This Magazine articles from May 1998

This Magazine archives from May 1998

Revolution is now.
May 1, 1998... The following is an excerpt from a speech by Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, delivered to the Canadian Club of Toronto in February. The speech was called Corporate Success, Social Failure, Corporate Credibility. The...

Conspiracy of silence.
May 1, 1998... I WAS ENJOYING THE PERFECT paranoid evening. Certain that my phone was tapped, sure that people were watching me and thanking god for Call DisplayTM, I was basically one joint short of lining my baseball cap with tin foil. I had rented...

Lockdown U.S.A.
May 1, 1998... WALKING BY THE STOREFRONT, you can't help but notice the padlocks: three dozen of them, shining against the backdrop of the massive steel plates that are locked to the windows of the building. At noon, it takes a man 10 minutes to pull the long...

Outlaw this: "speak no evil".
May 1, 1998... Soon after our cover story on the three-year-long legal battle between Friends of the Lubicon and multinational paper giant Daishowa was published, a decision favourable to the FoL was reached. In his judgment, Mr. Justice James MacPherson of...

Wheels of justice: "give 'em the gears" (Critical Mass).
May 1, 1998... The uneasy truce between Critical Mass cyclists and cars in Vancouver was busted recently when Vancouver police disrupted a February 27 ride and slapped more than 20 participants with tickets of up to $115. One officer at the scene threatened...

Free wheelin' (Victoria's Free Wheel Blue Bike Society).
May 1, 1998... MONDAY MORNING, VICTORIA, B.C.: Harry's alarm doesn't go off. He wakes up at 9:35; his job interview is at 10. He's missed his bus, so he sets out on foot in a futile attempt to be on time. He is hating Monday more than ever until...he spots a...

World according to Mel (Lastman).
May 1, 1998... 1969 Discount furniture salesman Mel Lastman decides to run for controller in North York. He argues that a business sense needs to be brought to local government and favours the amalgamation of the six Metro municipalities. His wife,...

Paper tiger: Winnipeg Free Press.
May 1, 1998... THE WINNIPEG FREE PRESS hit the national news this winter when local restaurant owners announced that they were going to ban the paper's restaurant critic, Marion Warhaft. The Free Press, appropriately enough, played up its role as a defender...

Some of my best friends work at the HRDC.
May 1, 1998... A RECENT OVERHAUL OF Human Resources Development Canada has mandated that it withdraw from labour market interventions. No longer able to do such tasks as retrain workers, HRDC has become the doddering tenured professor of government...

Membership has its privileges: the Amex slogan is a paean to inequality.
May 1, 1998... AMID THE GATHERING hype about the quintessence of the 20th century and the second millennium, something needs to be said about the nineties (a decade being, after all, the longest period of time that today's mind, saturated with news, gossip...

Dance with the devil: ... Toronto community workers are being conscripted as the new welfare cops.
May 1, 1998... THEIR PICKET SIGNS are blunt: NO FORCED LABOUR IN TORONTO and JOBS YES, SLAVERY NO! At high noon on a bleak mid-winter day, 20 protesters surround the entrance of a large building in Toronto's west end. Inside, several managers, alerted to the...

Work in progress.
May 1, 1998... When I photograph workers, I am often met with surprise and incredulity at my interest in them and their work. The workers view what they do as mere drudgery or just "hard work"--not the sort of glamorous activity that they associate with art....

Right wing is on drugs: how conservatives tuned in, turned on and took over the legalization debate in Canada.
May 1, 1998... PATRICK BASHAM'S been thinking a lot about drugs lately, which is something you can't really avoid when you live in Vancouver. As Canada's opiate and marijuana capital, Vancouver has the highest rate of HIV infection among intravenous drug...

Don't call us we'll call you: a primer on the Canadian telecommunications labyrinth.
May 1, 1998... IT WAS ONCE ARGUED THAT the telecommunications industry constituted a "natural monopoly." Competition was deemed "economically unfeasible" and, instead of market regulation, telecommunications around the world was subject to public regulation....

Against the grain: in 1974, when Kathleen Shannon founded Studio D.
May 1, 1998... The stories I'm about to tell in celebration of Kathleen Shannon's life and work are from a very personal point of view. I know that would have been just fine with Kathleen because she never believed in what she used to call the "Olympian myth...

Sun tan.
May 1, 1998... First one side, then the other. Then, a half hour later, over again. Face down. Face up. All morning, all afternoon. Lana was the talk of the poolside. Well, they talked about delis and flea markets and gallbladder infections, but that was just...

What's black and white and read all over?
May 1, 1998... Dear William Thorsell, Editor-in-Chief, The Globe and Mail We got your kind note of concern the other day. Thanks. You know, the one on the editorial page, about how a new generation needs to "define a functional left-wing vision for the...