October 30, 2009
Canadian justice for Desiré Munyaneza, but what about Afghan prisoners?
Desiré Munyaneza Quebec Superior Court judge André Denis made history on May 22, 2009, when he convicted Desiré Munyaneza of seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Munyaneza, he said, had “intentionally killed dozens” during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and “raped several women and pillaged homes and businesses.” For the first time ever, a Canadian court tried and found... [More >>]
October 21, 2009
Ottawa’s Gay Guerilla Takeover turns any club into a D.I.Y. gay bar
Guests at Ottawa’s Heaven dance club expect to have a good time and dance the night away. What the mostly heterosexual crowd was not expecting this spring Saturday night was for the club to be overrun by the Gay Guerrilla Takeover. The Gay Guerrilla Takeover is an organization that does what its name says: once a month, a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, and queer-friendly people venture... [More >>]
September 15, 2009
Progressive Detective: Can e-cigarettes help me quit smoking?
Dear Progressive Detective: I’ve been hearing a lot about e-cigarettes. What are these things, and can they really help me kick my habit? Leonardo DiCaprio enjoyng an e-cigarette in March 2009. The electronic cigarettes are touted as a quitting aid. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that detect the user’s pull and vaporize a nicotine solution that recreates the smoking experience without... [More >>]
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 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 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 >>]
August 12, 2009
Review: Nicole Brossard’s latest novel throbs with linguistic menace
Quebec writer Nicole Brossard’s latest novel, Fences in Breathing (translated by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood), confronts a subject favoured by a cadre of contemporary literary darlings, Roberto Bolaño, David Foster Wallace, and John Wray among them: namely, a profound distrust in the magic of fiction. A woman of letters herself, Brossard’s Québécoise protagonist, Anne, labours to write a... [More >>]
August 10, 2009
Is a 60-storey skyscraper the farm of the future?
How to get local produce in the city? Look up. Illustration by Peter Mitchell. Canadian architecture student Gordon Graff attracted worldwide interest when he designed SkyFarm, a 59-storey farm for downtown Toronto. What inspired you to design a vertical farm? Sometime in 2006, when I was first working on my masters at the University of Waterloo, I knew I wanted to focus on how to turn a city like... [More >>]
July 31, 2009
Are Environment Canada gatekeepers gagging their own scientists?
Toronto journalist Janet Pelley got a shock last February while attending a symposium in Burlington, Ont., on water quality research. After a session on Bisphenol-A, she approached two of the researchers who had presented for follow-up information. The researchers “laughed nervously,” says Pelley, then pointed her to an Environment Canada press officer in the corner. “I definitely felt that the... [More >>]
