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“Ever dreamed of subscribing to a cultural magazine that doesn’t seem to be eating out of the hand of half a dozen media magnates? Something pluricultural and unassuming but nonetheless covering everything worth seeing, reading, doing or listening to for a season? Well, it exists, and in Canada to boot!”

“There is no on-line version or web site, which either makes John a dinosaur or a man of character. (I opt for the second, since the editorial team occasionally has a kind word for me.)”

John Howe — Canadian artist and co-conceptual designer on all three “The Lord of the Rings” motion pictures.

* Editor’s Note: The age of the dinosaurs has at last come to an end — with the arrival of this website!

The Case for Intervention in Syria

On February 27, 2018

Popular protests in Syria during the ill-fated Arab Spring in 2011 turned into a bitter civil war that is still raging seven years later. It’s a pity the West failed to intervene in a meaningful way in the beginning, before things turned intractably violent. The conflict has […]

The Transformational Yukon

On May 10, 2017

“I am among the giants. They loom below, immense, silent, and

insouciant – their unbowed crowns cloaked in the whitest of ermine, their enormous shoulders cast of rock primeval. I have come to the world […]

Of Mortal Life, The Flower

On February 14, 2017

“So passeth, in the passing of a day, / Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower, / No more doth flourish after first decay, / That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower.”

On […]

Presidential Politics 2016: Cry the Beloved Country

On October 24, 2016

How can it come down to this – in the greatest nation on Earth, the best hope for mankind, the land of the free and the home of the brave? Have the lights gone out in that shining city on a hill? The presidential election campaign poses […]

Presidential Politics 2016: The Riddle of the Skittles

On October 24, 2016

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump’s son used a confectionary parable to illustrate his father’s concerns about the danger that a real or potential extremist might get into the United States along with throngs of refugees from such war-torn places as Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Imagine, he […]

“In the Land of the Lotus Eaters: The Sorry Spectacle of People Addicted to Gadgets”

On July 30, 2016

Artsforum Coins a Phrase: Behold the ‘Hand-Held Self-Affirmation Device’

Our (negative) review of the new movie “Nerve” coins a phrase for

those ubiquitous telecom devices into which so many faces intently […]