This Magazine articles from May 2006

This Magazine archives from May 2006

In harm's way.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Thank you for doing a very well-rounded story on the Agent Orange ("Collateral damage" March/April) issue at CFB Gagetown. This is, as you know, a continuing story as we continue to fight the government for acknowledgement that they did this,...

A tiny bit of caution.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... In your cover story of your March/April 2006 issue ("Collateral damage"), Chris Arsenault writes about how Monsanto's Agent Orange and other similar chemicals were routinely sprayed in New Brunswick from 1956 to 1984, by people who "were told...

Pardon me?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Just a quick note on Dave Morris' article "The rap battles" (March/April). Just because 50 Cent happens to hum out some tunes in the chorus does not take away from the fact that he is extremely monotone (along with most West Coast gangster...

Bridging the gap.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I would like to thank you for printing Audra Williams' "A gap in the movement" (March/April). Her thoughts and words provided me with a sense of relief. I too feel that there is a large gap in the women's movement. Audra's article allowed me to...

Too clever by half.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I enjoy This Magazine--in Fact, I thought the March/April issue was one of your best. But I have two bones to pick. One: Ron Nurwisah begins his article about East Van writers by stating that a constant in Canadian literature has been place....

Celebrate your local.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Re: your March/April article on "uberbru" ("Drink outside the box") and microbreweries, we live lo minutes away from Windsor's microbrewery. I don't know if they carry uberbru, but they do have products that win prizes and contain no...

Update!(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Since our last issue went to press, new figures have emerged that rank Canada 45th in the world with respect to the number of women in parliament, down from 42nd. The United Kingdom and United States both dropped one place to, respectively,...

Correction.(Correction notice)
May 1, 2006... Our apologies to Suzanne McCann, whose name was spelled incorrectly in our last issue ("Collateral damage" March/April).

A brew of their own: fair trade coffee reveals its feminine side.(THIS & THAT: INFORMATION, INSIGHT & INNOVATION)
May 1, 2006... A NEW BRAND OF COFFEE IS CATCHING THE ATTENTION OF FAIRtrade consumers across Canada--one produced exclusively by women in the mountainous Andes of Northern Peru. Both product and project, enterprise and experiment, Cafe Femenino is...

Minding the modern: why Halifax's newer buildings deserve respect too.(THIS & THAT)
May 1, 2006... OLD AND NEW CLASH CONSTANTLY IN HALIFAX, AS THE CURRENT DEBATE OVER A proposed 27-storey pair of twisting glass and steel towers proves yet again. Heritage defenders criticize the hotel-condo project's threat to harbour views and historic...

We're here ... and here ... and here ... getting your pride on across Canada.(THIS & THAT)
May 1, 2006... I ATTENDED MY FIRST GAY PRIDE PARADE IN OTTAWA IN 1995, when I was 18. I negotiated the sparse crowd of 550--according to official Ottawa Pride stats--shouting "we're here, we're queer, we're not going shopping!" The big parade was not yet...

Heed the Swede: transplanted cheese maker gets Exxon's goat.(THIS & THAT)(Arctic National Wildlife Refuge )
May 1, 2006... LAST SEPTEMBER, HANS-PETER STRAND packed up his house in the Swedish coal-mining city of Kiruna and headed west to Canada. After hearing about the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation's struggle to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) free...

How can I figure out what someone's preferred pronoun is if I don't know if they identify as a girl or a boy?(PROGRESSIVE DETECTIVE: INVESTIGATING THE POLITICS BEHIND EVERYDAY THINGS)(Brief article)(Column)
May 1, 2006... GENDER CAN BE COMPLICATED. Increased visibility of transgendered folk, transsexuals and those occupying a gendered place of their own creation increases the probability of potentially awkward social situations and pronoun gaffes. So how...

Blog log.(THIS & THAT)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... This Magazine brings you a window into the wonderful but overwhelming world of the blogosphere. This time around: Bike blogs for spring. While the most dedicated among us rode through the winter, warmer weather means that most cyclists are...

Asbestos reservations: Raven ThunderSky's fight for an outright ban.(THIS & THAT)(mesothelioma)
May 1, 2006... IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE A RARE FORM of cancer; barely pronounceable and definitely incurable, mesothelioma is diagnosed so seldom that it doesn't even make it to many Canadian health statistics. Yet it has taken half of Raven ThunderSky's...

Comrade Harper's one-percent solution: taking aim at the Tory tax cuts.(ECONOMICS)
May 1, 2006... The CONSERVATIVES MANAGED TO SURMOUNT THEIR PRO-business credentials and repackage themselves as friends of workers during the last election campaign. Now that is what I call an extreme makeover. How are the Conservatives planning to stand...

Neighbourhood watch: how cyberactivists keep the web's traffic moving.(MEDIA)
May 1, 2006... THIS PAST FEBRUARY, INTERNET BROKERS YAHOO!, MICROSOFT, Google and Cisco were called before the Committee on International Relations of the US House of Representatives and taken to task for aiding and abetting human fights violations...

We're going to Stalin world!: what's former Soviet republic to do with all those leftover statues? Build a theme park, of course.
May 1, 2006... THAT NOISE YOU HEAR is the dinging of alarm bells in the West, amid fears that Stalinism is on the march. Well, putting its boots on, anyway. In February of this year, the Russian city of Volgograd (the former Stalingrad) announced the imminent...

Farming it out: we promise guest workers many of the benefits Canadian citizens enjoy--until something goes wrong.
May 1, 2006... IT WAS THE THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER THAT HENK Sikking Jr. got the doctor's call. The 2g-year-old tulip farmer was getting ready to take his crew of Mexican migrant workers grocery shopping. The workers live on his property and get around with...

Haiti's high hopes.(economy and politics)
May 1, 2006... In Haiti it is said that beyond the mountains, there are more mountains. This saying reflects the experience of a country that first broke its shackles of slavery in 1804 only to face repressive reparation payments to France, a US occupation...

The Copyright Wars of 2017: how cut-and-paste culture turns kids into the enemy.
May 1, 2006... You're 17. You're busy with your computer, your pager, your cell phone. Doing what comes naturally. You play games. You share information. You explore, imagine and invent. You use the tools at hand. You cut, you paste, you copy, you surf, you...

Clown Queen.(POETRY)(Poem)
May 1, 2006... Clown Queen What you see here is a bunch of child-balloons bright-ribboned and deflated as puckered bellies, crow-winged and caught, flapping from wires, outside the window of a girl who let go. The...

Snow Suitor.(POETRY)(Poem)
May 1, 2006... Snow Suitor Snow is running through subways fast and slantwise as a train clattering a rice-spill of flakes onto faces. Under shivering tracks, small nests of curdled milk for a lying-in of mud-coloured mice. Snow...

The right hand man.(FICTION)(Short story)
May 1, 2006... MARTIN BUTLER, FRESHLY unemployed and trying to make a sandwich, was slicing cheese and tomato and bread as thinly as these things can be sliced by hand, but--rarely cutting clean through--ended up with lots of slivers and wet crescents that he...

Small victories: Pedlar Press publishes indie for 10 years and lives to tell about it.(ARTS & IDEAS: THIS INDEPENDENT CULTURE)(Beth Follett)(Interview)
May 1, 2006... NEARLY A DECADE AGO, WHEN PEDLAR PRESS WAS IN ITS infancy, Beth Follett used to cram herself, her inventory and her 70-something modern-dancer friend Doris into an inherited car and drive all over Southern Ontario looking for booksellers to...

Me Funny.(BOOKS)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Me Funny edited by Drew Hayden Taylor (Douglas & McIntyre) Inherent to the art of comedy is that it is difficult to pigeonhole. And that's just what Me Funny, a new anthology of Native humour writing, edited by award-winning playwright, author...

Iran Awakening.(BOOKS)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi with Azadeh Moaveni (Knopf Canada) When she was raped, tortured and murdered in her native country of Iran, Canadian photo journalist Zahra Kazemi's cruel fate revealed to Canadians the injustice that pervades the...

Strike/Slip.(BOOKS)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Strike/Slip by Don McKay (McClelland & Stewart) Perhaps Canada's greatest living poet, Don McKay offers his first new collection since the amazing (GG-winning) Another Gravity (2000). Where Another Gravity seemed (roughly) to be about the...

Suffering for one's art is romantic, but it's still suffering.(ARTS ARGUMENT)(need for more grants to artists in Canada)
May 1, 2006... THE LIBRARY AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, University of Toronto, contains a collection of Canadian first editions previously owned by the late great Canadian poet Al Purdy. Visitors to the library can flip through Purdy's books and enjoy all the...

Blim bounces back: Vancouver arts space finds a new home.(ARTS & IDEAS)
May 1, 2006... ON ANY GIVEN AFTERNOON AT BLIM, AN ARTS SPACE LOCATED in the heart of Vancouver's culturally booming Main Street, you'll find knitters, silk-screeners or sound artists working away at their projects. There's a tiny art gallery at the back but...

Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Mint Records).(MUSIC)(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Mint Records) On her first studio album in four years, honorary Canadian Neko Case saddles-up with some of this country's most celebrated musicians, and the results are unexpectedly disappointing. Fox...

Various Artists, See You On The Moon! Songs for Kids of All Ages (Paper Bag Records).(MUSIC)(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Various Artists, See You On The Moon! Songs for Kids of All Ages (Paper Bag Records) Having already helped frame the hipster aesthetic, indie scene-shaper Paper Bag Records is now after your small children. See You On The Moon! Songs for Kids...

Bald as I wanna be: Lisa Whittington-Hill explores why we still won't let our hair down when it comes to bald women.(BACK STORY)
May 1, 2006... WHEN V FOR VENDETTA WAS RELEASED, THE FILM GENERATED some controversy. Can a terrorist really be a hero? Can thoughtful political commentary on life in a post 9-11, Orwellian state really sell at the box office or would moviegoers rather see...