Author: Mary Soderstrom

Snow drops again! They’re out in front, which is in contrast to the date the ones in the photo appeared. The pix was taken April 22, 2008, and the snow was just melting. Now there is practically no snow left in town, a month ahead of usual. The New York

The weather is exceptional, spookily so. Ian McEwean’s novel Solar is excellent reading for such a time. The hero (and I use the term advisedly) is a physicist Michael Beard who for complicated reasons because deeply involved in reseaching alternate energy sources, specifically solar power. Beard is fat, grasping, unpleasant,

Manon Corneiller in today’s Le Devoir is excellent on Ed Broadbent and Tom Mulcair. The NDP’s grand old man was one of those (along with Brian Topp) who wanted to make the party a “big tent” one, inviting Mulcair to join. Now that they’ve been successful, they’re upset. I don’t

This is a weekend of demonstrations and parades. Not only is it St. Patrick’s weekend–and Montreal is the home to the second oldest St. Pat’s parade in North America and has been going continuously since 1824–but students are demonstrating against hikes in tuition fees. One of the biggest parks in

A mini-controversy is brewing in Quebec over the fact that a number of chicken processing plants are now killing poultry in a way that conforms with Muslim strictures of halal meat. This involves cutting the birds’ throats, and the abbatoirs which do it say there is nothing in the method

Sadly, we seem to be seeing more and more religion in public life these days. I don’t mean references to a moral code such as “do under to others as you would have them do unto you” which underlies the teachings of most religous systems, but the intrusion and imposition

No, they’re not open yet, but the shoots are definitely above ground. Makes me feel good to see them.

I’m still on a bit of a high from the great discussion we had last night at the Pierrefons Libraray about Kate Pullinger’s Mistress of Nothing. The novel won the Governor General’s prize for literature in 2009, beating out Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness and Michael Crummey’s Galore, among other

A week ago in the run up to International Women’s Day, I mentioned Lea Roback as a great example. Today I’d like to mark the passing of her great friend Madeleine Parent, with home she walked on many picket lines and spoke at many meetings. Here’s an interview with her

Aluminum is made from electricity and bauxite. The former ingredient is by far the most important, aud since bauxite is more easily transported than electricity, big aluminum foundries are built where electricity is cheap. That’s why Rio Tinto Alcan (just Alcan before its recent purchase by the Anglo-Australian mining giant)

One of my heros has always been Lea Roback, a Quebec feminist and union militant, who died at 97 in 2000. A film was made about her life which is exceedingly hard to find, Des Lumières dans la grande noirceur, but is worth ferreting out. She is an example of

For those of you in Toronto Thursday March 22, please come to a presentation of Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure at the Centro de Lingua Portuguesa Camões at 5:30 p.m. (800 Landsdowne) The next two days I’ll be at the NDP Leadership Convention, rooting for Thomas Mulcair, the only

This is one of my favourites songs, one I always turn to this time of year. It was written for the Brazilian March, which is the season of rain that comes after the summer, but here of course, the “saison des pluies” is that of spring and melting snow.

We’ve had a nice snowfalls in the last week, and it actually looks invitingly winterish outside. But we’re scheduled to have some quite warm weather over the last next few couple of days, and the snowpeople, so lovingly made by the young, and not so young, are likely to disappear.

This would be hilarious, if it weren’t so sad. The poster’s by Matthew Cope: good work!

One of the things that struck me when I was in Shanghai five years ago was the number of adolescent boys on school outings. I knew, of course, that there are a lot of “missing” girls, because Chinese parents for more than a generation have been trying to get around

Thursday I’m going to be talking about oing to be talking about Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure as part of the Atwater Library’s Lunchtime series. There will be music too. Hope to see many friends and fellow Lusophiles at 12:30 p.m., Thursday March 1, in the auditorium of the