This Magazine articles from January 2005

This Magazine archives from January 2005

First impressions.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... I picked up my first copy of This Magazine (November/December) at the recent Leftwords Festival in Toronto. I am always happy to support progressive magazines, though I don't always get around to reading all the articles. With this magazine I...

US and them.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... After living in the US for over a year, I renewed my subscription to This Magazine. The electoral craziness down here has made it abundantly clear to me the need for--and general lack of--an engaged, informed public culture. Your magazine is...

Follow your passions.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Our satirical website marryanamerican.ca provided some levity--and hope--for discourage American liberals during the dark days following Dubya's return to office. Here are some of the 4,000 letters we have received in response to the site. ...

Car wars.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Your article on Bern Grush's smart driving system ("The road less travelled," November/December) ignored the obvious downside to a GPS tracking system for cars--the dramatic undermining of personal privacy that this would represent. The...

Sweat equity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Arthur Johnson spuriously and insolently compares dehumanizing sweatshop labour conditions to the lamentable situation of unpaid interns working for Canadian magazine establishments ("Wage slaves," September/October). The reality is that those...

Road to success.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Thank you for including me in Bruce Gillespie's excellent article on Grant Dexter and MapleMusic ("Different drummer," November/December). MapleMusic is an admirable enterprise of great value to independent artists, and I certainly wish it had...

Psychiatry's brainchild.(Interview)
January 1, 2005... Lauren Slater was a troubled kid. In her early teens she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which she describes as the mental illness professionals least like to encounter. Borderlines are often manipulative and needy, marked...

Dogged determination: why Toronto's hot dog hegemony has it in for anything but warmed-over wieners.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)(Interview)
January 1, 2005... After returning home from a trip around the world in 2000 and being amazed by the abundance and variety of foods for sale on the streets of South America, Europe and Asia, Katie Rabinowicz was inspired to start Fork in the Road, a pedal-powered...

Fightin' words.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... In this corner, meet Hal Niedzviecki, author of Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity, weighing in at 254 pages. And over here, we have the tag team of Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, authors of The Rebel Sell: Why the...

War torn.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
January 1, 2005... When Jean Chretien told the House of Commons in March 2003 that Canada would not join the coalition forces preparing to invade Iraq, David Pratt remained slumped in his chair as his fellow Liberal MPs rose around him to applaud. The MP for...

All the news that's fit to pimp: how newspapers are forsaking readers in the country's most competitive market.(Media)
January 1, 2005... WHEN CONRAD BLACK SURRENDERED OWNERSHIP OF THE National Post to the Asper family in 200l, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Toronto San gleefully proclaimed that they had emerged victorious from Hogtown's long and bloody newspaper war. ...

Sign of the tomes.(Media)
January 1, 2005... For 30 years, scholars, students and other thinking folk have cracked the Dictionary of the History of Ideas to check the origins of such notions as, say, democracy or communism or Zoroastrianism. "But it was getting to the point where I didn't...

Stand-in committees.(Media)
January 1, 2005... One of the lesser-known developments in the new minority Parliament is how House of Commons standing committees have changed to allow backbench MPs to rise above the moniker of "nobodies" once given to them by Pierre Trudeau. Parliamentary...

Cut to the chase: tax cuts aren't the answer--unless we can make sure they go to those who need them.(Economics)
January 1, 2005... FEELING TIRED? ANXIOUS? DEPRESSED? PERHAPS YOU NEED A tax cut. If you believe the tax-cut lobby, a little extra money in our pockets is supposed to make us all feel better. But you may have noticed that the $100-billion federal tax cut...

In the belly of the beast.(Economics)
January 1, 2005... You'd think the Irving family would be content at having cornered the Maritime (and northeastern US) markets on forestry, paper, oil refineries, ship building, french fries, convenience stores, hardware stores and trucking-but no. Those wacky...

Booby prize.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Indoor tanning may give you more than a golden glow. It may even protect against breast cancer, according to Fabutan Sun Tan Studios, a Calgary-based chain of 151 tanning parlours across Canada. "A Fabutan experience also provides your body...

The great byte hope: transhumanists envision a radical future in which man and machine are one and death is a relic of the past. Should we prepare to enter the post-human state, transcending the limits of our natural bodies, or should we let evolution run its own course?
January 1, 2005... LOS ANGELES, 2019. MAN HAS CREATED ROBOTS, KNOWN as "replicants," in his own image. Designed by the enigmatic Tyrell Corporation, they have a limited lifespan and an even more limited function: to carry out dangerous construction work on other...

Blood oranges: winner of the 2004 prize for creative non-fiction.(Short Story)
January 1, 2005... BOXES TUMBLE DOWN FROM THE UPPER SHELVES--mebendazole, chloramphenicol, aureomycin.... Which one, which one? Clumsy with fear, panic and a five-mile mad cycle from the health clinic, I scramble through the pile. Surely someone else could be...

Sixty degrees: two stories.(Fiction)(Short Story)
January 1, 2005... THE FIRST THING OUR FRIEND TALKED ABOUT WAS vampires. He was staying overnight at our house and, while we were having tea, he said there was a woman vampire who lived in his building; she was a regular user of the building's swimming pool. This...

Because of Russell Edson.(Fiction)(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
January 1, 2005... THEY ARE CLEARING OUT OLD THEORIES, THEIR NO-LONGER-fruitful theories: the theory of possible, the theory of want; the theory of restlessness, the theory of wandering, the theory of lizards, the theory of coffee mugs, the theory of...

Disparate housewives.(Fiction)(Interview)
January 1, 2005... M.A.C. Farrant is the author of seven maverick short-fiction collections, including Darwin Alone in the Universe (Talonbooks), Sick Pigeon (Thistledown) and Girls Around the House (Polestar), and the memoir My Turquoise Years (Greystone...

Thank You.(Poetry)(Poem)
January 1, 2005... THANK YOU This poem may come as a surprise to you since I do not know your name. Thank you for your kind offer of 20 percent of 26 million dollars which we will split 50-50. My father too died in an...

Watch and learn.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)(Interview)
January 1, 2005... Michael McGowan isn't like other Canadian filmmakers. He didn't come up through the Canadian Film Centre or go to film school. He doesn't pal around with Atom Egoyan and Don McKellar. And he freely admits he's out to make money, and if he can...

What women want: in Chatelaine, Canadian women are getting the message they asked for. But it feels like something is missing from the mix.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)
January 1, 2005... CHATELAINE. FOR GENERATIONS OF WOMEN ACROSS THE country--and anyone stuck in a waiting room--it is the Canadian women's magazine. Today's glossy doesn't just flop onto subscribers' doorsteps each month--it sweeps into their homes to hang out...

Note to self.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... If Bridget Jones's latest diary doesn't give you enough of a cerebral workout, consider the translation of French-Canadian feminist Nicole Brossard. Intimate Journal, Or Here's a Manuscript (The Mercury Press, 2004) is part fiction, part...

A Secret Trial: Brian Mulroney, Stevie Cameron and the Public Trust.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... A Secret Trial: Brian Mulroney, Stevie Cameron and the Public Trust by William Kaplan (McGill-Queens University Press) William Kaplan's A Secret Trial is quite possibly the most important book on public life in Canada that has been...

Summat Else.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Summat Else by Royston Tester (Porcupine's Quill) In these connected stories, narrator Enoch Jones guides the reader through his coming-of-age with a cockeyed charm that makes both the English Black Country and the bloodthirsty Barcelona of...

Rue du Regard.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Rue du Regard by Todd Swift (DC Books) Infused with pop culture, Western Europe, and Todd, Todd, Todd, Rue du Regard divides its time nominally between Paris and London. It drops a thousand names, from Baudelaire to Loni Anderson...

Chipping away.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Joanasie Korgak was 24 years old when he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the drunken slaying of his teenage cousin. They had been out riding their bicycles in Iqaluit, Nunavut, when a fight broke out between them, sending Korgak home in...

Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken (Mint Records).(Hear this: off the beaten track)(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
January 1, 2005... Recorded at shows in Toronto and Chicago, The Tigers Have Spoken features covers, originals and live gems (including the hard to find track "Favorite") from one of Canada's best-loved alt-country singer/songwriters (and part-time New...

The Telepathic Butterflies, Songs From a Second Wave (Rainbow Quartz).(Hear this: off the beaten track)(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
January 1, 2005... Winnipeg psychedelic retro rock threesome The Telepathic Butterflies aren't shy about their influences. On the band's third release, their British-invasion influences--The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who--are all over the place. Looking for modern...

Stars, Set Yourself on Fire (Arts & Crafts).(Hear this: off the beaten track)(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
January 1, 2005... The third full-length album from Montreal indie quintet Stars opens with a booming man's voice and the words, "When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire." A rather dramatic (and some might say pretentious) start to...

Give peace a chance: Hetty van Gurp's crusade against cruelty.(Question Authority)(Interview)
January 1, 2005... HETTY VAN GURP KNOWS MALICE. WHILE GROWING UP, SHE and her siblings were victims of their father's tyranny. In 1991, her 14-year-old son Ben was killed by a schoolyard bully. A less resilient person might have resigned herself to a life of rage...