{"id":182,"date":"2016-04-16T11:21:18","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T15:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/?p=182"},"modified":"2018-07-11T11:46:01","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T15:46:01","slug":"great-time-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/?p=182","title":{"rendered":"A Great Time To Be Heard By All"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Jim Coyle<\/strong><\/h4>\n

June 14, 2007<\/h4>\n

If, as the saying goes, God made man because he so loves stories, the next few days in our town ought to win a good deal of heavenly favour for tales heartbreaking, conscience-stirring, rib-tickling, spirit-lifting and just about everything in between.<\/p>\n

From Pat Capponi, a celebrated Toronto yarn-spinner and a well-known story in herself, comes word of a special event hosted tomorrow by Voices from the Street at the Malcolmson Theatre at 1001 Queen St. W.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Voices offers a 12-week course in leadership, policy development and story-telling to those knocked around by life, circumstance or injustice, folks who\u2019ve known poverty, homelessness, addiction or mental illness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou will be entertained and moved,\u201d by the graduates\u2019 accounts, Capponi promises No one knows like those who\u2019ve been there. Even the well-meaning can\u2019t fully appreciate paths they haven\u2019t walked. Voices hopes to give those who\u2019ve been on the receiving end of social services a chance to showcase the vast difference between \u201ctheory and practice, academic and direct experience, middle class and poverty.\u201d An Aboriginal woman lost to drugs and alcohol. A Ugandan come to a country he thinks is paradise only to find his credentials are worthless. A Somalian handed over to Children\u2019s Aid not long after arriving in this country. All are on the bill.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to talk from a position of dependence, of powerlessness,\u201d the invitation from Voices says. \u201cThese men and women are ready to voice their stories, ideas and perspectives. Are you ready to hear?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Readiness is all, in a world of distraction. \u201cStories become \u2018new\u2019 to us when something in our own experience makes us ready to hear them,\u201d wrote Katherine Ketcham and Ernest Kurtz in The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the Journey to Wholeness.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are all kinds of stories, some factual, some merely full of truth, and Paul Farrelly has passed along word of a lighter hearted bit of ear-bending set for Saturday \u2013 which as the cognoscenti of things Hibernian know is Bloomsday, the annual commemoration of Leopold Bloom\u2019s epic perambulation around Dublin in James Joyce\u2019s novel Ulysses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill anybody remember this date?\u201d Joyce apparently fretted in his diary about what would become, thanks to the power of a story, the most famous day in fiction.<\/p>\n

And 103 years on, the St. Joseph Street Fair, off Yonge north of Wellesley, promises \u201cbooks, blarney, buskers and bonhomie, a movable feast of storytelling, literary readings and entertainment, featuring literary rambles around the restaurants of the neighbourhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 2 30 p.m., there is even to be a guest appearance by Leopold and Molly Bloom \u2013 all in aid of St. Joseph House, a resource centre for those in vulnerable circumstances to practise creative arts while providing a social and cultural hub for the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cSt. Joseph Street is at the centre of Postal Code M4Y, stretching from Bloor-Yorkville to Church and Wellesley,\u201d organizers said. \u201cThe area is the heart of Toronto\u2019s \u2018creative city,\u2019 that combination of liveability, enterprise and services that thrives in the contemporary knowledge economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the best of times, stories can help us see with new eyes, hear with new ears. But somewhere along the way \u2013 swamped by modernity\u2019s incoherent information avalanche \u2013 \u201cour ability to tell (and to listen to) stories was lost,\u201d said Kurtz and Ketcham.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, as Capponi and Farrelly hope, it\u2019s just been misplaced. And they think they know where we can find it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Credit: Toronto Star<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Coyle June 14, 2007 If, as the saying goes, God made man because he so loves stories, the next few days in our town ought to win a good deal of heavenly favour for tales heartbreaking, conscience-stirring, rib-tickling, spirit-lifting… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,5,16],"tags":[33,17,34,19,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":855,"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voicesfromthestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}