Race, The Mindy Project and Why We Need More South Asian TV Characters
When I was growing up in the nineties, no one on my favourite shows ever looked like me. Clarissa may have explained it all, but ...
Blog Archive
Excess Baggage
A baggage yak, from T.E. Gordon's 1876 book Roof of the World. I used to spend entire days on Greyhound buses, criss-crossing the ...
Orientalism, Gentrification and Irony in Parc Ex: A Response to the Globe and Mail
The former Jean-Talon railway station in Montreal's Parc Extension neighbourhood. Gentrification is a curious beast. At its roots, it’s an economic process, with ...
Roger Ebert, the Posthumous Twitter Follow and the Way We Mourn Today
Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz Hammel-Smith give the thumbs-ups to Nancy Kwan at the Hawaii International Film Festival on October 20, 2010. Photograph by ...
The Vancouver Seawall in All its Incarnations
Walking the length of Vancouver’s Seawall is a lesson in design fads and fashions. The Stanley Park stretch dates back to 1914 and is ...
Can a Canadian Cleric Overthrow the Pakistani Political Establishment?
Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri speaks at a conference in 2011. Photograph by Servingislam. In late December 2012, an obscure religious scholar and humanitarian took the stage ...
Veronica Mars, Amanda Palmer and the Complications of Crowdfunding
Last week, the creators behind Veronica Mars, the short-lived but beloved television show that aired on UPN/the CW between 2004 and 2007, made internet ...
Tumbling Into Context: Against "Against Tumblr"
Illustration by Yarek Waszul. Two years ago, the US National Archives started using Tumblr to publish photos and other historical documents that are now being ...
Why I Liked Argo
Will Sunday night's Academy Award win for Best Picture reframe the conversation around Argo? Or is the film doomed to polarize viewers indefinitely? Since ...
My Bloody Valentine, Jeff Magnum and the Musical Recluse in the Age of Nostalgia
Is the era of the musical recluse officially over? Consider that we now live in a world where: Axl’s Guns ‘n’ Roses actually finished ...
New Music Reads: Springsteen, Young, Byrne and More
Peter Ames Carlin – Bruce It’s pretty ridiculous that Bruce Springsteen is about to enter his fifth decade in rock music and only now is ...
On Kate Zambreno's Heroines, Being Too Much and Taking Up Space
A few months ago, as I was furiously reading and re-reading Kate Zambreno's Heroines (Semiotext(e)), my new homeopathic remedies arrived in the mail ...
Idle No More, Canada's First Nations and the British Crown
Marlene Etapp Dixon meets Prince William. Photo courtesy of the Etapp Dixon family. In July 2011, Marlene Etapp Dixon drove for seven hours and then ...
What if Lance Armstrong Were a Literary Genius?
Photograph by Benutzer:Hase. Imagine you're reading the new Pulitzer winner. It's a two-thousand-page novel, called Tour de France, by Lance Von Armstronger ...
The Signs of Gentrification
Photograph by Jason Harvey. Mile End is gentrifying, gentrifying, almost all-the-way gentrified. Since the eighties, when the Montreal neighbourhood became known as a cheap refuge ...
The Holiday Thong: A Mother’s Attitude About Her Daughter’s Sexuality Evolves
This year, for Christmas, my mother gave me a holiday-themed thong. She gave me some other presents, too—mostly books and kitchen supplies and a ...
A Concise Guide to New Year’s Eve
Illustration by Meinert Hansen. One of my most enjoyable New Year's Eves was spent worrying that robots would take over the world. It was ...
How the Quebec Rental Board Wages War on the Poor, One Agonizing Delay at a Time
Photograph by Colocho. Mismanagement. Delays. Number fudging. It's becoming a familiar refrain for Quebecers these days. It's also, unfortunately, a phenomenon not limited ...
Two Solitudes No More: ABC:MTL at the CCA
Olivo Barbieri, Aerial view of La Ronde amusement park and the Jacques Cartier Bridge, Montréal, 2004. CCA Collection. Gift of The Sandra and Leo ...
Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen and the Problem of Assessing Pop Music
Earlier this month, a Salon feature titled “Is Taylor Swift being taken too seriously?” got quite a bit of attention — especially after a number of ...
