MARK FAST IS a 29-year-old, Winnipeg-born, London-based knitwear designer who, in a few short years has become an international success. In 2008, he completed his Master’s at Central Saint Martins in London England (he did his B.A. there as well), started his eponymous line a year later and since then has caused a whole flurry of commotion in the fashion world. He famously refused to lend Lady Gaga his clothes, has used plus-size models in many of his fashion shows, has collaborated with Top Shop and has also created a lower-priced diffusion line called Faster.

For his Luminato, Lancôme-commissioned, installation, “The Ascension of Beauty,” Frost delicately
hung giant white, knotted ropes from the ceiling throughout the Allen Lambert Galleria at Brookfield Place. These giant, hanging ropes remind him, he has said, of the knitting loops he makes when weaving his creations on his knitting machine. The spectator is taken on a journey from the raw beginning through to the finished product: a beautiful red dress with Fast’s signature tight cobwebby-detailed bodice.

Mark Fast designed this red dress for Lancôme’s seventy-fifth anniversary. He made it out of lycra, viscose and Swarovski elements. “The knitwear I have created is symbolic of the elegant structure of the rose and I have derived my inspiration from its delicate confidence,” explained Frost. “Its [the rose’s] layers extend off the body emulating the delicate petals held together by the stem. The exhibition will encompass a rope structure that represents the emotion the Lancôme woman evokes. In my mind and my design, she encompasses the whole space and she is an inspiration to all people who behold her,” said Frost.

“Mark Fast’s work transcends the boundaries between art, fashion and beauty,” enthused Luminato CEO Janice Price. “Each year at Luminato, we aim to blur the lines between artistic genres by presenting unique collaborations and multi-disciplinary art. Fast’s unique blend of fashion creation and sculptural installation is a perfect match for the Festival,” said Price.

Fast’s collaboration with Lancôme also produced a fuschia-coloured lipstick called “Fast Kisses.” A far cry from a traditional knitwear designer, Mark’s sexy, feminine and body-conscious designs
are sure to keep Mark on the fast track to international stardom.

NINE-YEAR-OLD TWINS CLAIRE and Emily push at a low-hanging balloon with green polka dots. They giggle hard as their father pushes the ball back at them, with less than half the effort. The girls get ready to face the balloon coming in their direction and swing it back with full force.

They are at the Wish Come True Festival. Like them, many other families are enjoying the Rainbow City installations at Queen’s Park on this Father’s Day weekend. As a part of the Luminato festival, FriendsWithYou, a Miami based art collective, has put up life size installations in Queen’s Park for the weekend. The installations include giant bounce houses, totems and inflatable characters, led by Rainbow King, Luminato’s 2010 festival mascot. Mist fountains sparkle over this wonderland.

The twins’ mother, Kathy Reeves keeps an eye on the girls as she comments on the set up, “It is very whimsical. I used to pass by here for work and I have seen them put the pieces together. The final product is so visually pleasing.”

FriendsWithYou produces art work with the purpose of creating an immersive experience that encourages interaction through play to change the current state of a person’s emotion to ‘happy.’ Xavier Burt, an ‘ambassador of friendship’ for FriendsWithYou says they want their art installations which they take to different cities to represent the ‘happiness brand.’ He doesn’t seem to find the business of selling happiness ironic in the slightest. Burt explains, “Happiness is always inside you; you just have to find it.” And according to him, FriendsWithYou helps you reach that stage with the help of their visual art, interactive art, animation and music to create a complete experience.

“We have sprinkled a happy virus over this place which will be the picketing line for G20 next weekend,” he said hopefully.

FriendsWithYou have also tries to make their mission statement accessible through their products and art pieces. Even though their paintings sell for thousands, a smiley-face pin costs a dollar and instantly emits a happy aura. Bouncing in the play house is absolutely free, and so is standing under the mist or taking a picture in front of giant inflatable mushrooms.

FriendsWithYou offers this interactive experience for people all ages, but today it is mostly kids who are bouncing around the inflatable castle.

“This is the first time a majority of the demographic at an installation has been kids,” says Burt. “We usually get mostly adults at our projects.” In fact, Luminato’s creative director, Chris Lorway, bounced in a bounce house in Miami while scoping for art for this year’s festival. He enjoyed the experience so much that he invited FriendsWithYou to participate in Luminato. Not only did FriendsWithYou create installations at this year’s festival, but they also supplied other venues in the city with their artwork.

FriendsWithYou have a pop-up shop at the Magic Pony store and a painting exhibition at Narwhal Art Projects, both on Queen Street West and co-owned by Kristin Weckworth and Steve Cober, who are close friends with FriendsWithYou.

Magic Pony is a gallery and a business that collaborates with and showcases international artists who mix fine art, commercial art and ‘fun’ art. This is the first time in four years that the Narwhal gallery has shown FriendsWithYou paintings in their gallery. Luminato or no Luminato, Weckworth has always made it a point of having FriendsWithYou presence at her galleries. “They were one of the three artists that inspired me to start up the Magic Pony in 2002,” she explained.

Weckworth contacted the FriendsWithYou duo, Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III when their projects were new. Since then, Weckworth and FriendsWithYou have developed a friendship and infused the Toronto art scene with FriendsWithYou signature characters.

When they decided to come to Toronto for Luminato, Weckworth was excited to have them. “I think they felt like they had a home away from home in Toronto because of Narwhal and Magic Pony,” she said.

After Borkson and Sandoval met with Torontonians during the Luminato Festival, the duo will be busy creating works for another city – this time for Art Basel in the winter in Miami - where they will parade their larger than life installations, and try to bring happiness along the way.

Michael Chu

CANADIANS HAVE ALWAYS appreciated two things: a light sense of humour and Canadian folk-pop. And there’s no indie-folk artist who has been able to blend these two attributes together more eloquently than the current indie-music darling named Dan Mangan. While his tracks run deep and dark at times, Mangan ably retains a positive semblance – in one way or another.

“Though I’ve been known to make somewhat dramatic music at times,” says Mangan. “I’m a pretty easy going person.”

Clearly evident in one of his recent videos, Robots, the lyrical content runs deep, but the video – where two rival gangs duke it out using robots, only to harmoniously come together – can’t help but make a viewer laugh, or at least share a grin.

“I do like to infuse the heaviness with humour…Sometimes
it’s noticed and sometimes it’s not,” says Mangan. “It’s interesting how lyrics bring out all kinds of different reactions,” he said.

Originally hailing from Vancouver, Mangan has come a long way since his beginnings in his high school band and the emerging west-coast indie music scene.

“I had pipe-dreams of a legitimate career in music, but at the point it was just messing around with friends,” says Mangan.

“I learned to create music as opposed to just mimicking it and it took a long time to feel any sense of confidence with it.”

His recent album, Nice, Nice Very Nice released in 2009, has garnered significant critical accolades, just recently, making the 2010 Polaris Short List of best Canadian albums, voted upon by Canada’s most reputable music critics.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have a really supportive and dedicated fanbase in the last number of years,” says Mangan.

“I’ve never enjoyed the pedestal’ing that occurs with the audience/performer relationship,” adds Mangan, which has ultimately directed Mangan to appreciate each and every individual
making time in their schedule and parting with their hard-earned money, to attend his shows.
Undoubtedly, Mangan’s humble approach has translated into rabid fans not only in Canada, but also in the UK, Australia and the United States.

Magnan has just recently affiliated himself with famed indie label Arts & Crafts – home to Feist, Zeus and Broken Social Scene – and his album will be released in the United States this summer, accompanied by a tour of over seventeen major American cities.

While Mangan missed this year’s NXNE festival because he was on tour in the UK (including a gig at Glastonbury Festival), Mangan is energized to play the Canadian music festival circuit, starting with the Mariposa Folk Festival in July in Orillia.

Mangan will continue to tour in support of his latest release, and he has no intentions of stopping. His appreciation to be able to do what he is so passionate about, and talented in, is what motivates him and reminds him that it’s his fans who brought him to where he is today.

“It’s important to find the right people in every town along the way,” says Mangan. “Each town has good people in it.”

In the next 10 years, Mangan says he would like to continue evolving his sound. “I’d like to continue to put out albums under a variety of outlets,” says Mangan. “I like the idea of having the solo career flank a myriad of side projects and inter-disciplinary musical endeavours.”

He adds, “I also want to keep travelling and see new places. I want to add sweat to the walls of the world’s best theatres.”

Already having the makings of a long-lasting music career, Mangan is enjoying the ride and appreciating
each step of his ambitious journey. He seems to be fulfilling his lifelong passion – to engulf himself in music.

“As a kid it was a fantasy. As an adult it’s just become an excuse for my obsessiveness,” says Mangan. “I have a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm and ambition inside of me and it has to go somewhere. There may come a time when it’s not music, but for now, it certainly is.”

WHEN PEOPLE HEAR the term ‘protest music’ their minds automatically turn to the sounds of the 1960s and most of us think (even if we weren’t there), ‘back in those days, music actually meant something.’

Nowadays pop music is all so shallow. Judging from pop music on the radio, one might assume that our generation has become so self absorbed and doesn’t care about anything beyond our own narrow scope of existence. Judging by the hits, one might assume that fighting for change seems pointless or at best a remote possibility.

Or is it? Toronto film director Summer Love certainly doesn’t think so. Her new documentary Sounds Like a Revolution, which made its world premiere at the NXNE music festival on June 16 and opened in theatres on June 25, is an in-depth exploration of just how alive and well protest music is today. Musicians from every genre, from punk to hip hop and from folk to reggae, are still doing their part to get people active and involved in politics today.
However, this isn’t an easy task. This documentary shows how vocal musicians with messages of social justice are systematically pushed to the fringes. Sounds like a Revolution documents how the music industry has become dominated by corporate giants like Clear Channel and Best Buy, whose strict censorship rules don’t allow artists to have creative control over their content that’s going on to the major labels, on radio stations and into retail stores. So the problem is not that there is a lack of artists that care about bigger political issues, the problem is that they’re just not being allowed to speak up and be heard.

All of the artists in the film, including Spearhead singer Michael Franti, NOFX frontman Fat Mike and conscious hip-hop artist Paris, express their frustrations and battles with trying to get their music and their message out to as many people as possible without the help of major labels. Franti has probably garnered the most success, with his annual music festival Power to the Peaceful in San Francisco which attracts roughly 50,000 people. Meanwhile, Fat Mike kick-started Punkvoter, an initiative to encourage his young fans to get out and vote in the 2004 election in order to get the Bush Administration out of office. Even though Bush was re-elected that year, Mike’s efforts galvanized a whole new group of young voters to get involved in electoral politics.

Sounds like a Revolution was a long time in the making for Summer
Love, who first became inspired to make the film in the wake of September 11, 2001. It was by the time the Iraq war was underway that she knew decisively that she had to do it.

“For a long time after 9/11 people were afraid to speak out,” she said. “There was a lot of over-the-top patriotism in the United States and everyone was behind the government one hundred per cent. But by the time the Iraq war happened people were starting to wise up and there was a huge resistance, especially from artists. Even the Dixie Chicks voiced their opposition to the war. They came under fire for it, but really, that’s what inspired me,” explained Summer Love.

Watching the film, it’s evident that the invasion of Iraq back in 2003 did indeed have a huge impact on film director Love. Most of the artists interviewed, including the aforementioned Franti and Fat Mike, as well as ex-Rage Against the Machine member Tom Morello and Anti-Flag’s Justin Sane, spend a great deal of time talking about that particular issue in the film. But some musical icons who were popular in the 1960s and 1970s also appear in the film. David Crosby recounts the story of what inspired Neil Young to write the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song “Ohio.” The song tells the story of a shooting at Kent State University in 1970 and how, after seeing a photograph of the incident, Young immediately wrote the song and got his band mates together to record. The song criticizes the president of the time, Richard Nixon, and has become one of the most popular political protest songs of all time. Love says she tried to get Young himself to appear in the documentary to talk about the song but he declined.

Overall, this is an excellent documentary which sheds a lot of light on political activism still alive in twenty-first century music. Some of the sound bites have a tendency to become a little repetitive at times, but that’s probably inevitable when you have so many people talking about the same issues. On the positive side, all the artists are very articulate and the immense amount of passion for their causes that they feel comes through in this film. The fact that the artists care so much makes viewers care. That alone, makes this film a powerful tool for change.

As fear gripped Toronto during the G8/G20 Summits, democracy vanished.

To anyone paying attention, it seemed like the public relations machine that was kicked into gear for the G20 Summit was a never-ending set of announcements meant to elevate concern about the potential dangers of having the world’s most powerful people in Toronto for a weekend.

Early on, the University of Toronto announced that the possibility of danger on the St. George campus was so great that the entire University would be shut down during the Summit. Even student residents would have to be moved as the city would be so unsafe that students should not be allowed on campus.

This set the bar pretty high for what level of danger to expect. Of course, there were some rational heads on campus who challenged this decision by defying the university’s orders and keeping their offices open. They also called the university out when it was revealed that security agents would be taking the temporarily-moved students’ rooms.

These organizations were targeted for their courageous stands. One, the Graduate Students’ Union, was raided and every person inside was detained, likely with the help of Campus Police. What a price to pay for standing up against an administration that conspired with security officials
to detain progressive students.

The message sent by the Integrated Security Unit, the joint-security force comprised of the RCMP, the OPP, Toronto Police, Canadian Forces and private firms, as a result of this raid was clear: don’t challenge the notion that the security measures taken are warranted, or you could be considered an enemy of the state.

The federal government, security agencies and the province all seemed to manipulate information to make everyone fear each other: the protesters were to fear the police, the general public were to fear the protesters and no one should go near the fence. With everyone’s rationality turned off and replaced with fear, the purpose of the summits would continue generally unchallenged, especially by mainstream journalists.

Fear was used to rule the City of Toronto that weekend. Our powerless mayor stepped back as Martial Law was imposed by Police Chief Bill Blair, while the Premier looked the other way. Blair was ordered by someone to allow for his officers to conduct sweeping powers of search and detention that were not contemplated
by the anything passed by government.

As a result of these expanded powers , fear spread among citizens of being searched and detained
without any due process, having hearing damage as a result of being blasted with a sound cannon, or going blind or choking because of tear gas.

I saw fear in the eyes of many, many people I talked to that weekend. I was afraid too. On Sunday night, I was standing with four people at Queen and Soho Streets in awe of seeing busloads of people shipped off to cages. Two officers came up to us and told us to leave immediately. We were told that by standing together in a group we were “violating the riot act” and that we were not legally allowed to “converge.”

When I challenged one of the officers and demanded to know which part of what law he was citing, fear came through his eyes, and anger through his mouth. All he could do is yell, “I have told so many people tonight about this and I’m tired of it.” He threatened to arrest us again, if we asked any more questions, so we dispersed.

Blair was on the front lines of generating fear. He wasted many words whipping people up against the violent protesters, and convinced a cadre of journalists to advance this view. Before long, people uninvolved with the day’s events were decrying vandalism shown over and over on television news stations as if someone had actually been hurt.

Of course, many people had been hurt, but broken windows were the only image used to demonstrate violence. Many people who had been hurt were shipped off to a detention centre away from the city’s core.
We were all under attack. At times, we were all afraid. And despite using the force that they had, the security forces didn’t even unleash their entire arsenal. At each confrontation, this led many of us on the streets to wonder, what will they use next?

When I saw horses charging dense crowds, or people running as if their lives depended on escape, I wondered how instilling this fear among us had anything to do with G20 leaders like Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao or David Cameron. There wasn’t even a remote possibility of a world leader being hurt, indeed no political leader has ever been murdered in Canada by a protesting mob.

Instilling fear in people only served to disempower us. The move toward a near removal of all freedoms stated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms happened so fast that only after the Summit has anyone realized that the power on which the ISU was operating didn’t exist. But that didn’t matter. More than 1,000 people were rounded up and dehumanized, regardless of what powers the police did or didn’t have.

It degenerated into seemingly random arrests that were based only on the colour of one’s clothes, the language one spoke, or whether or not a protester came prepared to be tear gassed.

When I was hit over the shoulder and knocked to my knees by a riot officer, my hope of demonstrating against what the G20 stood for dissipated, and I knew that the rest of the weekend
would be pure resistance to the violence perpetuated by the police state.

The police response to us in the streets during the G20 is an important reminder of this: The freedoms we enjoy were hard fought for by generations of activists, and they remain absolutely fragile.

The reaction of the police to peaceful protesters with important and legitimate concerns of the work of the world’s elites is a necessary reminder that the powerful actually fear the power of the citizens when they come together to resist a global agenda that continues to rob and marginalize the world’s poor. They will promote fear, they will detain and they will raid our homes or places of work if the chance is presented to them.

If we know that fear will be used to advance an oppressive agenda, everyone who refuses to buy into that fear must stand up to it. And, in all circumstances, we must challenge those people in positions of power and demand justice for Canada and the world’s oppressed.

Especially now, as we know just how scared the elites are.

PEOPLE LIVING IN Western society are already familiar with the Hollywood image being portrayed in the media. The way an actress’ curves hug her dress that makes her beautiful, or skin lightening cream that makes a person with darker skin complexion more attractive, are prime examples of how being beautiful is determined solely on how “western” one can look.

In China, there are no exceptions to this statement. From the age of 18, girls growing up in China become extremely conscious of their image in society. American television has a strong influence on the young generation in China, and they idolize celebrities, based on their appearance.

The two most popular cosmetic procedures performed in China are eyelid reconstruction and nasal bridge surgery. Eyelid reconstruction is widening the eye, to make it look bigger. Nasal bridge surgery is reshaping the nose, making it look more symmetrical to the face. The most common age for these surgeries begins in the early 20s. This is the ideal age, due to job prospects, and being the marriageable age. People in China believe that by having surgeries such as eyelid reconstruction and nasal bridge surgery, this will further their career, and make them more accepted into society when looking for a long-term partner.

“Big eyes and a straight bridge are signs of beauty,” said cosmetic surgeon Dr. Yang Yunxia.

“Ladies don’t like their face to be big and fat, so they want to change their face into a more beautiful shape,” said Yunxia.

Western advertisements also have a huge impact on the Chinese, as they are constantly surrounded by beautiful people on television, and in magazines. They idolize the models posing
for various billboards, such as H&M and Zara, which have been blown up all over Shanghai.
The Chinese see these foreign advertisements as success, fame, and beauty. Consequently, they go to extreme lengths to look like these “picture perfect” people they have bounded themselves with.

The idea of the stereotypical tall, fair, Caucasian person being the most beautiful has also had an effect on China’s marketing industry. Workers at various stores selling Barbie dolls in Shangai have acknowledged the fact that the typical blonde hair, blue-eyed Barbie is always the most in demand, while the Asian Barbie just “sits on the shelves.”

General manager Dann Murphy, of Mattel Inc. (makers of Barbie) located in Shangai, said “We don’t offer a lot of Asian Barbies because they never sell well.”

“Customers like to buy the authentic Barbie that they think is beautiful, and Barbie is known to have blond hair and blue eyes,” Murphy said.

It is unfortunate that Western influences are rapidly spreading around the world, to the point where it is becoming dangerous. People of other nationalities are too caught up in imitating the Western image, and habits that they fail to embrace their own icon and unique features. In places like China, cosmetic surgery is beginning at a fairly young age. These false procedures are unhealthy for both the body and the mind; Cosmetic surgery will eventually become an uncontrollable addiction for people, and could potentially ruin their identity. They will be far too obsessed by the time they want out.

ON JULY 15, the Phelps family will hop into a squadron of minivans and drive 94 kilometres east from their home of Topeka, Kansas to Kansas City. They aren’t driving to a family reunion, a wedding, or a funeral. They’re going to an Adam Lambert concert.

But don’t get them wrong; the Phelps aren’t fans. Rather, they’re protesting the gay artist’s show on the basis that “he will be teaching people to sin” and that audience members ”will fall straight into hell.” An outline of the family’s trip can be read on their website.

Run through their exclusive Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), the Phelps have made international headlines for their “God Hates Fags” campaign. The WBC is known for protesting the funerals of American soldiers, shouting that God killed them for defending a society that accepts homosexuality.

They wave signs that read “Soldiers Die, God Laughs” and “Thank God for 9/11.” Since 1991, they’ve had nearly 44,000 protests across the United States, Canada, and once in Iraq.

They call these demonstrations “Love Crusades.”

Nate Phelps, 51, won’t be joining his family at the concert. In fact, Phelps hasn’t seen them 33 years.

On June 18, Phelps spoke to an audience of 200 at the University of Toronto about growing up in what a BBC documentary dubbed “the most hated family in America.” The speech was an official Pride 2010 event and was organized by the atheist organization the Centre for Inquiry Ontario. Phelps’ talk drew in atheists, theology experts, and members of Toronto’s GLBT community for an hour of insight into the WBC.

Phelps began by chronologically listing off the books of the Bible. At the age of seven, Phelps could recite all 66 books in 19 seconds flat.

“If one of us took too long my father would stop in the middle of his preaching, cast a gimlet eye on the offender and demand that, ‘Somebody smack that kid!’”

Along with his mother and 12 siblings, Phelps suffered from crippling degrees of physical and psychological abuse from his father, pastor Fred Phelps.

Pastor Phelps reads the Bible as a literal text, following each lesson word-for-word. This interpretation legitimized not only the WBC’s treatment of gays, but also the pain that was inflicted upon the Phelps children. Due to this interpretation, rules of the house came straight out of the Old Testament and restricted children from celebrating Christmas, having friends, dating, or girls from cutting their hair.

Phelps discussed moments of his childhood where his father would violently beat him with a mattock, a weapon that he described as “an axe handle on steroids.”

“He would administer a few painful blows, scream at the child for 20 minutes, and then go at it again to split open our wounds. He claimed that this punishment was done out of love for his children; yet as he beat us, he’d scream his hatred at us also.”

The church, started in 1955, doesn’t intend on expanding its parish beyond the Phelps family. In fact, the WBC’s website recently linked to another website called godhatestheworld.com. Pastor Phelps preaches that
only his followers will go to heaven and that the rest of the world is condemned.

“My father has no intention of conversion. You’re either chosen or you’re not.”

That message still rings true today. The current generation of the WBC has made online video parodies of songs such as Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” (“You pissed off God, you’ll see what he’s got”) and Michael Jackson’s “Bad” (“Because you’re bad, you’re bad … and God is mad, He’s mad.”)

When Phelps was the same age as today’s WBC youth, his father lost his job as a lawyer due to his volcanic temper. Pastor Phelps’ solution was to enlist his children to sell candy at bars across Kansas.

“Friday and Saturday night would find us ten to 12 year-old-children working our way through dark taverns, selling candy while strippers performed a few feet away. More than once, the violence that is inevitable in such places resulted in direct injury to one of us.”

Despite the violence, their father had them work at strip clubs for seven years.

“This raised some serious questions about the hypocrisy of my father’s message.”

Throughout his adolescence, Phelps secretly questioned the consistency of his father’s doctrine. If the Bible taught his sisters to dress modestly, why were they working in strip bars? If the Bible taught that they should love their neighbours unconditionally, what made it okay to condemn the world to eternal suffering?

At 18, Phelps finally decided that he needed to escape his father’s tyranny.

At midnight on his 18 birthday, Phelps snuck out the front door, tossed his belongings into the trunk of a green Rambler Classic that he secretly bought for $300, and drove to California to work in a printing company with his brother Mark.

Today, Phelps lives in Calgary, Alberta with his fiancé, Angela. Phelps’ story has made him infamous in the atheist community; he now rejects Christianity on the basis that the Bible can be moulded to legitimize intolerance and abuse.

“Any system that is sustained by hatred, any ideology that would debase people based on who they love is morally wrong – and I reject it.”

Nate Phelps’ life story is long, detailed and covered in deep psychological scars (he suffers from depression to this day.) Even though Phelps admits its emotional toll, sharing his story is extremely important to him.
A week before coming to Toronto, Phelps received an email from a 17-year-old gay teenager that had become obsessed with the WBC’s message. The teenager was reaching out to Phelps for advice on how to cope with the concept that he would eventually suffer for eternity because of whom he loves.

“Sometimes, I doubt that my story makes a difference. But when I got his email, those doubts disappeared. This does make a difference.

HOT DOGS FOR $5.25 (excluding the napkins, but after adding on fees for the bun, and condiments); paying sidewalk tolls for a toonie (we need to pay fees to access the sidewalk system?); and the cell-phone “stories” of everyday people like Big Mark and Benita (who do not like or cannot afford to allocate a large chunk of their disposable income on frills – like personal communications).

These are some of the tales used by the recent entries into the (at least for now) local cell-phone market – Wind Mobile, Mobilicity and Public Mobile – to introduce a new-found sensibility to the Canadian mobile communications market.
Canadians have long-suffered by paying exorbitant fees for cell-phone usage – and it shows, as, according to a 2008 TNS Canadian study, only 60 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 60 use mobile communications – far below the 80 per cent global average.
Many other factors have contributed to the current state of the mobile communications market in Canada: some of the tightest mobile network ownership legislations in the world and a consolidation of fragmented players in the late 90s to early 2000s.
A combination of media giants Telus and Rogers gobbling
up smaller players – Clearnet and Fido respectively – was supposed to mean streamlined operations and ultimately passing on these savings to consumers.
We all know how that all turned out.
When the Canadian Radio-television Commission opened up the bidding for wireless spectrum in 2008, the big Three (Telus, Rogers and Bell) all decried the federal government’s decision to open up free air frequency to new entrants was not fair and that, as then Telus executive vice-president of Corporate Affairs, Janet Yale said, “We thought this was a government
that believed in market forces….and at the end of the day we believe this is not in the best interest of consumers or telecom industry overall.”
When companies holding an oligopoly - ever so present in the Canadian telecom industry - believe adding system access fees and significant amounts on add-ons is necessary to enhance the user-experience, all the while, customers wait unacceptable times for assistance and spotty network coverage, there is no question that consumers were probably the lowest
of priorities in the Canadian telecom industry hierarchy.
In actuality, Canadians used to enjoy very competitive rates pre-industry consolidation without all those pesky extra fees – like the despised system access fee. Whatever momentum
the industry had gained in significant user penetration was killed when the heavyweights realized they were in a position
to maximize profit – their offerings were significantly inelastic in demand.
With the entry of the first of the three new entrants into the Canadian telecom market, Wind Mobile – borrowing
a brand already well-known in Greece, they succinctly marketed themselves as the anti-establishment: reflecting the diversity of Canada in their marketing campaigns using clever humour in the place of social networks limited to five friends and cute animals.
The competitive plans (for the most part) feature combinations of unlimited calling, unlimited text, add-ons usually having additional costs, and long-distance calling to an eclectic mix of countries, all with little to no contract commitments and no system access fees.

However, there are some drawbacks in signing on with the new entrants: phones usually cost the full retail amount, let alone limited selection (i.e. no iPhones), networks are still limited to certain major Canadian urban centres, and shopping for cell phones has become that much more complicated because of many differences amongst the new entries.

Another factor to consider is that many Canadians are already locked into long-term contracts, and users are being enticed to renew contracts with simplified – and more importantly – cheaper plans, making it imperative to sign up new, rather than converted customers, to be successful.

And each new service provider has various strengths and weaknesses to consider.

Wind Mobile - the first to make a splash – offers the widest variety of phones out of the new entrants, emphasizing affordable smartphone alternatives. While phones must be purchases outright, their generous plans allow great freedom for budget conscious individuals looking to own a Blackberry – with minimal restrictions and very little worry of going over any talk and data usage limits.

Mobilicity offers similar plans to Wind Mobile and targets heavy long-distance phone card users with its unlimited calling to the largest amount of countries offered amongst the new entries. Their plans are a little more complicated to sort through than Wind Mobile, and their phones are sold at full-retail value.

Public Mobile – which doesn’t offer smartphones – seem to be targeting immigrants with their simple and basic plans, very competitive long-distance rates, and offering the least amount of phones. Individuals dependent on landlines might find Public Mobile as a decent replacement due to its competitive costs, and no-frills options.

In a reactionary move, Rogers is planning to announce yet another flanker brand to its portfolio, to compete in the no-frills cell phone segment, chat.r. Reports suggest that its strength will be pay-as-you-go but offering similar plans to the ones already offered by the new entrants.

Canadians finally have more accessible options and finally the big players are responding. The big three – Telus, Rogers and Bell – spent billions upgrading their networks, beef up their customer service, and cut down on redundancies.

Nonetheless, the new entrants have gained significant momentum by giving customers back all of the features the big players had snatched away years ago. The damage has been done, and it will be interesting to finally see the progress the industry should have already experienced years ago.

The three new entrants into the mobile communications segment have their work cut out for them, and a long way to go, but in the end, competition is a good thing for Canadian consumers.

Haseena Manek

THROUGHOUT RECENT HISTORY, England has probably extended its reach to more countries than any other colonizing nation. In fact, at the height of its imperial regime, England controlled a quarter of the world’s population. Under the guise of science, anthropology, religious missions and military exploration, the English crown changed the history of hundreds of nations and millions of people.

Today, evidence of that history is unabashedly displayed in English museums.

Brighton’s Pavilion Museum is housed next to George IVs former seaside palace, which was built in the Indo-Saracenic style, a mix of Victorian gothic and indigenous design. This approach was a favourite of British officials living in colonial India, a way to mask orientalist exoticism with feigned respect and appreciation for local art, basically the equivalent of architectural imperialism.

The museum itself is small by comparison but efficiently packs art, tools, clothing and other tokens from indigenous peoples the world over.

Descriptions of these objects glorify ‘armchair anthropology’; a detached and ineffective ethnographic technique critiqued by contemporary academics for its racist essentialism.

The information provided romanticizes the colonial process, using gentle euphemisms when explaining the adventurous ‘collection process’ of what should be declared stolen goods.

The infamous British Museum of London, England’s also glosses over the processes by which artifacts were ‘collected,’ but small and large plaques thanking benefactors for their ‘donations’ are everywhere.

Many of these are personal contributions, which made me question where someone like Major R.G. Gayer-Anderson, who donated the Ancient Egyptian cat statuette, dubbed the ‘Gayer-Anderson Cat’, would have obtained his treasury of historic art. (The Victoria and Albert Museum, also in London, is another of many museums to house Gayer-Anderson’s and his younger brother, T. G. Gayer-Anderson’s, donations).

Despite the fact that a map of Britain’s contemporary and historical political ties could be drawn out based on contributions to the British Museum, it is clear that there is an attempt to depoliticize its collection.
A Tennyson quote on the floor of the Great Court (as you enter the museum), reads: “And let thy feet/millenniums hence/be set in midst of knowledge.” A quote that I believe illustrates the way history and art are romanticized. A self-confessed history-geek myself, I still believe it is important to contextualize historical artifacts to truly understand them.

Political context often goes unmentioned when displaying said artifacts, in an attempt to maintain what I can only describe as the ‘purity’ of academia, encouraging museum-goers to try and embrace and appreciate the wonders of world history and science without sullying it with implications of cultural theft and global politics.

If one considers the manner in which the museum obtained so many of its artifacts, disregarding historical and political context is to disregard a vital part the object’s history. In so doing, we are disregarding the people and the culture it represents. This strikes me as both discourteous and ineffective for an establishment of universal scholarship.

Another important point is that the value of certain histories, certain peoples and certain eras visibly changes as one navigates somewhere like the British Museum. Something as basic as the layout of exhibits, I think, illustrates what the institution deems more interesting or important for visitors.

While on the one hand much of the museum’s collection from what we call today’s ‘Global South,’ are stolen pieces of history, it is interesting to note that European territories are still given large wings and sections for multiple time periods while other parts of the world are given smaller and simpler bearings. Despite the British colonial legacy of baseless theft and genocide, the history of the colonized remains less impressive, or less important. 500 years later, Africa is still in the basement.

Tennyson’s quote is an obvious tenet of what the British Museum, and many other museums stand for: knowledge and learning about our past. All I can conclude based on visiting
all of these institutions is that we will be in no capacity able to learn from the mistakes of our past if future generations are not taught about them.

And I know I am not the first to say “He who wins the war writes the history books,” so I wonder why it is that centuries of colonial oppression and all its ramifications are not only glorified and venerated by internationally renowned institutions but that their gross misrepresentation goes unquestioned
and unchallenged.

It appears that the institution of the metropolitan museum has become another facet of the neo-colonial machine and that education is one more battle to fight in the war for freedom and equality.

AS TEARS FALL from the heavy gray skies in Majdanek concentration camp in eastern Poland, participants in the March of Remembrance and Hope huddle around Pinchas Gutter as he shares his story.

“Here lies my mother, my father, my sister,” says Gutter, referring to the mound of ashes, the Majdanek mausoleum.

While delivering a prayer for his family and all those others in the mass grave, there is not a single dry eye underneath the giant disk-like structure protecting the group from the elements.

Having an opportunity to meet a Holocaust survivor, it is difficult to know exactly how you should feel or present yourself to them.

But in meeting Pinchas Gutter, you will immediately feel inspired, appreciate his humbleness and crave his knowledge and wisdom.

His stories of defying death, heartbreaking loss and unimaginable hardship easily tug at one’s emotions, but his compassion and pride is remarkable, to say the least.

Gutter, born in Lodz, Poland lived a comfortable life, with his father- a winemaker - mother and twin sister. When Hitler and the Nazi regime initiated their twisted plot to eradicate, the family fled to Warsaw hoping to find safety from the approaching Nazis.

When any decision seemed better than to stay put, this would eventually lead the Gutter family to the suffocating confines of the Warsaw Ghetto. Gutter, even at the tender age of five, knew the dire circumstances at hand and did his best to numb himself from the inhumanity – by playing in the streets and sneaking sweets from the newsstand his mother had owned in the rapidly deteriorating streets of the Warsaw Ghetto.

They lived in the Warsaw Ghetto for three years, making ends meet – until the unrest of the Warsaw Uprisings.

Hiding in a bunker, the SS found them and threatened to gas the bunker, should they decide not to surrender. With nowhere else to go, the Gutter family would be deported to Madjanek, a concentration camp in Lublin.

Once arriving there, during the selection process – where those individuals suited for labour were separated from those that would be sent to the gas chambers – Gutter was separated from his family, the last time he would ever see them.

While most other children were immediately sent to the gas chambers – too young to be useful workers, Gutter nonetheless was chosen.

Gutter would continue to confront death, once, when hiding in a bunker as guards were rounding up inhabitants of the concentration camp for yet another round of selection – only to be spared for reasons unknown by a guard - and once again, also surviving the treacherous death march from Buchenwald – an intense labour camp – to Theresienstad, in Czechoslovakia, hundreds of miles away.

Gutter would remain there until liberation finally came in the form of the Soviet Army.

After the liberation, Gutter went to Great Britain, and settled in South Africa hoping to start a new life, but discovered something he had witnessed and experienced before – oppression.

“I hated the regime and what was going on there,” says Gutter.

“I came [on a visit] to Canada by chance,” adds Gutter, as he smiles. “When I came here I felt like I was breathing freedom.”

In 1985, Gutter would finally wind up permanently in Canada and has lived here ever since.

To this day he continues to share his story so that people - especially those not of Jewish origin - continue to fight human rights travesties.

“I feel it is important to tell my story to young students,” says Gutter. “I want to try and spread the word of what can happen at any country, anywhere.”

Gutter’s decision to share his story was a difficult and painful one, but can be attributed to a series of documentaries made for Global Television.

“I was convinced it was important [to share my experiences],” says Gutter. “But I couldn’t face it.”
Only after showing these tapes to his children, was he comfortable enough to speak about his heartbreaking past – resulting in taking his family back to Poland, documented in a feature for the BBC, The Void.

This led Gutter to continue sharing his story – at schools, human rights events and the yearly March of Remembrance And Hope, taking post-secondary students to Germany and Poland for a first-hand experience of the Holocaust.

What many survivors would consider difficult – going back to the places where they experienced their worst nightmares – is not easy for Gutter either, but the warmth and support he receives from each participant drives him to continue on his journey.

“By being able to share my burden with the students, I am able to parcel it out,” says Gutter. “It makes it easier for me because they know exactly what happened.”

Gutter’s fascinating drive to push himself to his physical and mental limits to share his painful story – in the hopes of building a level or respect and tolerance amongst the vast differences present in today’s society, has made a difference with each individual he has met.

“His courage, his compassion and his desire to share his unimaginable experience with all people – not just Jews – is, in and of itself, a gift,” says Alexandra Hunnings, a participant in this year’s March of Remembrance and Hope, and graduating master’s of journalism student at Ryerson.

“His tangible strength, intelligence and his relentless hope is beyond inspirational,” adds Hunnings. “Pinchas teaches us that humanity is a choice, not a given.”