I joined the board of Native Earth Performing Arts, in Toronto’s Distillery District, several years ago, and quickly discovered the best perk of the office is watching a performance evolve through rehearsal. Seeing the actors figuring out their moves together, adjusting dialogue, and dissecting the meaning of the play, and then witnessing opening night when […] More »

If you were to turn on a tap in the First Nation of Little Salmon Carmacks, Yukon, your cup might run over with gasoline, fecal matter, and worse (yes, there’s worse). It’s been this way for years, at least going as far back as 1991—the first year of comprehensive water testing. The problems in Little […] More »

[This article has been updated since its January 2011 publication; please see 3rd paragraph] Territorial devolution is key to a successful North… After decades at a frozen impasse, it appears the federal government’s position on devolving province-like responsibilities and powers to the Northwest Territories has finally thawed. In October, a draft agreement-in-principle between the feds […] More »

Extreme fighting has always been illegal in Ontario, but underground fights happened anyway. With legalization in 2011, the controversial sport is about to become big business. The champ climbs into the steel cage against the sounds of loud, thrashing theme music, polite applause, and the odd hiss. Caleb Grummet may be holding the championship belt, […] More »

For years, Joel Theriault has waged a losing battle against pesticide spraying in Northern Ontario forests. He’s made enemies in the logging business, the Ministry of Natural Resources—and even among his fellow environmentalists. What keeps him going? On a chilly afternoon in mid-June 2009, bush-pilot-turned-environmental-activist Joel Theriault is once again flying over the deforested landscape […] More »

With just one overworked psychiatrist for the whole territory, the North Slave Correctional Centre has become a de facto psychiatric hospital. Stuck in legal limbo, dozens of prisoners wait—and then wait some more—for justice Inside Yellowknife’s courthouse, behind the plastic shield of the prisoner’s docket, Tommy is plucking his fingers: one, two, three, four, from […] More »

A reforestation scheme in Borneo could radically reshape wildlife protection, land conservation, and indigenous stewardship—simultaneously. Halfway around the world, on the eastern side of the island of Borneo, near the oil city of Balikpapan, a new tropical rainforest is being created out of what was once a poisonous wasteland. It is a story of radical […] More »

November 13, 1971, The Pas, Manitoba. Four young white men drive past Helen Betty Osborne, a 19-year-old Cree girl. They call for her to get in the car and party with them. “I think I heard a yes,” one man taunts. When she refuses, the men pull her into the car and drive off. Flip […] More »

In The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, Vancouver-based writer Gord Hill blends his visual and literary talents to tell the story of aboriginal life since the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere in 1492. If the book’s title isn’t enough to tell you what perspective Hill, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, is […] More »

The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization […] More »

Despite ongoing efforts by the Harper government to shut it down, Insite, the Vancouver-based supervised-injection site, is alive and thriving, with over 10,000 registered users and around 800 daily visitors. To Mark Townsend, an Insite representative, it’s a success story that needs to be replicated in other cities. Established in 2003 as a scientific research […] More »