This Magazine articles from March 2001

This Magazine archives from March 2001

Our home and toxic land.
March 1, 2001... WAKE UP AND SMELL THE BENZENE. CANADA WAS ONCE CONSIDERED AN ENVIRONMENTAL LEADER, but laggard is a more apt description today. From the dioxin-laced B.C. coast to the radioactive tailings of Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, Canada seethes with...

Getting the royal treatment.
March 1, 2001... I STOOD IN FRONT OF THE KING'S MEDICAL Centre in downtown Toronto with a sneer as cynical and bitter as if I were channelling Tommy Douglas himself. The founder of medicare would be spitting tacks in the afterworld if he knew about the private...

Safe enough: managing risk and regulation.
March 1, 2001... I WANT TO GO AND LIVE IN THE MAGICAL LAND of the Fraser Institute. It is a lovely place, where second-hand smoke does not cause cancer and the lead content in children's teething toys is no real cause for concern. The various contributors to...

Virtual borders.
March 1, 2001... LAST SPRING, YAHOO CAME UNDER FIRE from authorities in France because of the Nazi paraphernalia available for sale on its online auction site. France thought Yahoo should use geotracking technology to keep French users from buying the stuff...

And they've got (Ralph) Nader too!
March 1, 2001... SURE, WE'VE GOT UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE and they've got the electric chair, but at least in some respects, the empire to the south is the kinder, gentler nation. In response to those hectoring calls to adopt the worst traits of the Blighted...

Be an avant-gardener.
March 1, 2001... OUR CITIES ARE A SAD SIGHT--BURIED RIVERS and dead forests encased in branded cement straightjackets. There are more parking lots than parks. Weeds are sprayed with chemicals. Trees are tangled in Christmas lights and caged behind steel bars....

Putting globalization in its place: are pro-business policies inevitable in this brave new McWorld?
March 1, 2001... Are pro-business policies inevitable in this brave new McWorld? Globalization's apologists and opponents both seem to think so. JIM STANFORD begs to differ. THE GOLDEN ARCHES. THE MOST RECOGNIZED and reviled corporate logo on planer earth,...

In praise of mediocrity: while judging two major Canadian arts competitions, Hal Niedzvieki discovers excellence isn't all it's cracked up to be.
March 1, 2001... IN THE FALL OF LAST YEAR, I FOUND MYSELF slumped on a carpeted conference room in a Halifax hotel, watching eight hours of videotape soon to be screened at the Atlantic Film Festival. A few months later, I subjected myself to a similar form of...

High-tech hope or hype? India's reputation as the Silicon Valley of the East is growing rapidly.
March 1, 2001... India's reputation as the Silicon Valley of the East is growing rapidly. But behind the optimism SARAH ELTON finds a digital divide that may never be closed. ONE HOUR'S DRIVE FROM THE SOUTH INDIAN city of Hyderabad in the arid countryside...

Great RRSP rip-off ... for Canadians of modest means, opting out is often the smartest thing.
March 1, 2001... RRSP SEASON IS OVER AT LAST. ALL THROUGH THE FIRST TWO MONTHS OF THE YEAR, we're bombarded with ads exhorting us to shove as much money as possible into Registered Retirement Savings Plans, to buy early, buy often, and buy a lot. Every...

Getting spooked: the anti-globalization movement is gaining momentum, but law enforcers are quickly catching up.
March 1, 2001... The anti-globalization movement is gaining momentum, but law enforcers are quickly catching up. Activists might be honoured by the attention, if the counter-attack weren't becoming so effective. It could amount to the end of freedom of...

Fortress Quebec: security measures get medieval.
March 1, 2001... IN A FEW SHORT WEEKS, NORTH AMERICA'S ONLY FORTIFIED CITY WILL be transformed into a virtual fortress for the Summit of the Americas. On April 20, dozens of heads of state from throughout the Americas will descend on Quebec City to discuss free...

Muzzled media: why are police pepper-spraying the press?
March 1, 2001... A YOUNG WOMAN SAT SLUMPED AGAINST AN OLD BRICK BUILDING ON a side street near Montreal's downtown Sheraton Centre as a group of police officers, dressed in dark-coloured riot gear and helmets, hovered over her. The cops handcuffed some nearby...

Same story, different acronym: FTAA basics.
March 1, 2001... DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE FTAA? YOU'RE NOT ALONE. ALONG WITH NAFTA, the MAI, the GATS, it seems like just another bunch of letters in globalization's insidious alphabet soup. Plus, governments haven't been too keen on serving FTAA drafts up to...

With friends like these -- a rogue's gallery of the anti-globalization movement's strangest bedfellows.
March 1, 2001... QUESTION. DURING THE LAST U.S. PRESIdential campaign, which prominent candidate said: "The bulls run wild on Wall Street, corporate profits and ceos ring up record salaries. But in Middle America, our industrial base is eroding, factories are...

What economists don't want you to know.
March 1, 2001... Free market solutions are the only way to achieve, right? Wrong. There's a little-known theorem that smashes the case for free trade and laissez-faire. Funny how they don't teach it in Economics 101. IN 1956, TWO YOUNG ECONOMISTS NAMED...

Miss Canada.
March 1, 2001... MARJORIE WANTS TO BE CONTESTANT NUMBER FOUR BUT SHE can't be because I am. I know all the rules so I'm the referee and the referee goes last. Rita's before me and Lorraine's before Rita, so move it Marjorie, I say, or you'll be disqualified....

Cultural worker.
March 1, 2001... WEB Separatism is ascendant across the land. Provincialism and regionalism are the order of the day, as Canadians recoil from globalization by looking ever inward. And then there are the people behind Canadian World Domination, who think...

(Montreal singer-songwriter Genevieve Letarte).
March 1, 2001... MUSIC Have you always suspected that the most irritating Quebecois singers are the ones who become best-known outside that province? Well, here's a well-crafted release that will (unfortunately) probably remain obscure in English...

Sunburst.
March 1, 2001... BOOKS If your knowledge of Canadian science fiction begins and ends with The Handmaid's Tale, fear not, fellow earthlings. BAKKA BOOKS, a new imprint of Insomniac Press, has opened the cryogenic chambers of our nation's speculative...

Advice bunny.
March 1, 2001... ART The entire "office" is painted pink. Not that giddy Barbie shade, but something more akin to rose, dusty like the power structure that informs this performance. Here, at Montreal's Plein Sud Centre d'Exposition, The ADVICE BUNNY lends...

Private reception.
March 1, 2001... IF POOR SUPERMAN CAME OUT OF RETIREMENT TODAY, HE'D BE screwed. Where have all the phone booths gone? With these once-ubiquitous pieces of urban furniture disappearing from the landscape, where would our hero shed his mild-mannered identity?...