Chances are Henrietta Lacks has been a part of your life. Without actually seeing her, Lacks could have helped you recover from surgery or a rare medical treatment. And while you might not know who she is, you may have heard of her alter ego: HeLa. Henrietta Lacks lived only to the age of 31, […] More »
Quebec is going ahead with its ludicrous ban on religious head-coverings like the niqab and the burka on provincial government property. It’s an astonishing piece of legislation that manages the improbable feat of being baselessly arbitrary and obviously xenophobic. The whole law is crafted to be targeted at a single identifiable—and extremely tiny—minority, but Premier […] More »
Whoever’s pulling the strings at one major tampon-maker has had it with euphemisms. It’s Kotex-ploitation! Finally, an ad about tampons spoofs stupid ad lingo—”down there,” “sanitary napkins,” “that time of the month”—and dares to actually say the word vagina (you know, where it goes) in a television commercial. The run-down: “How do I feel about […] More »
Pretty much every “women and children first!” joke has already been made relating to the upcoming G8/G20 conferences in Toronto and Muskoka, and the Prime Minister’s announcement that maternal and children’s health would be the core of the agenda. The Conservatives have been dancing around the issue of reproductive planning and what they actually consider […] More »
Update, Friday, March 19: It seems to me that it’s impossible to truly know where the government stands. One moment the foreign minister says birth control isn’t included in their G8 maternal health push. The next the prime minister’s backing up on that, saying discussion around birth control’s not out of the cards. *** There […] More »
Hot on the tail of the reinvigorated nationalism left in the wake of the Olympics in Vancouver, parliament reopened yesterday with the speech from the throne given by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean. Appropriately timed with said nationalism, the country’s National Anthem made its way into the hour-long allocution. The government would like to retool the English […] More »
In the Twitter-verse, news spreads fast, is debunked faster, and is retweeted before you can think of something better to say. Gordon Lightfoot can attest to this, I’m sure. So when a long story is slowly told through the 140-character limit, it tends to make people pay attention. That’s what happened when Angie Jackson decided […] More »
In today’s Verbatim, we’ve got a transcript of my interview with Alisa Palmer, director of Cloud 9, currently playing in Toronto at the Panasonic Theatre. Cloud 9 is British playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1979 play that masks a scathing critique of English colonialist notions of sex, gender, and race beneath a fast-talking and often absurd family […] More »
In all the hoopla following the New Orleans Saints’ momentous victory over the Indianapolis Colts in last week’s Super Bowl, an important piece of the biggest day in North American sports seemed to disappear all-too-quickly from the collective consciousness. With the pervasive and nauseating hyperbole around the significance of the Saints’ win in Hurricane Katrina’s […] More »
With Valentine’s Day around the corner and ladies coast to coast anticipating some special show of affection, there are alternative efforts toward female appreciation also being made. The Native Youth Sexual Health Network has just released a collection of writing by Aboriginal men about how they can help put a stop to violence against women […] More »
Fucked Up, winners of the 2009 Polaris Prize, this week released their cover of the seminal 1984 Bob Geldof/Midge Ure song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” and it’s pretty great. The band used part of their $20,000 Polaris cheque to bankroll the recording, and are donating the proceeds to three important Canadian charities: Justice for Missing […] More »