It’s mid-afternoon, about the only downtime in a sportswriter’s long working day. Damien Cox, The Toronto Star’s hockey columnist, is sitting in the paper’s cafeteria, talking about what’s wrong with the sports pages. At 39, Cox looks in good enough shape to skate with the athletes he covers, but his concern at the moment isn’t… Continue reading Playing on the Same Page

My very favourite news stories these days are those poignant tales of parents who have been investigated by the police or social service agencies because rolls of film they have submitted for processing turn out to contain nude photos of their children. These parents are often very badly treated. Their children may be temporarily taken… Continue reading The Fine Art of Being Loathsome

When Naomi Klein was in high school, she had a part-time job at Esprit, a popular retail clothing store for women. Esprit had a great manager, but sales were down, and so the head office brought in a supervisor to see to it that things turned around. It seemed image was part of the problem.… Continue reading Radical Chic

With stage fog drifting through the air, acrobats swinging from the ceiling and bass-driven music throbbing through the building, the pace of the party at first seemed oddly out of sync with its purpose. The green, orange and purple overhead spots cast an outlandish light on a milling crowd of journalists, Globe and Mailstaffers and… Continue reading Who’s On Top?

To a passerby on Yonge Street, the scene could have been an Italian wedding. The Sunday crowd included not only swanky 20-somethings sporting designer Italian jackets, but also their proud parents, who clutched envelopes stuffed with money. They piled into Grano restaurant in midtown Toronto-neutral ground for Woodbridge suburbanites and College Street urban dwellers alike-to… Continue reading Uphill Struggle