Q with Tom Power

For a children’s musician, Raffi is actually pretty punk rock. Long before Baby Beluga and Bananaphone made him a household name, the beloved Canadian icon was a struggling folk singer in Toronto who took out a bank loan just to self-record his first children's album, Singable Songs for the Very Young. That record turns 50 this year, and it’s still soundtracking childhood for a whole new generatio...

At just 27, Lennon Stella is already a music industry veteran. By the time she released her Juno-winning debut pop album in 2020, she had already spent years in the spotlight — first as a viral YouTube sensation alongside her sister, then as a series regular on the hit show Nashville. But just as her solo career was taking off, Lennon decided to hit the brakes, taking time to write, reflect and re...

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 traditio...

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 na...

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 Po...

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. T...

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 pa...

Bryan Adams is one of the world's biggest rock stars and a Canadian cultural icon. But after four decades in the business and 100 million albums sold, he’s done something he’s never done before: made an entire record dedicated to Canada. From the story of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope and the tragedy of Lundy's Lane to pushing back against threats of becoming America’s "51st State," Bryan is tellin...

Canadian hip-hop pioneer k-os is back with his first new album in more than a decade, BLackneck. It was funded by longtime fan Drake, who wanted to give his early musical hero the freedom to make a “classic k-os record.” Joining Tom Power in the Q studio, k-os shares the unlikely story behind the album, and explains why, after two decades breaking musical boundaries, he’s still determined to do th...

Shiv Carver grew up listening to her family play Irish rebel songs. Today, she’s channeling that rebellious spirit with her own band, Shiv and the Carvers. Discovered at Toronto’s legendary Sneaky Dee’s and quickly earning the endorsement of Bif Naked, the exciting new punk rock band has just released their debut album, Always Watching. Shiv joins Tom Power in the Q studio to talk about the record...

Nearly 40 years ago, Ann-Marie MacDonald shook up Canadian theatre with Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), an irreverent comedy that flipped the script on two of Shakespeare’s most tragic heroines. But when she first penned it, she wasn’t thinking about love, tragedy or even comedy — she was out for revenge against Shakespeare's "cry-and-die" roles for women. Now, Canadian Stage is remount...

Teagan Johnston is a multidisciplinary singer-songwriter with a knack for writing evocative, beautiful lyrics. She’s toured North America, Japan and Europe, and even performed at director David Lynch’s private nightclub in Paris. Teagan joins Tom Power to talk about her new album, Big Time, and what it took to make it entirely on her own terms. She shares how themes of identity and family shape he...

Forget the crooked nose and the bubbling cauldron. For her new Crave series YAGA, award-winning Canadian playwright and director Kat Sandler turns Slavic folklore upside down, reimagining the mythical witch Baba Yaga as a complex, sexually liberated woman who turns the tables on bad men. The eight-part murder mystery series is an adaptation of Kat’s celebrated play of the same name. She sits down...

When Noam Tomaschoff ordered an at-home DNA test on a whim, he didn't expect to learn anything earth-shattering. But before the results even arrived, his parents revealed a secret they had kept for decades: he was conceived via sperm donation, meaning the man who raised him wasn't his biological father. Digging deeper into the results, Noam made another startling discovery — he had more than 35 ha...

If you grew up on ’80s and ’90s action movies, you’re probably familiar with Dolph Lundgren. He played the towering Soviet boxer Ivan Drago opposite Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV, He-Man in the original live-action Masters of the Universe, and more recently, he’s been kicking butt in The Expendables franchise. But long before Hollywood came calling, Dolph was a chemical engineering student headed...

Last week, the world said goodbye to Sir Patrick Stewart — the British stage and screen actor best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men film franchise. In memory of Patrick, we revisit his 2023 conversation with Tom Power, where he looked back on his extraordinary six-decade career.

For more than 50 years, Marina Abramović has used her own body to push the boundaries of performance art. Now, as she approaches her 80th birthday, she’s preparing to stage her most ambitious — and most autobiographical — work yet, Balkan Erotic Epic. The bold new performance piece draws on ancient Balkan folk rituals to explore sexuality, spirituality, fertility and death. In this candid conversa...

Damhnait Doyle thought her days of making music were behind her. But after facing some personal hardships, an urge to reconnect with her authentic self led her back to songwriting. Now, the Juno-nominated musician and host of CBC Music’s Mornings is embracing the “weird kid” she was 30 years ago when she first broke onto the Canadian music scene with her hit song A List of Things. Damhnait joins T...

Holland Taylor (Legally Blonde, Two and a Half Men) has had incredible success acting in hit movies and TV shows — but her transition to the screen was originally intended to bolster her theatre career. In this conversation with Tom Power, Holland shares how she honed her craft under legendary acting teacher Stella Adler, how having ADHD has helped her channel focus into her most intense roles, an...

Comedian and documentary filmmaker John Wilson has a very particular way of seeing the world. For his acclaimed HBO series How To With John Wilson, he wandered the streets of New York City with a camera, following his curiosity into some bizarre and unexpectedly moving encounters with ordinary people. Now, he’s released his first feature documentary, The History of Concrete, using a similarly unco...

Ten years after Leonard Cohen’s death, his songs are as alive as ever. In a special remote interview at Hotel2Tango in Montreal — the studio where he helped produce his father’s final albums — Juno-nominated musician Adam Cohen sits down with Tom Power to discuss bringing Leonard’s songs back to the stage on a new tribute tour featuring his 19-year-old son, Cassius. Adam opens up about grief,...

In 1989, a young singer from New Brunswick sparked an international frenzy across Quebec and Europe known as "Rochmania." That singer was Roch Voisine, who skyrocketed to fame overnight with his breakthrough hit, Hélène. While the craze was initially written off as short-lived pop hype, Roch has sustained a career in both official languages for nearly four decades. Fresh off his induction into the...

Saskatchewan’s Tara Gereaux is the author of the novel Wild People Quiet, which was recently shortlisted for the Giller Prize — Canada's most prestigious literary award for fiction. Set in 1946, the book follows a secretary in a small prairie town who’s sacrificed everything to hide her Métis identity and pass as white. Tara joins Tom Power in the Q studio to talk about the book and how it was ins...

For more than five decades, Jayne Eastwood has been one of the most recognizable and beloved faces in Canadian comedy, film and television — from Goin’ Down the Road and SCTV to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In 1972, she joined the iconic Toronto stage production of Godspell alongside a powerhouse cast including Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin and Gilda Radner. Now, a new documentary, You Had...

Since winning an Emmy for his role as Lenny Bruce on the hit series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Canadian actor Luke Kirby hasn’t slowed down. He talks to Tom Power about his new leading role as Detective Sergeant John Darcy on Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, how his early days working with Canadian theatre legends felt like making it to the big leagues, and how back in high school, he act...