Here’s Canadian art history like you never had it in school. Theatre and visual artist Bruce Horak lives with just nine percent of his vision due to a rare cancer he survived as a baby. In his unconventional new stage show, Assassinating Thomson, produced by Monster Theatre, he mixes his personal story together with that of Group of Seven icon Tom Thomson, whose death in 1917 was shrouded in mystery—all while Horak paints live. The Ottawa Citizen has called it “tantalizing” and “a darned good yarn”. The show runs Wednesday (October 9) to October 19 at the Firehall Arts Centre; be sure to check out The Way I See It, Horak’s accompanying installation of portraits and landscapes, which vividly reveals the halos, distortion, and shifting colours that play across his impaired sight.