The Salvation Army is proposing an 892-square-metre “mega-shelter” in Ottawa’s Vanier neighbourhood that would provide temporary shelter beds for up to 350 people. The shelter would be the biggest in North America, featuring a special health care unit, a space for addictions recovery, permanent housing referrals, a dining facility, counselling, employment skills training, and more. […] More »

In September, sex shop and bookstore Venus Envy was fined $260. The Ottawa location was charged for selling a chest binder to a person under 18. The chest binder, a piece of clothing similar to a tank top that flattens the chest, is not itself illegal. It’s the fact that an “adult store” sold it […] More »

Once upon a time, there was born in Brooklyn a boy named Fred Theilheimer. When he started high school, asked his name by some young women in the schoolyard—and fearing that “Fred” would not sufficiently impress—in an act of spontaneous imagination, and with Moby Dick in his American DNA, he said, “Call me Ish.” And […] More »

[This article has been updated since its early March 2011 publication; please see 5th paragraph] Imagine a major Canadian city fortunate enough to have both an old-growth forest and wetlands, rich in biodiversity and rare habitats, covering an area almost three times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Now picture chunks of it bulldozed for subdivisions […] More »

The governing Conservatives are about to table a budget that spends many billions of dollars. It sets the agenda of virtually every government department and it means a lot to anyone who pays taxes in Canada. But when the budget is introduced by the finance minister tomorrow, the prevailing Ottawa groupthink says it’s not about […] More »

The March-April 2011 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 support […] More »

Chances are, even if you did happen to be in Toronto last week for Canadian Music Week, you still probably missed the opportunity to see Ottawa’s The White Wires. Their lone set, at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night, made them an easy act to miss. It’s unfortunate, because The White Wires are a gritty […] More »

The fight against poverty in Canada recently added a new weapon to its arsenal: the living wage bylaw. While only one Canadian city, New Westminster, B.C., currently implements the practice, the push is on to make it the norm. Living wage bylaws require that workers employed directly or indirectly by a municipal government be paid […] More »

Chewing Each Other the delectable year of ear nips replacing gum. you keep the crisp crunch of sugar intact. I suction out a tug of self-esteem. rubbery, it fit inside a jelly bean that summer I spent calling every porsche funny-bum and laughing on a loop. that time when the throat sprouted spontaneous salivary glands […] More »

In this edition of Listen to This, associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey brings us the first in a three part series we’ll be running throughout this fall, talking with the leaders of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples about the current political environment and their relationship with the government. With a new Minister of Indian […] More »

It’s time for a little refresher course in Canadian civil society: Canada’s formal political dependence on Britain came to an end in 1982 with Pierre Trudeau’s Canada Act.  The Act led to the patriation of the Canadian Constitution–you know, that old document that outlines the vibrant democratic system of government we so proudly employ in […] More »