Driving back and forth along Wellesley Street in Toronto, Iris looks for a sign that she belongs. It’s late at night and raining, and she’s been blown off by a date. The woman she met on the dating website Plenty of Fish lives in Niagara Falls, and Iris rented a car for the weekend to […] More »

September is home to Take Back the Night dates throughout Canada. Some cities, such as St. John’s and Fredericton had theirs this past weekend, and this upcoming week Edmonton, Guelph and others, will host rallies, workshops, and marches. “Take back the night in itself i, one moment where us survivors can all get together and […] More »

This past Saturday was the funeral of murdered teen Tina Fontaine, held in her Winnipeg home community of Sagkeeng First Nation. The 15-year-old girl’s body was found wrapped in a plastic bag after being dumped in Red River. Let’s pause for a second here: Her body was dumped in a river. That’s horrifying. So too is […] More »

Lost in the revelations that are coming out about Canada allowing a foreign spy agency access to world leaders (and who else?) is the knowledge that we’re finally getting more information about what actually happened during the G20. A fuller picture is emerging that adds embarrassing details to the already long list of offences committed […] More »

On November 21st the Macdonald-Laurier Institute will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Free Trade with a “gala” dinner that promises to be a “remarkable evening”. It’s being billed as a can’t-miss event, presumably attended by autocratic millionaires who will be outfitting themselves with new monocles and pocket watch fobs for the evening. I imagine most […] More »

An aging man in a green turtleneck loudly plunks at the keys on his dusty keyboard. He finishes writing and the corners of his mouth curl upward involuntarily as he reads it. For he is a “media critic” in Canada and he has just written an assortment of banal criticisms that now give way to […] More »

A new advocacy group for a not-so-new cause (This has been discussed in federal government for at least ten years) has formed to push for gender neutral language in the current version of O Canada. Together, Margaret Atwood Kim Campbell, Vivienne Roy, Sally Goddard and Nancy Ruth have launched Restore Our Anthem.  The group got […] More »

July 1 is about cottages, fireworks, beer, and the long weekend. As a white person born and raised in Canada, I was taught to believe that Canada Day was a nice summer tradition. Of course, as a kid growing up in the early ’90s, there was no obvious reason to think otherwise. By and large, […] More »

Forget St Patrick’s Day and Easter, March 2013 is Target month. The American big box store opened its first three Canadian stores yesterday, with one each in Guelph, Milton, and Fergus, Ont. These are the first of 24 set to open this month. By the end of this year, up to 135 Targets will cover […] More »

Guest blogger Canice Leung recently wrote in this space that Canada’s “national sport,” our beloved ice hockey, has became too elitist, too expensive and too inaccessible to maintain its position near to the top of the Canadian cultural hierarchy. Sparked by a fiery debate on Twitter the day before, her words were thought-provoking and insightful […] More »

Canada’s delegation to the latest round of global climate agreement negotiations put on quite the show a few days ago, suggesting that perhaps it’s time to scrap the Kyoto Accord and start over. The reviews are in, and the critics didn’t like it. In fact, they walked out just after the opening number. The Canadian […] More »