Latest news with #NewBrunswick
CTV News
24 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Improv show about relationship keeps performers on their toes as they tour the Maritimes
Alex Rioux is keeping a secret from Jean-Michel Cliche and neither of them know what it is. They have been dancing around the subject for a while onstage, discussing the challenges of their domestic lives. Finally, Rioux tells Cliche the truth: They steal cheese from Loblaws. The secret doesn't come from Rioux; it comes from the audience. 'Before the show, our stage manager asks the crowd what the secret is in the form of an 'I am' question,' Cliche said. 'There's a projection that comes up with the secret. Everything after is completely improvised.' Cliche and Rioux are the stars of TILT, a show that explores a relationship between two characters with the novel twist being that every performance features a new secret pulled from the audience. 'The show begins as a scripted piece,' Cliche said. 'The first half of the show is a journey through their relationship. Clearly something is not being communicated between the two of them. It's very grounded. At a certain point Alex's character musters up the courage to share the secret.' Cliche is the associate artistic director of Solo Chicken Productions, a New Brunswick-based theatre company that is taking TILT on tour through the Maritimes this summer. 'The name TILT appeared before the story did,' he said. 'I was reading about Coen Brothers' movies and how they have this concept called the tilt. For me that was the crux of the show. We wanted a moment where everything got turned on its head. 'We thought it captured the energy of the show. We want audiences to feel that tilt with us.' TILT show TILT is going on tour in the Maritimes this summer. (Source: Andrew Finlay) Cliche discovered improvisation in high school when, in his words, his teacher dragged him to a class one day. 'I hadn't found my thing yet and it really connected with me,' he said. 'It's a really collaborative environment. You have to be so in tune with each other.' Cliche studied theatre in university and coached an improv team at his old high school, continuing to develop his craft. 'There's a lot more training and skill that goes into it than people can imagine,' he said. 'I describe it as more like a sport. You have to run your drills. When you get to a game, you don't know how those skills will come into play, but you always fall back on them. You're thinking about your ability to connect to your fellow performers.' Through his work, Cliche met and started to work with Rioux through Hot Garbage Players, building a natural rapport through countless performances. Cliche said TILT came about in the wake of Rioux's show 'Fruit Machine,' which explored the history of the LGBTQ+ purge from Canadian military, RCMP and civil service in the 1960s. 'Alex created this beautiful, really complex piece about the LGBT purge,' Cliche said. 'We were touring that play and once we were finished that tour, we were kind of thinking what's next? Let's jam something out. 'It was an artistic challenge to go, 'We want to make something smaller scale but just as effective and polished as previous works.' I always had an idea of a show that started scripted and became improv. It was an artistic challenge for ourselves that sounded exciting.' Jean-Michel Cliche Jean-Michel Cliche is pictured. (Source: Andrew Finlay) Cliche said audiences have cooked up some truly odd secrets for the second half of the show. 'You get thrown this ridiculous curve balls,' he said. 'Really strange, wild twists like, 'I'm doing secret deals behind the Payless Shoes depot.' 'It's been cool to play the same characters in these different iterations but finding heart is at the core of all of it. We both gravitate towards the heart of these characters. They feel like real people to us.' TILT will kick off its summer tour at Memorial Hall in Fredericton on July 24 and 25. Other shows include: DANSpace at Halifax Fringe Festival from Aug. 27 to Sept. 7 Marshlight Theatre in Sackville, N.B., on Sept. 19 and 20 BMO Theatre in Saint John on Sept. 24 For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
'I will never own a home': Moncton artist highlights barriers to housing
Moncton artist Natt Cann would like to own a home, but at the age of 35, he's come to the conclusion that will probably never happen. His latest work, a series of nearly 300 prints of beautiful doors, was inspired by that realization. Cann was walking in downtown Fredericton one day, and noticed "pretty doors everywhere." His next thought was, "I'll never afford any of this." The doors may be beautiful, but for Cann, they symbolize more. "The door is sort of like a barrier," he said. "You're not coming in." Not all of the doors Cann prints are picture-perfect. Some are boarded up or have eviction notices on them. "I want people to understand that beneath this collection of doors, there's ... a whole lot of anger and annoyance." WATCH | 'My frustration with the Canadian housing markets': He calls his exhibit, Knock Knock! - I will never own a home, and describes it as his "frustration with the Canadian housing markets and predatory investment." "It's mostly born from just being priced out of houses and priced out of basically everything — and I was like, 'Well at least I can own a door.'" According to the Bank of Canada, the average price of a home in the province rose from just under $180,000 in 2019 to $297,520 in 2023, driven in part by record international and interprovincial migration after the pandemic. There has also been an increase in the number of homes purchased by investors, and a decline in first-time buyers. Investor purchases climbed from 20 per cent of all mortgaged homes in Canada in 2014, to 30 per cent in the first quarter of 2023. Cann wonders why government policy doesn't prevent investment firms from buying housing. "Why is that allowed to exist in Canada?" he said. "A group of people can put their money together and buy a home as an investment and not as a thing of shelter…it prices out individuals from having shelter in this day and age." According to Statistics Canada, more than one in five Canadian households live in unaffordable housing — meaning they spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing. One-of-a-kind prints Cann grew up drawing on his bedroom walls, but now he uses more sophisticated techniques in his studio to create his art. His collection of prints starts with taking pictures of the doors and includes doors from Fredericton, Saint John and Charlottetown. Once he has the pictures, he digitally crops out the house. "Then they get printed on a laser printer with a very specific toner and a very specific additive in that toner," Cann said. "Then you can use adhesive remover to transfer them onto a different piece of paper with some pretty aggressive application." "The prints are one-of-a-kind and that texture that he gets is unique," said Kathryn Basham, who owns the Bright & Brine Fine Art Gallery. She recently displayed Cann's exhibit in her Moncton gallery for three months, and is now working with him to get the prints made into a book. "It'll be a conversation about not just his process, but his original idea behind the series," Basham said. On the exhibit's opening night, Basham said about 50 to 60 people attended. "The messaging behind Knock Knock! is extremely important," Basham said. "We are losing this housing here locally and we are losing a lot of what, not just architecturally we've had, but the opportunities for housing." The project started in spring of 2023, but Cann is still adding doors to his collection.
CBC
2 hours ago
- Science
- CBC
N.B. Museum set to add 1st rare owl specimen found in the province in over 100 years
The New Brunswick Museum is set to add a rare great grey owl to its extensive bird collection in July. This owl will become the first specimen of its kind found in New Brunswick to be held at a Canadian museum in over 100 years, according to Greg Jongsma, the museum's acting curator of the zoology department. Jongsma said the department is excited for the new bird specimen. He believes this addition will be a great resource for scientific research globally, adding to their collection of 13,000 bird species, the largest in Atlantic Canada. "As sad as this is, the loss of this individual's life, this great grey owl, it's of tremendous value to the museum and the research community," said Jongsma. "Because this is one of the first specimens for New Brunswick, [and] it's certainly the first specimen from New Brunswick in any Canadian collections." The great grey owl is one of the largest owls in North America in terms of height. The bird is often found in northern areas and it usually migrates down southern latitudes when there's a lack of food supply, which are often rodents for these birds. According to Jongsma, the owl is considered a rare bird in the province because New Brunswick is too far away from these owls' natural habitat, explaining that they will often find prey closer to their habitats. The New Brunswick museum only knows of nine confirmed sightings of the bird, according to records vetted by the New Brunswick Bird Committee, an organization created in 1992 and sponsored by the museum to come up with an official bird list for the province. The committee, in collaboration with the museum, maintains the official bird list by screening and acting on reports of potential new species, ensuring accuracy. Jim Wilson, previous chair of the committee, said in an emailed statement that the owl joining the museum is considered to be the ninth great grey owl that has reached New Brunswick "for certain" in the past 125 years. According to Wilson there are two other existing specimens that were collected in the province in the late 1890s. The collectors were not recorded, so the museum has little information on how these owls were discovered, and both specimens currently reside in American museums. One can be found in the American Museum of Natural History and the other in the Field Museum in Chicago. The owl joining the New Brunswick Museum was found this past April in Lakeside near Hampton, with a hip and eye injury due to being struck by a car. The bird was put under the care of the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, who identified her as a female, and attempted to rehabilitate the owl, who was in overall good condition besides the injuries it sustained. According to the AWI director Pam Novak, joint injuries can be fatal for birds who need their leg strength to hunt like the great grey, which needs to be able to pounce over snow to catch their prey. However, due to the overall good health of the bird, the institute decided to operate. "We knew we were up against a low prognosis of this going well, but knowing she was in good condition we said 'let's give this a try,' because maybe something might be different with this particular case," said Novak. Despite the surgery being a success, the recovery of the owl wasn't. Novak explained that the owl struggled to regain strength and muscle tone in the injured leg, even with her hip joint being realigned. Taking into consideration the owl's deteriorating condition and her quality of life with an unusable leg, the institute decided to humanely euthanize the bird in June. Novak said this was a hard decision to make as they were hoping to release the owl back in the wild, and track her movement to figure out the owl's flying patterns in order to do further research on the species in the province. "It would have been really interesting to see if she can continue the story of where she came from," said Novak. "Would she go back or would she stay in this area trying to establish a territory? "Unfortunately those are questions we are not going to be able to get." However, Novak believes the owl's death wasn't in vain. She agreed with Jongsma and said that the bird's transfer to the museum would facilitate crucial research on its species for both the museum and other researchers around the world. "There's a lot that can be told from just them being able to analyze some of the tissue samples, some of the DNA ... there's a lot of opportunity for further research into the species itself," said Novak. Jongsma intends to retrieve the owl in early July. The owl will provide samples to study the owl's genetic diversity, population trends, or distributional shifts. For Jongsma the addition of the owl will not only be valuable to understand the species within a New Brunswick context but also for the scientific community overall. "It's an exciting rare occurrence to have this great grey owl specimen from New Brunswick, but it's now become a part of a larger collection that [is] greater than the sum of its parts," he said. "[It's] all together where the value really comes out for research and understanding life on our planet."
Globe and Mail
10 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
NORTHCLIFF ANNOUNCES CLOSING OF $1.2 MILLION PRIVATE PLACEMENT FINANCING
, /CNW/ - Northcliff Resources Ltd. ("Northcliff" or the "Company") (TSX: NCF) is pleased to announce that further to its press release dated June 19, 2025 , it has closed a non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement") of 19,842,128 common shares of the Company at a price of $0.06 per common share for gross proceeds to the Company of $1,190,527.68 . Proceeds of the Private Placement will be used to fund the Company's share of expenditures related to the Sisson Project and for working capital and general corporate purposes. About Northcliff Resources Ltd. Northcliff is a mineral resource company focused on advancing the feasibility-stage Sisson Tungsten-Molybdenum Project located in New Brunswick, Canada , to production. Additional information on Northcliff is available on the website at Investor services can be reached at (604) 684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114. Andrew Ing Chairman, President & CEO
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Fredericton police error collapses 3 murder cases, charges stayed against 5 people
An error by Fredericton police caused three murder cases to collapse Friday as the Crown stayed charges against five people. Crown prosecutor Jeremy Erickson sought the stays for charges against Erica Lea Ann Blyth, Joshua John McIsaac, Devon Mark Hill Hood, Matthew David LeBlanc and Travis James Snowsell on Friday during an appearance in Burton court. Blyth and McIsaac had been charged with first-degree murder, accused of killing Brandon Donelan, 27, of Minto. Donelan's body was found in a wooded area between Minto and Chipman on March 31, 2022, after being reported missing two months earlier. Hood and LeBlanc were to be tried separately on first-degree murder charges alleging they killed Donelan. Snowsell and McIsaac were charged with second-degree murder in the death of Corey Christopher Markey. Markey, 41, was shot in Fredericton's north side on Dec. 21, 2021, and died eight days later. WATCH | 'Utter disbelief' sister says as murder case ends: Staying the charges means none of the five will stand trial on the allegations. Erickson offered no specifics when addressing Justice Richard Petrie beyond saying that the province's attorney general was exercising its authority to seek a stay. But defence lawyer Nathan Gorham told the judge that the development was the "result of an insurmountable evidentiary issue" with a police agency involved in one of the murder investigations. Moments after the charges were stayed, ending the cases, the Fredericton Police Force issued a statement about the development. "The reason for the stay of proceedings is the result of an 'insurmountable evidentiary issue' linked directly to an error initiated, discovered and subsequently reported to the Crown by the Fredericton Police Force," Chief Gary Forward said in the statement. "Our error has further detrimentally impacted on a similar major crime investigation by a partner agency." The nature of the error was not disclosed. Lawyers for the accused told reporters it was an unprecedented development. Family members of the victims sobbed in court and outside it, with Donelan's sister expressing disbelief. "We have no answers," Jessica Donelan told reporters outside the Burton courthouse. "There's no transparency, there's no accountability. It's just, it is what it is and this is what you have to deal with." Review sought The police chief's statement said the force takes responsibility for the outcome. The force investigated Markey's death. "We cannot begin to gauge or comprehend the profound effect this will have on the victims' families and those closest to the investigations," Forward said in the statement. "It is, however, our obligation to take full responsibility for the issue and apologize for what has led to these stays of proceedings." The police force said it would seek an independent review of what unfolded. Erickson left the courthouse without speaking to reporters. Sarah Bustard, a spokesperson for the province's Justice Department, said in an email the Crown's office had no further comment. The RCMP, which investigated Donelan's death, expressed confidence in its investigation. "The N.B. RCMP respects the decision of Crown prosecutors and expresses sincere condolences to the family of Brandon Donelan who are continuing to seek justice," RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Hans Ouellette said in an emailed statement.
