance and contortion expand this vocabulary, allowing the body to speak in gestures that are at once precise and suggestive. What emerges is not a sequence of acts, but a continuous descent, carefully orchestrated yet deliberately disorienting.

At the center of this work is a small ensemble of performers whose individual proficiencies converge into a collective force. Their backgrounds vary in duration and specialization, yet the cohesion of the group suggests a shared commitment that transcends technical display. There is an understanding—perhaps unspoken—that the success of such a production lies not in isolated virtuosity, but in the capacity to sustain a unified atmosphere. It is this atmosphere, more than any single act, that lingers.

In the end, the evening resists simple categorization. It exists somewhere between theatre and ritual, between spectacle and seduction. The Redwood Theatre, with its layered past, proves an apt vessel for such ambiguity. And for the one attempting to document it, the task becomes less about preservation and more about interpretation—about accepting that no single frame, no sequence of frames, can fully contain what unfolds. One can only offer a version, shaped by choice, by omission, and by the quiet hope that something of the experience endures beyond the moment itself.

Writing is my music. Each sentence hums, each paragraph riffs, each essay seeks the elusive groove. I strive to make words swing. Sentences jazz solos, improvising with precision, always searching for the perfect note. For me, the page is a stage, and my words are the players—some brash like a trumpet blast, others soft like a brushstroke on a snare.

I learned to write from listening. Not to English teachers or grammarians, but to musicians. Louis Armstrong’s gravelly growl taught me cadence. Miles Davis’s cool phrasing taught me restraint. Coltrane taught me how to stretch a sentence until it soared. Each word I write carries the memory of a note played, a beat struck, or a lyric sung.

But writing isn’t just sound; it’s also silence. Like the rests in music, the spaces between words matter. A well-placed pause lets the reader breathe, just as a musician pauses to let the room catch its breath. When I write, I think about the air around the words, the way the spaces hold the melody together.

I write like I do because I can’t not. I write to capture the improvisational spirit of life, the way it twists and turns, refusing to be pinned down. I write because, like a musician, I’m always chasing perfection, knowing I’ll never quite reach it, but revelling in the pursuit.

When you read my words, I hope you hear the instruments behind them. I hope you hear the bassline of my past experiences, the percussive rhythm of my heartbeat, the melody of my thoughts. Writing, like jazz, is a conversation—a call and response between you and me.

So, why do I write like I do? Because words, like notes, deserve to be played. And if I play them right, maybe they’ll swing.

This Substack is more than sentences and paragraphs. It is a river of memory and music, flowing out of childhood summers and nightclubs thick with smoke, through conversations with strangers and friends alike. A paid subscription is not only a kindness but also a way of saying: keep the river moving, keep the stories alive. In return, you will be welcomed deeper into the circle: the full archive, the chapters ahead, the photographs not yet shared, the music behind the words. These are the offerings that do not drift free in the public air but belong to those who help shoulder the journey.

If these stories have ever held you steady, or reminded you of your own hidden summer, I ask you to join me. Become a paid subscriber. It is a simple act, but it carries weight. It means the words will continue, and that we will walk this road together. 5$ montly, 50$ yearly. Click below and step inside.

Gracious!

Bill

There are moments in history when the noise of the world—its violence, its pride, its machinery of conflict—grows so loud that even those long accustomed to it begin to hear, faintly at first, the echo of something truer beneath it. We find ourselves, perhaps, in such a moment now. For all the ruin and spectacle of war unfolding before us, there is, paradoxically, a sharpening of conscience—a reluctant but undeniable turning toward questions of meaning, dignity, and moral truth. If anything, enduring and positive emerges from the shadow of war, it may well be the rediscovery of teachings long spoken but too often ignored.

I have never regarded war with anything but deep unease. Even as a young person, there was an instinctive understanding—shared quietly among many of us—that the burden of war is not evenly carried. It is not the sons and daughters of privilege who fill the ranks of the fallen, nor those whose influence shields them from consequence. Instead, it is the young—often from working-class families, from communities where opportunity is already scarce—who are asked, or compelled, to stand at the edge of history and absorb its violence. They become, in the most tragic sense, instruments of decisions they did not make.

We sensed, even then, that the machinery of modern warfare would not hesitate. That when the moment came, every available means—technological, ideological, and human—would be deployed. And it was understood, too, that certain names would never appear on casualty lists, that some would remain safely distant while others bore the cost in flesh and memory. This awareness was not born of cynicism alone, but of observation—of patterns repeating themselves across generations.

Not long ago, I came across a letter I had written in those earlier years, addressed to the Prime Minister, expressing support for those who refused to fight in wars they believed to be unjust. These were individuals who sought refuge rather than participation, who chose conscience over compliance. At the time, it felt like a small act, perhaps even a futile one. Yet reading it now, I am struck by how consistent that moral thread has remained—how the refusal to accept war as inevitable or necessary continues to surface, even in the most hardened eras.

The teachings of the Catholic Church, particularly as they have developed across time, speak with a clarity that feels increasingly urgent. Leo XIII recognized the profound contradiction at the heart of war: that even when justified by human reasoning, it unleashes suffering that corrodes both victor and vanquished alike. His words remind us that peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but a condition of human flourishing—and that war, by its very nature, undermines that possibility.

In our own time, Pope Francis has gone further, articulating what many have come to feel but struggled to express: that war, especially in its modern form, represents not a solution but a failure. A failure of imagination, of diplomacy, of moral courage. The scale of destruction now possible—through advanced weaponry, through the targeting of civilian life—renders traditional justifications increasingly hollow. Violence does not resolve the conditions that give rise to it; it perpetuates them, deepening cycles of resentment and loss. His call is not naïve, as some might suggest, but radical in its insistence that human dignity must remain the central measure of all political action.

And there is, too, the voice of a Pope who speaks not only of the destruction war brings, but of its underlying causes: the pursuit of power, the neglect of the vulnerable, the willingness to invest in instruments of death while ignoring the needs of the living. This perspective reframes strength itself, suggesting that true power lies not in domination but in the capacity to build, to reconcile, and to care. It challenges the assumption that security can be achieved solely through force, proposing instead that lasting peace arises from justice and solidarity.

What emerges from these teachings is not a simplistic rejection of reality, but a deeper engagement with it. They do not deny the complexity of human conflict, nor the difficult decisions faced by nations. Rather, they insist that even in complexity, there must remain a commitment to principles that affirm life over destruction, dialogue over domination, and conscience over convenience.

If this moment in 2026 can be called an epicentre of anything, perhaps it is not enlightenment in the triumphant sense, but in the quieter, more demanding recognition of what must change. The suffering we witness is not abstract; it is immediate, human, and avoidable. And in acknowledging that, we are confronted with a choice—not only as nations, but as individuals—about what we are willing to accept, and what we are prepared to challenge.

War may continue, as it has throughout history. But so too does the persistent, often fragile movement toward peace—a movement sustained by those who question, who refuse, who remember, and who speak, even when their voices seem small against the vast machinery of conflict.

November 9, 2015

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada
Office of the Prime Minister
Langevin Block
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A2

Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing on behalf of those service members who have sought refuge in Canada over the past decade, many of whom served in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I fled to Canada in 1969 as a war resister. I had served in the U.S. Army and was ordered to Vietnam. I thought deeply about the ramifications and my own moral convictions, and I found that I could not be coerced into taking the lives of people with whom I had no connection and who posed no threat to our country. I had the distinct advantage of serving as a pianist in the 81st Army Band at Fort Campbell, Kentucky—the army band—which allowed me to socialize with many senior officers on the base. I soon discovered that many of them were troubled by the war, and a few were even seeking reassignment to avoid having to return.

I have lived with this decision all my life. Your father, Pierre Trudeau, got it right, and through his leadership, we were welcomed and allowed to immigrate and seek landed immigrant status. I have built a wonderful life here and have been an integral part of the music scene for the past 45 years.

About a decade ago, I had the privilege of meeting the young girl captured in the iconic photograph by Nick Ut—Kim Phuc—as she fled her village in terror, severely burned by napalm. I met her at a World Press Photo event. Ms. Phuc shared her experiences: years of skin grafts, persistent pain, and ongoing trauma. My eyes filled with tears. As I stood there, I thought of the millions like her—the countless hospital visits they would endure throughout their lives, the cost in human suffering and financial burden—and I knew, in that moment, that I had made the right decision.

When I first met the young people coming to Canada during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I quickly understood their situation—their genuine resistance to killing and to being used as instruments of death.

Decades after Vietnam, the truth has emerged: we were sold a false bill of goods. We were misled, and many involved in the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration were held accountable. We are now beginning to understand the reality behind the Iraq War, and much like Vietnam, it was also based on misleading premises. Hundreds of thousands are now dead, thousands have been tortured, and there has been a mass exodus from the region, unlike anything I have seen since my birth in 1946.

It is extremely difficult for young men and women to make clear decisions when confronted with duty and obligation. Those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan did so believing they were serving a just cause, but time has shown that many were ultimately serving the interests of oligarchs, politicians, arms manufacturers, and opportunists.

The Canadian government’s decision not to participate in the invasion of Iraq was one of the proudest moments in our country’s history. Some American service members made the same moral choice, refusing to fight in a war they believed was based on falsehoods. A small number of them sought refuge in Canada, following a path like my own when I left Fort Dix in 1969 and crossed the border.

These individuals have been in legal and personal limbo for nearly a decade—some, like former paratrooper Jeremy Hinzman, for even longer. I know several of them personally, and what an asset they are to our society. They are people of conviction and courage. They and their families have paid a heavy price: uprooting their lives, leaving behind family, country, and home. They did so because they could not, in good conscience, carry out what was being asked of them. Some continue to live with the trauma of what they witnessed and experienced in Iraq.

We now understand the extent to which the Iraq War destabilized the region. It destroyed a nation and left behind deep resentment that continues to fuel conflict and extremism. These individuals were right. Yet the former Conservative government targeted them and forced several back to the United States, where they faced severe punishment. Kimberly Rivera was deported and sentenced to 14 months in military prison. Robin Long received 15 months. Patrick Hart was sentenced to 24 months. Because they came to Canada and spoke out, they were punished more harshly.

Canadians were deeply troubled to see the Harper government single them out and deport them despite Parliament having twice voted to halt such actions. For years, we have been waiting for a change in direction.

I know that you and your colleagues have previously supported allowing U.S. war resisters to remain in Canada. I urge you to do everything in your power to ensure that no more Iraq War resisters are deported to imprisonment in the United States. They deserve our gratitude and the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

Respectfully,

Bill King
Toronto, Ontario

We emerged from World War II into a rapidly changing country. The wartime economy was shifting into something more stable, and for many people, life began to feel normal again. New suburbs were being built, televisions were appearing in homes, and Hollywood promoted an image of easy travel, family life, and affordable freedom. There was a sense that things were getting better, that there were more opportunities and a bit more money in people’s pockets. It felt like a fresh start.

But that sense of freedom was not the same for everyone. Many families were still dealing with the effects of the war in very real ways. Soldiers came home with injuries, both physical and emotional, and caring for them became part of everyday life. The image of the happy, forward-moving America did not always match what was happening inside the home. For some, the war never really ended—it just changed form.

Listen: Virginia, Don’t You Weep - Bill King - Gloryland, Tales from the Old South.

This is something I explore in my musical, Gloryland, Tales from the Old South. I focus on women who were expected to support their families and give up their own ambitions. Even though the country was moving forward, many of them were unable to pursue careers or independence as they had hoped in the musical selection, “Virginia, Don’t You Weep.” Their roles were defined by responsibility, and their choices were often limited by circumstances beyond their control.

I think about my mother in this way. She tried to continue her education by taking university courses online, which meant a lot to her. But my father’s long recovery made that difficult, and eventually she had to stop. It wasn’t a dramatic moment, but it was a turning point. What she wanted for herself had to be set aside.

As I grew older, I began to understand the sadness she carried. It wasn’t always visible, but it was there. After her teenage years, her life became focused on caring for her husband and children. She did what was expected of her, and she did it well, but it came at a cost. That quiet loss—of opportunity, of independence—is at the centre of the story I want to tell.

From Gloryland:

“Virginia came into the world with the quiet promise of open fields and unclaimed horizons, a girl whose mind reached farther than the fence lines that defined her days. She learned quickly—too quickly, perhaps—for the narrow expectations laid before her. Books hinted at a wider life, one shaped not by inheritance but by intention. Yet history, indifferent and immense, bent her course without asking.

The war did not take her to the battlefield, but it arrived all the same, carried home in the broken body of the man she married. His wounds were not only of flesh, but of spirit, and the world that sent him to fight had little interest in how he would live afterward. Virginia found herself tending not just to him, but to the silence left behind—an absence of answers, of support, of any clear path forward. She reached, more than once, for something beyond that life—education, purpose, a claim to selfhood that felt just within grasp—but each attempt dissolved against the hard edge of expectation.

Time settled heavily. Days blurred into duty, and duty into identity, until the question of who she might have been became too distant to hold. The sadness that followed was not loud, but enduring, a quiet erosion of certainty. And Virginia was not alone. Many women like her moved through those same long years, tethered to obligation, their earlier selves folded away like letters never sent. They endured not out of resignation alone, but from a belief—instilled, inherited—that endurance itself was a kind of virtue, even as it asked them to relinquish the very futures they had once imagined. Virginia, Don’t You Weep”

Nellie kept her beads and rosary close, always within reach, as if they were part of her breath. I can still see her stealing a moment of rest, stretched out on a makeshift couch between cooking and peeling, tending to her farm boy sons with a rhythm that never seemed to break. Mornings carried her toward Mass without question. Weekends sometimes brought a visit from the priest at St. Joe’s—one she had a hand in choosing, no less. Faith, for her, was not passive. It was lived, directed, and insisted upon.

Nellie Michelone was hard-core Catholic—Italian to the bone—and my outgoing, gregarious grandmother. She helped shape me in ways I still struggle to fully name. Fearless is the word that keeps returning. Fearless in the face of uneasy conversations, fearless in approaching anyone, anywhere, without hesitation. To her, strangers were simply people she hadn’t spoken to yet. That openness was contagious. I bought in.

Where we parted ways was in my detachment from religious authority. I came to recognize no institution as the governor of my thoughts, and later, not of my actions either. I was baptized Catholic, tethered early to the cross, but that bond frayed quickly. By grade two, I was already clashing with nuns, earning sharp raps across my knuckles with a wooden ruler. When that failed to intimidate me, it meant a trip to the office—stage two of discipline, whatever that entailed. I never found out. I told my father what was happening, and he acted. He pulled me out and placed me in public school. He saw something familiar in me—his own streak of Kentucky mischief, that Appalachian disregard for imposed authority that had marked his youth.

Lately, I find myself thinking of Nellie as I watch Pope Leo navigate the present moment, steering through turbulent waters while figures like Trump posture loudly on the world stage. The contrast is stark. Leo speaks in the language of restraint, diplomacy, and moral caution. Trump, by comparison, leans into spectacle and force, his rhetoric heavy with confrontation and certain death.

Pope Leo XIV has maintained a consistent stance—anti-war, pro-diplomacy—especially regarding tensions in the Gulf. He acknowledges Israel’s right to security yet draws a firm line against the suffering of civilians in Gaza. His call is for a ceasefire, for aid, for negotiation over escalation. It is a position rooted in principle, not performance. Against that, the bombast of political figures calling for dominance and surrender rings hollow, even dangerous.

Predictably, voices like FOX television’s mid-night dormat, Sean Hannity have lashed out, urging the Pope to stay in his lane, insisting that some wars are necessary, even righteous. Leo rejects that premise outright, arguing that war, in most cases, is a moral failure. Reports from within the Vatican suggest tense exchanges with U.S. officials—warnings dressed as briefings; power flexed as persuasion. One account even invoked the shadow of the Avignon Papacy, a reminder of when secular authority sought to bend the Church to its will. History has a way of resurfacing in moments like these.

Which brings me, strangely enough, to the Nobel Peace Prize. If there is a frontrunner in this moment, my money would rest with the Pope. Not because he is perfect, or because the institution he represents is beyond reproach, but because he is using his platform to advocate for restraint in a time that rewards aggression.

I am not a bible-thumping, come-to-Jesus kind of man. I am moved instead by the flow of life—by the movement of people, cultures, and ideas across the planet. A culture bandit, perhaps. Living artfully and completely seems to be the quiet theme that guides me. People live their religions, and for many, it works. I have no interest in condemning that or denying it. People need frameworks, something to hold onto.

In Toronto, where I live among hundreds of immigrant communities, that diversity plays out every day. People go home at night and worship as they choose. It coexists. It works. There is a certain amount of friction, yes, but far less than one might expect in a city of six million. We make space for each other. There is no single doctrine imposed, no one belief system tightening its grip over the whole. Not Sharia law, not Catholic dogma, not Protestant demands. Those who try to push such things tend to come from the margins now—echoes of older missionary impulses that no longer fit the present. That chapter, for most of us, is closed.

And still, I circle back to the Pope. The Catholic Church carries a long and sordid history—one that cannot be ignored. I have never been a natural ally of it. Yet Pope Leo feels different to me. There is something grounded, almost human scale, in the way he moves through the world. Not distant, not untouchable. More like someone you could sit with, argue with, maybe even share a beer with.

A bro Pope, in the neighbourhood. A decent man holding a complicated line in complicated times. Sometimes, that’s exactly what’s needed.

Bill King Photography - Emma Pennell

The theatre, in all its living breath and restless motion, remains one of humanity’s most enduring acts of collective imagination. One does not simply attend it; one enters into it—into the long hours that stretch behind the curtain, into the whispered cues, the scattered scores, the hurried footsteps of stagehands and artists alike, each bound to a singular purpose: to bring forward, if only for a fleeting evening, a world that did not exist before. I have known this world not as a distant observer, but as a participant—within the productions of Soulpepper Theatre Company, “88 Keys” and at the piano during rehearsals for other productions, where the earliest emotional contours of a performance begin to take shape. There is, in such work, a quiet understanding: that the individual must yield to the whole, that the success of the production rests not in any one voice, but in the harmony of many.

Director Jennifer Nichols and staff at the Redwood Theatre

And yet, this devotion is hardly new. Theatre, as we know, reaches back some twenty-five centuries to the open-air stages of Ancient Greece, where stories of gods and mortals were first given form through voice and gesture. From there, it evolved—finding new life in the courts and streets of Renaissance Italy, where opera emerged as a union of music and drama, elevating storytelling into something at once intimate and grand. Across time, the essential elements remain unchanged: the human voice, the telling of a story, the shaping of emotion into something shared. Whether through spoken word, song, or silence, theatre persists as a mirror to the human condition.

Two nights ago, we had the opportunity to reflect upon the significance of a work such as Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell on Amazon Prime. In this deeply affecting narrative, the lens shifts away from the towering figure of William Shakespeare and instead settles upon the quiet, devastating loss of his son, Hamnet. Through the eyes of Agnes—an imaginative rendering of Anne Hathaway (Jessie Buckley)—the novel traces the fragile threads of family, love, grief and feeling conveyed through carefully chosen words.

Through the emotionally draining two hours, the eyes are drawn to the sets, costumes, staging, and performances. In the final act, William Shakesphere’s Hamlet was staged not in some opera house of great elegance but in a round in front of peasants and the prosperous.

Within the walls of the Redwood Theatre, theatre continues to evolve without abandoning its roots. Here, the scale is intimate, yet the ambition remains vast. It is a space that exists just beyond the bounds of community theatre—where ideas are not merely presented, but tested, refined, and brought to a state of readiness for the wider world. This weekend’s production, Canuck Cantatas, presented by Against the Grain Theatre, stands as a testament to this spirit.

In its structure—a triptych of three concise operas, each unfolding over 15 minutes—the work embraces a modern sensibility, balancing accessibility and experimentation. Each piece introduces a distinct voice, a distinct facet of Canadian identity: from the eccentric musings of a late-night radio host enthralled by extraterrestrial life to the profound and necessary exploration of Indigenous girlhood and the ongoing tragedy of missing and murdered women, to the contentious terrain of censorship and parental activism. These are not distant tales, but reflections of the society in which we live, rendered through music that is at once contemporary and deeply expressive.

Behind these works stand composers and librettists who shape not only the sound, but the very language of the production—artists such as Sarah Slean and Royce Vavrek, guided in vision by director Jennifer Nichols and brought to life under the musical direction of Spencer Kryzanowski. Together, they craft an experience that bridges the classical and the contemporary, reminding us of that opera, too, is a living form—capable of change, of relevance, of immediacy.

And as one production yields to the next, the continuum of theatre reveals itself once more. Following closely upon Canuck Cantatas, April 10, 11, 12, then comes Don Giovanni, May 22, 2026, that enduring masterpiece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, first performed on stage in 1787. Here, the themes shift from the present to the eternal: desire, deception, and consequence. The figure of Don Giovanni—charismatic, unrepentant—moves through the opera with a reckless disregard for morality, until confronted by forces beyond the mortal realm. It is a work that blends the comic with the tragic, the earthly with the supernatural, culminating in a descent that is as inevitable as it is profound.

Springtime is shaping up to be an exciting experiment in theatre, musicals, concerts and beyond.

Kristine and I have spent the past two and a half months touring the world each day through the steady, unbroken lens of Noraly Schoenmaker—our go-to, non-stop world traveller behind Itchy Boots. Through her motorcycle journey, we’ve been carried across landscapes so remote that one can’t help but question why anyone would wander more than half a mile into some of them. The terrain often captivates—raw, vast, and humbling—yet at times the human presence feels subdued, almost muted. And then, without warning, there are places that erupt with life. Colour. Sound. Spirit. These are often the most impoverished regions.

I’ve come to understand something about myself. I’m a culture addict. To exist inside a bubble of only us feels confining, like a slow drift toward mental stillness. Growth requires friction, contrast, and colour. I speak of life in colours. I wear shirts and jackets that refuse to be ignored. Our home glows—Christmas lights strung not just for a season, but as a declaration. I used to rig the entire backyard, the garage, the weeds, the trees, even the front of the house with Fiesta lighting. The neighbours, for the most part, said it made their kids happy. That it lit up the night. That mattered.

There is something sacred about getting lost in your art. It is there—right there—that your mind and soul align with something deeper, something honest. The body doesn’t lie. It wants to dance, to sing, to paint, to play. It wants to tell your story through sound and movement; through whatever medium it can grasp. Children understand this instinctively. They have no off switch when it comes to discovery. No hesitation. No permission required.

When I think of the impoverished, I no longer think first of material lack. I think of those denied expression. The impoverished of soul. Those who are denied—or who deny others—the freedom to express what lives inside them. That, to me, is the deepest poverty.

Through Noraly’s travels, we’ve been brought into countless remote villages across Africa. Jungles thick with breath. Deserts that stretch into silence. Rainforests alive with pulse. Windswept coastlines, fishing villages, red clay roads that seem to hold the memory of every footstep. And through all of it, the one thing that resonates most deeply within me—like a vibration against some internal human soundboard—is the spirit of humanity itself.

Yes, the poverty is real. It is visible, often overwhelming. But the children… the children show up every day as children. Smiling. Struggling. Reaching. Trying to claim their small, rightful piece of life. They dream of opening shops, of teaching others, of raising families, of carrying forward the same fierce, quiet passion their ancestors held. There is no resignation in them. Only motion.

I’ve never wanted more than what I felt were the tools necessary to express myself. A piano. A camera. A means to write. I’ve never desired to control or possess others, nor to shape them into reflections of myself. My path has always been simple—ride the road ahead, stay in my lane, always curious, respectful, appreciative, grateful, and creative. That is enough.

The other night, Kristine found herself completely absorbed in the Masaka Kids of Uganda. Even later, sitting up in bed, she couldn’t look away. The dancing. The movement. The way those children poured themselves into expression without hesitation. It held her.

I was raised in a church that prohibited dancing. It was considered an affront to God. I never understood that. Still don’t. It has always felt to me like a form of self-inflicted restraint—born from the internal conflicts of a few, then spread outward like a quiet contagion. Dance is not rebellion. It is not defiance. It is universal. It is who we are.

I remember attending a Santería ceremony in Trinidad, Cuba, back in 1993. The drums were relentless. The air is thick, suffocating—easily forty-five degrees in the large shed. Figures moved in costume, embodying Gods and Goddesses, Orishas, their bodies locked into rhythm, forces of nature and human life. The room burned with energy. Not fear—but intensity. The kind that makes your body tremble as your blood seems to rise and surge within you. It was pure human expression. No boundaries. No apology. Just movement, spirit, and connection.

And that is where I see the truth.

The child in a village, with one or two shirts, a worn pair of sandals, and nothing but the earth beneath their feet, holds a wealth that many occupational tech bros will never touch. Those who hoard, who manipulate, who impose their will on others—they may possess everything, yet remain soulless, unable to sleep on hard ground. Meanwhile, that same child can experience, in a single moment of dance, a freedom so complete, so elevating, that it transcends everything material. That is wealth. That is the richness of the soul. Their feet use the ground beneath as a soundboard of liberation.

Which brings me to the Ghetto Kids.

In the busy streets of Kampala, where music spills out from small homes and laughter threads its way through narrow roads, a group of children discovered something powerful—rhythm. Not just sound, but a force. A current capable of altering the course of their lives.

It began with a man named Dauda Kavuma—Teacher Dauda to the kids. He saw what many overlooked. Not just children navigating difficult circumstances, but raw, untapped potential. Energy. Possibility. Some of these kids carried heavy burdens—loss, poverty, uncertainty—but when music played, those weights seemed to lift.

Their beginnings were humble. No formal studio. No polished floors. Just open spaces—a yard, a roadside, wherever there was room to move. The ground was rough. Their clothing is simple. But none of that mattered. They practiced relentlessly, shaping small movements into something extraordinary.

Then came a moment—an opening.

A music video for Eddy Kenzo’s “Sitya Loss” needed dancers. The kids stepped forward and gave everything. Every jump, every spin, every smile carried something deeper than choreography. They weren’t performing. They were telling their story.

And the world responded.

The video travelled far beyond Kampala, crossing borders, appearing on screens across continents. People stopped and watched.

“Who are these kids?”

“They’re incredible.”

Almost overnight, they became known as the Ghetto Kids.

But that recognition was only the beginning.

Soon, they found themselves on stages they had never imagined. The dusty streets gave way to bright lights. Small neighbourhood crowds turned into thousands. When they performed on America’s Got Talent, they didn’t dance for applause alone—they danced as representatives of where they came from. And they carried that all the way to the finals.

Yet through it all, they never lost sight of their roots.

Back home, the circle widened. More children joined. Older dancers guided the younger ones. What began as a movement became something far greater—a family, a place of learning, a living, breathing dream.

And the rhythm continues.

Sometimes, all it takes is music, movement, and one person willing to believe… to change everything.

We have all faced health challenges across the brief span of our existence—some more than others. I have always offered a quiet note of gratitude to whatever force saw fit to drop me into this body, one that has weathered much and continues to hum along like a well-kept 1946 Buick. I can still recall those childhood rides in my father’s ’49 Buick, the faint, comforting scent of cloth upholstery lingering in the back seat air. Perhaps that is where the preservation began, a kind of quiet durability that has carried me toward my eighth decade.

May 2, 2025, arrived not with ceremony, but like a sudden roadblock on a long and faithful journey—a marriage defined by miles of companionship, grace, dignity, kindness, and a shared, enduring laughter. I never treated marriage as a sideline to music or ambition; it came first, always.

It was seven in the morning. Kristine would usually drift downstairs an hour or two later, easing into the day. But on this morning, she appeared early, unsteady, collapsing onto the couch with a quiet admission that something wasn’t right. There was a shift in the air. We had lived through my own heart complications two decades prior and knew the language of symptoms. Still, when she said, “Call an ambulance,” the weight of reality settled in. Kristine, who had always insisted she “didn’t do hospitals,” had crossed a threshold.

When my own episode struck years ago, I had stubbornly taken a taxi, unwilling to rush through my beloved city as though it were a World Cup celebration. But this was different. Our neighbourhood—alive with Italian and Portuguese spirit—became the backdrop to urgency. Kristine chose the path of immediate care, entrusting herself to first responders.

Jesse met us, and everything accelerated. It was a heart attack. The day unfolded with cautious optimism—stents scheduled, procedures lined up. I returned home that night believing things were under control. Then, at four in the morning, the message arrived: “Mom almost died. It took three procedures to revive her.” In such moments, time fractures. The mind reaches backward.

She is eighteen again, and I am twenty-one. We are on Broadway, watching Wait Until Dark. We are standing on a roadside in Tennessee, her thumb out for a ride, me half-hidden behind weeds—a sure strategy for success. We are driving through Barbados at night, breathing in the sweetness of sugar cane. Biking the Martin Goodman Trail after an evening at the Beaches Jazz Festival, life fluid, effortless. Photographing Tony Bennett as his teeth light up the galaxy. And then comes the question that lingers in silence: what becomes of us now?

I think of my parents, who carried on into old age with a quiet resilience. My father, never truly well but always functional, fishing out his days in Florida. My mother beside him, steady and present, baiting hooks, sharing the rhythm. That talking bass chirping in plain view. Dad’s way of saying, let’s laugh in hillbilly Everglades language. There is something deeply grounding in those who endure the full measure of a lifetime together.

Kristine endured. Jesse and I stepped into our roles without hesitation, working the hospital corridors with humour and determination. We understood instinctively that laughter, encouragement, and presence were not luxuries—they were part of the medicine. She received extraordinary Toronto health care and, against the odds, returned home within days.

The months that followed were not easy. Kristine grew weaker, confined mostly to bed, overtaken by exhaustion. Jesse became something of a physician-in-training, absorbing every word from medical staff, translating, questioning, insisting on being present. When you are given a child like that, you understand the meaning of fortune.

I was reminded, too, of my younger sister, who battled MS and, at times, faced that fight without the support she deserved. I had been warned—those who endure long-term care often encounter moments when others falter, when the weight becomes too much. But we did not waver.

We kept things quiet. No broad announcements, no social media narratives, no selfies with IV hookups—just acknowledgment and time. A few friends reached through: Jaymz Bee, Steve, Ilona, Jessica. Jaymz arrived one day with gifts, with joy, with a kindness that cut through everything. Kristine could barely sit upright, yet she still speaks of that visit as though it were a cut diamond.

The next nine months became a rhythm. Laughter. Medication. Hope. Jesse and I coached the days forward, refusing to let despair take hold. Dr. Mezody stayed connected, reminding Kristine that progress would come slowly, in its own time.

And then, quietly, it began.

Medications were reduced. Iron returned to her system. A walk outside. Then another. A trip to the mall. Lunch at Café Diplomatico. A walk to Loblaws. Then farther downtown. And finally, movement on her own again.

On this Easter morning, we find ourselves with something to celebrate. As immigrants, our small family of three is bound tightly, shaped by shared experience and quiet understanding. We listen more closely. We embrace each day. We recognize each hour as a gift, though we cannot fully explain its source.

The spring that halted our world in 2025 stands in sharp contrast to this one in 2026. There is a sense of kindness in the unseen currents that move through life, though I do not place her recovery in the hands of any single force. Credit belongs where it is due—to the nurses, the doctors, Mezody, the caregivers, the healthcare system, our friends, and the world beyond our home that continued to support healing in both visible and unseen ways. A son who never wavered.

Faith exists here; it is quiet. It is the sense that something runs through all of us, occasionally faltering, occasionally needing repair—like a current that shorts and requires a careful hand to restore it.

To those walking the path of caring for a loved one—whether spouse, parent, or child—may your days be filled with as much love as you can gather. Hold onto laughter. It carries more power than we often realize.

Welcome back, my sweet darling. Happy Easter!

(Bill King Photography - 44 Gothic. Our home 1971-1976 - Kristine April 4, 2026)

Mid-week, we got good weather news, Friday daytime in the mid-20s, in Fahrenheit, let’s say 73. Spot on.

I began planning in my head a sprint from this oak desk to somewhere we’d could smell spring up close. The plan was to convince Kristine that High Park was the destination and well worth a first visit with cameras. The camera thing was a near-dealbreaker, yet she agreed once the iPhone spoke up and assured her it was all game.

High Park and the Kings have a long history. It was our home turf, 1971-1976, and a big part of our twenties in Toronto. Son Jesse was born there. Long-term friendships established, battle to save the neighbourhood in play, and one long-running Frisbee match that extended a good five years up around the bend in the road and those winter snowball ambushes. Not a soul on that street missed a second childhood.

Weed, woman and song was the name of my second memoir, and there was plenty of that going on for this generation of young aspiring Toronto professionals. Enjoy the photos from then, and the passage from my book. My account of our lives.

1971 …

We soon came to understand the developer’s quiet miscalculation in renting to boomers. They figured the long-haired crowd were trespassers, drifters, anything but working people. But what arrived instead was a breed entirely different. Flower power activists—political, educated, motivated—began to reshape the street. The harder elements faded. The last of the Montreal heroin crowd dispersed, unwelcome and outnumbered. In their place came writers, activists, artisans, musicians, pot dealers, students, and the working class—a loose but powerful force for change. Not at all what the developer had imagined.

(Courtesy Derek Stephenson)

In the annals of urban preservation battles, few stories carry the same charm and stubborn resolve as Gothic Avenue in Toronto’s High Park area. It was a classic David-and-Goliath struggle—residents versus developers—where the looming threat of high-rise towers cast long shadows over a neighbourhood defined by its modest homes and tight-knit character.

At the centre of it all stood two formidable women: Eunice Bennett and her daughter Winifred. Eunice, now gone, and Winifred, still rooted in the same childhood home, became the living spine of resistance. Their fight wasn’t just about property—it was about dignity, memory, and the right to remain.

(Winifred Bennett)

The 1970s brought pressure. Developers circled. Plans were drawn to flatten entire stretches of Gothic Avenue and replace them with concrete towers. But the Bennetts did not bend. Eunice had made a promise to her husband—to hold that home no matter the cost—and she carried it like scripture. Together, mother and daughter rallied neighbours, building a resistance that felt as much emotional as it was political.

Developers began buying up properties, filling them with tenants, some of whom were dismissed as “undesirable.” But something unexpected happened. Those same tenants—students, hippies, bohemians—wove themselves into the neighbourhood fabric. Winifred, a public health nurse with a wide and generous heart, welcomed them. A strange, beautiful symbiosis took hold.

Then came a defining moment. Former mayor John Sewell chose Winifred’s home as the site of his first public address. It wasn’t just symbolic—it was a declaration. Gothic Avenue mattered.

The fight ultimately reached beyond the street itself. It helped set a precedent: councillors would be required to recuse themselves in cases of conflict of interest. A small street, a large ripple. Gothic Avenue became proof that ordinary citizens could push back—and win.

Today, it still stands. Not untouched, but unbroken. A living testament to what happens when people refuse to disappear.

(1972 BK Photography - before development - weekly softball games)

It wasn’t all poetry and principle. The reality was rough. Police raids became routine. Dogcatchers harassed residents, impounding pets. Mail went missing. Pressure came from all sides, much of it tied to interests with friends at city hall. Kristine and I didn’t sit on the sidelines—we joined the fight. Five years of it. A long, grinding saga.

Our house became something of a sanctuary. Musicians drifted in and out, instruments in hand, always ready for a jam. Compared to the chaos of Rochdale College, Gothic Avenue felt grounded—civil, even familial. Weed and hash were the drugs of choice. Vegans? They were the real radicals, at least by neighbourhood standards.

(Mieke Scheper, Kristine and Hillie Scheper - BK Photography - 1973)

I tried my hand at growing pot. A few plants out back, some pushing eight feet tall. Impressive to look at, useless to smoke. Bold Billy, indeed. Ten, maybe twelve plants, all towering—and not a buzz among them.

Still, I wasn’t ready to admit defeat. I figured I’d bag the leaves, bury them for a month, and come back to a quarter pound of hashish. A brilliant idea—until it wasn’t. When I dug them up, the smell hit first. Dead animal. The contents? A worm-ridden mess. Even I had to laugh. Over the fence it went. Lesson learned.

(Larry Cimino and Joyce Desmarais Isen - both were university students living in our house.)

Mornings caught the conga line of young hippies romping porch to porch with joints tucked between the knuckles. You could start near the nursing home and porch jump until dusk. A banjo on the knee, a tune blowing through the trees. By evening, the streets lit up with fireflies, laughter, children charging in all directions, parents playing roundup and university students back in the basements studying for exams.

I’m in and out of town playing gigs. When practicing, it’s Scott Joplin at the piano, jamming with my Jamaican pals, early reggae, crafting puppet theatre with the ten-year-olds, and being the cool dad to all the kids parading through one door and out another. Biking through High Park with Kristine. Those long, sweat-filled nights racing near Grenadier Pond.

It was also one big dog party. The street was made for the social well-being of dogs. It was as if they carried on a separate existence only known amongst themselves. They’d travel in packs, back of houses, down alleyways and cross into the park. Spend the day nosing through the woodlands, chasing ducks and returning at nightfall and crashing in front of the fireplace.

(Hillie, Bill & Mieka)

Back on Gothic Avenue, the surveillance didn’t stop. Val Stevens and Gordie Neave, to musicians who lived upstairs, joined me on what we jokingly called narc watch. Unmarked cars lingered. Night after night. We’d monitor their whereabouts.

Sometimes they’d swing around Quebec Avenue. Other times, they’d burst right through the front door of an unsuspecting family.

One afternoon, we decided to flip the script. We spotted them at the end of the street, slipped into trench coats, hats, sunglasses—three amateurs playing spies. We followed them, surrounded their car, and stared them down. Stood behind, in front of and just eyeballed.

They moved. We followed down Quebec Avenue to Bloor. One rolled down a window and told us to piss off. We took positions on a slope and watched from the park. Eventually, they gave up and left.

Another raid followed. I’d hidden a chunk of Indian hash inside the piano—deep in the bones where no one would think to look. Five cars jumped the curb, stormed the yard. I grabbed Jesse, slipped out into the rain, and watched from a distance as they tore the place apart. When it was over, they left the house a wreck. And there, left behind like a calling card: “Bill King, we’ll get you next time.”

Gothic Avenue

The raids didn’t stop all at once. Nothing ever does. They thinned out first—like a storm losing its teeth—then one day you realized the sky had been quiet longer than it had any right to be.

Community activist Walter Weary, Ann Pohl, and I booked a meeting with the chief of police through a local councillor. The room smelled faintly of old coffee and something like varnish. Walter brought an itemized record of police invasions and harassment. The late-night knocks, the slow dread, the sense that someone unseen had taken an interest in us. You could see it in their eyes—that shift from polite attention to something closer to belief. Maybe even unease.

And then, just like that, it stopped. One meeting. One conversation where the air felt too still, as if something were listening.

2026

As Kristine and I were out walking, the street looked the same, but it didn’t feel the same. Funny how that works. We ran into a couple of new folks, you could tell. They had that look of people who haven’t yet learned what a place remembers.

We told them a little. Not everything. Just enough.

Sometimes I think we’ve become something like caretakers of the story. Historians, maybe. When we walk that stretch of pavement, there’s this strange pull—like memory has weight. It hangs in the air just above the trees.

And sometimes, just for a second, I can almost see it—a Frisbee arcing high, impossibly high, cutting through the leaves like a boomerang that forgot how to come back. Or skipping along the pavement, sharp and fast, like someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

We left behind the memories of Gothic Avenue and slipped across Bloor Street into High Park. Walked the edges and inhaled the sweet confection of winter’s work. Located a park bench facing a large ravine. The woods were battered, covered in decaying leaves and broken limbs. Looked each other over and smiled. The air, the fragrance of rebirth, a reminder that 55 years have passed, and we are at this moment, sturdy and resilient and willing to mark time until the flowers return and the green hidden below the remains of fall rises once again. Spring is near!

On Amazon!

I so loved the first few seasons of the Marvellous Mrs. Maisel. I was back at my nine-week gig in the Catskills and laughing my ass off. There are so many scenes and incidents that are familiar to me that I would talk back to the television. Rachel Brosnahan as Midge is so spot on and close to the same age I was in 1967. Twenty-one.

The Boys from Brooklyn, this band I hooked up with, landed a nine-week posting at the Pines Hotel and Resort in the Catskills—a no-frills Jewish entertainment centre tucked into South Fallsburg, New York, deep in the Borscht Belt.

Down the road sat the heavyweights: Grossinger’s and the Concord, where marquee names like Buddy Hackett, Tony Bennett, Milton Berle, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and, during my stay, Jerry Lewis, lit up the rooms. At the Pines, the tone was different. “When I was a kid, I was breastfed by my father,” Rodney Dangerfield once said. That line pretty much summed up the main ballroom. It was a comic’s paradise—raw, relentless, and unapologetically loud.

The Pines showcased characters with names that sounded like punchlines themselves: Shecky Greene, Myron Stanley Handelman, Charlie Callas flapping like a deranged seagull, Buddy Hackett, Marty Brill.

Built in 1933 as a ski resort in what they called the Jewish Alps, it limped along until 1998, when casinos in New Jersey and beyond rewrote the entertainment map. Presiding over the place by sheer force of personality was Hans, an Austrian ski instructor with a reputation that preceded him into a room. I could be mid-game at the pool table, lining up a clean shot, and Hans would glide over, pluck the cue ball off the felt, and order me away like I was trespassing in his living room.

The only television was a black-and-white floor model parked in the lobby. The band might be halfway through an old Jimmy Stewart picture—Destry Rides Again—and Hans would drift by, change the channel without a word, declare it final, and disappear. One day, I told him, calmly enough, that I was seriously considering crushing his skull. He didn’t blink. “I am friends with the owners,” he said, “and here forever. You fuck with me, and you will be hauled away in a vegetable cart.” That settled it. Message received.

Maestro Sid Wayne led the house orchestra, riding the lingering glow of his co-written hit for the Tempos, 1959, See You in September. Sid had taken a particular dislike to me. “You look like a dog,” he’d say. “A hideous dog—a very tall, ugly dog. Why don’t you get a haircut?” I let it slide until his act began looping, the same tired insults circling like a scratched record. Then one day, after hearing me play, he shifted gears. “You are excellent,” he said. “You can have the piano gig in my orchestra—if you get a haircut and show me your draft card.”

That was the moment. I looked him dead in the eye. “Sid,” I said, “you only hire the dead, and dead don’t even like you.”

We barely spoke after that, though he kept up the draft card routine for anyone within earshot. “That hippie dog burned his draft card—I should call Mr. Hoover,” he’d mutter, fishing for laughs that rarely came.

The band itself had undergone a facelift—formerly The Compliments, now reborn as The New Image. We played wherever we were told: poolside, lobby, patio. Attention was minimal. Payment wasn’t much better. Around there, “turn it down” counted as applause.

Bassist Stu “Woods” Wasserman and I were assigned a room that could generously be described as a servant’s cubicle. We slept on cots beside a radiator that hissed and spat, as if it had a grudge. Every trip down the hallway to the bathroom turned into a sideshow. A three-foot-tall Puerto Rican busboy would leap out from nowhere—busboy hell, apparently—and whip out what can only be described as a grotesque, foot-long ventriloquist prop, making it “talk.” “Hey, speak to my dick, sucker!” he’d shout. Nights, he roamed the halls in his underwear, juggling himself, swatting flies with it like it was part of the job description. No one knew where he came from. No one asked. I hoped he stayed away from the kitchen supplies.

Food was its own punishment. Breakfast meant runny eggs, no bacon, no hope. Dinner—late, always late—might be steak with vegetables, or more often, ground-up gefilte fish that tasted like regret, washed down with Manischewitz wine. The menu never changed. I was told the only way to get a decent cut of meat was to tip the head waiter five bucks a week in advance—money most sidemen didn’t have.

A fellow musician let me in on the system: “Make nice and tip twice.”

I tried it. First night, a steak arrived. Second night, the waiter slid a rancid fish onto my plate and walked off. I stopped him and asked what had changed.

“Sid says you’re a draft-dodging sheep dog.”

That ended my tipping career.

By day, drummer Jon Prano played knock rummy with the comics and summed it up best: “These are some of the most depressed and unfunny men I’ve ever met. No one laughs.” Then Jackie, our guitarist, showed up one afternoon with a date—a development so unlikely it bordered on science fiction. His language alone was enough to scare off most of civilization. He’d say something like “Tender is the night,” and it would land closer to “How ’bout I rear-end you tonight?”

We were sitting there when a waiter dropped off six miniature View-Masters—each holding a photo of the band, taken earlier that day. You had to hold them up to the light to see the images. Mine had been shot after I’d taken scissors to my own hair, experimenting in a moment of questionable judgment. The result was pageboy bangs—like a black-market baby from the 1930s.

Jackie flipped through the View-Masters, studying each face. Then he stopped. “I’m looking at the ugliest woman on the planet,” he said, handing it to his date. They both laughed and passed it along.

I couldn’t wait to see who it was. I held it up to the light.

It was me.

I smiled through it—what else could I do? Jackie doubled down. “Let’s take a vote,” he said. “Is this not the ugliest woman on the planet? Even I wouldn’t fuck her—wouldn’t you agree?”

I kept it together, laughed along, let it ride. Eventually, his date slipped out. I asked him to drop it.

“I’m concerned for you, Billy,” he said. “This new look will put you back in the nursery.”

I had to laugh. He was too funny not to.

We scored a set at Grossinger’s, an emergency replacement band. Funny stuff.

Whoever hired us thought they were getting the five fancy pant-suit guys dancing like the Nicolas Brothers and throwing one-liners like Henny Youngman. Not a chance. We walked in, and the maître d’ looked at us and said, “Table for none.”

We played Wilson, Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Otis Redding. “Do you take requests?” I was asked. I’m thinking Joe Tex. Word. “Either ‘ Beyond the Sea’ or ‘Just Don’t Play Another Shit Song.” I’m starting to catch on to Jewish humour.

On stage, Jackie was something else—completely locked into the music. He’d slash at the strings, bend notes until they cried. Dina had recently bought a Telecaster and wore it like a weapon, swinging it with military precision. He worshipped Wilson Pickett, could hit those blue notes like they were second nature. His red hair bounced wildly, framing a face that looked half godfather, half madman. His stage movement was peculiar—feet planted, body swaying side to side like he’d been nailed to the floor.

One afternoon, I found a grand piano in the high-roller lobby and sat down to play, just for myself. A clerk quickly reminded me I belonged elsewhere. As I was leaving, comic Marty Brill cornered me. Marty went on to do guest appearances on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Several spots on Ed Sullivan.

“You play beautifully,” he said. “We should write a song together.”

We set a time—1:30 the next day. He showed up, dressed in Miami canary yellow, and I played a chord progression, tapped out a simple melody. He loved it. Grabbed a pencil, started writing lyrics. Twenty minutes later, we had a song—something that sounded like it had fallen out of a pile of rejected Tin Pan Alley submissions, not something for Grace Slick. It didn’t matter. I’d just written with a real comic, and he treated me like an equal. That stayed with me.

It was the girls, girls, girls. The lobby of the Pines is the central hub to catch the flow of young Goddesses pissed off spending another weekend at the most boring hotel in the region. Mom and dad fully occupied in another endless Bridge tournament. Hippy dog lay low.

I must say, parents rarely batted an eye when they caught me running around with a daughter. “Keep her occupied, she whines too much,’ one said. Another, a New Jersey dad caught us doing the couch jumping, tapped me on the shoulder with a warning, “You two have fun, but I own her, remember that. I created that girl,” Then walked away. All I wanted was a Barbra Streisand. A funny girl.

The final weekend, things went sideways. Dina surfaced poolside, strung out and volatile. Jackie locked eyes with me. “King, I’m tired of you and those Jesus eyes. Stop looking at me.”

Jesus eyes? I wasn’t preaching salvation—I was just trying to get through the set.

Vic counted it off. Dina stumbled in, mangling a guitar line. Then suddenly—he raised the Telecaster, spun, and swung. A full-on chop at my head. For a split second, I flashed back to drunken nights with The Don Krekel Orchestra—except this time, heroin was driving.

He rushed the organ, muttering something about our Lord and Saviour. I grabbed him, dragged him toward the pool, and shoved him in. Security appeared, hauled him out, then dragged Jackie—kicking, screaming—to the front office and tossed him into a snowbank.

For a moment, calm returned.

Then a side door burst open. Jackie stormed back in, climbed a giant potted plant, screaming obscenities, ready for round two. Security wasted no time. They dragged him out again—this time for good.

And just like that, he was gone.

For this Indiana boy, the Pines was a baptism in culture. Family. Laughter, quick humor and hilarious new friends. I would listen to recalled stories of his youth growing up in Brooklyn. The love of black music. Jazz, soul, R&B. The Italians loved the clothes, my Jewish pals, the chord changes to “Giant Steps.” Long live Mrs. Maisel!

Amazon!

If you enjoyed the excerpt, you can find my memoir of the 60s on Amazon. Coming Through the 60s,’ A Rock & Road Story, William M. King. Travel with me from Indiana to Hollywood and Greenwich Village. The innocence of a piano player.

Coming Through the ‘60s – Reader’s Review (Don Gibbons) *****

Echoes of Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey. A frantic coast-to-coast voyage. The story of a young man with a burning desire to play music, no matter what the cost. The book captures the lives of many musicians who lived the constant slog out on the road, travelling from town to town, gig to gig. Endless hours travelling with little sleep, little food and sleeping in fleabag hotels or doorways. Streetlife and street people play a big part, but then, the 60’s happened in the streets.

The book captures the spirit of the ‘60s before the cultural changes really happened. That period when having long hair was considered despicable and evil. The reaction of rednecks to hippies is right on. Anyone who lived in those days will instantly relate to the story. Anecdote after anecdote about being considered the lowest of low-life hippy scum.........but of course we really didn’t care, did we? It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and nothing could stop us. That feeling of being a part of something huge resonates through the book.

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Step back in time—high school in the 1960s—and try to remember what “computers” meant back then. The word itself felt distant, almost mythical, like something locked away in a government lab or a science fiction magazine. For most of us, life was practical, hands-on, grounded in the real world of loading trucks, tightening lug nuts, stamping invoices, and punching time clocks. Work was something you could grip with your hands. The future, as far as we could see, was built from steel, sweat, and repetition. The idea that machines would one day think, calculate, and communicate faster than any human brain was not just unlikely—it was unimaginable. Only a handful of fellows, the ones we jokingly called the “coke-bottle glasses crowd,” seemed to sense something coming. The rest of us? We were too busy living in the present to recognize the edge of a revolution.

My uncle Doug worked for IBM, and in hindsight, he stood right at the epicentre of that coming storm. At the time, though, his work might as well have been written in another language. We didn’t talk about it—not because he wasn’t willing, but because we wouldn’t have understood a word of it. Computers then were room-sized giants, humming machines fed by punch cards and operated by specialists in white shirts and narrow ties. They were tools for governments, banks, and large corporations—not for everyday people. The notion of sitting at a desk, tapping away on a keyboard as a primary job function, felt out of place. That was work for journalists, secretaries, maybe accountants—not for the average person who measured productivity in physical output. The world was still firmly attached to labour you could see and measure.

Then, slowly—almost quietly at first, things began to shift. Through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, computers began shrinking in size and in exclusivity. Universities began experimenting with networked systems. The seeds of what would eventually become the internet were planted in projects like ARPANET, though none of us on the outside had the faintest idea. By 1977, Apple introduced one of the first successful home computers. It was a bold move, bringing computing power out of institutions and into living rooms. Still, for many of us, the leap from curiosity to ownership took time.

We had a son, Jesse, coming up right as computers began entering classrooms. Schools started introducing basic computer literacy—simple programming, word processing, and early graphics. Kids weren’t intimidated by these machines; they were curious, adaptable, and fearless. I quickly learned that the best move was to step aside and let them figure it out. They were learning a new language in real time, and before long, they were teaching us. Knowledge, for the first time in a long while, flowed upward instead of down.

This went on for years. Technology evolved, and so did the problems—faster, more frequent, more complex. I remember shooting hoops at the YMCA, talking with my pal Art, who had started working with a friend deep in the computer world—setting up large-scale systems, linking offices together, building the early frameworks of what we now call networks. These weren’t just machines anymore; they were systems, ecosystems even, connecting people and information across distances that once required days or weeks to bridge.

I tried to keep up. Bought a Texas Instruments device—something tied into the early handheld computing wave, connected in spirit if not directly to what Palm would later refine. Frustrating doesn’t begin to describe it. Buttons, menus, and functions that seemed designed to confuse rather than assist. I handed it over to my son Jesse, and within a night, he had it figured out. That was the difference. Where we saw obstacles, they saw puzzles. Where we hesitated, they experimented.

I even picked up one of those handheld football games—thought I might finally have something I could master. Jesse proved me wrong there, too, running up touchdowns with ease while I fumbled at the one-yard line. It became clear that this new digital world belonged to those who grew up inside it.

I didn’t bring a computer into my own home until 1990, thanks in part to the Ontario NDP government under Bob Rae and a publishing grant that opened the door.

That small Apple desktop changed everything.

Suddenly, tasks that once required entire departments—or at least a professional printer—could be done at home. My partner Greg Sutherland and I create a magazine from scratch, combine text and images, and process it all through Microsoft Word and PageMaker. It felt like holding a printing press in the corner of the room. But it wasn’t smooth sailing. Every small problem turned into a roadblock, and every roadblock meant picking up the phone and calling someone who actually knew what they were doing. Computers weren’t intuitive yet. They demanded patience, and often, outside help.

That’s when the next generation stepped in.

Then came the darker side of progress—the infamous blue screen of death. Hours lost. Files gone. Long waits in repair shops, hoping someone could bring your machine back to life. There was always that one local expert—the computer genius—who’d show up with a box of parts, a stack of hard drives, and the latest software. He was part technician, part magician. And then, one day, he wasn’t around anymore. Not because the need disappeared, but because the knowledge had spread. What once required an expert could now be solved by anyone willing to look it up.

That’s another revolution we didn’t see coming—the rise of shared knowledge. The internet didn’t just connect machines; it connected minds. Platforms like YouTube turned everyday people into teachers. Problems that once stalled you for days could be solved in minutes by watching someone else walk through it. Trial and error became guided learning. Expertise became accessible.

And here we are now.

We’ve gone from grandparents gathering around a rotary phone to seniors confidently navigating smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Not everyone is a programmer or a systems engineer, but most people have developed a kind of practical computer literacy—basic troubleshooting, content creation, and digital communication. We’ve adapted. We’ve learned. We’ve evolved.

As for me, I can now create music tracks, design magazines, write and publish articles, edit images, produce videos—all from a single machine. These are things that, 55 years ago, would have required entire teams, specialized equipment, and significant funding. Today, they’re within reach of anyone willing to learn. We may not be as skilled at stacking bricks or working a lathe as previous generations, but we’ve gained abilities that would have seemed like science fiction not long ago.

That’s what I mean when I say we’re all geniuses.

Not in the traditional sense—no lab coats or chalkboards filled with equations—but in our adaptability. In our ability to absorb, adjust, and apply new knowledge in ways that previous generations never had the opportunity to. Computer science didn’t just create machines; it created a new kind of thinking. Algorithms, logic, problem-solving—these concepts have seeped into everyday life, shaping how we approach challenges, how we learn, and how we create.

We didn’t all see it coming. Most of us couldn’t have imagined it. But we grew into it.

That’s us I’m talking about.

I love talking with Tom Wilson. There’s something unmistakable about the deep baritone of his voice and the precision of his words—measured, deliberate, and always carrying weight. A conversation with Wilson feels less like an exchange and more like a composition, built carefully around prose and presence. Recently, while digging back through old hard drives, I rediscovered a remarkable conversation recorded around the release of his documentary, Beautiful Scars. Listening again, it struck me how naturally Wilson inhabits the spoken word—how effortlessly he lets it simmer, then rise, then spill over into something deeply affecting.

It reminded me of the kind of oratorical power found in figures like Andrew Craig, particularly in his recital interpretations of War & Peace—where language is not rushed but allowed to breathe, to gather force. Wilson operates in that same space. Whether he’s seated centre stage in a lone chair or simply reciting from a companion’s well-worn, best-selling book, he commands attention through stillness and voice alone. It’s a rare ability—to make quiet feel expansive, and words feel lived-in.

Hamilton-born, Wilson has long been a defining presence in Canadian music and culture. From his work with Junkhouse to his role in Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, he has built a career grounded in authenticity and storytelling. Beyond music, he has emerged as a celebrated visual artist and writer, his influence stretching across Hamilton and throughout Canada. His memoir, Beautiful Scars, became a national bestseller, offering a deeply personal exploration of identity, family, and his late discovery of his Indigenous heritage.

That story expanded further with the 2022 documentary adaptation, bringing his journey to the screen with equal honesty and emotional depth. Most recently, it found new life again on stage in a musical production at Theatre Aquarius in 2024—another testament to the enduring resonance of his story.

From Wilson’s works of art.

If you’re searching for a Tom Wilson documentary tied to Hamilton, Beautiful Scars (2022) stands as a powerful and essential work—an unflinching reflection on identity, music, and belonging. It’s within that context that this conversation unfolds, setting the stage for an interview that is as much about listening as it is about speaking, as much about presence as it is about story.

Bill King: Since writing Beautiful Scars, has your life changed? Are you at a crossroads now?

Tom Wilson:
No—I’m not at a crossroads. I’m going straight ahead. In fact, I’m not even really looking at the road ahead. I’m paying attention to where I am right now.

That might be the most important lesson I have ever learned since joining the Buddhist community in Halifax. Anxiety lives in the future. Depression lives in the past. The only thing we truly have—our only way to sustain ourselves—is the present moment. So, I try to grind myself into that moment, to deal with what is right now.

And as a result, everything else takes care of itself. My creative work, my health, my relationships with my family—they all benefit from that one rule. It’s the most important principle I try to live by.

Bill: Has there been a reckoning in your life?

Tom:
Oh—holy fuck. Please put that in quotation marks. There’s been a lot of reckoning.

It started about ten years ago when I discovered that I wasn’t who I thought I was. I grew up believing one story about myself—that I was this big, Irish guy—and then I found out I was adopted. The woman I thought was my cousin was actually my mother. And I learned that I’m Mohawk from Kahnawà:ke .

That was one reckoning.

Another was my sobriety. On December 12, I’ll quietly mark 27 years clean and sober. Before that, my life was full of drugs, alcohol, and chaos—sleeping with strangers, searching for something I couldn’t name. I carried a deep lack of identity, a sense that I didn’t belong in my own life.

Those things came to a head at different times. In 1999, I gave up substances, and that changed everything. Later, discovering my identity—understanding the blood that runs through me—changed my life again, and will continue to shape me until the day I die.

Bill: How do you see yourself now?

Tom: I’m still exploring who I am.

My work now is about bringing Mohawk culture into the light. I want to stand in front of audiences and start conversations—real conversations—in this country. We have to stop pointing fingers and yelling at each other. We have to start listening.

If I have a role to play, that’s it.

We live in a country that was responsible for one of the most inhumane attempts to erase a civilization, not just in North America, but in human history. We can either pretend that didn’t happen or talk about it.

Reconciliation isn’t the job of governments, corporations, or churches. It belongs to all of us—as individuals. It’s about working together to create something better for the next seven generations.

Bill: You’re a writer, a musician, and a visual artist. Do those roles ever compete with one another?

Tom: Never. They’re all part of the same thing.

I recently wrote a play that’s opening in April, which is incredibly exciting. I’m working with a musical director from Come From Away. At the same time, I’m painting in my studio, writing my second book for Random House, and collaborating on music with people like Daniel Lanois, Terra Lightfoot, Colin James, and The Trews.

I feel completely alive—creatively alive.

And that’s all I ever wanted. When I was four years old, I knew I wanted to be an artist, a communicator. I knew I wasn’t built for the confines of what the world expected. Sixty years later, I’m finally living that life.

The reward isn’t money or fame. The reward is waking up the next day and getting to create again—to make something that didn’t exist yesterday. That’s the job of an artist: to enrich the world and inspire people to be better.

Bill: Do you ever take time away from work?

Tom: Of course. I love travelling with my wife. I took her to Jamaica for her 50th birthday, and that was special. I love spending time with my grandsons.

Lately, I’ve been trying to do more work that doesn’t involve constant travel—less time in taxis, airports, and hotels. That kind of distraction can pull you away from your creative center.

But I could still head to Newfoundland or anywhere with a beach at the drop of a hat. I’m pretty simple that way.

Bill: Do you have a specific place where you like to write?

Tom: Not really.

We tend to romanticize writing—as if we’re carving words into stone—but that’s not what it is. Nothing we create is fixed. It’s always changing.

A piece of writing might be interpreted one way by a critic, another way by a reader, or differently again when I perform it out loud. Even when I give a lecture, the words shift. The way I speak today won’t be the same as yesterday.

So the place doesn’t matter much. I’ve written at home, in studios, in Nashville, in Toronto, in airports. What matters is understanding that art is meant to evolve—to morph, to refresh itself.

If artists could fully accept that, we’d probably be healthier. At least, we’d be healthier artists.

Bill: Tom, thank you for your time—and good luck with everything ahead.

Tom: Thank you.

Oh—and don’t forget—they gave me the Order of Canada this year. I can’t seem to find the pin right now, but that was pretty cool.

Bill King Photography

It arrives not as a mere performance, but as a meditation—urgent, unrelenting—on the persistence of human conflict. It reminds us, with unsettling clarity, that we remain caught in a cycle of bloodshed so normalized it is often reframed as spectacle. War, in certain circles, is reduced to something resembling entertainment—an arena of brute force where damage is measured in spectacle, where violence is stylized, even trivialized. The language itself betrays us: we still speak of “Secretaries of War,” as though the machinery of destruction were simply another administrative function. The game, as it were, is always on.

Yet today’s warfare is no longer bound by physical proximity or even emotional immediacy. It is distant, digitized, and disturbingly casual. One can sit comfortably, consume a meal, engage a screen, and initiate devastation continents away. The results return with clinical precision—numbers, coordinates, casualties. Civilian deaths in the thousands. The abstraction is part of the horror. It is precisely this disconnection that makes Andrew Craig’s narrative not only relevant but necessary. His work functions as both a history lesson and a moral inquiry—a dissection of war in all its dimensions: its origins, consequences, architects, and victims. Empires fall, nations rise again from ash, and through it all, the human cost remains incalculable.

Craig’s performance evokes echoes of Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia, that singular work of filmed monologue directed by Jonathan Demme. Like Gray, Craig employs minimalism to powerful effect—a solitary figure, a piano, an acoustic guitar, sweeping visuals, and the force of language. Gray’s winding reflections on his experiences in Southeast Asia and his involvement with The Killing Fields transformed storytelling into an intimate and immersive experience. Similarly, Craig’s soliloquy draws the audience inward, into a shared space of reflection and confrontation. There is no traditional plot to anchor the experience; instead, there is a current—steady, hypnotic—that carries the listener through memory, history, and introspection.

War and Peace is, at its core, a hybrid form—part theatre, part spoken word, part affirmation of the musical composition. It is both personal and collective, examining the tension between inner turmoil and external conflict. “War” and “peace” are not merely geopolitical states here; they are emotional conditions, lived realities that exist within individuals as much as between nations. Craig’s work often roots itself in identity and lived experience, drawing from cultural and personal narratives that lend authenticity and depth. There is a movement throughout the piece—from struggle toward understanding, from fragmentation toward a kind of healing. And always, there is the thread of human connection, the deliberate attempt to bridge the distance between performer and audience.

The staging itself is modest, almost austere. This is typically a solo performance, or one supported by minimal instrumentation—digital and acoustic, understated, never intrusive. The intimacy of the setting is essential. It invites not passive observation but active listening, a closeness that amplifies every word, every pause. The songs, interwoven with monologues, offer moments of tonal variation, though one might question their necessity. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that Craig’s storytelling alone possesses a rhythm so compelling, so trance-like, that it requires no embellishment. The narrative flows with a cadence that holds the audience in quiet suspension, a mark of true command over the form.

Culchaworks, as a presenting body, is well aligned with such a piece. Known for championing diverse voices and interdisciplinary performance, the organization provides a fitting platform for work that resists easy categorization. Theatre, music, and spoken word converge here not as separate elements, but as facets of a singular artistic vision.

Ultimately, what lingers is Craig’s voice—measured, resonant, assured. He possesses a rare gift for public speaking, for drawing listeners into the architecture of his thoughts without force or flourish. He does not demand attention; he earns it. And in doing so, he transforms a familiar subject—war—into something newly felt, newly understood. The production’s quiet power lies not in spectacle, but in its ability to hold us still, to make us listen, and, perhaps, to make us reckon.

When my co-partner in venue productions and the imagination, Maria Karam, behind the Redwood Theatre, first suggested Jesse and me extend an invitation to urban visionary Gil Peñalosa for an hour-long conversation, there was no hesitation—only eagerness. Opportunities like this do not arrive often, and when they do, you lean in.

Jesse and I have long shared a peculiar devotion: hours spent cycling both the perimeter and the inner veins of Toronto. It is, in every sense, a kind of madness—yet a joyful one. We trace the city’s edges and arteries not merely for exercise, but for understanding. To move through a city at that pace is to witness its truths: the beauty, the fractures, the quiet ambitions, and the unresolved tensions.

City living, of course, is not for everyone. I have friends who recoil at the very idea—too many people, too close together, too overwhelming. But I find ease in the crowd. There is something electric about it. The constant movement, the intersecting lives, the hum of curiosity—it is a kind of shared energy that pulls me in rather than pushes me away.

Cities fascinate me for this reason. They are living experiments, endlessly adjusting, never quite finished. Toronto gets much right. And yet, it hesitates. It stops just short of fully committing to being a true “people city.” Too often, that hesitation is rooted in the arithmetic of politics—counting votes, balancing constituencies, navigating competing agendas where compromise feels like loss rather than progress.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the long-running battles that shape the city’s future. The ongoing disputes over bike lanes. The deeply troubling transformation of Ontario Place at the hands of provincial decision-making. These are not merely policy disagreements—they reflect a deeper conflict between private interests and public responsibility. One begins to ask: Who is being heard? And just as importantly, who is not? Where are the voices that carry both resistance and vision?

It is telling, perhaps, that one such voice arrives not from within, but from afar—from Bogotá, Colombia.

Gil Peñalosa brings with him a clarity of purpose that feels both refreshing and necessary. As the founder and chair of 8 80 Cities, and a global advocate for inclusive urban design, his work spans continents and cultures. Yet his message remains disarmingly simple: cities must be built for people—all people.

His legacy speaks volumes. In Bogotá, during the late 1990s, he led the development of more than 200 parks, including the expansive Simón Bolívar Park, a green heart in a dense urban landscape. His team also helped launch the now-famous Ciclovía—an initiative that transforms over 120 kilometres of city streets into car-free spaces every Sunday, inviting more than a million people to walk, run, cycle, and simply inhabit their city differently. What began as a local experiment has since become a global model.

There is something both humbling and hopeful in that.

This conversation with Peñalosa feels long overdue. Jesse and I, unabashed cheerleaders for big-city life, recognize in him a kindred spirit—but also a necessary challenger. He brings not just enthusiasm, but experience. Not just ideas, but evidence.

And so, I hope listeners take the time to sit with this exchange. To consider what a city can be when it chooses courage over caution, people over convenience, and vision over inertia.

I did the big watch last night, in between driving Kristine nuts as I switched over to the World Baseball Classic—Team USA vs. the Dominican Republic. The awards show had particular importance in our lives because, for most, daily life is a bit of a shitshow. Economics, for one thing: Jared Kushner’s Middle East war, Trump golfing and grifting off fallen soldiers. Film has a way of pulling us away for a few hours—into other people’s problems, other lands, other cultures, and, if we’re lucky, some kind of celebration.

Most folks don’t watch all the films in contention, or they simply don’t know where to find them. Theatres have become the bastion of big-budget, cartoon-like movies, while smaller films now live mostly on streaming platforms. It was pointed out last night that Amazon had no films nominated. Other than asking, “What films?”, the Melancthon decision may well cost Amazon in the long run. You can make a great film, lay it out there, garner strong reviews—but getting Oscar voters to side with you after the Melania dud may be a stretch.

Son Jesse and I were pulling for War Machine. Not nominated in any category. Not even considered for worst overall film, yet we had hopes. In all sincerity, Jess and I caught One Battle After Another in the cinema and called it that very afternoon. It had the air of certainty—big wins were coming. Sean Penn put us on the floor. Over-the-top great character and acting. This was crazy fun for the guys. The walkaway mayhem features gave Penn a one-off cinema look. There’s no reference in time. Killed it.

Conan O’Brien is the perfect host for the times. Solid last season. O’Brien tested his narrative in clubs, fine-tuned it, and delivered with the same weird schtick as always.

Six Oscars for One Battle After Another, a fine haul: Best Picture, Best Director, and Adapted Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson. The right film for the times. Every reason I crossed into Canada. I could never get with the bomb-and-detonator leftist crowd. I prefer protest songs.

Sinners’ stage gift was beyond spectacular. The cross-section of musicians and dancers—with Brittany Howard flashing the big guitar—was a stellar moment.

The K-pop stuff I don’t get. The animation and creators are from our Toronto Korean community at Sheridan College. I can’t bring myself to cry over AI-generated images or machine-generated music. It serves a purpose, perhaps, but not by any stretch a true film score.

Sinners took away four awards, and rightly so. Michael B. Jordan—top actor, hands down. Own it.

Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw made history as the first woman of colour to win Best Cinematography.

The memorial for Rob Reiner and his wife, the photographer, film producer, and political activist Michele Singer Reiner, was heart-warming. Those films are forever etched in memory. The long list of casts, producers, set designers, makeup artists, camera crew—everyone behind the frame—was a nice touch. Nothing exists without those in supporting roles.

Streisand on Redford. You can’t compact a person’s life into that short a time, but having Streisand sing and reflect on Redford was spot on—other than the invasive piano that was as loud and animated as the spoken-word microphone. Just kill the piano. She didn’t need a floating river of grace notes.

Eventually, the Oscars will move to YouTube, and the timing may be favourable. CBS took a hit last night, understanding that the Ellisons—who now control a vast swath of media, and who are not exactly protectors or promoters of free speech, other than the droppings that fall from Trump’s mouth—are about to shake up the media world. Music, cinema, books, theatre—they depend on a deep resource of storytellers and truth-seekers. Without them, we’ll all start to sound like K-pop.

Snow drifts down outside my office window this afternoon, a soft, steady fall that carries none of the ferocity we endured two months ago. Back then, winter arrived with clenched fists and icy resolve, burying the landscape beneath heavy storms and relentless cold. Today, the snow lands lightly, tapping against the glass as if offering a gentle reminder that the calendar has turned. March, ever patient, is beginning to loosen winter’s grip, quietly breaking its long and stubborn relationship with January and February. The season is shifting, inch by inch, and I find that I can live comfortably with that.

There are plenty of things in the world demanding attention, though not all of them deserve it. I have no intention of wading into the thick sludge pool of American political theatre. It has been a week of wringing out emotions, rinsing away the noise, and wondering aloud when someone might finally intervene and escort the loudest fool off toward Golden Pond, perhaps with a tidy anchor tied firmly to his cankles for good measure. The circus continues, as circuses tend to do, but there are far more interesting and uplifting matters worth our time.

Take Hamilton, Ontario’s own Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who has quietly stepped into basketball immortality with a feat that forces even the most hardened observers to pause and marvel. Playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder, the reigning NBA champions determined to defend their title this June, Gilgeous-Alexander has strung together 127 consecutive games scoring at least twenty points, surpassing a record long associated with the towering legend Wilt Chamberlain. Chamberlain’s statistical monuments have stood for generations, massive pillars in the history of the game that few believed anyone could touch. Yet here stands a calm and graceful Canadian guard who has simply walked past one of them.

Consistency at that level is almost mythical. Thousands of athletes have played in the NBA, thousands more have dreamed of such nights under bright arena lights, yet very few have managed to bend the numbers so thoroughly to their will. To enter the conversation alongside the great Michael Jordan, whose six championships and towering legacy still define excellence, is remarkable enough. To share statistical air with legends like Kobe Bryant and the enduring powerhouse LeBron James places Gilgeous-Alexander squarely in that rare territory where greatness becomes history. One might even argue that his precision and reliability make him one of the finest scorers the game has ever seen.

While basketball headlines belong to Hamilton tonight, baseball has given Canada another reason to sit a little taller. Canada faces the United States in the quarterfinal round of the World Baseball Classic, with the first pitch scheduled for 8:00 PM Eastern at Daikin Park in Houston, Texas. The Americans will send Logan Webb to the mound, while Canada counters with Michael Soroka. It is a single-elimination game now, the kind where every pitch carries weight and every swing can reshape the evening.

The stakes are simple and sharp. The winner moves on to the semifinals of a tournament that has become one of the most joyful celebrations of international baseball. The competition runs from March 5 through March 17, with the final set for Miami, and it has delivered the kind of global excitement that reminds us how beautifully the sport travels across cultures and borders.

Perhaps the most thrilling part of Canada’s presence in this moment is that very few expected it. The Canadian team reached the knockout stage for the first time after winning its pool, a milestone that surprised analysts and energized fans. Italy’s run has also captured attention, proving that the tournament continues to widen the baseball map. The United States remains a tournament favourite, but Canada has been playing a sharp, confident brand of baseball, making this matchup far more intriguing than many predicted. Tonight promises to be loud, dramatic, and immensely fun.

Saturday morning will bring a completely different kind of energy when the remarkable Jane Bunnett joins Jesse King, Rob Salem, CUIT 89.5 FM, and me for an hour of free-ranging conversation at 10 a.m. We will wander comfortably through politics, film, music, and art, letting the discussion go wherever curiosity leads. Bunnett has long been one of Canada’s most adventurous musical voices, a soprano saxophonist and flutist whose collaborations with Cuban musicians stretch back decades.

Jane Bunnett: Listen here. JumpMonk

Her group Maqueque stands as a brilliant reflection of that journey. Formed in 2013 after Bunnett encountered a group of gifted young women studying at Cuban music schools, the ensemble blends Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz improvisation and traditional Cuban musical forms. The result is something vibrant and electrifying. The name “Maqueque” itself comes from an Afro-Cuban slang expression that loosely captures the spirit and fierce energy of a young woman stepping boldly into the world. Watching the band perform, you immediately understand why the name fits.

And finally, there is the state of Canadian leadership, where Mark Carney has emerged as a steady and reassuring presence on the national stage. For years, Carney built a reputation across the global financial world as a calm strategist and thoughtful voice during uncertain times. Now that steadiness has translated into political leadership at home. At a moment when many feared Canada might drift into the same bitter theatrics that have poisoned other democracies, Carney stepped forward with the measured confidence of someone more interested in solutions than slogans.

Across the aisle, the once thunderous voice of Pierre Poilievre appears to be losing its echo. Poll numbers tell their own quiet story. The prairie yodel that once filled the air is fading, rolling down a lonely political highway like a staggering tumbleweed carried by an indifferent wind. Politics, like the seasons, moves in cycles. Storms gather, tempers flare, and eventually calmer weather arrives.

Outside my window, the snow continues to fall, gentle and reflective now. Winter is loosening its grip, Canadian athletes are rewriting history, baseball fans are gathering for a dramatic night, music will soon fill the studio, and the country itself feels steadier beneath our feet. For a moment at least, Canada has every reason to feel proud.

There are moments in creative history when technology shifts just enough to allow a new kind of storyteller to emerge. Sackin Bessette belongs to that generation. Long before LED screens lit stadiums and projection mapping turned buildings into canvases, Bessette was experimenting with light in dimly lit warehouses filled with electronic music, projecting loops of film while crowds danced through the night. What began as improvised visuals for rave culture would eventually grow into Moment Factory, the Montreal-based studio that now produces some of the most ambitious immersive experiences on the planet.

For Bessette, the day begins quietly. Mornings are important. They offer space to “tune into the day,” as he puts it—time to walk through the city and clear the mind before stepping into a studio that now includes hundreds of collaborators. These days, his schedule resembles a normal workday, but it wasn’t always that way. When Moment Factory began, he and his partners routinely worked 12- to 15-hour days, driven by equal parts curiosity and necessity.

The company itself was not born from a business plan so much as a technological awakening.

In the mid-1990s, Bessette was a photographer, fascinated by the simple miracle of light captured on film. His father, an amateur photographer, always had a camera nearby, and the young Bessette became intrigued by the alchemy of it all: light imprinting itself on 35-millimetre negatives, then appearing again on photographic paper or in projected slides. At the same time, the music world was undergoing its own revolution as electronic music and rave culture expanded. Bessette began organizing parties and after-hours events, projecting 16-millimetre loops and photographic slides onto walls while DJs performed.

Then something remarkable happened.

Digital technology arrived all at once. Cameras became digital. Editing moved onto computers. Projectors improved. Suddenly, visuals could be mixed live with music. The practice became known as VJing, a form of performance where images and sound are blended in real time, much like a DJ mixes records. For Bessette and his collaborators, it felt like standing at the birth of a new artistic language.

In 2001, he joined with Dominic O’Dée and Jason Rohde to create Moment Factory. The goal was simple, though it would prove expansive: explore this emerging medium and see what stories could be told when light, technology and physical space converged.

At the time, the technological landscape was much simpler than today’s. The internet was unreliable. Smartphones did not exist. LED screens were rare and prohibitively expensive. CD-ROMs were still considered cutting-edge. But those limitations also created opportunities. The tools were evolving rapidly, and the team sensed that an entirely new form of entertainment was beginning to take shape.

Bessette often compares such shifts to earlier moments in history when technology transformed storytelling. Before electricity, the theatre was illuminated by candlelight. Performances had to occur close to the audience, often outdoors or in intimate spaces. When electric lighting arrived, the entire architecture of the theatre changed. The proscenium stage became possible. Larger audiences gathered. New visual techniques emerged.

For Moment Factory, the equivalent transformation has come through digital light.

If there is one constant in the studio’s work, Bessette says, it is light and pixels—tools that can reshape environments and evoke emotion in ways traditional media cannot. The studio blends theatrical effects, architectural projection, lighting design, sound and interactive technology into experiences that occupy real physical spaces.

Sometimes those spaces are forests.

One of Moment Factory’s most successful innovations has been a series of illuminated night walks, immersive installations that transform natural landscapes into multimedia environments. Visitors wander along paths through the trees while lights, projections, and soundscapes create the sensation of stepping into an unfolding story. These experiences now exist in more than twenty locations worldwide—from Japan to Australia, from Europe to Canada and the United States.

In Los Angeles, the project Astralumina opened as one such example, inviting visitors to travel through a nighttime landscape filled with cosmic imagery and interactive light installations. Similar experiences have appeared in Whistler, Seattle and New York. The idea is simple yet profound: combine technology with nature to deepen people’s sense of wonder.

But forests are only one of the studio’s canvases.

Another branch of Moment Factory’s work involves transforming historic architecture. In Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica, the studio created Aura, an immersive multimedia experience that fills the cathedral with projection mapping, light and orchestral sound. In Paris, they produced a similar experience at Les Invalides, the historic complex that houses Napoleon’s tomb.

These projects combine entertainment with education. Visitors encounter dramatic visuals and historical narratives woven into the experience. Bessette refers to the approach as “edutainment”—a blend of storytelling and learning designed to engage both the heart and the mind.

Science increasingly supports the method. Research shows that people absorb information more readily when they are emotionally engaged. When audiences are captivated—when they feel curiosity, awe or delight—they become more open to knowledge.

For Bessette, this emotional connection is central to the art form.

Cinema, he notes, spent more than a century developing its storytelling language. Films rely on character arcs, conflict and narrative progression. Immersive environments operate differently. Visitors remain physically present inside the experience rather than observing from a distance.

As a result, the emotional palette shifts.

Instead of focusing on character drama, immersive environments aim to evoke what Bessette calls the experience of magic—a sense of encountering something larger than oneself. He compares it to standing beneath a sky full of stars or watching a rainbow appear after rain. These moments resonate across cultures and languages because they tap into a fundamental aspect of human perception.

Comedy may vary between countries, and even between neighbouring cultures, but wonder tends to be universal.

Moment Factory’s work often tries to recreate that feeling through scale, illusion and orchestration. Light, music, architecture and motion combine to produce environments that surprise the senses and awaken curiosity. Visitors do not simply watch; they inhabit the story.

The studio’s projects span a remarkably wide range of industries. Airports, theme parks, museums, concerts, city installations and cultural institutions have all become stages for immersive design.

One of the most striking recent collaborations occurred at the Sphere in Las Vegas, the technologically advanced venue known for its colossal 16K-resolution interior screen. After U2 launched the venue, the jam band Phish performed a series of shows there with visual environments created in part by Moment Factory.

The performances were unique each night. Phish’s improvisational style meant that no two set lists were the same. Visual sequences had to be adaptable and performed live alongside the music. Creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes and lighting designer Chris Kuroda orchestrated the visuals while Bessette’s team provided immersive imagery tailored for the sphere’s vast curved display.

Each show lasted nearly four hours. Each night unfolded differently.

For Bessette, the experience felt like a return to his roots in the VJ scene—only now on a scale unimaginable during those early rave experiments.

Another recent highlight involved work at Singapore’s Changi Airport, widely considered one of the most innovative airports in the world. Moment Factory helped create a massive multimedia installation featuring an indoor waterfall cascading through LED-integrated architecture. The environment shifts depending on weather conditions outside the terminal, sometimes appearing as an underwater landscape, sometimes as an open sky.

Projects like these require collaboration with architects, engineers, artists and technologists across disciplines. They also reflect the studio’s growing international reach.

Moment Factory now employs around 450 people, most based in Montreal but with additional teams in Tokyo, Singapore, Paris and New York. The company that began as a small group of friends experimenting with projections has become a global creative ecosystem.

Oddly, Bessette says managing the larger organization has become easier with time.

When the studio had fewer than a hundred people, everyone depended directly on the founders. As the company expanded, it developed specialized teams, clearer structures and experienced leaders who could guide complex projects. The organization now operates more like a network than a hierarchy—an environment where artists, programmers, designers and engineers learn from one another.

That collaborative culture, Bessette believes, is essential. Each project is essentially a journey into the unknown. The team rarely knows exactly what the final experience will look like until experimentation and iteration bring the idea to life.

The work can be demanding, but it also creates deep bonds among those involved. Creative risk, after all, tends to build strong communities.

Despite his global schedule, Bessette still finds time to travel for personal inspiration. Mexico remains a favourite retreat, while Asia—particularly Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore—frequently draws him back for both work and exploration. A planned trip to London with his children promises theatre, music and a chance to step away from production schedules for a while.

Yet wherever he travels, the guiding idea behind Moment Factory remains the same.

The company’s internal motto is simple: “We do it in public.”

For Bessette, that phrase carries philosophical weight. Human beings have always gathered to share stories. Ten thousand years ago, the gathering place might have been a campfire beneath the stars. Today, it might be a cathedral filled with projection mapping, a forest illuminated by hidden lights, or a concert arena transformed into a digital cosmos.

Technology has changed. The scale has grown. The stories have evolved.

But the essential human need—to gather, to marvel, to experience something together—remains the same.

And if Bessette has his way, the light will keep finding new places to shine.

Bill King Photography

“Architecture should speak of its time and place,” Frank Gehry once observed, “but yearn for timelessness.” Few architects working today embody that sentiment with such clarity as Siamak Hariri.

Soft-spoken yet expansive in thought, Hariri—German-born, Swiss-educated, Persian by heritage, and long rooted in Toronto—approaches architecture not merely as construction, but as an act of listening. Listening to people. Listening to place. Listening to the quiet emotional register that spaces can awaken in those who inhabit them. As a founding partner of Hariri Pontarini Architects, his work includes the Bahá’í Temple of South America in Santiago, Chile, the Royal Ontario Museum Welcome Project, Casey House—Toronto’s HIV/AIDS hospital—and the Tom Patterson Theatre at the Stratford Festival.

Yet when Hariri speaks about architecture, he rarely begins with buildings. He begins with people. When asked to help envision the BARLO MS Centre in Toronto, he knew immediately the project demanded a different approach. Multiple sclerosis is unpredictable and deeply personal; no two cases unfold in the same way. Patients may spend minutes with a physician or hours receiving infusion treatments. For many, the clinic becomes a recurring presence in their lives.

To better understand the realities of MS care, Hariri travelled to Barcelona to visit what was considered one of the world’s leading clinics. He spent days speaking with doctors and patients, observing how treatment unfolded and listening carefully to what worked—and what did not. What emerged from those conversations was a realization that shaped the project: care for MS patients is not a single moment but a complex sequence of encounters. “It’s an orchestra,” Hariri says. “It’s not one touchpoint—it’s many.” The building, therefore, had to express something beyond efficiency. It had to communicate warmth, continuity, and reassurance.

(Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto)

The resulting design sought to balance the clinical precision required by modern medicine with the emotional comfort patients need when facing a chronic illness. Natural light, welcoming gathering areas, and warm materials soften the institutional atmosphere typical of many healthcare environments. The aim was to create a place that feels like a blend of a hospital, a home, and a hotel. If the design succeeds, Hariri suggests, patients might even arrive early simply to spend time there. One doctor later told him about a patient who had arrived three hours early for his appointment, just to sit quietly in the waiting room. “That,” Hariri says, “is exactly what you hope for.”

Materials play a central role in achieving that atmosphere. Hariri often describes his approach through a childhood memory: the idea of a well-made German sweater. Such a garment is simple, durable, and crafted from natural fibres. You buy one or two, keep them for decades, repair them when necessary, and over time, they develop a character all their own. “Architecture should be like that,” he explains. Natural materials such as wood, bronze, and stone age gracefully, developing a patina that reflects the passage of time. Bronze, in particular, became an important element at the Barlow Clinic—not only for its warmth but also for its natural antimicrobial qualities.

(Hariri Pontarini Architects and Snøhetta to Design New Ontario Science Centre in Toronto.)

Hospitals typically favour synthetic materials for reasons of sanitation and durability, and Hariri acknowledges the practical challenges involved. Surfaces must withstand powerful disinfectants, constant cleaning, and the unpredictable realities of medical care. Yet through careful research and collaboration with medical experts, his firm continues to demonstrate that natural materials can meet those standards while creating spaces that feel humane rather than institutional. Casey House in Toronto offered an early example of this approach, introducing wood and stone into an environment serving patients with compromised immune systems.

Architecture Masterprize Winner St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts / Hariri Pontarini Architects.

If the Barlow Clinic explores architecture as care, the Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford explores architecture as experience. Located beside the Avon River, the theatre occupies a site where a roadway separates the building from the water. Hariri’s response was to lift the structure slightly above grade, visually bridging the gap and restoring a connection between the theatre and the landscape beyond. Inside, the theatre adopts a horseshoe configuration inspired by classical anatomy theatres—spaces designed so that every observer could see the delicate work unfolding below. The form creates extraordinary intimacy between actors and audience in the thrust stage arrangement used at Stratford, where performers are surrounded by spectators on three sides.

(Tom Patterson Theatre Stratford)

Outside, the architecture unfolds more freely. Curving structural elements extend toward the river like aquatic plants responding to the current, forming terraces, gathering spaces, and viewing platforms along the water’s edge. On opening night, Hariri watched as patrons wandered through these outdoor spaces, pausing along the terraces and looking out across the river. In that moment, he realized that the performance did not begin when the curtain rose. It had already begun outside.

Travel has played an equally important role in shaping Hariri’s outlook. Early in his career, a professor simply advised him: travel. Experiencing the cultures, landscapes, and artistic traditions of different places, the professor suggested, would reveal the depth of human creativity. Hariri embraced that advice. From remote villages in Indonesia to sacred gardens in Israel, these encounters expanded his understanding of architecture as an expression of the human spirit. In Indonesia, he witnessed quiet acts of communal generosity—bowls of water left outside doorways for thirsty travellers, or bags of rice appearing anonymously at the homes of families in need. Such gestures, he says, speak to the same sense of humanity that architecture should embody.

For Hariri, the highest aspiration of architecture is difficult to define yet instantly recognizable when it occurs. As a student visiting a building by Louis Kahn, he once noticed a security guard gently running his hand across a concrete wall, clearly moved by the texture and presence of the space around him. That moment stayed with him. The man was not analyzing architecture; he was feeling it. “That,” Hariri recalls thinking, “is what I want to achieve.” It is the moment when a space resonates—when light, proportion, material, and silence combine to produce something deeper than visual impression.

Music, he admits, often reaches the soul more directly. Architecture must contend with budgets, codes, engineering requirements, and institutional constraints. Yet when everything aligns, architecture can still produce that same emotional vibration. The experience might be subtle, but it can be powerful enough to move someone to tears.

Toward the end of the conversation, Hariri reflects on a word that once occupied the center of architectural discourse but has gradually disappeared from the vocabulary of many schools: beauty. The Mexican architect Luis Barragán famously lamented this loss when he accepted the Pritzker Prize, observing that the word had nearly vanished from the profession’s language. Hariri agrees. “If we cannot talk about beauty,” he asks quietly, “where are we?”

For him, beauty is not ornament or luxury. It is the resonance between human feeling and the spaces we create. It is present when a patient feels unexpectedly comforted in a clinic, when a theatre audience spills out toward the river after a performance, or when an ordinary security guard pauses to touch a wall simply because it moves him.

Those moments, Hariri believes, are the true measure of architecture.

Baseball has always possessed a curious healing power. In moments when the world feels especially coarse and discordant, the game offers a quiet counterweight: a measured rhythm, the crack of the bat, the rise of a crowd, the simple delight of athletic grace. At this moment, the greatest source of joy in many of our lives is the return of the World Baseball Classic, a tournament that arrives like a festival every few years and reminds us why the sport endures.

The tournament has unfolded at a time when the daily news feels almost unbearable. We watch governments posture, conflicts escalate, and the language of cruelty become casual. The recent bombing of Iranian oil refineries by Israel has inflicted a grim and lingering suffering upon ordinary citizens in Tehran. Toxic smoke mixes with rain clouds, pollution spreads across neighbourhoods, and once again, it is civilians who must live with the consequences of geopolitical theatre. In another corner of the spectacle, Donald Trump plays golf at Mar-a-Lago while the world trembles, strolling into a dining hall to applause and proclaiming himself the G.O.A.T., as if global tension were merely another backdrop for personal pageantry.

In such a climate, one almost instinctively seeks refuge in something wholesome, something joyful and unpretentious. Baseball, blessedly, provides it. The World Baseball Classic feels like a sudden clearing in a stormy sky. Instead of weary spring training routines and cautious pitchers stretching out their arms, fans are treated to a vibrant tournament of national pride. The game is played with urgency and delight, and the stands pulse with the colours and music of entire nations.

Every four years, this tournament transforms baseball into something larger than the long grind of a Major League season. Players do not wear the familiar uniforms of their clubs; instead, they represent the countries that shaped them. The event, first held in 2006 and organized by Major League Baseball in partnership with the World Baseball Softball Confederation, gathers roughly 20 national teams and sends them through a gauntlet of group play, quarterfinals, semifinals, and ultimately a championship. For a few remarkable weeks, baseball becomes a global carnival.

No team captures that carnival spirit more vividly than the Dominican Republic. Their roster is almost absurdly rich with talent, but it is not merely the talent that captivates. It is the energy, the joy, the sense that the game is being played with the exuberance of neighbourhood children on a dusty field somewhere in Santo Domingo. The Dominicans turn every inning into a celebration.

At the centre of that celebration stands Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the Toronto Blue Jays’ formidable first baseman. Valdy, as fans affectionately call him, seems almost to radiate happiness when he plays for his homeland. He swings with authority, laughs easily with teammates, and carries the confidence of a man who knows he belongs among baseball’s elite. Still glowing from his World Series heroics, he now tears through opposing pitching in the Classic, a superstar among superstars.

And what a constellation surrounds him. The Dominican lineup reads like a roll call of modern baseball brilliance: Juan Soto with his patient eye and thunderous swing, Julio Rodríguez patrolling the outfield with youthful electricity, Fernando Tatis Jr. bringing flair and daring to every play. Manny Machado, serving as captain, anchors the infield alongside José Ramírez and Ketel Marte. Young talents such as Junior Caminero and Geraldo Perdomo add depth, while Oneil Cruz and Carlos Santana round out a lineup that seems determined to swing with joyous abandon.

Behind the plate, Yainer Díaz and Webster Rivas guide a pitching staff equally impressive. Sandy Alcántara, Luis Severino, and Brayan Bello headline the rotation, while the bullpen bristles with power arms like Camilo Doval, Seranthony Domínguez, Gregory Soto, Wandy Peralta, and Carlos Estévez. It is a roster that could terrify any opponent, yet it plays with the relaxed laughter of friends meeting at a local ballpark.

This is the magic of the World Baseball Classic. It reminds players and fans alike that beneath the contracts, statistics, and relentless analysis lies something wonderfully simple. Baseball, at heart, is still a children’s game played by grown men who have never lost their love for it.

For spectators, the joy is contagious. Even those who follow only casually can feel it. A quick glance at the highlights on YouTube reveals stadiums dancing with drums and flags, dugouts erupting after every big hit, and crowds singing long after the final out. The Caribbean teams bring a rhythm that transforms the game into a festival.

And perhaps that is precisely what we need right now. Amid the noise of politics and the spectacle of global conflict, a baseball diamond offers a brief but precious reminder of goodness. The game moves at its own thoughtful pace. A pitcher pauses, a batter breathes, the ball arcs through the air, and for a moment the world seems a little lighter.

So treat yourself to it. Watch a game, or at the very least the highlights. Listen to the roar of a crowd that has gathered not to argue or accuse, but simply to celebrate a ball sailing over the fence. In times like these, such moments are not trivial. They are restorative.

The Caribbean rocks, the Dominicans dance, and for a little while, baseball heals the heart.