The B.C. Achievement Foundation has named Sechelt-based carver and visual artist Dean Hunt as a recipient of the 2021 Fulmer Award in First Nations Art. The annual award goes to as many as five B.C. Indigenous artists “who have demonstrated a commitment to their art practice, have accumulated a body of work, and who are recognized in their communities as artists.” Hunt is a member of the Heiltsuk Nation in Bella Bella. In a release, the foundation said Hunt is “constantly pushing the evolution of Heiltsuk art forward,” and is “a part of the movement to modernize the art form.” Hunt undertook a five-year apprenticeship with his father, Bradley Hunt, and older brother, Shawn Hunt, “using the tools and techniques his ancestors fought to hold onto through times of hardship and oppression.” Check out Hunt’s website for a look at some of his outstanding work.
MushrooMania
The Canada West Mushroom Fest is on from Friday, Oct. 29 to Sunday, Oct. 31, featuring “speakers and workshops at Gibsons Public Market, Shaggy Jack’s Wild Mushroom Foraging class and forest foraging walks, a mushroom products vendor market at Gibsons Public Market, a mushroom treasure hunt for kids and more.” Part of the festival is a presentation on Friday of the documentary film Dosed, at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons. It tells the story of one woman’s struggle with addiction and who was cured by therapies that included supervised use of “magic mushrooms,” or psilocybin. Doors at 7 p.m. Learn all about the festival at mushroomania.ca.
A Christmas Sail
The annual run of TV movies with a Christmas theme has begun, many of them produced by the company that makes Hallmark greeting cards, and some of which were filmed on the Sunshine Coast. You might see some familiar faces among the extras in A Christmas Sail, shot recently in and around Gibsons Harbour. The movie airs on the W Network at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 31 and again at 12:30 a.m. Monday. Don’t worry if you miss it this time, as W will repeat its showings often over the next few months.
Halloween weekend music
The Grateful Dead tribute band GDBC presents “A GDBC Halloween” at Roberts Creek Legion at 7 p.m. on both Friday, Oct. 29 and Saturday, Oct. 30. Tickets are $25-$35 and can be booked through the website rclegionevents.com.
Get creative with your Halloween costume and maybe win a prize at Halloween Quiplash at Tapworks in Gibsons on Friday, Oct. 29 starting at 8 p.m.
The Clubhouse Restaurant in Pender Harbour has a Rocky Horror Picture Dinner Show from 5 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 30, with a screening of the cult classic film Rocky Horror Picture Show starting at 6 p.m., a three-course meal, and prizes for best movie-character costumes.
Take your pick from two of the best cover bands on the Coast playing Halloween bashes in the same building on Saturday, Oct. 30 from 7:30 to 11 p.m. The Sofa Kings play the lounge at the Gibsons Legion, while Playback performs in the banquet hall. It’s going to be “monsterous,” the Legion assures us. No matter how you dress up, bring a health-protocol mask, too, to wear when you’re up and moving around inside.
At the Clubhouse in Pender on Friday, Oct. 29 from 5 to 8 p.m. you can hear the four-piece traditional Celtic folk band from Victoria, Clanna Morna.
On Sunday, Oct. 31, the Steve Hinton Band plays the Clubhouse from 2 to 5 p.m.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
