A beleaguered Texas school district ditches sports

By Emma Teitel - Monday, February 13, 2012 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

Michael Zamora/Caller-Times

A school district in southern Texas is doing the unthinkable (if you’re a Texan, that is): it’s eliminating its highly popular athletics program in hopes of preventing an imminent state-mandated closure—the result of an abysmal academics record. Basketball, baseball, track, tennis, and—wait for it—football will be slashed from the district’s curriculum and budget, says Premont superintendent Ernest Singleton, to save money and give students more time for school work. In fact, the Premont Independent School District’s academic standing and student attendance record is so low that the district has started sending a group of school officials to knock on the doors of truant students’ houses. If the situation doesn’t improve, Premont students will be absorbed by another school district—and 90 Premont citizens will be out of work. But the athletics program cancellation could backfire. One 15-year-old student said the ban will make kids want to attend school even less. “Nobody wants to try anymore,” he said.

Nike’s strange moral universe

By Emma Teitel - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Zumapress/Keystone Press

Nike founder and professional provocateur Phil Knight gave an Oscar-worthy performance at Joe Paterno’s massive memorial last week, admonishing university officials for allegedly disgracing the late, great football coach (the winningest in Penn State history) before his death on Jan. 22. Paterno, who passed away from lung cancer at 85, was ousted from his near-half-century post as Penn State’s football coach in November, for his lacklustre response to the sexual abuse accusations made against his long-time assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky—now regarded as likely a career pedophile (he has since been accused of molesting several other children on Penn State’s campus). When now-assistant coach Mike McQueary tried to alert Paterno to that probability in 2002 (McQueary says he saw Sandusky raping a boy in the Penn State showers), Paterno informed his superiors, who, in turn, informed nobody else. Paterno, apparently thinking he had done enough, let the matter lie, effectively turning a blind eye to his colleague’s behaviour. In short, he obeyed the technical letter of the law, but seriously abused its spirit.

This is something Nike—under the aegis of its founder and chairman—has been doing for years, which makes Knight’s apologia at Paterno’s memorial all the more perversely appropriate. It’s no secret, for example, that Knight’s shoe empire has enraged labour rights groups across the globe for its maltreatment of workers and violation of child labour laws. But Knight has consistently maintained that what appear to be Nike’s ethical violations actually belong to someone else. As one anti-Nike blog puts it, Knight “claimed that the employees who were exploited weren’t officially ‘Nike’s employees,’ but were instead employees of other businesses contracted to source Nike’s shoes.” This is almost exactly the same rationale Knight extended to Paterno’s actions in his memorial speech, when he proclaimed before a packed auditorium at Penn State that the coach “gave full disclosure to his superiors” and “if there is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation and not in Joe Paterno.” But the villain in the tragedy is neither the “investigation” nor Joe Paterno. The villain is Jerry Sandusky. What Knight misses in his blanket defence of Paterno is Edmund Burke’s dictum: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Or that good men do less than they should. It isn’t only bad guys who are capable of doing bad things.

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Bison back in Banff. Burgers, anyone?

By Emma Teitel - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Tim Smith

It appears wild bison will roam in Banff once again, now that federal Environment Minister Peter Kent’s proposal that the four-legged bovines be reintroduced to Banff National Park has been accepted by federal officials. Bison are a popular tourist fixture of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, which may be one reason why our government is keen on bringing them back to their old stomping grounds in Banff: some say their presence will increase interest in the park. There is, however, a good reason why they were removed in the first place, and why their reintroduction isn’t as easy as it sounds.

In 1997, Banff’s captive herd never got a chance to “flourish” as intended because its paddock interfered severely with the migration patterns of other wildlife in the area. The bison were removed from the park as a result, then auctioned off. And back in the 1970s—it seems the bison have an extensive history of bad luck in the region—a group of 30 Jasper-based bison wandered out of the park and were killed (some presumably shot by hunters to be made into bison burgers). Hunting is a big concern for bison lovers, as the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed them as a “near-threatened” species, but hunting the animals is not entirely illegal in Alberta. According to Maurice Nadeau, former president of the Alberta Fish and Game Association, “Any hunting opportunity [in Alberta] would be welcome, particularly an animal with the size and stature of a bison.” So while it appears that Banff’s only prospect of a successful bison resurrection will be of the free-range variety (i.e. paddock-free), Alberta’s burger-hungry hunters may cause Peter Kent to reconsider his policy.

Here’s an idea: cut the programs that offend our intelligence

By Emma Teitel - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Peter Cade/Getty Images

The verdict is in: governments far and wide must “tighten their belts,” “cut the fat,” “purge the gravy” and “stop the insanity” in order to curb their enormous debts. The euro is hanging on for dear life (apparently), America is going to hell in a handbasket (allegedly) and Canada is—though decidedly okay—accumulating household debt at a very risky rate, according to our patron god of finance, Mark Carney. Ontario, or Onterrible, as it’s known elsewhere, is particularly gifted in the art of acquiring debt (the province is supposed to exceed $250 billion) and Toronto’s most polarizing mayor in history—Rob Ford—has, of late, spent more time tightening his own belt than his city’s. By “eating like a rabbit,” says a slowly shrinking Ford, he has shed up to 10 lb. in the past week. Toronto’s fiscal situation, meanwhile, hasn’t been so fortunate—and its citizens (myself included) haven’t exactly warmed to the idea that controversial budget cuts may be in order. So what to do? Can Ford curb the debt? And more importantly, can any Canadian leader curb his constituents’ debt without slashing popular public programs and policies?

Probably not. It would be a potential insult to our intelligence to think so. But I have a proposal: why don’t leaders cut every program and initiative that offends the average person’s intelligence, and save money in the process. What programs, you might ask? Take the one I encounter every time I use a public washroom:

“This is a message from the Public Health Agency of Canada: Wet your hands. Put a small amount of liquid soap in the palm of one hand. Rub your hands together for 20 seconds so you produce lather. Rinse your hands well with clean running water for at least 10 seconds. Dry your hands with a single use paper towel. Use hand lotion to put moisture back into your skin if your hands are dry. Model good handwashing technique to your children … Have them sing a song like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star while rubbing their hands together to teach them the amount of time it takes to clean their hands properly.”

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Leave Lego alone

By Emma Teitel - Friday, January 27, 2012 at 4:06 PM - 0 Comments

zgrredek/Flickr

A number of so-called “feminist” and “health” groups are speaking out against Lego for launching an allegedly sexist line of building blocks and action figures specifically designed for girls. Said groups believe that the new pink and pastel-y Lego line gives young girls the impression that “being pretty is more important than who you are or what you can do.” But Lego says it created the line after getting requests from female customers (“moms and girls”) to make toys with brighter colours and domestic themes: i.e. girls want to play house, not just build one.

And why shouldn’t they be able to? Continue…

Monte Walter Menard

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Monte Walter Menard was born on March 1, 1963, in the western Manitoba town of Swan River, to Grace, a community worker, and Walter, a farmer and regional manager of the Manitoba Metis Federation. The fifth child and first boy in the Menard clan (younger brother Dale would come along seven years later), Monte spent his formative years hiking through the family’s mountainside ranch in Slater, Man., and tending to the animals with his father. “We had cattle, chickens, turkeys,” says Walter. “Almost like an ‘Old MacDonald’ farm.”

Monte loved to wander off on his own and explore the wilderness with his dog, a mutt named Sheba. “He just walked and walked,” says Walter. “He wanted to return to the pioneer existence.” But Monte’s journeys weren’t limited to land; one winter, Walter was forced to brave icy waters when Monte, still a small child, decided to ride his bicycle into a nearby river. “He just wouldn’t let go of his bike when it was rolling into the water,” says Walter. “That kid was never fearful of water.”

When Monte was nine, his family moved to another ranch about 100 km east of Slater, to start what is known as a “PMU operation”: collecting and selling pregnant mares’ urine to pharmaceutical companies for use in a menopause drug. “At that time, we probably had 150 horses,” says Walter. The business thrived, and Monte thrived with it, helping with the horses and hay bales “day and night,” and proving he was an exceptional farmhand. “I recognized even at that age that he was very good at this kind of thing,” says Walter. “He had a country attitude.”

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Uniting under the bigotry umbrella

By Emma Teitel - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Rainier Ehrhardt/Reuters

When a good friend of mine told her mother she was gay, her mother’s response was not, “How could you do this to me?” She said, “How could you do this to your father? I knew I shouldn’t have signed you up for softball.” Eventually, though, she made her peace with it. “Okay,” she conceded, “you can have a girlfriend. As long as you find one who’s Jewish.”

So Rachel did. She spurned non-Jewish girls in order to appease her mother, in the process becoming an instant expert in the art of Paradoxical Acceptance: the ability to deflect one prejudice by embracing another one. Her mother’s fear of lesbians was overshadowed by her fear of ham. Rachel dodged the first fear by giving in to the second.

It turns out that modern politics is littered with similarly questionable moral exchanges. And what better place to look for them than everyone’s favourite travelling circus: the Republican primaries—currently under way in the God-fearing Palmetto State of South Carolina.

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The gift that keeps on giving

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 1:05 PM - 0 Comments

Residents of Melbourne, Australia’s most affluent suburbs (Kew, Carlton and Fitzroy, to name a few) have an interesting approach to public charity. Instead of leaving hand-me-down toys and clothing at their local donation drop-offs, welfare operators say they’re leaving trash. The drop-offs were hit hardest over the holidays, when residents literally dumped hundreds of tons of garbage at the various donation points in the area. The illegal dumping is so severe that local charities have been forced to spend over $5 million on garbage removal this year.

The problem isn’t getting any better: an ongoing offence in Melbourne, illegal dumping has increased 20 per cent from last year, possibly because many of the city’s inner-city dumps have closed down. Some say residents are using donation points as a replacement for the now defunct dumps because the nearest landfill is far away and requires a premium fee that people simply refuse to pay.

Some of Melbourne’s most brazen “charitable donations” included (besides plain old paper garbage) broken furniture, dirty diapers, old Christmas trees, lunch leftovers, and a live kitten trapped in a bag.

Rupert Murdoch: the media monster becomes human

By Emma Teitel - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Simon Dawson/Getty Images

Rupert Murdoch has made an unofficial New Year’s resolution, and it has nothing to do with restoring the privacy of News Corp.’s alleged phone hacking victims—and everything to do with relinquishing some of his own. The beleaguered press baron joined Twitter on New Year’s Eve (his first tweet, on Dec. 31, was a recommendation for a “great book” he had just read called The Rational Optimist) and has been tweeting ever since. His topics have ranged from his publications’ philanthropic projects (“over two million dollars [raised] in two days for orphans of shot hero cop!” Jan. 6), global warming (“Big reversal. NY weather beautiful,” Jan. 7), and of course, American politics (“Obama out to lunch!” Jan. 9). With over 122,000 followers and counting, Murdoch has already racked up more adherents than Regis Philbin and Queen Elizabeth II (two other octogenarians who have taken to the social networking site) combined. For any skeptics out there, the blue checkmark beside his Twitter account (@rupertmurdoch) is legitimate proof that he’s the real Murdoch—and not one of the many imposters who tweet under his name. Still, you might ask, what’s the big deal? With everyone from Enron to your mom on Twitter, why shouldn’t the world’s foremost media mogul be there too, boring us with hand-picked minutiae from his own everyday life?

Here’s one reason: Murdoch and his massive media conglomerate, News Corporation, are embroiled in multiple scandals and lawsuits at the moment, the most notorious of which involve gross privacy violations of innocent people. Which makes a compendium of tips and quips from the guy who (allegedly) brought you the Milly Dowler phone-hacking scandal a less than charming proposition. Secondly, if his performance at the hearing into the Milly Dowler affair is indicative, Rupert, no spring chicken, is possibly already down a mental pint or two; who knows what kind of dementia-induced faux pas he could make with the world at his fingertips? Twitter and Murdoch, you’d suspect, would be a match made in media hell. Surprisingly, they’re not.

Because @rupertmurdoch turns out to be infinitely more likeable than Rupert Murdoch in the flesh. How do we end up liking him? Let me count the ways.

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Vancouver micro-lofts: it’s a small world after all

By Emma Teitel - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 1:05 PM - 0 Comments

Apartment seekers in notoriously pricey Vancouver shouldn’t get too excited about the inexpensive new “designer lofts” now on the market. They may be cheap—the average rent is just $850 a month—stylish, and located in a refurbished heritage building, but they’ve also been labelled “micro-lofts” by developers: a euphemism for exceedingly small. Ranging from 226 to 291 sq. feet, the new lofts, located in the once-condemned Burns Block building, are said to resemble many metropolitan apartments in Europe and Asia—with floor space roughly the size of two parking spaces, or a generous prison cell. And their location isn’t a selling point either. The “micro-lofts” may be downtown, but they’re on Hastings Street, in what is arguably the city’s most crime-ridden neighbourhood. The Portland Hotel—a non-profit residence for drug addicts, sex workers, and the terminally ill—is right next door.

Some say the area is slowly gentrifying, with the addition of similar (albeit larger) developments in the works. And considering Vancouver’s housing market remains the most expensive in the country (not to mention the fact that most inner-city condos today are under 600 sq. feet), apartment seekers may have no choice but to lower their standards.

Each of the 30 furnished “micro-lofts” will have high ceilings, a built-in fold-up wall bed, a flat-screen TV and a very small three-piece bathroom, with a showerhead installed directly above the toilet. Local activists opposed the development, aruging the space should have been used to house the poor, instead of, presumably, those who will just come home to their tiny apartment every night and feel poor.

‘Anti-gay’… I mean, ‘pro-family’

By Emma Teitel - Friday, January 6, 2012 at 5:16 PM - 0 Comments

Everybody’s talking about Rick Santorum, a.k.a. the previously ignored Republican primary candidate from Pennsylvania (also Jerry Seinfeld’s unfunny, Roman Catholic doppelganger) who couldn’t get a word in edgewise at any of the GOP debates. Until this week, he was far better known for his “Google Problem” than his warmongering, privacy quashing political aspirations. Today Santorum is a rising star, setting his socially conservative sights on the state of New Hampshire, after placing an extremely close second to Romney in the Iowa caucuses this week. He seems to think his near-victory in Iowa is proof that you don’t have to be a moderate to win a general election.

Iowa, however, isn’t America, something the former senator was rudely reminded of at a New Hampshire university last night, when his gay-marriage-will-lead-to-polygamy argument was met with unanimous boos:

That Santorum will flounder is almost certain (it’s only a matter of time before talking heads and comedians start lambasting him as fiercely as they did Bachmann and Perry) but mainstream and liberal media could quicken the process if only they’d avoid using the manipulative terminology Santorum and friends use to espouse their anti-gay rights, and anti-privacy beliefs. For too long, grossly dishonest phrases like “pro-family” and “family values” (phrases invented by and for America’s religious right) have been used by mainstream publications to describe the political profiles of Republican candidates. Take this example (one of many) from the Boston Globe:

Santorum, a Catholic, has campaigned on a strong family values platform.

The above is simply not true. Santorum may say he is campaigning on a “strong family values platform,” but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in ethics to understand that revoking adoption and marriage rights for gay people (something Santorum has expressed keen interest in doing) is not in the best interest of families. Then again, Santorum’s definition of what constitutes a family is decidedly limited (let’s just say he doesn’t see eye to eye with Mrs. Doubtfire).

Anyway, enough with this doublespeak. It’s lazy journalism for reputable publications to use terms like “pro-family” and “family values” out of context in reference to a political candidate. Just because Santorum and company cloak their bigotry in euphemisms, doesn’t mean we have to follow suit and use their language. Rick Santorum is not running on a “pro family platform.” He is running on a pro-heterosexual-family-and-no-contraceptives-please!-platform. Just as “pro-life” is a gross euphemism for “anti-abortion,” “pro-family” is a gross euphemism for “anti-gay.”

Christian fundamentalism’s cool factor

By Emma Teitel - Friday, December 23, 2011 at 3:16 PM - 0 Comments

kyz/Flickr

A well known hardware store (Lowe’s) and a well-known travel website (Kayak.com) have recently pulled their advertisements from a little-known reality television show (All American Muslim) in order to appease a little-known group of anti-Muslim Evangelicals (the Florida Family Association). Why? Because according to said Evangelicals, All American Muslim—a TLC show about an average Muslim American family–“profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.” In other words, the characters on the show are not grenade-throwing Jihadists. They’re normal. Worse, they’re boring (the show’s ratings are abysmal, even in the midst of the current controversy). Or as Michelle Goldberg writes in the Daily Beast, “The boycott of All American Muslim marks the first time right-wingers have objected to a television show for being too bland and wholesome.”

The weirdest thing about this, however, isn’t that an apparently wholesome Christian group is carping about a wholesome TV show, but that two substantial businesses actually felt the need to listen to them; it’s as though Lowe’s and Kayak mysteriously absorbed some of the massive Tea Party pressure currently facing G.O.P. candidates—a pressure that has turned the United States into the next Twilight Zone. How else do you account for a country in which political incorrectness masquerades as political correctness? Apparently conservative politicians in America–and now big business–are no longer afraid that they’ll offend the oppressed and marginalized: they’re afraid that they won’t.

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A hotel quiet as the grave

By Emma Teitel - Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Yuriko Nakao/Reuters

A hotel in a suburb of Japan’s second-largest city, Yokohama, has been forced to turn away several couples looking for a place to stay. Why? Because the Lastel Hotel is a hotel exclusively for dead people—waiting their turn for a place in the city’s overcrowded crematoriums. The deceased (there are 18 “guests” so far) are stored in cold-storage rooms, in refrigerated coffins. Each coffin costs roughly 12,000 yen ($157) daily to rent.

According to Britain’s Daily Mail, death has become a “booming market” in Japan, with 1.2 million people dying in 2010. By 2040, annual deaths are anticipated to reach 1.66 million. Hisayoshi Teramura, the Lastel Hotel’s owner, notes that Japan’s largest farming association and one of the country’s biggest retail chains, Aeon, have also gotten into the body-storing business. Indeed, the average wait time for a crematorium oven in Yokohama is over four days, putting hotels like Lastel in high demand. “Otherwise people have to keep the bodies at home,” says Teramura, “where there isn’t much space.” At Lastel, families can view their deceased relatives in their respective “hotel” rooms, until crematorium space opens up.

Amped up in toyland

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Daniel Janossy on his souped-up stilts.

Daniel Janossy is running down his Toronto street at full speed on what look like bionic feet, his every airborne stride attracting stares. Dogs cock their heads as he lopes by on the flashy futuristic aluminum frames. The jumping stilts look nothing like the simple sticks with two triangles of wood that you may remember from your childhood. Welcome to toys 2.0, where jumping stilts can propel you over cars, scooters are made for tricks, not travel, skateboards wiggle on two wheels and kids do flips on amped-up pogo sticks.

Children are moving in new and extraordinary ways these days, and although there is an element of danger, the exercise benefits are not to be dismissed. But what makes these intense toys so popular? “I think there’s a drive for the extreme in our culture that wasn’t there 50 years ago,” says 22-year-old Nick Ryan, co-founder of Xpogo and Pogopalooza, two U.S.-based organizations devoted to extreme pogoing. “It’s a way for younger people to make their own sport and—to the horror of their parents—test the limits of their surroundings.”

At Pogopalooza, for example, 18-year-old Daniel Mahoney from Truro, N.S., managed a record-breaking nine-foot, six-inch high jump at the 2010 competition in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year, James Roumeliotis managed the most consecutive jumps on a pogo stick: 206,684. And Fred Grybowski holds the record for the most consecutive backflips on a pogo stick with 11.

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Epilogue to Occupy

By Emma Teitel - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Drost/ZUMAPRESS/Keystone Press

Tim Gilbert is a 48-year-old lawyer on King Street in Toronto. His office is on the 20th floor of the TD Trust building, where it overlooks the financial district. He is the chair of Toronto’s Design Exchange (in what used to be the Toronto Stock Exchange) and the principal lawyer at his own patent and trademark firm, Gilbert’s LLP. He is hoping to put a large flat-screen television on the far wall of his office for Skype interviews and conference calls. He is a strong believer in free markets. He is also a friend of Occupy Toronto—and one of the people responsible for the peaceful outcome of the police eviction at St. James Park on the morning of Nov. 23.

Since then, tent cities have turned back into parks and editorial boards have turned to new topics, but Gilbert hasn’t been so eager to move on. Since the eviction, the intellectual property lawyer has been meeting with some of the movement’s organizers (a term he says he “uses loosely”) to discuss “the group’s next step.” “I don’t agree with many of their solutions,” he says. “But I think it would benefit them to have some degree of leadership and organization.”

The aftermath of Occupy—with park cleanups donated by businesses and rhetoric that’s seeped into the national dialogue—suggests the movement has made a dint in the national psyche.

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Politics in politics, boring is better

By Emma Teitel - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

Andrew Burton/Getty Images

“I made a vow to God . . . that’s stronger than a Texas handshake.”—Rick Perry

“What if [poor kids] became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom.”—Newt Gingrich

“I’ll bet you $10,000!”—Mitt Romney

“WIN, WIN, WIN!”—Michele Bachmann

“I distinguish between nationalism and patriotism.”—Michael Ignatieff

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Straight shooters

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Captive Media chart: National Bank Financial Group

A U.K. tech company has made going to a public urinal uniquely interactive (don’t worry, it’s not what you’re thinking). Bored by the usual male bathroom experience of staring at the wall ahead, Captive Media decided to develop “a urinal-mounted, urine-controlled games console for men.” This is how it works: a man stands in front of a urinal and points his “joystick” (their pun, not ours) at one of three target stickers placed inside the bowl. A screen mounted on the wall above the urinal measures the speed and accuracy of the player’s stream using infrared lights and displays it, along with other players’ rankings, on a virtual score board. Players can upload their scores to social media websites through their cellphones.Venues that have the gaming consoles—the company has sold the service to two English pubs so far—say their urinals have never been cleaner; supposedly a direct result of the game’s focus on “shooting” accuracy.

Entrances: Bursting on the scene

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Rolling Stone Magazine's winners Ewan Currie, Sam Corbett, Leot Hanson and Ryan Gullen of The Sheepdogs

PIPPA MIDDLETON

She has yet to utter a single public word, yet ever since her emergence—ahem, from behind—in an Alexander McQueen silk screamer at last summer’s royal do, the duchess of Cambridge’s baby sis has stolen the spotlight. Her slow-mo sashay down the aisle dropped jaws across the globe, launching a million appreciative tweets. And with her sister sequestered on a rainy Welsh island, as tabloids wonder whether—yawn—she’s preggers yet, the 28-year-old London party planner appears on the arms of a stream of tall, dashing, well-heeled suitors.

SUN NEWS

In hindsight, the hullabaloo over its creation seems wildly out of proportion. Fox News North, this ain’t. On Earth Day, viewers of the Quebecor venture were treated to Ezra Levant attacking a potted plant. The day coincides with Lenin’s birthday, Levant, wielding a chainsaw, shouted over the din, leaving no question which was the bigger tool. Communism and environmentalism aside, shop peeves include arts funding and the CBC, known there as the “state broadcaster.” They still have a long way to go before they rival the ratings of their southern mentor.

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Heroes: none but the brave

By Emma Teitel - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

AVERAGE JOES:

Dennis Manuge

The Canadian military veteran became a hero among his peers when he led a lawsuit against the government over cuts to veterans’ long-term disability insurance benefits. Manuge, who was injured at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in 2002, had $10,000 of his disability pension clawed back by the government after he left the military.

Terence Haight

Dubbed the “mystery millionaire,” the rural Ontarian made headlines posthumously when it was discovered that he left $1,035,948.55 to the small town of Gravenhurst in his will. According to the National Post, nobody is sure why he donated the money (some speculate it’s because his late wife was raised in Gravenhurst), but it is greatly appreciated—by the town’s mayor, especially.

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT MACLEANS’ OTHER NEWSMAKERS OF 2011

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My Occupy (a job) movement

By Emma Teitel - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Mark Blinch/Reuters

I’ve avoided writing about the Occupy movement for the following reasons: 1. Until last week I thought Warren Buffett sang Margaritaville. 2. I’m young and I have a job—a fortuitous, albeit awkward combination, as working for a major corporation isn’t exactly popular in most (drum) circles these days. In other words, it’s not the best time to be a liberal arts grad turned corporate lackey. As a result, I’ve been feeling a bit alienated from the pro-Occupy demographic you’d think would be my natural constituency, my peers. My Occupy contemporaries wear clothing made of plants and live in yurts. I just bought a coat with a genuine rabbit collar and I live in a building made of brick. One friend of mine who shall remain nameless appeared in a Toronto Star photo of the St. James Park encampment, beating a bongo drum to apparent oblivion. Another friend who doesn’t mind being named, Jen Anderson, states on her Facebook page that she believes in “energy” and that “we are creatures of the sun / no worries, no wishes / . . . the sun rises to greet us / we spin to meet the sun / There is always more than one truth.”

As disaffected as I sometimes felt from the Occupy movement, its detractors have left me even colder. Both sides have co-opted the supposedly free discourse with claims that strike me as unfounded. But, absent a side on the issue I can fervently embrace—and I suspect I’m not alone here—there are some truths I do stand by:

1. Less is more. Most people would take one good lie over multiple depressing truths. Most people are tired, busy and ignorant, and you don’t Occupy when you’re preoccupied. I love Jen Anderson, but as far as I can see, she doesn’t represent the 99 per cent. I do. Every time I read a story in the newspaper about the Canadian Occupy movement, I feel as though I just opened a book halfway through and I don’t know the plot.

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This won’t hurt a bit, rover

By Emma Teitel - Thursday, December 1, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Megan Thruston/Getty Images

These are tough economic times. Some people occupy public parks. Others—particularly in Britain—prefer to kill their pets. According to the Daily Mail, British pet owners are “deliberately maiming or even killing their animals to get a payout,” so much so that fraudulent pet insurance claims have nearly quadrupled in the past year. In fact, notes the Daily Mail, pets are now the “fastest growing area of insurance claims” in the country.

Figures from the Association of British Insurers show that there was more than $3 million worth of pet insurance fraud uncovered last year—a number that’s more than doubled since 2009. So how exactly do people commit pet fraud? Authorities insist that many fraudulent claims resemble “crash for cash” set-ups, in which animal owners stage accidents and injure their pets on purpose to get a payout. That, or they try to claim insurance on pets that don’t even exist to begin with.

Fake pets aside, however, 2.3 million real animals (cats and dogs) were insured last year in Britain—and that doesn’t even include the scores of other species covered by pet insurers. For example, one British company, Exotic Direct, offers its customers—in addition to the standard dog and cat packages—tortoise, lizard, snake, parrot, and “bird of prey” coverage.

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Eighty and employed

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

As the economy and markets have generally gone south over the past few years, it’s become clear to many boomers that retirement may not be quite as golden as they’d once planned. In fact, some new research suggests it may not happen at all.

According to a recent survey by U.S. bank Wells Fargo & Co., Americans think they’ll be working longer than ever before. Roughly 76 per cent of respondents (1,500 Americans, aged 26-75, were surveyed) said they would rather make a set amount of money before retiring, compared to just 20 per cent who said they’ll retire when they reach a certain age, regardless of savings. How long will it take to reach their target? A quarter of respondents say they expect to work into their 80s.

That’s a mentality not so far removed from the Canadian one: a recent Royal Bank of Canada poll shows that 72 per cent of Canadians hope to be mortgage-free by age 65, while a third of Canadians over 55 currently have 16 or more years still left on their mortgage term. “Canadians want to be mortgage-free as they approach retirement age and beyond,” says Claude DeMone, director for Home Equity Financing at RBC, “but the reality is that it takes prudent planning and the right advice to stay on track.”

Those damned ‘elites’

By Emma Teitel - Friday, November 25, 2011 at 6:18 PM - 0 Comments

As a new columnist, I understand the compulsion to repeat yourself. There are only so many segues and qualifiers, and I’ve probably exhausted all of them already. In fact, “in fact,” takes first place on my list of most recycled phrases—it appears in half the columns I’ve written for Maclean’s so far—with “The truth is” and “After all” competing for second place. I have yet to find other words for “In other words” and, contrary to the advice of my high school English teacher, all of my paragraphs begin with “and” or “but.” But, I like to think that my word choice—no matter how repetitive—doesn’t muddy the point I’m trying to make. It’s one thing to repeat words for the sake of clarity. It’s another to use repetition to blur distinctions in the service of your politics.

This is exactly what National Post columnist Barbara Kay has been doing for years.  In true Orwellian fashion (think Politics and the English Language), Kay forever enjoys railing against the same ambiguous enemy, ever ambiguously. I suspect, as George Orwell once argued about another obfuscator, she “either has a meaning and cannot express it, or inadvertently says something else, or is almost indifferent as to whether [her] words mean anything or not.” In the world according to Barbara Kay, every problem big and small is consistently blamed on anonymous elites.

I now present you with a list of Kay’s favourite word, in no particular order (emphasis mine): Continue…

The many ways bus drivers can be mean

By Emma Teitel - Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Ottawa mayor Jim Watson said he felt “sick” and “angry” after watching a YouTube video uploaded by a city transit passenger depicting an Ottawa bus driver verbally harassing another passenger. The passenger was apparently reading aloud from a sexually explicit play he had written; he also happened to be autistic. “Shut the f–k up,” “Shut your ignorant f–king cake-hole,” and “If you don’t shut your f–king face I’m going to stick my fist in it!” are just a few of the driver’s alleged correctives caught on tape (unfortunately the video only captured an image of the victim, not the perpetrator). The passenger, who described himself as “mildly autistic,” can be seen giving a very meek apology and darting off the bus at the next stop. Mayor Watson is shocked and appalled. I’m not—shocked, that is. Say what you want about city transit employees—they’re overworked, underpaid, overtired—but you can’t deny that they are, by and large, an unapologetically surly bunch (except, in my vast commuting experience, the ones in Nova Scotia, where everyone is delightful). And it’s about time someone told them to snap out of it. Being miserable is all well and good when you’re a Subway sandwich artist or telemarketer (two of my own previous occupations, coincidentally), but when you’re a public employee and your job requires that you deal daily with the elderly, infirm—and yes, some of the 35 million plus tourists who visit Canada each year—it should also require that you check your surliness at the folding doors.

I might not be so harsh on transit workers if they would only discriminate. But they’re equal opportunity churls: they’re mean to everyone. An immigrant with a hard-to-comprehend question, an old lady with a bundle buggy, a homeless guy with someone else’s recycling, a serial teen-mom, a puppy—you name it, they yell at it.

Continue…