Saturday, November 12, 2016

Canada Today: Dams, Fiddles and That New Leader Next Door

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Saturday, November 12, 2016		NYTimes.com/Canada »

Canada Today

Dams, Fiddles and That New Leader Next Door

By IAN AUSTEN

The construction site of the hydroelectric facility at Muskrat Falls in Labrador in July. Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

Because many parts of Canada rely on electricity produced by dams, "hydro" is often synonymous with electrical power and electrical utilities. The country's efforts to cut emissions linked to climate change have, not surprisingly, renewed interest in hydroelectricity. But demonstrations in Labrador last month and research led by a Nova Scotia native now at Harvard that was published this week highlighted an often overlooked consequence of hydro dams — mercury buildup in the water behind them. Without costly and time-consuming remediation, they can poison indigenous people who live downstream.

Celtic sounds. While out in Cape Breton, my colleague Craig Smith spent time with Ashley MacIsaac, Natalie MacMaster, Christine Melanson and other musicians to learn the how the "dirt" gets into the island's famous fiddle music. He also discovered that when fiddlers from Cape Breton began traveling in greater numbers to Scotland about 30 years ago, they helped set off a revival of their music in the country where it began. Be sure to watch the Daily 360 video that accompanies Mr. Smith's story.

Across the border. While it's unlikely that Americans unhappy with Donald J. Trump's election as president will lead a mass migration to Canada, the result of this week's vote will probably create a wide range of challenges for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Perhaps at the top will be the question of how to go ahead with a carbon tax in Canada if Mr. Trump follows up on promises not to act on climate change in the United States. The Conservative opposition is already arguing that imposing such a tax in Canada without similar American action will disadvantage Canadian companies.

Canada's musical poet. While Leonard Cohen spent much of his life outside of Canada, he maintained in a house in Montreal. On Thursday, after the announcement of Mr. Cohen's death at age 82, mourners gathered there with guitars to sing his songs, the best known of which is "Hallelujah." "Mr. Cohen's sophisticated, magnificently succinct lyrics, with their meditations on love sacred and profane, were widely admired by other artists and gave him a reputation as, to use the phrase his record company concocted for an advertising campaign in the early 1970s, "the master of erotic despair," Larry Rohter wrote in Mr. Cohen's obituary.

Telling all. Robbie Robertson, another major Canadian figure in music, has just published a 500-page book, "Testimony," covering the period of his life up to the break up of the Band. The group's final concert was turned into the acclaimed documentary film "The Last Waltz" by Martin Scorsese. "His memoir is confident and well oiled," Dwight Garner wrote in his review of "Testimony" for the The Times. "At times it has the mythic sweep of an early Terrence Malick movie." The book reveals that Mr. Robertson's family background is as interesting as his time working with musical luminaries like Bob Dylan.

Tourism East. The Times's 36 Hours travel feature made its way to Toronto. Jeremy Egner's agenda mixes some new tourist spots, like the Junction neighborhood, with the old, like Casa Loma.

Tourism West. Suzanne MacNeille of The Times toured the "global buffet" that is the restaurant scene in Vancouver, British Columbia. "It's no secret that food is one of the best ways to get the gist of a place, and that especially holds true for Vancouver," she wrote. "Among the most ethnically diverse cities in Canada, if not North America, the city is home to sizable populations whose background is Chinese, Southeast Asian, First Nations, Korean, Indian, Portuguese, English, Irish, German — again, the list goes on."

A dot in the ocean. Dan Levin looked into the role of strong drink in the territorial dispute between Canada and Denmark over a lump of rock known as Hans Island.

Here are some articles from The Times, not necessarily related to Canada, that I found interesting this week:

• Rats enjoy tickling so much that they not only squeak out the equivalent of laughter, but also seek it out.

• Environmentalist are pushing banks, including Toronto-Dominion, to cancel loans to an oil pipeline project in North Dakota that has been vigorously opposed by indigenous Americans.

• Nick Wingfield looks at the pitfalls and benefits of technologies that allow family members to play Big Brother on each other.

• Anne Barnard ventures into Aleppo, Syria, and finds two different cities: "You go from this moonscape of war-destroyed buildings to a street of buses, open shops and apartments with laundry hanging from the balconies."

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.