When two of Canada’s largest owners of print media reported dismal quarterly results Wednesday, the message was familiar: print advertising is disappearing at a rate that digital revenues can’t replace, online competition for ad dollars from the Googles of the world is fierce and cost-cutting can’t come fast enough.
Torstar Corp. posted another period of plunging revenue at its media division, which includes the Metro free daily newspapers and the Toronto Star, where print advertising sales were down 16.3 per cent year-over-year. During the quarter, the company announced voluntary buyouts and a round of layoffs at the newspaper and in an early morning conference call, executives said finding further cost savings remains a priority.
Later in the day David Holland, Torstar president and chief executive, was blunt in his observation to a crowd gathered for his company’s annual general meeting.
“We are in a time of change. For many years, media companies with newspaper operations lived a privileged existence — those days are long gone.”
[. . .]
Meanwhile, Quebecor Inc., the vertically integrated player that dominates much of Quebec’s media market, reported similar results from its news media division, which includes the chain of Sun newspapers. Cost-cutting measures could not keep up with falling revenues during the quarter, Pierre Karl Peladeau, outgoing chief executive officer of Quebecor and chairman of the board of Quebecor Media, said in a statement Wednesday morning.
“At the moment, our print business is profitable. But let’s not bury our heads in the sand. We’re in decline. There is significant pressure on ad revenue,” he later told reporters at a news conference following the company’s annual meeting in Montreal.
Yvonne Jones recaptured what has traditionally been safe Liberal ground, rolling up a big victory over Conservative Peter Penashue in Labrador’s federal byelection.
“When I was reflecting on this election win tonight, I was saying, ‘You know, I'm the first person in the country to beat the Harper government in a byelection,'" Jones told supporters at a victory party in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
"But that could never happen without all of you and many more across Labrador."
Jones garnered 5,814 votes to Penashue’s 3,922.
With all 91 polls reporting, the Liberal candidate’s share of the vote was 48 per cent, compared with 33 per cent for the Conservative candidate and 19 per cent for the NDP’s Harry Borlase.
[. . .]
Penashue — a prominent Innu leader — wrested the riding away for the Conservatives in 2011, eking out a 79-vote win. He garnered less than 40 per cent of the ballots cast, and was helped by a stronger than expected NDP showing that siphoned off Liberal support.
Up until that surprise victory two years ago, the region had only once gone Conservative blue since Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949.
Penashue quit as MP in March after repaying $30,000 in compensation for “ineligible contributions” he accepted during the 2011 election. He immediately announced he would run in the ensuing byelection.
The Maple Leafs, and their legions of fans, had dared to dream that this might become a unique spring, particularly after twice fighting off elimination to force Game 7 in their best-of-seven opening round playoff series against the favoured Boston Bruins on Monday night.
All signs were pointing to this series as a shiny new beginning, not a nightmarish end.
Instead, the end came with a stunning, mind-blowing 5-4 overtime loss on Monday night, with defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in the most painful, shocking and unforgettable way imaginable.
[. . .]
In a game totally abandoned by the officials to the nastiest desires of two of the NHL’s toughest teams, the visitors led 4-1 with less than 11 minutes left in the third period and seemed headed to the second round with a stunning upset victory.
No team in the modern tight-checking NHL blows a lead like that, right?
Well, the Leafs did in what will live on as one of the more infamous playoff defeats in team history, with Patrice Bergeron’s OT winner completing one of the most extraordinary Game 7 comebacks in NHL history.
Toronto city council wants to improve health care for medically uninsured residents, especially those who avoid treatment because they lack immigration status in Canada. They can’t do it all directly, but on Thursday night, councillors voted 21-7 to ask the provincial government to strengthen access to basic health care programs for residents ineligible for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
Many refugees, undocumented residents, people who have lost their identification, and even permanent residents of Canada do not qualify for OHIP benefits. Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, says that expanding health care access is both humanitarian and practical. “Early intervention is almost always less costly than dealing with a more advanced illness later in its course,” he told council.
According to a Board of Health report on the medically uninsured [PDF], the most vulnerable of them are undocumented residents, many of whom avoid hospitals for fear of deportation. When these individuals do access emergency medical services, they are routinely billed several times more for services than insured residents. That too needs attention, say some. “The billing system needs an overhaul so that anyone can access health care at a fair price,” maintained Denise Gastaldo, associate professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, after council’s vote. “Today’s decision is a step in the right direction.”
Also among those who can’t access services: permanent residents, who are eligible for OHIP benefits, but only after a three month waiting period. Council has asked the province to eliminate this gap in service, citing the fact that permanent residents spend years going through the application process before being accepted, and that by the time they arrive here they have already met immigration requirements.
The authorities in Brazil have ruled that marriage licenses should not be denied to same-sex couples.
The council that oversees the country's judiciary said it was wrong for some offices just to issue civil union documents when the couple wanted full marriage certificates.
Correspondents say the decision in effect authorises gay marriage.
However full legalisation depends on approval of a bill being examined by the Congress.
Tuesday's resolution by Brazil's National Council of Justice was based on a 2011 Supreme Court ruling that recognised same-sex civil unions.
However, notaries public were not legally bound to converting such union into marriage when asked by gay couples.
This led to some being denied marriage certificates at certain places, but being granted the document at others. That would be illegal, according to the new resolution.
"If a notary public officer rejects a gay marriage, he could eventually face disciplinary sanctions", NCJ judge Guilherme Calmon told BBC Brasil.
Archaeologists first posited that the Minoans came to the Greek island of Crete from northern Africa, establishing themselves on the island about 5,000 years ago. Subsequent theories suggested Balkan or Middle Eastern origins for the civilization. But research published today in Nature Communications reveals both a more European, and home-grown, development.
Researchers obtained mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the skeletons of 37 well-preserved ancient Minoans found in a cave in east-central Crete. The team compared the mtDNA from the remains with that of 135 modern and ancient populations.
None of the ancient Minoans carried characteristic African mtDNA haplotypes, or stretches of DNA. That rules out a northern African origin, which was first espoused by British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in the early 20th century. Evans famously excavated the Minoan palace of Knossos and based his theory on similarities he saw between Minoan and Egyptian art.
Instead, the ancient Minoan mtDNA samples shared the greatest percentage of haplotypes with both ancient and modern European populations. Researchers noted the island of Crete was first settled about 9,000 years ago, which coincides with the development and widespread adoption of agricultural practices in the Middle East and Anatolia. Looking for new land to cultivate, these new farmers spread into Europe—and, it now appears, to Crete.
Chris Hadfield -- nom de tweet: @cmdr_hadfield -- has been doing more than inspiring people, though. He has also been entertaining them. And delighting them. He has chatted with Captain Kirk. He has covered Bowie. He has written his own music, and performed it. He has publicly celebrated Valentine's Day, and Easter, and St. Patrick's Day, and April Fool's. He has done a mind-boggling number of live chats and Q&As and video explainers. He has led Canada in a national sing-along. And all of these things have shared a remarkable predicate: They have been done, you know, from space. Hadfield has kept a running dialogue with Earth, documenting not just the numinous -- those amazing views! -- but also the mundane: the food. The fun. The exercise. The sleep. The tears. The bathroom situation.
Over the course of 144 days spent on the International Space Station (encompassing 2,336 orbits of the Earth and covering nearly 62 million miles), Hadfield didn't merely do his day job -- conducting more than 130 scientific experiments testing the effects of microgravity on masses of various types. He also helped to change our concept of what it means to be an astronaut in the first place. Hadfield is a space explorer in the Gagarin/Glenn/Armstrong model, but he is something else, too: just a guy. A guy who happens to be in space. Hadfield, availing himself of new technologies that are just beginning to be widely adopted, made space travel seem accessible. He made it seem normal (or, in astronaut-speak, "nominal"). He took it out of the realm of the awe-inspiring and placed it squarely in the realm of the awesome.
[. . .]
What Hadfield used to his advantage, [. . .] was the copious combination of social media tools that are just now coming into their prime, tools that transform documentation into conversation: Hadfield had Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Reddit, not to mention a public excited, especially after the successful landing the Curiosity rover last year, about space again. Not to mention a 20-person social media team eager to remind the world about Canada's role in the space program. Not to mention a doppelgänger son, Evan, who handled Hadfield's accounts when he couldn't. Not to mention a good deal of luck. (William Shatner's casual tweet to Hadfield back in January won him a flood of followers, Quartz notes, after which his popularity "became self-sustaining.")
Hadfield also had ... Chris Hadfield. He was the right guy at the right time -- and in, wow, the right place: He's a natural performer who seemed truly excited to share his sublime stage with the rest of us. But his performances were intimate rather than epic: He subtly rejected the aura of distant heroism we normally associate with space flyers. Instead, he was nerdy. He was excited. He was delightfully, winkily mustachioed. He was your dad, or your uncle, or your mentor, the kind of guy who probably gets a little choked up when he makes toasts at weddings. Which is to say: He is quirky and real, and he made a point of putting those facts to use. He took all the corporate logic of social media -- the ethos of the "personal brand," the edict of "conversation rather than presentation" -- and applied it, seamlessly, to his life in space.
"Communications tools don't get socially interesting," Clay Shirky has argued, "until they get technologically boring." The same may be said of space. As a destination --- as a place, as a dream -- space may be, ever so slightly, losing its former mantle of foreignness, its old patina of awe. The final frontier may now be experiencing the fate that befalls any frontier: It ceases to be a frontier. Its settlers come to think of it, more and more, as an extension of what they know ... until it becomes, simply, all that they know. Until it becomes the most basic thing in the world: home.
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