This is not really related to anything (well, maybe tangentially to the success of the Liberal Party of Canada) but I was looking at this Chatelaine cover from September 1968, the height of Trudeaumania, and laughing at the headlines. Some things never change
"Canadian women are MASOCHISTS" it's true
super obscure canadian sci-fi: Def-Con 4 (1985)
it was shot and produced in halifax, NS :D
love that arrow video did a 35mm film scan and re-released it in HD 👏
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNzYKXQeXdA
its official poster just screams post-apoc 80s. artist: gary pullin
less well known was that the artist ahem, borrowed, pretty damned blatantly from angus mckee's cover art (1976). with a budget this low, i guess you get what you pay for.
so after the open discussion of how to deal with the canadian content problem on the fediverse, i've decided to start small: i'm going to post little stories about canadian life once every day or two (we'll figure out a bigger strategy later.)
today's find: The Lost Whole Moose Catalogue.
whenever i'm out used book shopping, i keep my eyes open for the most obscure stuff i can find. the more hyperlocal and weird the better.
this book that began its life as a local zine from whitehorse (in the yukon) is easily in my top 10 bizarre and wonderful canadian retro obscura.
equal parts parody of stewart brand's "whole earth catalogue" and part real tips for living in the far north, it is absolutely replete with every kind of diy tool building, cabin building, farming, cooking, trapping, and living off the land information you can imagine.
and of course, being from the north, there is no shortage of weather, animal and gallows humour.
if you ever see a copy on the shelf, grab it. besides, who could resist a Lord of the Rings typeface on the front cover like that?
RE: https://techhub.social/@giflian/116127211289400917
this might be the most obscure topic on canadian tv history and i absolutely love that this book exists
@magnesium for sure. but keep in mind that granting systems are equally censoring - they're totally selective based on their own rules about content too. i've worked through granting systems in the arts and sciences here, and their goals are to promote whatever cultural/political focus they're currently built around.
that being said: i absolutely appreciate that someone cared enough to actually build meaningful rules about what is canadian and what isn't. i'd rather be arguing with another canadian about what counts as canadian-enough-content, than promoting american libertarianism as some kind of cyber utopia.
the current fediverse absolutely favours populism and trendy american content, just due to a pure numbers game. that's a recipe for losing your culture if you're anyone but american.
@cxiao dedicated hashtags are a fantastic idea. that at least would improve reach for specific topics. hnom was a great tag during the olympics! (it gets pretty quiet during the regular season unfortunately)
i'd love to hear if there are any technical/actionable/doable outcomes from tomorrow's #fedimtl conf on the subject of canadiana.
to me, it seems that there might be a multi-pronged approach possible:
- hashtags for sure
- much better canadian maso instance-instance relaying support (it is currently totally borked)
- a specific canadian instance that manages its Trending hashtags very closely (this is how the front page gets dominated with US news)
- an instance devoted to posting cancon?
@vga256 This is interesting and I will have to think a bit about this! I am a bit younger but I still grew up in the era of lots of original Canadian children's programming on Treehouse TV and YTV, and tons of cultural touchstones that came out of that. It is again something that kids do not have nowadays.
I definitely think having a dedicated hashtag would be a good step. There's plenty of other hashtags that I have found good communities in, such as # hnom or # KpopMonday. One thing that helps with those communities too is the presence of regular events where everyone is checking and posting to the hashtag, such as hockey games or the weekly eponymous Kpop monday posts.
However it does not solve the problem of "people new to fedi will see very much American cultural content".
It also sounds like a good topic of discussion at tomorrow's @info / #FediMTL conference, which has a lot of Canadian fedi contributors speaking.
i have a weird idea that i'd like some input on from fellow canadians specifically about mastodon/the fediverse. boosts very much appreciated!
i grew up in the 80s and 90s canada. there were rules about the % and types of "canadian content" broadcasted on tv/radio.
partly because of that, and federal-provincial funding credits, i got to grew up with canadian-produced tv series like the Beachcombers, The Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup, The Raccoons, North of 60, The Elephant Show, Degrassi Jr/Sr High. it's a big list, and i'm sure you remember a lot more. some of it was great. some of it sucked. but all of it was very weird and canadian.
there was nothing i was fiercely prouder of than being canadian, because it was all around me.
and the in the 2000s some of that changed. cancon weakened. american productions got a huge foothold here, and suddenly we became inundated with american pop tv and music. i watched teens/adults become infatuated with US pop lifestyle, mostly because - i think! - we just didn't produce anything worth watching or listening to. even cbc.ca is 50% american headlines now, and it's painful
here's where mastodon comes in. i'm seeing that process happen again on masto. canadians posting endlessly about american politics and pop culture. i just checked the live feed of the largest masto instance in canada, and it was 100% american news opinions.
what i don't see - and please correct me if i'm wrong - is a cancon-oriented masto instance or fedi presence. one that *specifically* is organized around boosting/organizing/frontpaging canadian stories with canadian people in them.
i want to talk about our utterly unwatchable modern canadian tv series. or just how lame cbc radio 1's pop culture interviews are. or how heartbroken i was to see the team canada women's team lose a nailbiter.
i love that the fediverse was built around internationalism, but i've watched two generations of kids grow up with weak ties to their local weirdo canuck culture. they deserve a place where canadian stuff is front-and-centre, even if it sucks and we know it. i want to know the local news in coal harbour and fort st john and churchill.
what would that look like on the fediverse? would it be a masto instance? or something else?
feel free to reply here, or just write something up and tag with #canadaverse
#canada #fedizen #canadaverse #yeg #alberta #bc #saskatchewan #manitoba #yukon #nunavut #quebec #novascotia #ontario #newbrunswick #newfoundland #nwt
Cindʎ Xiao 🍉
vga256