Megan Lane - Someday We Will Leave this Town (Official Music Video)


Canadian Rocker Megan Lane Takes Her Her New Sound, And Album, On The Road
Megan Lane is best known for her blues sound, but her new album, Sounding the Animal, takes a decidedly pop approach to showcase her vocals and guitar skills. “I have evolved as an artist. My work has changed, but it’s come from the most organic place,” she says. “I’ve learned to embrace the guilty pleasure of ’80s rock songs, with the big choruses, or the 2014 mainstream melody you can’t get out of your head,” she says. “These catchy choruses and hooks live inside of us once we’ve heard them, and I wanted to do that to people.” Lane may be the driving force, but her new album has had some help from famous friends. The album’s leading single, “Someday We Will Leave this Town,” was co-written by Lane and trans icon Rae Spoon. Both Spoon and Lane grew up in similar situations (being queer in small towns) and were able to translate their experiences into powerful anthems. READ MORE


New Westminster's Annual Pride Festival Was Another Huge Success
[New Westminster, B.C.] New Westminster’s fifth annual Pride festival drew thousands, with organizers and participants describing the event as the Royal City’s biggest and best to date. “We get bigger and better,” says New Westminster MLA Judy Darcy. “I know in the last few days it was raining and there was a rainbow over New Westminster, and I said to myself, ‘That same rainbow has been flying for nine long days, and there’s not going to be any rain tomorrow when the rainbow flies over New Westminster.’ Indeed there was no rain today and that’s a wonderful sign.” The Aug 8 to 16 festival, which included more than 20 events, culminated with a party on Columbia Street, featuring three performance stages and three beer gardens that extended from the bars into the street. “This was known as the Miracle Mile,” says Burnaby-New Westminster MP Peter Julian, who recalls that the area used to be the number-one shopping centre for all the Lower Mainland. “There’s interesting symbolism of [Pride] being here in the heart of New Westminster.” Event organizers estimate that the Aug 16 street party attracted more than 10,000 attendees compared to the 1,300 who attended last year’s festival. Between 2010 and 2013, the festival was held six blocks up the hill, at Tipperary Park near New Westminster City Hall. “New West baby Pride has grown up and just busted out of its shell,” says Shelly Reinhart, a New West Pride board member. READ MORE


Experts Warned Of 'Serious Reservations' About Trinity Western University's Law School Plan
[Vancouver, B.C.] An expert legal panel hired by the B.C. government to advise on whether to approve a religious-based law school expressed serious reservations about major aspects of the plan, yet eight months later the government approved the school anyway. Trinity Western University, an evangelical Christian institution in Langley, applied to the B.C. ministry of advanced education in June 2012 to establish a school of law. According to Freedom Of Information documents obtained by The Province, the legal panel’s “serious reservations” included concern about the proposed law school’s academic freedom, the breadth of its world view, teaching of legal skills and course quality. A 26-page Report Workbook from the panel of five law professors from across Canada warned that a proposed introductory first-year course was “destined to fail,” and said there was “evidence that grads will not be able to get jobs.”

“The curriculum as described in the written materials does not set out in a comprehensive way what the overall learning objectives are,” the panel said. “The proposal says very little about the importance of an understanding of the theory of law.” The special review panel — comprising law professors David Percy, University of Alberta; Joost Blom, University of B.C.; Anne Pappas, Thompson Rivers University; Bernard Adell, Queen’s University and Jeffrey Berryman, University of Windsor — visited TWU and interviewed university officials before writing their report for the Ministry of Advanced Education’s Degree Quality Assessment Board (DQAB). READ MORE

TRINITY WESTERN TIMELINE:

• April, 2012 — Trinity Western University senate and board of governors approve law school proposal
• June 30, 2012 — TWU submits their law school proposal to B.C. government for approval
• Dec. 18, 2012 — Minister of Advanced Education refers TWU’s application to the ministry’s Degree Quality Assessment Board for consideration
• March 26, 2013 — Expert review panel of five law professors, appointed by Assessment Board, visits TWU, writes report setting conditions for TWU to meet
• May 17, 2013 — TWU writes responses to panel’s conditions
• June 10, 2013 — Assessment Board approves TWU proposal
• Nov.-Dec. 2013— TWU president Bob Kuhn writes to MLA Rich Coleman and Advanced Education Minister Amrik Virk, asking for law school approval
• Dec. 16, 2013 — Federation of Law Societies of Canada gives preliminary approval to TWU proposal
• Dec. 18, 2013 — Virk announces B.C. government approval of TWU proposal
• Feb. 19, 2014— TWU signs Terms and Conditions for Ministerial Consent
• April, 2014 — B.C. Law Society benchers (the board) vote that TWU is entitled to status as an approved faculty of law
• Sept., 2016 — Canada’s first Christian law school expected to open