Hey friends! Thanks for signing up. I'm so glad we are taking this adventure together. Your wisdom and friendship has been a constant source of inspiration and strength in starting this newsletter. I promise to keep things as real as I can so get ready for the good, the bad and sometimes shady.

Grab a coffee and enjoy this week's recommendations. They've all passed my cool factor test - would I leave the house to do this when the thermometer dips below minus 20? Hell yeah! - Tracy

Gone Fishing
^{(Across Canada)}

Anytime I ask a friend if they want to join me ice fishing, the question is followed by a silent stare 🥶. But it shouldn’t be. There’s something so healthy about focusing only on the task at hand, sans technology. I’m here 100% for more fishing this year.

Last week, Edmonton-based wild food guide Kevin Kossowan and producer of the James Beard-nominated webseries From The Wild made his shows available for free on Youtube, In S11 Episode 1, Kevin goes ice fishing somewhere in Saskatchewan and makes a damn good-looking niçoise salad using foraged ingredients. Email me if you want his canned fish recipe. Yum!

Curated Canada tip: Try ice fishing Feb. 15 & 16 during Alberta’s Family Fishing Weekend. It’s free and no licence is required.

Hot Spot
^{(Calgary, Canada)}

Sweat culture has been gaining a lot of traction across Canada lately. Sadly, most of these spas seem more focused on money-grabbing than rejuvenating you, and yet I'm a sucker for trying out new ones. The latest on my radar is Clear Nordic Spa in Calgary. It's a private members, err semi-private, indoor Nordic spa. Monthly fees range from $70 to $210, or you can buy a guest pass for $79 for the day. 

Curated Canada tip: DYI-it at your public swimming pool for about $10. Sauna for 10 minutes, quick plunge in the pool followed by a 15-minute rest. Repeat three times.

THE THROUPLE

3 Ways to Fight the Sunday Scaries

THE INTERVIEW

Black to the Future
^{(Edmonton, Canada)}

Ghanaian-Canadian artist Ekow Nimako presents Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships at the Art Gallery of Alberta (Jan 18 - April 13). The exhibition is a series of futuristic African kingdoms built from black Lego pieces. Ahead of Saturday’s opening at the AGA, Ekow Nimako talks to Curious Canada about the creative process and medieval history revisited.

Why Lego? And why black Lego? Are there challenges to working with Lego?

I decided to focus on using LEGO elements in my practice mainly because it was the material I knew how to use best above all. I'd experimented with metal, wood, ceramics, and other general plastics in art school, but none had the appeal and simplicity of facility as LEGO parts. You don't need machinery or a kiln, or blow torches to build with LEGO parts, and I was severely lacking in resources when I began. Black is my favourite colour, it contains everything and nothing simultaneously, and when it comes to the LEGO Group's colour palette black is the most versatile colour with the most diversity. Most importantly, using black allows me to make work that boldly asserts the cultural and ethnic identity of my subject matter. All material has challenges, for me accessing discontinued parts is becoming the most difficult. But my partnership with the LEGO Group has been helpful, and may yield some interesting perks down the line.

How and when did you learn about the voyage of Mansa Abu Bakr II, and what is it that intrigued you about it?

My wife and muse actually informed me about Abu Bakr's journey and I became instantly fascinated. I think the most significant part is that it was the first time I'd heard of an African, Black, Muslim, monarch who became a historic sea-farer and adventurer. And one that abdicated his throne to do so. My work is often informed by history, though I prefer to blend speculative historical narratives with Afrofuturistic musings so I am not beholden to academic or historical accuracy. Part of my joy as an artist is that I am not a historian. Facts are significant, but not as significant as telling a good story. Especially when the story gives life to marginalized characters and ideas.

In recent years, movies like Black Panther and Wakanda propelled Afrofuturism into mainstream American culture, but the movement has been around for hundreds of years. How does your Afrofuturistic artwork directly impact the modern world around us?

I like to think that my work helps us imagine liberated futures, since so often they can be hard to see. The civil rights movement, Haitian rebellion, and all the colonial resistance movements were absolutely instrumental to our survival and freedom. But to this day our people are still enslaved, exploited, disenfranchised, and deprived of basic rights, in this country and countries around the world. Just look at the plight of agricultural migrant workers in Canada, or the active slave trade in Libya, or how domestic care workers are treated in Lebanon. Afrofuturism allows us to dream beyond our current circumstances and in my case, provides visual inspiration to achieve these complex societal and technological aspirations to help us all thrive.

The Black experience on the Prairies dates back to the early 18th century yet much of these stories are excluded from Alberta's educational curriculum. What role is there for artists to influence history?

I think these stories through art can always be found if you dig deep enough. Artists emerge in every community, especially oppressed communities, though you are right in that they do not get represented in mainstream provincial and federal educational systems and histories. This is why we must always advocate for change in these areas whenever possible. And those of us in positions to shed light on these disparities must continue to do so in whichever ways are feasible. Artists can and do influence history, but we must also influence our interpersonal groups and families too. Small conversations become larger ones the more we have them.

What do you want visitors to walk away thinking or feeling from this exhibition?

I want visitors to begin to shift their ideas and associations of Africans and oceanic ships from stories of enslavement, to stories of adventure and scientific discovery that is not based on conquest or colonial power dynamics. I want them to see that Black learned muslims from the continent existed and thrived outside of the Arab world (which many don't know enslaved indigenous Africans for much longer than the European slave trade). I want to transmit notions of hope and wonder, and Afrofuturistic inspiration for all.

Any typos in this newsletter are my own fault. I am human not AI.

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