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It’s pretty boring of me

March 13, 2001 by Michael Boyle

to link to a Feed article – I do it all the time – but that’s only because, to me, it is the most interesting magazine going, in any medium. Anyhow, tonight’s object of my attention is the excellent, refreshing article, This Is Planet Earth. Mitchell Stephens has begun a long journey to report on the state of globalization around the world.

His first stop was to meet with the inestimable Clifford Geertz and his second, Wichita KS, where he found Laotion food among other things.

It’s personally interesting to me to read that because it mirrors my own experience in a way. In the early 90s I had this insane job in which I travelled to every city in Canada (pretty much). In my travels I was shocked, quite literally, to find a completely legitimate Thai restaurant in Prince Albert SK, to meet Indian (i.e., from India) businessmen (they were invariably men) in all sorts of cities, no matter how small and remote, and generally put the lie to the standard Canadian dogma: immigrants live in the big cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, etc.) and the rest is still very white and protestant. In my experience 10 years ago, that is simply not true.

I grew up at University in an environment in which very different issues were at the front of everyone’s mind – a very similar world as was described by Naomi Klein in No Logo (in fact if I’m not mistaken we overlapped at McGill). But I studied political theory, so even then the idea of globalization was kicking around – but at that time the whole edifice relied (at least casually) on the bedrock principle that cities=diversity, towns=whitebread. In Canada that’s an even deeper idea that permeates our entire canon of literature until 1990 or so. And it was, and is, wrong.

All this by way of saying that this sort of fresh, novel approach to the question of globalization is long overdue.

Tags: Business, Canada, Environment, Food, Montreal, Personal, Protest, Test, Toronto, Travel

Interesting news from

January 23, 2001 by Michael Boyle

Concordia University here in Montreal. The next Summit of the Americas is coming up in April and will be held in Quebec City. Concordia’s Senate has approved a plan to allow students who wish to attend protests in Quebec to defer their final examinations. The quote I heard on the radio said something like, “civic activism and protests are a legitimate part of the university experience.”

Tags: Montreal, Protest, Quebec, Test

Gotta love Montreal

November 17, 2000 by Michael Boyle

! In other cities people complain about Christmas starting too early. In Montreal people do something about it – they organize, plan, scheme… no idle chatter here. Uh, OK, it’s completely ridiculous, doing things like smearing shop windows with baby oil in protest. But we’re an activist city – we won’t take serious matters like decorating for Christmas too early lying down! The outrage of it all! [embarrassingly, this was found via Swallowing Tacks]

Tags: Christmas, Montreal, Protest, Test, Windows

I love my Mac

September 6, 2000 by Michael Boyle

as much as the next guy, don’t get me wrong, but this planned protest by Mac users at the Paris Expo is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard of in ages.

Tags: Paris, Protest, Test

My friend Lyle Stewart

August 11, 2000 by Michael Boyle

takes a look at the Philadelphia protests during the Republican Convention in his column this week. Lyle’s been working the protest beat for years now, and doing so very well at newspapers across North America, so he has an interesting perspective. The long view, maybe.

Tags: Friend, Newspapers, Protest, Test, War

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