Peter Milliken has had it made for almost ten years. He lives just down the hall from work, gets to throw lavish parties at a country estate, and makes a whole lot of money every year. Such is the life of the Speaker of the House of Commons—according to the image propagated by most news […] More »

In this episode of Listen to This, associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey interviews Carleton University professor Barbara Freeman about her research into the Abortion Caravan Campaign of 1970, one of the most important pro-choice movements in Canadian history. The campaign was literally a caravan that travelled from Vancouver to Ottawa in the spring of 1970, culminating in […] More »

It’s been a while since we’ve posted a new entry in the Verbatim series, the transcripts we provide of our Listen to This podcast. (Just a reminder that you can catch new, original interviews every other Monday—you can subscribe with any podcast listening program by grabbing the podcast rss feed, or easily subscribing through iTunes.) […] More »

Pablo Picasso had his so-called blue period. Ottawa artist Stefan Thompson is exploring a green period. Thompson first made a name for himself on the streets of the capital as a graffiti artist. Working under the pseudonym Maki, Thompson populated nooks and alleys throughout the city’s downtown with a menagerie of dazzlingly rendered and brilliantly […] More »

When Toronto launched Canada’s first bike share program in 2001, many saw it as a miracle project. Mirroring the popular-abroad systems of Paris and Vienna, the system allowed cyclists to grab their bikes at one hub, cruise the streets, and then drop the bike off at a rack nearest their destination—all for a daily or […] More »

One group’s feeble witch-hunt won’t deter legitimate criticism of Israel’s actions It started out on a hopeful note. To kick off the second hearing of the Canadian Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, director of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, flew to Ottawa at the committee’s request to testify [PDF]that Canada is a […] More »

In this edition of Listen to This, Nick Taylor-Vaisey interviews Duff Conacher, coordinator of Democracy Watch, a non-partisan advocacy group that lobbies for greater government transparency, accountability, and democratic reform. Conacher is one of the best-known media personalities in the field, constantly called on by media outlets to talk about what really goes on behind the […] More »

The National Hockey League playoffs open this week and the abundance of emotion-laden storylines are sure to captivate a significant portion of the the Canadian sporting public’s hearts. But while three Canadian squads—the Vancouver Canucks, the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators—vie for Lord Stanley’s coveted Cup, there’s another, less exciting, story unfolding that probably […] More »

Pretty much every “women and children first!” joke has already been made relating to the upcoming G8/G20 conferences in Toronto and Muskoka, and the Prime Minister’s announcement that maternal and children’s health would be the core of the agenda. The Conservatives have been dancing around the issue of reproductive planning and what they actually consider […] More »

Last night, I wondered whether it was worth writing about Ann Coulter. When I think of her at all — which isn’t too often, actually — I think of her as being a deeply vile but mostly irrelevant self-promoter. (It would be going too far to call her an ideologue, because that would imply ideas, […] More »

Progressive Canadians seldom get very excited whenever a Conservative government brings down a budget. More often than not, the priorities of the two groups are so wildly different that it’s almost not worth the effort to make a fuss. Last year’s budget was a different story. Stephen Harper’s team came up with a plan of […] More »