James Roots

Toronto, contrary to popular denigration, has never lacked for civic vision. A 2016 exhibit at its archives, “No Little Plans: Alternative Building and Transportation Visions for Toronto,” proved this point with its display of ambitious plans, proposals and development over the years. Most of these visions came to naught because the money simply was not there to implement…

The autobiographies of people with disabilities fall into two camps. One the one hand, those who acquire their disability in adolescence or later have been enculturated into the non-disabled society, to which they want nothing so much as a full return. They tend to present their disability as something like an ugly Christmas sweater, imposed upon them by external…

No one who grew up living the Ontario cottage experience is going to be able to read Julia Harrison’s A Timeless Place: The Ontario Cottage without emotional reminiscences, so let me set out mine at the start. In the 1920s, my grandfather bought up tracts of land on the Alcona Beach and Big Bay Point shores of Lake…

Communication is a prerequisite to belonging. Belonging to a family, a school, a culture—it does not matter the venue or context: what matters is that the first step toward belonging is communication. Two-way communication. Easy two-way communication. Easy for both communicators. I stress “two-way,” “easy” and “both” because communication—like all human interactions—involves a balance of…

The Hollywood comedy is a Canadian invention. More than a century ago, Quebec-born Mack Sennett became the first film maker on this continent to specialize in creating full-length comedies. In 1908, “full length” meant one reel, about 10 to 12 minutes; no one believed an audience could tolerate anything longer. The great D.W. Griffith, under whom Sennett was then apprenticing at the famed Biograph…

On January 17, 1921, a couple of young amateur athletes named Charles Burkman and Sidney Carr set out from Halifax to walk to Vancouver. A week later, the father-and-son team of Jack and Clifford Behan set off in pursuit. And another week later, a newly married couple, Frank and Jenny Dill, decided that joining the hike would make an excellent…

We can never have enough books about the Klondike gold rush. We need to be reminded constantly that it awakened us to the northern half of our country, crystallized the differences between Canadians and Americans, created the romance of sturdy Mounties amidst snowy wastelands and set the template for mostly foreign exploitation of our natural…