This Magazine articles from July 1999

This Magazine archives from July 1999

Dinner is ruined (international regulatory agencies are relied on increasingly to monitor food safety).
July 1, 1999... During the 1960s, the average grocery store carried about 300 items, and two-thirds of these were grown or processed within 100 miles. Today, stores carry thousands of products, including hundreds of imported fruits and vegetables. Food is...

Land of the free (the purpose of sales promotions through the giving of complimentary samples is to ensure loyalty).
July 1, 1999... PEOPLE KEEP TRYING TO GIVE ME stuff. For free, usually, or at least at a severely discounted price. Long-distance service. Coffee. Air Miles. Pornography. Food. Free e-mail service for my computer, or a free computer if I agree to pay through...

Water fight (the federal and provincial governments square off over water exports to the U.S.).
July 1, 1999... FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, THEN-PM BRIAN Mulroney mused that if water export "happens to make good economic sense...why not?" A decade into free trade, the water industry has arrived. Around the globe, fresh water sources are depleting. The rate of...

In the name of god (the hostility of pro-choice demonstrators shakes delegates of a Human Life International conference).
July 1, 1999... IT WAS A DISPLAY OF RAW POWER RESERVED IN MY imagination for war. Swarms of riot police in black uniforms and helmets, roiling on the shoulder of Dixon Road, awaited the disembarkation of some 300 protesters bussed in from the Toronto city core...

This ain't the people's court (Justice John McClung is often at the centre of controversy over high-profile court rulings).
July 1, 1999... When Alberta Court of Appeal Justice John McClung fired off an angry and offensive letter to the National Post complaining about what he saw as a personal attack on him by Supreme Court Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube, he confirmed his membership...

Seeing red (NATO bombing of its embassy in Belgrade sparks hostility to weterners in China).
July 1, 1999... FOSHAN, GUANGDONG, CHINA Sombre music played as the mid-news advertisement began to roll. The piano keys hit low and mournful notes as moving pictures of the rubble from the Chinese embassy in Belgrade were displayed--again. When the smoke had...

Up your widgets: for a while, raising Canada's productivity looked like the Liberals' latest "tough love" measure: work harder, produce more ...
July 1, 1999... BLAME IT ALL ON TWO BLUE-CHIP reports released late last year. One was from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the club of industrialized countries), the other from Parliament's own Finance Committee. Both were scathing...

Fear and loathing in Edmonton: what do you get when you cross record economic growth with vanishing social services? ...
July 1, 1999... IT COULD HAVE BEEN A MOMENT SET in some war-torn city. There was no electricity in half the room. Early March, and it was freezing, maybe because the heat didn't work, maybe because of all the drafts. The ceiling was so bowed it looked like a...

Who said we want a revolution? When a group of Brits started ... Reclaim the Streets, it looked like they'd ... mobilized thousands ...
July 1, 1999... THE STREETS WERE COVERED IN CHALK, AND THE intersection at Bloor Street and Brunswick Avenue in Toronto had been shut down for a good hour or two. Drums and dancing were heating up an already hot mid-May afternoon. There were people from...

Pay-per-use protest: freedom of assembly at just a few thousand dollars a shot.
July 1, 1999... WHEN INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY ORGANIZER JANICE KALETA opened her mail last year, she thought her eyes were defying her: staring back at her was a $6,241 bill from the Vancouver Police Department to cover the costs of policing the annual march....

Becoming Serbian (NATO's bombing has intensified ethnic pride among Serbs).
July 1, 1999... "It started," Toby said. I WAS AT MY COMPUTER, AND TOBY HAD COME UP BEHIND me without my hearing his steps. When I am designing something, I think in pixels, and colours can hurt me. The screaming pink that appeared on my screen at that...

Banking on the Balkans (international creditors are to blame for Yugoslavia's dissolution and ethnic conflicts).
July 1, 1999... Western public opinion has been misled. Whether in regard to the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina or the more recent events in Kosovo, the plight of former Yugoslavia is presented as the outcome of "aggressive nationalism," the inevitable result...

Canada: the moral superpower.
July 1, 1999... The numbers were astonishing: 150,000 Kosovars forced to leave their homes daily. And behind these numbers lay human faces, each carrying its own history of pain and suffering. The images sparked an almost immediate response from the rest of...

This little piggy's going to market: ... research is growing in the use of animal organs in transplants - and drug companies are doing most ...
July 1, 1999... YOU COULD SAY TIME WAS RUNNING OUT FOR 55-YEAR-OLD Mavis McArdle. For more than a year she had waited for a donor-liver, with no luck. She was admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal; her condition deteriorated. She slipped into a...

Underground.
July 1, 1999... The meaning of underground has changed again --there was the hole Pete and I dug beside the tracks in some little town I don't remember-- as well, the reason for the hole --who remembers these things? why we go underground...

(the Basmati Action Group combines theatrical innovation with social protest).
July 1, 1999... They don't come with a trail of screaming 11-year-olds, and Toronto mayor Mel Lastman probably wouldn't write an imploring letter if one of them decided to leave, but I'll choose the Rice Girls over the Spice Girls any day. If you're a good...

Exalted company of roadside martyrs.
July 1, 1999... Don't you hate those "summer reading" lists that book hacks come out with every July? The books are as thick and as tiresome as a paunchy midriff, and just as useful. I don't read books on the beach--I have friends. Nevertheless, if you're...

Man who loved Jane Austen.
July 1, 1999... If you attend any poetry reading in Canada and simply yell out the name "rob mclennan!" I guarantee you at least five people will turn and smile at our nation's most congenial poet. The other five just haven't been published by him yet. After...

(Vancouver artist Jason McLean sees his work as a means to bridge social gaps).
July 1, 1999... High art creates barriers, both ideological and economic while pop art trades in the currency of accessibility. Aided by the advent of the low-cost colour photocopier, Vancouver artist JASON MCLEAN has been creating, distributing and...

Do-it-yourself-defence (Assisted Self-Representation brings legal aid to the needy).
July 1, 1999... IT'S NOT QUITE Justice for Dummies, but it's not far-off either. After relentlessly slashing budgets, capping legal aid coverage and tightening eligibility requirements, B.C.'s NDP government is offering court-bound folks self-help booklets...