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Where is the Church in the Occupy Movement?
A question about the Occupy Movement: where is the Church? October 15th was supposed to be a global day of action, and by all accounts, it was successful, drawing crowds in cities all around the world. But where was the Church in all of this? The question was posed in Religion Dispatches nearly two weeks [...]
Continue reading...Occupy Wall Street – But Keep It Simple
12. October 2011
As the Occupy movement creeps ever closer to Toronto, we who support it brace ourselves for the inevitable backlash, not only from voices of power, but also from an eerily complacent middle class. Toronto had a foretaste of this more than a year ago when the G20 leaders came to town and those who spoke [...]
Continue reading...We Can’t Af Ford This
11. October 2011
After being away for a month, I returned home to Toronto with a question burning on my lips: So how’s Rob Ford’s War on Graffiti going? On Friday, I went downtown to get some answers. I can’t speak for the city at large because I sampled only a narrow sliver of streets downtown. The reason [...]
Continue reading...Who Has Seen The Wind (and it blows)
25. August 2011
I’ll soon be setting out on a road trip that takes me through the Prairies. I prepare for trips like this, not by planning where to stay or by careful packing that anticipates every possible weather situation, but by reading books from the places I expect to visit. I’m mostly interested in packing my mental [...]
Continue reading...Geoff Dyer, Antidote to the Supermodern
23. August 2011
As someone who claims to blog thematically about “the power of words” but occasionally interrupts his wordiness with photographs, I find it heartening that Geoff Dyer should open his latest collection of writings with a section devoted to photographers and their work. Whatever his rationale, I want to adopt it. In his introduction, he notes [...]
Continue reading...United Church of Canada – Anti-Israel Conspiracy Cult?
5. August 2011
There is a fascinating article by Joanne Hill in this week’s Jerusalem Tribune, a Toronto-based weekly published under the auspices of the B’nai Brith Canada. It purports to be an interview of Jonathan Kay as he launches his book, Among The Truthers. Jonathan Kay, a managing editor for the National Post, has written an exposé [...]
Continue reading...Mental Illness Stereotypes, Amy Winehouse, & Anders Behring Breivik
24. July 2011
Mad Pride Week finished more than a week ago. I had intended to write a piece on it but couldn’t find a hook. Until yesterday, that is, when two very different stories trended all over the social media universe. One story from the UK: soul singer, Amy Winehouse, had died at the age of 27. [...]
Continue reading...Ebooks and PED
23. July 2011
In debates about copyright and piracy, one hears a lot from copyright law advocates on one side (tough laws, DRM, enforcement with teeth), and cultural libertarians on the other (broad fair dealing provisions, open source, lenient enforcement). However, one hears little from economists. Sure, there are sweeping claims from the tough-on-piracy camp that illegal downloading [...]
Continue reading...Maurice, by E. M. Forster
15. July 2011
I first heard of E. M. Forster’s novel, Maurice, as an undergrad English student, not through one of my courses, but on a visit to my grandparents. At that time, my grandfather was a retired clergy and a staunch member of the Community of Concern, a group hellbent on keeping the dreaded homosexual out of [...]
Continue reading...Coming Out As An Author
12. July 2011
I did an English degree in the 80′s. Or it did me. I don’t know which. This was the age of Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Alex Keaton wore ties to the dinner table and poked fun at his hippie parents. I had thought I might go on with studies in literature or classics, but felt the [...]
Continue reading...Sense of Place in Zoe Whittall’s Holding Still for as Long as Possible
8. July 2011
Zoe Whittall’s Holding Still For As Long As Possible is a novel about queer youth in Toronto. I’m not a queer youth in Toronto. I’m a straight middle-aged guy in Toronto. (I leave for another time the debate about whether straight people can identify as queer.) So I don’t feel acutely qualified to pronounce upon [...]
Continue reading...Review: August Farewell, by David G. Hallman
6. July 2011
On Friday August 7, 2009, William Conklin and his partner of almost 33 years, David Hallman, learned that William—Bill—had pancreatic cancer. Within 16 days, Bill was dead. David wrote quickly of those 16 days, fearful perhaps that if he lost the memory of them, it would compound his sense of loss. The result is a [...]
Continue reading...Wringing the Author out of Middle Class Fiction
29. June 2011
In the introduction to Otherwise Known As The Human Condition, Geoff Dyer writes of how he first broached the idea of an essay collection with his editor: [H]e asked if these pieces would be linked, if there might be some way of passing off these bits and bobs as a coherent book organized around a [...]
Continue reading...Unwanted Erections and Adolescent Writing
28. June 2011
Writing stories is not a recent obsession for me. It began in my early teens with a story about the end of the world – planet Earth gets sucked into a black hole. Balls and holes. The scientist who announces Earth’s fate to his colleagues does so while standing beside a pool table holding a [...]
Continue reading...Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, by Zsuzsi Gartner
21. June 2011
Someday I would like to write a dissertation. I would use big words and quote great minds and when I was done I would tell people that I had made a definitive statement: a philosophy of the banal. I would write it in the spirit of Albert Camus who offered the world a philosophy of [...]
Continue reading...New eFiction from David Allan Barker
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17. October 2011
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