Editorial

“When I wrote this book, I knew the contents would cause great pain for many Canadians of English descent,” reads the first sentence in Daniel Paul’s We Were Not The Savages. “It must be discomforting to come to grips with the fact,” Paul continues, “that many of your ancestors were not always the kind, gentle […]

These are grim days for democracy. Every level of government that matters to us—from city to province to country—is running with little regard for us. Prime minister Harper’s contempt for free speech and open debate is well known. Premier RodMac rarely opens the legislature for work. And city council is out of step with what’s […]

It’s hard to believe the United States is sliding rapidly toward military dictatorship. But the latest list of under-reported news stories from Project Censored makes it clear that president Bush now has all the legal powers he needs to impose a police state. He can order mass arrests and imprison anyone indefinitely without charge or […]

Who could replace living legend Darce Fardy? That’s the question I put to Fardy last year, not long after he’d retired from his job as the province’s highest authority on freedom of information and protection of privacy laws. A longtime CBC journalist—he’d started as an office assistant in St. John’s and risen to become the […]

Censorship is rearing its ugly head these days in Halifax schools. Picture this: A high school teacher trying to give a science lesson on cloning wants to use animated, interactive websites to illustrate it. But half a dozen of them are blocked when students try to call them up on their classroom computers. It gets […]

Toronto’s CN Tower lost its title as world’s tallest free-standing structure last Thursday, with the announcement that construction of the Burj Dubai had reached 555.3 metres. The developers behind the Burj are keeping their planned finishing point secret, but said besting the CN Tower (553.5 metres) is just a milestone on the way to world’s […]

It was hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy on August 29 as Barry Barnet, minister of health promotion, faced an onslaught of media questions over his plans to curb Nova Scotians’ thirst for hootch. “One in five Nova Scotians who drink alcohol do so in a way that harmfully affects their own health […]

The day after September 11, Rudolph Giuliani spoke to his fellow Americans from a news conference. “Show your confidence,” he said. “Show you’re not afraid. Go to restaurants. Go shopping.” President Bush offered a similar message on September 27, talking about those 19 hijackers: “When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. […]

While you were off enjoying your summer, the citykept busy. There have been changes ranging from the unveiling of the beautiful “North is Freedom” statue at the North Branch Library, to the dubious installation of a bunch of surveillance cameras on downtown streets. There were plenty of visitors, coming to gawk during the Tall Ships […]

Anyone strolling near the main gate of the Public Gardens at noon on Monday would have witnessed a strange scene. There, in the bright sunshine, stood George W. Bush and his buddy, Steve Harper. “We need a secure supply of oil and gas, and we’d like your water,” Bush bellowed. “Well, I think it’s a […]

Now that Conrad Black has been convicted of corporate thievery, we might ask whether the journalistic system he presided over is itself a gigantic fraud. Black once owned daily newspapers in every major Canadian city. He also founded the National Post. He used his papers to push for tax cuts for the rich, privatized health […]

Those of us who imagine our lives as glamourous Hollywood movies with ourselves in the starring roles might have felt a tiny twinge of relief last week on hearing of the deaths of two famous European film directors. Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman and Italy’s Michelangelo Antonioni died on the same day—a noteworthy coincidence since, as Dan […]