Kyle Shaw

You could do worse than a double feature of Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck. Both are up for the best picture Oscar at Sunday’s Academy Awards, and taken together they give a crash course on everything that’s wrong with journalism today. Capote follows author Truman Capote from 1959, when he started writing a […]

There’s a scene from a classic civilization where the emperor Nero plays his fiddle, while around him a fire is destroying Rome. Although the veracity of the story is debatable—if nothing else, his instrument must have been a lyre—the image of a politician indifferent to major problems has earned a place in our vocabulary. Over […]

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. These are what shrinks call the “stages of grief,” steps a person has to go through before fully coming to terms with a traumatic event. Consider the shock of hearing the words “prime minister Stephen Harper” for the first time. I couldn’t believe it (denial), then I expressed dismay about […]

The looming federal election has me thinking a lot about the medically induced coma. You know, Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon was put in one after his stroke, and two Canadian soldiers received the coma treatment when they were wounded in last weekend’s suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan. Now I’m ready. Just put me out […]

It’s hard to avoid red poppies around Remembrance Day. Veterans are stationed in grocery stores across the country, selling the familiar felt and plastic flower. The bright piece of lapel flair is a must-have for politicians, making Canada’s parliament look like a convention of opium producers this time of year. The Chronicle-Herald even printed a […]

As if Vancouver needs any more ego boosting, early this month The Economist magazine’s research arm named it the world’s best place to live. The city has been at the top of the “Liveability Ranking” before, consistently scoring well in terms of stability, healthcare, education, infrastructure, culture and environment to be the planet’s “most attractive […]

One night last week, a construction site on Hollis Street became beautiful. It was after nine o’clock, when the only visible activity came from a welder doing some sort of repair to a backhoe’s scoop. The beautiful part was the white-blue light coming off the welding torch. It cast the welder’s shadow six storeys tall […]

Dear Dalton McGuinty, premier of Ontario, The one-armed boy’s yelling woke me up this morning. I poked my head outside to see if the pit bulls were at him again, and soon discovered what all the excitement was about. “There’s a boat coming, you,” he said. “Better get the frig down there, wha?” Although I […]