ARTICLES BY Lyle Stewart

Shooting the messenger

It used to be that the first targets of an authoritarian government were television and radio broadcasters. Now it’s the Net, its users and ISPs they need to communicate. Just look at the incipient revolution in Egypt: in a failed effort to cut the growing protest movement off at the knees, ... read more ››

Who's Hu?

When he thought he was getting a bargain deal, my dad would say it was cheap at twice the price. It’s a saying that could apply to the price of labour in China, which is embarrassingly cheap, even when a worker manages to double his salary. That’s what happened after a ... read more ››

Energizer

If you’re like me, you probably find it hard to roll out of bed at this time of year, when the days are so short and the natural light so weak. It’s a SAD state of affairs, you could say. During the past few weeks, predictably, it’s become increasingly difficult ... read more ››

Imagine all the people…

Do you remember exactly what you were doing 30 years ago this moment? As I write this, on the evening of December 8, 2010, I can vividly recall where I was on the same evening in 1980 and what I was thinking, even, just as can millions of other folks of ... read more ››

Dust and dignity

The dust was the thing that got me in the end. Wafts of fine red powder that drifted gently on the breeze after the slightest disturbance instantly churned into billowing, choking clouds whenever a vehicle spun by in the opposite direction on the unpaved track. I was in the back box ... read more ››

A tale of two sons

When I began writing this column almost two years ago, one of my first subjects (the second, in fact) was the seismic shift in the media landscape taking place across Canada. Canwest Global, then the nation’s biggest owner of daily newspapers, as well as the Global-TV network, other TV stations and ... read more ››

The thrill is gone

If you ever get a chance to tour the Martin Luther King Jr. Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, located in the same Lorraine Motel where the great American civil rights leader was assassinated in 1968, take it. It is an exhaustive, and exhausting, exhibit of the man and his times, as I ... read more ››

Prophets of crime

Law C-25 is going to change the landscape of crime and justice in Canada, particularly in Indian country. Officially – and pompously – dubbed the Truth in Sentencing Act, the legislation eliminates the two-for-one time deduction that criminals until recently enjoyed for time served before their convictions. This one piece of ... read more ››

Third place never looked so good

It’s funny how one person’s bad news can be another’s small cause for celebration. I had to smile when I read recently that one of my favourite targets – the international mining industry – is down on Quebec as a place to do business. After three years topping the Fraser Institute’s ... read more ››

I love the smell of tear gas in the morning

As I write, downtown Toronto is occupied territory, off-limits to the citizens who actually own the streets and public spaces ringed by a modern-day Great Wall of chain-link fences, video surveillance and phalanxes of heavily armoured security personnel. As a billion-dollar show of force, it’s impressive. Conceptually, it’s not far removed ... read more ››

Tapping the gusher

As I write, the price of crude oil on the world market is roughly $75 CDN a barrel. That means, according to best estimates, that between $1.5 million and $2.25 million worth of oil is bursting out of British Petroleum’s ruptured underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico every single ... read more ››

Protecting the boreal forest

In this case, it really is hard to see the forest for the trees, all 72 million hectares of them. That’s the area covered by the massively hyped Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement announced May 17. On the face of it, it’s a huge step forward in the way the forest industry ... read more ››

Exposing the face… of intolerance

I am an atheist. I think all gods and religions are human creations that were invented to serve us for a variety of emotional, social, cultural and political reasons. As valid and laudable as many of those reasons might be, I still can’t bring myself to believe they actually exist. That ... read more ››

The Crees' best friend?

A proposed diamond mine north of Mistissini is much closer to becoming reality after the release of an updated preliminary assessment by the project promoter. On March 23, Stornoway Diamond Corporation announced that the Renard Diamond Project is estimated to contain three times the raw diamonds than originally calculated. The Vancouver-based ... read more ››

The not-so-good ole hockey game

Two or three times a week, I tie up the skates and velcro on the pads to play recreational hockey in Montreal. Our garage league features more than 90 teams and about a dozen divisions. So there are all kinds of players of almost every calibre, from washed-up-NHL-hopeful to still-can’t-quite-master-turning-in-each-direction. ... read more ››

The call of the wild

Rhéal Charlebois’ handmade wooden goose calls are winning contests all over North America. What started as a hobby is becoming a full-time concern for the 43-year-old hunter and woodsmith from Mascouche, northeast of Montreal. Now he’s selling his goose calls, which range in price from $125 to $170, with the ... read more ››

Going for the gold

It was the Canadian equivalent of the shot heard ’round the world. And, almost as soon as Sidney Crosby fired a puck through the five-hole on U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller to win Canada the hockey gold medal in overtime on the last day of the Vancouver Olympics February 28, it ... read more ››

Vancouver’s fortress of solitude

Many media commentators and barstool wags have made clever Spinal Tap references to describe the cringe-inducing Winter Olympic torch-lighting ceremony at Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium. That movie’s hilarious Stonehenge fail certainly resonated during the painful moment of collective embarrassment when one of the four columns failed to rise. Poor Katrina Le ... read more ››

A New Era in Health

If the recent H1N1 pandemic posed a challenge for Quebec health authorities, it was a double challenge for the Cree Board of Health and Social Services (CBHSS), which faces shortages of staff and facilities in most of the James Bay Cree’s far-flung communities. Quebec was recently recognized as having the highest ... read more ››

Law and disorder

For a politician so fond of surfing the law-and-order wave that currently appears to be cresting on one its periodic high tides, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper sure doesn’t show much respect for the law himself, even those enacted by the government he leads. Don’t forget that his is a government ... read more ››

Dig and run

When, early last December, Dr. Isabelle Gingras and 19 other specialists and general practitioners who work at the Sept-Îles Hospital Centre threatened to quit en masse over a proposed uranium mine near the North Shore city, the province’s political, media and medical establishment were indignant. They’re holding the population of Sept-Îles ... read more ››

Nasty, brutish and short

Few people would say that Daniel Richard Wolfe had an easy start to life.  Born into crushing poverty in The Pas, Manitoba, the Opaskawayak Cree grew up on the mean streets of Winnipeg’s North End, bouncing from foster home to foster home before getting his first criminal charge at the ... read more ››

Hungry? Eat the rich

Fans of Xavier Kataquapit’s column – Under the Northern Sky – at the back of our biweekly book might be a tad surprised by the passion he uses this week to take to task those who always jump on stories of supposedly overpaid Indian fat cats, like the recent case ... read more ››

Plan Nord divides… and conquers?

The Quebec government’s “Plan Nord,” Premier Jean Charest’s vaguely defined election promise of multi-billion-dollar resource developments across the Ungava region, encountered some harsh criticism from some Native leaders during the government’s first consultation meeting with northern groups November 6. “Without us, the Plan Nord is a Plan Mort [a dead plan],” ... read more ››

People of the river of the mist

The northernmost stretch of the Yellowhead Highway, between Smithers and Terrace, BC, passes through the territory of the Gitsxan nation. I spent an important part of my childhood there growing up in one of the Hazeltons, three small towns (New Hazelton, Old Hazelton and South Hazelton) that straddle the confluence ... read more ››

Palermo on the St. Lawrence?

s a city, Montreal has had better months. Revelation after scandal after embarrassment has rocked this old town, especially during the closing weeks of one of its most closely fought municipal elections in recent memory (which concluded, mercifully, after press time last Sunday). One is left scratching one’s head wondering, ... read more ››