August 28, 2009
Fiction: “Accidental Ponds” by Elisabeth de Mariaffi
I met you in a hostel in Rennes. The weather was humid and this made the door stick: I threw my weight against it and fell into the room. Your pink sandals and your pack were lying in a corner and you were there, too: asleep. Eyes turned toward the window. I had to walk around in my socks so as not to wake you, run the tap on low when I washed my face. I had come into town earlier in the evening and... [More >>]
August 27, 2009
“Conceptual comedy” duo turn jokes into art as “Life of a Craphead”
"Sitting Bed" (2006) by Life of a Craphead. Photo courtesy the artists. Amy Lam, left, and Jon McCurley, the "conceptual comedy" duo known as Life of a Craphead. For Toronto’s “Making Room” art show in 2006, Amy Lam and Jon McCurley—the duo who call themselves Life of a Craphead— erected a bed sitting on a couch. The couch was large and blue and the bed sat as a human... [More >>]
August 26, 2009
How Canada’s secretive arms trade ruins our peacekeeping reputation
In July 2008, Switzerland’s Small Arms Survey released its 2008 annual report on which countries have the best and the worst records when it comes to transparency and the small arms trade — the diversion of weapons such as rifles and anti-tank guided weapons that can fuel civil conflicts and insurgencies. Canada’s score? A disappointing 14.5 out of a possible 25 points, putting us between... [More >>]
August 24, 2009
Deadly dealings surround Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement
Juan Pablo Ochoa, left, addresses a crowd of cane cutters in Bua, Colombia after a court hearing related to their strike. "What is going on is a frame-up." Photo credit: Dawn Paley. “You know that here in Colombia, there are many human-rights violations,” says José Oney Valencia Llanos, who earns his living cutting sugar cane in Colombia’s fertile Cauca Valley. “Business people,... [More >>]
August 20, 2009
“Socialism” and “Big Government” as Orwellian doublespeak
It’s not the size of your bureaucracy. It’s how you use it. Onward, Stephen Harper: lead us to the socialist utopia! If you follow the right-wing punditry you’d think comrades Harper, Obama, Brown, and the like are leading us along that slippery slope to—gasp—socialism. Not that any of these leaders has a nice word to say about socialism; they don’t. But the more alarmist fringes... [More >>]
August 19, 2009
Quebec’s “hip hop historian” raps about Québécois black heritage
Quebec City "hip hop historian" Webster. Photo courtesy Webster/Abuzive Muzik. Quebec city’s recent 400th anniversary celebration was quite a spectacle — Paul McCartney, Celine Dion, treasures from the Louvre, and even the occasional nod to diversity like the multicultural rap show, Hip hop tout en couleurs (Hip hop in all Colours). For the most part, though, the Quebec black experience... [More >>]
August 18, 2009
Graphic: Where are all of Canada’s stimulus dollars going to?
When Finance Minister Jim Flaherty first revealed his stimulus spending package back in January, he announced that Canada’s Economic Action Plan would “protect Canadians during the global recession” and “put more money in the hands of Canadian families, to help them weather the current storm.” Although Flaherty claims to have introduced a budget that is “Canada’s... [More >>]
August 17, 2009
Postcard from Lusaka: No smoking. Really no smoking.
When Lusaka went smoke free, they really went smoke-free. Photo by Michael Musenga. As the wheels hit the hot asphalt of the runway, I look up to see the frenetic expressions on the faces of my fellow passengers—a look that falls somewhere between anxious and anaphylactic, and it’s clear they’re desperate to get off the plane. It’s been a short and relatively painless flight from Nairobi, Kenya,... [More >>]
August 14, 2009
How to rehabilitate the NDP
With its exclusive fixation on winning more seats, the NDP has sacrificed the opportunity to build a truly progressive movement. On the 75th anniversary of the CCF, James Laxer argues that to save the present, we need to remember the past [This article was originally published in the July-August 2008 issue of This Magazine. We've reposted it here since the NDP 2009 federal convention happens this weekend... [More >>]
August 13, 2009
How the Green Party is skewing Canadian elections
Another B.C. election has passed, and the Liberals under Premier Gordon Campbell were able to hold on to power, but it was hard to tell at times which party stood where on the issues and the political spectrum. The environment was a central issue in this election, but it played out in a way that made no sense based on the historic positioning of political parties in Canada. The Liberal Party of B.C.,... [More >>]
