Canada’s public life has been diminished today by the death of Jack Layton, leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and of the New Democratic Party. Known to millions of Canadians simply as “Jack,” Layton embodied the kind of decent, energetic, principled, and optimistic political leadership that so many of us wish to see more of […] More »

It is impossible to speak of Will Munro. It is easy to talk about Will Munro(s). Will Munro, the artist/activist/social wizard/impresario and all around wunderkind, passed away one lovely, clear-as-a-bell summer morning in 2010. He was 36. In that too-short time, Will produced an enormous amount of highly influential, DIY-infused art, reinvigorated the Toronto, and […] More »

Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs’ conspicuously detailed death announcement, accidentally published by Bloomberg news service in 2008, revealed a little-known fact about the craft of writing obituaries: the blood doesn’t have to have gone cold before someone writes the first draft of your final epitaph. In fact, there doesn’t even have to be a reason […] More »

In early fall of 1950, Len Dobbin stepped out of a listening booth on Rue Ste-Catherine in Montreal to find himself confronted by five New York jazz enthusiasts seeking potential founders for a satellite jazz appreciation society. Only 15 years old at the time, Dobbin had never met enough fans to think the project would […] More »

You probably won’t see his face on t-shirts anytime soon, but for a wide-sweeping generation of twenty- to fortysomethings, the late John Hughes falls just short of being a cultural Messiah. The screenwriter and director became the latest Summer of Death casualty yesterday morning at age 59, and while most of his fans probably wouldn’t […] More »