Peterborough screenwriter Carley Smale continues to find success writing holiday-themed movies, with her latest project A Gingerbread Christmas now streaming on Crave after premiering on Discovery+ in November.

Written by Carley with Blaine Chiappetta based on a story by Carley and Katelyn James (co-executive director of One City Peterborough where Carley used to work), A Gingerbread Christmas tells the story of aspiring architect Hazel Stanley (Tiya Sircar), who goes home to Chicago for the holidays dejected after being passed over for a job at the top New York City architecture firm where she worked as an intern.

After returning home, she discovers local contractor James Meadows (Marc Bendavid) has been helping her father Ted (Sugith Varughese) with the family bakery, which has been in decline since Hazel’s prize-winning baker mother passed away, by not only renovating but by baking as well.

To complete against the new trendy bakery across the street owned by Hazel’s once-best-friend-turned-bitter-rival Shelby (Kyana Teresa), Hezel and James pool their their talents to craft a gingerbread design for a baking contest run by Chicago’s “Cookie King” Mark Clemmons (the Food Network’s Duff Goldman) with a grand prize of $100,000. However, the duo’s competition is fierce, including from Shelby, and unforeseen complications threaten to crumble not only their brilliant design but also their budding romance.

“When I read the script, I liked the way the love story develops between Hazel and James,” says director Pat Kiely. “They are doing okay in life individually, but something really wonderful is formed when they team up. We also have a very diverse cast, and it made me very happy to direct something that will hopefully connect to many different people.”

An avid writer and movie fan as a youth described as a “rom-com connoisseur,” Carley was born and raised in Peterborough. The Crestwood Secondary School graduate moved to Toronto to attend Humber College where she studied film and media. While in college, she interned with a production company that made TV movies.

“I started writing movie treatments for various networks like the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, and Nickelodeon,” Carley told kawarthaNOW in 2017. “Eventually a Christmas idea of mine sold and I became the director of development for all the Christmas content.”

At 24 years old, Carley’s first produced screenplay, The Christmas Parade, premiered on the Hallmark Channel with high ratings in Canada, the United States, and Europe. She also wrote and directed her first feature film in 2014 entitled Cold Season, which won Best No-Budget Feature at the 2015 Toronto Independent Film Festival. The movie went on to have international premieres in both New York City and Berlin with high praise.

In December 2015, her original story concept entitled On the 12th Day of Christmas premiered on the Hallmark Channel and was the #1 TV movie of the weekend, with 5.4 million viewers.

In 2015, Carley decided to strike out on her own and pursue writing full time. In December 2017, her screenplay for the comedy-drama Snowed-Inn Christmas premiered on Lifetime.

That was followed by Christmas Pen Pals in 2018, No Time Like Christmas (with Anita Hughes) in 2019, and both Christmas Unwrapped (as a story consultant with writer Gary Hardwick) and Let’s Meet Again on Christmas Eve in 2020.

In addition to her holiday movies, in 2020 Carley wrote the Lifetime movie His Fatal Fixation and the romantic comedy Midnight at the Magnolia.

Midnight at the Magnolia was nominated for Best TV Movie at the Canadian Screen Awards in February 2022 and spent over a month trending worldwide on the Netflix’s U.S. top-10 list. The movie is now available for streaming on Netflix in Canada.

Peterborough actor, director, and screenwriter Wyatt Lamoureux has a speaking role in an episode of the new Apple TV+ series Circuit Breakers.

A sci-fi anthology series similar to Black Mirror but for families, each half-hour episode depicts a near-future world where youth encounter futuristic technologies that lead to unpredictable consequences.

Lamoureux appears in the second episode entitled ‘Copy Cat’, which tells the story of Jesse (Nathaniel Buescher), a high-school student who wants to spend all his time practising to audition for the single available spot on his school dance team. When his rehearsals interfere with school and home responsibilities, Jesse’s parents provide him with a holographic virtual tutor that can appear as anyone from history, such as Albert Einstein.

Meanwhile, Jesse is helping his friend Cara (Kiera Laidman) with her school science project to create a robotic mannequin. When Jesse discovers his virtual tutor can also mimic his own appearance, he gets his friend to combine the virtual tutor with her robotic mannequin to create a functional duplicate of Jesse — with the idea being the “copy cat” can take Jesse’s place while he rehearses for the dance audition.

Unbeknownst to Jesse’s parents, the copy cat takes his place while his parents are entertaining Mr. and Mrs. Wallace (Lamoureux and Helly Chester) in their living room. In a two-minute scene, Mr. Wallace complains about the cost of his boat and Jesse’s copy cat begins to lecture Mr. Wallace on home budgeting, to the embarrassment of Jesse’s parents and the alarm of the surreptitiously watching Jesse.

As well as his speaking role in Apple TV+’s Circuit Breakers, Lamoureux recently made a brief appearance in the Amazon Prime series Reacher, based on the bestselling book series by Lee Child. In another upcoming role, Lamoureux plays Dean Taras in the comedy-drama feature film Older Every Day, directed by London, Ontario filmmaker Ethan Hickey, which is currently in post-production.

VIDEO: “Circuit Breakers” trailer

Early bird passes are now on sale for the 19th annual ReFrame Film Festival, running from January 26 to February 3, 2023.

An international documentary film festival focused on social and environmental justice, ReFrame is returning as a virtual festival again in 2023, although some limited in-person events are being planned — including an opening reception and film screening at Showplace Performance Centre in downtown Peterborough.

Also announced during a virtual media event on Friday (November 18), hosted by ReFrame’s creative director Amy Siegel, was a $44,600 Community Building Fund grant for the 2021-22 festival season from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Government of Ontario that provides time-limited grants to not-for-profit charitable organizations in Ontario.

“We have one of the best film festivals all across Ontario for a community of our size,” said Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith when announcing the grant. “The ReFrame festival is a celebration of a lot of independent small film producers. There have been a number of films I have seen at it that have tweaked my interest and, more than anything else, it tweaks your mind to think about things and to look at it from a different perspective.”

The $44,600 grant enabled ReFrame to maintain its operational viability and present a virtual film festival during the pandemic.

“Last year you put together a compelling case for how a $44,600 grant would affect your capacity to keep people connected through film,” said Ben Currelly, a volunteer with the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s grant review team. “I understand your grant helped you bring on additional staff so that online and hybrid programming could be done, is also being used to help with rental costs, and purchase cleaning materials and N95 masks as well.”

Festival board chair Jim Hendry explained why ReFrame is again returning as a mainly virtual festival in 2023.

“There’s a definite upside to a virtual film festival,” Hendry said. “We’re very pleased that we are going to be able to offer on-demand screening of more than 50 films. ReFrame’s virtual theatre is convenient, it’s accessible, and it’s available all across Canada, and it keeps our community safe.”

“We had originally planned a combined live and virtual festival this year but for a number of reasons, including concerns that COVID is not done with us yet, we made a decision to again be primarily virtual. However, we will be hosting limited in-person events, including a special opening night screening and reception at Showplace Performance Centre on January 26th.”

Hendry added the festival will also be hosting interviews, panel discussions, Q&As, and special events, although these will also be primarily virtual.

“Our plan is to return to a full festival of live in-theatre screenings when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of ReFrame in January 2024,” Hendry said.

Festival director Kait Dueck, who took over the role from Jay Adam in October, thanked the Ontario Trillium Foundation for its support of last year’s festival.

“The ReFrame Film Festival simply would not have been been possible during the pandemic without the generous support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation,” Dueck said, before announcing the availability of discounted early bird passes for the virtual festival.

“We are releasing our popular early bird virtual festival passes today,” Dueck said, noting they make great holiday gifts. “These passes give our audiences streaming access to our entire 2023 catalogue of curated virtual films.”

The passes cost $65 per person, or $85 for a household, and are available while supplies last at reframefilmfestival.ca.

Dueck also revealed the festival’s 2023 creative design, with a playful poster by Peterborough-based artist Casandra Lee.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be an official media partner of the 2023 ReFrame Film Festival.

When Tom Wilson, Colin Linden, and Stephen Fearing formed the roots-rock band Blackie and the Rodeo Kings 26 years ago to record a one-off tribute album to the great Canadian singer-songwriter Willie P. Bennett, the trio never imagined the band would still be together today.

Now as part of their 25th anniversary tour (delayed one year because of the pandemic), Blackie and the Rodeo Kings are returning to Peterborough’s Market Hall Performing Arts Centre for two back-to-back concerts at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, December 7th and Thursday, December 8th, with special guest Terra Lightfoot and openers Digging Roots.

The two concerts are presented by Market Hall and kawarthaNOW. Tickets are $47 and are available over the phone at 705-775-1503, in person at the Market Hall box office at 140 Charlotte Street (3rd floor) from noon to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, or online anytime at tickets.markethall.org.

It was 27 years ago when Tom, Colin, and Stephen came together in Tom’s hometown of Hamilton with the idea of paying tribute to their songwriting hero, Peterborough folk legend Willie P. Bennett. While all three had their own successful musical careers — Tom as former lead singer of Junkhouse, Colin as a guitarist and producer, and Stephen as a solo artist — they decided to record an album of covers of some of their favourite Willie P. songs, bringing his music to a wider audience.

Calling themselves Blackie and the Rodeo Kings after Willie P.’s 1978 record Blackie and the Rodeo King, they released High or Hurtin’: The Songs of Willie P. Bennett on May 22, 1996, intending to then return to their respective solo careers.

“I left the recording studio 27 years ago this January, shook hands with everybody, got in a car and went to the airport,” Tom recalls in a November interview with Mike Devlin of the Victoria Times Colonist. “It was really great. We did these songs that basically shaped my musical life and I thought that was it.”

“You’re supposed to put out a record, get in a tour bus, and flog it back and forth, north and south, until you’ve scraped the last dregs of what’s possible with that record, and then you do it all over again and keep repeating that,” Stephen says in a November interview with with Fred Cameron of Nexus. “What we did was make a record, play some dates that we’d all agreed to, and then we pack it in and mothball it. Everybody goes back to what they do.”

Obviously that isn’t how it turned out. The success of that first album (it earned a 1997 Juno Award nomination in the Best Roots and Traditional Album Group category), combined with the musical chemistry and camaraderie that formed between the three musicians, led to a decision to continue recording and touring as Blackie and the Rodeo Kings — with their long-time rhythm section of bass player John Dymond (The Wilkinsons, k.d. lang, Bruce Cockburn) and drummer Gary Craig (Anne Murray, Bruce Cockburn, Jann Arden) — while also pursuing their own solo projects.

While the band still performs Willie P.’s songs during their concerts (“White Line” is the final pre-encore tune at every show), they began writing their own songs, leading to 10 more records over the next two decades: Kings of Love in 1999 (which won a Juno Award for Best Roots and Traditional Album Group), Bark in 2003, Let’s Frolic in 2006, Let’s Frolic Again in 2007, Swinging from the Chains of Love in 2009, Kings and Queens in 2011, South in 2014, Kings and Kings in 2017, King of This Town in 2020, and their most recent release, 2022’s O Glory.

Peterborough holds a special place in the band’s heart, as Willie P. lived here (sharing a home with well-known local artist Joe Stable) until he died suddenly from a heart attack on February 15, 2008. Blackie and the Rodeo Kings have performed at the Market Hall several times since then, most recently in February 2020 just after the release of King of This Town and just before the pandemic hit — which, like for so many musicians, changed everything.

“We had literally said to each other at the Toronto airport in February of 2020, ‘I’ll see you in two weeks,’ because we were about to tour the record across Canada, Europe, and everywhere,” Fearing explains. “I didn’t see them for two and a half years.”

With Stephen living in Victoria, Tom in Hamilton, and Colin in Nashville, Tennessee, the pandemic posed a special challenge for the band’s writing and recording of their latest release, O Glory. Before the pandemic, they had planned to gather at Linden’s Pinhead Recorders home studio in Nashville, where they had recorded King of This Town.

“Like a lot of musicians, after the initial shock of the pandemic lockdown, the impetus became finding ways to connect with the world,” Stephen says in a media release. “Technology has come so far in the last few years, and it has made remote recording possible. I pounced on it. Colin gave me a lot of advice and took charge musically. It was then a matter of coming up with songs and getting them to each other.”

The band wrote the songs piece by piece, sharing ideas electronically, with Colin producing the record.

“Tommy would send me a voice memo with a verse, or a verse and a chorus, and he was pitching strike after strike,” Colin says in a June interview with David McPherson for the Toronto Star. “The songs were so great I could not let a day end without finishing these songs and recording them — those songs are the backbone of this new record.”

“To me, this is Tom’s record,” Stephen points out. “We all wrote and sung on it, but Tom’s recent journey discovering his Mohawk heritage definitely surrounds the record’s spirit from start to finish.”

Now 63, Tom discovered in his 50s that the Irish-French heritage he believed he had while growing up in blue-collar Hamilton was a lie. He accidentally found out he was adopted and someone he thought was his cousin — a woman of Mohawk heritage — was actually his birth mother. That discovery led to his bestselling 2017 memoir Beautiful Scars, followed by a feature-length documentary film based on his memoir that premiered at the 2022 Hot Docs Festival.

“It’s Tom’s record in so many ways, but it’s also the sound of Colin Linden’s mind,” Stephen notes. “If you’re going to get a guitar part from Victoria, and a vocal from Hamilton, and a drum part from a basement in Toronto, and make it sound like we’re all in the same room, you have to have a real mastery of your craft. You have to create a space for all of these things to exist in and that’s Colin’s genius. He’s pretty good at that.”

Along with the mutual respect, admiration, and friendship between members of the band, another reason for the longevity of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings is that each musician has continued to pursue their own separate interests since 1996. For example, Tom is an established visual artist as well as an author and solo musician, Colin records and produces and was the long-time musical director of the hit ABC television show Nashville, and Stephen has continued to release his own solo records every few years.

“Bands are notorious for tearing each other apart, oftentimes because the band is the only creative outlet,” Stephen explains. “With us, rather than breaking up to pursue solo efforts, that’s what we do. We are all solo artists but, when it comes time to get back together, it’s a joyful occasion with a lot of laughs and a lot of love.”

“Blackie has always been like a shield for us — it’s our refuge,” says Colin, with Tom adding the band “is something we go to when we are hungry — it’s something that is completely a labour of lust and as a result we have a great time doing it.”

“It’s exceeded our dreams in so many ways,” Colin says. “We never thought we would do a gig, let alone talk about staying together for more than 25 years.”

Opening for Blackie and the Rodeo Kings at their Market Hall concerts is the Juno Award-winning duo Digging Roots, a musical partnership between ShoShona Kish and Raven Kanatakta that balances Indigenous tradition and modern aesthetics, blending folk-rock, pop, blues, and hip hop with the traditional sounds of Indigenous music.

In June, the duo released their fourth album Zhawenim and, in October, received three Canadian Folk Music Award nominations for Contemporary Album of the Year, Indigenous Songwriter(s) of the Year, and the Oliver Schroer Pushing the Boundaries Award.

Also joining Blackie and the Rodeo Kings is special guest Terra Lightfoot. The Hamilton-based Juno award-nominated roots-rock musician released her fourth album, Consider the Speed, in 2020.

VIDEOS

“O Glory Lost Those Blues Again”

“Cold 100”

“Medicine Hat”

“South”

“I’m Still Loving You”

“Stoned”

“Sometimes It Comes So Easy” by Willie P. Bennett (Loveless Cafe in Nashville, March 2014)

“White Line” by Willie P. Bennett (Market Hall in Peterborough, November 2012)

“Skoden” by Digging Roots