This week marks pivotal religious holidays celebrated even by otherwise secular Christians and Jews. Mel Gibson's film, The Passion, will doubtless be discussed at length over the br...
You may not recognize the name Adbusters, but it is the biggest-selling Canadian magazine in the United States with 70,000 American subscribers. Its current issue poses the curious q...
Dr. Jean Marmoreo's patients, mature women brimming over with midlife woes and joys, provide the subject matter for her weekly Globe and Mail column. On Feb. 28, using two of her pat...
What do women want? I know I am not the first or last to ask -- Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (makers of Viagra) are frantically seeking the answer, for example -- but even Freud never got ...
  MONTREAL - Retired Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, veteran of the Rwanda genocide of 1994, during which Hutu teens hacked Tutsis to death with machetes, recently spoke to high school ...
Martha Stewart is guilty. She may go to jail. It isn't quite the kick in the stomach it was when I watched the O.J. Simpson verdict come in, but that was murder. The mechanics of he...
Blame it on Queen Victoria. When she availed herself of the new miracle of anesthesia for the delivery of one of her many children, the monarch conferred legitimacy on the hitherto f...
Canadians will laugh at themselves, and then go all sensitive when others laugh at them. But truth-based mockery is a salutary ego check. Last year I applied that theory to practice ...
When you love a friend, however imperfect she is, it’s a shock to overhear, “She’s a loser. Almost everyone hates her.” You’re angry on her behalf, but you only s...
Happy Valentine’s Day. Seen or read any good love stories lately? No, I mean where no one was naked, and where your heart swelled and you got goose bumps because you were...
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. (Say nothing about the dead unless it is good.) This dictum was law in newspapers until 1986, when England’s Daily Telegraph set out to riva...
Recently I crossed paths with an old friend from university days, who as a law student assisted in the defence for Ron Turpin, the last Canadian to be executed before the abolition o...
The series Sex and the City is winding down, and that's fine with me. I got the gist quickly, and dislike almost everything about it: the fusion of soap opera, group therapy and soft...
Everyone wants to know: Would I display grace under pressure, courage under fire? But few of us willingly seek out jobs or situations to test our mettle. If you choose soldiering or fi...
A reader -- M_____ -- wrote to express his vexation over a recent column. No problem; it's a free(ish) country. What distinguished this particular e-mail was its opening line: "Jesus, ...
American presidential campaigns seem to go on forever. It seems like years, not months, that the nine Democratic contenders have been racing for the nomination. I have some liberal,...
Merry Christmas! Not Happy Holiday, User-friendly Yule, or Salubrious Solstice. Merry C*h*r*i*s*t mas. I say this with heartfelt goodwill -- as I arrange the Hannukah candles in my m...
We saw the movie Elf last week, expecting the silliness kids like plus some sly comic winking at adults, like Shrek, Toy Story, and other modern kid-themed movies. But no, it was onl...
You may have missed a recent story on terrorism in Colorado. It didn't make the headlines, even though one person was brutally murdered, with two others injured. The carnage was horrif...
Public gender discrimination is over. Popular culture reinforces the general perception of gay social integration. From ‘Will and Grace’ to Queer eyes metrose...