From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — January 13, 2012

VANCOUVER — After an excel­lent meet­ing Tues­day with the Gen­eral Direc­tor of the BC Arts Coun­cil, Gillian Wood, I made my way to the port of Vic­to­ria to ride the sea­plane to Van­cou­ver. This was a first for me, and what an expe­ri­ence! It was sunny and the ride was smooth con­sid­er­ing the small size of the plane. It was sim­ply mar­vel­lous to see the islands dot­ting the strait sep­a­rat­ing the island of Van­cou­ver from the main­land. The arrival in Van­cou­ver was one of the best expe­ri­ences I’ve had.

Wednes­day, I met the new direc­tor of the Alliance for Arts and Cul­ture, Rob Gloor. Rob has just filled the space left by our friend and board mem­ber Amir Alib­hai, who moved to Toronto to take a posi­tion at the Aga Khan Museum. At the end of the day I had the plea­sure of din­ing in com­pany of the pres­i­dent of the BC Arts Coun­cil, Stan­ley Hamil­ton. We had a stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sion about the sit­u­a­tion of the arts in gen­eral and about the future of the CCA in par­tic­u­lar. The rest of my day was spent in my hotel room, work­ing remotely on a series of files and respond­ing to all my accu­mu­lated emails. This under­tak­ing ended on a frus­trat­ing note since the trans­fer of our new web­site had shut down the remote access to our email ser­vice! Tech­nol­ogy, tech­nol­ogy, how you have a hold on us… by the throat!

It was yes­ter­day, Thurs­day, how­ever that my sched­ule got really busy. It started very early in the morn­ing with a con­fer­ence call with the C-11 (Copy­right) strate­gic group, dur­ing which we put the fin­ish­ing touches to a doc­u­ment of pro­posed changes for the gov­ern­ment, with the goal of block­ing the unde­sir­able neg­a­tive con­se­quences of this impor­tant leg­is­la­tion. This doc­u­ment rep­re­sents months of efforts on the part of a dozen orga­ni­za­tions who, under the coor­di­na­tion of the CCA, have put their blood, sweat and tears to reach a con­sen­sus accept­able to as many of the orga­ni­za­tions as pos­si­ble. The result: 71 cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions from all cor­ners of the coun­try have affixed their sig­na­ture; an unprece­dented accom­plish­ment of sol­i­dar­ity and com­pro­mise for all the com­mu­ni­ties involved. The doc­u­ment will be pre­sented to the mem­bers of the Leg­isla­tive Com­mit­tee when the House returns at the end of the month.

The bulk of the day was ded­i­cated to meet­ings with mem­bers of cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions. To start, there was a two-hour ses­sion with a dozen peo­ple at the Fran­coph­one Fed­er­a­tion of BC to present the CCA and its upcom­ing projects. Then I jumped into a taxi to lead a ses­sion on the new Canada Rev­enue Agency guide­lines con­cern­ing accred­i­ta­tion of arts orga­ni­za­tions as char­i­ties. That ses­sion had barely fin­ished when we changed floors to meet roughly 60 pro­fes­sional artists and cul­tural work­ers com­ing from the four cor­ners of the Van­cou­ver area in order to par­tic­i­pate in the CCA’s con­sul­ta­tions on its future and to hear how this unique instru­ment in the cul­tural sec­tor can con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of a dynamic future for the arts. I think I can say with­out exag­ger­a­tion that these meet­ings gar­nered much inter­est and that the CCA’s pro­file was raised – which I must con­fess is really needed because after 67 years of exis­tence, the CCA remains one of the best-kept secrets. Even more excit­ing are the many inter­est­ing sug­ges­tions and signs of sup­port for our pro­pos­als put forth fol­low­ing ini­tial con­sul­ta­tions in Mon­tréal, Toronto and Ottawa.

So there you have it! The first leg of my Cana­dian tour has come to an end. It’s time to pack my suit­case, sleep a few hours and then rush off to the air­port tomor­row at dawn for my return to Ottawa for my only week in the office between now and Feb­ru­ary 20th!