Weekend AM

The "Man of a Thousand Songs" is taking time off to battle throat cancer. Ron Hynes' manager Lynn Horne says the singer-songwriter will be starting treatments of radiation and chemotherapy in mid August. She says they have cancelled all up coming performances except the one on August 11 at Mile One. Horne says Hynes is doing as well as can be expected. She says his focus in the next several months will be on treatment.

Gerry Squires has come a long way in the art world since those fourteen years he spent living at the lighhouse in Ferryland. A lot of honours and accolades have been bestowed on the artist..... Perhaps best known for his depictions of the beauty found in the rugged often harsh landscape of Newfoundland. But Squires says it was at Ferryland lighthouse - during those years as a struggling painter with a young family - that he developed into the artist he has become today.

Joan Clark says hr greatest fear would be not being able to write any more. Clark has written numerous books - her early works were mostly for children and young adults. As well as short stories. But there have been novels, such as Eriksdottir, An Audience of Chairs, Lattitudes of Melt and Road to Bliss. All have won Joan Clark critical praise. But Clark has also enjoyed the role of mentor to other writers. And she'll get to that this fall when she takes up the writer in residence position at the University of New Brunswick.

The waters around this province must be a real paradise for people who love diving to shipwrecks. Hundreds, thousands even, are to be found off our shores. Now avid divers, historians and others have formed a new organization. It's the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland and Labrador. One of the people heading up the new organizrion is Neil Burgess.

Joan Clark says hr greatest fear would be not being able to write any more. Clark has written numerous books - her early works were mostly for children and young adults. As well as short stories. But there have been novels, such as Eriksdottir, An Audience of Chairs, Lattitudes of Melt and Road to Bliss. All have won Joan Clark critical praise. But Clark has also enjoyed the role of mentor to other writers. And she'll get to that this fall when she takes up the writer in residence position at the University of New Brunswick.

It was a fluke that it survived. The score of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" that Figgy Duff wrote thirty years ago. The Duff performed it live to to the play at the LSPU Hall 30 years ago. Pamela Morgan is reviving the original composition.

It's unblieveably hard to get the resources to mount a film. Money is scarce and getting scarcer. So, it's understament to say Jackie Hynes was thrilled when she got the call. Jackie has been chose as the third winner of the RBC Michelle Jackson Award. The award comes with 40-grand - in cash and in kind - to be put towards a film project. I wanted to know more about what Jackie plans to do with her big win. So I invited her to come into our Weekend AM studio.

Five years ago Brad Peyton headed to Hollywood and it's been upward for the young director ever since. He's got a string of directing credits under his belt... Including the multi-million-dollar movie "Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" - an adventure film in a fantasy world inspired by Jules Verne, the science fiction pioneer. Now Brad Peyton has just signed another deal to do a sequel to Journey 2 - Journey 3. But that's not all he's doing. Warner Brothers has brought him on board to direct its screen adaptation of "Lobo", a story based on a character in a DC comic.

We're losing the art of conversation. Nobody talks to eachother any more. How many times do you hear that? That behaviour is something folklore professor Jerry Pocius observes daily. He's also observing the results in the lack of proper interviewing skills in students. So, in order to get back to the basics of conversing and observing that is at the heart of folkloric research, the iphones, Blackberries, all those electronic gadgets will have to go. Fo three weeks, anyway. It's a pilot project Pocius starts in the fall semester. That's when seven of his students will go offline in Keels, Bonavista Bay, for a crash course in meeting people, talking to them and documenting it.

We're losing the art of conversation. Nobody talks to eachother any more. How many times do you hear that? That behaviour is something folklore professor Jerry Pocius observes daily. He's also observing the results in the lack of proper interviewing skills in students. So, in order to get back to the basics of conversing and observing that is at the heart of folkloric research, the iphones, Blackberries, all those electronic gadgets will have to go. Fo three weeks, anyway. It's a pilot project Pocius starts in the fall semester. That's when seven of his students will go offline in Keels, Bonavista Bay, for a crash course in meeting people, talking to them and documenting it.

A new documentary is bringing to life a story that's part of the fabric of this place. The Portguese fishermen and the White fleet on which they sailed into St. John's. For hundreds of years the Portuguese fished the Grand Banks. Often taking shelter from storms and gales in a welcoming port. Now that story is being brought to life with one of the last remaining ships in the White Fleet - the Santa Maria Manuela. Peter Walsh's film, "Return of the White Fleet" airs next week on CBC Television in Newfoundland and Labrador. I asked Peter into our studio to tell me about it.

Katie Baggs, Ilia Nicoll and Sandy May are taking part. They speak with host Chris O'neil-Yates

Betty Hall and Chris Ryan have been making floral art for decades. They're part of the Floral Design Group at the NL Horticultural Society. This weekend they'll be putting some of that art on display to the public at the 25th floral art show at the MUN Botanical Garden.

It's Lighthouse Day and we will talk about these venerable structures with two people who know lighthouses - Artist Les Noseworthy, and Gerald Cantwell of The Canadian Coast Guard Alumni.

Newman's Sound Men's Choir is off to the 7th World Choir Games in Cincinnati. It used to be called the Choir Olympics. Under any name, these are some of the best choirs in the world. The fellow who tickles the the ivories in the choir is tickled pink. David Chafe is pianist, choir manager and Artistic Director. David Williams is a singer. They joined Chris O'Neill-Yates in our Weekend AM studio.