Category: Borderlines

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 ››

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 ››

Let them eat diamonds

Never have a people been so rich, and yet so poor. The people of Attawapiskat, on the western shore of James Bay, live in a territory so loaded in diamonds that the famous South African diamond giant De Beers has set up shop in the community. But, as Amy German reports ... read more ››

Love is all you need

We were scrambling over the rocky shoreline at Pemaquid Point, Maine; five buddies from Canada and their American host, also an old friend. The water glittered like thousands of diamonds as the shorebirds wheeled and dived and called out above our heads. We could see the heads of seals bobbing ... read more ››

The high price of volunteerism

My wife didn’t quite know what she was getting into when she accepted a request a few years ago to join the board of directors at the public daycare centre our children attend. By law, the board must have a majority of parents as members, and Heidi, my babies’ mama, ... read more ››

Flu pandemic highlights federal failures

The sight, during the Cree Fitness Challenge in Nemaska last month, was a jarring reminder of the flu pandemic that has swept Native communities across Canada’s north. A medical facemask worn by a young girl in order to ward off the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, was a ... read more ››

River of life

I grew up living aside rivers, big and small. At the moment, I live a city block away from the St. Lawrence River, which less resembles the rivers I’ve known as it does an escape hatch for the continent that it drains. I was born in a hospital on the banks ... read more ››

Climate-change criminals

It’s remarkable how fast a country’s status can change in a few short years. From a nation that was seen as a leader on the environmental file a few short years ago, Canada is now perceived around the world as an environmental outlaw. On climate change, Canada’s negligence since we signed ... read more ››

Winners and losers

If you thought the debate over creationism versus natural selection was simply about the origin of the species, you’d be wrong. According to the plans being talked up by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl, the federal government is once again playing God in order to pick the winners ... read more ››

Patriot Games

The recent “Fête des Patriotes” in Quebec, known as Victoria Day in the rest of Canada, was a reminder that history is an evolving story, one that is continually invoked – and rewritten – to meet the needs of today. The Montreal neighbourhood I live and work in makes it hard ... read more ››

Mining Mount Royal

Imagine a huge open-pit mine in the heart of Montreal. It’s not that far-fetched – Mount Royal, the ancient volcanic mountain that rises above the city’s downtown and the St. Lawrence River, is a storehouse of valuable minerals. Judging by the laws and regulations that govern Quebec’s mining industry, a company ... read more ››

Autoworkers are being set up as road kill

Since the Second World War, to be a unionized autoworker in Canada was to belong to the labouring elite. High wages, job security, great benefits and a generous pension were guaranteed those, mostly in Ontario, who were lucky enough to get a permanent job with one of the big three ... read more ››

The Afghanistan dilemma

Now that Canada is starting to focus on the end game in Afghanistan – i.e., how we get out in 2011 with our military and our dignity more or less intact – it’s useful to remember exactly how our soldiers were thrown into the hottest corner of the hottest civil ... read more ››

Public service and private benefits

For 40 days last spring, Quebec’s health minister was a double agent. From May 17, 2008, until he resigned his cabinet position last June 25, Philippe Couillard was under contract not only to the people of Quebec, but also to Persistence Capital Partners (PCP), a health-services investment corporation that hired him ... read more ››

Searching for Michael Ignatieff

As the recently installed leader of Canada’s Liberal Party and a likely future prime minister of the country, Michael Ignatieff continues to provoke questions about who he is, where he stands or even how he defines his own nationality. They are not easily answered. The self-described cosmopolitan seems to change ... read more ››

Smart is the new cool

It was an iconic image. When The Economist published a cover image of a moose sporting hip sunglasses to illustrate “Canada’s new spirit” five years ago, the prestigious British magazine intended to highlight the country’s tolerant, progressive governance that complemented our surging economy. The unspoken subtext was that the image ... read more ››

Are newspapers old news?

I still have a flimsy, yellowed, eight-page newspaper that I wrote out in pencil – with crooked columns, headlines and hand-drawn pictures – when I was eight years old. Later, in high school, a friend and I worked on homemade versions of Hit Parader magazine, replete with fawning profiles of ... read more ››

President Black Eagle

Last May, while campaigning in the hotly contested Democratic primaries for the presidential nomination, Barack Obama was granted honorary membership in the Crow Nation, a tribe that numbers about 12,000 people in southern Montana. Because tribe members Hartford and Mary Black Eagle symbolically adopted him, he was accordingly bestowed a ... read more ››

Chief Jimmy Mianscum – In Memorium

Former Chief of the “Doré Lake Crees,” Jimmy Mianscum died in Chibougamau November 5 after a lengthy illness. The Elder was the first, in the 1960s, to try to convince the Government of Canada of the Ouje-Bougoumou people’s right to a separate and permanent village. In an open letter to Ouje-Bougoumou ... read more ››