This Magazine articles from September 2000

This Magazine archives from September 2000

Bordering on paranoia (briefly reviews some sources of tension between Canada and U.S.).
September 1, 2000... IT'S A CLICHE THAT CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES ENJOY the world's longest undefended border. What this cliche conceals is the fact that neighbours can fear each other, without necessarily resorting to arms. Over the past 250 years, the...

Salvo (criticizes journalists as celebrities).
September 1, 2000... "WELL, DON'T YOU LOOK INTELLECTUAL." It was my mother on the phone, remarking on the photograph accompanying an article I had freelanced for The Globe and Mail. There I was, perched atop my prose, gazing pretentiously off into the distance....

Doctoring data (National Post quotes statistics out of context to suit ideology).
September 1, 2000... IF THERE ARE LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS, THEN THERE ARE liars, damned liars, and National Post headline writers. "POLL: 58% WOULD SCALE BACK MEDICARE" blared the Post's front-page headline on August 14. Shocking. But not surprisingly, it...

Slippery Dick (Canadian IOC VP Dick Pound criticizes corruption).
September 1, 2000... BACK IN ANCIENT GREECE, THE OLYMPICS were about discipline, excellence and fair competition in the pursuit of honour. Even so, political intrigue and the lure of money and fame sometimes overshadowed These noble goals--as they do today. Despite...

Go south, young brand (marketing to kids in developing countries).
September 1, 2000... IS SCAMMING THE ELDERLY OUT OF THEIR LIFE savings the most reprehensible occupation you can think of?. Think again. Think using child development research to market to kids, and you're getting warm. Think: selling the American dream, one...

Media merger predict-o-matic.
September 1, 2000... YOU THINK YOU'RE WATCHING THEM, BUT IN FACT THEY'RE WATCHING you. It seems the few broadcasting, publishing and entertainment companies left aren't satisfied with merely controlling the entire spectrum of news, information and entertainment...

Taking aim at (Bert) Archer.
September 1, 2000... I don't know who Bert Archer expects sympathy from. The author of a well-known book and of widely disseminated columns goes to a panel on queer identities and is challenged on a number of issues which, as it turns out, he is unwilling or unable...

Communist devolution: in the new Cuba, the revolution still lives, but capitalism rules.
September 1, 2000... In the new Cuba, the revolution still lives, but capitalism rules. Healthcare and education are free, but you need American dollars for just about everything else. WHEN YOU COME THROUGH THE ARRIVALS doors at Havana's international airport,...

Monumental tragedy: ... the new tomb on Parliament Hill ... does not honour history so much as it denies it.
September 1, 2000... HAVING EXITED, ESCAPED, FLED THE 20TH century--that butcher's block of a century, as it has been aptly called--this country chose, oddly, morbidly, to launch the 21st with a solemn ceremony in Ottawa in May. The exhumed remains of a Canadian...

I am anti-Canadian: Canada a caring, sharing nation? Not in my lifetime.
September 1, 2000... MY FIRST MEMORY OF FIREWORKS IS ALSO MY FIRST memory of Canada Day, and neither is any big whoop. The small crowd on the upper field of Beattie Elementary in Kamloops, B.C., grew tired of waiting for nightfall; in the dusk, someone lit the...

Accidental citizen: rethinking civic membership in the age of globalization.
September 1, 2000... IT IS A COMMON EXPERIENCE IN THIS, THE AGE OF casual multiculturalism. There I was, on a crowded 767, heading to London from Toronto, when I realized that nobody around me was speaking English--nobody at all, except the Quebecoise flight...

You're taking all the fun out of it.
September 1, 2000... HE USED TO WEAR SUITS. THESE SNAPPY-LOOKING slacks-and-blazer combos in rich chocolate browns, and blacks so black they were blue. He was a snappy talker too, always had a clever comeback for the neighbours or cashiers at the supermarket. Not...

Visitor.
September 1, 2000... Aunt Vie won't leave the house since their niece moved in. She wishes the girl had placed the diaphragm on the round knob of the cervix, but if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. Uncle Fin helps...

Not getting tongue.
September 1, 2000... "Si tu vois mon pays, mon pays malheureux..." --Antoine Gerin-Lajoie Downstream of Long Sault rapids where voyageurs portaged St. Lawrence onto shoreline farms before Loyalists or borders were here in childhood's...

Value of X.
September 1, 2000... IF ANYONE KNEW WHAT KIND OF GIRL JEANETTE (HENCEforth represented by J.) really was, they would have strung her from the flagpole of the school, J. was certain. She didn't know when it started. One day she was just casually looking around the...

Thirst.
September 1, 2000... WARM AND OVERCAST. FROM THE BRIDGE OF HIS fishing yacht about five miles out on the Atlantic, the old man could see the skyline of Miami. It looked like a convoy of battleships. Featureless, bland, formidable. The sea was calm but it sucked and...

What we sometimes mistake as love: the right hand of a pioneer radiologist, 1932.
September 1, 2000... it does not seem, on first inspection of the two black and white diagrams provided, human at all. if challenged, or confronted with a wager, you would guess it more reptilian, possibly avian, and certainly primitive in origin...

Blood relations: animals, humans, and politics.
September 1, 2000... Charlotte Montgomery's excellent BLOOD RELATIONS: ANIMALS, HUMANS, AND POLITICS (Between The Lines) is a good place to start rebuilding my gray muscle mass. A thorough, thoughtful, and very readable account of both the history and the present...

Walking in paradise.
September 1, 2000... After animals, the only creatures who remain more mysterious and yet ever present are those pesky bipeds called family. Libby Creelman's new collection of short stories, WALKING IN PARADISE (The Porcupine's Quill), goes to some extraordinary...

How did you sleep?
September 1, 2000... At first glance, Paul Glennon's book of short stories, HOW DID YOU SLEEP? (also The Porcupine's Quill) appears to be scuttling along the same crabby shoals as Creelman's collection. But a closer look betrays a kind of dreamy, suburban sci-fi...

Zines (Vancouver publication Heads carries drawings of white trash folk).
September 1, 2000... Digging through the white trash bin has never been a priority for sociologists. Few academics see value in peering beyond the mascara or peeling off those painted-on jeans. But there exists a secret history of the WASP underbelly that's more...

Trick or treat? (UNICEF drive undermined by Catholic Church's Aid to women).
September 1, 2000... HALLOWEEN CANDY AND ORANGE CARDBOARD UNICEF boxes go hand in hand like the matching costumes my brother and I used to wear--supergirl and superboy, witch and warlock, dead Molly Ringwald and dead George Michael. Alongside greedy shopping bags...