Can’t so easily just swipe ex’s image away

Troubadour of tears

Field Guide, for all his sad songs, is dressed exclusively in vibrant colours. His beanie is mustard yellow, his jacket and shirt are forest green, his Blundstones are burgundy. His short, scruffy beard is Spalding-ball orange.

Beyond Bond, Connery characters funny, fierce

When I was a kid, many of my peers collected sports cards. I collected movie cards, starting with the 1965 run of James Bond 007 cards put out by the good folks at Fleer.

At that point, only three Bond movies existed: Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964). (Thunderball would be released later in 1965.) The cards were basically productions stills of Sean Connery’s Bond in action, with appropriate captions: “Hunted by a Helicopter” as seen in From Russia With Love, or “The Incredible Laser Ray” or “Oddjob’s Deadly Derby” from Goldfinger.

So the news of Sean Connery’s death over the weekend had a kind of visceral effect, as it would on those of us who valued movie heroes over champions of the gridiron or baseball diamond. Connery, who lived to the ripe age of 90, presented a different kind of hero than the TV do-gooders of the era, a fact announced in an early scene from Dr. No when Bond cold-bloodedly kills a would-be assassin after he’s emptied his own pistol. “That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.”

Connery played Bond a total of seven times, and while he was undoubtedly the best of the Bonds, only a few of the movies hold up. Connery is certainly phoning it in in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), for example, letting his character devolve into self-parody. But his quest to escape the Bond brand resulted in a few interesting roles, including The Anderson Tapes (1971), in which he played a career criminal with a conscience (sans toupée), or Zardoz (1974), a delirious post-apocalyptic fantasy in which his primitive warrior goes up against a race of immortal intellectuals.

Making water safety a priority

The headlines persist.

Every summer, across Canada, people learn of drownings and deaths that could have been prevented if the people involved had taken water-safety precautions — learning to swim, supervising children, observing boating safety rules, wearing personal flotation devices (PFDs) or being cautious in and around fast-moving waters.

Also every summer, the Royal Lifesaving Society of Canada — which runs the Swim for Life program of swimming lessons across the country — designates the third week of July as National Drowning Prevention Week, as July is when Canadian water-incident rates peak.

The aim of Drowning Prevention Week is to promote water safety of all kinds — and the need is real. According to the Lifesaving Society, over 450 Canadians die annually in preventable water-related incidents. In Manitoba, there are 22 fatal drownings, on average, every year.

New Royal MTC artistic director to ensure everyone gets an equal voice on stage

It’s kind of like going from a nomadic existence to suddenly having two homes.

That’s what it’s like for Kelly Thornton to shift from her 17-year tenure at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre to come to Winnipeg to take the helm of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre.

When she takes over the role of artistic director from retiring A.D. Steven Schipper in June of next year, Thornton, 53, will program for two venues, the Royal MTC’s John Hirsch Mainstage and the Tom Hendry Warehouse Theatre.

Keep in mind that, in her years at Nightwood, Thornton had no single theatre to call home.

Brandon laying groundwork for Arabian championship

BRANDON — It’s time to dish the dirt on what’s about to happen at Brandon’s Keystone Centre.

Hundreds of horses and hundreds more spectators are about to descend on the site for Canada’s National Arabian Championship Aug. 6 to 15, and before that happens, the staging surface has to be perfect.

“We have been working on this day in and day out,” said Devin Epp, sales manager in the Ag Centre at the Keystone Centre.

Since July 24, staff have been working on a 24-hour schedule to build the competition floor. Dirt was hauled into the arena and has since been worked into place with tractors and hand-pushed equipment.