Storylines

Super Duty Tough Work is the first ever hip-hop group from Manitoba to be nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. We follow frontman Brendan Kinley, a rapper who draws on the past to make music for the present. Brendan is the youngest in a long family legacy of musicians, including late Juno winner Gerry Atwell and virtuoso pianist Winifred Atwell. Against the backdrop of his deep-rooted family history in music, hip hop as a space for social commentary, and Super Duty teetering on the edge of a national breakout, this is the anatomy of a hip hop album.

Trevor Campbell has unfinished business. After abandoning ship, he never reconnected with Paul and Nans. It’s been five years. Now he wants to find them, to finally talk about the day he fled.

Trevor Campbell joins the anarchist stage company “Caravan" and has his first taste of life with this ragtag family of theatre pirates. It's all terribly romantic, as Trevor travels with them in Europe, and later joins them in Louisiana. But it’s also terrifying, when U.S. government agents pay the ship a surprise visit in New York.

In 2012, Trevor Campbell ran away with the sea circus. He joined a floating experiment: “Caravan,” a renegade theatre troupe who sail around in a tall ship, putting on provocative theatre from its deck and riggings. Paul and Nans created the theatre company in the 1970s and captain the ship. In Part 1 of this three part podcast series, we discover the history of this anarchist troupe and follow Trevor as he auditions to join them.

Two stories about making connections, in a world that has changed because of the pandemic. First up, when the pandemic struck in the spring, artist Aiden McMahon set up an audio pen pal network, pairing strangers from across the country to connect through voice memos. We follow two of these pen pals, Sophie Maguire and Angela Stukator, who live across Canada from each other, and are navigating very different stages of life. THEN, as she awaits the birth of her first child, Lisa Xing gives her parents what she thinks is the ultimate honour: she tells them she wants them to choose their granddaughter-to-be's Chinese name. But Lisa's parents, who immigrated to Canada when Lisa was a child, tell her she should have a Western name. Of course, Lisa's parents have seen how Lisa struggled with her own Chinese name, Yaxi, and want to ease the way for their granddaughter. Now that COVID-19 has sparked a resurgence in anti-Chinese racism, Lisa struggles to convince her parents that she's making the right choice... and chose a name for her daughter.

Two stories about the rituals that help us through. First, Eva Voinigescu's Romanian grandparents are obsessed with their own burials — from who their "neighbours" will be to the shoes they plan to wear. They even own more than one potential grave plot, complete with headstones ready to go. But as the coronavirus sets in, Eva reflects on whether their tradition of obsessive burial planning can withstand this new reality. Next, in 1995, Christy Thompson's brother, Kelly, was trekking in Nepal when a catastrophic landslide tore through the area. His body was never found. Christy has struggled with this loss her whole life, but recently, when her dad told her he was finally ready to let go of Kelly's old clothes, she found a new outlet for her grief.

In 2013, Torontonian Simon Smith sent away his DNA for analysis. Simon wanted to see if he had inherited his late grandfather's heart troubles. When Simon got the results, he was pleased to learn he hadn't... but he was soon to learn he had something else: a first cousin, that no-one in their family knew existed. That message started the Smith family on a trail of discovery that led them to London England, and a little known part of history.

A good canoe trip takes good planning. Don Starkell knew that better than anyone. He spent a whole decade planning for the one he promised his two boys. Then again, he was planning to take them further than anyone had ever paddled before. On June 1, 1980, Don and his teenage sons set off from Winnipeg's Red River, planning to cover a distance of nearly 20,000 kilometres, through 13 countries, heading for the Amazon. Forty years later, Don's two sons look back on this inconceivable, world-record-setting journey, and the sometimes misplaced, sometimes heroic effort their father made to teach them the meaning of life.