
Show Notes
Please note, the podcast will take a break and return July 13, 2026 Welcome to my Canada Day special episode. Canada Day 2026 is special for me because twenty-five years ago on 1 July 2001, surrounded by many dear friends, I became a proud Canadian. That story comes towards the end of the episode. First, I want to celebrate a fellow Canadian and a fellow Newfoundlander. I've known Joe Teo for more than a decade. A long time ago, my alma mater, Memorial University called me up and asked me whether I could meet with two young entrepreneurs, Joe Teo and Sahand Seifi, who had just started a company in St. John's called HeyOrca. Over the years I've watched Joe navigate life and entrepreneurship and I am incredibly proud to call him a friend. On the day I interviewed Joe, Joe had just received his Canadian citizenship and taken the oath. This episode also contains the original audio created by my friend and then journalist Craig Welsh for CBC featuring my Canadian citizenship ceremony. Hearing my friends voices from twenty-five years ago is surreal and touching. I hope I have done you all proud. I would like to thank the many Supermetrics colleagues who contributed to this episode: Dave, Bartosz, Kamal, Darius, Toli, Irina, Pavel, Anssi, Lee and Jaz. I'm sorry for those that I could not include. The Canadian National Anthem, O Canada, is performed by Julie Nesrallah and Nathalie Paulin, accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Oundjian. Instrumental versions of O Canada are public domain recordings. For more show notes and pictures: https://tales.dups.ca/p/ep60-a-special-canada-day-broadcast
More from Tales under the cat tree: Imagination and Adventure
From punk music to album cover art, from opening for the Blue Oyster Cult to writing an album in 19 days; these are the stories of Dan Moore and Johnny Nolan in our history of Newfoundland's alt music scene. This episode traces the history of Dan Moore who played with bands such as Sheavy, Wizards of Kaos, Afterforever, Festered Corpse, Howl, and more in St. John’s Newfoundland. This is the fifth of the episodes Johnny Nolan and I have co-hosted chronicling the history, music and stories of Newfoundland’s alternetive music scene in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. We feature the following music with permission: * Psycho Flower by Festered Corpse * Whipping Post by Afterforever * Supa Hero by Sheavy * White Face by Wizards of Kaos * Tale of a Broken Heart by Hardliner Please also check out the art of Dan Moore at https://tales.dups.ca/p/ep73-dan-moore-of-sheavy-and-wizards-of-kaos
How do sex scenes written in English translate into Finnish? Let’s talk to Anna-Maija Ihander about translating fiction to Finnish. A few years ago, I read one of Finland's most celebrated post-war novels: The Unknown Soldier or Unknown Soldiers by Väinö Linna. The copy I read was a modern translation into English by Dr. Liesl Yamaguchi. As a foreigner living in Finland, I have been told that Finns have regional dialects but it's not something I can make out, certainly I don't know the cultural signficance of each of the dialects and how Finns themselves perceive them. The translator's note at the end specifically talked about how she had translated the conversations and for a native western English speaker, the book rang true. As a foreigner working in Finland and as a native english speaker working with many nationalities, I question how my tone, choice of words, and choice of expressions map and translate into my colleagues' mental models. At work though, the language I am concerned about is what I would call functional English. What about the much more complicated world of fiction translated into Finnish? In Unknown Soldiers, I had read Finnish fiction translated into English. However, the world of English media vastly outnumbers that of Finnish and in most book stores there is a large variety of English to Finnish translations. With that in mind, I invited Anna-Maija Ihander, a translator of fiction and entertainment, to talk about her experiences. If words create the worlds we live in, how do these words create worlds in different languages? Let's find out. Show notes: https://tales.dups.ca/p/ep72-not-lost-in-translation
Recently in Germany, the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) won more votes than any other party in the province of Saxony-Anhalt. In many parts of the world headlines rang that Germany was returning to the days of the 1930s. That's not really the case, but at the same time, it is the case that right-wing and other extreme ideologies are on the rise in western democracies from USA, to France, to Sweden, to Finland. I sat down for a conversation with my friend, former professor, and collaborator, Dr. Erwin Warkentin, who is living in Berlin as Berlin goes for an election that might swing to the complete opposite of the AFD if polling is to be believed. His point was that we weren't quite back to the 1930s, but much more perhaps to the 1920s. How did we get here and where are we going if we use history as a teacher? More show notes: https://tales.dups.ca/p/ep71-1920s-and-german-politics-today
What happens when you put hundreds of student journalists in a hotel in the middle of winter somewhere in Canada? We explore the Canadian University Press and student journalism in the 90s with Alayne Armstrong. Back in the early 1990s we didn't have Google. Most of our news came via mainstream media, whether that was television channels, radio, or newsprint. Cable news was starting to take off. However, that didn't mean that you couldn't have alternative voices. Most campuses in North America had a free student press, funded by newspaper advertising and usually run by the student union. Canada had something unique. Canada has the oldest student organization in North America and longest running student news service in the world with the Canadian University Press or CUP. The organization was setup in 1938 and continues to today. When I wrote and edited at Memorial's newspaper The Muse, we were members of CUP and the Atlantic region version, ARCUP. Student and alternative voices were and I believe, still are critical in society. We were not afraid to question the status quo, whatever that might be. We forced conversations whether you liked them or not, and we were a safe space for otherwise silent voices and ideas. But being part of CUP meant also learning from so many students across Canada. So it's my pleasure to welcome Alayne Armstrong, one of the presidents of CUP. She was president during my 1993-94 year otherwise known as CUP 56.
This is a combined episode combining Episodes 27 and 28 Today’s episode was originally broadcast in two parts but this time I have combined both into one omnibus episode. Please see original show notes, including pictures here: https://tales.dups.ca/p/ep69-reprise-bioware-stories Direct Links and episodes below Ep. 27: BioWare Stories Part 1 - Releasing the BioWare Community and Neverwinter Nights Duleepa Wijayawardhana Ep. 28: BioWare Stories Part 2 - The flood and shipping Jade Empire Duleepa Wijayawardhana