“Mikey and Corm’s Sober Song” – Peterborough Currents
Local artists share how their “relationship was reshaped by recovery and music.”
Cormac Culkeen and Michael Cloud Duguay share a friendship rooted in respect and creative camaraderie. They record and gig together across the country. And they encourage each other as they go from one success to another.
The friends came up together as two “ambitious and reckless young people” in the “small, freaky incubator” that was Peterborough’s late-2000s music scene, as Duguay put it. They made records, shared stages, and even launched a short-lived art venue.
But they also drank a lot — and their struggles with alcohol nearly ended their careers and their friendship. They stopped speaking to each other and they left town to walk separate, sometimes dark, paths for several years.
Eventually, though, friendship and sobriety brought them back to music, back to each other, and back to their hometown. It’s a beautiful story of the healing power of art and friendship.
For the Peterborough Currents Magazine, I wrote a feature article about Cormac’s and Michael’s journey. You can still find the magazine at a variety of downtown locations, so if you want to read the story in print, there’s time to pick up a copy.
But for those who prefer to read online, it’s available on the Peterborough Currents website.
“Meet Marjorie, the giant Newfoundland dog spreading joy at a Peterborough retirement home” – Peterborough Currents
Every time Kim Meekin walks in the front doors of the Royal Gardens Retirement Residence, on Clonsilla Avenue, the faces of residents and staff immediately light up. But it’s not Meekin they’re so happy to see. The smiles are for Marjorie, the gentle giant who pads along beside her.
Marjorie is a massive black Newfoundland with soft, shaggy fur and a blue bib fastened around her neck that says “Therapy Dog.” On most days, she’s a regular family pet who loves to swim and lounge at home. But every Monday morning, she has an important job to do: visiting Royal Gardens, where she brings comfort, distraction, and lasting joy to those she meets.
National Therapy Animal Day celebrates the contributions of pets like Marjorie every year on April 30. The day is dedicated to raising awareness and recognizing the impact these animals have on the people they serve. In Peterborough, the organization East Central Therapy Dogs (ECTD) trains and certifies dogs like Marjorie.
“I think dogs are nicer than most people,” said Bozena, a Royal Gardens resident who keeps treats on hand for Marjorie’s visits. “No matter what you do, they love you,” she said.
Read more about the work of local therapy dogs and their handlers at the Peterborough Currents website.
“This one-woman show was a model for accessible performance” – Peterborough Currents
When blind playwright, composer and Dora Award nominated performer Vivian Chong brought her one-woman show “Blind Dates” to Market Hall with the help of Public Energy last month, she and her team prioritized creating an accessible experience for audience members.
For the hard of hearing, live captions were projected onto a white cloud suspended above the stage. Sound effects were timed to provide auditory cues for those who couldn’t follow Chong visually. And attendees were even invited to touch samples of the set on their way into the theatre, so they could have a tactile experience of the play as well.
Chong’s and Public Energy’s efforts were appreciated by members of Peterborough’s blind community, who were sitting front and centre for the performance.
“It feels very rewarding,” said John Morris, who came to the show with a small group of Canadian Council of the Blind (CCB) members and sat with his service dog, a yellow lab named Casey. “The venue is accessible. Everyone is helpful,” he said.
The focus of “Blind Dates” was Chong’s experiences dating as a blind woman in Toronto, and her stories resonated with audience members.
“There was so much reality in it for me,” said Debby Haryett, another CCB member who attended the performance. “And I thought, oh that’s wonderful to be able to laugh at it and remember how it felt and experience it through someone else.”
Kate Alton, Public Energy’s new programming director, said she wants to continue offering accessible performances to audiences in Peterborough. “We can’t let go of what’s important in terms of taking care of each other and looking at the world from as many viewpoints as possible,” she said.
To learn more about “Blind Dates” and accessible theatre, read my full story on the Peterborough Currents website.
“Choose Your Own Adventure marks 10 years of communal adventuring on Trent Radio” – Peterborough Currents
It’s a Sunday evening and Chris Lawson is sitting inside a radio booth at Trent Radio. He opens the cover of a yellowing paperback, and gets ready to start reading live on air.
The book he has in his hand is Space Vampire, the 71st installment of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, which was hugely popular with children in the 1980’s and 90s.
Lawson has been reading the series live on Trent Radio since 2015. Listeners write in during each installment of the show to decide what twists and turns to follow in that week’s story.
Lawson’s co-host, Em Minthorn, sits beside him, preparing a playlist of spacey and spooky background music to set the mood for this week’s adventure.
The show’s intro music swells into a synthed-up electric guitar riff, signalling the hosts are about to go live. Listeners across Peterborough are tuning in, ready to play along. Will the pre-teen cadet at the centre of Space Vampire save his fleet from doom? Listeners will decide.
“There’s something really compelling about being in the centre of choosing where the story goes, rather than just having it relayed to you,” says Liam Kennedy-Slaney, a devoted listener who has tuned in almost every week since the show launched 10 years ago.
Kennedy-Slaney says he’s also a fan of Lawson’s storytelling. “The recurring highlight is Chris’s attempt to do as wide a variety of accents as there are stars in the universe,” he said.
For this episode, Lawson gives the vampire villain a lilting Hungarian accent, while voicing the space station cook as if he’s a boisterous Quebecer. He makes another character sound like Napoleon Dynamite.
The nerdy hilarity of the books, combined with Lawson and Minthorn’s obvious chemistry, have attracted a following of loyal listeners to the show over the last decade.
To learn more about the history of the show, read the full story on the Peterborough Currents website.
A. K. Stream and Story Studio 