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This Week in Canada: Rosh Hashanah Celebrations, Inside Out 2020, Online Pet Adoption Expo, and More

BizBash's new Canada-focused column covers the week's biggest event news.

MAPP Montreal’s annual video projection mapping festival lights up the city, beginning today.
MAPP Montreal’s annual video projection mapping festival lights up the city, beginning today.
Photo: Courtesy of MAPP Montreal

Welcome to BizBash's newest column, covering Canada’s biggest event news from coast to coast. Got a tip? Get in touch!

Provincial News

Alberta: On Sept. 26, “Walk a Mile in a Ribbon Skirt” at Edmonton City Hall will educate visitors on the history of ribboned clothing as a feminist symbol, as well as the discrimination Indigenous Canadians continue to face today. Led by local community activists Chevi Rabbit and April Eve Medicinespiritdancer, the event encourages participants to share an image or video of their ribboned attire with the hashtag #MyRibbonSkirt.

Calgary’s Two River’s Distillery hosted a “Buti and Booze” gathering on Sept. 22. Yoga guru Rachel Cadrin led a 15-person socially distanced evening of Buti—a yoga practice combining vinyasa techniques with dance and other higher cardio moves. Following the 75-minute class, attendees sampled specialty cocktails blended with the distillery’s gin and vodka selections.

British Columbia: “Putting Your Garden to Bed for the Winter,” part of the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) online workshop series, took place on Sept. 22. Mik Turje, known for their community food and agriculture development work in the greater Vancouver area and Toronto, led a discussion on preparing soil for harsh snow and rain and protecting gardens against disease and pests. The event was hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, a 24-hectare organic farm focused on developing sustainable global food programs.

Prince Edward Island: Charlottetown is preparing for its inaugural “Scarecrow in the City” event with a clothing drive. This week, residents are invited to drop off used garments, accessories, and yarn at Sterns Launderers & Drycleaners for cleaning. Donations will be used to build 300 scarecrows, which will pop up all over the city from Oct. 9-18. Participants can also look forward to ghostly tours, psychic readings, costumed stilt-walkers, harvest meals, wine tasting, and live music.

Ontario: Following the conclusion of TIFF activities, Inside Out, Canada’s largest LGBT2Q+ film festival, opens on Oct. 1 with the David Bowie biopic Stardust at Ontario Place’s RBC Lakeside Drive-In. Originally set to take place from May 21-31, the 30th edition of the event features more than 50 feature-length entries and short film collections available for screening over Inside Out’s website and AppleTV and Roku apps. Two additional drive-in screenings—Jump, Darling starring Cloris Leachman, and Ahead of the Curve, depicting the origin of pioneering lesbian magazine Curve—are scheduled at Ontario Place and Ottawa’s Wesley Clover Parks.

Quebec: The fifth edition of the MAPP Montreal festival, celebrating projection mapping art and technology, runs from Sept. 24-27. Activities throughout Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles include light shows combined with local murals; Composite, an outdoor digital creativity forum; a tagtool party enabling artists to draw and project wall art in real time; and a walkable light show throughout Mont Royal street. Multiple shows and events are scheduled to reoccur through the remainder of the year.

Coast-to-Coast
Following a virtual Rosh Hashanah celebration co-organized by all chapters of the Canadian Jewish Federation on Sept. 13, synagogues offered safe ways for Jewish communities to celebrate the new year over the weekend. The “Shofarpalooza” drive-in sundown service happened at Ontario Place on Sunday, with live shofar-blowing and the Torah delivered to the stage by motorbike. In Montreal, Shaar Hashomayim welcomed 200 people to its 2,000-seat sanctuary and delivered greeting cards and gift boxes with challah and honey to members unable to attend. And Vancouver’s Beth Israel conducted a series of family services over Zoom, as well as a Tashlikh prayer event at Spyglass Dock.

PetSmart Charities of Canada is holding a virtual edition of its national adoption days event to find homes for lost and abandoned pets from Sept. 14-30. Website visitors can search for animals staying within their postal code, and filter by age, size, breed, color, and gender from a network of nearly 200 animal welfare organizations. "With so many shelters overwhelmed with fewer resources, now is the perfect time to adopt a pet in need," said PetSmart Charities president Aimee Gilbreath. "Not only can you help reduce the strain on shelters and change a pet's life, but you'll also benefit from the support and unconditional love that pets provide."

Overheard
"While it's not a surprise that more Canadian workers are financially stressed, the variance between this year's results and what was expected based on the historical trends caught us off guard. The algorithm recognized that, despite remaining on payroll and being in a measurably better financial position right now, financial stress this year was impacted by a complex combination of new factors—including those that are more psychological than financial in nature."

—Dr. Adam Metzler, associate professor of mathematics at Wilfrid Laurier University, on a new Canadian Payroll Association study indicating that Canadians are increasingly financially stressed.

On the Scene
Royal Ontario Museum curator Justin Jennings led a discussion on the recently reopened Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic exhibit on Wednesday afternoon.

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