“Here we have the usual Roy Arden stuff—garbage, rubbish, scraps—very boring, of course,” Brussels-based curator Dieter Roelstraete harrumphs in front of Canadian art star Roy Arden’s black-and-white photographs. Arden’s body of work is part of a group showing in Antwerp, Belgium, called Intertidal: Vancouver Art & Artists, that Roelstraete has co-curated. Wait—the curator just called… Continue reading Drawn but not Quartered

Canadian Business editor-in-chief Steve Maich sits at a two-seater table at a Timothy’s coffee shop in late October 2009, a short walk from Rogers command central, the hulking mass at the north end of downtown Toronto. He strikes what I can only assume is his signature pose, the same one he has in the portrait… Continue reading Risky Business

In the din of the newsroom, an orchestra of hammers struck the first note. Old sets were hastily torn down and replaced by transparent desks, luminescent backdrops and television screens. As the sound of buzz saws and workboots grew louder, so did the pressure to meet the on-air deadline. Newscasters rehearsed their standups on unfinished… Continue reading Beyond Repair

At the end of the 20th century, a promising new phenomenon appeared—amateur reporters and commentators who came to be known as “citizen journalists.” They presented their writing on the internet, called web diaries, weblogs or simply blogs. The people maintaining these sites were writers unhindered by conventional journalism practices who wanted to tell stories from… Continue reading Much ado about Precious Little

By 8 a.m. most days, Mir Mahdavi is walking his customary 15-minute route from his home in western Kabul, greeting the same friendly faces and stopping in the same grocery store for cigarettes before arriving at the three-storey apartment building that houses Aftab (“The Sun”), the weekly newspaper of which he is founder and editor-in-chief.… Continue reading Lost