This Magazine articles from March 1998

This Magazine archives from March 1998

Medical ethics.
March 1, 1998... Amount drug companies pay volunteers to be the first humans to injest experimental drugs: up to $100 a day There are more ethical rules governing experiments on animals in Canada than there are moral guidelines for studying humans ...

Dilbert is a fraud.
March 1, 1998... THE CAKE ON THE BOARDROOM table was intended to celebrate my 25th birthday. But it didn't say Happy Birthday, or even my name--no, instead, it was a frame from the insanely popular Dilbert cartoon. On a background of orange icing, Wally sat in...

Do the hustle: Mexico City.
March 1, 1998... MEXICO CITY HUSTLES WHEN the lights at major intersections turn red. Hawkers come alive to sell roses, sweets, newspapers and even house-wares. Small clowns climb onto the shoulders of larger ones to entertain drivers, and young men with...

Dine and dash (Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal).
March 1, 1998... IT WAS THE HEIGHT OF THE pre-Christmas lunchtime rush. Ganachefilled pastries were piled high as the staff of the Montrealais, one of Montreal's swankiest restaurants, put the finishing touches on the luncheon buffet. Enter a defiant 20-person...

They doth protest too much.
March 1, 1998... GETTING KICKED OUT OF THE public, galleries of Ontario's parliament used to confer upon the kickee a badge of honour. You really had to put on a good show before you were tossed on your ear. But now, in order to win bragging rights (and maybe...

Kids invest in the darndest things.
March 1, 1998... For a few years now, earnest and faintly threatening billboards have warned twenty-somethings that they'd better start investing now, unless they want to retire in poverty. The hard sell must have worked: in 1996, the amount of money Canadians...

Sell me down the river: please: Courtney Love sold out ...
March 1, 1998... IT'S THE THIRD DAY OF rehearsals for my first big budget movie. It's a story about two nuns on a road trip to Mexico who are rescued by a girl gang of mechanics when their car breaks down. The location has been changed from a rural gas station...

This week has 32 hours: the B.C. Jobs and Timber Accord was supposed to kickstart the economy.
March 1, 1998... AT LAST YEAR'S PROVINCIAL NDP convention in B.C., Jeremy Rifkin, the bestselling author of The End of Work, was the keynote speaker. In fact, the American economist whose book on "post-market economics" has put him at the centre of a raging...

Breaking out: ... Kingston Pen(itentiary) is the last place you'd look for a gay men's group.
March 1, 1998... WHEN A BLANKET COVERS a cell door, it's a recognized signal in Kingston Penitentiary. Everyone knows what's going on behind it but nobody pays much attention. The other inmates don't care, and although sex is strictly forbidden, even the guards...

Speak no evil: when the Friends of the Lubicon began their hugely successful consumer boycott against giant Daishowa ... battle between corporate rights and freedom of expression.
March 1, 1998... At 10 p.m. on January 12, 1995, Ed Bianchi heard a knock on the door of his apartment. Before him stood a stranger who looked like "George from Seinfeld," as Bianchi put it, the bald-headed neurotic from America's most popular TV sitcom. The...

SLAPPed silly (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).
March 1, 1998... Friends of the Lubicon aren't the first activists to be hit with all the fury of a corporation that feels it's been wronged. SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) have a long history in the U.S., starting as a backlash...

Brief history of the Lubicon.
March 1, 1998... 1899 Treaty Eight is signed with the Northern Alberta Cree but a number of bands are left out, leaving the people of Lubicon Lake without a reserve and without officially recognized title to their traditional lands. 1933 The Lubicon apply...

Always look on the bright side: ... but what happens when gee-whiz enthusiasm and a great-looking CV just won't do the trick?
March 1, 1998... LAST summer, Simon Archer got a letter from the federal government. Recently laid off from a job as a researcher and writer, he was collecting unemployment insurance and looking for work. The government, apparently, had decided that he could...

Girl crazy: ... "girl crime wave".
March 1, 1998... seventeen years ago, when I was in the sixth grade at Courcelette Elementary School in Toronto's east end, I left school because a girl threatened to beat me up. I don't recall being particularly surprised by the incident, just afraid of what a...

Gate of harmonious interest.
March 1, 1998... When you were a child and chattered endlessly in the back seat on long trips, your father would finally rouse himself to say: "If you can't be sensible be quiet." He said this only to you, his one daughter. To your brothers, handing one or...

Abalone dives.
March 1, 1998... He'd row while I gripped the sides, head tipped back by the bulked collar of the life preserver, eyes dazzled by the light. And then he'd disappear. Over there, over the edge. I'd hold on with both hands staring at...

Still raising hell: poverty, activism and other true stories.
March 1, 1998... The subtitle for SHEILA BAXTER's Still Raising Hell should have been Go, Granny, Go! A sequel to her award-winning Under the Viaduct, Still Raising Hell (Press Gang Publishers) is a lively collection of Socialism 101 essays by a woman who...

Art: Fiona Smyth.
March 1, 1998... FIONA SMYTH's handpainted troll dolls are the perfect talisman for invoking your inner pubescent girl. Smyth's sophisticated sex/pop/cult iconography jamming has made her illustrations and paintings objets celebres across the continent. She's a...

Zines (Chics United for Non-Noxious Transportation).
March 1, 1998... A Toronto publication has brought politics and argument back to the navel-obsessed world of the homemade zine. CHICS UNITED FOR NON-NOXIOUS TRANSPORTATION (CUNT, for short) is a radical feminist cycling zine, by and for the harpies of the...

Roy Michell.
March 1, 1998... ROY MITCHELL makes films the way other people make their beds: about once a month, with weary resignation. Mitchell's Super-8 and VHS treats are laconic, often snarky explorations of his love/hate relationship with the gay community. In films...

McBusted.
March 1, 1998... THE PLAYERS McDonald's and the Teamsters union representing 42 McDonald's employees. THE BACKGROUND On February 12, less than 24 hours before the Friday morning shift was supposed to report to work at the St. Hubert, Quebec, McDonald's,...