contact us    416-365-7877

What is Bloomsday?

 

   May 24, 2008

Dear Fellow Bloomers,

We’re delighted to announce that we will celebrate the 23nd annual Toronto Bloomsday Festival in the ritualistic manner to which you’ve become accustomed.

Founded in 1986, the festival has had many incarnations. Here’s what we’re planning for this year…

 

  Bill of Fare for Bloomsday 2008   

JUNE 16, 2008

8.30am - noon   

Bloom on the Beach(es)

A re-enactment of scenes from UYLYSSES when the Beaches becomes Dublin for a day

8.30am:  Assembly: TTC streetcar loop at Neville Park                                      

9.00am:  Readings along the Boardwalk, moving westwards                         

10.30am: Singalong and respite at Bandstand Kew Gardens              

10.50am: Readings, eastwards along Queen St. E.

12noon       Bloomsday Brunch 

Whitlocks 1961 Queen St. E. 416-691-8784

8.00pm – 12 midnight... or later           BLOOMSDAY HOOLEY

This year, P.J.OBrien’s, the famous Irish hostelry, will generously host the Hooley.

The festivities will include dramatized readings by actors from the Bloomsday cast, a singalong, musical interludes, and general merriment.

 

Venue:  P.J.O’Brien’s Pub (Pat Quinn Room), 39 Colborne (back of King Edward Hotel)                                 

King St, E of Yonge

Phone: 416.815.PJOB (7562)  www.pjobrien.com

A  pre-show Bloomsday menu will be available. Reservation advisable.

 

Time: 8pm

Admission: PWYC (Pay What You Can)

Join us for all or part of the entertainment. No reservations needed for the show

For further information, phone 416.365.7877 or email: livia@pathcom.com

Yours in the affirmative,

                                               Mary

 

 


Bloomsday is a kind of literary Holyday celebrated around the world. It is a celebration of James Joyce's novel Ulysses in which Leopold Bloom, a Dublin Jew, goes about his life in the city of Dublin on June 16th, 1904

The date Joyce chose for Bloom's perambulations was a tribute to his wife and muse Nora Barnacle. Joyce first encountered Nora, who worked at a nearby hotel, outside Trinity College. She originally mistook him for a Norwegian sailor but did agree to meet him, and so June 16th marks their first rendezvous.

Why Celebrate? Read on....

Mary Durkan, Festival Director.

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The festival is dedicated to the memory of the late, much-loved Bloomsday actor  

Claire Crawford Guinn

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Bloom Bites

 

·         In the summer of 2006, the reading of Ulysses received a much-needed boost from CBC Radio host, Jian Ghomeshi. On the What Canada Intends to Read portion of his show, Sounds Like Canada,  he challenged himself and the country to finish reading Ulysses by the end of the summer. The nationwide Ulysses promotion was hugely successful and the response  overwhelming. The summer-long  publicity  may have helped  to dispel the aura of impenetrability that’s grown up around Ulysses.

 

·         This past year, a number of groups took up the Ulysses challenge and spent the winter exploring the book’s depths. I was involved with one inspiring group organised by Classical Pursuits and its director, Ann Kirkland, a long-time Bloomsday enthusiast. Our Ulyssian sherpa was Prof. Michael Groden, a renowned Joyce scholar and consultant to the Irish Government in the acquisition of the Joyce manuscripts exhibited at the National Library’s Joyce Centenary Exhibition in Dublin in 2004.

 

·         Earlier this year, when the Joyce Research Centre was inaugurated at University College Dublin, Joyce’s alma mater, Michael gave the keynote address.

 

·         In the spring, I was invited by Sheilagh Hickie to visit another Toronto group that was happily exploring Ulysses. In the guise of Molly Bloom, I spent a very entertaining morning at UofT’s Knox College with members of the Academy for Lifelong Learning.

 

·         Something we’ve all discovered is that in order to fully appreciate the enormous riches of Ulysses, it helps to hear the text read aloud. Hence, the Bloomday celebration!

·         The Toronto Bloomsday  Festival is twinned with the Glasthule/Sandycove Bloomsday Festival which takes place in Caveston’s of Glasthule and  Fitzgerald’s of Sandycove, in the shadow of  the  Martello Tower immortalised in the opening chapter of Ulysses.

The Toronto Bloomsday is prominently featured in the Vintage book “yes I said yes I will Yes” celebrating 100 years of Bloomsday.

Film maker Fritzi Hortstman, director of the 2004 documentary Joyce to the World, has described the Toronto Bloomsday as glorious...wonderful.. with amazing actors....in the top two Bloomsday celebration anywhere .

Special centenary ReJoyce! tshirts will be on sale during the festivities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

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