This Magazine articles from March 2006

This Magazine archives from March 2006

Alberta the safe.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... In response to "Alberta the Good" (September/October 2005), Alberta is also the first province in Canada to have established (at least be in the process of establishing) a road safety plan for the province. As guest editor for Canadian Civil...

Culture blues, persuasion.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... One thing I didn't see properly addressed at This Magazine's recent panel discussion ("Now Showing!" featuring a talk with filmmakers Katerina Cizek, Andrea Dorfman, Ruba Nadda, Clement Virgo, moderated by Terence Dick, November 30, The...

A generation's legacy.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
March 1, 2006... My parents' lives were shaped by the turmoils of 1960s America: the Vietnam War and the legal hurdles of family planning. My brothers, twins, were born on an army base in Oklahoma and my mother recalled to me the army matron who would...

Gone buggy: Michael Strutt gives binning a new beginning.(THIS & THAT: INFORMATION, INSIGHT & INNOVATION)(shopping cart for recyclables)
March 1, 2006... The thesis projects of industrial design students at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver tend to have a humanitarian bent--they've come up with pill containers that are easier for the elderly to open and hydration systems for...

Tiny tech: it's a nano world after all.(THIS & THAT: INFORMATION, INSIGHT & INNOVATION)(nanotechnology)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Last month Canadian researcher Ted Sargent was named one of Scientific American magazine's 50 award winners for 2005 for his groundbreaking work in nanotechnology. The University of Toronto professor has developed a sprayable material that can...

Drink outside the box: uberbrewers put culture in a keg.(THIS & THAT: INFORMATION, INSIGHT & INNOVATION)(uberculture)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Organizing free political film screenings, publicizing the impacts of Wal-Mart coast-to-coast and campaigning against polluting ad trucks are just a few examples of what uberculture, a nonprofit collective committed to reclaiming culture from...

House of sonnets.(THIS & THAT: INFORMATION, INSIGHT & INNOVATION)(poets and politics)
March 1, 2006... Shelley once called poets the "unacknowledged legislators of the world." An unfortunate typo, he actually meant to write "word," keeping "the world" the sole responsibility of our trusted politicians. Ever since then, there's been a blurring...

Progressive detective: investigating the politics behind everyday things.(THIS & THAT: INFORMATION, INSIGHT & INNOVATION)(women's deodorants)
March 1, 2006... Q: Why are there no deodorants for women that don't have antiperspirant too? Strangely, of the dozens of mainstream deodorant lines for women on drugstore shelves, all contain antiperspirants as well. This stinks for women who want to turn...

We built this city on urban sprawl: how to make Cowtown come downtown.(THIS & THAT: INFORMATION, INSIGHT & INNOVATION)(Calgary Urban Intitiative)
March 1, 2006... It's a snowless December night in Calgary and there's just a hint of chill in the air as I wander down quiet streets, jacket open. I'm on my way to Broken City, a deliberately ramshackle bar on Eleventh Avenue where I've arranged to meet a...

Stats can't: Terence Dick was numbed by the numbers game.(MEDIA)(Canadian federal election)
March 1, 2006... ON ELECTION NIGHT, AFTER SOMEHOW reconciling myself to the notion that a Conservative minority can't be all that bad, I tried to make sense of the evening's proceedings. Five hours of fractally split screens spitting numbers on a constantly...

Your bank name here: Ellen Russell explores the possibility of merger mayhem.(ECONOMICS)
March 1, 2006... Shhh! For years the bank merger lobby lay low, waiting for an auspicious moment to push. With such resounding silence on the matter, one possible downside to bank mergers has almost entirely slipped under the public's radar. But policy...

Silenced majority: politics as if women matter.
March 1, 2006... IN THE GUT-WRENCHING PLAY BETWEEN Harper, Martin, Layton and Duceppe, and throughout the depressing slide towards a Conservative government and its possible women-harming policies, one undisputed certainty could be discerned amongst the...

A gap in the movement: should young women revive Canada's near-dead national feminist body?
March 1, 2006... IF YOU'VE SPENT MORE THAN 45 MINUTES IN MY COMPANY, you have likely heard me say one of the following: "Muriel Duckworth told me that anything worth doing is worth doing badly, and she is a 97-year-old Nobel Peace Prize nominee. She didn't...

Collateral damage: Agent Orange, the deadly chemical used by the US military during the Vietnam War, was tested right here in Canada. But for almost 30 years, it was also sprayed on our home turf--and the locals are still feeling the effects. This Magazine talks to the New Brunswick individuals who have mounted a case for compensation against the government of Canada.
March 1, 2006... If he hadn't gotten soaked in Agent Orange every day, Robyn Gregory would have had a pretty cool summer job. At 21, Gregory and his buddies rode Muskeg tractors spraying every power line in New Brunswick with 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D--the carcinogenic...

The rap battles: the double standards of Canadian media don't add up to 50 Cent. Probing the language of our panicked press, there's "Just A Lil Bit" of bias.
March 1, 2006... Like many in the Canadian media, Rex Murphy doesn't get hip hop, but he certainly seems to know a thing or two about finger-pointing. Gangsta rap has been around in its present form for almost two decades. Society has yet to implode. These...

Cool.(Fictional work)
March 1, 2006... Everything started the day Eva walked into Miss Waverly's School of Dance. It was a couple of weeks into the year already, too late for new students, but Eva's mother came in waving a gold credit card and wouldn't take no for an answer. She...

Heat.(3 POEMS)(Poem)
March 1, 2006... Heat All the polar bears in this town drink gasoline. It's in their pee, too, they think, how they can escape the accumulation of matches & lighters-- the fires to come and to dream their...

The Warm Black Sky.(3 POEMS)(Poem)
March 1, 2006... The Warm Black Sky When the sparrow strikes the clear pane it is afraid and strange and then elated too mistaking its fall into the warm black sky for its mother's wings.

Bodies.(3 POEMS)(Poem)
March 1, 2006... Bodies Once upon a time The world becomes a rust machine Not the earth. God at the gears-- I walk through showers of sparks and red rain In the monochromatic forests of-- The mother writes a book, I hear, ...

The garden of Eden & Ivan: long an inspiration for local writers, East Van isn't what it used to be.(ARTS & IDEAS: THIS IS INDEPENDENT CULTURE)(East Vancouver)(Eden Robinson)(Ivan E. Coyote)
March 1, 2006... IF THERE HAS BEEN A CONSTANT IN Canadian literature, it has been place. Chalk it up to our history of explorers, pioneers and immigrants; the examples are everywhere. East coasters have writers like Wayne Johnston and Alistair MacLeod. Anyone...

Fatter, hairier, uglier, scarier: what happens when artist Allyson Mitchell wields her glue gun?(PROFILE)(Interview)
March 1, 2006... What Two 10-foot-tall lady Sasquatches Who Allyson Mitchell, artist Where Mitchell's airy, furry, earth-toned studio at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto When and Why 1978 "I remember being bored when I was a kid,...

Hear this: off the beaten track.(ARTS & IDEAS: THIS IS INDEPENDENT CULTURE)(I'm a Mountain)(Go Out and See)(The Observer)(Sound recording review)
March 1, 2006... Sarah Harmer, I'm a Mountain (Universal) Sarah Harmer's recent album, I'm a Mountain, is a collection of country and bluegrass melodies that emulate the warm sound of country masters like Townes Van Zandt or Emmylou Harris. In her fourth...

Against the New Authoritarianism: Politics after Abu Ghraib.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Against the New Authoritarianism: Politics after Abu Ghraib By Henry Giroux (Arbeiter Ring Publishing) The latest book from Henry Giroux--the intellectual refugee who recently traded Penn State for McMaster in a bid to escape the "fear,...

A Good War Is Hard to Find.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... A Good War Is Hard to Find By David Griffith (Soft Skull Books) The Jam once ambivalently sang, "A smash of glass and the rumble of boots, an electric train and a ripped up phone booth, paint splattered walls and the cry of a tom cat,...

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives Compiled by Frank Warren (HarperCollins, ReganBooks) Confession: I read the postcard you wrote your ex-girlfriend. I know you trashed your parents' house while they were away so...

Sooner.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Sooner By Margaret Christakos (Coach House Books). With her sixth collection of poetry, Sooner, Margaret Christakos offers up prismatic threads from a perceptual apparatus as delighted by the abstraction, contraction and resemblance of...

Body commodification: Karen Darricades explores how women are always cordoned off from medical science.(BACK STORY)
March 1, 2006... OF THE MORE THAN 200 human body parts roaming the globe in Dr. Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds and Body Worlds 2 The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies, only six of the 25 whole body specimens are of the female sex, despite the fact...