This Magazine articles from March 2004

This Magazine archives from March 2004

Labouring the point.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... I love your magazine. It bas helped increase my awareness of the world in which I breathe the air of six billion other inhabitants. My letter is in regards to the article by Sarah Cox titled "Made By Children, For Children" (Jan/Feb 2004)....

Born again.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... When I saw Julie Crysler's article entitled "Breeding Discontent" I was immediately reminded of an earlier article of that same name. Varda Burstyn's "Breeding Discontent" was first published in the June 1993 issue of Saturday Night;...

Library of progress.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... I've been meaning to get around to this for quite some rime, but a story in your most recent issue, or more accurately its author, served as a reminder. I would like to sponsor a subscription to This Magazine for my former high school, whether...

No afternoon delight.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... If you continue to run articles like "My Afternoon with Sherwin Tjia" by Lee Henderson (web-only feature, Nov/Dec 2003), I can assure you that your magazine will simply go under. Is there no way of having young people write without being so...

Democratic imperative.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... It is encouraging to see your desire and ability to avoid commercial dependence to assert your journalistic objectivity: "if we want better democracy, we need better media," (This Magazine Fundraising drive, December 2003). Of course, this...

Tell us what you think.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Send love letters, hate mail and everything in between to editor@thismagazine.ca, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #396, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3Ag or fax to 416-979-1143. Please include your name and daytime phone number. Sometimes we edit...

The revolution will not be televised ... literally.(This & that: information, insight & innovation)
March 1, 2004... Last November, the B.C.-Yukon division of Amnesty International held a small film festival on human rights in Vancouver. But one film listed on the schedule didn't get screened. Amnesty pulled a documentary about the 2002 coup attempt against...

A winning team?(This & That)
March 1, 2004... As he assembles his election team to challenge the Liberals, federal NDP Leader Jack Layton smells blood in the water. Just a few months into office, Paul Martin is losing his grip on the left wing of the Liberal Party. While left Liberals...

Amoral authority.
March 1, 2004... The continuing controversy surrounding police raids at B.C. legislative offices raises some extremely disturbing questions about Prime Minister Paul Martin. While most of the national media tried desperately to avoid this conclusion, the most...

Soldiers of misfortune: whatever happened to the military-industrial complex?(This & That)
March 1, 2004... I was a peace activist long before I became an economist. My very first political act, back in Grade II, was to help my girlfriend circulate a petition against the arms race. When Pierre Trudeau sent back a form letter to each student who...

The hamburger thief.(This & That)
March 1, 2004... James Scott McLeod has served two weeks of a five-week jail sentence at the maximum-security provincial prison in Kamloops. His crime? Breaking a court order to stay out of restaurants. Last winter, McLeod's Failure to pay for a hamburger,...

Red chamber blues.
March 1, 2004... Of all the "legacy" items bequeathed by former Prime MinisterJean Chr,tien, none has left as much of a mark as his record on patronage. "Da Boss," as party insiders sometimes called him, doled out approximately 3,600 positions in courts,...

Spit ball.
March 1, 2004... When Mary MacDonald fired off an email to her local MP expressing her dismay over a $700-a-plate Liberal fundraiser last December, she didn't expect to hear from the RCMP. But the Halifax single mother's email immediately set-off-alarm bells...

The cost of cars.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Smog. Sprawl. Congestion. Canadians are well acquainted with the social and environmental impact of-automobile use in our society, but they might be surprised at the price tag. When you total up the expenses relating to land use, emissions,...

The good fight.
March 1, 2004... LIKE MANY OF MY GENERATION, I FIRST WOKE UP TO THE urgency of politics through the peace movement. It was 1998:. Ronald Reagan was president of the United States and Pierre Trudeau had just signed an agreement allowing our southern neighbour to...

Peace nix: for decades, progressives have been entirely identified with the peace movement. But as Jeet Heer points out, pacifism isn't the left's only political legacy.
March 1, 2004... DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR, THE ARMIES OF I the major European powers were clogged in hellish trenches along the front line separating Germany from France. For four painful years, more than nine million soldiers were killed in a war of...

Taking sides: after the siege of Sarajevo, the rules of peacekeeping changed forever. A memoir from the front lines.
March 1, 2004... BY THE TIME CANADIAN NAVAL CAPTAIN BARRY EREWER CAME TO Sarajevo in late September 1992, the Bosnian war was becoming normal. We were already numb to many of its gruelling and traumatic aspects: file shelling, the daily water-fetching trips,...

Open secret's: a former CIA agent proves that military intelligence doesn't have to be an oxymoron.
March 1, 2004... MINUTES AFTER THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE WAS HIT the morning of September 11, 2001, Robert Steele jumped into action. In his basement office just outside Washington, D.C., he started banging out a press release. The WTC's south tower collapsed as...

The art of war.
March 1, 2004... ALLAN MACKAY IS A CANADIAN ARTIST AND CURATOR originally from Charlottetown, P.E.I. He has been the director of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Saskatoon's Mendel Art Gallery, and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery of...

My scythed fingers.
March 1, 2004... FINGERS ARE NOT TRAINED TO FOLIOW THE things they drop. Where are your fingers? I lost mine, years ago, in a dispute. I was walking out of my ramshackle hut in the foreign village, where I was regularly harassed and composted, when I ran into a...

Un Translator.(Poetry)
March 1, 2004... UN TRANSLATOR At the International Convention the English frog said, "Ribbit ribbit" and the Spanish frog said, "Croac, croac" to which the Bulgarian frog replied, "Qvac qvac. Qvac, qvac." Outraged, the Mayan...

It Could Have Been Mad Chicken.(Poetry)
March 1, 2004... IT COULD HAVE BEEN MAD CHICKEN United States researchers discovered that cows, unlike other animals, had developed a universal language. "Moo," said the cow in England. "Moo," replied the cow in India. ...

Simply read.
March 1, 2004... Alice Burdick lives on Grimm Road near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Her most recent book is Simple Master (Pedlar Press). Her poetry has been published by many small presses and magazines, including BookThug, Proper Tales Press, Push-Machinery, dig,...

Enter the Dadabase: Ignacio Corral and Mo Salemy, founders of Dadabase Store.(Arts & ideas: this is independent culture)
March 1, 2004... Bake sales and 12-step meetings need not apply: Dadabase Store, located at the corner of Main and Broadway in Vancouver, is not your average community centre. It's a community centre of the future, meeting the material needs of artists,...

Poetic injustice: bards barred from awards.(Arts & Ideas)
March 1, 2004... WHEN THE COLLECTIVE CULTURAL WISDOM THAT IS THE National Magazine Awards Foundation announced recently that they were dropping poetry from their slate of some 34 high-profile writing prizes, the nation gasped. The ensuing uproar from all...

London calling.(Arts & Ideas)
March 1, 2004... In a world where computers double in speed every 39 seconds and movies have more special effects than actors, it's nice to know that there are still a few people who like their electronic art a little rough around the edges. No Frequency Media...

The Unicorns, Who Will Cut Out Hair When We're Gone? (Alien8/Sonic Unyon).(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Just when you think pop/rock music has become tired, lame and predictable, a band like Montreal's The Unicorns comes along and gives you hope. Standard song structure be damned, there's none of that here. The Unicorns take the...

The Gay, You Know the Rules (Mint Records).(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... It might be easy to dismiss The Gay as just another Vancouver indie rock supergroup. They've got members from Maow, Superconductor and The Tennessee Twin. Their debut album You Know The Rules was produced by Kurt Dahle, drummer for another...

Jim Guthrie, Now, More Than Ever (Three Gut).(Sound Recording Review)
March 1, 2004... Toronto-based singer-songwriter, critics' darling and Royal City guitarist Jim Guthrie deserves all the accolades and adjectives he gets. His third album is simple, understated, lo-fi genius. Now, More Than Ever's charm lies in the combination...

Hero worship.(Arts & Ideas)(All My Friends are Superheroes )(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... In moments of frustration, irritation or even admiration, most of us exaggerate the traits of others: "he's the laziest man in the world," or "she has the most beautiful face I've ever seen." Andrew Kaufman's novel, All My Friends Are...

Moriah.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... by David George Taylor (BuschekBooks) Moriah is a collection of four stories by David George Taylor. In "The Swans," two young drifters ride the rails with a pair of elderly hobos on their last trip. In "The Spy," the Gestapo threatens the...

Forever Young: the 'Teen-Aging' of Modern Culture.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... by Marcel Danesi (University of Toronto Press) Take a look around and you see adults listening to Eminem or reading the latest Harry Potter book while standing in line to see the new Lord of the Rings film. Our culture has become...

Wake.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... by Melanie Cameron (The Muses' Company) Melanie Cameron's wake explores both the fullness and emptiness of memory. These capacious, long poems play with form--long and short lines, abrupt line-breaks and repetition of images and phrases to...

The other gulf: prof. Katherine Meyer finds that pushing democracy doesn't always produce allies.(Question Authority)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY SPREADS democracy on the world the way a farmer spreads fertilizer on a field. And while critics might say it stinks, the U.S. government believes it is sowing democratic seeds that will yield a bumper crop of new allies...