Good Food * Good Listening * Good Company
in Northern Bruce Peninsula
519-795-7477 or mail@voyageurstorytelling.ca or return to home page
In which we start to tell you about
Canadian Storytelling Repertoire and Resources
and our 2009 Concerts
Introduction
We plan to set up a resource bank about Canadian storytelling. There we will post our own repertoire, and encourage other Canadian storytellers to do the same. We will encourage discussion of the characteristics and ethos of Canadian stories and storytelling that make them distinctive. We have our own ideas, and know that others do too. We want to include a diversity of views.
A story can be easily identified as Canadian if it originates in Canada, or has been adapted by a Canadian teller, even if the story is culturally specific. Beyond these common-sense ideas lie forms of Canadian story that speak more deeply to our shared national realities:
—> a place of wild, northern, sparsely populated, breathtakingly beautiful Nature;
—> people living with that Nature, comfortably or uncomfortably, amiably or with hostility or fear;
—> a heterogeneous North American Culture with three primordial stems (each diverse in itself) — Aboriginal, Francophone and Anglophone — and with a rich and growing set of fellow voyagers;
—> people living within that Culture, comfortably or uncomfortably, amiably or with hostitiliy or fear.
Our common vision is the celebration of our lack of common vision, our lack of need for conformity to a common vision. We live a national life of quiet disparation.
Other ideas, quite possibly contradictory, are on our Voyageur Storytelling Experience page.
This section will evolve over the next couple of years. It's a long-term project. In the meantime, if you have ideas, please drop us a line.
Our 2009 Summer Concerts
Food for Thought
Invocation: Food — by John Updike
Sora Indik's Restaurant — skit based on a story by Sholem Aleichem
Mrs. Murphy's Chowder — campfire song of unknown origin
Mary Howell: Queen of Fish — based on Mary Howell's memoirs and stories from people who knew her
A Word from our Sponsor — skit by Stan Freberg
A Literary Dinner — poem by Vladimir Nabokov
The Last Breakfast — poem by Gwedolyn MacEwan
Mammoth Undertaking — duet with lyrics by Voyageur and music by Sir Arthur Sullivan
nobody loses all the time — poem by e.e. cummings
When the Farmer Comes to Town — traditional song
Sumerian Surprise — story collected by Voyageur
Some Little Bug — song by Roy Atwell (1915)
Two Challahs — tradtional Jewish folk tale
Voyageur's Truck Stop — story by Voyageur ending with a traditional Scottish song
Salad — poem by Sydney Smith
A Dish of Peaches in Russia — poem by Wallace Stevens
Food, Glorious Food — lyrics by Voyageur and music by Lionel Bart
Full Fathom Forty-Five
Invocation: The Pilgrimage as Worship — by Alden Knowlan
Full Fathom Forty-Five — poetic prelude borrowed from Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot
Outward, Onward, Homeward Bound — lyrics by Voyageur to a traditional chanty
The Woods of Muskoka — a memoir by Matilda Wood Stone of Franklin Township
The Country North of Belleville — poem by Al Purdy
Border Country — stories collected by Voyageur
What's Sinister about Dexter? — stories collected by Voyageur
Low Tide on Grand Pré — tuned recitation of a poem by Bliss Carman using music by Franz Schubert
The Female Cabin Boy — traditional ballad
Tuber Melanosporum — stories collected by Voyageur
Rumania, Rumania — Yiddish song by Aaron Lebedeff
Two Nurses in Crimea — stories collected by Voyageur
Poles of Inaccessibility — geographic insights collected by Voyageur
The Woodcarver and the Painter — traditional Mongolian tale
Silk Trade, Fur Trade — story based on a report from the Rev. B. Vimont
Home on the Bruce — lyrics by Voyageur to a traditional tune