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From the archives

Referendum Trudeau

He campaigned in poetry but governed in prose

Jeff Costen

Rinkside Reading

What does hockey’s literature say about the sport?

Naoko Asano

Alarm Bells

Fort McMurray and fires hence

Bob Armstrong
Our Contributors

Robert Sirman

Robert Sirman served as director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts from June 2006 to June 2014, following a distinguished career at Canada’s National Ballet School, the Ontario Arts Council and Ontario’s first Ministry of Culture. In January 2015 he will become a senior fellow in Arts Management at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Articles by
Robert Sirman

Weathering the Storm

The Canada Council’s director for the past eight years looks back at troubled times for the arts October 2014
“I get the willies when I see closed doors.” This is the opening line of Joseph Heller’s 1974 novel, Something Happened, and it succinctly captures the work culture I encountered when I arrived in Ottawa in June 2006.  The significance of doors, both literal and metaphoric, surfaced on my first day. The office I inherited as director of the Canada Council for the Arts had no door whatsoever to the outside…