Andrew Bates

Wouldn’t you know it, I’m writing again! After a few years as an editor, they’ve been getting me writing at Brunswick News, and after spending some time covering a vacancy at the Kings County Record in Sussex I have officially signed on to the Telegraph-Journal’s Times-Globe newsroom in Saint John.

It’s been fun writing again! And I thought it might be good to share some of that writing on the blog here so you can see what I’ve been working on. So here are some of my April writing highlights:

‘She can’t wait’: Ukrainians joining relatives in Sussex

After staying with relatives in Warsaw for two months, Mariia Poznakhovska can’t wait to be reunited with her aunt and cousins.

Poznakhovska, 18, her mother Lesia, 40, and sister Cristina, 13, left their homes in western Ukraine when Russia began its invasion of the country in February, leaving behind her father, who chose to join the military. Now they’ve applied for visas, and Poznakhovska said they’re eager to join her aunt in Sussex.

“My aunt who lives in Canada calls us every day. She can’t wait for our arrival, as well as our cousins,” Poznakhovska said by email. 

The Multicultural Association of Sussex has said it is preparing to welcome more displaced Ukrainians as part of the federal government’s Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET), including Poznakhovska’s family and another family coming soon. The measure allows Ukrainians and families to come to Canada with streamlined visa and travel requirements and stay as temporary residents for three years, with availability for an open work permit.

Chelsie Nightingale, MAS executive director, said the group is looking to formalize how to handle placing newcomers with verified volunteers, but in the meantime, it’s facilitating cases like Poznakhovska’s where the family and hosts are known to each other. Nightingale said the group will be helping her family with medical items, finding work, and assessing their language needs.

Click here to read more… (Kings County Record, April 27, paywalled)

Rental cap not enough protection for tenants: advocates

Rent control advocates say a dispute involving the province’s proposed rent cap that left two Hampton tenants looking for a home shows lack of protection for renters.

Jennifer Taylor and Michelle Cheslock, two single mothers who had rented out separate suites in a duplex at 27-29 Acadia Crescent, say they were given eviction notices, notifying them their apartments were being turned into Airbnbs. They said the notices came one day after they refused to sign new leases that included rent increases of as much as 40 per cent.

Matthew Hayes, spokesperson for the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants’ Rights, said unless better protections are added with the 3.8 per cent rent cap the province announced this year, including making it permanent, tenants are at risk.

“We’re really seeing that the lack of rights is contributing to housing insecurity and the housing crisis for many, many people,” Hayes said. “If they impose a rent cap without improving tenants’ rights, we are going to be seeing a raft of the same type of evictions … because landlords can do whatever they want to evict tenants.”

Click here to read more… (Telegraph-Journal, April 11, paywalled)

Peter Powning exhibit finally opens after pandemic delay

It’s been a long wait, but an exhibit celebrating one of New Brunswick’s most celebrated artists is finally opening to the public.

Peter Powning: A Retrospective opens Saturday at the New Brunswick Museum location in Market Square in Saint John. Originally scheduled to open in Fredericton in the fall of 2020, the exhibition of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery is curated by John Leroux and features works from throughout the sculptor’s five-decades-long career.

“The New Brunswick Museum is always proud to feature such an important event in the life and career of … one of our internationally-renowned artists,” said Peter Larocque, the museum’s art curator.

The exhibit follows the book of the same name, released in 2020, which featured photos of Powning’s collected works as well as items that were privately held and large public installation pieces. This exhibit represents the works that were available to display in person, such as the ones in the New Brunswick Museum collection, and is organized in chronological order, according to Powning, who has lived in Markhamville, N.B., just outside of Sussex, for over 50 years.

Click here to read more… (Saint John Times-Globe, April 8, paywalled)

‘That’s my cat’: Owner IDs feline lost a decade ago

Alica Henry always thought her cat Louie died more than 10 years ago, but then she saw him on Facebook.

Henry, a 32-year-old former Sussex resident now living in Moncton, said she came across a post from Strays of Sussex (SOS), a group that helps stray or abandoned cats. She says the post, about a cat named Bruce who had been roaming a local neighbourhood for more than three years and was taken in with an injury, seemed familiar.

“When I saw it, I was like, that’s so strange. That looks just like my cat,” Henry said. “I went back through all my pictures from years ago, and I was… 100 per cent was my cat,” she said. “These people are going to think I was crazy if I message them, but she didn’t think I was crazy.”

Terri Peck, a member of the SOS executive board and foster for Louie, said the cat hung around the neighbourhood for three to four years, with herself and another neighbour feeding him and offering him shelter at winter. She said they had a feeling he wasn’t a feral cat.

“Normally, a feral cat, if they see you, they run and hide,” she said. “He would come to the door looking for food, and if you open the door to go out, he would go so many feet away and watch you while you put the food out.”

Click here to read more… (Telegraph-Journal, April 6, paywalled)

N.B. director takes helm Monday for network TV show

A New Brunswick-born director hopes her upcoming episode of The Good Doctor can be a major turning point in her career.

Cayman Grant, from St. Martins, has directed an episode of the ABC medical drama that is scheduled to air Monday at 11 p.m. The award-winning director with 14 years experience says having a TV episode opens doors and can push her career to bigger heights.

“I’ve been directing for a long time and I’ve been around television stuff for a long time, and it’s definitely culminated to this being my time and I’m very excited about it,” Grant said from Los Angeles in an interview with Brunswick News.

Grant said she has had success in her career, including a Sports Emmy for a 2015 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, but early on it was hard for female directors to find agents and get opportunities, so she turned to writing. Now after getting on the roster of the Creative Artists Agency in 2015 and landing a few previous mentorship programs, she said she’s in a Disney mentorship program which offered her to direct an episode at the end.

“One of the issues you have breaking over into the TV world is that you need an episode. Once you have that episode, things open up for you, but you have to manage a crew of eighty people on set,” she said. “It’s a big undertaking that I’m very grateful for. When this opportunity came up, I jumped on it and didn’t look back.”

Click here to read more… (Saint John Times-Globe, April 2, paywalled)

Every year by the end of the year I think of making a list of things that moved me and sometimes fail to finally put it together, but This Year Will Be Different, pals. (Plus, this beautiful website of mine needs at least one update while the year still ends in one.) So please enjoy some stuff that I liked in arts and sports this year.

Game(s) of the year

There were two long-awaited games this year that both ended up being free drops: Deltarune Ch. 2, the latest instalment in Toby Fox’s spiritual and literal successor to Undertale and the best game to BE A BIG SHOT and Get In The Car, Loser!, a road trip JRPG with a banger battle theme, “The Spirit of the Times,” that ponders the big questions, like how to respond to creeping injustice and whether or not an angel can cuss. But the game I poured the most time and emotional investment into this year was Hollow Knight: Voidheart Edition, a very pretty, very challenging but very rewarding Metroidvania that draws you deeper and deeper into its bug-filled world. I was banging my head against the wall getting the Hunter’s Mark but I DID IT, back in April.

Art piece of the year

This is a year when I really got into Kickstarting projects and the concept of keepsake games and connected-path games, led by Shing Yin Khor and Jeeyon Shim’s Field Guide to Memory. Is it a scrapbook? Is it a roleplaying game? Is it an online community? It’s kind of all three! Every day for four weeks in February, I got an emailed prompt for a diary entry in the story of my erstwhile character Angus Dates, whose cryptid-researcher mentor went missing. It’s a story you’re meant to populate with your own memories, a great reminder of our impacts on nature and the impacts of others on us.

Album/song of the year

Spotify Wrapped can’t control me. This year I dug deep on Bandcamp Friday, trying to scoop records for actual literal money that goes to artists, as well as continuting to pick up vinyl. (Like Humour by Russell Louder, a great synthpop glam-cave dream!) But there wasn’t a song that dominated my year as much as “Paradise (Stay Forever),” a part of Epoch’s soundtrack for the 2020 game Paradise Killer, which splashed city pop and vaporwave across my musical choices and also my YouTube recommendations. The song I hit play on right before taking a shot at the end of the day.

Wrestling matches of the year

Even with some promotions on intermittent schedules, there was still a lot of amazing wrestling to consider this year. Let’s bust out some of my favourites:
5. Shingo Takagi vs. Tomohiro Ishii (G1 Climax Night 1, 9/18)
It’s been an up-and-down year for New Japan. Some of it has turned me off, such as the rise of Will Ospreay in the promotion, but one thing they did right was make Shingo Takagi champion, and turn him loose for banger after banger, including a great match with Hiroshi Tanahashi in the Tokyo Dome. But this is my favourite, a blistering hoss fight with Tomohiro Ishii.
4. Utami Hayashishita vs Syuri (Stardom Tokyo Dream Cinderella, 6/12)
This was an extremely good match which featured great action throughout, a thrilling clash that somehow left the audience wanting more while giving it more at the same time. A match so good that the rest of the year revolved around it.
3. Kenny Omega vs. Bryan Danielson (AEW Dynamite Grand Slam, 9/22)
This match had it all: a complete dream-match setup, with the surreal notion of the pairing happening at all, the unique stadium atmosphere in Arthur Ashe Stadium, and a really compelling story told over 30 minutes — and all on television. The wrestling event of the year.
2. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (Grappling exhibition, NJPW G1 Climax Finals, 10/21)
Shibata’s last G1 surprise was simply to announce that he was alive. But this, years after a subdural hematoma against Kazuchika Okada ended his career in 2017, and after his becoming a regular presence as LA Dojo Dad, was the return of Shibata The Wrestler, and it was so lovely, to at least once, have him back again. This, and the sequel grappling-style match planned for Wrestle Kingdom, is so welcome to me because it focuses away from the tragedy of Shibata’s best work coming in the match that almost killed him. We have new Shibata work to consider, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
1. ASUKA vs. Kagetsu (Hana Kimura Memorial Show, 5/23)
The memories here were still raw a year after the death of Hana Kimura, but the way this unannounced singles match coalesced out of the main event of Hana Kimura’s memorial show, the fact of Kagetsu’s one-night-return from retirement, what Hana meant to ASUKA (as well as Kagetsu) made this match the most meaningful of the year to me. Tears.

Wrestler of the year

In a year with so many momentous comings and goings, the story of a cowboy trying to be the best man he could be was still as compelling as anything else in wrestling. Hangman Adam Page encompassed the values of sincerity, vulnerability, friendship and tenacity, in a roller-coaster story that seemed to bring him close on a few occasions until he finally won the big one at AEW Full Gear. He got back on the horse, and is my wrestler of the year.

Good show of the year

I ventured into the theatre a few times this year, catching the extremely fun, dreamily-staged musical In The Heights and the transfixing Dune, and I’ve also had some great appointment-viewing TV shows such as WandaVision or, again, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But the best thing I feel like I’ve seen on screen so far is Only Murders In The Building, a comedy murder mystery with Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short. Extremely funny, and it’s to true crime what wrestling is to MMA: it has all the best parts, but fewer people get hurt.

Bad show of the year

There were a lot of opportunities to gawk at glorious messes this year. Cruella offered a delightful-yet-unhinged prequel to 101 Dalmatians that nobody needed, Space Jam 2 arrived but was almost completely without any redeeming points (I just yelled I LOVE BRAAAANDS so much.) I played eighty hours of Cyberpunk 2077 even though it was so flawed it crashed in the ending credits TWICE. But the biggest, worst call, most botched show of the year was the live-action Cowboy Bebop from Netflix. There’s something in there, a funky near-future cyberpunk dystopia which is reminiscent of The Fifth Element, and it’s good to watch John Cho fight. But so many elements of the original anime’s story were misunderstood and poorly employed, with formulaic, eye-rolling changes and a groaner finale twist that seemed to set up a sequel that was cut off when the series was almost instantly cancelled.

Soccer moment of the year

There can only be one team, one match, one win here, and it’s Canada’s gold medal win in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in August. From 2012’s bronze to now, Canada’s team had established itself as an important side, but from the moment it lost to the U.S. in the semifinal in London, the path to a true victory seemed hazy. But the stories of Christine Sinclair, the team’s other veterans, past and present, and its new generation coalesced in the journey past Brazil, the U.S. and Sweden in the final.

It’s obvious that art is subjective, and wrestling is a performance art, so everyone’s take on a show is going to be different. But the men’s Royal Rumble match January 26 doubled down on one thing: Brock Lesnar, and your desire to see him smash or be smashed, comparatively, and that’s no longer a safe bet.

The match was built around Lesnar, the former UFC superstar in his fifth reign as WWE champion, starting from the No. 1 position. His size and real-world expertise have legitimacy with a mainstream audience, and so he’s a safe bet for the WWE every time they want a name draw for a big event. But there have been 1,997 days since he won the belt in 2014, his first since returning to the company, and he’s held one of the promotion’s two top men’s championships for 1,036 of them (52%). He’s different from everyone around him, but he’s also just the same every time he’s used: thumping German suplexes, knee strikes, and the F5. Kofi Kingston was anointed as the first African-born WWE champion at Wrestlemania 35 last year, but when the show debuted on the Fox network, Brock walked in, hit Kofi with a single F5, and pinned him to retain again. More of the same.

Brock is both the immovable object and the irresistible force, and so it’s hard to find him opponents. So this match is, on paper, meant to make him look like the baddest man possible and then immediately imbue that energy onto another man; someone who can seem even badder by the fact he took Brock out. But because everyone who isn’t the new challenger gets sacrificed, you have to pick him well. And that’s the rub: everyone has their favourites. The man with the most popular support is Kofi, my favourite is Shinsuke Nakamura, the friend you brought to the Royal Rumble party may remember John Morrison. But they all got tossed, fast, and every time it just sucks away your passion for it. Eventually it was a collaboration between Ricochet and Drew McIntyre, combination nut shot and finishing move, that sent Brock packing, and Drew rode that wave to win the match (he unceremoniously eliminated Ricochet, who is the most recent person to be pressganged into the role of Tiny Man Wants To Fight Brock But Can’t, LOL.) But he has had so little momentum heading into the match, so even though you could say it’s a breath of fresh air or something different, it fell flat for me in the moment because I just don’t care about the guy.

So was it good? A booking-ology perspective, that tries to see how best to get wrestlers over and build interest for future shows, would say it was flawlessly drawn up and executed, and it got the desired reaction in terms of the massive pop when Brock went over, so it must have made Drew. If you are tuning in to see big bruisers wreck house, you probably loved it. But if you have an attachment to wrestlers that were in the first half of the list, there’s nothing for you there. And it left me cold. I have been in and out of the product since before SummerSlam, and I hoped for something satisfying, or at least something which didn’t make me feel actively bad for watching (like the Santina segment in the otherwise excellent women’s Rumble, which spoiled my mood for the whole final sequence) and I was left mostly cold.

There was one good thing

It had been widely discussed leading into the Rumble, but Edge’s return during the match was still shocking and emotional! My first thought on seeing the 46-year-old Canadian make his return almost nine years after retiring with cervical spinal stenosis was, is this okay? After Daniel Bryan returned, and Katsuyori Shibata got physical at the G1 Climax Finals last year, Edge always seemed like the outlier, the one who could never come back, on pain of death. So seeing him make his smoke-filled entrance filled me with joy and concern, but he looked good, even if you couldn’t see his first spear back due to a camera cut. Oops. It wasn’t till I looked back on YouTube that I could really see his joy and excitement to be back in the ring and pump myself back up to see someone that was involved in my favourite matches growing up return.

Destino fulfilled

One of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s most ambitious Wrestle Kingdom weekends saw Tetsuya Naito’s long-running chase of that moment in the sun culminate in his Double Gold Dash to becoming double IWGP heavyweight and intercontinental champion. The two-day event was anchored by a tournament of sorts, where on night one Kazuchika Okada defended his IWGP heavyweight championship against G1 Climax winner Kota Ibushi in an excellent match while Jay White lost the Intercontinental belt to Naito, the leader of Los Ingobernables de Japon. Naito’s chase of a big-ticket Tokyo Dome win has seen shock surprises before, namely his 2018 Wrestle Kingdom 12 loss when he was red-hot and the fact that he lost the IC title just months ago at Destruction, so there were arguments for extending Okada’s long run or giving Ibushi his moment, but there seemed little doubt that this is when they would finally pull the trigger with Tetsuya Naito. The win pulled together a tapestry of stories that includes getting bounced from the Wrestle Kingdom 8 main event by fan vote, founding LIJ, trashing the IC belt, hitting the Stardust Press and, silently, wrestling most of 2019 with a serious eye issue that required surgery. Of course, he had only minutes to lap up the win before getting bowled over by the Bullet Club’s KENTA, his New Beginning challenger, because Naito suffering is one of the key tenets of New Japan.

This show also featured the return of another problematic neck: Hiromu Takahashi, who nightmarishly broke his neck in July of 2018 in a IWGP junior heavyweight title match which he FINISHED, made his return to defeat Will Ospreay and I’m just so happy to see that bundle of fluff. Though he kept the flame alive, it looked like it might not ever happen, and he’s just so creative and wonderful to watch that I’m full of relief that we get this version of Hiromu back. He then pinned Jushin Thunder Liger in his retirement match, which fits with tradition, but Liger’s losses in his final matches were mismatched with our desire to see this heroic wrestler stand tall one more time before bowing out. He’s a wonderful person who has left us a legendary career.

Mox is the coolest

One of the biggest stars right now might be Jon Moxley, in line for a shot at Chris Jericho’s AEW world title at the promotion’s February PPV. He’s got just the right mix of humour and violence, and performing at the top level with two great IWGP U.S. title matches at Wrestle Kingdom 14 while also being a weekly presence on Dynamite is fun to watch. He refused to join Jericho’s Inner Circle stable and got a spike in the eye for his trouble, which both helped reinforce his character as someone who does only what he thinks is right, regardless of the outcome, and gave him a kayfabe eyepatch, which he wore even while singing Sweet Caroline on karaoke during the Jericho Cruise. Next up is a match with Minoru Suzuki, my god.

Chris Brookes heads back to Japan

One of the most curious introductions of 2019 was DDT, the comedic Japanese promotion, unveiling British indie star Chris Brookes in an ad meant to spoof Jon Moxley’s NJPW vignette. Brookes went on to totally endear himself to the audience and wrestle in swimming pools, zoos and more; after losing to Masato Tanaka in the promotion’s Jan. 3 Koruaken Hall show, he announced he’ll be spending a year there. His going-away party from the U.K. scene included a PROGRESS title challenge and a pair of Schadenfreude & Friends shows, one of which featured him manipulating a Minoru Suzuki blow-up doll. He’s incredibly creative and fun to watch, so it’ll be exciting to see what he puts together, and who he puts through the ceiling of Gatoh Move’s Itabashi Chocolate Square next. The most frenetic thing I watched all month was an hour-long minigames deathmatch Gake No Fuchi Pro wrestling against homicidal princess Miyako Matsumoto, which included badminton and somehow, human darts.

Kagetsu please don’t go

It’s great how much attention Stardom has been getting since being acquired by Bushiroad, with a dark match at Wrestle Kingdom 14. But the retirement of Hazuki and, sadly, Kagetsu have come after Oedo Tai has seemed a little sidelined compared to Tokyo Cyber Squad and Hana Kimura, as well as newer acquisitions by the company like Giulia. The goodbye gauntlet for Hazuki and Kagetsu’s tag match with Hana Kimura were so warm and showed what a great presence those two were, and I hope both of them are happy and, once Kagetsu heals up, they may want to come back to wrestling. Kagetsu will retire in a self-produced show Feb. 26 in Osaka, with a match against her trainer, Meiko Satomura.

Maritime Wrestling’s next step

I had a great time checking out North Pro Wrestling’s inaugural event at Casino New Brunswick in Moncton, Ante Up! The scene in the Maritimes can feel stagnant sometimes with the same wrestlers popping up constantly and only rare connections to the vibrant stars of the indie scene elsewhere in Canada and to the south. This show, which I suppose represents a continuation of the UCW brand, was a refreshing attempt to present the product in a major-league setting, at the same place where New Brunswickers might go to see the big-ticket rock and heavy metal tours that don’t hit the Avenir Centre or TD Station. They had teased Marty Scurll, in promoting a mystery ROH wrestler with the #woopwoop hashtag, and while it was Flip Gordon instead he had a great match with Matt Angel, being well-received by the crowd, winning a local belt and, shockingly, not losing it the next day in Halifax. Nick Aldis defended the NWA World Heavyweight title against Markus Burke, a real old-school encounter which felt just like the classic formula of the world champion coming to defend against your local hero. The main event was a bruising three-way between Channing Decker, fresh from a tour of Big Japan and bringing that deathmatch energy, Marko Estrada and Saint John’s Dick Durning, who won the belt months after returning from retirement.

ANDREW BATES likes wrestling and will write about it every month maybe? Tweet at me @teambates if you liked this.