June Issue No.1

Politics and art have always shared an uneasy address, and this issue we lean into that tension. In our RADARt feature, we ask what an NDP government would actually mean for arts and culture in Canada—not through the usual lens of funding announcements, but through the more elemental question of time: who has it, who doesn’t, and what we do with it when we finally get it back. Elsewhere, we spotlight the Canadian premiere of Ken Kelleher's ANCHORBALL at the Royal Botanical Gardens, the opening night of Toronto Summer Music with Les Arts Florissants at Koerner Hall, and a season of Southern Ontario events stretching from a vogue ballroom night at Buddies in Bad Times to an Afrofuturist solo exhibition in Hamilton. In Cannopy Kudos, we recognize the courage of violinist Lara St. John, whose documentary Dear Lara demands accountability from the institutions that have long protected predators. As always, this is your guide to what's happening across the province — and a reminder that the time you spend with it is, itself, a small act of resistance.

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For this week’s poll, we are taking a brief break from big picture questions and bringing it back to your experience of reading the ANY newsletter. Here is your chance to let us know which new segments we should add to our biweekly issues covering the arts industry across Southern Ontario. After launching our opinionated RADARt and Cannopy Kudos Series, we are ready to explore other ways to discover arts and culture in the province. Let us know which of the five new segments you would like to see included in future Issues of this newsletter!

We were hoping for controversial outcomes to a controversial question, but instead there’s a strong consensus: tax exception should come with certain responsibilities. Nearly two-thirds of you agreed that tax-exempt institutions should provide community cultural space, suggesting a general dissatisfaction with the current role being played by these institutions. At the same time, there was very little support (only 4%) for the most hardline position of revoking tax exemptions for institutions that refuse to open up their space to the general public. On the flip side, literally no one felt that private spaces with tax exemption should remain… private spaces. This is profound because it suggests we have a long way to go when it comes to maximizing the use of cultural spaces — churches, halls, and heritage buildings — to meet the public’s demands.

The Canadian premiere of ANCHORBALL: A Curious Art Journey is coming to Royal Botanical Gardens this summer! Explore the vibrant sculptural universe of artist and contemporary sculptor Ken Kelleher, internationally known as Anchorball. This massive outdoor exhibition transforms the garden into a vivid sculptural landscape where bold characters, imaginative narratives, and contemporary form merge with nature and blooms to create a world that feels full of wonder, yet deeply recognizable.

Toronto Summer Music Festival is one of Canada’s leading classical music festivals, bringing internationally renowned artists and emerging performers to Toronto each summer for a citywide celebration of chamber music, orchestral performance, and musical discovery. Running from July 9 till August 1st, Toronto Summer Music opens its 2026 festival with an appearance by the internationally acclaimed Les Arts Florissants, the celebrated French Baroque ensemble renowned for its historically informed performances. Serving as the festival’s opening-night concert, the program sets the tone for the weeks ahead, bringing one of Europe’s defining early music ensembles to Toronto.

1. Siofra | Jun 17–28 | TORONTO — Part two of Eldritch Theatre's Dark Mother Trilogy, created by Natalia Bushnik and Kathleen Welch, exploring the Irish myth of changelings through a tragic 19th century story. Eldritch Theatre / Spindle Collective | Red Sandcastle Theatre | Horror Theatre / New Work

2. Just Feel It: Toronto Vogue Night | Jun 18 | TORONTO — Toronto’s only consistent ballroom night run entirely by Trans women, featuring open-to-all competitive categories — vogue, runway, face, realness, and body — with a $200 cash prize. Organized by Milani Telfar; built for the city’s Black and Brown queer community. Milani Telfar/Buddies in Bad Times) | Ballroom/Vogue/Nightlife Performance

3. Sweet Ephemera | June 18–20 | TORONTO ─ A double bill of new dance works by Eilish 미정 Shin-Culhane (peel me) and Jose Miguel ‘Miggy’ Esteban (pahinga ka muna), built around embodied access practices including ASL interpretation, open captions, and tactile offerings. DanceWorks | Franco Boni Theatre | contemporary dance

4. Art on the Street 2026 | Jun 20 | GUELPH — Guelph’s largest outdoor art exhibition and sale, featuring juried regional and emerging artists in open-air studios along Quebec Street. A free, family-friendly event drawing thousands of visitors to discover original fine art and craft. Guelph Arts Council/Downtown Guelph Business Association | Quebec Street, Downtown Guelph | Visual Art/Outdoor Exhibition

5. En Plein Air Watercolour Painting | Jun 20 | KITCHENER — Artist and educator Candice Leyland leads an outdoor watercolour painting session in the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery’s Garden of Resilience. An accessible, hands-on workshop connecting participants to the landscape through direct observation. KWAG / Candice Leyland | Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (Garden of Resilience) | Visual Art/Participatory Workshop

6. Camille Turner: Hometown Queen | Opens June 26 | HAMILTON ─ A new solo exhibition by Hamilton-born Afrofuturist artist Camille Turner, exploring identity, memory, and the city’s Black histories through performance documentation and installation. Art Gallery of Hamilton | contemporary art / Afrofuturism

7. 5 Solitudes | June 26 – August 8 | WINDSOR ─ Bringing together multiple artists working across contemporary media, 5 Solitudes explores themes of isolation, connection, and coexistence through installation, image-making, and spatial intervention. Artcite Inc. | Contemporary Art

8. ArtFest Kingston | June 26–28 | KINGSTON ─ A three-day outdoor festival in City Park featuring juried artisans, live music, food, and family programming along the Lake Ontario waterfront. Kingston Artist Events | City Park | multidisciplinary / craft fair

9. Little Eden | Jul 2–12 | TORONTO — Gabriel wakes trapped in his late grandfather’s house, stumbling through waking nightmares as he picks apart the walls of his own psyche. A debut solo work exploring grief and authenticity, premiering at Toronto Fringe. Charles Ford | Factory Theatre Studio | Solo Performance/Theatre

10. Defiant Memory | Till August 1 | TORONTO ─ This group exhibition brings together print-based works that examine memory as an act of preservation, resistance, and cultural continuity. Through diverse approaches to image-making, the participating artists explore how personal and collective histories are carried forward, challenged, and reimagined. Open Studio | Contemporary Art / Printmaking

Issue 16 invites you to take a long, slow walk — through boardwalks, backstreets, and creative nooks — where the coffee is hot, the leaves are turning, and your favourite song plays on loop. Across 100 pages, and spanning twelve editorial series, we encounter over 30 artists who redefine presence: from Toronto’s dance and jazz scenes to London’s Afro-fusion rhythms and Paris’s experimental stages.

ISSUE 16

This series presents scoops and deep-dives on topics in the arts ecosystem across Southern Ontario. From early announcements, to gallery openings, to short opinion pieces, RADARt captures the most exciting happenings on our creative radar.

By Michael Zarathus-Cook, Chief Editor

I’ve always been reluctant to drag politics into this arts platform, mostly because I see politics as downstream of culture, and culture is even further downstream of art. But lately I’ve been thinking about the biggest obstacle that arts organizations—and arts journalism—have to contend with. As much as we would like it to be fanciful things such as shrinking attention spans, and the emulsification of art into the entertainment industry, there is a far greater common enemy that all artistic endeavours have to contend with: it’s the economy, stupid.

We’re very proud of what we are building here at Cannopy. It is not a platform that is driven by algorithmic gimmickry, but one sustained by the delivery of quality content designed to be consumed slowly. So, as an editor, I have to ask myself: where are people gonna find the time to consume all this quality content? Our target demographic–the precious millennial cohort–is typically working one-and-a-half to two jobs just to keep pace with their monthly bills, and the little time that they have left for artistic engagement is easily gobbled up by the piranhas of entertainment on Instagram and TikTok and the like. It’s easy to blame the readers, but you have to look upstream at what is causing this scarcity of time. This is where politics comes in.

At least, for the sake of this argument, and on the topic of artistic engagement, I will reduce the entirety of any political agenda to one simple metric: how much of my time will I get back if this party, or this politician, or this political movement could enact their agenda? There is a little-appreciated fact of human nature that the less you have of something, the more desperately and carelessly you spend it. Whoever came up with the adage “Penny-wise and pound-foolish” had probably never been down to their last penny. In the face of scarcity, we tend to think less of the long run and the power of investing. This is true for both how we spend our money as well as our time. When people have very little time to spare, the time that they do have is spent on high-fructose content that we find on social media. It doesn’t sustain your soul for very long, but it gives you a quick dopamine rush before you have to get back to work. It doesn’t take much optimism to realize that the more time people have, the more likely they are to consider spending it on things that would sustain them in the long run: arts, culture, community, and other such long-term investments.

So how do you give people back their time? It’s painfully simple: give them back their money. This singular metric, of time and money, is a low resolution but highly effective way to understand the priorities of the different political forces in Canada. For this initial reflection on this issue—and because they are the most vocal party on this issue—I want to focus on the NDP’s approach to giving you back your time and money.

It’s been a really long time since Canada had a legitimate left-wing movement, let alone a left-wing party. The formal leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, chose to steer the party closer towards a centrist liberalism, and in doing so handed the steering wheel to the Liberal party. Voters took notice of this lack of direction, and rewarded them handsomely by revoking their license as an official party in the last election. The NDP literally had almost nothing to lose when Avi Lewis came into the fray with a promise that his candidacy would deliver a true left-wing movement in Canada. Many saw this promise as inherently disqualifying, and his candidacy was only taken seriously after the first few sentences of his victory speech as the new leader. Somehow, there is more doubt about what Lewis and the NDP can achieve now than even before the leadership contention. What there can be no doubt about is that, for the first time in a while, there is a renewed sense of energy for the increasing number of Canadians looking for a truly populist left-leaning political movement.

The economic agenda that the NDP has proposed is imaginative, and can be summarized into 5 main pillars:

• Tax cuts for working Canadians ─ Putting roughly $505 back in the pockets of those earning between $19,500 and $177,882 — and permanently removing the GST from essentials like grocery store meals, diapers, monthly cell and internet bills, and heating.

• Taxing the ultra-wealthy to fund public services ─ Implement a graduated wealth tax on households worth over $10 million, projected to raise approximately $94.5 billion over four years.

• Lowering grocery and household costs ─ Cap grocery prices in its first budget and crack down on price gouging.

• Universal pharmacare and dental care ─ Argue that pharmacare and dental coverage would make a career in the arts more viable for gig workers, freelancers, and contract-based cultural workers.

• Employment Insurance (EI) reform — Reducing the threshold for qualifying to a universal 360-hour standard — and extending coverage to at-risk contractors and the self-employed.

Whatever your politics are, and wherever your political allegiances lie, it is evident that the economic agenda above is one that gives you back your time and money. This economic agenda functions really as a kind of cultural policy by stealth, prioritizing values of the electorate over their economic value. By putting more money in people’s pockets, lowering the cost of daily life, and building a safety net that includes freelancers and gig workers, they create both a larger audience for the arts (that’s you, dear reader) and a more sustainable ecosystem for the artists who create them.

Now, can the NDP actually gain enough political power and enact these policies? I’m sceptical. Lewis, despite being a refreshing and invigorating direction for the party, is a hard sell on the national stage. He is sincere in his messaging, and altogether laser-focused on delivering results. But he lacks style. True, when the issues are this important, style is not a priority—but in politics, style is a form of sincerity (insert copious examples from Zohran Mamdani’s campaign here). The one upside for the NDP’s prospects for broader appeal is that there’s enough time between now and the next election to cultivate a messaging that’s more appealing, and turn Lewis into a messenger that’s less shrill.

In the meantime, we can’t wait any longer to get our time back—this publication depends entirely on the time you make for it. Which is why we will be looking at how the other political parties—including the one in power—are working to support the arts and culture industries.

What can Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony teach us about acceptance?

In the second instalment of Notes From the Recording, Cannopy turns toward Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony through the lens of vinyl culture featuring a recording by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Moving between personal listening reflections and broader musical history, this instalment considers how recordings of the Sixth Symphony have long wrestled with Beethoven’s own resistance to overt programmatic storytelling, while also reflecting on the nostalgia and visual language that surround classical records themselves. As with the series’ first entry, this entry treats the act of listening not simply as consumption, but as a lived ritual shaped by memory, collecting, and the physicality of recorded sound.

Notes from the Recording No. 2: Pastoral

Cannopy Kudos is our shout-out for praiseworthy artists, organizations, and patrons whose good work is contributing to making Ontario’s arts ecosystem a healthier and more inclusive place to be.

If there’s someone that you’d like to give a shoutout to, write a letter to the editor in 200 words or less. Selected entries will receive a free 1-year subscription to The Cannopy Newsletter, and be entered to win special prizes each month. Send your entries to team(at)cannopy.ca

In Finland they have a word for courage that describes something greater than courage: sisu. Sisu is courage mixed with determination, sustained effort, and a tinge of optimism. That is also a word that describes the acclaimed Canadian violinist Lara St. John. St. John has just released Dear Lara, a feature documentary wherein she exposes a pervasive culture of systemic sexual abuse and institutional silence within elite classical music circles. It takes courage to come forward with your story, but requires something even greater than courage to persist with this story to be able to tell it in a comprehensive and unflinching way, many years after the abuse occurred.

Building on St. John’s own public reclamation of her story as a survivor, the film follows her journey across continents to document the shared traumas of fellow musicians and the failures of the schools that were meant to protect them. The result is an urgent call for accountability that seeks to dismantle the “untouchable” status of abusers and transform the future of music education.

St. John joined Cannopy Magazine for Issue 10, in the spring of 2023, to discuss some of the reflections that would eventually form the basis of this documentary. In the clip below, she discusses the culture of deference in classical music that is easily exploited by predators and often makes it hard for victims to speak out. She also discusses how institutions avoid breaking this chain of abuse by simply moving predators around in a pattern that she describes as “predator teacher whackamole”.

WATCH "DEAR LARA"

• Technical Assistant | June 15, 2026 | TORONTO ─ The University of Toronto Faculty of Music is seeking a Technical Assistant to support theatre crews, maintain equipment and supply inventory, and coordinate facility repairs across one of Canada’s largest and most active university-based music programs, hosting over 600 concerts annually. University of Toronto | Salary Not listed

• Senior Artist & Label Operations Manager | June 19, 2026 | HAMILTON (ONTARIO-BASED) ─ Skysong Records is seeking a full-time operations manager to oversee a growing roster of artists, managing release schedules, grant applications, and A&R coordination in a fast-paced music label environment. This hybrid role blends label operations with artist development and early-stage management support. Skysong Records | Not listed (competitive salary)

• Curatorial Assistant – Collection Optimization | June 19, 2026 | NIAGARA FALLS ─ The City of Niagara Falls is hiring a contract curatorial assistant to support the Niagara Falls Museum’s Collection Optimization Project, including photo documentation, collection record administration, and deaccession research. The position runs through March 2027. City of Niagara Falls (Culture & Museum) | $27.00–$35.64/hr

• Production Coordinator – Disability Arts Festival | June 22, 2026 | TORONTO ─ The Disability Collective — Toronto’s only fully disability-led multidisciplinary arts organization — is seeking a Production Coordinator to support the planning and execution of its summer Disability Arts Festival, handling logistics, technical needs, and on-site coordination. The 30-hr/week contract runs June 22–August 28. The Disability Collective | $27.20/hr

• External Collections Review Consultant | June 17, 2026 | LONDON ─ McIntosh Gallery at Western University is seeking qualified curators, academics, or arts professionals to conduct a research-based External Collection Review and Report on the gallery’s permanent collection. This is a contract/freelance engagement open to independent practitioners. McIntosh Gallery (Western University) | Contract

• Executive Director – Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery | July 10, 2026 | KITCHENER-WATERLOO ─ The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery is seeking a new Executive Director to lead this nationally recognized public art museum, overseeing its exhibitions, programs, and operations in the heart of Waterloo Region. This is a permanent, full-time senior leadership position. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery | Not listed (senior-level)

• Artist Educator | July 1, 2026 | HAMILTON ─ Arts For All is continuously recruiting practicing artists to design and lead community-based arts programs — including visual arts, music, dance, drama, and media arts — for children, youth, and families across the greater Hamilton region. The role is flexible and ongoing. Arts For All | Not listed (per-program contract)

• Creative Designer | July 3, 2026 | HAMILTON ─ Oak View Group is seeking a Creative Designer at TD Coliseum in Hamilton to develop visual campaigns spanning professional hockey, live concerts, and venue marketing — including motion graphics, video content, and game-day materials. The role is full-time and permanent. Oak View Group / TD Coliseum | $50,000–$65,000/year