NORTH SHORE NEWS ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Storyteller Shields spins local yarns NORTH Van is no longer the small town it once was. Dune Shields can remember when salmon swan in the streams, his neighbors raised chickens in backyard coops and every home had a “victory garden” of fruits and vegetables to support the war effort. Shields, 65, has been a relegran bov, newspaper carrier, logger, com- mercial fisherman, tugboat skipper and school teacher. Fifty years af work experience can be considered merely as research for his current profession. Shields is a storytelier. His stories i ; are about coastal living and the charac- ne ters who add color to thy community. -. 49 Growing up in North Vancouver Lt during the "30s, “405 and 730s provid: ed Shields with plenary of fodder for Ins Layne CHRISTENSEN stories. = ——---———--- a Colorful characters thrived in ARTS REPORTER a North Vancouver's “small town atn 9s- ’ phere where these types were tolerated a lor more than in a bigger city,” he says. Shields tells cales of characters like Nature Boy, Screwy Louis and rloak Nelson. Nature Boy was a piano-playing fimess freak, whose pas- sion for jogging predated the fitness craze by 20 years. A for- mer concert pianist, he can everywhere, says Shields, “When he wasn’t running he had this grand piano on the verandah a that he would play.” Outside his 29th Street home, “there a would be sometimes 15 to 20 people standing on the boule- ne vard. He plaved beautiful music,” he recalls. : Serewy Louis was night watchman at C.H. Cates and Sons and 3 labor unionist who would teach the neighborhood chil- dren to sing radical union songs. Hook Nelson was a one-armed logger and a champion at logger sports. As a teen he had emerged from the woods sur- rounding an Indian Arm logging camp. Finding him confised and incoherent, the loggers assumed him to be the Nelson boy who as a baby years earlier had been snarched by a cougar . and never seen again since. . Fact or fiction? Shields doesn’t seck to authenticate every a devail. “The nature of oral history is that stories are a lor dif- ferent than historical fact,” he says. noe Shields tells his stories to schoolchildren and to students in / the education departments at UBC and SFU, where he pro- motes storytelling asa useful teaching tool. - This Saturday, he'll be telling tales at CiryFest "98. E mie. More than 125 acts from more than 30 cuitural groups Photo Robert Semeniuk . SINGER and guitarist Julie Vik, ceilist Corbin Keep and violinist Moritz Behm are Resin. The Bowen Island moe See CityFest page 35 trio performs Saturday during CityFest at Vancouver Community College. f §6Ragti cally tops | showcases “s I wished I was American. might be possible for an individual American, 1 : That was my overwhelming emotion as we all pushed and It was ai age when a successful (as in wealthy) American gentle- aZ1 rou L stumbled around the badly designed lobby and stairs of the Ford man could journey to the North Pole if he chose; when a suc- ~ Theatre after the grand opening of Ragnime. cessful (as in wealthy} biack musician could sport a brand new ne 1 was sure T would have felt more emotional connection to Model-T Ford instead of chains; and when the gates of Ellis NORTH Shore _4 what J had just experienced it F was. Island represented freedom from Easrern European oppression to musicians are mak- ‘| That's not to deny [wasn’t inypressed. IT was. aman and his daughter. ing their mark at ft _ Ragtime is uneguivacally the most impressive package of tech These three factions -- white, black and immigrant and therr { MusicFest Canada a nical theatre to ever hit this town and if the musical itself didn't hopes and fears (Mand there were no negroes” sing the white | this week quite grab me the same way, it could be that Pm just an dnglo-saxon protestants; are presented individually betore they nIS WCCK. 4 unwashed Canadian of English extraction, circle and confront cach orher in the best opening scene of a The Canadian nrusic Z Then again, it might be that it just seemed tow well packaged: musical F can reeall, student's national show- ‘ without solid heart or hummable melody. CURTAIN CALL Ifthe audience dida’t know going in, it is made immediately case ts being held on the Not quite true. The ragdime riff that rans through the show is clear that Raafms purports ta be a musical with a sacial con URC campus, May 12 . perhaps meant to be both, but if se it lacks soul and the sveavopated melody science, ] through 17. Phe festival a is ultimately repetitive. But taking on the warp and weft of the American social tapestry nieans is the largest of its kind 4 Still, days Jater as Tweite this Dam using to tar off dhe player piane in individual strands of the stery wer dost for huge chunks of che show. in North America, my head, while tunes that seemed like they ought to lave been memorable For example: The second mayor scene rakes place moa Now York revue Phe Handsworth at the time have been completely forgotten. theatre, which Fagan remember forais fibulots staging (capitalist porkers in Set at the beginning of this century, Ragteme embraces a decade of opti Sev Festival page 33 musm both in terms of what was possible for America as a whole and what hee Character pune ¥ THE HORSE WHISPERER: 30 GEOFF GIBBONS: 33 DINNER TRAIN: 36