Sorry about the hiatus..

So it has been a while since I last posted.

My apologies...I really hope you haven't missed me too much!

(By the way, that was to the four dedicated readers I have...)

But I have a legitimate reason! I swear!!

In a previous post, I have mentioned that I was interning at  Canculture as a student reporter.  Although my tasks involved mostly one day assignments and 400 word articles, I was asked to write a feature on Ontario Place.  Being the rookie reporter, I obviously took the chance and took on the task. 

But wow, did I not realize it would take so much work. 

I've written features before...but never were they as thorough as this one.  Most of them were pretty much written in a span of two to three days.  Interviews would probably take about two weeks to be completed.

But for this feature, by golly! Not only did I have to make multiple phone calls to the same people, I had to do a lot more work in terms of getting facts, history and statistics. Not only that, it took three drafts and nine hours to edit with my editor!  It was absolutely exhausting.  

But now, I am delighted to announce that it finally got published onto the web at approximately 1:22 a.m eastern time. I am proud to say my hard work is finally online (not to mention with the help of my editor Andrew), even though I am aware that there are many quotes in the article.

For next time, I will try and make it flow better. If there are more critiques, please let me know.

Read the article here.  WHEW. I'm finished!!!

Day in a Life of a Board Game Guru

Joseph Brosnan fixes himself a coffee and greets customers with a nod and a charismatic grin.

He takes orders and makes suggestions, waiting patiently for overwhelmed customers to make up their minds.

But people aren’t having difficulty choosing coffee.

Instead, they’re struggling to find a game to play, scanning the shelves filled with board games ranging from classics such as Uno and Sorry! to newer ones like Taboo and Cranium.

Brosnan is not your average café barista. He is a board game guru at Snakes and Lattes, at 600 Bloor St. W.

The board game café was created by Parisian couple Ben Castanie and Aurelia Peynet who were inspired by toy-lending libraries back in France.

After two years of scrounging garage sales and thrift stores, the couple collected more than 1,000 games. The café’s collection continues to grow.

Brosnan, 22, has been working here since the café opened in September.

When he isn’t cooking and serving guests, the avid gamer spends his shifts wandering around the café teaching games and playing with customers.

Growing up, Brosnan was always interested in board games.

“During the holiday season, [my family] would always get together and play these wild, intense games of Monopoly,” he says.

When he got older, he entered tournaments and got “super-involved” playing Pokémon and Magic cards.

But the idea of teaching games for a living was something Brosnan would have never imagined.

He first heard of Snakes and Lattes when his roommate was searching through Craigslist and found a job listing for people who could teach board games to the public.

After working for five months, Brosnan is a board game expert.

“Now it’s the height of my addiction,” he says.

After being trained in theatre at the University of Windsor, the Brampton native moved to Toronto to pursue an acting career.

Despite some work in TV, film and theatre, Brosnan says the work “soured up” and moved back in with his parents.

“My parents were furious with me because I was playing board games all summer. They were like ‘Get a job!’ ” he says.

But when the opportunity came up, he knew it was perfect for him.

“It was pure luck. Pure luck,” he says as he prepares a latté for a customer.

He notices two women having difficulty picking a game, and runs to the shelves to offer his assistance.

“Were you interested in a particular game?” he asks.

“Well, something that’s not too complicated,” says a woman in a black toque. “I don’t want to spend the whole time sitting there trying to figure out the whole game!”

“In terms of two-player games, I was thinking that you guys can play 30 minute games. A favourite I can suggest is Wasabi, where you’re competing to be master sushi chefs!” Brosnan says with excitement.

While he waits for their final decision, he pulls his hands out of his pockets with a look of amusement. In his hand, lies a circular token.

He chuckles. “You know you work in a board game café when you have little board game pieces in your pocket.”

The two women finally decide on Monopoly Deal, a card game version much shorter than the original.

He plays a match with the two women, watching intently and offering tips and strategies.

Brosnan reassures his opponents by reading the instruction card: “Start playing and it will become clear…we promise!”

After a game of Monopoly Deal, he checks the front counter and returns to help a couple with their orders.

They’re new to the place, so Brosnan gives them a run-down of the café.

“Go ahead and play the games. You can play as many as you’d like and we can teach and suggest them to you.”

Brosnan gives his suggestions and the couple finally settles on Hive, a strategy game where the purpose is to surround the opponent's bee queen with tiles.

He briefly watches the couple play, but is soon back with the two women to teach Dracula, another strategy game.

After offering instructions, he is interrupted to fulfil other duties: cinnamon rolls for the café’s main attraction that night-a tournament for a game called Dominion, the first ever hosted at Snakes and Lattes.

“That’s how this place goes. You play games but you have these goals,” he says as he runs to the kitchen to start baking.

“These are vegan cinnamon rolls,” he says as he gathers the ingredients and pours them into a bowl. “I’m working on gluten-free, so everybody can eat them.”

While he mixes, he mentions how he prefers board games to video games due to the social aspect.

“Board games nowadays, there’s so much more them. Human interaction is so much better than swearing at someone over a headset,” he says.

By 5:30 p.m., the café starts to get busy as gamers pile in for the Dominion tournament.

As Brosnan lets the dough rise, he goes down to the basement to facilitate matches at the tournament.

After viewing a few games, he’s back upstairs to check on his baking. 

While he sprinkles cinnamon and makes the icing, he talks about how people have come into the café to help out, donating kitchen utensils or bringing in games.

“It’s developed so much. It has been popular since the very beginning and it hasn’t died down yet,” he says of the café, but knocks on the wooden counter for luck.

“I may be superstitious but I don’t want anything bad to happen to this place. This is such a distinct, original point of happiness. I’ve always wondered when I was kid what places a kid can go to. Yeah, there’s a pool hall here and there and the movie theatre. But what else is there?”

While Brosnan loves his job, he plans to continue acting.

“I need to put myself back into improv,” he says.

On his days off, he watches comedy shows and wishes he were onstage doing what he enjoys most.

“So jealous,” he says about watching the actors perform. “It’s like my first love.”

Empowering Youth One Tour at a Time

Attending a largely white populated Ottawa high school was not easy, as Dawit recalls being the centre of discrimination.

Dawit, who is of Ethiopian, Ukrainian and Scottish descent, remembers being compared to children in developing countries who were being sponsored by Plan Canada.

Seeing that her peers misunderstood her background and had the wrong ideas about her culture, Dawit started a black history club with her principal when she was in Grade 11.

“We started doing the programming in high school because there were problems that we were noticing in the school system,” says Dawit. “I was one of two or three black students and I experienced a lot of discrimination and racism when I was in high school.”

After having graduated and pursued her post-secondary education at the Harris Institute for the Arts in Toronto, Dawit, 30, never thought the small club she started in high school would come back to life, let alone become her full-time job.

But it did, when it revived in 2004.

“I realized that there were a lot of other social justice issues. Not just looking at racism and equity issues, but in terms of human rights, children’s rights, and women’s rights. [Many] organizations wanted to communicate to young people about [these issues], but the organizations weren’t able to do it in a palatable or interesting format,” she says.

Joining forces with Anita Wong and Patrick McCormack, the club became 411 Initiative for a Change, a non-profit organization that uses arts and culture for young people to educate themselves on social justice issues.

“We look at and treat issues that affect young Canadians. It could be something like HIV/AIDs, violence against women, we look at children’s rights, and the stories of young people around the world who are also living in Canada,” Dawit says.

All three founding members have a background in the arts, allowing them to collaborate their skills to create arts programming, which Dawit says appeals more to students.

Dawit and Wong have worked together in international development as well as the music industry, while McCormack is an artist who has also worked in sound engineering and production.

“We were able to revive 411 because our formats use music, pop culture, and dance, which are much more interesting for young people.”

Six years later, 411 Initiative for a Change has reached over 300,000 students across Canada and focuses on other issues such as safe sex, gender equality and children’s rights.

Touring with professional musicians and artists, 411 Initiative for a Change works with students who are imprisoned or in inner city schools to give them a chance to express their ideas through their arts-creation programming that use different forms of art which include visual art, drama, and poetry.

The organization has also collaborated with other organizations such as Alicia Keys’ Keep a Child Alive, which provides AIDS care for families in developing countries, the AIDS Committee of Toronto and worked with music channel MTV to film documentaries surrounding youths living in Sudan, Colombia and Haiti.

Although, 411 Initiative for a Change has reached millions of people since it first started when Dawit was in high school, the main focus of her organization remains the same: to get students to speak out and raise awareness on social issues.

“We’re not an organization that asks you to join up with us or start a club. It’s more about encouraging discussion. So for the schools who bring us in, we’re an opportunity to get discussion started around topics that students may not have wanted to talk to their teachers about,” Dawit says.

Remembering her own experiences of sitting through school assemblies, Masia One, a Toronto-based rapper and producer, says she never felt connected to special presentations about global issues because she felt they were boring and out of touch with young people.

But after doing presentations and tours with 411 Initiative for a Change, Masia One, whose real name is Maysian Lim, is touched knowing that she has made an impact on students to make a difference.

“After tours, I’ve had kids come up to me crying. Even now and maybe six months after the last tour we did, I [still] have kids emailing me and telling me it was the best thing they’ve ever learned in school,” she says.

Having pursued an architecture degree with a minor in economics from the University of Toronto, Masia One thinks an organization like 411 Initiative for a Change is great, as it helps artists like her encourage students to go to school.

“I’m a rapper. This is my full-time job. There are a lot of kids that I meet that want to get into the music industry and want my record label to sign them, but at the end of the day, I try to put upon them that I also have an architecture degree. I have that option in case I want to go into it.”

Having had the opportunity to travel to World AIDS conferences in Sweden and Mexico as well as Ethiopia to meet and work with young children, Dawit plans to continue focusing on issues such as HIV/AIDS as well as introduce new issues such as bullying and raising self-esteem in young women.

“One of the things we are working on this fall is producing a program on girls. We’ll be looking at self-esteem, we’re looking at bullying, and especially online bullying. This is something that [many schools] have been having a lot of difficulty with.”
But on a grassroots level, Dawit also wants to focus on anti-racism, the topic that started 411 Initiative for a Change in the first place.

“It’s something we haven’t treated in the last five years and we’re going back and producing a program with MTV looking at racism in Canada and how young people experience it, where they experience it, and what you do if you experience racism.”

Masia One says that students should understand the importance of making a difference, noting that Dawit started this program at a young age.

“She took the effort to do something about [racism] and educate people instead of getting angry or becoming reclusive. I think that it’s very inspiring for these high school kids to learn and understand that Tamara started 411 in high school and now it’s a tour that goes across Canada. I think it’s one of the best arts education programs in Canada.”

Picture From:  Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation

What makes a SuperDog?

All it takes to make a SuperDog is motivation and a lot of cookies.

At least, that’s how Sue Trout’s Rottweiler Slinger learns.

Slinger, who’s three, twisted, hopped, and danced in front of a roaring crowd Tuesday afternoon.

Trout, along with her dog, is in Toronto for the 88th annual Royal Agricultural Winter Fair to perform at the SuperDogs competition.

An owner of two Rottweilers, Trout, 58, prefers to train almost every day.

“I’m kind of a train-a-holic. I just enjoy spending the time with my dogs and seeing what I can come up with and what I can teach them.”

Having performed with her dogs in the SuperDogs show for 22 years, Trout says the best way to train a dog is to be very motivational, instead of getting frustrated and angry with them.

Alluding to shows such as The Dog Whisperer which uses choke chains to train dogs, Trout thinks the methods used are not the correct ways to help a dog learn.

“To anybody, who will take a dog and hang it till his breath has gone out of him and then put it on the ground and say ‘Look, I have control’, that’s not training. That’s abuse,” she said.

Instead, Trout advises dog owners to go to a proper dog training school.

She thinks that people abuse dogs because they don’t realize that dogs have to be taught to behave and learn from their mistakes.

“People expect that dogs just drop out of the womb knowing how to heel. Well they don’t. You have to teach them. So take a cookie, shove it in their nose and walk them up the driveway for three weeks saying, "This is where I want you to heel.”

For Trout, she prefers to spend time with each of her two dogs to give them the attention they need.

“I don’t want my dogs suppressed. I want them keen to be able to make a mistake and go: ‘I’m not going to get a reward for that,’ rather than being punished.”

Nicky Snook, a personal dog trainer, also says that a dog’s behaviour can be traced from how the owner acts.

“I believe what energy used and portrayed are what the dogs are going to feel. So if you’re scared, the animal is going to feel it. So you just need to be very calm, and be relaxed about it. They do better that way. They feel that you’re confident as well. That’s what I find with every dog I’ve worked with that have fear problems or aggression problems. You can’t get anxious. It just doesn’t work for them. Praise, telling them “Good Dog”, petting them at the right time, feeding them at the right time, you can get them over those obstacles.”

Snook, 38, says a lot of people are in too much of a hurry to train their dogs. She suggests taking small steps to show the dog to not be afraid and to learn.

“It’s taking the time to work with the dog. Taking the time to build that dog’s confidence. I want to help the people who want to help the dogs, and enjoy the dogs."

 

Sue Trout and her Rottweiler Slinger.