The summer I was 15, my friend Kenny and I were up at my family’s cottage for a few days, flush in the glorious boredom of post-exam bliss. We were hanging out on the dock when my mom came down and told us that there had been an accident. A plane from Canada to India […] More »

I’m slowly making my way through Feeding the Future, the newish collection of essays edited by Andrew Heintzman and Evan Solomon. I say ‘slowly’ because the barfing takes up a lot of time when you’re trying to chew through this analysis of what we eat and how it gets to our plate. The bottom line, […] More »

It’s official. The events of the past month prove that Edmonton is now the centre of the universe. Evidence: – Mayerthorpe incident becomes national tragedy – Edmonton’s Randy Ferbey skips Alberta to a win at the Brier – Worldcom’s Bernard Ebbers becomes the biggest business fraud in history. Ebbers started his career as a milkman […] More »

Trying to beef up your street lingo? Longing to see CNN as SnoopDogg does? Then check out Gizoogle , a site “fo all you beotches who wanna find shiznit.” The site allows visitors to “translate” sites like cnn.com, slashdot.org and msnbc.com, resulting in amusing headlines like “Jackson did ho-slappin accusa told schoo’ official.” No word […] More »

Recognizing that I am in danger of sinking irretrievably into the abyss of nerditude, I nevertheless intend to now blog about chess. I didn’t think it right that we let pass such an earthquake-like event as the retirement of Garry Kasparov without some sort of comment. To quote from the Guardian story about him, Kasparov […] More »

In a story in today’s NP on the almost exclusively Canadian trend toward big, big bands (Broken Social Scene, the Hidden Cameras etc.) writer Jake Bogoch asks: “So why have the bands’ individual contributions been examined but the greater movement ignored? Why has the music press snoozed on one of the most creative musical movements […] More »

Those of you who were intrigued by Andrew Potter’s post of some while back about the Slap Shot-style league play in Quebec that’s taken hold of his heart thanks to the NHL players strike won’t want to miss “The Chiefs” — opening today. And remember the precepts of our Film Club. Tell everyone you know. […] More »

Call me nationalist. Call me sentimental. Call me angry-as-hell! Reading articles like this one at the Weekly Standard (the feature story of the issue), gets my Canadian pride burning. More »

This Magazine’s Mar/Apr issue is spotlighted in today’s Sunday Toronto Star in the Ideas section. If you live in the GTA, go buy a copy and check it out! I would also like to take this opportunity to mention how much I love the new Sunday Star. The in-depth features are great — high quality […] More »

The other day, at a lovely historic hall in downtown Toronto I attended the annual general meeting of Access Copyright, Canada’s English language copyright licensing agency. What’s that you say? Access who? Licensing what? And the fact that 90% of Canadians would ask the same questions just means that, in a sense, Access Copyright is […] More »

But look closer, and in their eyes there is pride. Look closer, and on one, even the hint of a smile. How could they not have been proud? They were members of our national police force. They were Mounties. Paul Martin gave a great speech yesterday. Watching the ceremony on TV, I wanted to be […] More »