Staring Down the Tigers
The Sri Lankan civil war is playing out in Toronto’s Tamil media — and one local writer has the broken bones to prove it. Profiles in journalistic courage
From the window of the airplane I can see treetops for miles and miles, with terracotta-tiled roofs flickering in patches. Then, on the one-hour bus ride from the airport, I catch glimpses of yellowthroated birds and wildflowers in the bushes. Small white herons with jet-black legs and beaks dot the paddy fields. Trees rise up […]
“I”
With plans to write about his severely disabled son, Ian Brown—a master of personal journalism—is about to get a lot more personal and maybe, finally, perhaps, produce a book that matches his big ambitions
“Failure!” says Ian Brown. “Big failure.” The feature writer and broadcaster is talking about his failure — to write a book he still owes Random House, the chronicle of a car high-jacking and kidnapping. We’re well into our conversation that began about an hour earlier, just after 8 a.m., when he burst through the wooden […]
The “Gee Whiz” Effect
Bob McDonald and his Quirks & Quarks colleagues cover science with infectious enthusiasm. It's a 32-year-old formula that still offers lessons on how to make difficult topics compelling
The toys look like muses. They line the office partitions, overlooking producers at their desks in this third-floor corner of the Canadian Broadcasting Centre: a small dinosaur, a baseball in a case, an uncompleted Rubik’s Cube, a shot glass, a tiny model space shuttle, two snow globes, a Pez dispenser, a model of an atom […]
The Tortoise and The Tortoise
Two new city magazines in Edmonton have left the starting gate, but slow and steady may not be enough to win this publishing race
Shop clerk Dawn Golding snatches a copy of Edmonton Life from the display in front of her till at the Front Page, a newsstand on downtown Edmonton’s main drag. She leafs through its pages and gushes about the glossy new magazine in her hands. “I’m just glad they’re doing a magazine on Edmonton,” she says. […]
Leading Men
Power! Influence! Drama! Pulling back the curtain on four of Toronto's top theatre critics
The theatre performance du jour in Toronto is Soulpepper’s adaptation of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker. Having just finished their opening night performance, the three actors return to the stage to take their bows. A sparse standing ovation springs up for the 2005 Nobel Prize winner’s 1959 classic. The audience members process what they’ve seen. “That […]
Going Undercover
Violence, drugs and police conflicts: A Toronto journalist reveals the perils of immersion journalism
Since I became a journalist 10 years ago, I’ve had three dozen needles poked into my arm over two days, lived homeless for a year, stolen cars, hopped freight trains, panhandled and had the crap beaten out of me more than once. Through dumb luck and willfulness, I’ve wrung stories out of murderers, drug dealers, […]
Firebrand
At 19, Heather Robertson wrote an editorial that enflamed the college jocks, sparking a career dedicated to fearless reporting. A revealing look at Canada's feistiest journalist
Heather Robertson wanted no part of a football team.In 1961, the University of Manitoba was again considering forming a squad, even though teams had already folded twice due to high costs and low support. But “the football boys,” as Robertson called them, wanted to try again—at the expense of the students and administration. So, as […]
Cyber Siege
Yes, the Internet is a big, scary monster that threatens newspapers. But as Globeandmail.com and others have shown, the counterattack has begun
On Friday, November 11, 2005, in the lobby of The Globe and Mail building on Front Street in downtown Toronto, I leaf through the day’s edition and come across the headline: “Sony BMG shoots itself in the foot while firing against music pirates.” I sigh, because I already know the story: hidden security software has […]
The Dispassionate Eye
A photojournalist speaks of death, detachment and documenting human suffering
In late October 1998, the Kosovo conflict was more than halfway through its tragic course. One day, while cruising the Drenica hills area, I heard about a young boy who had been shot dead. It’s possible that he had ventured too close to Serbian positions without realizing the danger. I wondered who could have shot […]
”It’s Who I Am”
How one aboriginal reporter left mainstream news outlets behind to tell the stories of her people
In August 2000, I was sent to Burnt Church, New Brunswick to cover the daily showdowns on Miramichi Bay between Mi’kmaq fishers and conservation officers. The federal government had set a deadline for native fishers to remove their lobster traps to make way for commercial fishing – a deadline ignored by members of the Burnt […]
