Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 226: Paramedic for the Arts — with Norman Armour
Speakers: SAMANTHA WALTERS, AM JOHAL, NORMAN ARMOUR
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Samantha Walters 0:05
Hello listeners! I’m Sam with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
This week on Below the Radar, host Am Johal is joined by Norman Armour, a Vancouver-based curator, consultant, producer, director, actor and non-profit arts specialist with over 35 years of experience. Together they talk about Norman’s time co-founding the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, his storied career in the Vancouver arts scene, as well as his health. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 00:46
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Below the Radar, delighted that you could join us again this week. We have a special guest with us, the living legend Norman Armour. Welcome, Norman.
Norman Armour 00:57
Thank you for having me on the show. If you call it a show.
Am Johal 1:02
I don't know, other people can call it a show, I don't know. Norman, maybe we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit?
Norman Armour 1:10
Yes. My name is Norman Armour. I'm an independent curator, consultant, producer, interdisciplinary artist. I'm based out of Vancouver, been based out of here, since I guess around 1980 or so. Perhaps the late 70s, when I went up to work in Whistler. And I've been an instigator, a co founder of a few institutions in the city that I'm very proud of. And like, continued today, those involve Rumble Productions, the PuSh Festival and the Post at 750, which is a co-location, studio and administrative space in the campus of the CBC buildings in downtown Vancouver. And most recently, I've been working freelance in a variety of different ways. Yeah.
Am Johal 1:58
I should have said Dr. Norman Armour because of course you've—
Norman Armour 2:01
Right!
Am Johal 2:02
—got an honorary doctorate from SFU. There's gonna be a lot of students listening to this as well. So maybe I'll start with just a question around how you found yourself in the arts as a young person, like how did you first get involved? Were you singing and dancing when you were five? Or how did you fall into this as a lifelong passion?
Norman Armour 2:23
Well, my family background is not that uncommon, in a sense that it's bicameral with, that perhaps is the word between Scottish and Irish, Irish Orangemen, you know, very Protestant Irish. On my father's side, well on the Irish side, we were lawyers, very prominent ones, including a Supreme Court judge. He was an engineer, worked at York University oversaw the building of the Steeles campus for about 25 years, actually. But on my mother's side, we're a ragtag team of, of academics and theatre people. Yeah, theatre people, definitely theatre people, including a kind of an amazing guy, James Mavor, who was a professor of economics. He taught, I know I'm not going to remember the name, but the man who taught Marshall McLuhan, and his specialty was Russian history and Russian economic history, and he was a close pen pal of Leo Tolstoy. And he was a Fabian, he was, George Bernard Shaw was a close friend of his. Mark Twain's. So he's a man of these letters in the world in such but a real arts aficionado, and taught at the University of Toronto, established, I think, a chair there in economics. But you know, kind of didn't come from prestigious academic background in Scotland, but found himself in Canada. And one of his daughters was a woman named Dora Mavor Moore and she's considered one of these sort of doyens or, you know, matrons of the Canadian theatre scene, a real, I'd sort of say cultural nationalist, if that makes, I don't know if that's a real phrase or not. And she had a lot to do with establishing Stratford, a lot to do with establishing a kind of a need for Canadian voice, theatrical voice. That was still, for her generation, drawing on English mentors and things.
But her son Mavor Moore really forged forward, and I knew Mavor quite well, and he lived out here on the West Coast in the later part of his life. Mavor was very close to my mother. And I liked her a lot. He was an incredible storyteller and told stories of the beginnings of CBC Radio and as a producer and telling cultural ministers to get the, you know, the F off and let them do their work and such and they were real... They were really forging a really beginning of cultural institutions at the time, from everything from the Charlottetown festival to to St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, the venue there, and many, many institutions in the late 50s and into the mid 60s. And he was the first artist chair of the Canada Council. So you know, that side of my family, that kind of introduced me to it, my sister went into theatre, she was a tailor's apprentice at Shaw and worked also at Manitoba Theatre Centre. Her late husband also was a master carpenter and worked on a couple of Cronenberg films, including Dead Ringers and such. So that was my inspiration around the idea of theatre. I knew I wanted to express myself or speak or something, you know, have some sense of an expressive outlet. And I don't think I had the patience for the other ones, like literature and painting, and I didn't want to be alone. I think there was a part of me that really enjoyed the company of people and doing things together. If you don't, you know, don't ever think of theatre because it's nothing if not collaborative.
Am Johal 5:53
Now, you were a student at SFU.
Norman Armour 5:55
Yeah.
Am Johal 5:56
In the, in the early 80s?
Norman Armour 5:58
Yeah, I think a pretty good period of time.
Am Johal 6:00
Yeah. Can you describe that period? You guys were up in Burnaby Mountain, I assume.
Norman Armour 6:04
Yeah, up in the shacks there in the.... It's funny because they were, they weren't permanent buildings. But I remember going to visit my father on the Keele campus and he was in buildings that weren't permanent either. And he'd been in them for 20 years. So they were there for a very long time. And they were where the Center for the Arts was, Grant Strate was the chair of the department, an extraordinary artist in his own right as a performer and as a choreographer. But as an arts administrator, man, oh, man, he was just sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp. And it was a crazy period of time in really good way. There was a really like, energetic notion around the interdisciplinarity of what that meant, just in a purely social and practical level in terms of knowing people who were in the film department and knowing people in the visual art department and being inspired by a music teacher, as much as you were inspired if your core practice was theatre is by your theatre artists, there was a real energy there and a kind of camaraderie between people. And a lot of people. I mean, SFU I think prided itself, rightly so that it wasn't about turning out people who waited for other people to create situations for you, that you were going to create your own situations, and often you were going to create them with your cohort, with your generation and people that you studied with.
So, you know, I think we've heard lots of stories, read things about certain eras in New York, or Paris or in Berlin. And this was one I frankly, in Vancouver, you know, that, you know, oh, Judy Radul, Ken Lum, I mean, the list is long, it's just an extraordinary list. And there was a point at which, you know, there was the almost the, what do you call, the general strike, because of the cuts in the university, had suffered a third of its cuts, and the Center for the Arts wasn't protected from that. And they were facing their own cuts. And there was this desire to kind of celebrate ourselves and who we are together and such. And we were doing end of term presentation. I think the first time we did it as a group, we just took initiative. And it was like seven hours long, you know, the teachers were coming in at like four in the afternoon going, what the hell's going on here, you guys aren't finished yet. And we were just sharing our work. And I just saw somebody I went to school with, Michael Doherty. He's based out of Toronto, he's a film producer. And he talked about that time with Al Razutis and the exercises that he gave him and others as students there. This kind of liberty, like, doesn't matter what you do, just don't do something that's boring. And don't mimic something else, like, you know, encounter the world around you and respond to it in intriguing and interesting ways. And I also got, I think, another award from SFU, the Arts Award. And in both situations, I kind of said, look, my career, what it's turned out to be and where I've worked in the world, and what I've believed in and stood for all goes to SFU. And my mother. But half of it's SFU, half of it's my mother. And so I really, I cherish SFU. I honestly, I think it's an extraordinary institution with incredible history and an incredible future still to happen.
Am Johal 9:23
Yeah. And so after you graduated, what did you end up starting up and working in the, in the arts?
Norman Armour 9:32
I worked a little bit around Canada doing the weird, the weird shit, I used to sort of say, because, you know, in theatre, you've got quite a big divide between, you know, the kind of straight ahead play play and... or theatre theatre as they like to call it. And say the regional network. And then you have degrees of, of kind of adventuresome. And then you get further and further into experimentation, and then you're into, okay, we're not talking about theatre here anymore. We're talking about performance, you know, some form or another. And I was certainly prepared to do that. I felt comfortable in it. I couldn't dance numbers, I couldn't like, numbers were not my friend. But I could respond to ideas and I could respond to things, to music and stuff in I think intuitive ways that I was taught, you know, how to trust my instincts and how to be in the room and to improvise and such. And to create meaning, you know, to make sense of something whether it be a question, an art, you know, a melody or whether it'd be a question of a, of a story or a question of movement or space, you know, and site specific work and such. So I did some things around Canada, around interdisciplinary art. But I also, through a connection from SFU, I did Shakespeare in the states. And I did it in Boise, Idaho, I did it at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. And I had an incredible summer time there, came back and did another production in the fall of Macbeth. And then I met some people there who were establishing a Shakespeare Company in Albany, New York in a park, by a designer, the park was designed to... Quite a beautiful park designed by the same person who did Central Park in New York, and after Shakespeare Company. And I worked two summers there doing Shakespeare. I think I was basically on the budget, as you know, furniture or something like that.
Am Johal 11:30
Now, in terms of, I know that you worked throughout the states and a bunch of cities as well, and then you also set up and started organizations. So I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that, because actually, a lot of people in town probably don't know about all this work that you did in the States as well.
Norman Armour 11:46
Well, yeah, I mean, very quickly, I worked in Atlanta, Georgia, probably two years out of five years. Over the course of five years. I worked at Emory University, which is where Carter used to teach, very prestigious university, really fine place and really strong theatre program. And an interesting theatre program in that it was a combination of professionals and non professionals. And they produced a lot and developed plays and brought in, you know, world renowned playwrights to do sort of a retrospective or focus on their work. But it was this combination of professionals and non professionals that was, to me, really, really dynamic. And so I taught there a bit and I performed there a bit. That was a big thing. I worked in Sacramento, California, which was really kind of an amazing time. I still remember the Tex Mex restaurant that I would go at sort of happy hour and do a short meal and read Michael Ondaatje, I was reading Skin of a Lion at that time, and I would sort of read 20 or so pages over dinner, before going to perform Tartuffe at the Sacramento Theatre Company. That was a really fond memory. And I sort of joke that I worked in a lot of the minor state capitals of...
Am Johal 12:59
Columbus, Ohio.
Norman Armour 13:00
No, not Columbus, but Boise, Idaho and Sacramento and Atlanta, oh Atlanta's not minor, it's certainly obviously the Southwest or Southeast, it's a major major hub. And then your other question was around...
Am Johal 13:16
Yeah just that, what brought you back to Vancouver in terms of starting new organizations?
Norman Armour 13:22
Yeah, it's funny, you know, my, I think it still happens today, maybe happens quicker, but I can't imagine that anybody coming out of Simon Fraser University or Studio 58, or UBC, Capilano, Langara, Studio 58. Who doesn't immediately go 'do I stay here?' Do I go to Toronto? Do I go to Chicago perhaps? Do I go to Berlin? I mean, if you're a visual artist, you know, do I go to Berlin? It's a big decision to sort of figure out, and harder now because it's, it's not the— it was expensive back there, Vancouver has always been not a particularly cheap place to live. But it's really expensive. I just can't imagine now coming out at 20 and, and 21, or 22, and trying to figure out how to do your rent and how to make money and survive while you did your art form. So it was a, it was a big decision for me. You know, it was funny, the way it described it is that there was a bunch of us for whatever reason, who decided to stay and just slowly or maybe abruptly kind of went, I'm gonna stick here. I'm gonna stick it out here. There's something interesting here. For me, I liked, having come from Toronto, which you know, career is with a capital C. I liked here that, I don't know what the words are to say, it's not that aspirations were less or smaller, but maybe more modest. And it just brought you down to focus on relationships, and people and how you could work together, how you could share resources, what you had more in common than what you had in competition with each other. And over time, I just, I thought, whatever. I'm going to stick here. I drove taxi for a lot of years, I drove taxi for 12 years for blacktop. And so I had a source of income, they liked me a lot. And so I got my cabs when I needed my cabs and could pay my rent in a couple of days and stuff like that. So that wasn't difficult. And we were making good money on taxis that time. This is you know, whatever, late 80s. And, and then it became okay, well, am I really a journeyman actor? I wouldn't describe myself I think, I don't really have all the necessarily—
Am Johal 15:39
Did you practise your lines in the cab with people?
Am Johal 15:42
No, but I worked as an assistant director for Roy Surette a couple of times and I used to see the show one night and then I come back, take a break, park my taxi and I go into the bar at the firehall and give notes to the actors on the previous night's performance. And then take off. So yeah, I did work it in. I worked my taxi in. And I did a piece, a beautiful piece with Harvey Meller, choreographer. Dancecorps. Harvey was one half of Dancecorps and we did a piece called Stay Awake about taxi driving. He was a taxi driver in Winnipeg. He got held up with a shotgun. And I'd certainly had experiences when I drove and I drove a lot of night shifts, and we did a piece together called Stay Awake and it went across the country actually, or went to Toronto and Ottawa. So yeah, it became a source material in some cases. Yeah. Yeah. So how did, how did Rumble come to be? Well, Rumble was a kind of answer to the question of if I wasn't going to sit around and wait for somebody to give me a job and, and I did have an agent. I had a film agent. Really beautiful guy, one of the founding kind of agents in this scene here. Man named Robert Carrier, beautiful man, who I still remember to this day. I felt really odd going look, you know, Robert, he'd seen me in a very whacked out piece in blood alley, directed by Teri Snelgrove, actually, and it was an ensemble piece and very crazy piece. And last thing I think a film agent would go, oh, yeah, I want that guy. I'm gonna, I'm gonna represent him. He's going somewhere. That's the next Brad Pitt. And I said, I said to Robert, I said, look, you know, you can drop me any time, you know, I'm going to be a nuisance to you, because I'm going to go off to Atlanta, and I'm going to do this and blah, blah, blah. And he just quietly said, don't worry, we'll just play by ear. And he kept me for... until he retired and sold his business. And is just a man of honour. And, and he was smart. I mean, he's a very smart businessman. But he gave me the room to kind of do other things and didn't pigeonhole me into look. If you want a career in film, and if you're serious about this, you're gonna have to do this. And I really adored him for that.
So, but on the other side, I could audition for things. And I was doing that to a certain degree, got a gig here and there with Touchstone and other things. But it just seemed like, I want to create things, I want to instigate things. So with a man from Toronto, this crazy idea, Chris Gerrard-Pinker, who I knew through my older brother, and through high school was a theatre creator, close collaborator, and friend of people, like a whole bunch of people, Guillermo Verdecchia and Daniel Brooks, who recently passed away from cancer. And for some reason, I said, Chris, how about we do something? And he wasn't gonna move to Vancouver, he was gonna stay in Toronto. I wasn't expecting that. And he said, sure, and it'll take five years. How do you feel about that? And I went, okay, I like that sober kind of reality that it's going to take that time. And so we started, we started Rumble, and it was called Rumble productions at the time. And as we went along, we both shared an interest in interdisciplinarity. And this idea of working with choreographers, he's done a lot of work with choreographers, a lot of collaboration dramaturgically, had also, you know, co creation. And we both shared an interest in film and other things in the possibilities around that. His mother is, she's still alive, a well-known actress and did a lot of work in radio, so he knew of radio and stuff. And that was a medium that was of real interest to me, or the idea of sound, and such. And so we started, we started Rumble. Yeah
Am Johal 19:28
And you were based in the Dominion building.
Norman Armour 19:32
Yeah, ninth floor. I mean, it's just like Sam Spade written all over the place. I'm just a sucker for something like that, I love that building.
Am Johal 19:40
There's a lot of nonprofits, Da Vinci's Inquest. And like, they were all around there.
Norman Armour 19:45
Yeah I used to stand, you know when I used to smoke, I would stand there with Haddock outside. He had his big stogie and stuff like that and we'd share conversation and stuff.
Am Johal 19:53
And I think Shauna Sylvester was there with IMPACS at that time.
Norman Armour 19:58
Yeah, a lot of really interesting people. And I think I, we moved in there just as Laine Slater was there with marketing and Linda Gorrie, who's just the backbone of so much in the city. You talk about a story that's not been told is the story of Linda Gorrie and how she's woven through the success and, and resilience of organizations. And I think when we moved in, it was just when that when the confection store downstairs was closing. So but I love the Dominion building.
Am Johal 20:28
For those of you listening out, that's like a way before the Nuba days. Way before.
Norman Armour 20:33
Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, it was.
Am Johal 20:34
There was a Mexican restaurant down there too.
Norman Armour 20:36
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting story... Interesting, I don't know if it's interesting. It's just a bit embarrassing, but I was in the elevator at one point and this guy gets on and who I'm assuming is his wife, this older man. And I'm looking at him. And I can't remember his name. And I said, I said to him, are you who I think you are? And he looked at me, took a pause, and he said yes. And knowing exactly that I couldn't remember his name and, and that was nice to meet. I shook his hand, it was Ed Broadbent. But I thought it was a fairly clever way to kind of nod wink, I can't remember his name. And he was very gracious.
Am Johal 21:22
It was the save-the-world building for a long time til’ the rents went up.
Norman Armour 21:26
It kind of was.
Am Johal 21:27
And you did a bunch of productions with Rumble, but then where the idea of the PuSh festival, you left Rumble and then started on on PuSh, or it came out of Rumble
Norman Armour 21:39
It was a co... I mean, like Rumble, I've never done anything that I haven't done it with somebody else, you know, and Rumble had an interest in things. Like a lot of the independent scene, understandably, was driven to do its own work, you created an institution, you could do your own work, direct your own work, or create your own work, act in your own work. And we were certainly interested in doing that and we were doing things of that kind with Rumble. But we were also interested in being something of a hothouse, that kind of place where a creative sort of home for other artists who didn't want to necessarily start institutions and didn't want to put together society and a board and those things to be able to create work. And we thought, hey, we've got some degree of influence. We're part of a new generation, and we were very much a generation. And we're talking 1980, Rumble was founded in 1980. And it's still going today, it's got a great leader in Jiv Parasram. Fantastic. And think I've got his last name correct. But Jiv, he's a wonderful individual. And we were, we wanted it to be more than us. And we wanted it to be about the values that we stood for, but expressed in ways that we would never express them. And so we started residency programs. And we started The Young and the Restless, which was a program around young and emerging artists and providing a platform, a presenting platform for them. We also did stuff with radio, we did.
One of the things that Rumble came out of was a thing, well, one project called Company which was, that's an interesting story, because The Company was a Beckett novella, and we raised money for it through a program that no longer exists to the Canada Council. And I'm not gonna remember right now, an amazing program for interdisciplinarity really, and just great ideas. And we did that. And The Company came out of that because Serge Bennathan, who was moving to Toronto to head up Dancemakers, in a lobby of the firehall one night said, do you want my company? Like, it's all set up legally, and everything, was called Hummingbird or something. And we said, Sure, and we changed it. And we had a whole ton of different names and, and in the end, we came up with Rumble, which was a combination of rambler and mumble, so anyways Rumble. And Chris and I, it was at the cafeteria of blacktop cabs that we came up with a name anyway. So from Rumble, this idea of providing a platform and presenting work, the natural extension was, what do we want to be fed by? Who in Toronto or in Halifax, or in maybe ultimately, Berlin? But who elsewhere in the country do we want to invite in to say, hey, show us what you're doing? Can we show you what we're doing? Maybe we got some connections here. Vancouver, at that time, and maybe it does now I, you know, I've lived a certain life and such, so I can't speak for again somebody coming out of, you know, or having been out of university for two or three years what their experience of Vancouver is, but back then it was isolated. You just didn't, we weren't in the media. Forget it.
Ontario. You know, I grew up in Ontario, I know how it thinks of itself as the centre of the universe, and the Globe and Mail, last thing that they were going to do was cover something in Vancouver, and certainly anything on anything emerging or whatever. So we had to take it into our own hands to establish our own identity and our relationships with the rest of the country. And who shared that too was Katrina Dunn with Touchstone Theatre. And we talked to each other about doing a production, it was a production revival of a Glenn Gould production. Necessary Angel, I think it was, Necessary Angel. Pretty legendary production. Ridiculous manager at the time, who just said, just was stupid in negotiations, and we said, forget it. We dropped it. And then we kind of went, well, what do we do now? And I was possibly going to do something with The Cultch, but they weren't really connected or interested and then Touchstone might do something with it where they were resident The Cultch, but The Cultch didn't because they were doing something, anyway. And we turned back to ourselves and said, you know, what do we do here? And I had done some presentation previously, Jillian Keiley with a really beautiful Under Wraps, extraordinary production with like 20 people on stage, all underneath a white sheet and two people not. The storytelling told that way. And Katrina and I talked about a festival and talked about, again, you know what it would take to do it? And are you interested? Because it's going to be a long haul. And we both seem interested. And there was a festival in Calgary, One Yellow Rabbit High Performance, legendary festival, that certainly was an inspiration. But equally was a festival in Toronto called Six Stages. Six works. Not all solo works, a couple were solo, but six works from around the world. And that was the festival. It wasn't 20 shows. And it was a fantastic festival. And it showed us that scale, size is not everything. It's the quality and the depth of the thing that you present that creates people's perception of scale and depth. And we basically went to them and said, could we get that one? Can we get that one? Can we get that one?
And we presented Marie Brassard with Jimmy, we presented William Yang, who presented again photographer storyteller, with a piece called Shadows, beautiful artist, still a friend today. And we presented One Yellow Rabbit with a piece called Dream Machine, which is about the Dream Machine. William Burroughs and the Canadian, his colleague, poet and the dreamachine that they created. And I remember, the way I describe it is, I, we did Jimmy, which is just a remarkable piece of work. And we were like, you know, if you're presenting theatre or dance, let's say music too, a perfect size house, somebody asked me, what's the perfect sized house in the independent scene. And I said well, if it seats 100, 110 is perfect. Just a sense of demand and craziness. And will I get a seat? And it was crazy for Jimmy, like the word spread within two days. And was just ridiculous. We were at Studio 16. And we were selling out and more than that. And one night there was a talkback. And we said you know, stay around if you wish talkback. Usually you're lucky if you get a third of the audience to stay for a talkback. And it took her 20 minutes to get out of the makeup and microphone and everything, was a real tour de force performance. And she came in, she sat down and not a single person in the room had left. And I went to Katrina, I just said we knew it was needed, now we know it's wanted. There were the same 110, 150 people there that were there at the beginning of the show. While at that point, it was like two hours previous. So we didn't call it a festival at first. I said refer to the F word. Because I knew we would have been shot down. Oh, that's not a festival. It's not big enough or oh really you only got a work from Britain. I'll forget it. Oh, oh, you got a work from Toronto and Montreal. That's it? Where's the work from New York? Like anything? People would go, oh give it up. Nice try. But yeah, give it up. So we stayed away. We called it a series and then eventually we called it a festival.
And the name PuSh comes from Laine Slater. She's the one who was responsible for that, if what she had, you know, 40,000 possibilities, and we had a bunch of names and, and I remember asking her about the capital S? And I said did you know that everybody in print would brand us essentially by capitalising that s and she just smiled. This has no meaning to it. There's no meaning to the word capital S. It's not like PuSh.... So or something like there's nothing. It's just the branding in print. And then we just steadily grew and we grew and we grew through partnerships. Real belief in partnerships, the Dance Centre. I'm not gonna get it right, UBC, one of the finest producers in the city, UBC theatre producers did really difficult work with us. And were an amazing... the Chan Centre and Joyce Hinton. Did a lot of things we co commissioned and Kronos Quartet and Tanya Tagaq in a work that eventually ended up in Carnegie Hall. We partnered with... Oh, we did a thing called La Marea down in Gastown. It was co-produced with Boca del Lupo, and it was a site specific work from Buenos Aires. And we got together UBC, Langara Studio 58, and SFU. And the three universities had never worked together at the same time. And they both put in I think 5000 each and they provided production or they provided actors or they provided technical. It was all different depending on what seemed like the right kind of contribution. And we closed off Water Street and had six, seven thousand people come up over five to six days. We did a whole series on the city, around place, around, we did a blindfolded tour of the city, which was two hours long. And you got taken into somebody's house and you took into businesses. And for two and a half hours, you were guided by somebody and you were blindfolded to experience the city, from other senses than your eyes, in sight. And we did really challenging work. I mean, interesting thing is, one of the things I'm most proud of is I was in Edinburgh at one point and I was outside of venue and I'd just seen an extraordinary production or it was at halftime, of Mabou Mines in Toronto where they had done the Doll's House. It's the one, where the woman is trying to leave this marriage, anyway. The woman is played by a six foot two, opera singer, actress, remarkable performer. And all the men are under five feet tall. And this incredible production in the second half, it just soars. It's just like wow. Anyways, I'm talking to this old guy, this producer who's producing the show. And he says so. So who are you? And I said well I'm out here with the PuSh festival in Vancouver. He says, oh, yeah, I've heard of you. And I said, What do you mean? And he said, Yeah, well, you. I've heard you take good care of people. And I said, how do you hear that? He said uh, word gets around.
And I was so proud, you know, because the festival was not about—when an artist leaves or a technician or a producer leaves a festival, and leaves Vancouver. They don't think about me, they think about the technicians they dealt with, they think about the person who picked them up at the airport, they think about the person who provided the contact for the kinesiologist, or the massage therapist who can help them deal with the performers injury, they think about how they were cared for. And that's not me, it's the people doing all the other work. And our festival had a beautiful reputation for how we cared for people. And it was deeply important to me that people, we did things called fetes, we were trying to solve, I love this idea, you have a problem. And you cannot come up with the simplest solution like the most crudest, you know, we'll take a little block of wood here and hammer that in and nail some screws to that and put a little saw thing to it. And so we wanted to connect artists to this local scene, visiting artists. So we came up with this idea of fits. And we would go to an artist, we went to Camille Gingras and her partner Cande and said, hey, look, this week of the festival, we have a group from St. Petersburg, we have a group from Berlin, and somewhere else, can't remember the third. And we'll turn up at 9:30 to your house. And we'll lay out all this food, all this wine, booze, non alcoholic beverages. And at whatever time you tell us, we'll come back and we'll swoop it up. And you will not have done a single thing. You create the invite list. It's your invite list, your artistic community that you want to have come and share a kind of time with these groups visiting. We can come, our staff, but we won't have a huge barrage of volunteers come, it's your party. And it was a way of trying to overcome to some degree that kind of gatekeeper and power that can really quickly creep into an organization that has resources and supposedly is the one to make things happen. To give some degree of agency and ownership because frankly, too, and we're, we were very practical about it. If the festival wasn't felt to be owned by the local community, it would have died. Would have died. Long ago. By bitterness, rightly so, by a sense of resentment, and where are we on the stage? And we really felt that PuSh needed to be owned, needed to be felt and possessed by people locally. Secondly, there's a kind of famous line of, you know, at a festival two patrons just come out of a show and they're in the lobby and one says to the other man, that was shit. What are you gonna see next? If people can stick with you, that they trust the choice, or the reason you made the decisions for the work that you chose, they can live through work that is not of their taste at all. They can live through work that actually doesn't turn out to be great. But perhaps it was a commission or you know, was done for integral reasons and done with honesty.
But if you're choosing things in cynical ways and presenting them as if oh, don't worry, they'll be fine and if they don't like it, that doesn't matter, they'll still come back, I think people will get onto you and audience— we developed an audience that trusted us, that came to Black Arm Band from Australia, this extraordinary evening of Indigenous music, film, song. And 1600 people turned up in a freezing rainstorm. We presented Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Dana Gingras and with Animals of Distinction, anyway, um 2300 people. And we present, I mean, one of my favourite audiences once was looking at a show Buckminster Fuller, which is by Sam Green, who's going to be in the festival this year with 32 Sounds, and I was looking out at the audience and going, there's architects, there's social activists, there's people around food safety, there's creative creatives, there's designers there, people from so many different walks of life and, and professional practices, because of this figure, Buckminster Fuller. But there's also Ya La Tengo fans, and there's Sam Green fans. He was, you know, Academy Award nominated for his film about the— about The Weather Underground. And I just thought, man, oh, man, that's the audience. You know, it's not about if you're British, you like British food. It's like, you know, what are you drawn to? What are the ideas? What are the things that the work might be speaking to and what kind of aspects of the world is it touching upon? And the more far ranging that is, and the more nuanced and complex that is, the better. An audience is not a single person. And it's not a single thing, or psychological frame or a cultural interest, or it's, it's a multi, you know, it's as complex as any of us are as individuals. You just multiply that by 1100 people. And you've got 1100 people who are going on there for this film about Buckminster Fuller by Sam Green with Yo La Tengo, you know, and it's by the PuSh festival, who I love. Yeah,
Am Johal 37:54
The PuSh festival, obviously, it's become a thing in the city, it's really held very tightly, it's highly respected nationally and internationally. But you know, as people who you know, found an organization, get it started, there's not necessarily a blueprint in terms of how to grow it, how to go through that whole process. And I'm wondering if you could share just a little bit of like, your learnings in the process of growing PuSh into this, this mature organization,
Norman Armour 38:26
Oh, wow. Minna Schendlinger, who was my partner in crime on the administrative side, and put it up with me enough, in the beginning, as I was like, terrified of what we were trying to do. She says, you know, live and learn mostly live, you know. You make a lot of mistakes, and you own them, you try and be clear headed about it. You try and be honest with people, even with yourself, and hopefully, human beings, whether they be funders or donors or patrons, fellow colleagues, you know, will give you the space to kind of adapt and be in that place of, man, this was wrong, or what we did was wrong. And how can we do it differently or better? You know, I think most of the mistakes that I personally have made in my career have to do with not informing people, letting them know about things. The more you do, the more you include people in the information that they really deserve to know about, the better. And in a lot of cases, it has to do with risk, frankly, you know. The risk that it takes to, to start an organization and to grow it at times, and the determination that it takes. It takes determination, I'll say that. It's a funny mix. I'm not a fan of bravado, it's just whatever. I can appreciate it when it's done well and clever and such but, but I am a huge fan of clarity. I'm a huge fan of determination. And I'm a huge fan of passion. I think without passion, forget it. There's just no way Nothing's ever easy. And anybody who says something's a no brainer is just, just weaponizing a kind of situation that seems somewhat less risky than another situation. But nothing is without real challenge. Nothing is without collective effort. And I think the more that you value people properly for what they are, and involve them for what they are, which is why you should be as opposed to paying lip service to something, the more that I think you're going to build up a team of individuals. I mean, we were talking with Julie earlier, I mean a remarkable individual, it was, that was a remarkable time then. The spirit of how people worked together and how they challenged each other.
And, and we're in kind of debate and discussion and I'd always walk across the room to Janelle. I would walk across to Janelle to say, what's the ticket price on this thing? Like, what are we going to do here? In music, she was clairvoyant. I remember on a Monday, we were presenting 13 Most Beautiful. And we were going into the Vogue, if not the first time, maybe the second time, but you know, that's 1100 seats. That's not a small venue in Vancouver, and it's not an easy thing. And we don't, frankly, we don't have 1500 seats, we go, we jump to 2700 seats after that. So it's a sizable venue. And we'd sold 45 tickets for 13 Most Beautiful. I said, Janelle, what are we gonna do here? Can you help me with my obituary? I don't know what I said. And she said, don't worry, we'll be fine. And I said, what do you mean? She said, just don't worry, we'll be fine. And by Saturday, I think it was Saturday, I like to think Friday, but I think it was Saturday, we'd sold it out. Half of it was walk ups. And, you know, if you're not working with good people, then you're not working with good people. And you. I've heard that before, surround yourself with people smarter than you is, there's no question. It still means in the end, you have to make, what are you responsible for, and you are responsible for making difficult decisions. And I made a difficult one one time about growth, where I felt this was going to be too hard on the team and I paid a price for it out in the sector. Cause I cancelled my participation or the PuSh Festival's participation in a presentation. And there's still half of me that goes oh Bonnie could have dealt with it in the marketing. And then the other half that goes nah, screw that. You did it for the right reason, you were trying to kind of, you were caring for how much the load is, you know, you're putting on this individual Bonnie Sun, extraordinary marketer. And who's a really beautiful, she works out at MOA now. Head of Communications out there. And so in a way I, no, I don't regret it, I did it for the right reasons.
And I think, I think, I'm not going to get into leadership speak. And there are people who are much more articulate around this stuff and studied about it. But I think that's part of it is making hard decisions and people seeing you make hard decisions. Because if you're not making them between, like, I remember struggling with what is morality, and what is ethics, and I looked up and found definitions that were satisfying to me for what I was trying to figure out. And it kind of talked about rallies between good and evil. And ethics is between two goods. And if you're not willing to kind of stick your head into the fire of two goods, or it's not a fire, it's something else, then why be in that position, because you have to. And you have to show people that you're willing to make those hard decisions. That also means that you actually are a good listener, and that you hear people's concerns. You hear people's... because if you have to go a certain path, where some individuals are not fully on board, they should have the right to know that you listened, you know, that they had their day in court. And I figure out, you know, of 10 people, you have an idea, and you say something two people are going to disagree totally will never care, two people are going to disagree, but they understand the reasoning behind it and they respect it. And then the other six are going to agree and agree for the reasoning. Who are you talking to the two who will never agree to you? Or are you talking to the two who disagree, you could learn something from and the two who are on your side? You know, so growth, you can't just... this whole risk averse... I think the risk thing is so badly stated and articulated at times, it's kind of used in ways to sort of say, oh, you're risk averse, or come on, take the risk, go for the risk, you know. As if it's some kind of, again, some kind of form of bravado. And I'm not downplaying that there are definitely risks at play. But it's calculated, it's talked about and thought through. And, and the key is not to isolate yourself. And because, to be honest, also everybody shares in when those failures don't happen. Oh, guys, okay, everybody, how do we do this differently the next time rather than oh, sorry, guys. I was wrong to force everybody to do this extra thing.
And we did big things and grow things. We believed in what we were doing, and we were confident in what we were doing, I think of, we really thought of what it was going to take to shut down Gastown and what it took for Kenji Maeda to go to all of those businesses. I think there were 12 of them and get them to agree to every night. Them having a performance in their space or, or outside their space on the street and everything. We would have given up long ago. So and in discussion with a fairly significant project with an organization that I'm doing some curating with, and it's big, it's huge. But the last thing I want is to be shut down, because of the cost of it, it's like, that's just come on, let's first find out if there's a reason to do this. And if we think there's a reason, maybe somebody else does, and if they think there is, maybe somebody else does. And if we keep going at this, we're going to find enough people who think it is we're going to get the resources actually to do this. That's not to be stupid about things. But it's just way too easy to say, nah, it's not possible. It's not possible, give up now, you know, so it is a tricky sort of dance with that question of when you do let something go. And when you persist, because, again, I just say, nothing happens easy, and you have to persist. You have to be a, you know, kind person about it and be respectful and everything but fight for what you're doing and with the value of what you're doing and and the resources necessary for it. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Am Johal 46:58
Yeah, totally. Norman, I wanted to talk a little bit about health stuff.
Norman Armour 47:03
Oh, sure.
Am Johal 47:04
But first, let's start with the heart attack. I mean, it was written about in The Globe and Mail and everything. But what— It happened at an intermission at the PuSh festival?
Norman Armour 47:14
Yes, yeah.
Am Johal 47:15
Do you mind sharing a little bit about it? Of course my colleague, Michael Boucher was also... saved your life?
Norman Armour 46:35
Yeah. We were presenting Mary Margaret O'Hara, the first time she had been presented in Vancouver. And it was intermission. It was the first night of a two night gig for her. And were at Performance Works. And Michael, who had come in early, as a good presenter would, to find a good seat, he said, oh, well, maybe we'll sit with you. And so Michael and his wife Tish sat with me and oh, some other people, Sherrie Johnson and others. And at intermission, no no, I think that was pre show, he got me a couple crantinis. But at intermission... that day, I'd been feeling odd. I've got a picture of myself with Rabih Mroué at the Grunt Gallery, like four hours earlier. I look like death warmed over. And, you know, I had jaw pain, which I didn't know jaw pain was a part of early signs of yeah, that you're looking at what they call, I guess, an incident, cardiac arrest and was full full cardiac arrest. I don't know what half is. But um, and I went down, dropped to the ground suddenly. Michael, who I didn't know, had been a paramedic in Montreal in his 20s. And you know, he's built, he's a tough Irish guy, and stocky, and he went down on it for five and a half minutes, did CPR. There isn't a jolt, one of the machines in the building, perhaps it is now, maybe. Tish called for the ambulance, stayed on the phone because it's a bit complicated, Granville Island, to find where the venue is, so she was guiding the ambulance.
Five and a half minutes later, there was a guy doing, you know, pumping me. And they brought me back. And I was completely unconscious, and put me in the ambulance. They had to stop in front of the Arts Club. And I'm not sure what the meaning of that is. Because I stopped again, my heart stopped again and they had to give me more. I don't know what that was. Actually good friends with Bill, always have been good friends with Bill. Bill Millerd. And I got one stent put in. There's a, it's a term, it's the strength of your heart. If your heart takes in ten ounces of blood and pumps out six, it's normal. Mine was 3.5. And they put the stent in and eventually over a few weeks, got to five. I had a recent check in around an echocardiogram and my heart's actually completely repaired. And I saw my oncologist, great guy, Dr. Graham Wong, legendary guy. But you know, it was the second week of the festival and it's like, the festival director is sorry, who's? Who's having a heart attack? It's Norman Armour. And there was I guess a lot of discussion on whether they would perform, continue to perform, which they chose to do, which was great. And the first song on the set for the second half was her signature song from Miss America. Do you know it?
Am Johal 50:24
No, I don't
Norman Armour 50:24
Oh, it's a beautiful album. Do you know the album?
Am Johal 50:27
I know about her but not her specific...
Norman Armour 50:29
Well, the album is beautiful. It was like recorded over I think the course of like two years. Various, beautiful, extraordinary, but her signature song is Body in Trouble. And that's what she sang the first song off the top of the second half. And I was stupidly determined to go back the following week, which Lorna was like... My partner, Lorna, Lorna Brown. And I just said I'm sorry, Lorna, you come with me or you don't. But I'm not spending a year not having been able to. So you know, I think I was home, that was a Saturday, a Friday night, I think. And I was home by Monday or something fairly, fairly early. And I went back the next week, we had Taylor Mac from New York, beautiful cabaret, drag artist. Extraordinary artist. And he was doing an evening of various things. And he's known for playing the ukulele. But he hadn't played it at all that night. But he did the very last song, and I snuck in, in the darkness. And I was standing like, 10 feet, like parallel to where I was a week ago, on the floor, you know, about to die, and I would have died elsewhere. If I had fallen on the street, I would have been dead. There's no question. Michael definitely saved my life. And I, and I think Sherrie was also a part of it in a very spiritual way. I would have been dead otherwise. So theatre might kill me, but it saved me. Yeah.
Am Johal 51:51
So afterwards, I guess you had to stop smoking and eat a lot of avocado toast.
Norman Armour 51:58
You know, this is perfect Scottish retribution. I had stopped smoking the year before. So it was kind of like you're not getting away with this. Yeah, it changed, it changed me. I think it changed a lot of people in terms of these shocks that you have about mortality. I mean, yet we're all going to die at some point. Whether it's young, or older, or in kind ways or less pleasurable ways. We're all going to die. And but we, of course, like to forget that. And so you have these kind of moments where you're just whoa, god. Okay. So it's that. You're that close to it. Really. You're that vulnerable to it. I mean, I had somewhat genetically in my family situation, as my father died of a heart attack, and his father died of heart attack. The smoking and the stress. Those are sort of the three things that for me caused it together.
Am Johal 53:01
Yeah. And, of course, more recently, you've been very public. You've been public about your recent cancer diagnosis. And I'm wondering if you wanted to share a little bit about that.
Norman Armour 53:15
Yeah, I was, well, I was diagnosed on my birthday. I learned my diagnosis on my birthday, what a birthday, it's a gift that keeps on coming, or keeps on giving. February 19th, diagnosed with lung cancer, and diagnosed with stage four, and I don't know a lot about cancer. I'm still learning a lot. And of course, stage four is like, oh, god, I'm dead in four months? Well, stage four means it's jumped the fence. It's not in one place. You can't go carve it out. You can zap it out. It's with you for good. The question is, whether it's treatable or not. And mine is treatable, thankfully. And I've been, I tell you, though, so it's in one lung, it jumped, where it went elsewhere, was into a vertebrae in my third lumbar and caused a hairline fracture, which just is I mean, the cancer is fine. It's the treatments and the side effects and consequences that will kill you. Aye yai yai, just your body adjusting and readjusting and all these bad things that it does. And don't get me on steroids. And well, I spent 10 days in a psych ward because I was dealing with lack of sleep. And it's, I'm trying to look for the word. I didn't send you a text, it's happening, no?
Am Johal 54:38
I've got a few texts from you. I visited you, so yeah.
Norman Armour 54:44
Sorry. There's so much like, it was such a phase. That period of it's, I'm trying to remember the manicness. A lot of people who deal with schizophrenia, or one version or another, often encounter it because of lack of sleep. And it's essentially lack of asleep. With steroids, it just ramps it. It just makes it like you're off the ground, you know you're a foot off the ground. So I've gone through a lot of things from pneumonia to two embolisms, one in each lung to severe pain like ridiculous, sort of say I have an understanding of the world war one in the trenches of people dealing with lack of anaesthesia and just wanting their leg to be sawed off. And I had that from the vertebrae. That thing's thankfully going on, I have some other things but I'm seeing somebody tonight. A physiotherapist for the first time so I'm hopeful for that. I'm amazed at the BC medical system. You know, walking into the Cancer Agency is just, the first time I had this experience that like, oh, everybody's walking as slow as me, it was just suddenly whoosh. And suddenly I was in this space with all of this community of individuals who were either dealing with cancer themselves or, or their loved ones. Everybody, the technicians, the receptionist, the nurses, the nurse practitioners, the doctors, like, there has not been one person that I've ever felt mistreated by. I don't know, like they can't all get together every morning and go, okay, how are we going to be today? But they do. Somehow. And there is just this vibe. And this, this care that is absolutely extraordinary. That kind of, I don't know how it feeds me, but it certainly makes me feel so much less alone with something which is terrifying. You know, the response to when I was in the psych ward was I got assigned a psychiatrist. An extraordinary psychiatrist, Dr. Richford. Carole Richford I think is her full name. And she had this— I like to tell this story and the stuff I tell I just figure, why keep secret. I mean, I it's not an ideology for me. And if it's not something you want to speak about, your health, I completely appreciate. For me, I'm fine. And for me, it actually makes me feel like I say less alone. And my first session with her with Lorna, Lorna and I, she said at one point, she looked at me and she said, if you think I have somebody outside the room ready to take you away, you're wrong. And I froze. And it was like the back of my brain was going how the effing did you know that that's what's at the bottom of where my fear is. And I told her later, I said, you know, when you said that, it was just a massive sort of click of trust. And she said, well, it was a risk for me to do that. But I was afraid you were gonna walk up and walk out at that moment. And she's a remarkable individual, beautiful individual. And you know what? Steroids can do very strange things to you, they're amazing painkillers, but they're so dangerous. They're really like evil, evil things to the... it's addictive and, and misleading and everything. And for me, one of the problems was is it jacked me up. So I was like, 100 times what it was, or 1000 times. So if somebody said, sorry, Norman, what are you saying, I just go more intense.
Am Johal 58:25
Pretty good biceps too.
Norman Armour 58:28
And she at times in that session would go, would look at, would hear me. She'd ask a question like, do you have bipolar in your family, examples, and I would give 10 minute portraits of my family members. And she would like turn to Lorna and go, is he always like this and like in normal life is he like this? And she'd go, yeah, you go, okay. And she did it about four or five times. And I just went, you're so smart, like you're so in the room here. And, again, I just I've been astounded by the sense of humour, the care, the attention, the charm of the system, it's overworked, overloaded. In terms of HR and everything, it's that centre, that place, carries such a huge responsibility, theCancer Agency, but yeah.
Am Johal 59:12
Yeah, I know, you've continued to work and you do lots of consulting for organizations, as our friend Sirish Rao refers to you, the paramedic for the arts.
Norman Armour 59:23
That's very kind.
Am Johal 59:24
You have to have a heart attack to get that name, right? And there's a lot of issues you— you've spent so long advocating to arts funders, be it the BC Arts Council, the Canada Council, and others, in terms of being a really loud, prominent sector wide voice in terms of funding and other areas that need to happen to allow organizations and artists to thrive and all of that, and I'm wondering, you know, your thoughts on, you know, lifetime of advocacy for the sector beyond the things that you were working on. You're continuing to do this work now.
Norman Armour 1:00:00
Yeah, my work is less public now. You know, because my name for the first time in 30 years just after I left PuSh in 2000, and whatever. So five years ago, I went to work for the Australia Arts Council, help them with strategy with North America and their Australian art sector. So I've had my name attached to an institution that was public facing for 30 years. And now I've been working independently, worked with the Indian Summer with Sirish others there and helped with the leadership transition, something I found extremely rewarding. And the thoughtfulness, you were there on the board at the time.
Am Johal 1:00:38
Oh yeah, full exposure, I was there I was on the board.
Norman Armour 1:00:40
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Beautiful leader. You're a remarkable leader, Am. And so, and there's been huge generational change in the last few years and huge cultural change and much more to come. So I find myself in, in an odd situation, you know, I'm white cis male, 64 years old. I think I'd still have things to bring to the table and thinking about things and to talk things through, I think my values are solid. I don't, I'm not in the thick of some of the debates that are happening, you know, in terms of people who are firmly entrenched in organizations that are very public, whether they be, you know, producing organizations, or a policy advocate, or funding organizations and such. So I'm selective of where I think I can bring value and such. I'm also at liberty now, you know, at 64, I paid off my mortgage last year, I didn't think I could ever spell the word, let alone pay it off. But 15 years later, I did. And I have a beautiful partner, Lorna, Lorna Brown. I wouldn't be alive now, if it wasn't for her. It's no doubt in my mind. So I feel, you know, I come from a place of feeling extremely fortunate, I suppose privileged in a lot of ways, but I also fought very hard to get where I got to in my career, and consistently, I think, learn from my mistakes, and collaborate and learn from others and was curious about that. And think as much about what I can give is what I can get out of anything. In fact, don't want to be in any room that I'm not really honestly actually, or meaningfully actually being able to contribute and stuff. So it's more selective. I'm doing some projects, I'm co editing a book, with Maiko Bae Yamamoto of Theatre Replacement, called Vancouver Theatrics: 30 years of Restless Experimentation, and it's about 30 years of the Vancouver scene, written by Vancouver artists that we're commissioning essays from. And because there's no recorded history, really, of the Vancouver independent scene. And if there is, it's reviews or profiles, it's done by journalists, but not by artists, and artists who have been influenced by that work and by those conditions, and by those particular productions and incidents and such. So that came out of COVID. And we're now sort of moving into, like, confirmed writers and things like that. It's a really exciting project. Scary one. But I think we're going to do a great job with it, I think, and the people are going to do a great job with it. We have a really remarkable collection of individuals working on it. Again, a collaborative project.
And then I approached, at some point, VIFF. Kyle Fostner, who I'd met briefly, and approached somehow and just sort of said, would you, you know, I'd seen that he'd done live film and something live element, mostly music, I think, but not always. And I, for some reason, I just thought, I've been a big fan of VIFF for years. I joke it's been a childhood dream, which of course, it can't be because I grew up in Toronto, but it is, I love— I think it's an extraordinary institution and always admired the audience. I was like, to everybody at PuSh, I went, that's our audience. That's who we want. That's the type of people we want. And I said, would you be at all interested in somebody helping you with your live program. And by chance the person had internally, who had been working on it with Kyle, Kyle off the sort of side of his desk, had left and Kyle said, sure. So kind of helped to develop a definition of what a guest curator might be and what the scope of work is. And we're some modest beginning this year, but a couple of really public-facing things, 32 Sounds from Sam Green, and then a work called Machine Folklore. It's two collectives from Taipei, who are in the past, I would have said the next generation, but they are the generation like, they were in full momentum. And so contribution of artists who are also very deep into VR and other kinds of things, but it's a film and music digital music thing. So doing that, but then also introducing an idea around a kind of program. And we're not calling it a program yet, because we don't deserve to call it that yet. But we're calling the individuals participating residents who are outside of the television and film world but who have an interest in the idea of image. And I know the festival and a lot of festivals are challenging themselves around this question of how can we expand our notions of film culture to include larger notions around the image, VR and other things? And so they're invited to participate in the festival and to access the industry stuff and, and the things that are appropriate and Amp and Signals which is the music and the VR/AR thing.
And that'll be all announced in September, but so I can say it now because this will come out later, but it's Miwa Matreyek, remarkable animation artist who inserts herself live into her work, she's currently teaching at SFU came out of CalArts in California. Cris Derksen, extraordinary Indigenous cellist and composer, and Sammy Chien, who I like to say is based in Vancouver and 10 other cities in the world. He's all over the place. He's crazy, in all the good ways. And then a guy named Daniel Barrow, who does overhead projectors presentations with animation that he creates and with acetates in these overhead projectors, or if you remember from high school, those old ones. But he did a piece called 30... piece called Winnipeg Babysitter. And it's worth mentioning because it's going to come out on on Blu Ray, and Winnipeg Babysitter is a 90 minute survey of a period of time in the late 70s, early 80s, in Winnipeg, when the federal government was allowing airspace or the establishment of cable television, on the condition that there will be community access given and they did it, you know, as all these things for a short period of time and then relaxed it and nobody did it again anymore. So this is Winnipeg's version of community access. And it's whacked out, it's good. I grew up in Toronto, and the one in Toronto was Chuck the Security Guard who would, supposedly he started his work at 12 at nights and you'd come in and unbeknownst to anybody at the studio, he would turn on the television start broadcasting. So Chuck, the security guard. Winnipeg is all over the map. That's everywhere. And Daniel does this great. So he's going to on a Thursday night, and the second week with the industry people. Mostly, I think a lot of that. And there's a good collection of it that's growing and growing. The Amp program is just like taking off, Signals is gathering more and more steam, and is going to sort of say, here's the beginning of radio. Like here's the beginning of television, here's the beginning. Here's the beginning of cable television. And this would, this is what it looked like this is the wild wild west. And of course they all have an idea of you know, Winnipeg with Guy Madden and maybe Neil Young or others and stuff like that.
Am Johal 1:08:06
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Anything you'd like to add, Norman?
Norman Armour 1:08:09
I think I've probably babbled on enough. I said more than enough. I hope this is in the vein or the stream of what you like to have.
Am Johal 1:08:20
Yeah, well great to speak with you Norman, you are the living legend in the arts. And it's so great to have you with us sharing some of these stories, particularly for students who are going to be able to listen to this as they come out of school and think about where they're going to be making their work and, and experimenting inside of festivals and other places. So thank you.
Norman Armour 1:08:44
Oh, it's my pleasure, man. My pleasure.
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Samantha Walters 1:08:49
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our episode with Norman Armour. Head to the show notes to read up on some of the resources mentioned in this episode, or for a further dive into all the artists and organisations mentioned, check out the episode’s audio transcript, which is available, as with all our episodes, on our website.
Don’t forget to subscribe to Below the Radar on your podcast listening app of choice. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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