Ryan Thorpe

Matthew Kerry Smith was a twenty-four-year-old revolutionary in search of a cause. He had an instinctive grasp of Mao’s maxim that political power grows from the barrel of a gun, but his theory of social transformation — inasmuch as he had one — had more in common with the putschist tactics of secretive Blanquism than with the working-class uprising predicted by…

Anyone who takes a principled stand on a matter of public debate is bound to make enemies, and it would be an understatement to say John Sewell made some among the police during his time on Toronto City Council, which culminated with a short stint as mayor from 1978 to 1980. The police union hurled homophobic slurs at him for defending gay…