Standing in knee high snow in Queen’s Park yesterday, I witnessed my very first protest run. The event, which was organized by journalist and university instructor Margaret Webb, was to protest Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law, particularly in conjunction with the Sochi Olympics. I watched as the group of protestors ran around the designated route, holding […] More »
Canada is no longer the Great White North—except at the boardroom table. Consider this: the population growth of racialized or non-white groups continues to outpace that of white Canadians. This has created a shift in the demographic balance of the Canadian mosaic, with our population on its way to becoming a “minority majority.” According to […] More »
Even after all its Olympic-related world-class-city posturing, Vancouver remains very much at odds with itself. At once a bedroom community, a wannabe metropolis, and the centre of a long-running real-estate boom, the city is like a teenager who keeps changing her clothes, says visual artist Eric Deis. “Kids grow up, they push boundaries, they try […] More »
Today in Verbatim, This contributing editor Andrew Wallace interviews Dave Zirin, sports editor of U.S. progressive weekly The Nation and host of Edgeofsports.com, a blog and radio show that examines the collision of politics and sports. He’s the author of several canonical books on that topic, most recently of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, […] More »
In Podcast #008, This Magazine contributor—and our own resident sports blogger—Andrew Wallace talks with Dave Zirin, sports editor with the influential U.S. progressive weekly The Nation — the first sports writer the Nation has ever employed, in fact. Zirin writes a weekly column about what he calls the “collision” of athletics and politics called Edge […] More »
The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization […] More »
I grew up in the Greater Toronto Area, home to the most diverse region in all of Canada, perhaps the world, in a Hong Kong immigrant household (caveat: my Man U-loving dad raised me on soccer). I’m intensely proud of that fact. So it ruffles my feathers that, hockey so often precludes all other events — […] More »
The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games open tonight with much fanfare, pomp, jollity, glee, grandeur, ceremony, flourish, and setting things on fire. We’ve spent, oh, about the last six weeks moaning about the whole thing, from the overblown budget to the bogus environmental claims, the sponsor bloat to the unsettled aboriginal land claims, the out-of-control […] More »
When Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, checks into his Vancouver hotel suite a few weeks from now, he will find (as he flops, exhausted, no doubt, from the strain of private jet travel) a “video wall,” paid for by the citizens of British Columbia. The bank of televisions are a requirement of […] More »
Nothing brings out patriotic pride like the Olympics. But before we get busy reading about gold medals and new heights of athletic glory, let’s take a few moments to reflect on a few shameful Canadian records that you likely won’t be hearing about during any Olympic broadcasts: 1. The Alberta tar sands hold two shameful […] More »
This edition of Verbatim is a transcript of Andrew Wallace in conversation with Harsha Walia of the No 2010 campaign. The original podcast of that interview is available here. Andrew is also joining us as a blog columnist, writing about the intersection of sport and society with Game Theory. The first column appeared yesterday. Be […] More »