Canadian arts deserve support, Ottawa told
Last Updated: Monday, April 16, 2007 | 5:46 PM ET
CBC Arts
Prominent dancers, writers, performers, filmmakers and visual artists gathered on Parliament Hill on Monday to emphasize to the federal government the value of artists to Canada.
The event, spearheaded by the Writers' Union of Canada, was designed to encourage the government to pay greater attention to the arts and restore cultural funding, with a particular focus on promoting Canadian artists abroad.
"Artists are not encouraged," author Lawrence Hill said. "Artists are among the most entrepreneurial of business people, but they need support."
Author Susan Swan, who also serves as vice chair of the union, directed her message specifically at Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"We want you to be more thoughtful. We want you to read more books. We want you to support the arts and improve your cultural funding and reinstate your cuts to …cultural institutions," she said.
Yann Martel has taken the idea even further: The Booker Prize-winning author of Life of Pi has started a campaign in which he will send a book to the prime minister every two weeks, along with a letter containing reading suggestions and why he chose to recommend that selection.
Martel started his campaign on Monday with Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and will update Canadians on each book he sends the prime minister — and any response he receives — at the website whatistephenharperreading.ca.
"Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being prime minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim," Martel wrote on the site.
"But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate — that would be arrogant, less than that — to make suggestions to his stillness."
