Commentary

Every corner tells the story

June 11, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

It was a lot of fun this week of interviews with one person for the first time and two others I know quite well – pals over lots of years. Different conversations with the same theme: the first event of the Dufferin Arts Council’s (DAC) new lineup for this season, an easy, breezy and very interesting Salon in Hockley Village, Tuesday next week. The piece featuring the interviews and the story is published in this edition, and there is no need to repeat them here.

What was fun was the humour, kindness, and wisdom they each displayed, along with the things I learned during each conversation. To interview an individual or a group is a real privilege, a matter of trust, a skill that accumulates knowledge as the interview counts add up.

Trust is the main factor, for the interviewee is prepared to have that conversation in print, not misrepresented nor suggested in any way that goes against fairness and truth. The relationship, more often than not, between strangers is fascinating. Sometimes, the subject matter is an issue about which the interviewer knows a lot less than the person who is the focus, a craft perhaps, a specific job or an area of knowledge. The journalist will have done some preliminary research that can never match the expertise before them.

There is an element of negotiation there, a balance of knowing, of perceptive questions, some of which a mindful reader might have proposed. In the asking and telling come the sought-for stories, the how and why of a person’s life. It is no small responsibility to convey them with respect and accuracy.

Whatever has been told and understood, there is a story, for there is no life without a story, each with an ingredient of the unique. Can it be true that there is no limit to “unique?” Yes. In this day and age of seemingly knowing everything, there are still secrets; there is still the unknown. There are new ideas, born independent of technology, and we do not really have to base all our entertainment on extensions of what already exists.

There are new ideas.

By and large, my field is to artists or creators as they are referred to now, as an understanding that art is extremely broad, covering every aspect of the planet and its inhabitants. So, there are creators, artists indeed, but not only visual, a word to encompass all the categories of dance and the so many creators of theatre and film. Writers, the source of every kind of story, reflect this and other worlds.

The whole huge range of fashion, garment-making, cooking, and maybe even raising a child…

Okay, you have the idea; you probably have a list of your own. The point is, it matters that the creators are in our midst, that we need them, that creativity must not be shrugged off, dismissed in the frantic rush to teach our kids coding – in kindergarten – really?

How much is early education about being hands-on, promoting a child’s very early impulse to create? Artistically? And how much is given over to early technology – far too early?

Who do we want to be when we grow up? Fearful as we are about who will find us from outside our own world, before we find them. Our panic to land and “colonize” Mars is a fool’s wish. To travel and learn and meet on some sort of civil footing, other civilizations are brave as long as it isn’t as the insanely cruel creatures we were in the 1400s.

How do we rescue our own children from a crazed imbalance of tech over reality? We keep all the arts front and centre; we take them horseback riding; we travel with them to places with history, early enough in their lives to understand what is important about all those stories.

Here in Canada, here close to home, there are old stories, and we should ask the guardians of those stories to share them with us, to be sure our children have access to a balance that keeps them safe from a total preoccupation with the faces on their screens. Ah, says you, that is already the case. Mom and Dad are nearly as bad as teenagers about how much time they spend with the critters on their screens.

Take your kids to art galleries; enrol them in art camps or workshops. Go to the theatre. Attend art shows and live music events.

We have it on good account that this Orangeville, this Dufferin County, is the most arts-centric community in the country. Not just painters, plying their brushes to show a story on pause for the watching, but all kinds of arts are loved here.

There is a fresh breeze coming from a revitalized Dufferin Arts Council to, according to David Nairn, “deep dive with the creators – the zany, crazy minds of wonderful creators!”

Our kids stand a chance here to learn the balance.

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