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May-June 2011

This45: Alana Wilcox on book collective Invisible Publishing

Alana WilcoxWebsite

Even when it’s not faced with an uncertain digital future, the publishing industry occupies a very uncomfortable place at the intersection of art and commerce. “Intersection” may not be the right word; it’s more like art is one end of a teeter totter and money is the other, with publishing in the middle, trying to […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Sarah Elton on community-supported fishery Off the Hook

Sarah EltonWebsite

It’s hard to find fresh fish to buy in Canada. Even in Halifax, in view of the ocean, it takes at least six days for local fillets to make it from the fishing boats to the supermarket. Now, a group of five fishers are changing the way fish are caught and sold. They’ve founded Off […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Jim Stanford on activist educator Kevin Millsip & Next Up

Jim StanfordWebsite

It was the sort of sectarian self-destruction that’s sadly all too common in left-wing movements. After winning strong majorities on Vancouver City Council, the school board, and the park board in 2002, the Coalition of Progressive Electors alliance split in two just a couple of years later. This paved the way for the right to […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Gordon Laird on Buddhist teacher Doug Duncan

Gordon LairdWebsite

It’s easy to despair of politics in the 21st century. We seem cursed with high recurrence: on issues like climate change, poverty, and democracy, we experience the same problems, the same arguments, and the same incomplete fixes. Why is it so hard to make change stick? “You cannot have outer revolution without inner revolution,” explains […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Susan Crean on Aboriginal theatre company Native Earth Performing Arts

Susan CreanWebsite

I joined the board of Native Earth Performing Arts, in Toronto’s Distillery District, several years ago, and quickly discovered the best perk of the office is watching a performance evolve through rehearsal. Seeing the actors figuring out their moves together, adjusting dialogue, and dissecting the meaning of the play, and then witnessing opening night when […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Craig Saunders on environmentalist Gideon Forman

Craig SaundersWebsite

That Gideon Forman is an activist should come as no surprise. The child of New York peace activists, he spent his 1960s childhood handing out leaflets around his Greenwich Village home. What is surprising is that this wiry man in his 40s has become one of Canada’s best environmental strategists and led a group of […] More »
May-June 2011

This45 Fiction: Rosemary Sullivan on Lauren Kirshner’s “The Ugly Building”

Lauren KirshnerWebsite

Introduction by Rosemary Sullivan Lauren Kirshner is a very talented young writer. I first met her in an undergraduate workshop I gave at the University of Toronto in 2003. She was such a natural that I submitted one of her stories to Barry Callaghan’s journal Exile. When she read at the launch of that issue, […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Arif Noorani on Canadian Journalists for Free Expression

Arif Noorani

I’m sitting in a room surrounded by hundreds of people, kindred spirits, a number of whom would normally not cross paths. Chiselled-faced anchors sit side by side with journalists who have been exiled from their homes around the world. Then a series of startling images jolt me up in my seat. Footage of riot police […] More »
March-April 2011

This45: Gerald Hannon on trans rights activist Syrus Marcus Ware

Gerald Hannon

For the last two years, anyone weary of the increasingly commercialized and blissfully apoliticized nature of Pride in Toronto has made a beeline for the back-to-the-future experience that is the Trans March. It’s small, friendly, community-based, unendorsed by any corporate interest. It’s also politicized, giddy, and endearingly disorganized, the way many of us remember Prides […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Jessica Leigh Johnston on feminist teen magazine Shameless

Jessica Leigh JohnstonWebsite

Flip through the pages of Shameless, a feminist magazine for teen girls, and you’ll find a debate about the value of corporate social responsibility titled “When Oppressive Corporations Do Progressive Things” alongside a first-person call for self-acceptance, “Shame, Beauty and Women of Colour.” It’s not exactly Seventeen, and that’s the whole point — or at […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Clive Thompson on zero-growth economist Peter Victor

Clive ThompsonWebsite

Could you live on $14,000 a year? Could everyone in Canada? And could we live on $14,000 a year for the rest of history? That’s the sort of uncomfortable, prickly question Peter Victor likes to ask. And the way you answer might say a lot about the future of the planet. That’s because Victor is […] More »