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Nostalgia for ‘a mythical past’: why Gen Z loves the old-school digicam

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TORONTO – The photos are grainy, poorly lit or pixelated. The flash has washed out the subjects or illuminated only a portion of the scene. There may be a tiny orange time stamp in the bottom right-hand corner.

But the photographers don’t mind; it’s what they’re going for, said 20-year-old Anya Chigak.

“It captures the vibe a lot more than a clean photo taken by your phone.”

Like many of her peers, Chigak has embraced compact digital cameras — a token of the past she hopes will keep her tethered to the present.

The marine biology student from Cambridge, Ont., pilfered one from her mom and purchased the other second-hand for $10. Neither can produce the quality of the camera built into hersmartphone.

Chigak was in Grade 10 when she started using her mom’s old digicam from the mid-aughts, wary of the allure of her phone’s notifications and looking for a way to capture memories while staying in the moment.

The results also match her esthetic sensibilities.

“I’m very into antiques and vintage,” she said. “I work at an antique store and I collect records and vintage clothes and cassettes, so I’ve always liked the older look of photos better.”

They remind her of the contents of her parents’ old photo albums, which she always preferred to the well-lit, perfectly crisp and immaculately edited pictures that populated her social media feeds.

Selma Purac, a professor at Western University’s faculty of information and media studies, said the digicam is just the latest in a long line of out-of-date technology to capture the youth zeitgeist: vinyl, yes, but also disposable cameras and instant cameras, reminiscent of old Polaroids.

“These are artifacts of an earlier time, and I think that makes them kind of transportive,” Purac said.

Her students and those younger than them, the ones embracing the digicam trend, came of age during the COVID-19 pandemic and are entering a precarious future shaped by climate and cost-of-living crises.

“And then there’s the mental health crisis that’s been brought on by their engagement with digital media,” Purac added. “So this desire to reach to a mythical past, a more positively framed past, kind of makes sense.”

That framing of the past is a key ingredient to nostalgia, she said.

“There is a real simplification underlying most nostalgia. Nostalgia is memory that necessitates forgetting. It’s memory that necessitates erasure, because what we’re doing is we’re reaching back to a perceived simpler time.”

Emma Soper, a 23-year-old linguistics student in Hamilton, can put an exact year to that time: 2011, when she was nine years old and got the digital camera she still uses today.

“It’s comforting to go back to a time when there was less responsibility and things felt more like someone else was deciding for you — it’s kind of a break from the mentality of: ‘I’ve gotta figure this out on my own,'” she said.

She also likes that the photos she takes with the digital camera aren’t necessarily for sharing.

“It’s not like, ‘I’m gonna upload this to VSCO and adjust the contrast and the sharpness and the saturation and make sure I have a nice caption,'” Soper said. “It was just, smile for the camera, and that’s it — even though I know full well I will likely post some of those pictures on Instagram.”

Cedrick Pizarro has perfected his process for sharing the photos from his digital camera.

The 20-year-old flight services student from Toronto has become his friend group’s de facto photographer — and unlike Chigak and Soper, he’s editing his pictures. He uploads them to Darkroom, an app in which he’s created preset filters to enhance the retro feel.

Then, Pizarro shares the photos to his Instagram stories so his friends can see them and ask for copies.

But Pizarro is using more than just his digital camera: he also takes photos with his phone and an Instax instant camera.

The phone is good for videos and immediate sharing, while the Instax photos feel more spontaneous.

“There’s no second take,” he said of his digicam. “With the digital camera, you can take more and more, while Instax only has 10 (sheets of film.)”

In that sense, the digital camera is unlike the phone and the film camera, he said.

“It’s so fun taking photos without knowing the outcome,” he said. “You can see it in the camera, but it’s so small…If you take a photo on your phone and then you see it, you’ll want to redo it.”

An added bonus?

“When I was a kid I wasn’t able to use the digital camera because it could be broken easily,” he said. “So now I get a chance to take pictures whenever I want.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 1, 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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