It’s early April, and Tomek Kniat stares at his computer screen in the basement of his Scarborough, Ontario, home. His usual desktop image of a polar bear with gentle eyes is covered by a graph that zigs sharply higher and higher, reaching peaks that were foreign to Kniat only three or four days earlier. Is this… Continue reading Poles Apart

Shelley Youngblut had a problem. How can I get people like me to feel they can do home improvement? She was working on art ideas for a cover story titled “What’s the Worst That Can Happen?” So, when the Swerve editor-in-chief saw someone dressed as Mike Holmes at a Halloween party, she thought, Wouldn’t it be funny to put him… Continue reading Swerve Ahead

Andrew Westoll was on a mission. His motorboat, loaded with food and supplies, pushed upriver. Along the banks of the Sipaliwini River the foliage was dense, the layers of varying shades of greens and browns occasionally reverberating with bird cries. He was deep in the neotropical jungle of southern Suriname, the least-travelled country in South… Continue reading Lost and Bound

Updated February 2, 2011, 12:41 p.m. Chris Jones dials a number in Scottsburg, Indiana, and Gail Bond answers with her slow Midwestern twang. “My name is Chris,” he says. “I’m a writer with Esquire and I’d like to write a story about your son’s journey home.” Gail’s voice tightens and she begins to cry. Then Chris cries,… Continue reading Not All Smurfs and Sunshine

Updated: January 5, 2011 1:12a.m. By 1973, George Bain was restless. He’d been writing The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa column since 1964, and though he’d covered a fascinating, occasionally tumultuous, time in Canada’s political life—including the 1967 Centennial, Trudeaumania and the War Measures Act—he was up for a new challenge. Globe editor Richard “Dic” J. Doyle didn’t want… Continue reading Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant