Featured

The trouble with Stanley Tucci’s Taste (and the right way to make tomato sauce)

By Brian Fawcett | March 2, 2022

Brian Fawcett on how to make Euclid Avenue Tomato Sauce. Everything you need to know to get it right.

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The Answer to Some Things (and not others)

By Vivien Lougheed | January 18, 2022

Ken Belford’s selected poems, “The Answer to Everything.” Or, as reviewers Vivien Lougheed and John Harris suggest, “the answer to some things (and not others).”

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Cuckoo Coup

By Stan Persky | November 2, 2021

Stan Persky reflects on the ex-prez’s Jan. 6 coup attempt, and the danger that the “next coup” poses to democracy in a post-truth era.

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RIP Gerard F. Farry

By Brian Fawcett | October 24, 2021

In mid-January of this year, 2021, Gerard Farry died in Vancouver at the age of 92. He wasn’t the sort of man who’d naturally be familiar to the readers of this website; he had been the director of urban planning for Greater Vancouver during the 1970s and 1980s, which was the heyday of urban master…

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Some Musings on Quitting Cigarettes and Facebook

By Michael Boughn | August 21, 2021

Michael Boughn on quitting cigarettes, and quitting Facebook. Compare and contrast.

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Lindsay Shepherd and the Post-Scholarship University

By John Harris | April 13, 2021

    In his article “Speaking Out” (The Walrus, June 2019), Toronto-based 30-something freelance contrarian John Semley tells the story of the Wilfred Laurier University (WLU) teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd, who made international headlines when she was censured by a University examining committee for allegedly creating an unsafe learning environment for transgender students. The committee…

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Book Publishing, Bookselling, George Bowering, and the new censorship

By Brian Fawcett | January 13, 2021

        I read George Bowering’s latest book, Writing and Reading (New Star, Vancouver, 2019), in a single sitting, which was unique in my experience of reading him. Bowering can be demanding and occasionally hermetic, and therefore requires intense concentration. But Writing and Reading was like having a conversation with George at a…

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Far from the Madding Crowd

By Stan Persky | December 11, 2020

Douglas Murray’s “The Madness of Crowds,” a critique of the “social justice movement,” is a conservative writer’s response to gays, feminists, race, and trans people. Stan Persky reviews it, keeping an eye on the tripwires in an ideological minefield.

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Why Jean Meslier matters

By Max Fawcett | November 9, 2020

Max Fawcett searches for the prophet of atheism.

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Dead Icons and Deader Icons: Which Statues Really Need to Go?

By John Harris | October 4, 2020

John Harris posts a slightly argumentative view on the Statue Wars controversy

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