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adamwatchesmovies · 3 years

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Conan the Destroyer (1984)

Though Conan the Barbarian has presence and memorable moments, I wouldn't call it "a great film". It's the end-all-be-all of sword and sorcery stories compared to the sequel, however. Conan the Destroyer has none of the charms of its predecessor. This new adventure feels like a D&D campaign with Arnold Schwarzenegger thrown in the middle.

Set some time after the first story, Conan and his companion, a thief named Malak (Tracey Walter), are forcefully summoned by Queen Taramis (Sarah Douglas) to the city of Shadizar. The Queen will bring Conan's beloved Valeria back to life. In exchange, he must help the Queen’s niece, Princess Jehnna (Olivia d’Abo) as she retrieves a mystical key that will help bring the dreaming god Dagoth to their world.

The toning down of the violence, gore, and nudity is immediately noticeable. Conan the Barbarian isn’t just an “R” picture; it’s a heavy “R”. To go from crucifixions, topless women and buckets of gore to a “PG” rating, just to get more potential butts in the seats is a betrayal. What separates Schwarzenegger's brutal barbarian from the kinder, gentler imitators like He-Man or the Beastmaster are scenes where he decapitates his archenemy and throws his head down a flight of stairs for all to see. Without this, there's no reason to show up.

Instead of the badassness, we get a big pile of useless characters and a whole lotta unfunny humor. Conan assembles a team of allies you don't care about: the Wizard (Mako as Akiro), the Amazon (Grace Jones as Zula), and a paladin (Wilt Chamberlain as Bombaata). See what I mean about this feeling like a plot from Dungeons & Dragons? Along with the princess, the titular barbarian, and his buddy the thief there are simply too many characters. If at least they were integral to the plot. Thief Malak is a coward through-and-through that doesn’t even have any useful lock-picking skills or character development. The same applies to Zula. While I like the idea of a badass female warrior to add to the group, all she does is fight in a style that’s different from Conan’s.

This more kid-friendly picture attempts to make you laugh and never succeeds. Comic relief Malak (picking on him again) is essentially the dollar-bin version of Gerry Lopez's character from the first movie. Your dislike for him increases as you realize he's only there to repeat the same joke over and over. He’s a coward. I get it!

The picture picks up towards the end. There's a sequence with a big monster that's pretty cool. For the most part, it fails to grab your attention. The story is not engaging and with the performances being only slightly better than last time (at least Schwarzenegger is more convincing here), it desperately needed dynamic action scenes to make up for the lack of everything else. When you’ve got an ineffective wizard for an opponent and a lot of scenes where characters stick around frozen while the plot moves around them, I throw my hands in the air and give up.

Conan the Destroyer can’t even get Arnold punching a camel in the face right. It's a mix of disappointment and embarrassment that isn't even worthy of hatred. (On DVD, July 5, 2015)

#ConantheDestroyer #movies #films #moviereviews #filmreviews #RichardFleischer #StanleyMann #RoyThomas #GerryConway #arnold schwarzenegger #GraceJones #WiltChamberlain #Mako #TraceyWalter #Oliviad'Abo #SarahDouglas #1984movies #1984films

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plungermusic · 3 years

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“Kinda bent, but we ain’t breakin’… in the long run”

Maverick Saturday stretched out before us like a challenge - thirteen hours is a long time on your feet for a couple of oldsters, but we’d give it our best shot…

We didn’t catch all of Dan Walsh’s opening Barn set, but his closing number, a lyrical, backwoods folk-flavoured instrumental that peaked in an increasingly frenetic celtic reel to the whoops and stomps of the crowd, was enough to impress us with its fleet-fingered dexterity.

Kelly Bayfield made her second barn appearance with another stylish set drawn from the new album: Kelly taking to the piano to give us a new short number Sing which was twinned (“well, they’re a similar flavour, and in the same key!”) with her last single Hitchhiker, both oozing classy 70s chanteuse vibes and the latter closing in some great Telecaster work from Andy Trill in a majestic closing solo.

There’s not much that’d drag us away from a Kelly performance early, but having spotted his programme picture (“Long hair, Les Paul? That’ll do!”) we pottered down to the open air Green Stage for David Banks and his band. He did exactly what we thought it said on the tin: lots of Springsteen/Petty influenced muscular Americana with a dash of Molly Hatchett topped with excellent southern-fried guitar and classic ‘big endings’… marvellous.

He was followed by Simon Stanley Ward (another ‘old fave’) who brought his Jonathan Richmanish irreverence and wit to Old Time Country in Excuse Me While I Feel Sorry For Myself; the Graceland-African-style I’m A Worrier (”…that’s worrier, not warrior”) a swinging rock’n’roller Bigfoot, Baby (Eddie Cochran meets cryptobiology) and Rocket In The Desert (the salad leaf not the projectile) with its Lawrence Of Arabia theme tease. While lampooning his own assumed-Nashville twang in American Voice the accompaniment was as echt as you could want, and the deadpan humour of Beluga Whale was sung to a properly stirring Journeyesque anthem.

As it wasn’t raining The Green seemed the place to stay, where Forty Elephant Gang came next. Reviewing their album we were a little sniffy about their ‘crowd-pleasing festival songs’ but aside from the field holler-meets-O Brother Where Art Thou-style Songs Of Praise, this set was mostly the ones we’d liked: the relaxed Tex-Mex of Strange Things Happening with three-part harmonies and intertwining mando’n’guitar lines; the melancholic waltz of Young Man’s Game and the Squeeze-y domestic wit of Drunken Promise Song. A final ‘crowd-pleaser’ came in the chugging bluesy Hands Out Your Pockets, an instruction the assembled masses eagerly followed to add the required clap-along.

Sam Chase Trio made another appearance at The Green, wooing the larger crowd with both edgy humour (including praising UK portaloos in comparison to US versions, and introducing Everyone Is Crazy But Me as “a children’s song... now, what they mean is that it’s simple, since kids are generally at the dumber end of the spectrum”), and songs as varied as the fiery protest of What Is All The Rage and the haunting, wistful Lost Girl, (from the “Faustian Spaghetti Western Of Epic Proportions Known As The Last Rites Of Dallas Pistol”) sung by cellist Devon.

Now Plunger do like a bit of bluegrass, whether it’s grainy b/w Flatt & Scruggs clips from the 50s, through Sam Bush and New Grass to Béla Fleck and Greensky Bluegrass so The Folly Brothers should have been our kind of thing… however what we heard of them was more My Old Man’s A Dustman than anything Appalachian so we wandered off…

Back at The Barn Dean Owens and the Southerners drew a large and attentive crowd, but the popular Scot also left us a bit underwhelmed. Mellow, melodious troubadoury country that wouldn’t have been out of place on a mid-afternoon 70s Radio 2 show, the kind of thing that takes a deep listen in your bedroom to appreciate the stories told: very easy on the ear for sure but without any particular thing to grab us at a festival.

After an abortive attempt to catch Ella Spencer and her accompanist at The Moonshine (an extremely long soundcheck with problems with feedback from pretty much everything they touched meant we gave up) we caught a snatch of Los Pistoleros as we rounded The Green: probably the most C.O.U.N.T.R.Y. thing of the weekend, complete with draggy fiddle, pedal steel and old time vocal harmonies… if I’d not left my cowboy boots at home I’d have been out line-dancing with the best of them.

Plunger had only just seen Alyssa Bonagura (with Tim De Graaw’s band) less than a week since. Here at The Barn she was nominally solo but Tim joined her to add sweet harmonies and mellow guitar to Alyssa’s polished Cali-country: her strong yet ethereal vocal equally at home in slow emotional confessionals or giggly upbeat Big Yellow Taxi-style big strummers.

Listed only as ‘Dogs Play Dead’ it was only a lucky guess that took us down to The Green for what turned out to be Friday’s headliners Black Eyed Dogs playing a set of Grateful Dead classics. Mainly those with a countryish twist to them already, like Casey Jones, I Know You Rider and Friend Of The Devil; and bringing that flavour with fiddle and pedal steel to others like Truckin’, China Cat Sunflower, Playing In The Band and the epic closing Franklin’s Tower. All done with the right degree of loose, shambling rhythms and discursive noodling on guitar (and fiddle!) Fabulous stuff for grooving on the grass under what by now were glorious sunshine-filled blue skies.

Brooks Williams’ jangly sonorous acoustic and warm, smooth higher register vox was ideal early evening fare at the barn, in covers like Dave Alvin’s King Of California, traditional numbers like Deep River Blues and originals like the Gordon Lightfootish melancholy of Frank Delandry, and the damp-eyed nostalgia of Palomino Gold, aided toward the end of his set by some more excellent banjo from Dan Walsh.

The USP of Eddy Smith & the 507 is Eddy’s gravelly soulful voice, ideal for their bluesy-edged material, like the harp-led strut of It Don’t Feel Much Like Living and the new single Ticket Out Of Here, a bustling two-step with impressive three-part harmony vocals. They definitely have moved up a level since we last saw them a couple of years back.

Somehow we managed to miss Sarah Petite with her band completely on Friday, and almost all of her stripped-back Moonshine set on Saturday. Which was definitely our loss gauging by the brief snatch of crackling husky vocal over restrained bass and reverb laden guitar that we heard while hunting for a still-open toilet (a water supply problem having rendered all loos unusable for a considerable portion of the late evening... pretty much the only fly in the ointment all weekend!)

As the sun set the two-month date differential was beginning to tell: clear night skies in September aren’t quite the same as July and the growing chill was testing our stamina a bit. We headed for The Peacock and the tribute show to John Prine, hosted by Rich Hall. Pretty much every act who was on site came to do a turn in honour of the recently-deceased songwriting legend, with their own favourite from his oeuvre. Kelly Bayfield band gave us Hello In There, Tim De Graaw with Alyssa did That’s The Way The World Goes Round, Alyssa gave us the obligatory Angel From Montgomery, and Simon Stanley Ward (plus Kelly) gave a fantastic rollicking Lake Marie. Entirely in character, Sam Chase Trio broke the mould and gave us their own tribute song John Prine.

Rich Hall had to skip out on MC duties to attend his own set at The Barn: sacrilege to say, but the appeal of stand up (even to music, even from such a big name) palled a little. It was getting bitterly cold (you could see your breath hanging in the air) and given that what we could hear of his set was the same as we’d heard last time he was here we spent much the time attempting to warm up with piping hot beverages. However it was by far the rammedest set of the weekend, with the tightly-packed crowd spilling out of The Barn for some distance.

Jon Langford was unsurprisingly somewhat hindered by the draw of Rich Hall (which left The Peacock a bit underpopulated!) His spiky, punky approach wasn’t entirely our bowl of chilli, although the rendition of Eddie Waring (originally by Help Yourself with Deke Leonard and BJ Cole, who was sitting in with Jon tonight) was very good.

The programme description of headliner Jerry Joseph did its best to weaken our staying power too: with our deep suspicion of any write-ups that include the ‘p-word’, and somewhat incredulous of the mention of ‘jam bands’, Jerry looked like he wouldn’t be our kind of thing at all. However he didn’t live down to expectations (wholly). A very animated stage-prowling audience-provoking figure in shorts and no shoes, there was no shortage of energy even if it was largely unchannelled and could get a little wearing… (maybe it was that, maybe it was the chill, but The Barn steadily thinned out during his set, ending less than half full). War At The End Of The World was the pick of the bunch, although like most of his material it would probably have sounded better with a band (like, erm, Stockholm Syndrome, which he co-founded; or, erm, Widespread Panic who he has written for… so much for our ‘jamband incredulity’!)

While it might have ended as a bit of a test of endurance, there were more than enough high points to make Saturday another enjoyable Maverick experience.

“Did we do it for love? Did we do it for money? More like stubborn dumb persistence and hot chocolate, honey…”

#Maverick Festival

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Review: fierce and fun Warrior Nun is a perfect Fourth of July binge-watch

Ava (Alba Baptista) finds herself resurrected by an angelic halo in her back, and is recruited by a group of nuns in the Order of the Cruciform Sword.

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The nuns have just suffered a devastating loss of one of their own.

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Ava just wants to live a little with her new hip friends.

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Sparks fly between Ava and JC (Emilio Sakraya)

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JC’s friends don’t know quite what to make of Ava.

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Father Vincent (Tristan Ulloa) tries to win Ava over to the cause.

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Mother Superion (Sylvia De Fanti) has her doubts about Ava’s potential.

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Sister Lilith (Lorena Andrea) and Sister Beatrice (Kristina Tonteri-Young)

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Sister Camila (Olivia Declan)

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Cardinal Duretti (Joaquim de Almeida) questions the stability of the order.

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A romantic interlude.

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Shotgun Mary (Toya Turner) and Sister Lilith are both on the hunt for the missing Ava.

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Shotgun Mary finds Ava

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Jillian Salvius (Thekla Reuten) is a wealthy scientist and entrepreneur whose work might be a threat to the Catholic Church

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Sister Beatrice in fight mode is fierce.

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A young woman gains extraordinary powers when a divine artifact is accidentally embedded in her back, and finds herself reluctantly battling demons on Earth in Warrior Nun, a new Netflix series based on the comic books by Ben Dunn. It sounds like a cheesy premise, but this adaptation is anything but. It’s a fiercely fun, entertaining, occasionally thought-provoking series that will have you hooked and eager for a second season.

(Mild spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

As we previously reported, the first issue in Dunn’s manga-style comic book series, “Warrior Nun Areala,” debuted in 1994. The series largely features Sister Shannon Masters, a modern-day crusader for the Catholic Church’s (fictional) Order of the Cruciform Sword. In the series mythology, the Order dates back to 1066, when a young Valkyrie woman named Auria converted to Christianity. Renamed Areala, she selects a new avatar every generation to carry on her mission of battling the agents of hell. Sister Shannon is the Chosen One. It’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer got religion.

Dunn has said he was inspired to create the series after learning, via a New York Times article, about the Fraternity of Our Lady, which established a chapter in Harlem in 1991 to run a soup kitchen. One of the nuns (the fraternity has both nuns and priests), Sister Marie Chantel, trained in the martial arts (judo and Tae Kwon Do), and many of her fellow nuns also practiced self-defense, albeit mostly for sport. Dunn envisioned a world with nuns as superheroes, where heaven and hell are real dimensions.

Sister Shannon isn’t dominant in the Netflix adaptation—she only appears in a couple of episodes, played by Melina Matthews. Instead, the show focuses on a young woman named Ava (Alba Baptista). Per the official premise:

Caught in the middle of an ancient war between good and evil, a young girl wakes up in a morgue with inexplicable powers. Her search for answers brings her to The Order of the Cruciform Sword, a secret society of warrior nuns sworn to protect the world from evil. While juggling her responsibilities as the chosen one with the normal obstacles of a teenage girl, this mysterious fantasy drama is full of mystery, action, adventure, and teenage romance, proving our main character might fight in the name of good, but she’s no angel.

We meet Ava after she has just died in a Catholic hospital, having been there since she was crippled (a paraplegic) in a car accident at the age of seven. Her body is laid out in the church morgue by Father Vincent (Tristan Ulloa), when his crew of warrior nuns returns from what should have been a routine mission. Sister Shannon has been mortally wounded and they must remove the angelic halo from her back that grants special powers, and insert it into the next “Halo Bearer.”

But they are interrupted by a supernatural beast intent on retrieving said halo for itself. As the sisters scatter, one of them slips the halo into Ava’s body. The halo’s power brings her back to life, and also restores her mobility. But Ava is not a nun, nor is she particularly devout, and honestly, after a lifetime paralyzed in a hospital bed, the 18-year-old just wants to live a little. This rankles Cardinal Duretti (Joaquim de Almeida): “How did our greatest weapon against evil end up in an unbeliever?”

The whole armor of god

Ava and Shotgun Mary take refuge in a village that has seen more than its share of demons.

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Ava comes to terms with her calling.

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There could be another personal motive behind Jillian’s research.

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Warrior nuns suited up for a mission.

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Tending to a wounded warrior.

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Shotgun Mary stands firm in the face of evil.

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There is tension in the nuns’ ranks

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Lilith returns to her sisters.

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Ava has a vision.

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Ava decides upon a course of action.

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The team marches out to infiltrate the Vatican.

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Nah, not suspicious behavior at all.

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Sister Camila’s mad hacker skills come in handy.

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Sister Lilith ready to do her part.

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Warrior nuns, assemble!

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Father Vincent argues that Ava must have been chosen for a reason, and tries to convince her to take the role of Halo Bearer seriously. Mother Superion (Sylvia De Fanti) doesn’t think Ava has what it takes, while Sister Lilith (Lorena Andrea) was supposed to be next in line for the honor and resents being passed over in favor of Ava. Sister Beatrice (Kristina Tonteri-Young) and Sister Camila (Olivia Declan) are a bit more welcoming, while Shotgun Mary (Toya Turner) is grieving the loss of her BFF Sister Shannon and intent on revenge upon whoever betrayed the Order that fateful day.

There are also greater machinations afoot, starting with scientist and tech entrepreneur Jillian Salvius (Thekla Reuten), who has been using a mysterious material known as “divinium,” found on certain holy relics stolen from the Vatican, to create a prototype inter dimensional portal. She thinks this will usher in a new Age of Enlightenment: “Heaven exists, and I discovered a gateway to it.” This puts her at odds with the Cardinal and the Church—she has desecrated holy relics, after all. And the Cardinal himself seems to be intent on remaking the Order to serve his own ambitions within the Church. Ava clearly needs time to process and come to terms with her new situation—but that might be a luxury the Order can’t afford, as the beast is still hunting for the halo, leaving carnage in its wake.

The entire cast give stellar performances, but Baptista is luminous as Ava. The character could easily have come across as a spoiled brat in the early episodes, given that her learned defense mechanisms involve flippant irreverence and keeping people at a distance. Instead, you genuinely feel for this young woman who has suddenly been granted a second chance at life, able to feel sensations, to walk and run and feed herself, for the first time in 11 years. But the gift comes with a price: she is thrust into a spiritual war she doesn’t understand, with people she has no reason to trust after years of abuse at the Catholic hospital. There’s also her raging teen hormones and a super-cute boy (Emilio Sakraya) drawing her away from the Order.

The series is expertly plotted, with twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the final reveal.

We naturally expect there to be heroes and villains, but Warrior Nun takes a much more nuanced, less black-and-white approach to this than the original comics. In the comics, for instance, Julius Salvius is a Satanist and arms dealer whose minions regularly battle the Order. But his gender-swapped counterpart in the TV series, Jillian, is a more complicated figure—someone who seeks to rise above the longstanding the tension between science and religion for motives that might just be more personal (and less overtly evil) than one might otherwise expect.

Likewise, the heroic figures have all-too-human flaws that lead to ill-advised decisions at times: entitlement and resentment (Sister Lilith), jealousy (Mother Superion), anger management issues (Shotgun Mary), and being a bit too naively trusting (Sister Camila) and overly obedient to Church authority (Sister Beatrice). Another welcome departure from the comics: the nuns actually dress modestly, like nuns, rather than the silly cleavage-centric habits and loin cloths worn by the nuns in Dunn’s earlier comics.

The series is expertly plotted, with twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the final reveal. There is a rich historical mythology, and plenty of action and killer “Nun-Fu” moves, especially when Sister Beatrice lets out her inner ninja. (Watching her effortlessly take out a crew of Jillian’s security forces who assumed she was too small and weak to pose any threat is glorious.) And there are welcome moments of sly comic relief and contemplative reflection to break up the action now and then. Ava and her sister Warrior Nuns are definitely worthy to join the ranks of Buffy, Wynonna Earp, and Witchblade‘s Sarah Pezzini as flawed-but-fierce women who fight against evil, in all its forms, for the greater good.

Warrior Nun is now streaming on Netflix, and makes for an excellent holiday weekend binge.

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esprit-de-corps-magazine · 7 years

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ONE LARGE STEP: The Journey To Recovery Through The Invictus Games In Toronto

(Volume 24-8)

By Kari M. Pries

Leaving behind the military institution after years of high-intensity training and extended contributions to Canada’s security commitments can become a devastating process for those who are not ready to start something new. Stories of bereavement, of shock, and of post-release isolation are common.

In an Invictus Games flag handover ceremony at Fisher House in Bethesda, Maryland, on July 12, Ken Fisher, Chairman and CEO of Fisher House Foundation and former Chairman of the 2016 Orlando Invictus Games, addressed this experience with frankness. “No one goes to war and comes back unchanged. For some people, these changes mean months, even years, of arduous rehabilitation,” said Fisher. It also means that the service member’s role within the military also can be irrevocably changed.

André Girard tried for years to come back from gunshot wounds obtained during an ambushed foot patrol in Afghanistan. Despite his best efforts to learn a new trade, his traumatic brain injury did not permit the words to come the way they needed to. He medically released after five years, feeling frustrated and isolated from his comrades and colleagues who had long been members of his family.

Caroline Cauvin and Helene Le Scelleur both describe their experiences of releasing from the military as a period of mourning with the accompanying five stages of grief. Their lives had become so entwined with the military that the prospect of leaving it behind resulted in a loss of motivation and, in Cauvin’s case, depression.

Le Scelleur found the leaving process so important that she has now commenced doctoral work studying what takes place during disengagement from military service. She questions how people are supported during the leaving process and whether training is necessary to turn a soldier into a civilian again.

“The military invests funds to train a civilian to be a soldier, but no money to train a soldier to be a civilian. I think this is an important point … especially in efforts to evade suicide … there can definitely be a clash when the individual is still too embedded in their military role,” she reflects.

Many competitors speak of their search for a goal or something that would reinject meaning to their life and allow them to continue to make a contribution to their country. To provide a space of healing from the process of release to begin a “new chapter” or “turn a corner,” as Cauvin terms it, has been the goal of Invictus Games Toronto 2017.

Many like Team Manager Greg Legacé, Team Head Coach Peter Lawless, and the competitors that spoke with Esprit de Corps, point out that the Invictus Games are a moment of celebration. They allow Canadians to see that individuals once devoted in service to Canada are “still going above and beyond to represent and serve their country” as Melanie, wife of IG competitor Joe Rustenburg, states before concluding with the admonishment: “So you better cheer for them!”

An incredible moment of celebration

HRH Prince Harry founded the Invictus Games after visiting the Warrior Games in the USA in 2013. The Prince has spoken frequently about how this experience was inspirational, answering his questions on how wounded, ill and injured soldiers and veterans could be recognized for their achievements and new accomplishments. Sport became a means to promote physical, psychological, and social recovery and the Games a showcase for “the very best of the human spirit.” His first Games were held in London in 2014 and the second followed two years later in Orlando, Florida.

Running the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 is CEO Michael Burns, co-founder of the True Patriot Love Foundation. Burns turned his attention to helping Canada’s military families after a friend’s son was killed in Afghanistan in 2007. He explained to Esprit de Corps last year that the “emotional and moving experience” engendered “deep realisations that my generation was not doing enough or anything for military families.”

He found a way to act on this realization after hearing about Prince Harry’s initiative. Inspired over what those Games could mean in a Canadian context started Burns on a path that has entailed working non-stop with government, non-government, and charity partners to bring the Games to his hometown of Toronto in time for the Canada 150 celebrations.

The Invictus Games Toronto 2017 will host 17 nations contributing a total 550 competitors participating in 12 adaptive sports. The Games are supported by $10-million in contributions each from the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario. The City of Toronto as well as a host of organisations and partners including Jaguar Land Rover are also sponsoring the Games.

During their first training camp in Victoria, Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan took time to join in the athlete’s training program. There he spoke with the athletes on their experiences, sharing as a peer himself, before putting his words into action around the race track.

Minister of Veterans Affairs Kent Hehr has also joined in for numerous events in the lead-up to the Games, including attending the ticket launch ceremony in Toronto. He further joined in an international stop on the Invictus Games flag tour in Landstuhl, Germany, at the U.S. military hospital where Canadian soldiers with significant injuries were evacuated from Afghanistan. Legacé observes that, from a leadership perspective, the support from the government could not have been better and that this support bodes well for the future of post-Games programs for Canada’s wounded, ill and injured serving and veteran members of the CAF.

Team Canada’s participation at the Games is under the responsibility of the Canadian Armed Forces’ Soldier On Program, which assembled the team and provided the training and support necessary to prepare the team for competition.

Canadian athletes feature in archery, indoor rowing, track and field athletics, cycling, swimming, sitting volleyball, wheelchair basketball, rugby and tennis competitions. Golf has been added to the Games for the first time and this event will be held at Toronto’s renowned St. George’s Golf and Country Club, which has hosted five Canadian Opens and five LPGA tour stops to date.

Other events are spread across Toronto — from the archery tournament at Fort York National Historic Site to Toronto’s High Park for cycling. Parking areas in Toronto’s historic Distillery District, a Victorian-era neighbourhood once host to the largest distillery in the British Empire, will be transformed by Jaguar Land Rover with a challenging driving course.

Eleanor McMahon, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport in Ontario, added her approbation in a press release: “What a great way to end an impressive summer of sport in Ontario, which included the North American Indigenous Games, in this milestone 150th anniversary year.”

Contributing to the celebratory spirit of the Games are the elaborate opening and closing ceremonies the IG17 organizing committee has planned.

A broad range of Canadian performers including Alessia Cara, Laura Wright, Sarah McLachlan, Bryan Adams, Bachman & Turner, La Bottine Souriante, and Coeur de Pirate will contribute artistic performances aimed at appealing to diverse crowds.

“I look forward to paying tribute to all the men and women gathered for the Games,” stated Sarah McLachlan in a press release announcing her musical contribution to the opening ceremonies.

Born into a family steeped in military tradition, Bryan Adams occasionally includes military commemorations in his art such as the 1987 song Remembrance Day. However, it is through his lesser-known work as a photographer that he became involved in support of wounded, ill and injured soldiers and veterans. In February 2015, his exhibition Wounded — The Legacy of War was displayed in Quebec City’s Musée National des Beaux Arts de Quebec (MNBAQ), presenting photos of British soldiers who had fought and sustained lasting injuries in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Reflecting on the travelling exhibit in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper in 2015, he stated, “There is too much suffering for families and children. The repercussions of these wars are going to be felt for decades.”

Making each step count

Team Canada’s Head Coach Peter Lawless confirms that the impacts of conflict can persist over the long term. It is for this reason he has encouraged individual athletes to reach out to their local sports communities beyond the training and structures of the Invictus Games.

An experienced coach, Lawless notes that his training and coaching techniques have had to change for a team that is spread out across the country. Error detection and form correction could be improved with close-range coaching, but “that is not the point. The most important date is 1 October,” he says. “It is then that we will see what the Games have given to each competitor — the skills, friendships, and connections that will continue to improve lives beyond the Invictus Games.”

Team Canada Manager Greg Legacé concurs. “What happens in Toronto comes and goes. But what is left is getting involved in sports and getting something lasting.”

Lawless continues: “[We want to encourage] local support networks with local peers and local clubs. This promotes awareness of local resources [and reaching] peaks that can’t be reached alone in isolation. Sport is a vehicle for the journey forward from 1 October and every day thereafter. We want to create community through the common ground of sport and maintaining those connections is good for everyone — local civilian sports clubs and [IG] competitors alike. We want to see more of that.”

There are specific benefits to events like the Invictus Games, Legacé emphasizes. Participants are set specific goals to reach with their Invictus Games sports that motivate their continued physical activity and new skills. Their highly visible participation also can act as an inspiration for others to get out of their basements, end their isolation, and reach out to others. Several competitors on IG17 Team Canada cite the social media posts of competitors in previous years as the inspiration to step up, get active, and apply to compete themselves. “That is the power of sport. The inspiration through [the event] profile and [public] awareness leads to subsequent benefits,” Legacé concludes. “Look at the number of young women that began swimming competitively after Penny Oleksiak’s performance in Rio, for example.”

“Events are just events in the end,” adds Lawless. “It is the legacy that matters — that’s magic.”

The Invictus Games are a great catalytic opportunity to implement policies and programs that are real and lasting. This is why Lawless has been inspired to bring the Games to Victoria, B.C., in a few years’ time. His strategy for enticing the Games back to Canada will likely be similar to how he recruited other coaches to support Team Canada: “It is simply about picking up the phone with such a worthy cause. They just don’t know how much they want to do this yet. Once I tell them about it, they are on board to make a contribution.”

Follow-up and follow-through

But for now, Team Canada is focused on bringing their personal bests to this year’s Games, celebrating with their families, friends, and themselves over how far they have come. Competitors emphasize that having the Invictus Games as a goal to reach has been largely a transformative experience where many goals have been realized long before the opening ceremonies actually take place.

Competitor Kelly Scanlan writes in an email, “The motivation the Invictus Games and Team Canada has given me has helped me to overcome so many obstacles and given me so many new opportunities that I never thought I would have in my life.”

Geoff De Melo echoes these sentiments. He has gained the confidence to rejoin large groups of people and go to places without the accompaniment of his service dog. “Invictus is already a success story for me,” says De Melo. “[We have learned that] injuries don’t limit or define us and we are an example of those who still work hard to serve our country. For me, this is also a moment to celebrate how far I have come. It [is a moment] that closes one chapter and opens opportunities for new challenges.”

At the same time, Legacé wants Canadians to know that, for the 90 competitors of Team Canada, “when the dust settles, when the light goes out on the cauldron, the competitors know where they can go to get support. [We need] the community to be inspired to keep this momentum going post-Invictus too.”

Although the Invictus Games take place in Toronto, they will be broadcast by Bell Media and on local CTV channels throughout Canada. To reach a larger number of Canadians, the Invictus Games flag, accompanied by a flame lit in Afghanistan, travelled across Canada visiting 22 military bases and 50 communities from Alert to Victoria to Charlottetown. Hundreds of Canadians applied to be flag-bearers. It is hoped many more will support these competitors and others in the aftermath of the Games as they move forward.

As Lawless says, “[These competitors] did something for Canada, responding to the government’s call. Regardless of politics, Canadians have a permanent obligation to show that service mattered, that we care, and continue to care.”

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