Q with Tom Power

Dorothy Grant’s work as a Haida fashion designer combines art, ceremony and history. Her designs have been shown everywhere from runways in Paris and the Oscars red carpet, to legislative halls and prestigious museums. Back in April, Dorothy received the first-ever Indigenous Fashion Award at the Canadian Arts & Fashion Awards. She joined Tom Power to talk about her approach to fusing traditional Northwest Coast design with high fashion, and her take on who exactly can wear her designs.

Across three decades at MuchMusic, CBC and beyond, George Stroumboulopoulos has shaped the Canadian cultural landscape and become a defining generational voice, interviewing everyone from punk legends and sports stars to politicians and royalty. Now, in the new CBC Gem documentary Stories That Made Us, he travels across the country to explore the foundational film and television that forged our national identity.

In this conversation with Tom Power, Strombo makes the case for why Canada’s weird and wonderful CanCon era needs a comeback, pointing to shows like The Hilarious House of Frightenstein and Hammy Hamster. He also looks back on his formative years at MuchMusic, and tackles some pressing cultural questions — like whether the dog from The Littlest Hobo was secretly a narc.

Before Heated Rivalry became an international phenomenon, Quebec singer-songwriter Peter Peter had never scored a film or TV show in his life. That changed when creator Jacob Tierney slid into his Instagram DMs looking for a signature sound. Fast-forward to now, and Peter Peter has just been awarded the Global Impact Award at this year's SOCAN Awards for his work on Heated Rivalry. He joins Tom Power to tell us what happens when your first big composing gig becomes a massive hit, how he approached translating Ilya and Shane’s iconic romance into music, and the story behind the fan-favourite track, It’s You.

You might know actor and filmmaker Jordan Firstman from his viral pandemic-era conceptual “impressions” or his turn as Charlie on HBO’s I Love LA, but his latest project is turning heads for an entirely different reason.

This year, Jordan became the talk of the film festival circuit with his directorial debut, Club Kid — a sharp, funny and deeply personal project that he also wrote and stars in. The story follows Peter, a gay 30-something nightclub promoter 10 years deep into the New York party scene. When he unexpectedly discovers he has a son, he’s forced to grow up fast and navigate a massive shift in his life.

Jordan sits down with Tom Power to talk about bringing Club Kid to life, the psychic reading that predicted the movie’s success, how an experience with toad venom gave him the courage to make the film, and why he’s drawn to exploring the complex inner lives of gay men.

Nobody speaking English today is free from the influence of the King James Bible. Back in the early 1600s, dozens of male scholars and clergymen gathered under royal mandate to translate the Bible into English. Their word choices would come to shape modern literature, music and everyday speech. But when flawed human beings set out to record the "Word of God," whose voices actually end up on the page?

Dora Award-winning playwright Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman examines this question in her latest stage work, The King James Bible Play. Fresh off a sold-out run at the Stratford Festival and heading to Ottawa’s National Arts Centre on Nov. 11, the play unfolds across two distinct eras. The first act looks at the political and religious pressures faced by these 17th-century translators. The second act introduces a modern meta layer, following a group of contemporary women trying to stage a production about those very men and the lasting impact of their decisions.

Charlotte joins Tom Power to discuss the big questions raised by The King James Bible Play, the messy politics of translation, and her own story in theatre.