Ferreira Fest 079

Published July 2016.

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And once again the 20th of the month rolls around and this means another great gathering here at Ferreira Fest, where we celebrate the acting career of Louis Ferreira, our chosen charities, and the latest adventures of our many guests. We have a very special interview with Claudia Ferreira this month, along with reflections on recent events, our new Reading Series and much more! Grab an age-appropriate pineapple drink at our virtual bar and come on in – pool’s open!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Louis wanted to share his thoughts on the recent outbreaks of violence, from the Orlando Club shooting to the incident in Nice, France.

Listen to the sound clip here:

LF – Our hearts and prayers continue to be with the families and the victims, of those who lost their lives in Orlando. Such a tragedy. Such beautiful lives lost. And to imagine why is unfathomable, unthinkable, and it’s just wrong on every level and it’s just heartbreaking.

Like our culture is, “that’s so three weeks ago, let’s forget about those people now that life has gone on”. This is still very real for those people who went through that.

And there’s still people recovering, there’s still people in hospitals, there’s still people who have to live with that every day – imagine being in that club and experiencing any of that.

I certainly don’t feel I have any right to be speaking in public, but here’s our little Ferreira Fest where we can at least share what we think, and it’s just our humble opinion. Please don’t take it personally, this is our two cents. This is what’s happening in the world, we at least have the courage to say how we feel about it. Because I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice by not talking about it.

It’s too real, right now.

It’s just so sad on every level, it’s so hard to digest that we’re living in a world where these things are happening as often as they are. And as human beings, as citizens of the world, we’ve obviously lost track of what’s important.

It’s just such an awful time right now because there’s just seemingly so much hate. Everything that is dividing and scaring people continues to seemingly grow as opposed to the thing that we should be doing, which is uniting.

At the end of the day, the hashtag at this point should be #JustLikeMe, which is something I’ve heard in the past which I love, which is like, we’re all the same. And we all know this. And it’s all the stuff we learn when we’re very young, but somehow keep forgetting, and for me it’s just a testament to how much people have stepped away from their spiritual roots, the idea that we are born out of love.

What’s going on right now is sad and harmful and dangerous, and we need to stay hopeful and optimistic and that’s only going to turn around when we start seeing the similarities, and not pointing out the differences.

If you wish to make a donation to honor those who lost their lives in Orlando please consider making a donation to Equality Florida Action.

We want to invite you to share your thoughts – and your grief – at our Forum. Signing up is easy and free and nobody will send you spam. Please speak up – there or elsewhere, and do what you can to end the senseless, unproductive violence.

Ferreira Fest has always been a safe place to share. We would love to hear from you.

– Louis and the Ferreira Fest Staff

CHARITY NEWS

Ability Online

Project Limelight

You can also read a nice write-up about Project Limelight‘s partnership with Simon Fraser University, which has more awesome behind the scenes videos. Our friend Patrick Gilmore moderated the latest Tuesday Night Live fundraising event (see below in the Friends section). Peter Kelamis also attended. The next TNL event will be on Tuesday September 27. If you live too far away to support Project Limelight in person you can easily contribute and make a donation by clicking on the logo below.

The Good Neighbours’ Club

The Good Neighbours’ Club is participating in The Good Wishes Project, a program designed to provide people experiencing homelessness with three simple wishes to help ease their end-of-life, to personalize the process of dying and to bring comfort and dignity to the last days of those who have lived a difficult life.  

Please click on the logo below to donate to GNC – it’s easy and secure, and your money helps giving older homeless men a hand up.

The Children’s Aid Foundation

The Joe Carter Classic golf tournament fundraiser was a huge success and had a great celebrity turnout. Read more about it here.
 
The next fundraising initiative is the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon on October 16th. This is a great opportunity for runners/walkers to participate while supporting a charitable cause. Runners/walkers can join our Team HOPE or just donate to support thousands of children and youth across Canada!

For all current activities and lots more info please check out the monthly newsletter The Buzz.
 
If you’d like to support children in foster care please consider donating to this great cause. Just click on the logo below to go to our very own donations page!

MOTIVE

TVTango has a MOTIVE Season 4 announcement that will make anyone cringe: The photo is from Season 1 and the synopsis is from Season 2 with a tiny mysterious Season 4 add-on blurb. Apparently the concept of research is not valued at this site!

So here is the real Season 4 cast, in an official Lark Productions press release photo. Yes, we like our Main Man front and center.

HiddenRemote has a review of the end of Season 3 as well as the first episode of Season 4 The Vanishing Policeman and last week’s episode Index Case.

You can find a super detailed moment-by-moment synopsis of The Vanishing Policeman here. Scroll down for a large amount of screencaps from the episode!

THIS LIFE

Louis is returning to THIS LIFE in Season 2 as Natalie’s estranged ex-husband David Crowley. He will appear in several episodes and just finished filming more scenes earlier this month in Montreal.

Here is a Behind-the-scenes moment from THIS LIFE. Follow the show on Twitter at  @thislifeTV!

AN INTERVIEW WITH CLAUDIA FERREIRA

Louis is the proud godfather of Claudia Ferreira who has graciously agreed to a special chat with Ferreira Fest.

We’ll let Louis introduce her to you:

LF – Hi friends! Meet my wonderful goddaughter Claudia Ferreira. I’ve had the privilege of knowing her since she was born. And she means a great deal to me. She is one of my favorite people in the world.
 
She is always, always pushing me to grow and to continue to evolve, and I am just so blown away by her own personal growth, to see her evolution as a, well, it’s really child to teenager, to young woman, to incredible mother of these beautiful children.

I love her so much, and my goddaughter and I are so close. And we’ve been through a lot together and she’s very special to me. She’s family.
 
I have so much respect and admiration for who she has become, having seen her journey through her entire life and I’m just so blessed that she’s in my life, I love her to death and she’s the most amazing mom, and I love her so much.
 
She’s just miraculous, stupendous and fantastic. I love her with all my heart, so enjoy this wonderful story.


And so, without much further ado, here is the interview with Claudia Ferreira!

FF – Hi Claudia, this is Bea from Ferreira Fest. We’re so happy to have you with us on Ferreira Fest 79. Let’s start with something really simple – who is Claudia? What gets you up in the morning? Is it coffee, tea, or an energy drink, or something else?

CF – Definitely coffee first thing in the morning. And my children.

FF – Coffee and the kids.

CF – Coffee and the kids, yes.

FF – That sounds perfect. Tell us a little bit about what your typical day might look like.

CF – My typical day… well, right now it’s summer holiday so it’s kind of a little bit scattered because the kids are off from school, but my typical day during school season is coffee in the morning and a work out and then prepping the kids to get to school. And my youngest is still at home with me so we do a lot of games and we look for activities to do around town. And then chores around the house and errands for my husband [and partner in our company “Healthy Living”], if he needs anything done, for his work, but otherwise I’m a stay-at-home parent. Which I’m happy to do that right now when my children are young.

FF – Yeah, the beach sounds great. Do you have any personal talents or passions that you pursue? Like when you have some free time, what do you like to do?

CF – You know what, I love love love reading. That’s something I spend some of my spare time doing. And lately I’ve taken up squash, and I like racket sports, tennis and squash, and, I don’t know, I’m not sure, I have many, many, many interests, so I think this would be a long question to answer. But I’ll start with just a couple of hobbies that I really like to do, which is reading and playing a couple of racket sports. And yoga, I do love how yoga makes me feel.

FF – So, Claudia, you’re a proud mom of three beautiful children, would you tell us a little bit more about them?

CF – Good point.

FF – Now, let’s talk a little bit about Sage, your youngest. You told me that she was born with micro and macro lymphatic cystic malformation. Can you tell us what this means?

CF – We didn’t find out until late in the pregnancy. I was thirty-two weeks pregnant and my midwife at the time just realized there was something wrong so my care got transferred to an OB where I was able to be under medical supervision. And we weren’t quite certain what it was other than there was a mass that was showing up on the ultrasound.

And it wasn’t until after she was born and they were able to go in and kind of see what it was… what it is, it was mostly liquids to it, like the mass, is like a malformation, when she was being formed as a human it was just kind of a malformation, like it just grew that way and that’s why they call it a malformation.
And it was in her lymphatic system on her throat and neck and in her esophagus, which kind of posed some danger. And it was fairly large, we had to schedule a procedure. I can tell you a little bit more about that later.

FF – When she was born, how did she grow up? How did that affect a fairly complicated birth and pregnancy, as I would imagine? How did that affect her infancy and her development, growing up?

CF – Maybe I’ll just kind of tell you a little bit about her birthing, and then what happened the first few weeks of her life.

She was born via an EXIT procedure which means, keep Sage hooked onto me via umbilical cord while they intubated her, just to make sure that she had room in her air passage because her micro and macro cystic malformation was all around her neck and her esophagus.

So when I came around after the operation I don’t really remember, I wasn’t quite alert, but I briefly saw her for about fifteen seconds. It was very brief.

And then she got taken away under tunnel to Sick Kids which was across the street, but they have a connecting tunnel. So, because Sick Kids is specifically for children, even if you’re delivering, that’s how the kids get transported to immediate care. They get transferred via the tunnel.
 
So she went off and I stayed and recovered for almost three days. And she went straight to Sick Kids with my husband, he went with her. And they were trying to stabilize her vitals, she was struggling to keep her life for the first few days. The mass was just so big, it took so much, and she was little, she was born a couple of weeks early so was small, she was considered at term because she was thirty-seven weeks, but she was six pounds and eight ounces, and then once they removed the mass she dropped down under six pounds. The mass was significant for her size.

So, you know, it was a lot, it was part of her and so her heart was feeding it, so everything was feeding it. Yeah, so it was, until she was able to kind of stabilize it was pretty scary the first few days.

Yeah, and then once I was a little bit recovered from it I was able to see her. But I wasn’t able to stay at Sick Kids because she was in intensive care.

So, I had to stay at the, they have this great place called the Ronald McDonald House. Yeah, it’s just for families who are, who live away from the hospital, over, I think it’s over forty kilometers. If you’re over forty kilometers, could be fifty, but it’s in between forty and fifty kilometers, you automatically get a right to a room, so that you can be near your kid. They have no curfews, nothing like that, you just walk in and out. And, just very much like a home away from home for families who are at a distance, whose kids are at Sick Kids for treatment.

And that was such a blessing because I hadn’t even thought about it, because it kind of happened quick, because we didn’t find out until week thirty-two.

And, there was basically no questions asked, we just got admitted, they were like, oh, where do you live? Sudbury? Okay, well, here you go. This is taking care of you so you can be with your kid. So it was a blessing to have that. Yeah, and so, the first few weeks of her life, she was getting stabilized and getting stronger and they were trying to get her to, you know, making sure she was feeding well, so that we can prep her for surgery.

CF – Yeah. It was a successful surgery. It was really long. She was in the operating room for twelve hours.
 
FF – Oh my goodness.
 
CF – It was very, very, very long, for such a little person.
 
FF – Yeah. Oh my goodness.

CF – But it was a success. And she recovered pretty quickly and everything went really well from there. She stayed in intensive care for another week and a half, two weeks, and then from there we got transferred over to the Ear/ Nose/ Throat floor at Sick Kids, and that’s when I was able to stay in the room with her. So I left the Ronald McDonald House and I just stayed in the room with her for a week. Which was extremely uncomfortable.
 
FF – I’m sure!
 
CF – But doable. But nothing in comparison to what she went through.
 
FF – Yeah, oh, I’m sure, I’m sure.
 
CF – That was our experience in the hospital.

FF – Wow.

So it’s not like it’s a hundred percent cleared, but it wasn’t posing any trouble until she got really sick, then it inflamed a little bit. And then it goes down and then it inflames a little bit and then it goes down.

So it’s always a little bit of a concern when she got really sick, but recently, over the last, since last summer, so almost a year, we noticed it’s slowly growing.
 
And so we have inquired more about what we can do and we’ve since found a procedure called Bleomycin sclerotherapy where they use an injection to try to reduce the swelling. So that therapy will start in the Fall, in the early Fall.
 
It’s a chemotherapy drug that she’ll get injected with to reduce the swelling. So that she doesn’t have to have a scare, you know, we don’t have to have a scare every time, because we’re worried about her air passage. The doctors down at Sick Kids seem really confident, they’ve had great success with this, where she’ll be the fourth child to do this out of Sick Kids Toronto. So with this therapy we’re hoping that it will then reduce some of the bigger cystic malformations in there so that when she does get really sick, because she’s bound to get chicken pox and other illnesses that come with the kids home from school and down and out for a while, so we’re hoping to stay ahead of it with doing this therapy system. So that, so we don’t have those scares, with her air passage.
 
So that’s what we deal with today. But her paralysis is gone.
 
FF – I’m glad.

CF – Because she’s not symmetrical, she struggles more with her speech, because her jaw is a little off-centered, so she really has to enunciate things. And that’s something that she’s working with. It’s not a thing for her though, it’s just kind of part of who she is, you know?

FF – Having gone through all of this, what advice do you have for parents who might be facing a similar situation to what you were in?

CF – I think at this point I would say to never to give up looking for answers. There’s incredible things out there and we, for example, we just found out about this through research and research and research. My husband was really great with that. You know, being persistent on trying to get, like at one point we thought maybe if there’s no one here in Canada… we eventually found somebody, after asking a gazillion people, doctors… you just have to make sure you’re diligent about making sure you’re satisfied with the answers. And not just taking everybody’s word for everything.

Like making sure you’re comfortable, you thoroughly understand everything and you thoroughly have done your research and that you’re making confident choices about what kind of plan or procedure you’re going to take.

And then do it. So, I would say to just, you know…

FF – And that’s so important to do your homework, especially if it’s not something that is a run of the mill thing that happens ten thousand times a day. But if you’re in a situation where this is not a very common occurrence, then it’s so important for the parents to stay involved, and do their part because everything that you do, and every step the child takes will benefit another child that comes along at a later time. Because, as you make those connections, you and your doctors and the therapists that you might be with, all of these connections, they have been made, and they are there for other people to use later on. Which is what’s so exciting about that, that we can do this so much easier today, now that we have the internet and social media, and we’re able to communicate with each other across the world so much more easily when we’re in situations like that.

FF – That counts as one. That counts as one. You got one more.
 
CF – I’d say he’s a charming man. I think he’s a charming man.
 
FF – Fabulous! Thank you, those are great words, Claudia, thank you so much!
 
CF – Yeah, no problem.

FF – So now, if people wanted to know more about Sage’s particular condition, micro and macro lymphatic cystic malformation, is there a place that you can recommend, that they can go to? A website or an organization? And how can we help?

CF – So, just for information purposes, the Nationwide Hospital in Columbus, Ohio has the most research done on the specific condition. They have a lot of information if people want to know what it’s about. That would be a really good website to go to just to inform yourself on what it is.

FF – Wonderful. We’re at the end here, Claudia. Thank you so much for your time.

CF – Thank you for taking the time as well, to find out about Sage.

FF – Yeah, this was incredibly fascinating and informative, and a topic that I, and many other people obviously won’t know that much about, so thank you so much for sharing your story, and how it impacted your life, and I hope you have a wonderful evening and a great rest of the summer, and we’ll talk to you soon.

CF – Thank you, you too.

FF – Okay, bye-bye.

CF – Bye.

Thanks to Casey for all the transcripts!

In accordance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA”) we have obtained the parents’ express permission to post photos of their children as well as their stories at louisferreira.org. Please do not repost them without the parents’ permission. All photos © by Claudia Ferreira.

PHOTOS

Even if you’re not a soccer fan you may have heard that Portugal won the Euro 2016 Championship. Being of Portuguese descent Louis had every reason to celebrate! Billie and Giancarlo, of course, are always up for a party – especially when it involves dressing up!

IT CAME FROM THE TWITTERVERSE

SCREENCAPS

To celebrate the start of the last season of MOTIVE on USA Network in the US we have 818 screencaps from the episode The Vanishing Policeman. Oscar Vega tries to adjust to his new position as staff sergeant while Angie Flynn rocks a new ‘do and rolls eyes over a new team member. The death of a fellow police officer hits close to home for all of them.

Here is a direct link to the album:
https://ferreirafestscreencaps.shutterfly.com/pictures/5406

THE NEW READING SERIES: MR. MUGS – MEET MY PALS

The second monthly reading series is Mr. Mugs – Meet My Pals by Martha Kambeitz, Denise Burns and Josephine Proctor.

Louis credits the Mr. Mugs books series with helping him to learn English at a very young age. The Mr. Mugs books have been out of print for many years but occasionally you can find them on eBay, Amazon Marketplace or various other antique book dealers.
 
You can listen to the book readings on the Reading Series Page.
This month’s reading is Chapter 2: Picnic Fun from Mr. Mugs – Meet My Pals.

FRIENDS NEWS

Be sure to check in with the Counter Act website regularly – it is constantly being updated with new photos and character portraits. Louis plays the owner of the diner where a sit-in is happening, as various people get involved in the Civil Rights movement in their own way. With current world events and the recent sit-in in Congress the topic is as hot as ever!

Meanwhile, Thomas Affolter has been shooting sunsets for a current project, and he was also filming Dianna David at the Whistler Children’s Festival.

From the Affolter Entertainment Facebook Page:

“BRAND NEW VIDEO! The final video for Will Stroet of Will’s Jams new album “Wordplay” has been released! Affolter Entertainment is proud to have produced this French video and collaborated yet again with the wonderful Will Stroet and Kim The! And a huge shout out to the many kindergarten students who are the stars of this fun video! Great people, great music!”

Greyston Holt

Greyston will be at Comic Con Copenhagen, Denmark, this Fall! You can visit him there September 24-25, 2016.

The hit series “Bitten” Season 3 DVD was released July 19th.

Mika McKinnon

Mika has been covering a lot of exciting space topics lately, from the Space Launch System (SLS) test firing to the Juno spacecraft arriving at Jupiter. Fun Fact: Our update manager Alma’s uncle is also working on SLS! It’s a small world after all!

Eugene Lipinski

The Romeo Section has started production on Season 2. The show premieres October 5, and Eugene will be reprising his role as Al. Several Behind-the-scenes photos have been posted of recent shoot but none of them include Eugene.

In the meantime, if you live in Canada you can catch an encore presentation of the first season Wednesdays at 9pm on CBC Television. Louis guest stars in about half of those episodes as the character Fred Foy.

Troy Mundle

SADinVAN
Troy’s web series Single and Dating in Vancouver won four awards at the Austin WebFest including Best Lead Actor for Troy!

SADinVAN has also qualified for the Marseille Web Fest in October. Congrats to the entire SADinVAN team!

Troy recently lived it up at the DemonX Wrap Party, you can also check out the series Facebook Page and trailer (Troy doesn’t appear). He also starred in No Compassion, No Mercy – you can watch the trailer here.

Dennis Heaton

Dennis live tweets during new Motive episodes on Tuesday nights! Catch his hilarious comments at @DennisHeaton2!

Heather M from The Televixen did a great interview with Dennis about Motive’s Season 4. It’s very insightful and contains the following gem:

Heaton says the decision to devote part of season 4 to the mystery of Vega’s illness arose from a desire to serve both the character and Louis Ferreira. “The illness came out of wanting to give Louis an opportunity to drill into Vega, who is a very still waters run deep guy,” he recalls. “It started with,”What can we do for that character?’ All of the things that come off of that…the friction with Angie, the [relationship] with Betty, the march out of being a detective, evolved out of that initial desire to let that character look in the mirror for a while.”

Eric Banerd

Star Trek: Beyond opens July 22nd. If you’re an eagle-eyed moviegoer you may spot Eric who plays a Swarm Soldier!

Zajac Ranch For Children
Eric writes: “I made some big goals this year to contribute to other people. I’m proud to say my company EB Painting is sponsoring the Zajac Ranch For Children. They’ve built a large new building at the ranch that will act as a movie theatre for screening movies and a space for other activities. I’ve partnered up with one of my suppliers, Dulux Paints, to do all of the painting in the facility for FREE! We start painting on Friday! Super stoked. Check out their website and if you’re inclined to make a donation to them please do, the ranch is an incredible opportunity for children with all types of disabilities to experience summer camp! Pictures to come…”

Jennifer Spence

Jen guest-starred in several episodes of Travelers, alongside our friend Patrick Gilmore! Her IMDb listings have been updated accordingly.

A Film Poster for Jen’s recent short film Ganjy can be found here.

Jen’s series You Me Her is now on HBO Canada!

Rob’s latest film Over, Under, Through just wrapped filming. He wrote the script, and you can see some great still images here. The movie is about a Korean Immigrant family set in K-Town.

Bradley Stryker

Bradley’s IMDb listing has been updated with credits for Max 2: White House Hero which is currently filming (here’s a photo) and Drone which is now in post-production.

Drone Logline: Ideologies collide with fatal results when a military drone contractor meets an enigmatic Pakistani businessman. Note that FYA co-founder Patrick Sabongui is also involved in the project.

Bradley’s script for The Dragon Run is a Finalist in the 2016 Script Pipeline Screenwriting Contest. Congratulations!

HEALING BODY ART

Every month Vancouver artist Nicole Pilich shares one of her henna creations with Ferreira Fest. Please visit her website for lots more photos and fascinating facts and information about this ancient artform. And if you find yourself in Vancouver – visit her studio and treat yourself to some Healing Body Art made just for you.

Nicole writes: 

This month I thought I would show the natural stain progression of henna on skin.

Picture one is fresh henna paste applied to skin, it looks black. This paste stays in place for some time (3-24 hours) and then is removed by scraping off.

Picture two is the next day after the paste is removed. Notice a reddish tone.

Picture three is two days after paste is removed. Now the henna is a darker brown colour. This stain should last about two weeks!

Not all henna looks the same once the stain has developed. Every region produces a different variety of henna and this produces differing stains. I tend to stick with Pakistani henna and Indian Rajistani henna.

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 and TV reminders!

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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!