It’s a cold, mid-November night, but inside at Shift‘s annual “State of the Net” party, things are heating up. The scene: the vast open space of the Guvernment, a Toronto nightclub, where the thump, thump, thump of the bass is pounding so forcefully that it feels like a second heartbeat in your chest and where… Continue reading Dead in its Tracks
Tag: canada
Watered Down
Coastlife magazine was conceived in November 1998 around a coffee table laden with a pot of tea, mugs and bowls of hummus and chips. Kyle Shaw, Christine Oreskovich, Catherine Salisbury and Heidi Hallet had gathered at Shaw and Oreskovich’s Halifax home for the fall board meeting of The Coast, at the time a five-year-old weekly… Continue reading Watered Down
Apocalypse Bob
It’s 4:30 a.m. Bob Hunter turns off his alarm clock, steps into his slippers and selects a robe from one of nearly a dozen in his closet. In the bathroom, he gathers his long, thin, greying hair and ties it back into a ponytail, splashes cold water on his face and hooks his dark-rimmed glasses… Continue reading Apocalypse Bob
Bad Boys, Booze and Bylines
The press club door had a buzzer in those days. You had to ring the buzzer and then wait for the door to open. On this night, someone is leaning on the buzzer. Inside, as the door opens, turned heads watch with surprise-and no surprise-as Duncan Macpherson falls through to the floor. He’s drunk, with… Continue reading Bad Boys, Booze and Bylines
The Outsiders
Stephen Osborne can be an intimidating guy. Even some long-time members of his own staff think so. Maybe it’s the beard. With his greying whiskers, a steely, confrontational stare and a manic twinkle behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, the founding editor and publisher of Vancouver’s Geist magazine conjures a cross between the ghosts of Rasputin and… Continue reading The Outsiders