This Magazine articles from July 2004

This Magazine archives from July 2004

The devil you know.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Perhaps it would have been more interesting for Clive Thompson to inquire why so many lefties reject the scientific point of view ("Science Fiction," May/June), rather than tell us we're morons who can't wrap our weak little minds around a...

Full of beans.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Yay This Magazine for touching on the fair trade coffee issue ("The grinds, they are a-changin'," May/June). However, I found the information about Starbucks coffee to be misleading. Starbucks' commitment to fair trade products is less...

Ideological implosion.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Now that I know about Joseph Heath's understanding of what is wrong with the film version of The Corporation ("Ideological indecision," May/June), and Andrew Potter's understanding of what is wrong with the book, I look forward to reading an...

Inuit values are Christian values.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Regarding your article "Dangerous territory" (May/June), I wonder what can be so "dangerous" about a Nunavut politician simply standing up for traditional Inuit values? Is "traditional belief" now the "dangerous belief"? If the Inuit...

Choose your own belief system.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Your article "I want to believe" (May/June) describes several religious activist groups that eschew some of their religions' basic tenets in favour of more progressive stances. While I prefer most of the groups' ideological positions to those...

Much appreciated.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Thank you for the wonderful story on our little concept store in your March/April issue ("Enter the Dadabase"). Keep up the amazing work you do concerning politics and culture. Ignacio Corral and Mo Salemy Vancouver, British Columbia

Counter attack.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... I have just picked up the March/April issue of This Magazine, to which I have subscribed since it was "About Schools." What a shock and disappointment to read the extremely one-sided article on Sarajevo ("Taking sides"). Why would This...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
July 1, 2004... A table in our January/February issue reported the US incarceration rate to be 2,298 per 100,000 residents, higher than the rate at which the Soviet Union sent people to the gulags. However, the figure refers not strictly to the incarceration...

Great ideas wanted.(youth and politics)(Editorial)
July 1, 2004... As we began putting together the current issue of This Magazine, the dailies were consumed with the issue of declining voter turnout--particularly among youth. "There is simply no good reason for young people... to stand on the sidelines...

The new voice of democracy: how poets, not politicians, are politicizing Ottawa youth.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
July 1, 2004... Ottawa is a vocal city. The art of government expresses itself loudly through heckling in the House of Commons and sound bites gathered by frantic scrums of journalists on Parliament Hill. But another voice has stepped up to the mic in the...

A surplus of ideas.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
July 1, 2004... Our federal government told us in March it will collect $5.2 billion more in revenue than it will spend. Between 1999-2000 and 2002-2003, surpluses totaled almost $48 billion. The government once promised to allocate half of that "fiscal...

Vespa nation.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
July 1, 2004... La dolce Vespa, icon of chic Euro-style and Mod subculture, has motored back to Canada after an 18-year absence. The federal government banned the stylish scooter in 1986 because Piaggio, its Italian manufacturer, failed to meet toughening...

Minimum wage increase equals minimum benefit.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
July 1, 2004... Does increasing the minimum wage by 30 cents actually benefit low-wage earners? It seems like employers just pass the added cost on to consumers, increasing the cost of living For everyone, including the working poor. So is a minimum increase...

Sponsorship shmonsorship: yes, the scandal was sleazy, but it's not nearly the most offensive and wasteful thing the federal Liberals have done.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
July 1, 2004... LIKE ANY OTHER PATRIOT, CLINICAL CANADIAN, I LOVE TO SEE arrogant politicians get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. But surely I wasn't the only one left yawning after weeks of banner headlines on the Liberals' sponsorship scandal. ...

Plastic fantastic! Cosmetic enhancement for the common folk.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
July 1, 2004... A few days after Cinar co-founder Micheline Charest died while undergoing her "spring lift," I received a brochure in the mail for the third-annual New You consumer trade show, designed to inform the masses about medical cosmetic augmentation....

Martin bucks wheat agreement.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)(Paul Martin)
July 1, 2004... The potential conflicts of interest involving Paul Martin's ties to Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) are unlikely to go away soon. Martin owned the private company throughout his tenure as finance minister, keeping it in a blind trust while...

Unread menace.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)(China blocks Web sites)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Though we've been labelled a pinko publication, apparently This Magazine is not Communist enough for the chinese government, according to a 2002 study by a pair of Harvard Law School researchers. Try to look up www.thismagazine.ca in China, and...

Split on Svend-gate.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)(Svend Robinson's shoplifting)
July 1, 2004... When Svend Robinson revealed in April that he had pocketed a pricey antique diamond ring, conservatives were gleeful with schadenfreude, and progressives scratched their heads and wondered what had possessed their fallen hero. Even the experts...

Yankee go home! The Americanization of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, is driving up land prices in this hippie hideout--and inspiring long-time residents to take matters into their own hands.
July 1, 2004... It started as the sound of rustling underbrush behind the heavily wooded Salt Spring Island hillside where l live. It's not a deer, I thought. It's not a cougar. Way too noisy. It must be people. Now it's highly unusual, you understand, to hear...

We're not in Dixie anymore, Bubba: NASCAR dads have become the swing vote in this fall's US presidential election. But to understand the man, you must first try to understand what drives him.(National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing)
July 1, 2004... ON MY WAY TO LAST SEASON FINAL NASCAR RACE AT LOWE'S Motor Speedway, coming over a rise on 1-85 on the outskirts of Charlotte. North Carolina, I saw what appeared to be a huge, low-rent subdivision made up of very small, tacky, homes stretching...

This boat is my boat: first they stole our land, then our methods of water transportation. Cultural appropriation aside, is it too much to ask that weekend warriors give the canoe and kayak some respect?(Cover Story)
July 1, 2004... F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote "The rich are different from you and I," to which everybody usually responds, "Yeah, they've got more money." On a similar theme, it's been my Ojibway-tainted observation over the years that "middle-class white...

There ain't no cure for the summer camp blues: if you want a picture of camp, imagine a sneaker stamping on a human face--fow a whole summer. How one midle-class kid not only survived the Orwellian experience of self-improvement camp, but lived to tell the tale.
July 1, 2004... EVERY YEAR AS ANOTHER SCHOOL TERM ground to a close and the spring air hinted at the summer to come, our negotiations would begin in earnest. Like many liberal-minded parents, mine believed the modern family should behave as a model democracy....

This isn't summer stock: for the current and former mental health patients who make up the Workman Theatre Project, acting is a step toward healing--a way to take control of their minds and bodies.
July 1, 2004... WHERE A STONE WALL ONCE SHIELDED THE DARK FORTRESS of the former Provincial Lunatic Asylum at 999 Queen Street West in Toronto, a low black-iron picket fence grazes the perimeter of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the largest...

Cold Lake Karaoke Bar.(Poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2004... COLD LAKE KARAOKE BAR I dedicate this song to the man I met 5 minutes ago I dedicate this lung to a bar full of blue smoke I dedicate this liver to the chronic wasting of beer I dedicate this tube top ...

Dazzle.(Fiction)(Short Story)
July 1, 2004... {1} I have always been fortunate to exist in two worlds: the grey, maudlin one into which we are all born, and that place where names are spelled out in lights. Though my origins are unspectacular, fate has periodically placed me in the role of...

Red vinyl diaries.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)(The Vertical Struts)(Sound Recording Review)
July 1, 2004... The Vertical Struts, named from a photo of the remaining stubs of one of the World Trade Center towers, are a two-man (Raymond Biesinger and Trevor Anderson), '50s-style garage-rock combo from Edmonton. They are self-proclaimed throwbacks with...

War photography is hell: a picture may be worth 1,000 words, but a snapshot rarely tells the whole story.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)
July 1, 2004... ONE CANNOT ARGUE WITH PHOTOGRAPHS, AND THAT IS THE inherent problem of the medium. A photograph is often viewed as exactly what it represents--a destroyed building, a dead child. It can scream, but it rarely speaks or engages us like the...

Idea man.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)(Speaking Out: Ideas That Work for Canadians)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... It always makes me wild with rage when the complexities of a federal election are idiotically reduced to a single issue for voters. The major parties, and the mainstream media, seem to assume that people have the attention span of...

I know you are but what am I?(Read this: the best of the Canadian Small Press)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... I know you are but what am I? by Heather Birrell (Coach House Books) Time and again in this nine-story collection, Birrell weaves patterns of flashbacks, walk-on characters, best-ever similes (an airplane window like an eyelid), and--most...

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity.(Read this: the best of the Canadian Small Press)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig (Penguin Press) Every movement needs an inspirational figure, someone able to both set the terms of debate and lead by...

Viral Suite.(Read this: the best of the Canadian Small Press)(Sound Recording Review)
July 1, 2004... Viral Suite by Mari-Lou Rowley (Anvil Press) It is rare to see science and poetry mixed as seamlessly as they are in Mari-Lou Rowley's Viral Suite, but not surprising for Rowley, a science and technology writer. The linguistic gymnastics...

Cheap trick.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)(series of one-day art shows )
July 1, 2004... It's quick, hot, cheap and dirty--and you'll love it. Cheaper Than A One Night Stand is a series of one-day art shows that creates a venue for up-and-coming, under-appreciated artists. The series is run by the Vancouver-based artists'...

Tangiers, Never Bring You Pleasure.(Hear this: off the beaten track)(Sound Recording Review)
July 1, 2004... Tangiers, Never Bring You Pleasure (Sonic Unyon) When Toronto garage-rock darlings Tangiers released their debut album Hot New Spirits last March it seemed like the almighty hype machine was working overtime. It would be an understatement...

Bob Wiseman, It's True.(Hear this: off the beaten track)(Sound Recording Review)
July 1, 2004... Bob Wiseman, It's True ([][][][][][] recording club) It's True marks Bob Wiseman's first album since 1995. Produced by blocks recording club co-founder and Hidden Cameras/Barcelona Pavilion member Steve Kado, the album is an odd little...

The Organ, Grab That Gun.(Hear this: off the beaten track)(Sound Recording Review)
July 1, 2004... The Organ, Grab That Gun (Mint Records/604) I liked The Organ even before I heard their 2002 EP Sinking Hearts. The Vancouver all-girl quintet recruited members not on the basis of musical ability, but instead on an appreciation of the...

Frames of reference: Ho Che Anderson on a cartoonist's call to action.(Question Authority)(Interview)
July 1, 2004... HE MAY REFER TO THEM AS "FUNNY BOOKS," BUT HO CHE Anderson views comics as a serious, socially redeeming art. The Toronto cartoonist has authored a number of intriguing titles in the past decade, but none so potent as KING, a graphic novel...