This Magazine articles from July 2007

This Magazine archives from July 2007

Food for thought.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I can't cook and I am notoriously bad at feeding myself (unless crackers and candy make a healthy meal), but lately agriculture and food security have become my issues of choice. Thanks to This for publishing "Back to the Land," by Geoff...

The other "n" word.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... Anna Bowness's bit of codswallop about the unfairness of Torontonians occasionally having to "huddle in slush" just so a handful of Canadians can live outside major cities is a great example of why rural Canadians do not universally love...

Off course.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I caught the letters section of your most recent issue, vis-a-vis Afghanistan (May/June, 2007), and I had to weigh in. If all foreign troops were to withdraw from Afghanistan, the country would have the space to heal from the wounds of...

Keep it up.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... Congrats on 40 years! Same amount of time since the Leafs last won the Cup. Lovely to see you still flourishing from the time when I first was a subscriber to the old This Magazine Is About Schools days back in 1968. Of course way back then I...

Travelling light.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... The picture on the cover of your March April issue reminds me of-the time, many years ago, that I got kicked out of a rooming house without any notice at all. I managed to pack my bag in a hurry and ride off with it on my bicycle. Maybe I'm...

With a rebel yell ...(EDITORIAL)
July 1, 2007... IT'S A GOOD TIME to be thinking about resistance. The cover of yesterday's Globe and Mail carried a large photo of an anti-G8 demonstrator, which both brought me back to my own past experiences with water cannons at international summits, and...

A flock of sea goals: 30 years later, Paul Watson is still giving poachers shit.(PROFILE)
July 1, 2007... AFTER THREE DECADES of patrolling the high seas for bad guys, environmental pioneer Paul Watson is still going strong. The founder of the radical marine conservation group Sea Shepherd is adamant that the years haven't changed him, or his...

Off the bottle: Nalgene goes on the "no buy" list.(NEWS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... IF YOU'RE THE TYPE to slap stickers on your Nalgene water bottle, Rocky Mountain Animal Defense (RMAD) has a new one for you: "This is my last Nalgene bottle," it reads. The Colorado-based animal rights group has organized a boycott of...

Harper watch.(THIS & THAT)(Stephen Harper)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... STEPHEN HARPER WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE that we will plunge ourselves into an economic disaster not seen since the 1930s if we meet the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. This is the same person who once said the international agreement is...

Dance another day: 007 proms--a wise choice?(NEWS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... IT'S HARD to visualize James Bond as he's been portrayed by any of the six actors who've played him over the years going to high school, let alone to a grad prom. This didn't deter school councils across the country from choosing a Bond theme...

We'd better get to keep Rita MacNeil; CRTC review makes activists nervous.(NEWS)(Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... WHEN NEW CRTC CHAIR, Konrad von Finckenstein, delivered a speech to the B.C. Association of Broadcasters in May, dropping phrases such as "self-regulation" and "creative market forces," media activists got nervous. "We have a government...

Welcome to the new boom town.(GRAPHIC)(City overview)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... BEING A BOOM TOWN isn't new for Fort McMurray. Founded in 1790, the Fort of the Forks once flourished as a fur-trading post. Eventually taken over by the Hudson's Bay Company, the town was renamed Fort McMurray in 1875. Located on top of one of...

Fight the small fights: it works!(ARGUMENT)
July 1, 2007... WHEN ALL SIX-AND-A-HALF POUNDS OF ME came screaming into the world, Ontario law said that if my parents wanted to give me both their names, my father's name had to come first--an edict that applied only because my parents were unmarried. My...

Who knew street people had it so good?(WTF?)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... THIS SUMMER Toronto will conduct a homeless assessment, part of which will evaluate the impact of panhandling on local businesses. Critics fear the results will be used to bolster calls from councillors to restrict panhandling, the most vocal...

3 things that shouldn't be going into landfills.(LIST)
July 1, 2007... YOU'RE VIGILANT with your blue bin, you donate clothes, you even posted "No Flyers, Please" on your mailbox. Yet, despite your best efforts, Canada still produces more than 20 million tonnes of waste per year. The credo of "reduce, reuse and...

Subverts take it online.(WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... CULTURE JAMMING?)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... REFERRING to altered billboards and media manipulation, the term "culture jamming" was first used by California sound-collage band Negativland on their 1985 album, JAMCON '84. Since then the slogan has been used to refer to a range of...

Dig deeper than donuts: why aren't media asking the hard questions about Afghanistan?(POLITICS)
July 1, 2007... I happened to turn on CBC Newsworld one afternoon recently and found myself watching an interview with a U.S. pundit about the morale of troops in Afghanistan. The premise of the interview was that, unlike troops in Iraq, the ones in...

First Nations fumble: how the Tories dropped the ball on funding.(ECONOMICS)
July 1, 2007... Wouldn't you be a trifle upset if your land was taken and you were forced into extreme economic dependency and cultural annihilation? Has Canada moved beyond this sort of colonial relationship with First Nations peoples? Sorry to break it to my...

Straight to the blue box: facelifts will only hasten the newspaper's demise.(MEDIA)
July 1, 2007... If you're looking for a copy of the freshly redesigned Globe and Mail in Italy, forget it. The only English language daily readily available is the International Herald Tribune. I wasn't especially interested in polluting my recent vacation...

Top secret: a journey to an Ottawa teach-in reveals that NAFTA 2.0--the Orwellian-sounding Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)--aims to make sweeping regulatory changes, but without changing any laws. With 300 issues on the table, the SPP could reshape North America. So why do so few know just what Bush, Harper and Calderon are up to?(Rebel Rebel!)
July 1, 2007... Seeing the original "three amigos"--Paul Martin, George W. Bush and Vicente Fox--pat each other's backs for the cameras at the first summit in Waco, Texas, it seemed likely that they were up to no good. Their handshake there two years ago...

Rising up: the stereotype is wrong. Our history isn't that peaceful. A retrospective on four under-appreciated Canadian rebellions whose effects are still with us.(Rebel Rebel!)(Essay)
July 1, 2007... Canadian history. Those two words have caused generations of eyes to glaze over. Like so many other kids, I went through school bored with history lessons filled with Great Men and Worthy Causes. There were a handful of Major Rebellions, such...

Act fast: SPP's not the only threat. It's time to unleash your rebellious spirit if we're to avoid a bleak, desolate Blade Runner future. Portraits of five movements that urgently need you--at your most fierce.(Rebel Rebel!)(environmental, political and health movements)
July 1, 2007... It's easy to be apocalyptic these days. The challenges we face are so overwhelming and unpredictable that it sometimes seems the only sane reaction is to ignore them. It's all too easy to imagine a future that looks like bad science fiction....

At last at sea.(Fiction & poetry)(Short story)
July 1, 2007... "MY DEAR, YOU WILL LOVE IT," MY MOTHER had told me over the phone from Toronto, lingering on the L, attending to the V. "You'll just love it," she said again, as I wrapped the phone cord around my wrist like a bracelet, staring out at the palm...

Fair Game.(3 Poems)(Poem)
July 1, 2007... FAIR GAME We are always surprised to find our cupboards emptied, and not politely--cereal boxes gutted, jam jars bled of their sticky red. No letter on the table, or money in the mailbox. Only a door...

Atonement.(3 Poems)(Poem)
July 1, 2007... ATONEMENT On the side of the highway, in August, on full stomach, I picked the already thin blueberry bushes clean. And for a year afterward the bears roamed hungry-- picked off campers in crisp red tents...

Cozy Camp.(3 Poems)(Poem)
July 1, 2007... COZY CAMP A black bear sunk into the wooden planks, only the pole of her body visible as she swims from couch to fireplace. Permitted passage, the children ride on the bear's black furred back, dig...

The great video game experiment: you won't find Kokoromi on your Xbox.(ARTS & IDEAS)
July 1, 2007... IN MONTREAL, independent artists are as common as poutine and potholes. But Kokoromi, a collective of artists and video game developers, has sidestepped the Converse-wearing, indie-rock-loving crowd by working with an underused artistic medium:...

Torch the Olympics.(FILM)(Five Ring Circus)(Movie review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... THE 2010 OLYMPICS may still be three years away, but that hasn't stopped Vancouver activist Conrad Schmidt from making a documentary film about its consequences for the city. He sold his home to finance the project, saying he "wanted to make a...

Beer, barbecue and ... portraits.(ART)(Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... IF THE GOVERNMENT of Canada won't give us a portrait gallery, Toronto writer and illustrator Sarah Lazarovic will. Until early June, her garage was standard-issue dank. Inside, two rooms were littered with the results of "Sarah, can you store...

Is it pornography?(MEDIA)(BlackFlash's Mature Content)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... WHEN BLACKFLASH'S "Mature Content" issue hit stands last fall, the irony couldn't be ignored: an 11-page feature on childhood sexuality and censorship ran without images. The Saskatoon-based arts magazine published an essay exploring the...

28 stories of AIDS in Africa.(READ THIS)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... 28 stories of AIDS in Africa By Stephanie Nolen Random House, 416 pages With her new book, 28 stories of AIDS in Africa, Globe and Mail Africa reporter Stephanie Nolen has something to prove. "When I talk to people at home about the...

Read between the frames: why Canlit seldom goes to Hollywood.(FILM)(movie adaptations of best selling novels)
July 1, 2007... So, as tradition has it, summer rolls around and you get out your most comfortable tracksuit, limber up and prepare for an uninterrupted season of blockbuster movie watching. Equipped with a jumbo bucket of malted milk balls and a copy of the...

Writing under the influence: Clive Doucet builds on greatness.(Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Ottawa city councillor Clive Doucet is the kind of politician who I would want to represent me. He's someone who cares about local issues like preserving old trees in a neighbourhood and public transit, but who also sees how these issues fit...

Baby's first Facebook: social networks teach kids the value of a Zbuck.(WEB)
July 1, 2007... Five years is a long time on the internet. It's practically geological; the virtual landscape changes so dramatically. Over the next half decade, who can predict the plate tectonic shifts that will take the online community, our collective...

Pedalling's past: from emancipation to ecology, bikes have changed our gears.(THEN & NOW)(Chronology)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... 1890s The introduction of the pneumatic-wheeled "safety bicycle" sets off a bicycle craze. Many of the enthusiasts are women (at least those who can afford the roughly $100 cost). They shed chaperones and their confining clothing and experience...