|
Home |
CMAJ on PMRA, November 2023 |
EV as empty vessel in car sewers, Eric Reguly, Globe & Mail, May 20, 2023 |
Comic Piccini opera, Redux, Ontario auditor general Env Report, Globe & Mail, May 18, 2023 |
Venal or Venial? letter to Globe, May 16, 2023 |
"Cry me a river over a few bats", Redux, Globe & Mail, May 12,2023 |
Greenbelt "Scam": Barbarian Ford invasions, Globe & Mail, May 12, 2023 |
Barbarian Ford invasions case: City of Belleville Bell Creek dvlpt, Intelligencer, April 25, 2023 |
Road building projects in Wales, UK, cancelled as climate clangers, the Guardian, Feb 14, 2023 |
Unpublshed letter to Globe, 1996 opioids revisited, February 6, 2023 |
Cathal Kelly on climate charade, Globe & Mail, January 27, 2023 |
Ontario Bill 23, letter to the Premier, and Todd Smith MPP, Nov 24, 2022 |
Canola conundrum, letter to Globe & Mail, October 2022 |
3rd (Canadian) arm of U.S. Air Pollution Health Effects Study, the Guardian, Aug 12, 2022 |
Atomic awe and Boris blight, letter to Globe, July 11, 2022 |
Your !!*^%! car, Part II, Globe and Mail editorial, July 16, 2022 |
Your !!*^%! car, Part I, Globe and Mail, June 20, 2022 |
CAPE report on fossil fuels, Globe and Mail, June 9, 2022 |
Traffic Air Pollution Health Effects report, CAPE, April 2022 |
EU Bans Toxics, the Guardian, April 2022 |
Comic Piccini opera: Ontario Auditor General Environment Report, November 2021 |
......RIP Trillium...... November 16, 2021 |
Covid-19 Parlour Sessions 2020/2021, April 1, 2021 |
Mitch Podoluk, Obituary, Globe and Mail, September 2019 |
Notice to (Big Bay) Mariners, August 2019 |
Air Head, Globe and Mail, August 2019 |
Leon Redbone, RIP, June 2019 |
Ontario Endangered Species Act at risk, letter to Rod Phillips, April 2019 |
Slide to Extinction, Chris Humphrey, letter to Globe, October 31, 2018 |
Peter Galbraith, FRCP, obituary, October 2017 |
White Pines on Death Bed, Bruce Bell, Intelligencer, July 17,2018 |
Thucydides Trap, letter to Globe, May 2018 |
Great Lakes toxics down, SUNY Oswego/Clarkson U, April 2018 |
Machine subversion of democracy, letter to Globe, April 2018 |
Air Pollution overrides Ancestral Genes, Globe, March 2018 |
Olympian Cathal Kelly, letter to Globe, March 2018 |
Environmentalists seeking unemployment, letter to Globe, February 2018 |
Less is more on Bike Lanes, National Post, January 2018 |
Tramadol, 10 years on, Globe and Mail, November 2017 |
White Stripes: Belleville bicycle lanes, letters, November 2017 |
Occupational Cancers, CCO research results, Globe and Mail, October 2017 |
Big Pharmoney and Canadian Drug Use Guidelines, Globe and Mail, June 21, 2017, Kelly Grant |
Oxycontin, 20 years on, letter to Globe, May 2017 |
Lake Ontario wind turbines to remain on hold? Feb 2017 |
Obituary, Raold Serebrin, September 2016 |
Sartorial slip or signal? letter to Globe editor, October 2016 |
Weapons of mass distraction, letter to Globe editor, Oct 2016 |
Point O turbines 99% Down the Drain, CCSAGE, July 7, 2016 |
Point O turbines Dead and Damned, PECFN, July 6, 2016 |
Rabid diplomat, letter to Globe, May, 2016 |
More on bats: rabid rocker? letter to Globe, January 2016 |
Lighthouses of eastern Lake Ontario, new book by Marc Seguin, March 2016 |
Continuing corporate windpower malfeasance: Windstream and Trillium Corp, Feb 2016 |
Amherst Island: the next fine mess, Feb 2016 |
Valerie Langer: Thirty years of effort pays off on the B.C. coast, Feb 1,2016 |
Trillium log, 6th annual ELO expedtion, September 2015 |
Trillium Wind Corp intent on Spoliation of eastern Lake Ontario and Main Duck Isle, June 2015 |
Turtles rule? Ontario Court of Appeal Decision: Turtlegate, April 2015 |
Obituaries, Mary Terrance (Luke) Hill, January 2015; Valerie Ingrid (Hill) Kaldes, July 2015 |
Ontario Court of Appeal turtle hearing, December 2014 |
Trillium Log, 5th annual ELO expedition, September 2014 |
Planetary public health manifesto, The Lancet, March 2014 |
Ostrander Bioblitz, butterfly inventory walk, August 10, 2014 |
Victory at Cape Vincent: British Petroleum withdraws turbine proposal, February 2014 |
Stay of execution granted by Ontario Court of Appeal, March 2014 |
Never say die: Will the Court of Appeal let the Ostrander Phoenix fly free again? March 2014 |
Divisional Court ruling in Ostrander: turtles belly up, Trojan horses win, February 2014 |
Lafarge 2020, pushing the air envelope again, Hazardous waste as cement kiln fuel proposal, Jan2014 |
Another fine mess in Port Hope: municipal waste incinerator proposal, January 2014 |
Ostrander: fiasco, or snafu? you decide, December 2013 |
Ostrander rises again, Noli illegitimi carborundum, December 2013 |
British Petroleum backing off Cape Vincent after a decade of aggression? December 2013 |
Turbines best Bald Eagles in U.S law, December 2013 |
SARStock 10 years after, letter to Globe, August 2003 |
Trillium log September 2013: Surfin' USA: Hanging Ten in a Hughes 29 |
ERT Post mortem: Garth Manning lets it all hang out, August 2013 |
ERT post mortem: Cheryl Anderson lets it all hang out, August 2013 |
ERT Post Mortem: Ian Dubin lets it all hang out, August 2013 |
Great Lakes United turns thirty, goes down, RIP GLU, July 29, 2013 |
ERT decision, Ostrander turns turtle, goes down, July 3, 2013 |
PECFN Thankyou, and Appeal for funds, July 6, 2013 |
Minister of Env on Lake Ontario Off shore wind turbine status, June 2013 |
Lake Ontario water level control plan, June 2013 |
Play by Play, Part II, APPEC Ostrander ERT Appeal, June 2013 |
Ostrander ERT June 2013, Appendix VI, an indirect cause of human morbidity and mortality ? |
ELOERG Presentation to Ostrander ERT, Part II, Human Health, May 2013 |
The Dirty E-Word, Terry Sprague, Picton Gazette, April 2013 |
Toxics in Great Lakes Plastic Pollution, April 2013 |
Bill Evans on Birds and Wind farms, April 2013 |
Mayday, Naval Marine Archive, April 2013 |
Experimental Lakes Area, Kenora, Closing by Federal Gov't, March 2013 |
Fishing Lease Phase out on Prince Edward Point, March 2013 |
Windstream makes $1/2 Billion NAFTA claim, March 2013 |
Play by Play, PECFN Ostrander ERT Appeal, March 2013 |
Offshore Wind turbine moratorium 2 years later, The Star, Feb 2013 |
ELOERG ERT submission on Ostrander: Appendix V: Pushing the Envelope of the MoE SEV, Feb 2013 |
Wente on Wind and Bald Eagle mugging, Globe and Mail, February 2, 2013 |
Sprague on Wind and Bald Eagle mugging, Picton Gazette, Jan 25, 2013 |
Cry Me a River over a Few Bats: Submission to Env Review Tribunal, ELOERG, January 2013 |
Lake Ontario's Troubled Waters: U of Michigan GLEAM, January 2013 |
Letter to Minister of Environment re: Ostrander, January 2013 |
No Balm in Gilead: Ostrander IWT's as Trojan Horses, January 2013 |
Ostrander Turbines: another Christmas gift by the MoE, Dec 2012 |
Occupational carcinogens: Ontario Blue Collar breast cancer study, November 2012 |
Fresh water fish Extinctions, Scientific American,November 2012 |
Great Lakes Toxics revisited, November 2012 |
Frack the What ? November 2012 |
$ 2 1/4 Billion Trillium Power lawsuit knockback Appeal, November 2012 |
Canada Centre for Inland Waters decimated, October 2012 |
Birds, Bats, Turbines, and the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, October 2012 |
Ecological public health, the 21st centurys big idea? British MedicalJournal Sept1,2012 |
Trillium log, Sept 2012 |
George Prevost, Saviour of the Canadas, 1812 - 1814. June 2012 |
The Victory at Picton: Bicentennial Conference on War of 1812-1814, Differing Perspectives, May 2012 |
Carleton Island and the 1812, letter to the Globe, October 2011 |
Queen's Fine Arts Department Succumbs, letter to Principal, December 2011 |
Mr. Kumar and the Super 30, November 2011 |
Letters, Articles and Projects from the Nineties |
Alban Goddard Hill, web site manager |
|
|
|
Enter subhead content here
|
|
Obituary
Mitch Podolak, 71, was Canadian folk music's beloved radical patron
Jana G. Pruden
Published September 10, 2019
Updated September 10, 2019
2 Comments
Open this photo in gallery
Mitch Podolak, centre wearing a baseball cap, was variously described over the years as a 'bearded, chain-smoking radical,'
a 'chubby working-class hero,' a 'banjo-playing Trotskyite who could pass for a biker' and part of 'a cabal of deranged artist
types.'
Dave Landy/Courtesy of the Winnipeg Folk Festival
Mitch Podolak was 13 when his older sister, Alice, took him to a Pete Seeger concert at Toronto's Massey Hall in 1961.
There, his life changed. "Something happened that day," Mr. Podolak would recall in a 2013 interview with the CBC.
"I caught something that day from Pete."
What he caught was not only a love of the banjo and folk music, but also a political ideology and way of seeing the world
that would shape the rest of his life. "He was just transformed. He just got his worldview, right then and there,"
says Mr. Podolak's son, Leonard. "He called himself a communist, and I think in terms of the actual original vision of
what communism was supposed to be, that would be accurate in certain respects of his life. But he was really a Pete Seeger-ist."
Mr. Podolak's belief in the power of music became a guiding force in his life, and affected the lives of countless others
through the cultural events and institutions he created and helped to create. His efforts included co-founding the Winnipeg
Folk Festival and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, forming a record label to release Stan Rogers' first album, and the creation
of Winnipeg's storied West End Cultural Centre.
Mr. Podolak died in Winnipeg on Aug. 25, 2019, at the age of 71, of complications from septic shock. He leaves his wife,
Ava Kobrinsky, his three sons, Leonard, Zeke and Max, three grandchildren, and extended family.
Mr. Podolak was born in Toronto on Sept 21, 1947, the youngest of three children in a home filled with political discussion
and music. In interviews, Mr. Podolak described himself as a "red-diaper baby" and his parents as socialists and
"working-class radicals." His father immigrated to Canada before the Second World War and one of his grandfathers
died in the Holocaust.
Mr. Podolak's father passed away when he was nine, and Mr. Podolak struggled and rebelled. He dropped out of school in
Grade 8, though tests later showed him to have a genius-level IQ. After seeing Pete Seeger perform, he pawned his clarinet
for a banjo.
In his teens, Mr. Podolak began working at the Bohemian Embassy, a seminal Toronto coffee house at the heart of the 1960s
folk revival in Canada. There, he once refused to book a young Neil Young because he thought Mr. Young couldn't sing, a decision
that Leonard Podolak says became one of his father's :larger regrets."
By his early 20s, Mr. Podolak was a political activist and avowed Trotskyist, travelling the country to start branches
of the Young Socialists Alliance and the League for Socialist Action. He met Ava Kobrinsky in Toronto, and the two soon married
and returned to her hometown of Winnipeg in the early 1970s.
They would have one son, Leonard, and later adopted two teenagers, Max and Zeke Preston, after their mother died in the
early 1990s.
It was in Winnipeg that Mr. Podolak and a friend applied for a grant to host a folk music concert as part of the city's
centennial year celebrations in 1973. The show was hosted by legendary CBC broadcaster Peter Gzowski, and took place on the
grounds of Birds Hill Provincial Park, outside the city the following summer.They hired Bruce Cockburn, the show was free
and 9,000 people came, Leonard says.
The Winnipeg Folk Festival was born.
The event was not only about music. Mr. Podolak believed in music as a powerful way to spread ideology "even to
spark revolution" and he brought political organization to his approach to festival planning and the broader tenets of
the event.
In those years, every performer was paid the same amount, and volunteers and performers were treated equally, including
being fed the same and having the same parties. Mr. Podolak said he modelled the volunteer system on the Bolshevik Party of
1917.
"He used to tell every volunteer crew that they were the most important crew," Leonard says. "And, the
thing is, none of it was a lie."
A 1984 book about the Winnipeg Folk Festival said Mr. Podolak created it "almost as a singular act of bravado."
Mr. Podolak was a perennial presence amid the sea of blankets and bodies at Birds Hill, a large man with wild hair and
beard, dressed casually in black T-shirt and jeans, sometimes hitched up with suspenders. (He once told a reporter he disliked
barbers and had one suit and two ties, for "funerals, weddings and bar mitzvahs."
He was variously described in news stories through the years as a "folk festival guru," a "bearded, chain-smoking
radical," a “chubby working-class hero," a "banjo-playing"Trotskyite who could pass for a biker,"
part of "a cabal of deranged artist types" and "a transcontinental telephone screamer and cajoler, ego masseur,
bully-boy, fiscal conjurer, seat-of-the-pants strategist, romantic and catalyst."
Among the tributes that have flooded in since his death, he has been called "folk music's radical patron."
Mr. Podolak left his position with the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1986, after years of heavy rain dampened attendance,
put the festival in debt and stressed Mr. Podolak, who said he would start dreaming about rain in January. Leonard says his
father's decision to leave the festival was also greatly affected by the death of his good friend Stan Rogers, in an airplane
fire in 1983.
In addition to his vital role in creating the festivals in Winnipeg and Vancouver, Mr. Podolak helped with the creation
of several others, including the folk festivals in Edmonton and Calgary, and the Winnipeg International Children's Festival.
In 1987, he led the transformation of a church in Winnipeg's core into the West End Cultural Centre, which would become another
beloved city institution.
His most recent endeavour was Home Routes, which connects performers with circuits of home concerts around the country.
Leonard says the organization maintained the ideals to which Mr. Podolak had adhered throughout his life, including that everyone
was paid the same and an equal member of the team.
"My dad hated capitalism so much," Leonard says. "So, so much. He believed the profit motive was the root
of all problems, and that people should be treated as fairly as possible."
Friends and family recall Mr. Podolak's roaring laugh, and his love for good food. Though he could be brash and was famously
opinionated, Leonard says his father was also open to changing his mind , even accepting electric guitars at the Winnipeg
Folk Festival, a significant shift at the time.
Mr. Podolak had little patience for rules and bureaucracy, joking on more than one occasion that he thought "after
the socialist revolution, we'd hang the last capitalist with the guts of the last bureaucrat," and rebelling even against
the strictures of the ideologies to which he subscribed.
"I'm a communist. My own kind of communist," he said, in a story in The Globe and Mail in 1986. "I belong
to my own political party. That's the Mitch Podolak communist party. One member. No dues, no committees, and no damn meetings."
Mr. Podolak had struggled with his health since a fall in 2016, and his condition deteriorated rapidly this past summer.
Before his death, family and friends gathered at his bedside in Winnipeg, singing and performing.
Mr. Podolak was buried quickly, in the Jewish tradition. A broader memorial will take place in November, fittingly during
an upstart Winnipeg arts festival. Leonard says the event will be called the 2nd Annual Winnipeg Crankie Festival Honouring
Mitch Podolak, and will include performances, workshops, classes and variety shows over three days. Plans are also being made
to create a foundation in Mr. Podolak's name.
"His main mission was to make change, and make the world a better place," Leonard says. "There's a lot
he couldn't do anything about. But what he did do affected a lot of people, and a lot of people that don't even know it affected
them. He mentored hundreds, he created work for thousands, and he created fun for millions."
Asked by a reporter in 1993 what he would like his epitaph to say if he was "called tomorrow to that big folk festival
in the sky," Mr. Podolak responded: "I hope it says something like: "He taught a lot of people a lot of music."
This summer, more than 76,000 people attended the Winnipeg Folk Festival, breaking all previous attendance records.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Enter supporting content here
Eastern Lake Ontario Environmental Research Group
|
|
|
|