Category: Summer 2000

“Feminism can come to men’s rescue,” Donna Laframboise scribbles in her notepad. “Honestly?” Laframboise and I are here, along with a couple of hundred people gathered at the University of Toronto to hear Susan Faludi, one of the grand dames of feminism, speak. Faludi, author of Backlash and self-described “dame in shining armour,” is talking… Continue reading Do You Hate Me?

On a cold night in Ottawa last October, a hundred people packed the National Press Club theatre to meet The Globe and Mail’s editor, Richard Addis, the new general in the bloody newspaper war against the National Post. The room buzzed with anticipation. So far, most of the war had been fought with biting columns,… Continue reading The British Are Coming, The British Are Coming

By the end of 1997, the trend was clear. It was the planet’s 19th consecutive year of above-normal temperatures and the hottest year on record. Disappearing glaciers, melting sea ice and a sea-level rise of 15 centimetres over the past century indicated that global warming was more than a theory. Environmentalists cited the summertime Red… Continue reading The Questionable Coverage of Global Warming

On a Monday night in November, the upstairs floor of Bistro 990 is filled with magazine editors, art directors and writers who have come to see the unveiling of Nigel Dickson’s 30 photographs of Toronto authors. While guests snack on stuffed pastries and sip wine, they examine the portraits that are displayed throughout the room,… Continue reading The Soul in the Lens

Red, grey and black binders bearing such labels as “Metis, et al” and “Halifax 1890s-1915” are scattered across the boardroom table. Huge yellow boxes of slides are piled in a corner. “Those are all for the Confederation episode,” says Mark Starowicz as he enters the sixth-floor screening room in the Toronto CBC building. Seating himself… Continue reading Live from the Plains of Abraham