I arrive at the Yarrow Ecovillage on one of those days when the sky is in constant flux, the clouds above shifting restlessly in the cool wind, creating new patterns against the blue sky. I walk past the cluster of colourful co-housing buildings, down a long dirt path speckled with puddles heading back to the 20 acres of agricultural land.

Valemount, B.C. is the end of the line. It’s the last stretch for hydro on a line running from Kamloops. It’s the final stop for produce shipments. When a service is missing, it’s up to the community to find a way to supply it. A place like this, says Korie Marshall, president of the Valemount Geothermal Society, tends to collect individuals with a strong, pioneering spirit.

People regularly flow through the O.U.R. Ecovillage. They come from all over the world to do internships, to volunteer, to learn how to make natural buildings out of cob or design permaculture gardens. The unique blend of zoning at the village allows for experimentation with materials and technologies that would be too difficult or unsafe to test out elsewhere.

Johnette Swan experienced her first panic attack in 2013 during her second year as a student at the University of British Columbia. Her paper was due in the morning and, after hours of trying to get words on the page, she had nothing. “I just started breathing really heavily and I went downstairs to get water and was hyperventilating.

VANCOUVER – Boyd Benjamin picked up the fiddle for the first time at 14 years old. With the melody of a song played at an old-time dance in Old Crow still running through his head, he sat down to try and recreate what he’d heard. sitting with the fiddle, learning to play a song that was played nowhere else — launched a life-long passion for fiddle music and for sharing the story of his home.

Dan Starling’s experimental film, The Chorus, follows the re-emergence of the chorus – a popular feature of ancient Greek theatre in which a group of several often unidentified characters serve as narrators – as they attempt to find a role for themselves in modern cinema. Exploring themes like the nature of identity and the relationship between art and politics, the chorus as a character is at once profound, endearing, and whimsical.

A fleet of five fully enclosed, three-wheeled, human-powered, electric-assisted velomobiles is turning heads on the University of British Columbia campus. The vehicles, an unusual combination of mini-car and self-pedaled bicycle, are part of a new ride-sharing service called Veemo that has entered its final phase of testing and is now just weeks away from being publicly available on campus.

Sadira Rodrigues and Justine Chambers start the conversation, pictured in the photo. A circle of dancers and artists sit, some in chairs, some on the yellow wood boards of the studio floors, surrounded by mirrors and ballet barres and windows overlooking the city. There are backpacks and water bottles and discarded shoes scattered across the floor and the sound of birds calling to one another from just beyond the panes of glass adds to the ambient sound of chatter in the room.

This week’s feature is a book, or rather, a three volume set of books, which at first glance present the life works, letters, and literary remains of the influential poet, John Keats, but beneath the surface, also winds together the tales of two very interesting nineteenth century men. Within one tragic decade John Keats lost his father, a livery stable keeper, to a skull fracture incurred when he was thrown from an agitated horse, then lost his mother to tuberculosis (the disease that would later claim his brother's and then his own life) and had his guardianship signed over to Richard Abbey; a prosperous but miserly tea merchant. Far from sitting with the young boy drinking cups of fresh tea and sharing tricks of the trade, and valuable life insights, Abbey instead had very little interest in Keats, saw nothing remarkable about him at all, and pulled him from school by sixteen years of age to apprentice him to an apothecary-surgeon.

The fascinatingly diverse prints of seventy-two artists from around the world currently line the walls of the Windsor Printmaker’s Forum Art Gallery like rows of tiny windows, offering intriguing glimpses into the creative minds that produced them. They range from ethereal to whimsical, thought-provoking to meditative. As I walked around the space, leaning in to gaze through these little windows, I marveled at the unique ability of this show to bring artists from such vast distances together in this room, all present in a sense, represented by the works still resonating with the creative energy poured into them.

The sky was a cloudless blue, but a blustering wind whooshed through the street and between the buildings, rattling the windows of the Artspeak Gallery. It was fitting weather for experiencing Ken Arseneault’s photographic study of the forces of nature, and the effects they have on us presented in his current exhibit, “Create Expectations”.

During the month of April, experience the “Floating World” of old Japan through Art Collector, Mark Reeseman’s collection of 19th and 20th century Japanese Woodblock Prints, on special at Juniper Books for the next five weeks. The prints, called Ukiyo-e, translated as "Pictures of the Floating World, depict the scenes and moments of everyday life in old Japan as they pass by, disappearing forever. In a sense the art works are preserving this world, while also expressing the nature of a whole era as being fleeting, much like that of an everyday moment. The prints encourage a deeper immersion in the present, as through them you discover the myriad experiences that are contained within a single moment, like the ones frozen in time on the paper; you see the patterns of shadow and light, the movement of water, the tiny veins on the underside of a lily pad, the shape of tree tops; you can sense the connection being shared between two figures; feel a peaceful surrender to the natural flow of time and life. In his book, Tales From the Floating World, Japanese novelist, Ryoi, described the concept of Ukiyo-e as such; "...Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; caring not a whit for the pauperism staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along the river current: that is what we call the floating world..."

I arrived at the Printmaker’s Forum this past Thursday to a flurry of activity; the crackling, swooshing sound of thin sheets of pale beige newsprint being whisked into place, the donning of various apron styles all decorated with the colorful ink of projects past, the faint scent of ink being worked into the desired viscosity atop the plastic covered wooden work tables, and of course, the friendly chatter of a group of people who have shared a wonderful experience together. It was the final day of a three day workshop, and a unique time to join in the experience since, by this point, the group had gotten to know one another, had learned a lot and were now being given the gift of three hours of freedom with the monoprinting press to experiment with the techniques they had learned and further explore the possibilities of the medium.

Imagine standing under the first film posters ever to be produced, the display-case light bulbs casting a yellow glow across your face as you contemplate the marvels of this new motion-picture technology, and wonder at the delights awaiting you in the darkened theatre. At Juniper Books, you can stand before the very same posters that hung on the walls of early cinemas and independent nickelodeons across the nation, because Windsor’s House of Books is now also home to over 100 pieces of film art dating from the early 1900’s to the 1960’s.

I have long been an admirer of the many book ends here at Juniper, from whimsical, to unusual, to impressive. This past Friday night, as I gazed across the counter at the profile of a white horse leaning against “The Beans of Egypt, Maine” and carefully holding up the row of books behind it, I decided to to go on a discovery walk through the store and have a look at every book end therein. I thought I might count them to see just how many such objects a house of over 50,000 titles employs, but I soon lost count. It seemed that every time I thought I had seen them all, I’d be surprised by a sturdy metal ship tucked into the recesses of a shelf, or a stern bust contemptuously ignoring me from the very top of a book case. So join me, if you like, in discovering only some of the many bookends here at Juniper Books.

This week’s ephemera piece hails from a time when the political landscape was vastly different; a time before radio broadcasting, televisions, computers, internet, facebook and twitter; indeed before public street lighting, when torch-light parades were still a popular election activity.¹. In addition to riding through the darkened city streets in carriages with crowds of people cheering and holding up flaming torches, news of the electoral candidates spread by word of mouth, through posters, and newspapers.