Series: Spring 2004

Toting his notes, thermos of coffee and a pack of Salem Light Menthol cigarettes, Earl McRae would creep into the closed Simpson Tower on Yonge Street and ride the elevator to the 11th floor – home of The Canadian magazine. Squeezing into his office with barely room for a desk and chair, he’d begin pounding… Continue reading Roto Retro

It is 6 o’clock Monday morning. A man sits quietly in front of his computer with headphones on, seemingly oblivious to the world around him. The smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken fills the small room as a young guy named Scott breezes in and perches on his chair, fingers greasy, to update the traffic report.… Continue reading Where’s the Beef?

In early March 2002, Byron Christopher, senior journalist for CHED radio in Edmonton, stumbled onto a story. While looking into a lawsuit against Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc., he discovered that the company had been accused of bombing, raping, enslaving, kidnapping and executing citizens in Southern Sudan, where it operated the Heglig and Unity oil fields.… Continue reading Left Behind

It was baking hot in Nelie Alfredo Marinze’s little mud-walled shack, but we sat inside and she pushed the tin door closed against the prying eyes of her village. With the help of a translator who spoke her native Shonga, she told me how her husband left Lionde, in southern Mozambique, to work in the… Continue reading Out of Africa

The Rogers campus at 1 Mount Pleasant Rd. in Toronto is a towering, pinnacled, cathedral-like edifice of brown brick and mirrored green glass. The lobby is sunlit and impersonal with white floors and grey and white granite walls, three-storey windows, and a giant stone and steel spiral staircase. Marketing Magazine is cloistered on the seventh… Continue reading Market Indifference