Maurice Richard sets Quebec ablaze

charlesforan.com Rare is the athlete whose cultural impact transcends the sport he or she plays. Charles Foran, the author of a new book on Maurice Richard for the Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series, says his subject fits this select category. In the same sense that Jackie Robinson didn’t set out to[Read More…]

More dimensions than the five dollar bill

warmuseum.ca Andre Pratte, the author of a new mini-biography of Wilfrid Laurier for Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series, complains that the  man on the five-dollar bill has been mothballed by myth. “Laurier’s fame today is confined to old books on the shelves of public libraries,” he writes. It is the dual[Read More…]

Averting meltdown

The first item listed in a recent story on the Atlantic Wire website, “The Worst Reactions to the Japanese Earthquake,” was an awkward construction from P.J. Crowley, a U.S. State Department spokesman, on his Twitter page: “We have been watching a hopeful tsunami sweep across the Middle East. Now we[Read More…]

Mere penarchy

It is a dark world out there. A state of war, each against each. You are all alone. It is mere penarchy. Despite all our progress as a species, despite our eminent legal institutions and our many esteemed documents banning torture, protecting free speech, prohibiting the wearing of a fake[Read More…]

In Goethe-inspired opera, a fatal attraction

Opera of Montreal Shortly after the curtain rises on Opera of Montreal’s production of Werther, a young boy wheels a bicycle across the stage, laughing and carousing with his friends. The bicycle remains onstage through the first act, occasionally pedaled by the boy but mostly left in a corner, untouched[Read More…]

Walking the streets of Mordecai Richler

Holly Stewart Holly Stewart Few hipsters, biking furiously down St. Urbain Street in Mile End, notice number 5257, an unassuming second-floor apartment in a small, pinkish-beige brick building on the east side of the street. It’s uglier and noticeably younger than other buildings on the block, with no sign to[Read More…]

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