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The Blog

The CCA com­mu­ni­cates reg­u­larly with its mem­bers and the pub­lic regard­ing its work pro­mot­ing and defend­ing the arts, cul­ture and her­itage sec­tor. From time to time, Alain Pineau adds his per­sonal touch as pre­sented in this blog. Read on and share your thoughts by post­ing replies.

 

 

The National Director’s Blog – On the Red Arrow bus from Calgary to Edmonton

The National Director’s Blog – On the Red Arrow bus from Calgary to Edmonton

Jan­u­ary 31 CALGARY — Ah Cal­gary! What a warm wel­come, and I am not refer­ring to the spring-like tem­per­a­ture or the radi­ant sun­shine of the past two days! It began yes­ter­day at the air­port where Michael Green, Cura­tor and Artis­tic Direc­tor for Cal­gary 2012 was wait­ing to take me to my hotel and it went on until Tom McCarthy, Gen­eral Man­ager of Cal­gary Arts Devel­op­ment, dropped me at the Red Arrow bus ter­mi­nal today. I was wel­comed with open arms in this mod­ern metrop­o­lis in...

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From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — Written from the tarmac in Winnipeg

From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — Written from the tarmac in Winnipeg

Jan­u­ary 27, 2012 WINNIPEG — The weather gods are no longer smil­ing upon me! Freez­ing rain in Toronto and Ottawa means that I have at least three hours of leisure time at the Win­nipeg air­port: who knows at what time I’ll get home today! I may as well take advan­tage of this delay to blog on my short visit in Manitoba’s cap­i­tal. CCA Board mem­ber Nicole Mati­a­tion and Thom Spar­ling, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Arts and Cul­tural Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion of Man­i­toba (ACI) pre­pared a fully loaded...

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From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — Latest news from Regina

From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — Latest news from Regina

  Jan­u­ary 24, 2012 REGINA — The weather gods have been good to me so far. While Saskatchewan was a frigid –40º C last week, today was a balmy –2º C and the sun was shin­ing bright and warm, cer­tainly more pleas­ant weather to deal with as Marnie Glad­well gen­er­ously drove me from meet­ing to meet­ing. I must say that when it comes to mak­ing sure not a sec­ond of my stay here is wasted, Marnie has very few rivals. She had us booked from 8 in the morn­ing to 6 at night, with barely a break for a soup...

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From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — A full day in Saskatoon and off to Regina

From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — A full day in Saskatoon and off to Regina

Jan­u­ary 23, 2012 REGINA — So here I am, finally set­tled into my hotel room after a three hour bus ride that took me from Saska­toon to Regina with my knees pressed against the seat in front of me. At least I had inter­net access along the way so I could catch up on the day’s e-mails and read an excel­lent inter­view by Greg O’Brien from cartt.ca with Kon­rad Von Finck­en­stein, the chair­man of the CRTC whose term is fin­ish­ing up in a few days. It was a long and busy day! I was up at 6 a.m. for a tele­phone...

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From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — January 23, 2012

From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — January 23, 2012

SASKATOON — Already time to head back to the air­port. My only week in the office between Jan­u­ary 9 and Feb­ru­ary 21 has gone by like a flash of light­ning: so many things to do before return­ing to the on-the-road vir­tual office, hostage to tech­no­log­i­cal haz­ards and human frailty! So, back to the national tour: after Vic­to­ria and Van­cou­ver, BC, on to Saskatchewan and Man­i­toba. I knew my first stop, Saska­toon, was referred to as the City of Bridges. Last Fri­day, I learned on CBC’s National that it is...

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

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...

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From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — January 10, 2012

From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — January 10, 2012

VICTORIA — Well, it’s on! After weeks of prepa­ra­tion, my cross-country con­sul­ta­tion tour started yes­ter­day in British Colum­bia where I am spend­ing the week. I must con­fess that after the snow and cold we’ve had in Ottawa these past weeks, it is agree­ably exotic to forego boots and scarf: it’s a pleas­ant 8° C in Vic­to­ria and the rain seems pleas­antly spring-like to some­one from the East­ern part of the country. Why this pan-Canadian tour which will take me to 14 cities between now and Feb­ru­ary...

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From the desk of the National Director: New Year and Renewal

First things first: there is still time to wish all of you health, for­ti­tude and seren­ity for 2012. I’m afraid we will all need that and then some! Every­one knows that the begin­ning of a new year is a time for renewal. This is espe­cially true for the CCA this year: 2012 will go down in its long his­tory as the year we recre­ated the CCA to ensure that it con­tinue its unique con­tri­bu­tion to the wel­fare of the Cana­dian arts, cul­ture and her­itage com­mu­ni­ties. Faced with the expected deci­sion of the...

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FROM THE DESK OF Alain Pineau: A little of this, a little of that …

CCA Bul­letin 33/11 Decem­ber 1, 2011 Well, this week has been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than oth­ers. For once, I was able to put aside my pri­mary pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of the last few months – the rein­ven­tion and finan­cial auton­omy of the CCA (I will come back to that at the end of this bul­letin!) – to par­tic­i­pate in other forums where the stakes were just as important. This started Mon­day morn­ing with a half-day ses­sion on the impor­tance and the chal­lenges of pub­lic broad­cast­ers. This event was...

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FROM THE DESK OF Alain Pineau: Time for an update!

CCA Bul­letin 31/11 Novem­ber 15, 2011 How time flies! This fall is par­tic­u­larly busy for all of us: I’m not not sure exactly why, but it seems that every­one is run­ning on an accel­er­at­ing tread­mill! So it is time again to keep you posted on a num­ber of cur­rent files. The Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nomic and Trade Agreement Let’s start with the nego­ti­a­tions between Canada and the Euro­pean Com­mu­nity. I par­tic­i­pated in the brief­ing ses­sion orga­nized by the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and...

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