Our Winter 2011 Issue
Dec. 13, 2011Subscribe today for just $24.95!
The snowplows advancing down this month’s cover will be familiar to anyone who’s spent a winter in Montreal. But as Selena Ross reports in “Getting Plowed,” the collusion and violence rampant in the city’s snow-removal industry are even more intimidating than the machines themselves. Ross spent a year interviewing sources and scouring municipal documents, and her resulting exposé depicts an industry plagued by illegal bid-rigging—much like Quebec’s infamously corrupt construction sector. On our cover, illustrator Victor Kerlow and Maisonneuve art director Anna Minzhulina playfully reference the iconic photo of a protester facing down tanks in China’s Tiananmen Square. Who, the image seems to ask, will stand up to the ringleaders of collusion?
Also in this issue:
Christopher Szabla on learning how to forget in an age of endless remembrance.
Alexandra Molotkow traces the cultural history of the ironic cover song.
D.Y. Béchard on telling fact from fiction in a war zone.
Mark Mann on how to be stupid about art.
Ben Nelms photographs the decline of Windsor's Ford City.
Andrea Bennett uncovers the culture of fear at a Christian housing co-operative in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Eric Andrew-Gee profiles Gary Doer, Canada's ambassador to the US.
Nick Taylor-Vaisey on the rocky past and uncertain future of the NDP.
Evelyne de la Chenelière wonders why we consider obscure artists the "elite."
Kaitlin Fontana on the deadly curse that plagues Fernie, her British Columbia hometown.
Guillaume Morissette uses Facebook chat at a café.
All this, plus new fiction by Kasper Hartman, new poetry by Mathew Henderson, the final instalment of Michael DeForge's comic column "Rescue Pet," spot illustrations by New Yorker cartoonist Farley Katz, the Book Room and the Music Room!
On newsstands everywhere December 16.
