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 »

When the new study guide for immigrants applying for Canadian citizenship was published last November, a reporter asked Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney why there was no mention of Canada’s world-leading (but still-in-progress!) record on equal rights for gay and lesbian people. Here’s what Kenney said: “We can’t mention every legal decision, every policy […] More »

When one writer found herself sinking into a mire of prejudice and resentment, she set out to find a cure. But maybe 12 steps aren’t enough. The first step to getting help, they say, is admitting you have a problem. That part took me years of halting, painful introspection and self-doubt. Later, I told friends—just […] More »

Could surfing really help bring Israelis and Palestinians together? Grant Shilling meets the beach bums, peace activists, and ex-soldiers who believe it’s possible Surf’s up in Ashkelon. So I hop on the train in Tel Aviv bound for the southern Israeli city with my surfboard bag in tow. The bag, stencilled with Boards Not Bombs, […] More »

To prepare for our regular staff meeting earlier this week, we flipped through the last year of This to see what we covered well, and what we’ve missed. The findings clearly showed us the kinds of stories we tend to cover—and pointed to a few things we need to work on. First a word on […] More »

The story of Africans being brought to the Americas, mainly in bondage, is well known. The transatlantic slave trade has been exhaustively mined and narrated and, if the plot is misunderstood, one only needs to peruse the history books for clarity. We know relatively little, though, about African-Americans and their voyages back to the other […] More »

Quebec city’s recent 400th anniversary celebration was quite a spectacle — Paul McCartney, Celine Dion, treasures from the Louvre, and even the occasional nod to diversity like the multicultural rap show, Hip hop tout en couleurs (Hip hop in all Colours). For the most part, though, the Quebec black experience went unacknowledged. For “Webster” Aly […] More »

Three Canadian church congregations stood up to Immigration Canada and the police to save the lives of refugees in peril. Some say they should butt out. In 1990, Felicia Abimbola Akinwalere (“Ola” to her friends) arrived in Toronto from Nigeria on a temporary visa to visit family. During that vacation, her husband took part in […] More »

When I first saw the original two-minute teaser trailer, above, for District 9, the new science-fiction movie coming out in August, it was a few months ago and the huge, out-of-control advertising campaign promoting it hadn’t yet blanketed every bus-stop and billboard in the country. Though the subsequent advertising has dulled my interest a bit, […] More »

The July-August issue of This Magazine is now in subscribers’ mailboxes (subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too), and will be for sale on better newsstands coast-to-coast this week. Two pieces from the issue are already online: Jenn Hardy‘s cover story on the new generation of farmers using the principles of permaculture […] More »

Sure, the web is rife with nonsense. But real political dialogue thrives too In my more idealistic moments, I always imagine I’ll stumble upon raging intellectual debate on the subway. But based on the conversations I’ve overheard lately, here’s what I can tell you about the public mood in Canada: saving GM is both the […] More »