Jonas Naimark took one of the most striking photos from Sunday, showing the demonstrators and bystanders hemmed in by riot police at the corner of Queen and Spadina. This is just a small portion of the image; click to see the remarkable full-size photo on Naimark’s website. One of the most notorious images from Saturday […] More »

By far the most significant video of the weekend was this one, shot by Meghann Millard from her third floor office on Queen St. West, in which the protesters sing the national anthem, and are then charged by a line of police in riot gear. This video received an extra boost when no less than […] More »

From June 25–27, the world’s most influential political and economic leaders will descend upon Muskoka and Toronto for the G8 and G20 summits. Joining them will be thousands of protesters advocating everything from anti-globalization to climate justice. If you want to get in on the dissent, check out this advice for emerging activists from Mike […] More »

Today’s the day! Heritage Minister James Moore will apparently introduce new legislation to update Canada’s copyright laws this afternoon. Michael Geist, the usual go-to guy for all discussion on this topic, has a quick introduction on his site. Basically, fair dealing will remain pretty strict; Geist has complimentary things to say about how internet intermediaries […] 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 »

“This is about the complete failure of democracy,” Alan Young says, munching on his strawberry-jam toast at Sunnybrook Restaurant in Toronto. Young, a criminal lawyer, has been Canada’s forerunning pot reformist since he got a judge to declare that “marijuana is relatively harmless compared to the so-called hard drugs, and including tobacco and alcohol” during […] More »

When her adopted father and longtime abuser was let out of prison, Alli Russell channeled her turbulent feelings into a deeply personal song called “No Shame.” That song has become a continent-wide charity tour by Russell and her urban roots band, Po’ Girl, to support victims of childhood sexual abuse. “It was a three-year sentence […] More »

The Globe and Mail‘s story on Nazim Gillani’s testimony to a parliamentary committee investigating the Guergis/Jaffer fiasco contains all sorts of fun tidbits. Rahim Jaffer, Noted Businessman Who Is Smart, says he wouldn’t touch Nazim Gillani with a bargepole: “We realized very quickly after a few meetings with him that our firms were very divergent, that […] 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 »

Former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer was clocked doing 93 km/h in a 50 zone one evening last September. At the time, police charged him with impaired driving and cocaine possession. A few months go by, and—abracadabra!—the drunk-driving and the drug possession charges disappear, replaced by a guilty plea for “careless driving”: Crown attorney Marie Balogh […] More »

Among the remarkable details of Roman Polanski’s arrest last fall was the notably different reaction to it on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. While the North American media published explicit and condemnatory accounts of Polanski’s rape of a thirteen-year-old girl, in Europe the reaction was much more ambivalent. The governments of France and […] More »