There are no borders

We’re not idiots. But as Canadians, we’re told things, contradictory things, things that don’t add up… about Afghanistan, our mission, security, democracy… February 19th, here in Montreal, Robert Fisk, respected Middle East correspondent of 33 years, argued fervently for NATO […]

  Artist Biography:  Lyne Lapointe’s career dates back to the early eighties, when she rapidly made a name for herself as one of the most promising artists of her generation. Between 1983 and 1994, Lyne Lapointe created ground-breaking sight specific […]

Fennario’s War (41 minutes) is a simple film. The Montreal playwright, David Fennario, reads a text in his Verdun apartment about World War One. He has based his drama on an interview he did with a Great War vet in […]

  I’ve known Jason Breckenridge for many years and over that time the two insights I’ve gained about what makes him tick are 1) He concocts the most ridiculously unattainable schemes in an effort to make his working life as […]

Introduction: When I left Montreal on February 15th I knew that this would not be a predictable trip.  From all that I’d heard, the border crossing from Egypt to Gaza (at Rafah) was unpredictable, at best.  Yet I did not […]

      Hey kids! Want a career with a dubious future? A job where you get paid to play real life deadly games? Then join the Canadian Armed Forces! Kill innocent people!  People you’ll never know!  People just like […]

A cosmic motherly-sounding voice has always told me that even the darkest of clouds have silver linings. The past two weeks have forced me to now wonder if the same idea of a silver lining applies to clouds of white […]

  In the following short reconstructed video, De-Construction, I’ve used a home video report from Gaza and extracts from other videos found on Youtube, along side my own recordings, to try to convey something of how development, occupation and destruction […]

                Urban Iran Mark Batty Publisher www.markbattypublisher.com 130 pages, hard cover, $27.95 US/ $32.95 CA/   Urban Iran is a beautiful book. Its eye-catching stark black and white hard cover with embossed lettering […]

[Short listed by the CBC-Quebec Writers Federation Literary Competition and first published in In Other Words. New English Writing from Quebec, Edited by Claude Lalumière, Véhicule Press, 2008]    A huge black crow was doing a balancing act on the […]

  All militarization has environmental consequences.  All of which have little to do with democracy. The other day, Montreal economist, writer, publisher and social ecologist, Dimitri Roussopoulos, took M/S on an amble through the four categories of militarization and environment, […]

Unembedded. Two Decades of Maverick War Reporting. By Scott Taylor.  Douglass & McIntyre, 2009.   Review by Maya Khankhoje Unembedded is the mid-life autobiography of a toy-soldier-playing boy turned real soldier, of a soldier  turned journalist, of a fervent admirer […]

     ‘A Modest Proposal’ is from Norman Nawrocki’s anti-war, anti-Empire solo CD, ‘Duck Work’ released in 2004 on the Les Pages Noires label.  [audio:10.mp3]

     Standing on the sidelines of the parade grounds, they are old now, grandmothers, great-grandmothers; women who forfeited their lovers to the bagpipe sirens: the tangled sheets cooled by waving flags.   Penelope knew the secret, the dark unraveling […]

    May you die, in a coffin buried with tears, Buried with the youth of my years, Buried with the breadth and depth of your fears, May you die, in my eyes one more night, Buried from my sight, […]

  From thickset specky windows   he eye-balls the tough job warp and weft of the launch pad as it floats itself for the copter’s sea-strip.   Then the kitchen’s remodelled –                    Tony bumps the eggbeater off its base buoying […]

  Look through grandmother’s kitchen window: a concrete airstrip, wheat fields, red poppies, cornflowers. Forsythia, osier willows in bomb craters.   We moved to Halle 7, in 1950, two-story, red-brick house attached to a shed. Windows blasted, front door, missing. […]

  In the rush of city life, it is exceptional for a large gathering of people to get together to discuss, face-to-face, concerns that affect their quality of life in their neighbourhoods and urban environment. In discussing their experiences and […]