The Last Days of Eric Malling
The spectacular rise and drunken fall of a great contrarian
An early Sunday evening in Toronto. The rain that fell throughout the day is starting to let up, and Eric Malling has the house to himself. His son, Leif, is away at university, his wife, Pat Werner, is out of town and his daughter, Paige, is at her job at a local drugstore. It’s late […]
The First Lady of Razzmatazz
If Toronto's newspapering in the '50's was a circus, Dorothy Howarth was in the centre ring
At seven minutes after 11 o’clock in the evening, on September 8, 1954, 16-year-old Marilyn Bell waded into the choppy water of Lake Ontario at Youngstown, New York. In drizzling rain, the 119-pound high-school girl started swimming. Soon, nausea swept over her as the rolling swells of the lake crashed above her head. Eels attached […]
The British Are Coming, The British Are Coming
How Fleet Street stormed Front Street and colonized The Globe and Mail
On a cold night in Ottawa last October, a hundred people packed the National Press Club theatre to meet The Globe and Mail’s editor, Richard Addis, the new general in the bloody newspaper war against the National Post. The room buzzed with anticipation. So far, most of the war had been fought with biting columns, […]
Do You Hate Me?
For the National Post's Donna Laframboise, the question is rhetorical
“Feminism can come to men’s rescue,” Donna Laframboise scribbles in her notepad. “Honestly?” Laframboise and I are here, along with a couple of hundred people gathered at the University of Toronto to hear Susan Faludi, one of the grand dames of feminism, speak. Faludi, author of Backlash and self-described “dame in shining armour,” is talking […]
The Questionable Coverage of Global Warming
Why are the media so cool to such a hot story?
By the end of 1997, the trend was clear. It was the planet’s 19th consecutive year of above-normal temperatures and the hottest year on record. Disappearing glaciers, melting sea ice and a sea-level rise of 15 centimetres over the past century indicated that global warming was more than a theory. Environmentalists cited the summertime Red […]
The Soul in the Lens
The unforgiving art of Nigel Dickson
On a Monday night in November, the upstairs floor of Bistro 990 is filled with magazine editors, art directors and writers who have come to see the unveiling of Nigel Dickson’s 30 photographs of Toronto authors. While guests snack on stuffed pastries and sip wine, they examine the portraits that are displayed throughout the room, […]
Live from the Plains of Abraham
It's Canada: A People's History, the CBC $25 million, 30 hour, 15 episode attempt to show us the way we were
Red, grey and black binders bearing such labels as “Metis, et al” and “Halifax 1890s-1915” are scattered across the boardroom table. Huge yellow boxes of slides are piled in a corner. “Those are all for the Confederation episode,” says Mark Starowicz as he enters the sixth-floor screening room in the Toronto CBC building. Seating himself […]
Sink or Shift
Will we ever curl up with a magsite or will publishers take a bath trying to make us?
The offices at Shift Media are rarely silent. Phones ring constantly and lively conversations buzz along, meshing with hypnotic bass-heavy electronic music pouring out of computer speakers. Located on the second floor of a downtown Toronto art deco building, the space looks like a glorified university student’s residence room. The mix of comfortable furniture, young, […]
Slumming with Rebecca Eckler
An uptown girl meets a greyhound world
Rebecca Eckler sits on cold, grungy steps outside the Chicago Main Greyhound Bus Station between two scruffy-looking men. It’s 12:45 a.m. and I’m just arriving, joining her for the last 2,238 km of her bus adventure, which started in Whitehorse three days ago and will end in Miami three days from now. Looking up, with […]
600 Is Too Many
How the press used four boatloads of Chinese migrants to create an immigration crisis
In a small village in southern China, in the province of Fujian, a fruit seller is unable to face another winter without enough produce to make a living. It is the summer of 1999, and a group of men, human smugglers, show up in the village. They are driving cars and making promises. For a […]
