You probably won’t see his face on t-shirts anytime soon, but for a wide-sweeping generation of twenty- to fortysomethings, the late John Hughes falls just short of being a cultural Messiah. The screenwriter and director became the latest Summer of Death casualty yesterday morning at age 59, and while most of his fans probably wouldn’t […] More »

It’s official, folks: males are the weaker sex. Toronto-based physician Ken Walker—perhaps better known as nationally syndicated medical columnist Dr. Gifford-Jones—points out in a recent article that life’s cards are unfavourably stacked against those with a Y chromosome, and he attributes social conditioning to be a primary culprit. Males live an average of 5.3 years […] More »

In an age when CNN can get away with quoting Twitter as “a source” in its coverage of Iran’s high-stakes political bedlam, it’s more than fair to assume that as a society, we’re still ironing out the kinks in our relationship with interactive media. For some of us that might mean, say, late-night microblogging about […] More »

Girls are expected to behave a certain way. While I’m not exactly sure what that means, I do know that I was once chastised by one of my high school drama teachers for what she diagnosed as “this stupid Goth thing you’re going for”: referring—albeit inaccurately—to my self-styled uniform of inky dyed hair, Salvation Army […] More »

It’s only fair that the 11-day Celebrate Canada! festival should kick off with National Aboriginal Day. After all, what better way to commemorate this crazy multicultural mosaic of a country than by launching its celebration in honour of the first people to make it awesome? We’ve compiled a list of things to see and do […] More »

For at-risk youths, Pathways to Education may be a one-way ticket out of poverty. The program can be described as an “early intervention” initiative: it identifies demographically disadvantaged students and, from grade 9 onwards, guides them towards high school completion and post-secondary education through a combination of tutoring, mentoring, and scholarships. Unlike tuition freezes or […] More »

Ever the  moral hinterland, the U.S. state of Texas has recently been in the news for an exceptionally despicable practice: charging victims of sexual violence up-front payments for their own rape kits, which pack a financial wallop of up to $1800. No one has conducted an official poll on the matter, but I’m fairly confident […] 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 »

“It’s  aggravating to put up with the amount of sanctimony and hypocrisy that’s around,” griped Globe and Mail columnist, longtime activist, and former This Magazine editor Rick Salutin, at the early May launch of Yves Engler’s book, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, where Salutin was the keynote speaker. Engler’s book sheds light on […] More »