This Magazine articles from March 2009

This Magazine archives from March 2009

Colour, commentary.(agenda)
March 1, 2009... This issue marks the unveiling of a redesigned This Magazine. In our more than 40 years of publishing, This has sported many different looks, and this is just one more step in that evolution. The most obvious difference that regular readers...

Further fur furor.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... Reading "Pelted with abuse" (Nov/Dec 2008), I was immediately struck by the one-sided perspective offered here. Were Melissa Wilson to have delved into the fur industry's claims, she would, in fact, have likely come away from them with a much...

No porno without politics.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... I was glad to see an article on pornography in This Magazine, because it's an important issue in contemporary society ("The New Face of Porn," Nov/Dec 2008). However, I was disappointed when I reached this passage: "The idea that feminism...

Reaction to our reactionary rhetoric.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... When you say that "In a true financial calamity it's always the little guys who get it worst," how are you defining "calamity" and "worst?" ("The Trickle-up crisis," Nov/Dec 2008) Because for a magazine that has propounded an ideal of "zero...

The mysterious 'Craig'.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... Clearly "Blogging is so 2008" (Jan/Feb 2009), sophomoric and boring as the other examples the writer mentions, hasn't even been properly edited, given that in the last paragraph there's mention of a "Craig" character who hasn't even previously...

Corrections.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... "Reclaiming reality" (Jan/Feb 2009) said oilsands production was projected to go from 1.26 to 2 billion barrels per day; it should have read "millions." In addition, the accompanying photo on page 7 was credited to Matt Jones; it should have...

Ken Lewenza: road warrior: he's in the CAW driver's seat--but where's he going?(Interview)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When Ken Lewenza became president of the Canadian Auto Workers last September, he had no idea it would soon be begging for government loans--$14 billion in the U.S. and $3.4 billion in Canada--to stay afloat. Lewenza...

A shot in the arm for boys: they're often unwitting carriers of HPV, so why no vaccinations?(SPOTLIGHT)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Last November, the findings of the first study on boys and Gardasil the vaccine that protects girls from four types of human papillomavirus--were released by pharmaceutical giant Merck. The good news is it works,...

Land of the lost: Canada finally restores citizenship to thousands stripped of their status.(EASILY MISSED)
March 1, 2009... On April 17, thousands of "Lost Canadians" will finally have the opportunity to claim their long-denied Canadian citizenship, thanks to Bill C-37. Intended to restore citizenship to those stripped of their nationality without their consent or...

Strong feelings on ... proportional representation.
March 1, 2009... We're loving Fair Vote Canada... The brainchild of three concerned citizens, Fair Vote Canada is devoted to reforming Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system. Formed in 2000, it currently has members in every province from across...

What's the greenest diaper choice?(PROGRESSIVE DETECTIVE)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The diaper issue is a messy one, especially since your baby will demand 5,000 to 7,000 changes before his second birthday. Currently, 85 percent of Canadian parents use disposable diapers, making them the...

Help wanted: need EI? Three words: location, location location.(CALCULATOR)
March 1, 2009... Consumer confidence and stock values might be dropping, but there's one number that's on the rise: Canada's unemployment rate. As more Canadians start turning to Employment Insurance, we got to wondering about the specifics. EI schemes vary...

WTF?(this & that)
March 1, 2009... There might be a black man in the White House but one Dartmouth, N.S., Shopper's Drug Hart is still stuck in the pre-civil rights era. It keeps certain products aimed at, and popular with, the black community--such as do-rags and black hair...

FTW.(this & that)
March 1, 2009... Each year about 100 million sharks have their fins cruelly hacked off--and are then thrown back into the ocean to slowly die--for shark fin soup. So we were shocked to hear that in January. certain Great Canadian Superstores started stocking...

It's not easy bein' clean.(SPRING CLEANING)
March 1, 2009... Our homes are filled with substances used to clean, disinfect, and deodorize. But while these products may wipe the dirt away, they potentially leave us with real health and environmental problems. Let's look at the ways they do this. and what...

The road to Damascus: our own security forces sold out these men. It could happen again.(SECURITY)
March 1, 2009... Will anyone be held accountable for Canada's now well-documented pattern of systemic complicity in torture? More than four months have passed since the Iacobucci Inquiry's public report confirmed that Canadian agencies were complicit in...

Baffled at the ballot box: if our electoral system seems screwy, that's because it is.(POLITICS)
March 1, 2009... In 1864, Thomas Hare argued at the Association Internationale pour le Progres des Sciences Sociales meeting in Amsterdam that proportional representation-in which parliamentary seats are awarded based on political parties' share of the popular...

No country for old men: baby boomers: drop the watercolours, back away slowly.(DEMOGRAPHICS)
March 1, 2009... In last spring's flimsy caper comedy Mad Money, an uneasy truth lingered beneath the slapstick thievery and rolling-in-greenbacks hijinks: the fabled baby boomers, now hitting their early 60s, have no idea how to deal with the diminishing...

The colour of money: marketers will slap the "green" label on just about anything. Don't be fooled.(MARKETING)
March 1, 2009... I have no qualms with calling myself a conscious consumer. If there's a label, I read it. If there's not, I ask. I like to know what's in the products I buy, where they come from, and who made them. I care about the price, sure, but I also care...

Consistency.(Four poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2009... Consistency When the soldiers came in their armoured vehicle they gave the little Muslim boys candy bars. They gave pieces of candy bars to barking or tail-wagging dogs. When the soldiers drove away, some of the boys ran...

Enjoy your meal.(Four poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2009... Enjoy your meal After I push the button to reheat a cup of coffee or a bowl of pasta, my microwave tells me: Enjoy your meal. But after I turn the dial to thaw something edible on Turbo Inverter Defrost, it does not tell me...

Scald.(Four poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2009... Scald Many years ago a farmwife lived with her husband, son and baby girl. One day, shifting pots on the stovetop for the men's dinner, she tipped a saucepan of boiling water off the stove onto the baby crawling on the ...

Bestseller.(Four poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2009... Bestseller My brother advised me to write a bestseller. That seemed like a good idea. The books I'd written had never sold well so I didn't know why it hadn't occurred to me to write a bestseller. Writing a...

Traffic jamming: around the world, cities are finding ways to drastically reduce, or even eliminate, car use. It could happen here too.
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In cities around the globe, World Carfree Day is a nice little break from the everyday. Every year on September 22, dozens of large cries shut down some of their main streets to traffic, leaving them open to...

What's in a sustainable community? It's impossible to have everything, but through his research, J.H. Crawford has compiled a list of the services a community must have in order for its citizens to be comfortable giving up their cars and taking transit to work and other necessary destinations. This list is a part of his blueprint for neighbourhoods in a car-free city.
March 1, 2009... A working sustainable community must have, within walking distance: (1) Bank, or at least an automated banking machine (2) Bike repair/rental/parking (3) Newspaper/tobacco/ variety store (4) Post office (5) Baker (6)...

Autoholics: Tim Falconer, author of Drive: A road trip through our complicated affair with the automobile proposes a 12-step program for breaking our addiction to cars.
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As individuals and as a society, we love our automobiles--even as we hate how they screw up our planet, our cities, and our lives. Environics Research Group, a Toronto based research firm, found that 32 percent of...

Your money or your life: in a country with supposedly universal coverage, some of the most vulnerable must pay cash for health care. It costs them their livelihoods--and sometimes their lives.
March 1, 2009... Dr. Paul Caulford will never forget what happened to Patricia. An 18-year-old girl from Grenada, she had an athletic build, black skin, and black hair cropped at her ears. She had come to Toronto at the age of 15 and her father had applied to...

Five pounds short and apologies to Nelson Algren.(fiction)
March 1, 2009... No one ever tells you not to fuck the monkey. Fuck with the monkey. Get fucked by the monkey. The monkey is filled with a selfish wrath, a vengeful will, a self-loathing so encompassing it eats at the fabric of others. And the preaching and...

Surprise of the machines.(postcard from: tokyo)
March 1, 2009... In North America, we barely notice vending machines. They dispense soft drinks, water, sometimes coffee (or laundry soap in laundromats). In Japan, however, vending machines have been elevated to a fine art. To an outsider, these machines,...

Worth a thousand words: Jillian Tamaki found that literary juries are still learning how to read graphic novels.(in profile)
March 1, 2009... Last year, on October 21, Jillian Tamaki got a phone call from her cousin, the Toronto-based writer-performer Mariko Tamaki. Their much-loved co-creation Skim had made history by becoming the first graphic novel nominated for a Governor...

Reading Michael Ignatieff: famous for his non-fiction, his novels tell a different story.(SPOTLIGHT)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One of the most overlooked aspects of interim Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff's carefully cultivated image of Renaissance man--teacher, TV personality, philosopher, and now politician--is that this polymath...

Please feed the birds: Calgary band is big in Europe, but home is where their hearts are.(LISTEN)
March 1, 2009... Woodpigeon may very well be the biggest Canadian band you've never heard of--literally and figuratively. The eight-member Calgary collective's wistful, lyrical alt-folk has been drawing capacity crowds and garnering deafening buzz in the U.K....

Let's get it on: Canadian fiction prefers the joinery of farmhouses-not farmhands.(BOOKS)
March 1, 2009... The preference among Canadian literary awards for historical fiction has created a national literature devoted to burlap sacking instead of life in the sack. The repeat shortlisting of historical fiction, in which a rural or foreign yesterday...

Found in translation: the web allows immigrants to straddle two worlds like never before.(WEB)
March 1, 2009... As in so many immigrant families, weekend mornings in my house always meant one thing: "our shows" on TV. We are of Indian descent, and the sounds of the latest Bollywood hits were a staple of our Saturdays and Sundays, as much a part of our...

The message is the medium: are emerging cut-and-paste art forms ruining narrative storytelling?(FILM)
March 1, 2009... Before my son Louis could walk, he could surf. He took to the internet like an aquatic creature, swimming easily and confidently. It was cute to see him perched at the computer, his big baby head topped off by a pair of giant headphones. But...

That's that.
March 1, 2009... "No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism.... Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened, and killed. It has been my honour to belong to...