As a former Polaris Music Prize juror, I still get phantom pain whenever the award shortlist is announced and the inevitable backlash begins (for well thought-out criticism read Josiah Hughes and Mark Teo’s essay, “Canadian Music is Boring,” in FFWD.) But I’m guilty of award bashing, too. After reading the shortlist, I immediately grumbled about […] More »

I sighed loudly when I read the “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” cover line on the latest issue of The Atlantic (July/August 2012). When done sighing, I wondered what the “all” was now. I hoped the “all” was a nap because I was exhausted before I even opened the issue and read Anne-Marie […] More »

Oh god, not this joker again. These are the first words that enter my head when I see the new issue of Rolling Stone on the newsstand. The cover features a haggard Charlie Sheen. He looks like a cross between a chain-smoking bobble head and a contestant vying for first place in a Keith Richards […] More »

If you enjoy seeing authors paraded around like show ponies, visit Book Expo America, the annual publishing tradeshow taking place this week at the Javits Center in New York City. Just as celebrity memoirs and how-to books dominate bestsellers lists, the longest lineups I saw at the show were not for big-name authors (and they’re […] More »

This weekend, if you’ve got an itch to see some Canadian contemporary art, the best place to be is south of the border. Two hundred years after the war of 1812, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA, is hosting Oh, Canada, one of the largest survey exhibitions of Canadian contemporary art […] More »

Wondering how best to pay tribute to a musician who recently died? Just say no to holograms—please I beg of you—and instead enlist some adorable children to help you with your tribute. That’s what Portland filmmaker James Winters did. Winters got his kids and nephew to reenact the Beastie Boys 1994 video for “Sabotage” (directed […] More »

While waiting for a bus on Lansdowne Avenue, a gritty strip in Toronto’s west end, I was struck by an image on a billboard (no small feat considering how often my nose is in the position of downward-facing iPhone). The photo was of a shirtless young man, his body curled up in what appeared to […] More »

During Toronto’s Hot Docs closing weekend, I watched a fascinating film called The Mechanical Bride. The U.S. film, directed by Allison de Fren, is a 76-minute journey into the world of men and their life-sized dolls: how they’re made, how they’re fixed, how men relate to them, how they have sex with them, and how […] More »

A couple of weeks ago, I came home to my worst nightmare. I turned on my television and nothing happened. No picture, no noise, not even some static or a TV test pattern. I was overcome with fear. No Chuck Bass. No feeling better about my evening wine consumption via the drunks on Intervention. No […] More »

Whale hunting is a fundamental practice in the North and should be celebrated, not restricted… Gabriel Nirlungayuk can’t pinpoint when Inuit first began hunting bowheads. “Whaling, from an Inuit perspective, has been ongoing since time immemorial,” says the director of wildlife and environment for the land-claims group Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. But he knows one thing: […] More »

Long regarded as the enemy of literacy, comic books and graphic novels are increasingly useful as a way of improving reading skills among otherwise reluctant students, young and old On a cold mid-February afternoon under overcast skies, a school bell rings. The halls of Toronto’s Agnes Macphail Public School flood with children dressed in puffy […] More »