Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Toronto’s weekly anti-vax rabble were out in force again this Saturday. I stumbled upon them by accident. My wife and I had run out to get a few groceries. When we reached the corner of Church & Bloor, we could see flashing lights in the distance and realized that it was police blocking an intersection…
I was curious to know if there would be a repeat performance of last weekend’s Freedom Convoy protest in Toronto. However, on Saturday when I got to Bloor and Avenue Road, it was apparent that the police had assembled a more comprehensive grid of road blocks. At Bloor & Avenue Road, there was a lone…
I went out shortly after 3:30 pm February 4th, ultimately to meet my wife down at her office in time to lug her laptop back home. Toronto Police Services had issued a notice that they were closing College St. west to University and University south from there in anticipation of tomorrow’s trucker protest which is…
On the evening of June 6th, protesters toppled the statue of Egerton Ryerson which stood on Gould Street on the campus of Toronto’s Ryerson University. Since that date, I have passed the site almost every day and have noted incremental changes.
[T]he function of a statue is only marginally tied to history; its primary function is to serve as an object of reverence. Statuary (of historical figures) is an expression of idolatry that serves the universal religion of our age: the dominance of capital over everything.
The very fact that we allow them to march down the main thoroughfare of our city gives the lie to their complaints. Admittedly, one of the marchers lost his freedom when he was arrested. But that was because he bit a police officer.
This is the first time in months that I’ve been out with my camera and have interacted with a live human being. It’s as if I’ve been holding my breath all winter and can suddenly let it out (while still wearing a mask, of course). It gave me such a lift to chat with a stranger.
The requirement that you conform to white expectations as a prerequisite to conversation about racial injustice is itself an enactment of racial injustice.
Ten years ago to the day, I left the safety of Toronto’s suburbs and rode downtown to poke around the billion dollar militarized zone that former PM Stephen Harper authorized to secure the 2010 G20 summit.
In an initiative called Paint The City Black, 40 graffiti artists from the GTA and Montreal have gathered in Graffiti Alley to support the Black Lives Matter movement with murals
Tom and George sat on the low stone wall and watched how the tear gas, looking for all the world like tufts of cotton, scudded along the street and vanished through the trees in the park.
Near the end of Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell’s memoir of his service in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell confesses that he was not above resorting to graffiti.
To take his mind off the pain and insomnia, he started decorating things, his mailbox and front porch to begin with, then expanding out into the yard to create a garden of glass beads, plastic bugs, pennies, action figures, rubber boots, bicycle tires, teapots, pool cues, ad infinitem.
So what is all this kerfuffle around the Toronto Public Library (TPL) renting space to Meghan Murphy? And why should it matter to someone like me, a cisgendered, middle-aged white male i.e. the ideal symbolic stand-in for privilege in all its manifestations?
I had seen signs around the downtown core declaring a Global Climate Strike on September 26th 2019. Inspired by the outspoken activism of Swedish high school student, Greta Thunberg…