Meet shambolic, directionless Mason Dubisee, an author-manqué who has just turned 30 and can’t seem to finish his big novel. Decimated by his cocaine and gambling addictions, he agrees to ghostwrite a love letter for an odd, lovesick man named Warren. When Warren is found dead, the missive becomes a poignant suicide note—and Mason decides […] More »

Canadians – a bunch of walking, talking BPA vessels? Apparently so. Statistics Canada recently released results from their first nationwide look into bisphenol A, and the results aren’t pretty. According to a Globe and Mail report on the stats, 91 per cent of Canadians tested show some sort of BPA exposure, and teenagers carry most of […] More »

Dear Progressive Detective: I’ve heard of a new birth control pill, Seasonale, that reduces your period to four times a year instead of 12. I see the appeal, but messing with my cycle just seems like a bad idea. How safe are these kinds of contraceptives? Extended-use hormonal contraceptives like Seasonale boost estrogen to levels […] More »

UPDATE: Wednesday, July 28, 12:14 — The Council of Canadians reports that the United Nations general assembly has voted in favour of the resolution to recognize water and sanitation as basic human rights. The still-unofficial vote count was 124 votes in favour, zero votes against, and 42 abstentions. We’ll update with the official vote when […] More »

The July-August 2010 issue of This is now in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands. As usual, you’ll be able to read all the articles here on the website as we post them over the next few weeks. But also as usual, we encourage you to subscribe to the magazine, which is the best way to […] More »

We’ve talked a lot about what’s going wrong so far with the G20 and G8 meetings taking place in Ontario this year. And lord knows there are plenty of problems: aside from the lack of discussion surrounding women’s health we’re now chopping down trees in an urban jungle and searching around for supposedly stolen police […] 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 »

Aside from the fact that single older women have enough stigma to deal with, the “cougar” trend has been a rampant part of pop culture for years now. And while, for some reason, the thought of an older woman dating a younger man draws giggles and raised eyebrows more often than not, up until this […] More »

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This certainly rings true in the world of health policy: there’s a lot of talk, and the idea of change or reform is nice to think about, regardless of whether it ever happens. Recently, it seems that absolutely nothing is changing at all. Because for […] More »

Q: Dear Progressive Detective: I’m worried about radiation from the cellphone tower that was just installed on my building’s roof. What can I do about it? A: Everyone and their grandma is on a cellphone these days, and because we believe nothing should impede us from updating everybody on everything, cellular service companies are rushing […] More »