COME ON!

People can be truly silly. Yet again, out-of-town angry white people are rushing down to Caledonia to get mad at Six Nations people.

Provincial police officers holding the middle ground in a standoff between aboriginals occupying a former housing development and non-aboriginal protesters turned their police line toward Six Nations residents Saturday for the first time since a raid of the contested land last spring.

A tense situation in which some 150 aboriginals stood only metres away from, and jeered, a dozen Canadian-flag waving protesters in this southern Ontario community saw some two dozen police in full riot gear on standby.
Toronto Star

Even OPP chief Fantino said that the group was being counterproductive. Negotiations are happening, Aboriginal people are holding the land, calm down out-of-towners!

Ex-cabinet minister John Snobelen faces gun charges

Anytime an ex-Harris cabinet ministers get into trouble with the law, an angel gets her wings.

Police are checking the history of an illegally owned handgun after former provincial cabinet minister John Snobelen was arrested yesterday and charged with illegal possession of a firearm and related offences.

Snobelen, 52, turned himself in at a Milton detachment of Halton regional police where he was charged and released on his own recognizance, police said.

Officers seized a Colt .22 calibre semi-automatic pistol and ammunition while executing a search warrant at his residence north of Milton on Tuesday.

Toronto Star

Looking for New Ontario Music to Review

Blacklfy Magazine - Issue 1.2

Blackfly is looking for new Ontario musical artists to review on our website and in our next print issue.

If you would like to have your music reviewed please email us at hannah@blackflymagazine.com or send a CD (with a note!) to:

Blackfly Magazine
10574- 998 Bloor St W
Toronto, ON
M6H 1L8

Please forward this message to anyone you think might be interested.

For more info about Blackfly, check us out at www.blackflymagazine.com.

Writers Needed: Spring 2007 Issue

Writers Needed

Blackfly Magazine is looking for writers for its third issue on wide-ranging matters concerning Ontarians.

We want pitches for articles between 250 words to 3000 words in length.
We are most interested in articles about marginalized groups and underrepresented subjects.

Some areas we're interested in for the spring issue:
• Environmental impacts of governmental policies or industry activities in the province
• Other Environmental issues (nuclear power/logging/water/air quality)
• Women's Issues
• Queer issues
• Social services in small town/rural/Northern Ontario
• Labour issues (minimum wage/injuries at work/harassment in the workplace)
• Ongoing issues on reserves and amongst aboriginal communities

But don't feel contained by those topics – as long as it's Ontario progressive and interesting, we want to hear about it!

If you are interested in reviewing books or cds, or in writing an article but don't know what to write about we also encourage you to get in touch.

We are also interested in other media for our website like audio files, extra images and extended interviews. When you pitch, please indicate if any of these things will be included.

Pitches for articles are due Sunday, January 28, 2006 at 11:59PM
Completed articles are due Wednesday, February 28, 2006 at 11:59PM

Pitches should be sent to Jenn Watt: editor@blackflymagazine.com.
For more information on how to pitch and to read about Blackfly, please visit our website: http://www.blackflymagazine.com

Blackfly Magazine still does not have the funding to financially compensate anyone (including its staff), but as a (small) token of our appreciation all writers will receive a free subscription and t-shirt for their contributions.

(Blackfly is also always accepting pitches for articles and audio/video files to appear on the "Web Exclusive" section of our website, especially regarding issues that are too time-sensitve to appear in quarterly publication.)

Minimum wage set to increase

The Liberals have made the minimum wage increase official. On Feb. 1, we'll see it go to $8/hr. Certainly, much better than the $6.85 it was stuck at when the Liberals took power.

But as Cheri Di Novo NDP points out, it still keeps those working for minimum wage among the poor.

"Symbolically it's appalling and in actuality it's appalling," said DiNovo. "We have people out there at $7.75 an hour – now even when they're raised to $8 an hour they're still well below the poverty line, working 40 hours a week."

"Over two-thirds of those are women, many of them with children ... and a lot of them are immigrants," she said in an interview.

-Toronto Star

This comes just weeks after all MPPs gave themselves a 25 per cent raise.

What was good about 2006?

Our last post was pretty down-and-out, lamenting a bad year in Ontario.

But Seven Oaks has brought us some joy.

Check out what they say are the seven "highlights" from 2006.

Underrated and overrated

Welcome 2007. This past year in Ontario has been brutal: Aboriginal stand-offs, terrorism arrests, 70 murders in Toronto, federal cuts (affecting every province) to social programs, no movement on social assistance programs by the province, and MPP salary hikes to finish it all off.

Here's hoping that 2007 will bring much better things to us.

By far this past year, the most underrated story has been the environment. Yes, there was lots of reporting on federal environmental politics. Harper's Clean Air Act was a bust and The Weather Makers was a bestselling book, but what about McGuinty?


John Bonnar, our online contributor extraordinaire, brings us video from Santa and his elves taking a lump of coal to our provincial Liberals.

Appropriately, the gift symbolizes McGuinty's failure to shut down coal-fired energy plants in the province. Once upon a time, he promised to eliminate coal power by this year. 2007. Now he says he's not sure when it will happen.

There has been little political pressure on this front. Therefore, the most underrated story of the year.

Most overrated: 17 arrested terrorism suspects in Toronto.

I'm glad that the media reported on this. Arresting a group of young Muslim Canadians is a big deal. But the way that this case was reported on makes it overrated.

There was no real evidence to comment on. The courts enforced a publication ban immediately after the suspects were arrested. And yet the media continued digging into the lives of these men and boys, took pictures of the women in their families showing up to court in burquas, and basically convicted them in the media.

And so, GOODBYE 2006. Please bring a more peaceful, friendly 2007.

- Jenn Watt