Kevin’s Projects, Serena’s Return, and Pride Photography
Plus: What’s happening with the drug boats?
Sipa USA, Alamy / iStock / Emery Forbes
Kevin O’Leary is scaling back a proposed data centre in Utah that would have had a footprint twice the size of Manhattan. The smaller version of the project will still be huge—basically the size of one Manhattan only. The entrepreneur is also planning the world’s largest AI data centre industrial park in Alberta. Amarah Hasham-Steele put both enormous projects in perspective:
The University of Calgary estimates that the Wonder Valley project could produce up to 33 million tons of emissions per year. This would completely undo Alberta’s progress in reducing its emissions over the last twenty years; between 2005 and 2023, the province reduced its emissions by roughly 29 million tons. Researchers warn that “a handful of data-centre projects could raise emissions levels to those of twenty years ago—when we burned coal to power the grid.” The Alberta government has opted not to conduct an environmental impact assessment for the project. The federal government has not yet determined whether to conduct their own assessment. [Read more]
More than 200 people have now been killed by US air strikes along the coast of Colombia and Ecuador as part of a bombing campaign meant to target drug smuggling. The entire operation is shrouded in secrecy. Christy Somos investigated the legal grey zone and possible Canadian involvement, in “America Is Bombing Drug Boats, Killing Dozens. Ottawa Won’t Clarify Its Role”:
Despite DND “working on” the questions I sent in on February 18, a high-level former military member confirmed there are Canadians serving in SOUTHCOM, which is running Operation Southern Spear, and in a “detection and monitoring” hub known as Joint Integrated Task Force South (JIATF South) in Key West, Florida. What positions and clearances they hold is not public. What is known is that intelligence (by this I mean information, logistics, maps, targets, criminal and operational intelligence collected and analyzed for this operation) does flow from JIATF South and SOUTHCOM to the US military units and assets tasked with carrying out the air strikes. Somewhere in that mix are Canadians doing their jobs. [Read more]
Serena Williams is coming out of retirement to pair up with Canada’s Victoria Mboko for an upcoming doubles tournament. In the past two decades or so, Canada has built up the sport in the country, as Alex Pugsley found in “How Canada Became a Tennis Powerhouse”:
Tennis Canada owns the Rogers Cup and its operations are funded from its profits. Michael Downey and Jack Graham, sensing business was growing—and indeed in 2007 and 2008 the tournament would set records in sales, attendance, and profitability—realized that much more capital was needed. They chose to adjust Tennis Canada’s long-term debt on the new stadiums to allow for an increase in the investment in younger talent. How much increase? “Triple the money,” says Graham, describing an increase per year from $3.5 million to roughly $12 million. “So we could significantly advance our own player development.” And so was born the National Training Centre. [Read more]
Pride month is here! Max Halparin spoke with Toronto street photographer Ethan Eisenberg, who documents personal moments during the city’s festivities, collected in the gorgeous photo essay “In the Name of Love”:
Inspired by American street photographers like Garry Winogrand and Mark Cohen, Eisenberg captures moments of intimacy. Not one to pop up for a quick shot, he needs people to know he’s there. But under Pride’s blanket, he rarely runs into problems. “One of the exhilarating things about doing this,” he says, “is that people really don’t care and they don’t feel threatened.” Eisenberg prefers to shoot after the official festivities have ended. He gets close, and his wide-angle lens renders everything equally. “I’m not just zeroing in on a subject. Everything in the frame matters as part of the picture.” [Read more]
Zena Sharman took a historical look at queer kinship, parenting, and her own family dynamics for the weekend read, “My Family Has Four Queer Parents Raising Three Kids Together”:
In Canada, the queer parents who won custody of their children did so by “leaning into a politics of respectability” and discretion. Parents who were open, proud activists or involved in the queer community were more likely to lose child custody or access. The first reported Canadian case in which a lesbian mother was awarded custody of her child was K v. K (Alberta, 1975). Halyna Freeland, the feminist lawyer who acted on Mrs. K’s behalf, later wrote that the judge commented favourably in his decision on how discreet the mother was about her lesbianism. Freeland added that she believed the mother would have lost custody “had the father not been found completely incapable of caring for the child.” A year earlier, in Case v. Case, a lesbian mother in Saskatchewan lost custody of her two children because the judge ruled that her gay rights activism would be harmful to them. The line between “good” and “bad” lesbian mothers hinged in part on acting straight and on a promise to raise their children to be heterosexual. [Read more]
Check out our books podcast, What Happened Next, hosted by Nathan Whitlock. This week’s conversation is with Kate Cayley about her fiction debut, Property, nominated for this year’s Amazon First Novel Award.
Read a poem by Bruce Taylor: “Pissing in the Woods”
Read a short story by Helen Humphreys: “Franklin’s Library”