This past summer I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in France, and while I was there I made a pilgrimage of sorts to the tiny home town of history’s first recorded atheist author, a 17th century Catholic priest named Jean Meslier. Over at Dooneyscafe.com, I air out my decadent 2,800 word treatise on Meslier’s life and work and the reasons why I think both continues to be ignored.
In the November 2010 issue of Unlimited Magazine, I take another ride on my favourite hobby horse, our problematic relationship with real estate. Why is the owned home regarded as an indicator of moral virtue, and what are the potential downsides associated with that attitude? South of the border, homeowners have learned the hard way that a roof over one’s head is not the sole – or even primary – barometer of economic well being. Will we learn that lesson in time?
Disturbing the Peace: The Case Against the Site C Dam
In the spring of 2010, The Tyee published my five-part series documenting grassroots resistance efforts aimed at stopping BC Hydro’s proposed mega project in the Peace River Valley. After beginning with a general overview of the region’s history and the nature of the proposed project, the series discussed the dam’s negative agricultural impacts, the available alternative sources of energy and the myth that the province even needed the proposed dam’s output before closing with a discussion of urban-rural burden sharing.
The Trudeau Generation: Why Pierre Trudeau Matters More Than Ever
On the 10th anniversary of Pierre Trudeau’s death, the Commons published my latest effort to place the former Prime Minister’s influence on this country in its fullest context. In the piece, I argue that Trudeau’s greatest legacy isn’t multiculturalism or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but instead the attitudes and values of the newest generation of Canadians, many of whom were born after he left office in 1984. They have taken his ideas and ideals and made them a defining part of who they are and what they believe, not just as individuals but as Canadians. Trudeau once said that there was “nothing more ridiculous than the idea of an all-Canadian boy or girl.” It’s ironic, then, that he managed to create just that.
The Perils of Positive Thinking
In the June edition of Unlimited Magazine, I had the pleasure of taking a poke at the culture of positive thinking, one that reached its ludicrous zenith in the form of “The Secret,” a terrible book that espouses a worldview so implicitly nihilistic that it would make Nietzsche blush. But while positive thinking has found its fullest expression of late, it’s not a particularly new idea. “The idea of embracing our flaws rather than trying to bench press them out of existence,” I wrote, “is a form of wisdom as old as society itself. Inscribed on the Temple of Apollo, the revered site where leaders of the ancient Greek world would consult the Oracle of Delphi on any matter of significance, is one particularly important phrase: ‘know thyself.’ To bend an old cliché, when it comes to the self-improvement industry truer words have never since been spoken.”
The Dawson Creek Bombings: A Three Part Series
In the summer of 2009, while I was serving as the editor of the Chetwynd Echo, a small weekly paper located in British Columbia’s Peace Region, This Magazine published a three-part series that reviewed the string of pipeline bombings that had rocked the region and engulfed the whole northeastern part of the province in a thick fog of paranoia. The bomber’s motives, real and imagined, were the topic of conversation at every coffee shop in the area, and this series of investigative pieces attempts to provide the context in which those discussions – and the explosions themselves – took place.
End of an Era for Dooney’s Cafe
Twenty years after he opened his modest cafe in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, Graziano Marchese decided to sell Dooney’s Cafe in 2007. The cafe, which served as the unofficial clubhouse for Toronto’s journalists, writers, musicians, poets, and other assorted malcontents, became famous in the 1990s after it fended off a ham-handed attempt by Starbucks to take over the prime corner lot location. This piece documents the death of Dooney’s Cafe.
In the fall of 2007, The Tyee published my diatribe (my latest one, anyhow) against the Baby Boomers and their attitude towards people my age. As I wrote, “Young people are lazy, self-absorbed, pleasure-obsessed and imbued with an unrealistic sense of entitlement. At least, that’s what most baby boomers think.” The truth of the matter, I tried to explain, is a little more complicated, one that’s defined by an imbalance of opportunity that makes any attempt to interpret the behaviours and habits of my generation by the standards to which many Boomers adhere an exercise that borders on prejudice.
mited Magazine, I take another ride on my favourite hobby horse, our problematic relationship with real estate. Why is the owned home regarded as an indicator of moral virtue, and what are the potential downsides associated with that attitude? South of t
