Lowefiles

Andrea D’Sylva has a plan for you this election. She wants you to vote strategically. It’s not about ditching your NDP, Marxist-Leninist or Green Party principles and voting Liberal to make sure Stephen Harper doesn’t grab the keys to 24 Sussex. For D’Sylva, voting strategically is voting as a feminist. And voting as a feminist? […]

I sang along to “Auld Lang Syne” this New Year’s, in blithe contradiction to that part about auld acquaintances being forgotten. You see, 2005 was the year I found my long-lost best friend, my first best friend, Karen. We talked about entering kindergarten together, about rollerskating shows we put on in my basement and how […]

On a recent episode of NBC’s Fear Factor, contestants braved a dark tunnel filled, by turn, with sewage, rats, tarantulas and two walls of fire. Where, I wonder, was the eggnog? The holiday “treat” — eggs whipped with sugar and milk or cream (plus whatever abominable chemicals the commercial brands are laced with — what […]

The story would make perfect fodder for the satirical online newspaper The Onion: Oxford, Nova Scotia’s town council passed a unanimous motion on November 28 proclaiming the entire month of December the “Christmas season” because, according to deputy mayor Leonard Allen who introduced the motion, the politically cleansed term “holiday season” isn’t giving Christ his […]

Sometimes these columns brew and brew. Like niggling little errands left undone or that call I ought to have placed to my grandmother for the birthday gift she mailed two months ago. With to-dos, you need time and opportunity. With columns, you need a hook. And now that local comedian and first-time playwright Michael Best […]

I’m trying to come to terms with something Dr. Phil once said: when you’re late (and I am — consistently), you don’t care enough to be on time. It’s classic Dr. Phil, whose take-responsibility — or, as he calls it, “get real” — pop psychology might well be dubbed “deal with your own shit, lady.” […]

They found the remains of Alicia Ross last week. Twenty-five and missing for a month from her home in Markham, Alicia’s remains were scattered around picturesque cottage country on a lake near Coboconk, Ontario. Three days before, it was Jennifer Teague. Eighteen and missing 11 days since she left the night shift at Wendy’s and […]

I Google myself all the time. Nothing dirty. It’s just searching my name on Google.ca. Though admitting it feels kind of like letting the cat out of the bag on chronic masturbation. And it’s a similar activity, really — fuelled by self-love, simmered in a feeling of shame that’s, if you’ll pardon the pun, bred […]

A school in Vail, Arizona, becomes this autumn one of the first e-book high schools, ditching real, live paper textbooks for the flat screen sheen of student-issue laptops, e-texts, online articles and an extensive WiFi network. I can already hear the apocalypse-prophesizing of book lovers everywhere. But come now. This isn’t the same disaster of […]