Ever struggle with coming out of your parent’s shadows? Try having a father who is one of the most famous Aboriginal activists and thinkers in Canada. But filmmaker and musician Shane Belcourt has done better than most. Find out how the Ottawa-born native lives his life in Toronto – he’s the latest subject for my blogT.O. Toronto through the eyes of column.
July 6, 2009
Shane Belcourt’s Toronto on blogTO
June 30, 2009
Poet Priscila Uppal’s Toronto
My latest column for blogTO looks at the city from poet and writer Priscila Uppal’s view – preferably from the top of the Hyatt with a glass of champagne.
Listen to my favourite part here, Priscila reading her poem,” A_Divorce_or_Spanish_Lessons?“ It’s a wry commentary on the concerns of contemporary Toronto reflected through its streetcar advertisements.
June 23, 2009
Take 5 News Picks: Canada talks tough to Iran but Embassy won’t aid injured protestors; Van’s Eastside housing unaffordable; Toronto strike to end in arbitration s,
My pick of today’s best national stories as broadcast on Take 5, CIUT 89.5 FM this morning
Canada talks tough to Iran
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is calling the Iranian authorities reaction to peaceful protests against last week’s election results “wholly unacceptable” and denouncing the “use of brute force and intimidation” by authorities.
He’s calling on Iranian authorities to immediately stop violence against their own people, to fully investigate fraud allegations in the presidential election and to release all political prisoners and journalists – including Canadians.
On Sunday morning Canadian-Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was reporting on the demonstrations for Newsweek magazine, was seized in by Iranian security officials from his Tehran apartment.
Meanwhile… Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is calling for the Canadian Embassy in Tehran to offer refuge to protesters who are injured on the chaotic city streets.
But Foreign Affairs spokesperson Simone MacAndrew is holding the party line, saying QUOTE “Canada does not offer asylum to individuals in its embassies abroad” except in cases involving “immediate threat of injury or death.”
Well it’s only Day Two of the Toronto City strike but experts are already predicting how it’s going to end.
Premier Dalton McGuinty will likely be forced to order arbitration.
The big question is time… Will he do it quickly like the 16-day City Strike in 2002 or let picketers languish for months like he did at York University?
Nelson Wiseman, a politics professor at the University of Toronto, is betting on an early end because piles of garbage in the hot, hot heat of summer are a health issue.
In the meantime, city celebrations – like yesterday’s flag raising ceremony for PRIDE and Canada Day celebrations – are all being cancelled.
City officials say if the strike is settled next week then summer programs for kids and Canada Day parties will go ahead. But union officials claim they are miles away from reaching any kind of settlement.
Canada has gone far beyond the call of duty in helping Omar Khadr, the Canadian terror suspect… at least that’s what federal lawyers will argue before the Federal Court of Appeal this morning.
The Conservative Government is asking an appeal panel to overturn a landmark Court Decision ordering the Harper government to push for the repatriation of Khadr from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, where the Toronto native has been held since 2002.
Raising the rent on Vancouver’s poorest citizens
In Vancouver’s downtown Eastside many of the city’s addicts and its poorest residents live on their welfare cheques of $375 a month for housing.
But a recent survey of 88 privately-owned hotels in the area found rooms renting for more than $425 a month rose by 44 percent over last year – and found only 0.2 percent of rooms that were both available and less than $375.
The report by the Carnegie Community Action Project called “Still Losing Hotel Rooms” finds residents are still being squeezed, either by paying more of their food money for rent or by being forced onto the streets by high rents.
First Nations still being left off the Jury Rolls in Ontario
The Ontario Attorney General was recently forced to launch an internal review on how police and Crown attorneys secretly pre-screen jurors for mental illness or criminal records – yet no action has been taken on revelations that came to light almost a year ago that aboriginal people were being systematically excluded as jurors – and that’s another example of double standards in the justice system for Aboriginals – according to Julian Falconer, a lawyer for several aboriginal groups.
Last fall, court officials were forced to admit major failings in representing Aboriginal people on its jury roles – Indian and Northern Affairs had simply stopped providing band lists for some communities and the Attorney General’s office took as long as six years to even try to contact some reserves to get band lists.
Falconer wrote Attorney General Chris Bentley last year asking for a formal inquiry into the legality of the jury rolls – but got no action. Falconer is accusing the ministry of “dumb silence and a complete cover-up,” saying “the unequal treatment of natives and non-natives is another example of why first nations can so rightly point to a double standard justice system.”
June 19, 2009
Insider’s guide to Toronto – new blogTO column
If you could ask City Hall to change one thing about the city right now, what would it be?
Paul Ngyuen, founding editor of jane-finch.com, wants politicians “to pay more attention to the so-called priority neighborhoods. They’ve gotta come on down and visit before they decide to make changes.”
Great Bloomers musicians Lowell Sostomi and Nate Hindle “have to speak up for the youth,” they want live music venues to open their doors to under 18’s.
Poet and writer Priscilla Uppal wants the City to “fix the transit system. Please fix the transit system!”
Councillor for Trinity-Spadina, Adam Vaughan, wants his fellow councilors to “fall romantically in love with Toronto.”
Journalist Peter C. Newman wants City Hall to try to save at least part of the waterfront from the condo “obscenity.”
These are some of the answers I got while talking to a few well-known city dwellers for a new weekly column I’m producing for blogTO and Take 5, on CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s a look at their personal maps of the city — the first one, on jane-finch.com founder and editor, Paul Nguyen — launched today on blogTO and the audio version will be broadcasted on Take 5, which airs Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Hopefully they’ll widen your map of the city.
June 16, 2009
TAKE 5 NEWS: Let’s talk isotopes Harper & Ignatieff; Pink ceiling 4 corporate queers; Citizens militia forms against Iroquois in Caledonia; Zoomer takeover continues
My pick of national news for Take 5 this morning on CIUT 89.5 FM.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to quash any possibility of a summer election by meeting with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff today for the first time since January.
On the table: the isotope shortage and unemployment insurance reform – two major sticking points for the Liberals as they decide whether to support the Government’s economic update this Friday.
In Caledonia… a group of citizens are trying to organize an unarmed Caledonia militia to protect themselves against what they say are ongoing affronts to their rights by Six Nations residents who have occupied a tract of land in the region since 2006.
The land is at the centre of an explosive 200-year-old land claim battle.
The Boomer takeover continues with CityTV mogul Moses Znaimer’s $25 million purchase of Vision TV.
Znaimer says he has quote a “little experience in television” and a few ideas for the station, a small collection of multicultural and religious channels skewed to the boomer age bracket.
Cirque du Soleil isn’t just trying to set a world record for stilt walking on its 25th birthday today – its lawyers are also demanding Maclean’s magazine retract and apologize for recent cover story which it claims taints the company’s image.
The cover shows a photo of Cirque performer in a beaded costume with a headline that reads “Sex, Drugs and Acrobats.”
Old Boys Network blocks corporate queers
As thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gender Canadians descending on Toronto for PRIDE this week – Xtra is reporting that in the corporate world, discrimination against GBLTs still runs high.
A new report by research firm Catalyst finds queer women are the worst off – their relationships with their managers are worse than those of gay men and heterosexual men and women.
Doing more for the mentally ill while they’re behind bars… Federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loane is urging provinces to provide more community services for the mentally ill. Speaking at an Ottawa conference of correctional and health officials yesterday, Van Loan said poor treatment of the mentally ill is “one of the greatest failings of society today.”
The problem goes back to the 70s and 80s when large mental institutions closed their doors to allow the mentally ill to live in the community, says Van Loan, but the support services they needed never materialized.
Alberta citizens are not so peaceful over nuclear power
After local councilors in Alberta’s Peace region rejected the results of a citizen-driven survey on a new nuclear power plant because the response rate was too low – local residents are going door to door.
Bruce Power wants to build a new nuclear power plant in the Peace region of Alberta – but a survey, mailed to 2,200 citizens in May, shows residents are not on board. 500 returned their forms, and 88 per cent said they do not want nuclear reactors built in the Peace region or anywhere else in Alberta.
Resident Pat McNamara who organized the survey says the door-to-door drive should be wrapped up this week.
