This Magazine articles from July 2008

This Magazine archives from July 2008

See the vision.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... Re: Goats or Jobs? Which will really aid Africa? (May/June) Your cover story raises another question: Must it be either/or? For Africa's sake, I hope not. World Vision's 55 years of international work has taught us that development...

Hello ...?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... Thank you for the Richard Poplak Libya story ("Libya, is it me you're looking for?" May/June). I found it, of course, Lionelly Enriching. ROB EVANS Victoria, B.C.

Access denied.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... Re: It's a hard knock life for...? (May/June) Where exactly were you hoping to go with this story when you decided to end it by mentioning that police think this baby was born in the U.S.? Your research regarding Canadian...

This style.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... Re: Whose Burden? (May/June) I was very impressed with the clarity and the quality of the writing in this piece. Economical, to the point, yet very informative. A really good and rare example of using precious space to advance an idea, in...

Seas of plastic.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... Re: Plastic unfantastic (March/April) Having been a ship's captain for many years, I can tell you that when the ocean is glassy calm, plastic and Foam packing products can be seen everywhere. Ships leaving the Far East routinely Follow...

More Potter mouth.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... Behind the fancy talk, Andrew Potter ("A convenient untruth," March/April), the provocateur, seems to have a point. Not the part where "progressive humanism" is any less an ideology than his concept of declinism; nor the part, given the choice,...

Congratulations.(LETTERS)
July 1, 2008... Sarah Steinberg's short story "At Last at Sea," has been named a finalist for The Journey Prize; Jason Sherman's "Scenes from my last play," received an honourable mention in the one-of-a-kind category at this year's National Magazine Awards,...

Back to rehab.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
July 1, 2008... WHEN WE BEGAN PLANNING THIS "REHAB" ISSUE, we considered putting Lindsay Lohan on the cover. Celebrities are often the first people who come to mind when thinking of rehab--unsurprisingly, there is an entire TV show dedicated to that...

If you build it, green will come: sustainable building program hits the nail on the head.(PROFILE)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "NO ONE WOULD THINK it's possible to have students with no construction experience making an entire self-sustainable building from scratch," says David Elfstrom, a graduate of Fleming College in Peterborough,...

Dam Canadians: China's destructive Three Gorges project has links to home.
July 1, 2008... THIS SUMMER, while people around the world feel the excitement of the Beijing Olympics, millions of Chinese will be pondering their futures that are now in turmoil because of-the monstrous Three Gorges Dam, a project with a surprisingly close...

When private met public: the evolution of a great debate.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN THE FALL OF 1996, NAV Canada, a private company, took control of Canada's civil air program, the organization responsible for such tasks as air traffic control and airport weather briefings. This $1.5 billion deal...

Kicking the grass addiction: why it's time to cut the lawn out of our lives.
July 1, 2008... FROM THE FIRST BREATH of spring, we North Americans dream of an expanse of green grass, a vast carpet that tickles our skin and stains our sundresses on which we can spend long, lazy days barbecuing and reading summer fiction. But our love...

Poetry coaching with Stuart Ross.(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... ONE-ON-ONE poetry coaching and critiquing, tailored to you--in person; via Skype or by phone. [paragraph] FOCUS on your work and expand your knowledge of contemporary poetry. Expose yourself to new influences and poetic possibilities....

Seven ways to get off the bottle.(LIST)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN 2006, Canadians spent $731 million consuming 2.1 billion litres of bottled water, with most of those plastic bottles ending up in landfills. If you're tired of slowly destroying the planet while build ng the bank...

Franken-Steyn's monster: uncovering the consequences of "free" speech.(POLITICS)
July 1, 2008... Human rights commissions are power-hungry commissars out to crush our democratic tradition of free speech and impose a gulag of politically correct thought on freedom-loving Canadians. This message reverberated in mainstream media during...

Beware the good old days: the welfare state's past isn't the key to its future.
July 1, 2008... Remember the good old days when Canadians used to think the government was supposed to help everyone share in economic prosperity and prevent anyone from shouldering the brunt of economic adversity? We thought we'd learned the bitter lessons...

I regret to inform you ... apologies without action are sorry indeed.
July 1, 2008... There's nothing like a good apology. I'm sorry, but I just love saying that. An apology is shorthand, emotional rehab writ small. "I'm sorry" is what you preface a statement of unhappy fact with. I'm sorry but... Salon.com under its new...

Look back, Jack: with its exclusive fixation on winning more seats, the NDP has sacrificed the opportunity to build a truly progressive movement. On the 75th anniversary of the CCF, James Laxer argues that to save the present, we need to remember the past.(New Democratic Party and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation)(Cover story)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] WHENEVER I SEE MY FRIEND AND FORMER COLLEAGUE WHO HAD A liver transplant 20 years ago, I always think for a second about Tommy Douglas and the CCF-NDP, without whom this man who is now in his early 70s would be...

Girls gone wild. So? With stars such as Amy Winehouse splashed across tabloid covers, racing toward early graves, it's easy to think they're stupid and sick. But, as Megan Griffith-Greene argues, there's something subversive about women who won't behave.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE WEBSITE "WHEN WILL AMY WINEHOUSE DIE?" reads like a macabre count-the-jellybeans contest. How many days does a junkie have left to live? Leave a guess, and a "pre-condolence," like this one: "It's not like you...

The addict's last refuge? B.C.'s Iboga Therapy House is following in a decades-old tradition of underground rehab--administering a drug called ibogaine, which has the reported side effect of curbing addiction. But can these activists take their experiment mainstream?
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE DRUG REHABILITATION FACILITY IS AN ordinary split-level house in a sleepy residential neighbourhood in a small town on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast. Inside, the many bookshelves contain everything from...

There will be blood: it's Calgary Stampede time again--the annual celebration of the traditional cowboy life. But the history of Canada's Wild West reads very differently than the festival's romanticized fable.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THERE IS A MOMENT IN RED RIVER, HOWARD HAWKS'S epic 1948 western, when John Wayne delivers the most convincing endorsement of the beef industry of all time. Surveying a vast herd, 10,000 head strong, about to embark...

Why the psychiatrist laughed.(Short story)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nabokov's grandmaster in The Defense features a young man for whom the whole universe has turned black, and in the blackness only one thing remains brilliantly lit. Chess. This epiphany occurs at a crucial moment....

C Squared.(Four Poems)(Poem)
July 1, 2008... C SQUARED A grey balloon twenty feet above the surface of a lake. A blue lake twenty feet below a grey balloon. A woman on a wooden dock fifty feet away from A dark blue shadow cast by A grey balloon twenty feet above...

All Postcards Feature the CN Tower.(Four Poems)(Poem)
July 1, 2008... ALL POSTCARDS FEATURE THE CN TOWER We scuttle in our newness, feet clicking on the sidewalk. Buddy Holly is a lucky penny we walk around. I say this is the Royal Alex where I waited six hours for cheap tickets...

Here Hold this Frayed Wire.(Four Poems)(Poem)
July 1, 2008... HERE HOLD THIS FRAYED WIRE You act like you've never run away from a burning city before. As if they were not people and not on fire. The spaghetti tonight was overcooked, I know. The holes in the strainer are all plugged...

Preparations.(Four Poems)(Poem)
July 1, 2008... PREPARATIONS There were crows with stethoscopes, partitioned beds. The smell of dog, of snake, of rabbit blood. There was cattle, ear ticks, the sharing of parasites. Plastic tubes with fluids pulsing, draped like...

This land is his land: one man's art trumps the oil that lies beneath it.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AS YOU WALK THROUGH Peter yon Tiesenhausen's land, artwork emerges as if summoned from the ground up. Ships and nests made of willow branches appear along well-worn paths. Statues carved from logs stand watch from...

DIY strip show.(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... ASPIRING CARTOONISTS without the gift of good draftsmanship, Fret not: Web 2.o could hold the key to your future success. Bitstrips, a new online comic-making application, allows users to manipulate stock images to create surprisingly diverse...

A never-ending short story.(WRITING)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS, Vancouver writer Kevin Spenst has woken up most mornings to write a very short story. "The day seems like the most natural frame for everything," explains Spenst. "1 have one burst to get something done in the morning...

TeaTime.(READ THIS)(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN TORONTO ARTIST stef lenk's world, tea time is an invitation to adventure. The latest installment in lenk's evolving graphic series, TeaTime follows a young girl who is drawn into an antique shop by toys that are...

'Jenkins: bitstrips celeb'.(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... HENRY JENKINS, MEDIA STUDIES PROFESSOR AT MIT, ATTENDED THE BITSTRIPS LAUNCH AT THE SXSW FESTIVAL IN AUSTIN, TX. HIS IMAGE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO BE RENDERED ON THE SITE AND HAS SINCE BECOME ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY USED. "IT'S FASCINATING...

Kill your babies beautifully: on Michael Ondaatje's fetish for suffering.(Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Twice over the endless winter of 2007-08, I finished a pleasant-enough telephone conversation with my mother only to have her call me back a couple of minutes later. "I know what I wanted to tell you," she said...

Notes from the underground: in defence of fantasy and horror cinema.
July 1, 2008... Tell someone you like science fiction, fantasy or horror films and you might get "the look." A look that says, "Are you silly, immature or, worse, pervy?" Fans of genre cinema--the term applies to many different categories of film but is most...

A stereotype of one's own: why it's safe for white folks to laugh at themselves.
July 1, 2008... According to the latest internet superfad, white people can e categorized by the New Balance sneakers on their feet, indie rock in their iPods, and the Ralph Nader bumper stickers slapped on their Priuses. Our children are multilingual and our...

Kicking it old school: time travels on the wagon.(THEN & NOW)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Fifth century B.C. Plato's prescription for avoiding over-drinking involves no wine for those under 18, moderate consumption for those under 30 and an open bar for anyone over 40. The average life expectancy at the...