Generally if I find myself awake at four in the morning, the best thing on TV is Vince Shlomi pitching the SlapChop or Billy Mays yelling at me from beyond the grave. But this morning, I caught an unapologetic and often uncomfortably unflinching documentary on what day-to-day life in a wheelchair is like. More »
John Mathenke was once arrested for being gay but, after failing to pay the customary bribe, was forced to have sex with the policeman. He had an orgy with a priest who publicly excoriates homosexuality, along with five other Masaai boys. And his Arab trader clients curse him during the day, but come back looking […] More »
I’m back in Scotland this month, for my first trip home since Christmas. Coming home is always incredible — a constant onslaught of the long-lost familiar — but being back also reminds me of some of the reasons I left in the first place. I could give you a few of those, but lurking behind […] More »
Last week, I talked about preparing two pitches for the 2010 editorial calendar of New Mobility Magazine and I addressed one of them here. It was the one about Kyle Maynard, the limbless mixed martial arts fighter, and whether it was appropriate for him to fight at all. I argued he could do more for […] More »
[Editor’s note: this series of blog posts on the bombings of natural gas wells in Northern B.C. is running over three days; part one was posted on Monday. Part two ran yesterday. This is the final part of the series.] The RCMP’s recent decision to raise the temperature in this region by officially describing the […] More »
[Editor’s note: this series of blog posts on the bombings of natural gas wells in Northern B.C. is running over three days; part one was posted yesterday. Look for the conclusion tomorrow morning.] If the gas that was coming out the ground in Northern B.C. smelled like rose petals, it might not be such a […] More »
[Editor’s note: this series of blog posts on the bombings of natural gas wells in Northern B.C. will run over three days, starting today. Look for part two on Tuesday morning and the final part on Wednesday.] When I agreed to take a job as the editor of a small newspaper in Chetwynd, B.C., I […] More »
A few days ago, a deadline with potentially enormous consequences passed very quietly. Thank goodness. It was June 30th, the day a court order to save Insite – Canada’s only safe injection site for heroine users – was due to expire. Fortunately the government agreed to extend the exemption and allow the facility to continue […] More »
If you haven’t heard at least whisperings of octuplets born in California this past week, you might want to get your hearing checked, or at least pick up a paper. Any paper. Any blog. Any radio station. The story is everywhere. The new octet is only the second set of living octuplets. The first, the […] More »
Here in Toronto, I’m hiding in my apartment as the temperature hovers just above zero and I’m wondering how it is that I turned out to be such a wimp when I spent my formative years in Winnipeg, the land of cold and snow and over-sized Halloween costumes fitted over snowsuits. It seems to be […] More »
Forget about the drug store commercials that tout pharmacists as friendly neighbourhood fixtures who look out for your family’s well being. The Ontario Medical Association is downgrading them to med-school dropouts who can’t tell a tummy ache from metastatic stomach cancer. A new proposal floating around Queen’s Park would allow pharmacists to diagnose simple ailments […] More »