Month: November 2011

Why I miss the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre

Every weekday morning, as I drive my boys to  middle school, I pass an empty lot in Toronto’s West Don River Valley that used to be home to the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre. Parkland has a soothing effect on most people, myself included, but this grassy...

Taking a bite out of the Apple Jobs myth

For those of us who haven’t consumed copious amounts of Apple-flavoured Kool-Aid, the the posthumous over-the-top comparisons of Steve Jobs to Edison, Einstein, Da Vinci, etc., have been more than a little hard to take. Fortunately, sanity is starting to return to the conversation. Malcolm Gladwell,...

This guy has tenure at Columbia

Joseph Massad, an associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, had this to say on Al Jazeera’s website on Oct. 27, 2011. It’s a deconstruction, of sorts, of recent speeches by U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the...

White elephant in Winnipeg?

Martin Knelman wrote this fawning piece that appeared in the Toronto Star about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, now under construction in Winnipeg. This $300-million-plus facility is being built with money from three levels of government and private fundraising, which is being led by Gail Asper,...