Juno News - August 08, 2021


Reclaiming our culture


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

209.29497

Word count

662

Sentence count

35


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Toronto Blue Jays are back in the Skydome! What does that mean for the city of Toronto and the fans who love them? And what does it mean for us as a city and a society? And more importantly, what does this mean for our culture?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I've gone out for two activities, two experiences in society, that I haven't done for over a year
00:00:12.040 and a half. I went to an art gallery to see the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario,
00:00:17.740 and I went to the movies to see a new theatrical release. And I gotta tell you, it felt really good
00:00:23.820 to do them. Not just in terms of getting out of the house and doing something that I love to do,
00:00:28.720 that I've loved to do for many years, and unfortunately haven't done for a year and a half.
00:00:33.060 Not just because it was enjoyable to see that art exhibit, been looking forward to it, to see the
00:00:38.600 movie and so forth, but it felt good to have a communal arts and culture experience. To be with
00:00:45.480 people. No, I didn't know them, I didn't chat with them and so forth. You're pretty distanced at the
00:00:50.300 movie theater. When I was at the Art Gallery, of course, you're just sort of flowing through the
00:00:53.900 exhibit. There's people in front of you, there's people behind you. But there's something about
00:00:57.980 the communal experience, that's, well, that's why we do them in the first place. That's why these
00:01:02.340 things have existed for as long as they have. Even though, yes, you could just look at stuff on your
00:01:06.660 phone or on your computer, we still choose to go and have those arts and culture experience that have
00:01:12.880 been lost for a year and a half. Yes, go into the movies, go into the Art Gallery, go into the live
00:01:18.000 theater, so many other live performing arts events, concerts, even just the street festivals,
00:01:22.560 the cultural festivals that have been put on pause for a year and a half, all throughout Canada,
00:01:27.920 all throughout many parts of the world. How do you quantify that, the meaning of that? Well,
00:01:32.780 you can't, at least not as easily as you can quantify the cost of small business closures.
00:01:37.740 People, of course, put their life savings into a business because of lockdowns. Tragically,
00:01:41.260 the business falls apart. Awful stuff happening there. You can definitely quantify all of that,
00:01:45.780 but we don't talk much about what it means that we've put our broader culture on hold and the
00:01:51.940 sharing of that cultural experience. The Toronto Blue Jays back doing their games in the Skydome.
00:01:58.120 They were playing elsewhere. Now they're back in Toronto. I have a friend who's a big Blue Jays
00:02:02.140 fan, loves baseball. I love it too. I love watching the Blue Jays and we were texting while the game
00:02:05.700 was on and he just said, it's so good to see them there where they belong, right there in the Skydome.
00:02:12.060 And I know, you know, he wasn't actually in person. He didn't have tickets for it,
00:02:15.960 but even just to know they were there and to watch the game on TV and to know they're where
00:02:20.060 they're supposed to be for that collective Toronto baseball fan experience. I mean, it's right.
00:02:26.780 It's how it should be. And when you take that stuff away, as we did, I mean, it does sort of,
00:02:32.440 sort of eat away at your various municipal cultural values in terms of Torontonians rooting for
00:02:38.700 the home team, rooting for the Maple Leafs, for the Blue Jays, for the Raptors and so forth.
00:02:43.460 The art galleries, of course, what that all means. I mean, there are people out there who their great
00:02:47.060 passion in life is going to the symphony, for instance. And of course, that's been put on hold
00:02:50.980 and that's been taken away from them and all those people who make up that ecosystem. So let's not,
00:02:56.880 let's not underestimate, understate what it meant to have those things on pause. And let's also not
00:03:02.660 understate what it means for the fact that they are back and they are so important for us as a society,
00:03:07.760 so important for our communities.