A month ago on this blog, I wrote an open letter to Jack Layton in the wake of his announcement that he’d decided to step down from his duties as Leader of the Opposition to focus on his cancer treatment. It spoke of the hope, that very real belief that I shared with a lot of Canadians that Jack and his moustache would be back in Parliament at the end of the summer; but now that we know how his story unfolded, that hope smacks more of denial.
When I started chemo for Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2001, I was nineteen years old — one of the few patients under fifty at my cancer centre. A social worker put me in email contact with Rachel, a twenty-two year old with a brain tumour who was undergoing treatment at the same time. Rachel described her cancer in a message to me, explaining that her doctors gave her a one-in-twenty chance of surviving five years. With my own nine-in-ten survival rate, I was floored. She followed her explanation with, “Oh well, we’ll see how things go.” She assured me that she would one day marry her boyfriend. I don’t know if it was denial or hope, or if those two things are the same, but I agreed that she would.
We stayed in touch for a few months and shared funny stories of hair loss and the awkward but usually endearing things said by people who don’t know what to say, but as we both carried on with our treatments our emails dropped off. Six months into my treatment I was told my cancer was gone. A month later I got an email from Rachel’s boyfriend letting me know she’d passed away. (more…)
Yesterday evening on QR77 AM radio’s The Rob Breakenridge Show, guest host Whitney Deane interviewed author Michael Harris about “Life After Death,” his cover story for the current issue of The Walrus. Use the embedded player to hear them discuss HIV/AIDS at age thirty.
Dear Friends,
Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.
Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.
I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.
I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election. (more…)
MuchMusicDamian Abraham is standing on the front steps of the Masonic Temple, a brick landmark in downtown Toronto that was once the city’s premier concert hall. He’s wearing a striped polo shirt and tie-dyed hat with a large, realistic eyeball on the front, which only accentuate Abraham’s physically imposing figure. He’s bald and burly, with a face that can morph from babyish at one moment to seemingly furious the next.
There is a skeletal television crew around him — a box light, a cameraman and one producer talking on his Blackberry, coordinating with technicians at MuchMusic headquarters a few blocks away. Abraham quickly runs through some patter until he’s cut off by the producer, signalling that they’re about to go live.
“Guess who’s baaack?” Abraham opens. This isn’t the first time he’s been in front of camera at this iconic locale. Four years ago, his hardcore punk band Fucked Up was banned from this very building after their live television debut — a performance in a men’s washroom — ended with thousands of dollars in property damage. That was during a live taping for MTV Canada, the network that currently occupies this building. Now he’s back, working for the other music channel in town. (more…)
I think I speak for most, if not all, Canadians when I mutter “damn it” and sigh heavily.
The reason Canadians of all political leanings paused at your announcement yesterday is because cancer has an eerie but largely unspoken grasp on everyone. Few among us are untouched by the disease, and this latest news of yours is a reminder that life has a way of shaking even the sturdiest of foundations, especially, it seems, when we could really use the stability. A person can’t swing a CT scanner in this country without hitting someone who either has or has had, or knows some who has or has had, cancer. Very little shock lingers after an announcement like yours because disbelief is quickly ousted by a familiar sense of disappointment — not again.
Any oncologist will tell you that cancer is not a single disease; it’s a blanket term for a type of disease that takes on many different forms and implications. Today, while some observers dig around to figure out what particular kind of cancer you’re battling now, others among us know it really doesn’t matter. Any cancer survivor will tell you that cancer is cancer. Regardless of who you are, how old you are, where you are, and what the sickness interrupts: it’s cancer. (more…)
The only reason the sky didn’t fall yesterday is because this damn heat rose and held the sky up.
Obviously, this puts you in a bit of a pickle. You made all those grandiose predictions about how terrible the record-breaking temperature would be, but besides that moment when you got stuck with a “don’t walk” signal before crossing the street on the way from your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned office, you barely broke a sweat all day. Embarrassing? Sure. Very much so.
Every time this kind of weather occurs, which it does often, inevitably, at least once a year, without incident, it feels like the first time for you. That’s because you’re an emotional person (some might say neurotic, alarmist, ridiculous), but no one should judge you for that. Don’t worry, plenty more predicted catastrophes have come and gone without incident — Carmageddon, Snowpocalypse, the “shoegaze” era in rock music. There are ways to make today’s walk of shame easier on yourself. (more…)
What was supposed to be less than three hours of testimony from News Corporation executives Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks, in response to allegations of phone hacking and other serious wrongdoings at News of the World, the recently folded London tabloid belonging to News Corp.’s News International, instead stretched out to nearly five hours today. However, very little new information was gleaned from the executives. All three stuck to a strategy that the committee of British MPs found difficult to penetrate. The Murdochs and Brooks each claimed ignorance about many of the goings-on at News of the World, apologized for the damage that had been done (particularly in the case of Milly Dowler), and expressed their commitment to journalistic integrity. Read our play-by-play account and analysis of the events of the day, which reached an early climax when Murdoch Sr. took a shaving-foam pie to the face two-and-a-half hours into the proceedings.
9:40 am EST: Rupert and James Murdoch are before the British Commons’ culture, media, and sport committee. Rupert interrupts his son’s opening apology: “This is the most humble day in my life.”
9:49 am EST: James claims no knowledge that Brooks, former editor of News of the World, or other resigned executives had prior knowledge of the hacking allegations. “There is no evidence today, that I have seen, that there was any impropriety by them.”
9:51 am EST: Rupert Murdoch is called on. Seems a bit shaken and skirts questions to remind the committee of his tens of thousands of dignified employees. News of the World only 1 percent of his company’s operations.
9:54 am EST: Rupert claims no knowledge of much of News of the World‘s wrongdoing and blackmail allegations, despite international press coverage — deflects to son James but MP Tom Watson holds the spotlight on Rupert. James eager to jump in. (more…)
July 6, 2011: “WHAT IS THIS!?!” “That’s your voice at too loud a volume.”
June 29, 2011: “Don’t cry. It’s just a comma. Imagine if it was a semicolon.”
June 21, 2011: “I just wrote a new social etiquette manual called Real Talk. Deal with it.”
June 14, 2011: “Do you want anything from Montreal? Attitude? Or bagels?”
June 7, 2011: “You can have as many cries as you want. He can’t control your tears.”
May 30, 2011: “There were some serious inconsistencies in Charlie’s Angels 2.”
May 25, 2011: “You’re like a hot Where’s Waldo. It’s totally good.”
May 5, 2011: “A little power corrupts a little bit.”
April 14, 2011: “No one expects a unicorn to actually do anything.”
March 4, 2011: “My whole life is a Whitesnake moment.”
Luminato FestivalMurder, deception, sex, and violence all played out on the stage last month, and it wasn’t some cutting edge, contemporary play. Rather, one of the oldest collections of stories in existence — One Thousand and One Nights, better known in the West as Arabian Nights. At Toronto’s Luminato festival, the production stayed true to the source material. This was not Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves: Disney-fied childhood memories of magic carpets and vest-wearing, shoulder-riding monkeys quickly disappeared when confronted with these stories of rape, slaughter, orgies, and sexual objectification.
“I’ve always been interested in stories, especially those that gripped me as a child. But how I knew these stories as a child bares little relation to how they actually are,” says director Tim Supple of the Luminato production, which ran from June 11 to 19. “We receive these stories through a filter as Arabian Nights. More than any other stories that I can think of, a completely different version has been developed for these. [They have been] stripped of their violence and sexuality and given to children.”
The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment was the name imposed on English translations of One Thousand and One Nights in 1706, but the collection dates to the 9th century. It’s a gathering of tales from Persia, Arabia, and India, held together by the framing narrative of King Shahryar and Queen Scheherazade. When Shahryar learns that his first wife has been unfaithful, he murders her, then adopts the unseemly habit of marrying a virgin every night, bedding her, and then killing her in the morning — guaranteeing fidelity. Scheherazade, a daughter of the official who’s been tasked to find the king’s new consorts, offers herself up as the next bride, but with a clever plan. Once they have married, she tells her husband a long, enchanting story that lasts through the night. When morning comes, she leaves the plot at a Dan Brown-like cliffhanger, causing Shahryar to keep her alive to hear the rest. With that framework in place, Scheherazade’s stories within stories within stories follow, all to keep the debauched king’s attention. The entire tale is similar to Inception, but with less special effects and more nudity. (more…)
Biblioasis Press“There were ‘birds’ whose purpose was to record
the movements of the masses, to repeat
working-class conversation verbatim.”
— from Joshua Trotter’s “Continuation of the History of Utopia”
Joshua Trotter’s debut, All This Could Be Yours, slipped quietly into (better) bookstores earlier this year and quickly became something of a totem among the poetry-reading public. A small number of people seem to like it a great deal. I’m among them. The Montreal poet’s eclectic, unformulaic approach to form has resulted in a book of language games and sci-fi–flavoured experimental riffs that stick around in the reader’s mind, both propelled by sound and sustained by content.
Trotter and I exchanged emails about the book and his creative process. That correspondence is shared below.
Jacob McArthur Mooney Thanks for doing this, Joshua. What’s most striking about All This Could Be Yours, at least in terms of content, is its diversity of interests. You really take from across the culture, and from science and the social sciences. At the same time, the poems possess a sort of self-containment as individuals, giving the book a real “collection” feel. Despite a handful of recurring motifs and characters, the book’s unity comes from disunity: it’s a book of poems, rather than the less specific “book of poetry.” How do you feel about unity in the context of a book of poems, as it relates to the assumed necessity (especially with a first book) of a singular voice?
Joshua Trotter I spent a lot of time attempting to coerce the book into coherence — in terms of style, in terms of content, in terms of voice — and I found I could not force it to happen. At least, not without damaging the poems. So, as it says on the cover, it’s a book of poems, rather than poetry. The poems are self-contained organisms, I hope. The book is their exoskeleton. It took me awhile to be okay with that. I have long been a fan of books with a distinct, consistent tone. Recurring images, morals, themes, grammatical forms, even words. It is a wonderful feeling to buckle yourself into such a Volvo, to let it carry you from page to page in comfort and relative safety. Yet, as I read more, as I get older, I’m becoming more interested in books that jump from place to place. Books that go off-road, scratching the paint, dragging the muffler — books that are willing to drive without insurance, perhaps a little drunk. (more…)
Irshad Manji wants to stir things up. The author, journalist, and advocate for religious reform opposes the hijab, saying it “makes [women] a billboard for the most chauvinistic aspects of Arab tribal culture,” and was offended by plans to create an Islamic community centre near Manhattan’s Ground Zero. She is committed to her Islamic faith, but is urging all Muslims to ask questions and hold moral stances about things like honour killing and suicide bombing.
Manji’s new book, Allah, Liberty and Love, is out this month. It’s a follow-up to her wildly successful The Trouble With Islam Today, which was banned in many countries. But droves of readers, especially women and youth, reacted positively to Trouble, which has now been published in thirty languages and downloaded more than two million times. In Allah, Manji writes that the imam at her mother’s mosque in Vancouver “declared me a ‘bigger criminal’ than Osama bin Laden. His rationale: among Muslims, my book had allegedly caused more debate.”
Manji, a feminist, lesbian Canadian, is perhaps not many orthodox believers’ preferred critic of mainstream Islam. She frequently receives death threats, and reprints some of them in Allah, Liberty and Love. But she argues that the focus can be taken off of “bombings, beheadings, and blood” if Muslims practice ijtihad — using one’s mind to understand the world and “exercising the freedom to ask questions — sometimes uncomfortable ones.” Manji emphasizes that both Muslims and non-Muslims have a responsibility to query what is happening in Islam. Yet Muslims, she writes, are fearful of speaking out and acting in non-traditional ways for fear of dishonouring their families, while non-Muslims fear being labelled bigots for questioning the religion.
Manji is outspoken, determined, and, some would say, fearless. But as I interviewed her at Random House Canada’s Toronto office, I was taken aback by her charm and openness. A condensed version of our conversation follows.
Lindsay Lafreniere Your book The Trouble with Islam Today created such strong praise and criticism from people all over the world. Did you anticipate such reactions, and are you expecting a similar response to this book?
Irshad Manji I didn’t know what to expect after The Trouble with Islam Today came out. I only knew one thing, which was that my conscience required me to write it. I certainly didn’t expect the emails from young Muslims in the Middle East asking when I was going to get the book translated into Arabic. It’s been somewhat surreal, but more instructive and eye-opening than anything else. I truly would not have predicted being able to write a book called Allah, Liberty and Love after putting the finishing touches on my previous book. Love was not what I was thinking. I’ve [since] learned that I’m not alone and in fact, there is such a constituency of reformist Muslims who need to be equipped with the “how” of expressing themselves and not just the “why.” (more…)
best seo forums: Thanks for sharing such an brilliant post. I make sure to visit this post regularly. keep sharing more and more..
Seenloitering: The “gender analysis” in this article is upside down. Marie Calloway is a threat to the status quo because she threatens the myth that women are morally superior, above...
Jefry: I do not really like to read a story like a novel or a real story but I think this is very interesting and need to be read
Legong: I know I am replying to this pathetic, racist statement a little late and the whole ignorant rant probably doesn’t even deserve a reply. Wanhenglo, if we were all to generalise about...
Legong: I know I am replying to this pathetic, racist statement a little late and the whole ignorant rant probably doesn’t even deserve a reply. Wanhenglo, if we were all to generalise about...
Sky Goodden: This is startling, refreshing, overdue, and damn good. Thank you, Shary.
Mark: It’s not just in Canada, it seems all over artists don’t get the local recogtnition they should. I was in Malaga where Picasso was born and it is much different, but then he is...
Guest: I didn’t want babies or a period any more. I KNEW without a doubt I did not want children so I had been asking for a hysterectomy since I was 19. I finally got it at 39. My...
Djzklj: Pretty interesting article, despite that I don’t wanna make a voyage there
Sanyo Seiki: I love this game! Very addicted! Sanyo Seiki
