Pamela Divinsky

Three books provide different insights into how Toronto has been made. One outlines a neighbourhood’s origins; another walks us through various streetscapes; the third charts the history of a long-running conflict between cars and bicycles. With differing perspectives and speeds, they all probe an essential question: How do we cultivate nurturing communities? Because with devastating…

With Sidways, the Globe and Mail reporter Josh O’Kane catalogues the personalities, procedures, and problems surrounding a failed effort to create a city-within-a-city on Toronto’s waterfront. The story begins with the ambitions of Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, leaders of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, who envisioned a community on the shores of Lake Ontario that would operate efficiently and…

In his 2004 book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the law professor, writer, and filmmaker Joel Bakan painted corporations as psychopathic. There’s evidence that many of them took that indictment seriously. Over the past fifteen years, publicly traded companies have developed purpose-driven initiatives, built more sustainable supply chains, reduced their carbon…

I grew up in a family that was half socialist and half monetarist — both equally convincing world views to an impressionable child. Every Passover, we celebrated the Seders and marked the liberation of oppressed peoples, but we also crossed picket lines during garbage strikes. We tried not to buy fruits and vegetables farmed by exploited…

The fissures and contradictions of ­capitalism are obvious. One cannot turn away from increasing inequality of income and wealth, and the social upheaval that it causes. The warnings of experts are ominous. Take Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and his recent essay on the deleterious consequences of “easy money.” Or see Larry Fink’s annual letter to BlackRock…