This Magazine articles from September 2002

This Magazine archives from September 2002

Book 'em. (Under The Hood).(censorship by Canada Customs)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... DIDEROT ONCE PONDERED, "WHO SHALL BE THE MASTER? THE WRITER or the reader?" These days, the writer and the reader don't stand a chance against our real masters, the Canada Customs official. Despite reprimands from the Supreme Court, they've...

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer. (Under The Hood).(banned in 1949 by the Minister of National Revenue, Canada)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... All right, Norman Mailer. This time, it's personal. By order of the Minister of National Revenue, The Naked and the Dead was banned in 1949, even though it had been a best seller for 10 months. The Minister was apparently one of the few...

Ulysses by James Joyce. (Under The Hood).(taken off Canada's prohibited imports list in 1949)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... In 1949--16 years after the U.S. cleared obscenity charges against it--Ulysses was finally taken off Canada's prohibited importations list. Prior to the decision, University of British Columbia English students received required reading lists...

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. (Under The Hood).(charged under obscenity law in 1960, Canada)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... In an age when Temptation Island 3 is in the works, the fuss this novel caused seems almost quaint. Originally titled Tenderness, it's about a woman who takes a lover when her husband returns from the war paralyzed from the--ahem--waist down....

The Diviners by Margaret Laurence. (Under The Hood).(banned books, Canada)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The history of challenges to The Diviners for its sex, adultery and four-letter words has made it The Catcher in the Rye of Canadian literature. In 1976, the principal of the high school in Laurence's hometown of Lakefield, Ontario, pulled The...

Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker. (Under The Hood).(censorship by Canada Customs)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... One of the many books targeted en route to lesbian and gay bookstores, (notably Little Sisters in Vancouver and L'Androgyne in Montreal) Empire of the Senseless was detained in November 1988 because it contains scenes of rape, incest and...

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. (Under The Hood).(seized by Canada Customs)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The Satanic Verses has prompted much shocking behaviour: book burnings, a fatwa and even an apology from Brian Mulroney. During Freedom to Read Week in 1989, Canada earned the distinction of being the only western democracy to seize The Satanic...

120 Days of Sodom by The Marquis De Sade. (Under The Hood).(book banned by Canada Customs)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... You know, he could have stopped at a 100 days. Maybe could have gotten away with 110, 115, tops. But oh, no. The Marquis had to go completely overboard and write 120 Days of Sodom. That kind of excess, my friend, will get you stopped at the...

Women on Top: How Real Life has Changed Women's Sexual Fantasies by Nancy Friday. (Under The Hood).(attempted book bannings, Canada)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... For this description to really work, it needs a Keystone Kops soundtrack to accompany it. In May 1997, acting on a hot tip from a call-in radio show, Winnipeg police order the Winnipeg Public Library to remove this bestselling book or face...

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. (Under The Hood).(Indigo! Books and Music Inc. pulls off shelves)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books, announced last November that her bookstore chain was pulling all copies of Mein Kampf from its shelves. Indigo, the largest book retailer in the country, will no longer sell or special order the book. The...

One Dad, Two Dads, brown dad, blue dads by Johnny Valentine. (Under The Hood).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... One Dad, Two Dads is one of the books that teacher James Chamberlain wants to use in his Grade 1 classroom, along with Asha's Mums and Belinda's Bouquet. The books are described as "colourful texts [that] cast a positive light on alternative...

Reality bytes. (Salvo).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... IF YOU WEREN'T ALREADY WARY OF TECHnologies described as "the next killer app," then brace yourself for Augmented Reality (AR). Strap a 26-pound computer on your back and a thick robot-visor over your eyes and you'll be on your way to...

No sweat, but ... (Red-Handed).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... PERUSING YOUR LOCAL ALT-WEEKLY, YOU MAY have noticed a giant ad for American Apparel, a sweatshop-free company that churns out stylin' duds. It sounded too good to be true, so I googled them and I was left scratching my head. Get this. Head...

Power corrupts: absolute power may corrupt absolutely, new research hints. (The Stock And Bond).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... THIS STARTLING REVELATION, ALONG WITH THE DISCOVERY THAT GOOD TIMES DON'T LAST FOREVER, IS SHAKING THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM TO ITS FOUNDATIONS. YOU MEAN, IT'S NOT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS? IF I CAN'T TRUST GREEDY, POWER-OBSESSED...

Working with labour. (Up Next).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... THE SUN IS RISING ON A CLEAR JUNE MORNING and 2,000 people are heading into four lanes of halted Calgary traffic. A bunch of anarchist-type anti-capitalists tilt their heads up to skyscrapers and shout: "Quit your jobs! Quit your jobs!" The...

Hey buddy, wanna buy a ... (How-To).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... SOME REALLY BIG FISH HAVE GONE BELLY-UP in the past few months. The collapse of General Distribution has hit the Canadian publishing industry pretty hard. Book and magazine publishers are scrambling to get possession of their back-stock and...

Counting the dead. (Chart).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... ON MAY 22, IRENA PLITZIK TOOK A DRIVE with her husband to the town of Rishon Letzion, near Tel Aviv. They had two passengers with them, 16-year-old Issa Bdeir, and 21-year-old Arina Ahmad. Bdeir got out of the car, walked into a park, and...

Eat this. (Letters).
September 1, 2002... To get your Heritage funding, do you have to promise to publish the comments of people like Gregory Boyd Bell? Gregory, Gregory, Gregory, you just don't get it. Let me pull the pants down on your quasi-high powered intellect and give you...

Fair comment. (Letters).
September 1, 2002... While belittling the efforts of those involved in protests, Gregory Boyd Bell gives few solutions other than to "participate" in elections ("The Great Democracy Drop Out," July/Aug). Although he touched on the need for proportional...

Food for thought. (Letters).
September 1, 2002... As the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Food Banks (CAFB), I turned with great interest to Kathryn Scharf's "Can a food bank change?" (May/June). We are always interested in new ideas that will help us better fulfill our...

Whoops!(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2002... In the last issue, the gorgeous photos of the Mondragon Cafe were taken by Jon Schledewitz. We spelled his name wrong in the photo credit. Check out his groovy website: www.kickittilitbreaks.com

Who's this.
September 1, 2002... Buffy Childerhose is a writer/broadcaster, a reformed spoken word artist and a nascent lie-catcher. Jacqui Clydesdale is a displaced maritimer working as an ESL teacher and editor in Toronto. In her junior high oratory contest, she won...

Heralding Innis: fifty years after the death of Harold Innis, Mel Watkins reflects on the continuing relevance of one of this country's finest scholars: Innis Memorial Column. (Economics).(Brief Article)(Column)
September 1, 2002... NEVER PASS UP THE CHANCE TO PRAISE THE deserving--especially those who are not as famous as they should be. It's now been 50 years since Harold Innis died, prematurely, at the age of 58, just as his genius was reaching its full stride. Rick...

The can-con game: in the spirit of common sense revolution and dollar-for-dollar accountability, Hal Niedzviecki offers a modest proposal to solve the Canadian content issue once and for all. (Culture).
September 1, 2002... AT A RECENT RECORDED-FOR-TV PANEL DIScussion involving me, the dynamic Richler book-duo of Noah and Daniel, writer Stan Rogal, and the university professor turned Can Lit critic Stephen Henighan, we stumbled into the thorny issue of setting....

Pump up the volumes: sure, Canada's literary magazines publish some nice poetry and fiction. But can you tell them apart? By defining themselves so broadly, our quarterlies may be selling themselves--and their readers--short.
September 1, 2002... ED SLUGA IS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING NEW IN AN OLD HOOK. AFTER MISSING FIVE ISSUES, THE NEW PUBLISHER of Blood & Aphorisms is resurrecting Toronto's seminal literary quarterly with another round of Literary Babes. "Literary magazines are a...

Telling storeys: they say the walls have ears, but if you listen hard, they also speak. Kathy Walker reveals how our buildings tell the story of our past lives and our competing visions of the future.
September 1, 2002... AS I WRITE YOU THESE STORIES, I'M SITTING AT MY COMPUTER AND when I get snuck or become unsure about how to tell-it-just-right I stare up at the wall in front of me. There are bookshelves, so loaded they once fell off the wall. There's a...

Hack attack: as columnists invade the news pages, are we missing the real story? RACHEL PULFER tracks the rise of the op-ed, and the fall of the foreign bureau.
September 1, 2002... WHEN LEAH MCLAREN'S STORY "THE TRAGIC INEPTITUDE OF THE English male" appeared on the front page of the London Spectator this summer, the U.K. public got its first taste of the "acknowledged beauty" and Globe and Mail lifestyle columnist...

Cooking the books: in the wake of Enron, WorldCom, and ImClone, the corporate annual report may be one of our finest contemporary works of fiction.
September 1, 2002... I HAD TO ADMIT, THINGS WERE LOOKING GREAT FOR THE energy company. I flipped open their annual report, and read a catalogue of confident, upbeat news. Revenues in the last year had zoomed up by 28%, cracking a record $40 billion. "Our position...

Great Canadian literary hunt. (Congratulations to the winners of the 2002).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... At This Magazine, it's always been important to us to publish new, emerging writers. That's why this contest was started six years ago--to cast a big wide net and find the amazing poets and storytellers Canada was missing and introduce them to...

Portraits of fruit.(Poem)
September 1, 2002... (1) The light of oranges in your hands in the morning. The wet spark of breaking. With fingernails for knives, you pry out half smiles from aching yawning sections, pale thin veins. Peel the skin slowly...

Law ornaments.
September 1, 2002... DAVID COULD FORGIVE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE SIGHT OF HIS BRONCO up on blocks in the driveway. It was undignified. In an ideal life, David would have returned from the hospital to discover his truck gleaming and polished. Instead, his dad had...

Small-small girl.(Short Story)
September 1, 2002... THE PILLOW SMELLS OF AFRICAN SUNLIGHT AND USAMUN'S HEAVY iron, black and small in his hand. With each stroke, its curly cord stretches out tight as a clothesline. Imagining Usamun in the laundry room behind the carport, I sniff and sniff until...

Love the clown.(Poem)
September 1, 2002... Love the Clown It was too bad about Love the Clown, who kept his nationality a secret. Who never left the house without his burnt red wig. They accused him of being greedy and perverse. Of touching...

Cheap for you.(Short Story)
September 1, 2002... Kaite sat at a table, her back to the wide open door. Leaning forward, her elbows propped up at the table's edge hands in front of her face, her fingers loosely picked at each other. It was hot, a rivulet of sweat coursed down her back; she...

It's no coincidence that Laura Cowell's idea of just. (Film).(Splice This super 8 film festival, Toronto, Canada)(Brief Article)(Interview)
September 1, 2002... IT'S NO COINCIDENCE THAT LAURA COWELL'S IDEA OF JUST what makes an interesting film festival sounds exactly like a description of Splice This, Toronto's annual celebration of super 8. "If I hear about a festival, a group of people, or even...

Tart. (Zines).(Winnipeg art scene)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Fostering a visible arts community is often difficult, and without something to document it and encourage a dialogue between participant and observer, even the most vibrant city cultures can lose focus and momentum. The Winnipeg art scene is...

These days, anyone with a computer, internet access and what they regard as a flair for iambic pentameter can throw up a site and publish their writing on the web. (Web).(This Magazine)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
September 1, 2002... These days, anyone with a computer, internet access and what they regard as a flair for iambic pentameter can throw up a site and publish their writing on the web. The result? Type "new fiction" or better yet, "poetry" into your typical browser...

It's Still Winter (quarles.unbc.edu/winter). (Web).(Prince George, British Columbia litzine)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... While the name (and design) of this Prince George, B.C. litzine may be rather bleak, the content sure isn't. Devoted to contemporary Canadian poetry, meaning "poets and poetry who live in the present, even when they write about the past." It's...

The Danforth Review (www.danforthreview.com). (Web).(litzine Canada)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... "Focusing on the Canadian press scene and other matters of insignificance," this Toronto based litzine publishes new poetry and fiction every six months. In addition to new work, The Danforth Review also features an interesting mix of...

Forget magazine (www.forgetmagazine.com). (Web).(Vancouver litzine)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... We don't just think this Vancouver based litzine is cool 'cause we may have enjoyed the odd beer with one of its contributors, or senior editors for that matter. Providing a voice for young Canadian writers and a forum for work largely ignored...

Outskirts: Women Writing from Small Places. (Books).
September 1, 2002... The Canadian literary canon has a special place for women writing from and about rural areas: Susanna Moodie, Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence and a host of others are required reading for nearly every CanLit course. This history, and the...

Lie detector. (Free Thinker).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... IN AN AGE OF MARKETING HYPERBOLE AND CORPORATE MENDACITY, the idea of truth has become slippery. But maybe we just don't know how to spot a falsehood. According to Dr. Paul Ekman, a professor of psychology at the University of California, the...

What's the big idea this fall? Feed your curiosity.
September 1, 2002... Own An Idea Need IDEAS at home or in the car? You can own your own IDEAS in print and audio formats. The following symbols on the calendar indicate what format they are available in: (A) Transcript (B) Audiocassette (C) CD...