This Magazine articles from November 2007

This Magazine archives from November 2007

Unite the left.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... Like your writer Scott Piatkowski, I'm a lefty ("Elizabeth May's Wild Ride," September/October). Unlike him, however, I've long been and remain a staunch Elizabeth May supporter. In my opinion, May has more integrity in her little finger than...

Whose promised land?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... I just wanted to thank you for the excellent cover story on apartheid Israel ("Tear clown that wall!" September/ October). However, contrary to the suggestion that the analogy is new, it is worth noting that Israel was recognized as an...

Clarification.(Correction notice)
November 1, 2007... The final letter to the editor that appears in the September/October issue was printed without a credit. The letter writer's name is Katie Nolan. She lives in Ottawa. Thanks to Ms. Nolan for her eloquent letter, and our apologies for the...

Stage fright.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
November 1, 2007... WHEN I MENTION in an email to This Magazine contributing editor and former playwright Jason Sherman that we are planning to do a theatre issue, his response is unequivocal, "Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!" We plan to meet, so he can intervene before...

Olympic objections: students for a Free Tibet take on China.(PROFILE)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ON THE EVE of the one-year countdown to the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, six members of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) headed up the Great Wall of China. Armed with rock-climbing gear and a...

Boxes for Jesus: Canadian students become unwitting Christian soldiers.(EASILY MISSED)
November 1, 2007... EVERY HOLIDAY SEASON, children from approximately 1,100 public and Catholic schools across Canada assemble shoeboxes packed with toys, school supplies and other items that have been donated by the students as part of Operation Christmas Child...

Hot and bothered: Inco vs. Moncton.(EASILY MISSED)
November 1, 2007... WITH DOLLAR SIGNS in their eyes and a fancy PowerPoint presentation, representatives from the mining company CVRD Inco entered a Moncton city council meeting this past July to sell city representatives on the idea of a local uranium mine. ...

Math is hard!(WTF?)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Thanks to a nine-year-old girl's refusal to take part in "Glamorous Girls" camp, Nova Scotians now know that their provincial tax dollars are funding gender-segregated programs for public school children. In the municipality of the district of...

I can see your house from here.(WTF?)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Google Maps has introduced a program that allows viewers to scan city streets through a series of photographs. Street View can produce some not-so-flattering images of pedestrians caught unaware, and Canada's privacy commissioner has said the...

Harper watch.(THIS & THAT)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] INDIGENOUS PEOPLES are often shafted by governments of colonizing nations, and Harper's Conservatives have proved yet again that Canada is willing to pay little more than lip service to Aboriginal rights. One of only...

How many Tofurkeys a layin'?!(GRAPHIC)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Last year, Canadians spent an average of $822 each on gifts for the holidays. This year, before you reach into your wallet to shell out big bucks for the latest iToy, consider the other (possibly better) ways that money could be spent. Happy...

Blind spot: why the accessible channel's vision is impaired.(ARGUMENT)
November 1, 2007... IN APRIL, a new Canadian specialty channel will make its debut. The Accessible Channel won't look any different from the others, but it will sound different to some. The Accessible Channel, developed for the blind and visually impaired, will...

Five reasons to oppose regional trade agreements.(LIST)
November 1, 2007... WITH THOUSANDS PROTESTING the proposed Security and Prosperity Partnership, it's easy to miss the fact that the provinces are also busy paving their own roads to massive deregulation. On April 28, the premiers of Alberta and British Columbia...

The hole truth: a success story and cautionary tale.(WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... THE HOLE IN THE OZONE LAYER?)
November 1, 2007... IN THE EARLY '80s, when scientists first noticed that levels of ozone over the Antarctic had depleted to just 30 percent of normal levels, they thought it was an instrument error. But a closer look revealed something shocking--a large hole in...

The Montebello mystery: are the pols and CEOs fiddling while the manufacturing sector burns?(ECONOMICS)
November 1, 2007... Remember way back in the summer when George Bush and Company were in that swanky hotel at Montebello discussing the Security and Prosperity Partnership? If you didn't get your invitation to that meeting don't feel bad: only a handful of top...

Crude awakening: why are environmentalists asleep at the tar sands wheel?(POLITICS)
November 1, 2007... Alberta's tar sands are on pace to become the largest industrial project in human history. The development will arguably become the single most environmentally destructive undertaking in Canadian history. The response from environmental groups...

Fish sticks these ain't: cooking lessons from the islands.(FOOD)
November 1, 2007... There's much to be learned about offbeat seafood from island dwellers, I learn during a chat with the cheery woman behind the Oceanna Seaplants table at the Charlottetown Farmers Market. She seems unusually well-informed about the nutritional...

Pulling strings, making trouble: from the productions of Dora-award winner Ronnie Burkett to the giants who populate protests, political puppets are acting up.
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] First, the sketch. Taking pencil to kraft paper, he draws the face, the body, the costume. Like a child at play, he becomes absorbed in the character, in the whole spectacular world he is creating. This is how each...

Scenes from my last play: why Governor General's Award winning playwright Jason Sherman is in television now.(Play)
November 1, 2007... SCENE 1. MY OFFICE AT HOME The stage is bare, except for a couple of pieces of worn, gaffer-taped furniture. I sit at my desk, typing a letter on a laptop computer. The letter, composed on email, is projected onto the back bare wall of the...

News from the stage: the Canadian curtain opens on reality theatre, as "verbatim" crosses the pond.
November 1, 2007... All revolutions in art, a philosopher once said, are made in the name of greater realism. If this is the case, an uprising in Canadian theatre is at hand. Verbatim theatre, a form of play where the scripts are compiled word-for-word from...

Crime scenes: prisoners at William Head penitentiary know their way around a stage. The prison's 26-year-old theatre program draws fire from right-wing critics, who think prisoners shouldn't be having fun. But arts programs can be more successful at rehabilitation than standard approaches. Why is it, then, that William Head is unique?
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, the prisoners packed into a prison gymnasium on Vancouver Island for the play rise to their feet cheering. It wasn't a pent-up desire for Shakespearean tragedy...

Great Canadian literary hunt 2007.(List)
November 1, 2007... Congratulations to the winners! POETRY WINNERS First Place The Butchers by J.S. MacLean Second Place Union Station by Dani Couture Third Place Smog Lies by Jamella Hagen FICTION SHORTLIST ...

The Butchers.(POETRY * 1ST)(Poem)
November 1, 2007... The Butchers The early winter's air was filled with one squeal so urgent, it had to be real. They grunted and slipped, faces puffing red, as they heaved the carcass onto a sled. They soaked the hide ...

Love will save the day.(FICTION * 1ST)(Short story)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The morning after Lia did not have sex with Ervine, his mother made crepes with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. They were the first crepes Lia ever tasted, and when she had eaten them, his mother offered her a glass...

Union Station.(POETRY * 2ND)(Poem)
November 1, 2007... Union Station I cannot love you all and I won't. The shoulder knows the will of the heart and its way around a crowd. The clam-soft give. The crack of the shell. Help me recognize your humanity--talk in a low slow...

Drink-play-drive-sleep.(FICTION * 2ND)(Short story)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] He's a man who was once handsome. Five years ago his green eyes meeting yours, brown, likely, or else blue, might have sent a shiver right through you: chest, fingertips, spine. He was a promising man, smooth-faced...

Smog Lies.(POETRY * 3RD)(Poem)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Midnight. Stray cats on the twisting streets of Seoul. She blows on her hands and feels a little death creep in. Behind the wall, sleeping soldiers, their barbed-wire dreams. Up the hill, persimmon trees, black and...

Civil wars.(FICTION * 3RD)(Short story)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nadia and Junie stood bare-naked and shivering. From Junie's bedroom closet Nadia heard Junie's mother ask the boys, "What are you kids up to?" "Showing movies," said Mark. Nadia couldn't make Junie's face...

Confronting class: renaissance activist takes it to the streets.(PROFILE)(Book review)
November 1, 2007... THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, first-year Simon Fraser University student Michael Barnholden dropped out of school. The social historian, poverty activist and poet says it was a political statement of a kind that still guides his work. "The fact is...

Up in arms.(MUSIC)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Winnipeg's Royal Albert Arms, the prairie version of New York's CBGB, will change hands this January after being sold to a developer--leaving the icon's future as a music venue uncertain. The decades-old punk-rock mainstay has launched the...

Press "1" to confess.(MULTIMEDIA)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... GUELPH MULTIMEDIA ARTIST Dawn Matheson was trudging home one night when she heard a woman confessing her disappointment with life to a friend in an alleyway. Matheson stopped to listen. "I recognized myself in her confession." she...

All the world's a stage.(THEATRE)(Theater review)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO, Crate Productions co-founder Chris Reynolds received an unlikely email from administrators at Fort York. Considered little more than a historic relic by most Torontonians, the downtown...

Forsaken.(READ THIS)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] LANA SLEZIC TRAVELLED to Afghanistan in 2004 with a "knapsack full of naivete"--a knapsack that included the belief that Afghan women were living in a post-burka and less oppressive environment. The horrors Slezic...

War, web style: evolution of a cyber-battlefield.(WEB)
November 1, 2007... Law professor and cyberspace legal expert David Post says the First Internet War was waged by Scientologists against their critics in 1991. While the skirmishes, major and minor, between the sci-fi religion and its debunkers were not much more...

Get your weep on: social-issue drama sells in Oscar season.(FILM)
November 1, 2007... Get ready for drama. Crazy drama. Crazy, heart-rending, hope-filling drama that, like Santa, comes just once a year--around the same time--and usually involves actors trying to broaden the scope of their repertoires. Get ready for Oscar season....

A tale of two realities: Americans take a page from the book of role reversal.(BOOKS)(Book review)
November 1, 2007... Through the reading glasses, America used to be such a fun place--the land of Saul Bellow, Dorothy Parker and Mark Twain, writers who knew how to mix in the absurdly comical with their dire warnings. By contrast, we Canadians have tended to...

Labour laws and protections: a not-so-illustrious history results in one question: how far have we come?(THEN & NOW)
November 1, 2007... 1872 As part of a widespread nine-hour-workday movement, printers strike Toronto papers. To almost everyone's surprise, it turns out that union activities are illegal, and union leaders are jailed for sedition. The Tory government quickly...