Latest news with #GrahamGreene
CBC
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
'When I started, we were dead people': Tantoo Cardinal on bringing nuanced Indigenous stories to the screen
To understand the legacy and trajectory of Tantoo Cardinal's renowned acting career, you really have to understand the cultural context she was born into. "I was born only [five] years after Emily Carr passed away," the Indigenous icon tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "If you look at her work, it's all about the dying culture and the dead Indian…. So when I started, we were dead people." By the time Cardinal landed her first professional acting role in 1971, she says there was "massive ignorance" about Indigenous peoples across Canada. Fueled by rage, she turned to acting and storytelling as a form of resistance. "I understood the power of stories," Cardinal says. "Those stories had to be changed to empower ourselves to decolonize … to get back to the origins of who we are." In 1986, Cardinal moved to Los Angeles to find more work. That's where she landed a career-changing role in the Oscar-winning film Dances With Wolves, opposite Kevin Costner and Graham Greene. For a lot of people, Dances With Wolves was the first time they saw Indigenous people being represented in a way that highlighted their humanity. "There was a lot of magic surrounding that movie and I knew that it was significant," Cardinal says. "It was going to be in a Native language and then I asked them, 'Could you use a language where there are some materials, so that the actors have something that they can use to learn what the language is? … So that's how Lakota became the language that they used." Recently, Cardinal was honoured with the Equity in Entertainment Award at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment Canada gala in Toronto. The award recognizes the Canadian acting legend's tireless work to bring authenticity, accuracy and nuance to Indigenous stories. When she looks back on her career now, Cardinal can see how her advocacy helped lay the groundwork for greater Indigenous representation today. "There's no turning back," she says.
Times
4 days ago
- Health
- Times
Clappers, colonies and poisoned wells: a surprising history of leprosy
'What strange ideas people have about leprosy, doctor,' a character wonders in Graham Greene's 1960 novel A Burnt-Out Case, set in a Congolese leper colony. 'They learn about it from the Bible, like sex,' the doctor replies wearily. There's a great deal of historical truth in this wry exchange, the journalist Oliver Basciano tells us in this wide-ranging, globetrotting survey of the disease. Leprosy makes its literary premiere in Leviticus. In the Old Testament, those stricken with tzaraath are unclean and unworthy, deserving of ostracism as well as charity. The coinage lepra — scaly, in the manner of a snake — we owe to the Alexandrian Jewish scribes who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. But in the New Testament and later in the Middle Ages leprosy was regarded as a divine blessing. Basciano's chapter on medieval leprosy is the most arresting of this book. Living with leprosy was deemed akin to suffering in purgatory. At death, then, the leper could expect an easy passage to Heaven.
CBC
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
How did Graham Greene become a Canadian icon? Talent, discipline and luck
With hundreds of stage and screen credits to his name, Graham Greene is an undeniable Canadian icon. In 1990, he became one of the most recognizable Indigenous actors in North America thanks to his breakthrough role in the Kevin Costner film Dances With Wolves, which earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Now, the Oneida actor from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario is the recipient of a Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement. But before he carved out a prolific career in the performing arts, Greene was a draftsman, a steelworker, a welder and an audio tech — difficult jobs that taught him the importance of discipline and a strong work ethic. In a career-spanning interview with Q 's Tom Power, Greene says he got his first professional acting opportunity while working as a roadie (he mentions he toured with the Canadian band Abraham's Children and did sound for country artists like George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire and Buck Owens). That's when a guy named Doug Rogers asked him if he had ever considered doing theatre. "I said, 'Well, I don't know about theatre. I don't even know what a script looks like,'" Greene recalls. After receiving the script, Greene decided to give it a shot and landed the job. He was pleasantly surprised to find the work really enjoyable. "I changed into the costume and they put me in the shade in a nice chair," he says. "They brought me food and water … and I thought, 'Jeez, I'm living the life of a dog! This is great. I don't have to carry anybody's amplifiers anymore. I don't have to do lights. I don't have to drive halfway across the country for nothing.'" While Greene says it took him a while to get used to acting, he eventually came to the realization that he loved performing and had a talent for it. But as one of a few Indigenous actors in Canada at a time when representation was lacking, talent and discipline could only take him so far — he also needed luck. "I got lucky, I just got lucky," Greene says. "A lot of actors that I know in the business, they had to punch and claw their way to do the stuff, and they had to work very, very hard at what they did to get where they are today. And me? I just got lucky."
CBC
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
When actor Graham Greene got the call that he'd won a Governor General's Award, he thought it was a prank
Social Sharing With a dry sense of humour and a penchant for teasing, it's no wonder that acclaimed actor Graham Greene believed his own friends were pranking him when he got the call from Governor General Mary Simon's office letting him know he'd be receiving a Governor General's Performing Arts Award. "'Yeah, yeah, who is it?'" he recalls saying. "I found out it was true, and I said, 'Oh my gosh, I'm terribly sorry, I thought it was some friends playing a joke.' The same thing happened when I got the Order of Canada, I thought somebody was pulling my leg." The 72-year-old actor will be receiving a Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award for his vast body of work in stage and screen, which includes unforgettable portrayals of chiefs, medicine men, doctors, a judge (Molly's Game), a detective (Die Hard with a Vengeance) and a death row inmate (The Green Mile). For his performance as Kicking Bird, a Sioux medicine man in the 1990 film Dances with Wolves, he earned an Academy Award nomination. Often playing specifically Indigenous characters, and frequently speaking languages and representing tribes and nations not his own (he's Oneida from the Six Nations of the Grand River), Greene is one of the most recognizable Indigenous actors in North America. "It's wonderful to be recognized in your own country, and I'm grateful for that," he says. "I'm just a working actor and I'm lucky enough to survive as long as I did in the business. There's a lot of better actors that have not survived and there's some that are still active that never got any recognition, which is unfortunate." His four decades of acting all stemmed from Greene's fascination with human behaviour when he was a sound engineer for bands. He'd sit behind the sound console and watch the crowds instead of the band. "I just picked somebody and started asking questions and making things up about them." Filling in a character's backstory came naturally to him in film, but he wanted to bring more confidence to his acting, so he did theatre to develop discipline and learn "how to dance," as he calls ad-libbing. Some of his favourite "dance partners" have been Felicity Huffman and Mel Gibson, from Transamerica and Maverick, respectively. Actors Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal 4 days ago Duration 5:33 Two Canadian actors discuss what it was like to work with Hollywood's Kevin Costner in the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves. Despite announcing his retirement from acting, he says he gets more calls than ever. He tells his agent to send only the good stuff, and his requirements include working four days or less, very little dialogue and "a lot of money." Acclaimed television series The Last of Us and Reservation Dogs must have fit the criteria, as Greene made notable appearances in both in recent years. Sometimes, a little convincing brings him into the fold. The 2024 thriller/comedy Seeds was written specifically for Greene by the film's writer, director and star, Kaniehtiio Horn. "She says, 'I wrote a role for you, and you better do it.' I said, 'Well, I guess I better.'" Seeds is the closing night film of imagineNATIVE Film Festival, where Greene will receive another lifetime award, the August Schellenberg Award of Excellence.
Euronews
08-06-2025
- Euronews
Seven days, five countries: My scenic Paris to Istanbul train ride
'So this is the great Orient Express,' says a character in Graham Greene's 1969 novel Travels with My Aunt. 'Maybe it's real luxury travel…for people not in a hurry.' That novelised version of the famed Paris to Istanbul train was a little run-down, and calamitously, had no restaurant car to sate passengers on its three-day journey. Ttitular Aunt Augusta bemoans the lack of caviar and champagne in which she'd indulged on a previous voyage. 'We practically lived in the dining car. One meal ran into another and night into day.' Just as Aunt Augusta harkened back to the glory days of train travel, so too does Golden Eagle Luxury Trains. Passengers on its new French-Turkish connection will hardly find themselves going hungry, but they certainly won't be in a rush. A champagne reception at Gare de Lyon set the inaugural journey off on a footing of opulence and pleasure. While Paris slipped away behind a drizzle of rain, we first travellers were treated to a boozy on-board lunch that portended the extravagance of our seven-day voyage to the Bosphorus. Coupled to the royal-blue wagon-lits of its Danube Express were two restaurant cars and a bar car, all in full swing, with enough caviar and champagne to last well beyond Istanbul. Golden Eagle's itinerary touches on many of the locations taken by previous iterations of the multifarious 'Orient Express' trains — Austria, Serbia, Bulgaria — although it traces an original, more languid, sinuous route across the continent. The train makes additional stops in France's Reims to visit a champagne house, an afternoon at Slovenia's Postojna Cave, spirit-tasting in Belgrade, and a city tour of Sofia. This was late May (the route is offered in spring and autumn), the perfect time to make a cross-continental crop inspection of Europe. The budding grapevines of France trailed into the soggy barley fields of Austria, to Serbia's parched beans and corn, and Bulgaria's squat, as-yet-faceless sunflowers. Fat Brown Swiss cattle in Alpine pastures begat Croatia's sheep, which gave way to the skinny Dardanelle goats of Turkey. And every day of the journey, sprouting between the railway ties as though they had been seeded by passing trains, was a festive tri-colour of poppies, butterwort, and early-purple orchids. Greene's Aunt Augusta was right to say that 'in middle age pleasure begins, pleasure in wine, in love, in food.' Food was on my mind from the get-go of this trip, and did funny things to my senses. At our stop in Reims, I was happy to hear our guide say, 'We will be visiting the Café Drole.' I was honestly surprised to find us then at the city's cathedral rather than a brasserie. The statues carved into the church's façade, chewed by acid rain, looked leprotic without various fingers, hands, noses, and toes, and put me in mind of gorgonzola. The next day, as I passed through Austrian Tyrol, the waiter bent with a basket of bread and asked if I wanted 'The normal, or the terrible kind?' Too curious to refuse, I asked for the terrible, only to find it was, in fact, made with tarragon. The bread, the butter, the finicky meals, and delicate desserts are judiciously constructed in the cramped swelter of a railcar kitchen. It feels certain that, were it not moving on rails for weeks at a time, the Danube Express restaurant would have a Michelin star or two — that system being predicated on the anonymity of reviewers, who are unlikely to spend a week or more eating at the same establishment. Yet I could think of nothing better than having my regular breakfast of poached eggs and bacon while passing through Slovenia's Julian Alps, or eating octopus carpaccio, grilled sea bass, and baked mango cheesecake as we traveled south through Croatia, to my left was a wolfish Balkan wood, to my left, fishing boats and Adriatic beach sand. Each evening, Gábor Viczián, the train's resident musician, would fill the bar car with music — tunes from his native Hungary, the Great American Songbook, and Elton John. One night, the carriage slowly emptied, until it was just the two of us, him at the piano, and me drinking my champagne. I tried to listen with sincerity while Gábor explained to me how Chopin's modulated romantic chords led to the swing and jazz of Gershwin and Joplin, but between the rocking of the train, the drink, and Gábor's unique spin on the English language, his explanations soon became a little blurry. In my clear moments, I knew this was a special voyage. As the trip wore on and Istanbul loomed, it became a topic of conversation — the historical connotations of the journey, in literature, film, and the imagination, were inescapable. The last supper on board, a semi-formal 'black-tie gala,' was held as we rattled between Sofia and Istanbul. I sat with an Australian gentleman, who expressed amazement that everything had gone so well. 'This trip just flowed like wine,' the Australian said. 'Smooth from start to finish.' Yes, I thought, and the train is the terroir, providing us with everything needed for an excellent trip. 'We can only do so much,' said Tim Littler, Golden Eagle's founder, who travelled with us on the journey. They have refined their mission after years of operations in Europe, Central Asia, and India (new itineraries will soon begin in China, Tibet, and Vietnam). What is under Golden Eagle's purview — the delicious food, the drinks, the comfortable cabins, the friendly and smiling staff — was better than anyone could ask for. As in any kind of travel, the rest was up to us passengers. How could the torrential rain we encountered in Vienna be a problem when we had a private orchestral concert waiting for us at the Burgtheater? Why bother over the occasionally spotty Wi-Fi when we had the breadth of Balkan Europe to look out upon? How could anyone complain about the wait times at the Bulgarian border when the formalities were entirely taken care of by Golden Eagle staff, leaving us free to continue sipping champagne and reading our novels? The time allotted to us was the true luxury. To paraphrase Greene, this is the great Golden Eagle; it is real luxury travel for people not in a hurry. The writer was a guest of Golden Eagle Luxury Trains. I smile as Silvia – our tour leader on Intrepid's eight-day Best of Switzerland rail trip – guides us confidently through Zurich's main station, tickets to Lucerne in hand. Though Italian, Silvia now spends much of her time in Germany and Switzerland, and she navigates the local railway systems with ease. Trains are arguably the best way to explore Switzerland, renowned for its punctual transport and panoramic vistas. But there's more to train travel than hopping on and enjoying the view: timetables, routes and accommodation along the way. All of these factors require know-how and planning, which can prove challenging for time-strapped travellers. Consequently, companies such as Byway, which help customers book self-guided train itineraries, are proving very successful. Yet there's an even easier way to get onboard, thanks to a rise in small-group rail trips like Intrepid's. Here, a knowledgeable guide and the chance to meet like-minded travel companions are added bonuses. Such benefits inspired me to try my first European Intrepid trip. Driven by a soaring demand for train travel, the small-group adventure company recently launched a rail-based collection spanning old favourites to new itineraries, and it was here that I spotted the Best of Switzerland. Cheese, chocolate and superlative scenery? Swiss bliss indeed. Switzerland is expensive, and this tour reflects that, with prices starting from €3050. Perhaps due to this, my group was on the older side of Intrepid's demographic: ranging from 60-something Americans to an Aussie in her forties. I am 33 and there was just one person younger than me. Yet, as I often find on these trips, we bonded well despite our various ages and all relished the ride. We begin with an evening welcome meeting and walk in Zurich, before leaving the next morning. With little time spent in Zurich on the trip, I agree with Intrepid's advice to arrive early and explore. From fondue spiked with cherry liquor in the old town, to myriad museums and Bahnhofstrasse's dazzling jewellery, you'll find plenty here besides watches and banks. I recommend staying three or four days and buying a Zurich Card, which covers public transport, plus discounted entry to multiple attractions. Up next was Lucerne, about an hour from Zurich by train. Cue a typically scenic journey, where jagged snowy Alps glint in the distance and buzzards soar overhead, followed by a small city with big charm. An azure lake spanned by wooden bridges, frescoed buildings depicting craftsmen and jesters, medieval cobbled streets and city walls – Lucerne is a true supermodel, right down to its mountain backdrop. Our two days here also include a 'golden round-trip' Mount Pilatus tour: covering a steamboat cruise across Lake Lucerne, the world's steepest cogwheel railway up to the summit, and finally a gondola back. This is slightly ruined by foggy conditions on Pilatus, but as our next stop, two and a half hours by train from Lucerne would show me, fickle mountain weather is hard to avoid. Hills dotted with gingerbread chalets, tinkling cowbells, streams rushing through conifer forests; then suddenly fog, mist, a brutal world of rock and snow. Such was my disorientating experience of ascending towards Jungfraujoch, 3454 metres above sea level, in the Eiger Express gondola. I then catch the Jungfrau Railway – an awesome feat of engineering that saw a tunnel blasted through mountains far above the perennial snow line – and emerge onto the so-called 'Top of Europe', where clear conditions promise a stellar Alpine view. My view? Snowy blizzards. It's lucky Jungfraujoch has indoor entertainment, including a karst cave and an ice palace, too. Mountain weather is indeed fickle, but I enjoy our two days of free time in the Jungfrau Region nonetheless. My favourite excursion is Trümmelbach Falls, where subterranean waterfalls plummet through rock ravines in a milky-blue roar. Enhanced by adjacent wildflower meadows, impressionist canvases of purple and yellow, it feels like the setting of a fantasy movie. The Grindelwald Hotel is also a highlight, with its abundant wood and mellow lighting, as is my cheesy Alpine macaroni in the restaurant. Talking of which, our next stop is cheesy indeed. After around three hours and two train changes from Grindelwald, we arrive in Bulle: a pretty pastel town in French-speaking Switzerland. Our final destination is nearby Gruyères, where we visit a small factory to learn more about its renowned hard nutty cheese. This is often used in fondue, and so beloved that it's inspired a tradition of intricately carved wooden Gruyère spoons. My unsurprising highlight is the tasting, as with the chocolatier we visited afterwards. Chocolate is another product that Switzerland famously makes well, particularly via artisanal makers like Richard Uldry, who sources quality cocoa from places like Peru and São Tomé. After explaining his bean-to-bar process, Richard offers us samples of products like his Gruyère double-cream truffles. Yum Backed by a massive fang-like mountain that recalls the Matterhorn of old Toblerone packets, Gruyères is as delectable as its food. The red-roofed hilltop town is complete with a medieval château. It's also home to a bar and museum celebrating sci-fi artist H.R. Giger (best known for his work on the 1979 film Alien) – visiting this during our free time, I enjoy it almost as much as the cheese. Almost. Alas, all good things come to an end. Our last stop, around a one-hour train ride from Bulle and back into German-speaking Switzerland, is Bern. Home to a UNESCO-listed old town, complete with unusual underground shops, the Swiss capital is also celebrated for its 13th-century clock tower: a landmark whose secrets we learn on an included behind-the-scenes tour. Saying goodbye to the group over a rösti dinner, I reflect on my first-ever guided rail journey. Granted, it had been 'lazier' than my usual Europe trips, which I navigate with friends or family, but I'd saved several days of planning and met some lovely companions from across the world. Getting from A to B without worry, thanks to guide Silvia, was also a novelty; after all, mistakes are possible even in Switzerland, especially during tight train changes. I appreciated the mix of included activities and free time too. Want a multi-stop rail tour without hassle? I believe tours like Intrepid's are just the ticket. The writer was a guest of Intrepid.
