Published January 2016.
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Lo and behold – it’s the 20th of the month and time for another great party at Ferreira Fest where we celebrate the acting career of Louis Ferreira and all the latest projects of his friends and charities! Winter is most definitely here, so come on in and sit by the fire for a while, grab an age-appropriate pineapple cocktail at our virtual bar and maybe some pineapple upside-down cake to ring in the new year! This is our 7th year at The Friends of Louis Ferreira and we have so much good stuff for you this month. Louis’ birthday is coming up soon, so please join us!
CHARITY NEWS
Ability Online
Louis is keeping busy as a Cyber Dad at Ability Online.
Check out the official Winter Newsletter full of inspiring stories, news and reports!
January is National Mentoring Month! Mentoring is very important to Louis and everyone here at The Friends of Louis Ferreira, so be sure to follow them on Twitter for all the latest info.
Ability Gives is currently raising funds for 6 year-old Ishaar. Please help out by clicking the logo below – every penny helps this little boy succeed in life!
Project Limelight
Project Limelight has made a Pictorial Year in Review… who is that funny guy in the 6th photo?
Thirteen Project Limelight girls and musical director Chersea have written and recorded the music video Paradise – check it out! Here is a short teaser as well.
Managing Director Donalda Weaver writes: “Our next regular program will start in February. This performing arts program will conclude with a performance on June 12th.”
The popular storytelling event Tuesday Night Live is back on January 26th! Storytellers will be Dylan Riches and Anesha Bailey.
You can be there in spirit by making a donation to Project Limelight to help kids get a great performing arts education that they could otherwise never have. Click on the button below!
The Good Neighbours’ Club
The Good Neighbours’ Club‘s Annual Dinner for Sam took place last week on January 16th, and it was a big success, attracting a huge crowd.
More “In Their Own Words” photos have been added to the GNC Page – check them out! It’s a photo series of people showing us why they volunteer.
GNC received an awesome Christmas lunch gift from the George Brown School of Hospitality.
Check out this edible dragon – it’s almost too pretty to eat. What a special meal for the club members during the holiday season!
So you’re a zero in the kitchen with no culinary skills whatsoever?
If you have even burned water on a stove, consider making a donation to GNC instead. On our very own donations page it’s safe and easy – help us reach this year’s donation goal by clicking on the logo below!
The Children’s Aid Foundation
Check out CAFDN‘s monthly newsletter The Buzz for all the latest headlines and fundraising projects, and there’s also lots of useful information on our Children’s Aid Foundation Page.
Upcoming Events
February 25th – Suitcase Party
The annual Children’s Aid Foundation’s Suitcase Party held in downtown Toronto, is an invite only event that hosts some of the city’s hottest young professionals for an exclusive night of networking, delicious food, drinks and entertainment.
There’s a great new video about the Ted & Loretta Rogers Foster Care Transition Program.
With children and young people faced with the uncertainty that comes with being removed from your family and uprooted from everything and everyone you’ve ever known, it’s not surprising that youth living in care face various psychological challenges. That’s why CAFDN is funding comfort kits to support kids entering the foster care system.
Comfort kits provide tools to assist with the transition into care. Including items like hygienic necessities, blankets, gift cards, journals, art sets, books on being in care, mp3 players and a teddy bear, these kits are designed to offer a sense of stability for youth during one of the most unstable experiences of their lives.
You can help fund these kits and other projects by clicking on the logo below. Our own donation page is easy to use and secure.
MOTIVE
The first Canadian Screen Awards nominations are out and MOTIVE was nominated for Best Dramatic Series! Congratulations, everyone!
Leading Lady Kristin Lehman nabbed a nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role. Way to go, Kristin!
MOTIVE wraps principal photography for Season 4 on February 12th.
MOTIVE also clocked in at #6 on Canada’s Most-Watched Canadian Series. Read the great article on TV-eh (and find out who else is on the list)!
Here is a lovely review of the Season 3 opener 6 Months later (written by none other than our friend Dennis Heaton!) While the series stopped airing in the US after Season 2 you can purchase the rest of the episodes on DVD in Germany, France and the UK.
Lauren Holly was thrilled that she got to film some more “#bega” scenes with Louis last week!
What’s up with the weird hashtag, you ask? It’s a popular thing among TV and film fans to “ship” a couple, whether canon or wishful thinking (“ship” is short for “relationship”). Most often these “ships” are designated by combining letters from the characters’ names: BEtty and VeGA = Bega. Mystery solved!
And here are some of the unsung heroes of MOTIVE – the men who work behind the scenes and who make all the actors and stories look so good. They might be invisible, but we constantly see their great work. Thanks, guys, you rock!! From left to right: Kyle Brown, Will Minsky, Jay Sullivan, Ryan Purcell, Brendan Chalmers, Mathias Herndl, Ryan Nazar, Boris Martens, Mark Chow, Tolar Armitt
For more great MOTIVE photos check out the updates from Amanda Alexander in the Friends News section below!
THIS LIFE
Unless you live in Canada you won’t have much luck at this point getting to see THIS LIFE, a new series where Louis has a recurring role, so it seems appropriate that we bring you a little more information, some photos and a comment from Louis himself.
Here is a series summary from the official CBC webpage of This Life:
Set in contemporary Montreal, THIS LIFE is a family saga focusing on Natalie Lawson (played by Torri Higginson), an accomplished columnist and single mother in her early forties whose terminal cancer diagnosis sends her on a quest to prepare her teenage children for life without her. Her tight-knit family – sister, two brothers and parents – do the best they can to help her, while coping with their own responses to this revelation. THIS LIFE is a funny, honest, heartfelt series about a regular family whose world turns upside down overnight. Faced with the uncertainty of life, each Lawson does their best to embrace the absurdity of the journey, while confronting the drama that comes with all of their choices big and small.
Louis first appears in episode 9 and continues in episode 10, with clear clues that he will be back in Season 2 as a major plot point. He plays David Crowley, the proverbial absent father who returns at a time when he’s least expected.
Here are some thoughts from Louis. Listen to the sound clip here:
LF – I was at the end of [episodes] nine and ten. They introduced me as a possible, like, oh, hey, let’s figure out where this can go in the next season, so it’s only in the last episodes.
FF – It’s another deadbeat dad, huh?
LF – No, that was different. He was not a deadbeat dad, he’s a dad who chose another family, quickly, over his last family. And there’s a lot of these dads who do that. And then sort of neglect their children that they should never. What I wanted to play, and what was written was kind of like the deadbeat dad who comes back and was the bad boy, etc., etc.
But what I’m really doing is, I want to have a guy who wakes up one day and realizes he screwed up, and then accepts responsibility for that and then goes back and tries to find some sort of redemption and some forgiveness. And he knows that he’s got a long way to go but he’s committed to trying to be there, in his kids’ lives because you can start at any time and change. So, to me that’s a better, more positive story. So that’s where I would like to see the character go.
But what was written, was in fact, the guy had a family, and then he married and got another girl, and then he went to South America and completely ignored his kids while they grew up. And now he’s coming back and you don’t really know why, so…
FF – Right.
LF – We’ll see.
Thanks to Casey for the transcript!
SCREENCAPS
This month we have screencaps of Louis’ first episode in the series This Life, episode 9 “Dark Retreat“. In this episode we see him leave in a flashback scene and then return in the present narrative.
Here is also a direct link to the album: https://ferreirafestscreencaps.shutterfly.com/pictures/3262
PHOTOS
Louis shared some beautiful photos of his Christmas vacation:
Giancarlo says: “Hey everybody – come help me wish my Main Man a happy birthday! Did you know he’s going to hit the big 5-0 next month? Yeah, guess what, IMDb and Wikipedia have got it wrong, and there’s no way I can fix that… But you can help me make this his best birthday EVER! The instructions are at the end of the newsletter!”
THE READING SERIES: ARE YOU AS HAPPY AS YOUR DOG?
Every month Louis reads a chapter from one of his favorite books, Are You as Happy as Your Dog? by Alan Cohen. Mr. Cohen has kindly granted his permission for us to post Louis’ book reading clips here. Please join me in thanking him and be sure to visit his website at alancohen.com.
Click on the thumbnail of the book cover to purchase a copy of the book.
You can listen to all the book readings on the Reading Series Page.
This month’s reading is chapter 35 of the First Reading Series Are You As Happy As Your Dog?
FRIENDS NEWS
Amanda Alexander
Amanda shared this oldie but goodie from the SGU set. Those were the days! The photo was taken by SGU props master Neil Fairall.
More SGU photos can be found on Amanda’s Page. Amanda also took the awesome photo of The Men of Motive, in the MOTIVE section above.
Below are two photos from the MOTIVE set. Thanks for sharing them, Amanda!
MOTIVE Craft Services sure knows how to sweeten the pot when people have to work on Saturdays! Kudos to them!
On December 15th, 2015 the cast and crew of MOTIVE was working here at the crack of dawn. Want a pretty crime scene? This is it.
Greyston Holt
Season 3 of Greyston’s show Bitten premieres on February 12th on Space Channel (Canada). Other markets will undoubtedly pick up this last season of the werewolf drama.
Greyston will be on a Lashcon Cruise August 19th-21st. A con at sea! And with Greyston and other great guests to boot! Surely it doesn’t often get any better than this!
Not that he has any need to prove his manliness – but he did it anyway at the traditional New Year’s Day Polarbear Plunge! Woohooo!!
Greyston is the one in the red swim trunks.
There is also a new selfie-video from Greyston’s YouTube Channel entitled Negroni Nights. Greyston plays a mean guitar in it!
Mika McKinnon
Mika is busy covering science topics all over the world.
Her most recent gig was reporting on the launch of the Jason3 spacecraft which measures global ocean topography.
Here she is with the Falcon-9 rocket that carried the satellite into orbit. For more of her science adventures please follow her on Twitter.
Mika writes:
“I’ve been asked how to find just my stories in the mix of io9 and Gizmodo now that I’m not running a subsite anymore. Here’s the link! It doesn’t get co-authored pieces, but it’ll catch everything else.”
Eugene Lipinski
Eugene has been traveling over the holiday season. His current series The Romeo Section aired on Wednesdays at 9pm on CBC in Canada.
If you live in Canada you can watch all of the episodes online now on the Official Website. The rest of us can only dream that the series will be picked up by other networks. Let’s all hope there will be a season 2, because Louis plays recurring baddie Fred Foy in the series!
Troy Mundle
Troy’s filmography has been updated with new writing and directing credits.
SADinVAN filming has wrapped on the first three episodes of Season 2! Louis makes a cameo appearance in one of those episodes. Troy shared a photo from those busy days.
What’s going on there? We’ll have to wait and see to find out!
Dennis Heaton
Dennis is still busy working on Season 4 of MOTIVE. Principal photography will wrap on February 12th.
Can’t get enough of that awesome photoshoot photographer Jeff Weddell did with Dennis? Go to Jeff’s website to see more – and he has tons of MOTIVE goodies, too!
Patrick Gilmore
Patrick’s filmography has been updated with new credits.
He’s in a new Hallmark Channel movie titled Anything for Love. It premieres Valentine’s Day at 9pm/ 8pm central time zone. Check it out!
And here is a quick preview – and Patrick is in it! He’s the one holding the teddy bear and saying “Sweet!” Here is a direct link or click on the screencap below.
It’s SuperPatrick on Christmas morning…
…and his New Year’s video, a week later. Click to play.
Eric Banerd
Eric has created a new page on Facebook for career related stuff. Check it out here!
And right away he posted a new photo from the filming of The Man In the High Castle which streams on Amazon.com.
For lots more photos check out Eric’s Page at The Friends of Louis Ferreira.
- The Motherf**ker with the Hat
Eric also writes on his new Facebook Page: “I’ll be helping out musically for this show in the new year. Check out the Indiegogo page and donate in return for tickets and other perks. Win-win!”
Show Dates and Ticket Info can be found here.
Eric is kicking off a new charitable campaign! He says: “Hey guys, one of my goals for 2016 is to help create a positive change in the lives of others. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Please check out the link below and help me on my journey to make a difference. Much appreciated. Side note: all of the money raised goes directly to funding a home for a family.”
- The Wild Romantics
Eric’s band The Wild Romantics are The Zone913‘s Band of the Month – You can stream 3 of their new songs at the 2nd link (She Could Tell, Who Ya Foolin’? and City of Ghosts). Check it out!
Justin Chance
Justin has been quite prolific with artwork and poetry. Click on the thumbnails to see large versions. As always, everything is intended for mature audiences. For more artwork, poetry and photos please visit Justin’s Gallery!
Here’s Justin hanging out with his writing partners for a current project. From left to right they are Josh Thrower, Justin Chance and Colin Waite.
Jennifer Spence
Jen is currently starring in a new series called You Me Her where she plays the character of Carmen. The show centers around a three-way romantic relationship involving a suburban married couple. Stay tuned for more info!
Jen will be at WishCon this year, but only on Sunday November 20th, so plan your con experience accordingly!
Ingrid Rogers
Ingrid and her husband Rob Munic attended the Golden Globes Awards. Here are a few nice shots of them being all glam at the event.
Ingrid writes: “Hand out all the trophies you want… This dude is a winner beyond.”
Rob Munic
Rob’s Page has been updated with a ton of new credits for Empire! The hit series on FOX has just been renewed for a third season. Congrats, Rob!
Rob also has a new short film in the works called Perfect Chemistry, which was co-produced by his favorite children’s charity Kids in the Spotlight.
Logline: A cheerleader must make the difficult choice of being popular with her squad or finding true love with a chemistry geek.
Peter Kelamis
Peter’s website is currently down – but never fear – Peter’s Page here at The Friends of Louis Ferreira is in great shape and his IMDb listing has just been updated with this new filmography credit:
Bob’s Broken Sleigh (TV Movie) (2015) – Puffin Minion 1
Logline: This Christmas movie tells the adventure of a young magic-less elf named Bob, who finds himself on a wild sleigh ride after being ambushed by the evil puffin Fishface. Stranded in the middle of a magical forest, it’s up to him and the friends he makes along the way to bring the sleigh back home in time for Christmas – if the puffins don’t get it first!
Here is a video for his scheduled appearance at Everfree Northwest, Seattle’s My Little Pony Convention, on May 13th – 15th, 2016.
Bradley Stryker
Bradley has nabbed yet another recurring role, this time in the undead smash hit iZombie. He plays Kenny. Here he is on set:
Bradley’s full-length feature film Land of Smiles won the California Film Awards Diamond Award in the Foreign Film category, as well as three more Indie Film Awards! Congratulations to Bradley and his team! Bradley also posted a photo of a private screening of the movie. It sure looks good!
A quick reminder – The Lizzie Borden Chronicles DVD will be released on February 2, 2016.
Skipjack rides again!
And finally, Bradley shared a photo of his first Stryker Family Christmas!
HEALING BODY ART
Nicole Pilich is a healing body art creator in Vancouver. Once a month she shares one of her artworks with us. Here is this month’s offering:
“I just did this henna crown for Doreen, a beautiful woman who has been undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. She shaved her head a month ago as her hair was falling out and wanted to celebrate and honour her experience with something special, a henna design. She wanted a flowing tree and asked me to incorporate an elephant, and this is what I came up with.”
Thanks to Doreen for sharing this part of her journey with us!
Please be sure to visit Nicole’s website at http://healingbodyart.com/, and if you find yourself in Vancouver please check out her store and studio. Maybe it’s time for you to give yourself the gift of Healing Body Art!
THE 2016 BIRTHDAY PROJECT
It’s that time of the year again when Ferreira Fest gears up for Louis’ birthday on February 20th. He’s turning 50 this year! His birth date is listed incorrectly all over the web so it’s virtually impossible to fix it. And it doesn’t really matter – we want to gather birthday wishes from all over the world for him!
If you’d like to participate please send a brief email to and you will receive instructions and the mailing address. Please don’t delay – some overseas mail services take several weeks to ship a letter. All correspondence has to be received no later than February 10th, 2016, so please plan accordingly.
If you run out of time please email your birthday wishes after you receive the instructions and we will print them out and include them in the package!
ODDS AND ENDS
Will the real Louis Ferreira please stand up?
Here we have accomplished surfer dude Louis Ferreira in an old magazine ad for Hang Ten Sports & Surf Wear from 1978…
Flag Map
As of press time we had readers in 107 countries and 602 different regions/ cities.
Welcome to all of our new friends! Please don’t be a stranger – write in and introduce yourself to Ferreira Fest or a staff member – we’ll respond!
And that, dear Friends, is about it for this month! Thanks for visiting often! Be sure to follow us on Twitter for all the Louis news you can handle!
If you have comments, questions or suggestions, there are many ways to make your voice heard:
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3. Contact or any other staff member. Everyone is listed on the Contact Page. If you have any questions that you need answered, email is the way to go!
We are always looking for volunteers who want to contribute, and there are perks associated with being a correspondent or staff member! Want your own email address at louisferreira.org? Contribute – it’s that easy.
Please remember: all content of Ferreira Fest and indeed this entire website is copyright protected. That’s what the note on the bottom of each page says. It means that you should never re-post anything you find here elsewhere. If you absolutely must do so please contact first so we can work things out. We all work for free here, and we all work very hard, and it’s just not fair if you steal stuff and claim it as your own. Your mom/ dad/ parental unit/ teacher already told you as much. Please play by the rules.
We hope to see you all next month!
