By now, you’ve probably heard about the Queen’s representative eating the raw heart of a dead seal this week. But there is more going on here than just heating up the old debate over the Canadian seal hunt — the news event continued a tradition of misleading the Canadian public about this issue. General Michaëlle […] More »

Alex Felipe witnesses the toxic effects of Canadian gold mining on three remote Philippine communities Click here for a full-screen slideshow Admitting that I was a Canadian has never been as difficult as when I travelled to the Philippines to photograph two Canadian-owned open-pit mining sites last winter. The fact that I am also Filipino […] More »

We’re less than a month away from Pride Week in Toronto, which kicks off with the Dyke March — also known as the Saturday when thousands of half-naked queer women take to the streets between Church and Yonge. Lately, I’ve been wondering if this mass shedding of clothes isn’t really about celebrating our sexuality and […] More »

Wired magazine’s current issue contains an interesting essay that’s worth a read, called (in Wired‘s loveable hyperbolic style) “The New Socialism.” With the U.S. economy still in a tailspin and “socialism” back on the political radar there (Obama: is he, or isn’t he?) the time is ripe to seriously ask whether the various political ideologies […] More »

What does “free” look like? This was the prompt sent out to a group of local Toronto artists around two months ago. The results, which were hung along the fourth-floor hallway of the Case Goods Warehouse in the Distillery District last weekend, elegantly captured a word that is part economic reality, part political manifesto, and […] More »

At a yuppie-friendly health food supermarket, Helen Goode pushes her shopping cart down the produce aisle. She reaches a mound of green apples reading “Conventionally Harvested $3.99/lb.” Just beside these lies another mound of apples, labeled “Organic $5.49/lb”, followed by a selection of “Sustainably Harvested Organic” apples, then “Locally Grown Sustainably Harvested Organic” apples, then […] More »

Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park is home to one of the planet’s most richly diverse ecosystems. Beneath it lies enough oil to generate some billions of dollars in revenue. What’s a poor Andean nation to do? Hold off drilling in exchange for cash, it turns out. In 2007, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa proposed a novel solution: […] More »

Proponents argue that nuclear power is greener since it produces lower carbon emissions. But mining and refining the uranium that fuels reactors produces many toxic byproducts, including arsenic, thorium-230, and radioactive waste. Uranium is scarce too, which means that to produce one kilogram of uranium, you have to dig up and process one tonne of […] More »

Last week, I saw this disturbing surveillance footage. It really does speak for itself and is just one example of a recent  rise in violence and robbery preying on seniors and people with disabilities. No one is off limits. (They probably never were.) Vulnerability equals victory for criminals (and sometimes cops) who figure disabled and […] More »

Toronto-based NGO Africa’s Children—Africa’s Future, which runs programs and advocates for HIV/AIDS orphans and other children in sub-Saharan Africa, has an interesting photography exhibit on right now as part of the annual Contact festival. AC-AF provided cameras to African kids, aged 12-18, and asked them to document the world around them, particularly the consequences of […] More »

The hype’s died down, but cybercrime still thrives In the 1980s and ’90s, the term hacker struck fear into a public still new to the web — basement-dwelling loafers who were happy to take down a network or website for bragging rights. Since then new online fears have popped up that have reduced hackers to […] More »