This Magazine articles from November 1996

This Magazine archives from November 1996

Blood from a stone: the Red Cross Society closes a donor clinic to keep out gays.
November 1, 1996... The Canadian Red Cross hit the wrong vein in its October blood drive at McGill University. The organization collected only half its target of 1,400 units after it shut the clinic early - just to keep out gay students. The fiasco began with...

Name that territory.
November 1, 1996... What do you call a stretch of tundra that's east of the Yukon, west of the soon-to-be Inuit-governed territory of Nunavut, and north of pretty much everything else? Good question. When Nunavut is formally created in 1999, there'll be a...

Black + white.
November 1, 1996... This fall, JAMES WINTER released Democracy's Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News, attacking corporate media for undermining democracy in Canada. He argued that mass layoffs - driven by profit - are ruining newspapers and crushing...

Straw vote: by running after elections, Reform and the NDP become more alike all the time.
November 1, 1996... I'm not sure if it's numb panic or nagging despair, but I get the strangest feeling when I vote. For the last several years, I've suffered from civic ennui whenever I've gone to the polls - the existential feeling that somehow the whole voting...

Home improvement: Manitoba's bid to privatize home care hit a strike that wouldn't give.
November 1, 1996... Ashern is a town of 700 in Manitoba's Interlake region - marginal farmland a little more than an hour's drive northwest of Winnipeg. It's not a place where one would expect shop owners to advertise their support for a public-service strike. ...

Labour's dirty secret: they're voting conservative, and hotly oppose affirmative action.
November 1, 1996... At first glance, David Mackenzie easily fits the mould of the committed, left-wing labour activist. When I visit him at the Toronto headquarters of the United Steelworkers of America, where he's a senior staffer, his office walls are draped...

Isn't it ironic? ... the slickest new nationalism is in the latest wave of beer ads.
November 1, 1996... A commercial for Labatt Blue appearing on television at the height of this summer's beer season: Opening shot: Two scruffy-looking explorer types canoe along a river in a rocky, pine-strewn wilderness. The title tells us this is "Somewhere...

Land of opportunity: in its quest to court "high skill" immigrants, does Canada give a false picture of our job market?
November 1, 1996... Last year, Krupanand Kesavalu had a typical yuppie family and lifestyle in India. Kesavalu, a highly qualified chartered accountant, owned a successful tax-consulting firm, a nice house, a car and all the money he needed to live the good life...

Plots of land: rural Asian writing is giving the hinterland a facelift.
November 1, 1996... When world-famous naturalist and writer Farley Mowat was critiqued by John Goddard in the May 1996 issue of Saturday Night Magazine, a tremor ran through the edifice of Canadian Culture. Would Farley Mowat, the kilted mogul of the outback, be...

Gimme a break: left-wing groups are losing their charitable status, as Revenue Canada leans right.
November 1, 1996... (Last spring, Revenue Canada auditors descended on Briarpatch - a small, left-wing Saskatchewan magazine published by a charitable foundation called Briarpatch, Inc. Their question: should the journal continue to be allowed to call itself a...

Busted: okay, I inhaled -- and went to court for it. But it still didn't feel quite like a crime.
November 1, 1996... It is February, it is freezing, and I am immersed in another night of the glamour of independent rock. I am in London, Ont., where my band is playing an average dive: the kind of place that, for reasons known only to the patrons, appeals to...

ballad for nomads.
November 1, 1996... my close compatriot the leaves are falling and I don't know where to turn. oh my compatriot the leaves have fallen and I haven't even asked, did you see the trees? as fall comes and goes colours burn in our eyes, leaves...

I guess you could put it that way.
November 1, 1996... let's say yes everything is falling into accordance and the skies couldn't have smiled more brightly -- say this and be done with it for there's very little else except knowing there are times when you've unwittingly ...