A few years ago, Leonard Cohen was brought to the brink of bankruptcy when his former manager swindled him out of almost all his money.
Well, fast forward a few years. Recently, Leonard Cohen was given a hero’s treatment, getting the Glenn Gould Prize from the Glenn Gould foundation. He was also supposed to get $50,000. Now, $50K doesn’t sound like a lot of money to a Canadian pop star, let alone one as famous as Cohen, and given what had happened before, it’s understandable Cohen would have quietly pocketed the cheque and nobody would have said anything.
Cohen instead turned the cheque over to the Canada Council.
Leonard’s the man, but how much do you want to wager that come Budget time 2013, the Canada Council finds its annual grant from the (Harper) federal government scaled back by, oh, let’s say, $50,000? Bookmark it, baby.
P.S. Re: “I don’t think that’s how things exactly work…” This is Stephen Harper’s Canada: Things work exactly how Stephen Harper say they going to work. I say, this is Stephen Harper’s Canada: Things work exactly how Stephen Harper say they going to work.
At an arts conference in Regina on May 4-5, Robert Enright (brother of the CBC’s Michael Enright, and founder and contributing editor of Border Crossing magazine in Winnipeg) had this to say about the attitude of the current government toward culture in Canada. This came after he discussed cuts that the CBC, TeleFilm Canada and the National Film Board sustained in the recent budget.
“This is a mean-spirited bully-boy government without a clearly considered cultural policy from which it makes decisions. So there’s a nasty capriciousness about how they’re operating. How the Canada Council escaped the recent purge is anyone’s guess. It’s partially a question of not being noticed. But I have no doubt that when they set their sights on arm’s-length agencies like the Canada Council they’ll find ways to do damage.”
That’s about right. High profile donations from famous bohemians like Cohen will get the Canada Council on their hit list.