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K’naan got tired of the spotlight. So he stepped behind the camera for his debut film

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TORONTO – K’naan Warsame shot to international stardom in the late aughts with his smash hit “Wavin’ Flag.” Not long after, he waved goodbye to the limelight.

“I don’t think at the time that I was cut out for that kind of intensity,” the Somali-Canadian rapper and singer says of the chart-topper, which soared beyond airwaves to become Coca-Cola’s promotional anthem for the 2010 World Cup and spurred remixes by stars including will.i.am and David Guetta.

“I still really appreciated the experience and all of that, but it was nuts. It was a lot,”Warsame says.

After dropping his 2012 album “Country, God or the Girl,” he decided to take a step back from the music business. He says he felt drained by the demands of the album release cycle.

“I’ve probably made two albums worth of music since that time, but I just haven’t released it because I lost the energy for putting music out. It just takes so much to be trying to crack through the noise and be like, ‘I’ve got something to hear!” the 46-year-old says on a video call from his New York apartment.

“I want whatever I’m doing for now to be about the work itself and less so about my own identity and history.”

Warsame says he’s spent the last decade creating things that don’t require him to be the centre of attention. One of them is his directorial debut “Mother Mother,” which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival Friday.

The film centres on Qalifo, a widower portrayed by Maan Youssouf Ahmed, and her college-age son Asad, played by Elmi Rashid Elmi, who manage a camel farm in rural Somalia. When Asad learns that his girlfriend has been seeing Liban, an American visitor played by Hassan Najib, tensions escalate into a confrontation that alters the course of their lives.

Warsame says he wrote the movie’s script in October 2020 as an homage to his aunt Qalifo, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The main character is loosely based on her.

“As I was dealing with these challenging last months of her life, I was putting her through a challenge in a fictional landscape so I could spend more time with her.”

His aunt died just as filming began in northern Kenya.

Warsame, who has long drawn musical inspiration from his war-torn homeland, says the film is also a tribute to Somali mothers.

“Our mothers are very tough, very loving, very powerful people. You meet any Somali and you talk about a Somali woman or Somali mother, there’s an immediate recognition of what that is,” he says.

“This movie tries to pull back the curtain on that specific and unusual quality to the Somali woman.”

Warsame says he first got the filmmaking bug in 2013 when he did a month-long stint at the Sundance Institute’s annual directors and screenwriters labs in Utah.

“I was trying to see if I could tell stories or evoke a feeling through the camera, the way I could do with words and music.”

He says the experience marked a “big shift” for him creatively and he fell in love with the idea of an entire team working together to tell one story.

“It was a less lonely way to work. You just feel like people are like little ants moving a big thing together.”

In 2016, HBO ordered “Mogadishu, Minnesota,” a family drama pilot about the Somali community in Minneapolis written, directed and executive produced by Warsame and executive produced by “The Hurt Locker” filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow. The network announced in 2017 it was not moving ahead with the pilot.

Warsame says he decided to pull the plug on the show after it got swept up in controversy over its subject matter.

“This was before any kind of show was making anything that had to do with complex topics involving Muslims and immigration. The first of something always has a lot more challenges to crack through,” he says.

“I think people were so afraid because there was no precedent for somebody talking about the Somali experience, and more broadly, the Black African Islamic experience.”

Warsame says he opted to wait and make other things rather than move forward with a show “that people were watching with suspicion, not openness.”

He notes he picked up many tools while filming “Mother Mother”— from a deeper understanding of the pacing of a story to the intention behind cinematography — that he can apply to his “next thing.” But he has “no idea” what that thing will be.

He released a track last year called “Refugee,” earning a Special Merit Award from the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy Awards. A new song, “I Come From,” plays during his film’s closing credits. But he can’t confirm whether a new album is in the works.

“I’ve never been this tired in my whole life. I’ve been non-stop,” he says, noting he only wrapped “Mother Mother” in August.

“I’m sure there’s something already going in the back of my head. I do want to make another little movie. I’m not really that interested in big things. I like the little kind of guy, the little movies. I have some others in mind,” he adds.

“But music is always there, so we’ll see what happens.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2024.

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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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