A provision governing hate speech in Canada is under the microscope this week, after a tribunal of the Canadian Human Rights Commission concluded that it violates the right to freedom of expression guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This body doesn’t have the power to strike down Section 13(1) of the Human Rights […] More »
A friend recently sent me an email commenting on the Twitter craze provoked by the recent riots in Kampala, Uganda. Within the first few minutes of the first sign of rioting, Twitter was chock-full of witness reports on the events. Just like Tehran earlier this year, Twitter delivered an instant “news” source. While Twitter provides largely […] More »
In choosing Veronica over Betty, Archie Andrews overturns 70 years’ worth of cultural expectations “Just a matter of skill, that’s all!” Archie Andrews’ first words (said as he stood precariously atop his bike) may have seemed spontaneous in 1941, but 70 years have imbued the line with more weight than a supersized chocolate malt. The […] More »
The treatment of Caster Semenya is a disgrace. The 18 year-old South African runner, who is currently the object of “gender verification testing” after winning the world championship 800-meter race in August, has had her most private medical details paraded before the international press in what can only be described as an exceptionally ugly episode […] More »
Until 1999, Nigeria was a land of military rule, repression, and instability. Helon Habila’s novel, Waiting for an Angel, evokes the mental and social climate of the country during the military’s last few years of power in the late 90s. Matching the chaos that rapid changes of power — mainly by military coups — must […] More »
[Editor’s note: This Magazine columns editor Eva Salinas will be reviewing films and rounding up news about the Toronto International Film Festival over the next week. Visit us online next week for more of her dispatches.] And so it begins. This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival kicked-off last night, a little later […] More »
I feel like I’ve been re-reading the same article all week. Politicians quoted in The Globe and Mail, National Post and others talk about this weekend’s Le Moulin à Paroles like it’s the last nail in Confederation’s coffin. “There was the death of a man. These were tragic events,” Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, Josée Verner told […] More »
It’s a familiar ritual in movie palaces and multiplexes all over the country. You find yourself in a lineup for a film that you know nothing about, aside from its reputation as a remarkable new work by a hot young director from the Carpathians, or maybe Polynesia. For sustenance, you have foregone popcorn in favour […] More »
Two elections. Two women. Two killings. One legacy? Not really. One victim became a world icon, while the other barely registered on the books of the international media. Such are the divergent post-mortem fates of Neda Agha Soltan and Zeina al-Miri. The former was shot in the streets of Tehran during post-election disturbances in June. […] More »
The September-October 2009 issue of This Magazine should now be in subscribers’ mailboxes (subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too), and will be for sale on your local newsstand coast-to-coast this week. All the articles in the issue will be made available online in the weeks ahead, though, so keep checking back […] More »
For Toronto’s “Making Room” art show in 2006, Amy Lam and Jon McCurley—the duo who call themselves Life of a Craphead— erected a bed sitting on a couch. The couch was large and blue and the bed sat as a human would, folded at the waist, with two wooden legs on the ground. It looked […] More »