Latest news with #Belanger
Ottawa Citizen
07-07-2025
- Ottawa Citizen
Defence calls on Vietnamese culture expert in Lam sisters' murder trial
Article content Chau said her mother would call her a whore, a prostitute and a 'b–chy c–t' that nobody else would love. Article content Belanger testified on Monday that some Vietnamese parents use strong language and insults to discipline their children. Article content 'There's research indicating that language is a strong tool to educate and to discipline children or adult children. The way this is done is through the use of negative, direct language that will put people down,' she said. Article content 'There is a scholar who worked on the use of insults as a way to discipline or to control, and he specifically worked on mother-daughter relationships in the south of Vietnam. … He showed that the use of powerful language insults is a way to seek compliance or to control.' Article content Shame, or threats of it from the larger community, is also used as a disciplinary tactic, Belanger added. This would include collectively laughing at a kid if they were being insolent, or telling someone that their family will 'lose face' in the community if they did something considered disrespectful. Article content Article content But the threat of shame also means a lot of Vietnamese people hesitate to find care for their parents, Belanger added. Vietnamese children will often avoid seeking help as much as possible because it would not be fulfilling their duty to care for their families, which would bring shame. Article content Previously, the court learned that Kieu was moved to a nursing home so Hue and Chau could escape the abuse. However, the elderly woman only stayed in the nursing home for three days before she was brought back to the sisters due to pressure from their eldest brother. Article content 'The centrality of Confucianism and the emphasis is the duty to care for one's parents, sending parents to a nursing home is is very problematic, because it's seen as a failure to provide to fulfil one's duty,' Belanger explained. Article content 'The second aspect is given this importance and this duty home-based care is really the preferred arrangement.' Article content Article content 'Girls have to acquire value towards parents' Article content Chau also told the jury during her testimony that her mother never showed love towards her and her sister since they were children. Article content She said her mother would say 'con gái là con người ta,' or daughters are other people's daughters. This is an old Vietnamese phrase that describes when a daughter is married, they become the daughter of the husband's family. Article content It is also used as a phrase to describe a preference for sons over daughters among traditional families. Article content On Monday, Belanger said Vietnam is a patrilineal society and families often prefer sons over daughters. Article content 'Obedience towards one's parents is stronger in the upbringing of daughters than in sons,' she said. Article content 'There's a strong inequality in how in the in the sense of responsibility that is instilled in children early on … Sons have intrinsic value because they're male. So they can be naughty, they can be whatever they are. They are fine. Their status is sort of guaranteed.
Los Angeles Times
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Queer Lens' is the provocative photography show only the Getty would be brave enough to stage
'Queer Lens: A History of Photography' is a sprawling survey of more than 270 works from the last two centuries that looks at the ways cameras transformed the expression of gender and sexuality. Scores of artists as well-known as Berenice Abbott, Anthony Friedkin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray and Edmund Teske hang with more than a dozen unknowns. The Getty Museum's groundbreaking Pride Month show is provocative and important, and the timing packs a wallop. The exhibition has been in the works for years (since 2020), but coincidentally, it opens during a state of national emergency. The ACLU is tracking 597 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state legislatures across the U.S., including six in California. (Texas leads the hate-pack, with 88.) Most won't pass. All, however, mean to intimidate just by being introduced. The show conjures an oppressive frame of social reference again and again. Often it is subtle. Take the simple black-and-white photo booth snapshot in which a kissing couple of twentysomething young men was memorialized around 1953 by Canadian-born American artist Joseph John Bertrund Belanger. Their mouths smashed together, one man looks with a heavy-lidded gaze at the other, his eyes shut but his open hand raised, fingers brushing his beloved's throat. Tight framing in the contained privacy of a photo booth underlines an image of passionate intimacy. However, imagine if they were to step outside the curtain and into Vancouver's Playland Amusement Park, where the picture was made, for the very same kiss. They would face possible arrest and imprisonment for 'gross indecency' under the country's antigay criminal code. (That law wasn't lifted until 1969.) Belanger was a World War II veteran who fought with ordinary distinction against a fascist German regime rampaging across Europe — one that launched its reign of terror with the 1933 burning of a homosexual's library on a Berlin public square. In 1944, the fellow pilot with whom Belanger had a private wartime romance was killed in combat. This modest postwar photograph resounds because it pictures the photo booth as a closet. Was that the artist's intention in making it? We don't know, but the result is compelling because it is at once profoundly personal, which is obvious from the deep kiss, while extremely exotic, since queer images like this are rarely seen, never mind celebrated. That bracing fusion recurs in gallery after gallery. The vivifying dichotomy is even announced in advance. Climb the stairs in front of the museum, its risers smartly painted as a cheerful rainbow flag that visually sets the art museum atop a queer pedestal, and you'll encounter the inviting billboard for 'Queer Lens.' Reproduced is a publicity image by Frederick Spalding, a self-taught British portrait photographer. Fanny and Stella, middle-class lovelies in hoop skirts, engage in a warm embrace. The couple, otherwise known as Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park, appeared on the London stage — and often out and about in public — in snazzy women's attire. The photograph dates from about 1870. Today, when drag queens and trans people, especially women, are innocent targets of hysterical conservative attacks as some new liberal phenomenon signaling imminent social collapse, a 155-year-old photograph casts a witty and jaundiced eye on the stubbornness of irrational anti-queer hate. Good on the Getty for not mincing visual words. Getty curator Paul Martineau has organized 'Queer Lens' in nine chronological sections. (His catalog, compiled with historian Ryan Linkof, is very good.) Each one is pegged to social conditions around LGBTQ+ life, principally in the United States and Europe. 'The Pansy Craze,' for example, takes note of pre-Prohibition-era underground clubs, often gay, where drag and other performers gained local fame, in addition to bohemian European establishments, some with a vibrant public face. Show business is prominent in Baron Adolph de Meyer's atmospheric portraits of entertainer (and later spy) Josephine Baker and Carl Van Vechten's Bessie Smith, empress of the blues, resplendent behind a huge, feathered fan. Buoyant members of a Harlem social club of drag kings and queens posed for James Van Der Zee, while Brassaï cast his quietly voyeuristic eye on a relaxed and tender lesbian couple enjoying a Paris nightclub. Artist and designer Cecil Beaton performed a coy fashion magazine pose in full drag, his slender form crowned by an enormous picture hat that transforms him into something approaching a human flower, photographed by the duo David James Scott and Edgar Wilkinson. Such portraits create a surprisingly revealing context for Surrealist Man Ray's 'Rrose Sélavy,' the famous photographs of Dada artist Marcel Duchamp in drag, bundled up in a cloche hat and fur-collared coat, eyeliner carefully smudged and lip gloss crisp. Two straight male artists are scrambling establishment gender, but here it's less a singular statement than part of a larger cultural phenomenon. Art and science are analytical tools in some photographs, especially those of nudes. (The show includes considerable nudity, mostly male.) Two images from about 1860 are early textbook cases. In one, photography pioneer Félix Nadar pictured an intersex person from the neck down. Careful cropping maintains privacy for clinical study. In the other, Gaudenzio Marconi helped to launch what would become a standard trope over a century's time for using an artistic pedigree to legitimize homoerotic images. With a flesh-and-blood male model, his picture replicates the famous, much-admired Hellenistic marble sculpture known as the 'Barberini Faun,' a muscled god with splayed legs, dredged up during the Renaissance from a moat below Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo. Strict gender separation common to early 19th century social structures underwent unexpected transformation after the binaries of heterosexual and homosexual were invented in 1869. Karl Maria Kertbeny, an apparently closeted Hungarian journalist, who was living in Berlin, coined the two terms barely a generation after the camera's 1839 invention. The show's first image is even earlier. A small cut paper silhouette from 1810 shows Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant gazing into each other's eyes, their profiles framed in entwined strands of their hair. The artist is unknown. But silhouettes like this are evoked by the phrase 'the art of fixing a shadow,' which is how William Henry Fox Talbot described his earthshaking invention of the negative-positive process that made photographs possible. The lesbian silhouette's inclusion reminds that same-sex love predates cameras and the modern era, while implying that things were about to change. And change they have, for good and ill. These days, the Getty is probably the only major art museum in America that could open an exhibition like 'Queer Lens.' Others wouldn't dare. Some smaller institutions would, like the young Chicago exhibition space Wrightwood 659, where the large international loan exhibition 'The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939' is currently on view. (Curator Jonathan D. Katz, a respected scholar, has said that four out of five of his requests to museums and private collectors for loans to the show were denied, and no American museum would accept the show for a tour, even when offered for free.) Meanwhile across town, the mainstream Art Institute of Chicago is about to unveil 'Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World,' a traveling exhibition virtually identical to the one already seen in Paris and Los Angeles, where it was notably titled 'Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men.' The show explores the late-19th century artist's homosocial themes, distinctive for Impressionism, whose common human subjects were typically women and girls. A spokesperson at the Art Institute of Chicago says the name change, made long before the show's Paris debut, is simply meant to reflect 'Caillebotte's full lived experience and daily life.' Maybe, but all three prior Caillebotte retrospectives at American museums since 1976 have already done that. In the current repressive climate, the explanation is frankly unconvincing. The Getty has the prestige and immense financial resources to ignore thuggish political attacks on queer people — and on the arts — which now gush from various statehouses and, most dangerously, Washington's halls of government. An absurd, now notorious New York Times front-page story in 2016 claiming presidential candidate Donald J. Trump would be 'the most gay-friendly Republican nominee for president ever' has been disproved by what is widely considered to be the most vicious such administration in American history. It surpasses even the 1980s Reagan Administration, recalled in '$3 Bill,' a companion Getty Research Institute show also on view. A furious 1987 Donald Moffett poster, dedicated to Gay Men's Health Crisis Director Diego Lopez, juxtaposes the AIDS-indifferent Hollywood president, smirking vapidly above the phrase, 'He kills me,' next to a screaming orange bullseye. '$3 Bill' is a rather jumbled amalgam of minor artworks, documents (books, fliers, pamphlets, magazines, etc.) and ephemera assembled by GRI curator Pietro Rigolo, meant to compile evidence of contemporary queer lives. Its most affecting moments reference the AIDS epidemic's abject cruelty. Powerful forces of oppression are of course still at play. The day after 'Queer Lens' opened, the Supreme Court ruled that individual states may ban healthcare for minors based on the identity of the patient asking for it: cisgender, yes; transgender, no — parents and doctors be damned. The blatantly bigoted decision will someday be overturned, but not without inflicting enormous pain in the interim. A few features of 'Queer Lens' are surprising. A lone film projection — Andy Warhol's short movie 'Blow Job,' in which an actor's face performs the role of fellatio recipient — seems out of place, when many other queer films could as easily be included. In fact, like Marconi using the classical Barberini faun sculpture as a high-art pretense to legitimize ogling male nudity in a photograph, Warhol used ink and acrylic paint as 'makeup' to legitimize the mass media photographs he appropriated for paintings. Since almost all of Warhol's classic 1960s silkscreen works are best described as photographs in painting drag, including one would have been splendid. Omissions are inevitable. (The show makes no claim to being encyclopedic.) Luis Medina, who chronicled Chicago's queer scene in the 1970s, and Jeff Burton, who photographed the almost surreal margins of the huge 1990s pornography industry in the suburban San Fernando Valley, are especially missed. Through no fault of its own, 'Queer Lens' peters out a bit at the end, when the final section declares 'The Future is Queer' in 18 works from the last decade. (Happily, two-thirds are from Getty's own collection.) The world got along for thousands of years without the enforced binaries of heterosexual and homosexual, and in recent decades the fences erected around that century-old split have been coming down. The simultaneous 21st century digital revolution is dramatically changing the contextual terms of the image game, as surely as the analog camera did after 1839. Given that a digital camera is now in most every pocket, queer photography's bracing fusion of the personal and the exotic is pretty threadbare, since exoticism no longer applies to being queer in American life. It simply is what it is. We can be grateful for the shift. And we can also be grateful pictures will continue to shape and affirm queer existence, as pictures always have the capacity to do.
Hamilton Spectator
16-06-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Grise Fiord harbour completion expected by 2029
A proposed harbour in Grise Fiord is expected to be completed by 2029 if it's approved. 'We look forward to our long-awaited and much-needed harbour and the many benefits this project will bring to our community,' Mayor Meeka Kiguktak wrote in a letter to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, which is screening the project. The harbour would include floating docks, a boat ramp and a breakwater, according to a project summary posted to the Nunavut Impact Review Board website. It would be located on the west side of Nunavut's northernmost hamlet, which has a population of just over 140. 'Floating docks will be able to accommodate all the boats that are currently in the community docked at one time,' said Greg Belanger, spokesperson for Transportation and Infrastructure Nunavut, in early May in an email to Nunatsiaq News. 'It will also accommodate additional boats in the event more are added.' A preliminary design concept sketch appears to show room for 36 boats. Belanger said the project is in the 'design phase,' but did not provide a cost estimate. 'The department doesn't share cost estimates prior to tender as it would interfere with the procurement process,' he said. Belanger said the harbour project is expected to be completed by 2029. It will be paid for by Transport Canada, through a federal program that funds High Arctic harbour infrastructure. On the Nunavut Impact Review Board's website, the project is listed as being in 'active screening,' and said a 'public comment period' started April 30. The board's webpage for the project includes submissions from federal agencies including Environment Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. There are also letters of support from the community. Amon Akeeagok, chairperson of the Iviq Hunters' and Trappers Association, wrote in a letter that the HTA was consulted on several occasions, and that 'Grise Fiord urgently needs a harbour' for 'safety and efficiency' around boating. The hunters and trappers association didn't express any concerns about the project impacting fish, wildlife and community members' ability to harvest. Hamlet Coun. Laisa Audlaluk-Watsko pointed to safety as a key benefit of the harbour, especially as summer boating water conditions can quickly change. 'If we had that harbour, then you're arriving into calmer waters because [it is] sheltered in,' she said in an interview in April. 'We could be out in the day, it'll be calm, and then midway before we return it got wavy.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
CTV News
14-05-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Belanger appointed to cabinet
Belanger appointed to cabinet WATCH: Buckley Belanger, Saskatchewan's sole Liberal representative, has been appointed to cabinet.
Global News
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Global News
Saskatchewan Liberal MP appointed Secretary of State for Rural Development
Saskatchewan's only Liberal Member of Parliament is taking on a new role in Prime Minister Mark Carney's government. Buckley Belanger, who represents Desnethé–Missinippi–Churchill River, has been sworn in as Secretary of State for Rural Development. He is one of 10 secretaries of state appointed by Carney. 'Belanger is going to have to wear a number of different caps here,' said Daniel Westlake, assistant professor of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. 'He's the Liberal MP from Saskatchewan, he's the rural Liberal MP for Western Canada and he's an Indigenous MP, so he's got a lot of groups that he's going to have to represent,' Westlake added. The secretaries serve as members of the Privy Council and are responsible for important matters within their respective federal departments. Story continues below advertisement Although secretaries of state do not attend every cabinet meeting, they participate in discussions when topics related to their portfolios are being addressed. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy 'It'll really depend on how much Carney wants to invite people in these secretary of state positions to cabinet discussions,' said Westlake. Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron called the appointment a positive step, saying it offers Indigenous leaders a direct point of contact in Ottawa. 'We have a direct link with him now,' Cameron said. 'We can just phone him and say, 'Buckley, here's what we're doing at the FSIN, here's our main concerns, but more importantly, here's our direction.' Cameron adds that he hopes Belanger's Métis background will bring indigenous priorities to the forefront in Ottawa. 'The housing conditions, the policing issues we face, the health crisis, the impacts where social issues do devastating damage to our First Nations,' said Cameron. 'So in that sense, he can be a good voice and an advocate in the House of Commons.' Belanger previously served two terms as the NDP MLA for Athabasca before switching to federal politics as a Liberal. In a statement, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck congratulated her former colleague and emphasized the need for Ottawa to stay focused on Saskatchewan's priorities. Story continues below advertisement 'There's a renewed consensus right now for nation-building projects — rail lines, pipelines, power lines and highways,' Beck wrote. 'We cannot let this consensus go to waste.' Belanger's appointment comes as three Indigenous ministers join Carney's federal cabinet, something Westlake says is a start of a broader effort to increase representation at the decision-making table. 'At the same time, it'll be interesting to see what happens when indigenous issues end up creating challenges or perhaps tensions with some of the other government's priorities,' Westlake added.
