Wanda's: The smallest work place

Sam Nadal, 19, works in the back of the tiny Wanda's Belgian Waffles store building fancy waffles as fast as he possible can. "Everyone is always moving," Nadal says about the tightly-packed kitchen. "It's just a fast-paced environment. Everyone has a station in the back and they stick to it."

Usually, the six-by-eight feet restaurant (if it can be called that) has two or three people working and a line of eight customers spilling onto Yonge Street, waiting for their Liège-style vanilla waffle or their concoction of chocolate sauce, ice cream, bananas and whipped-cream.

People strolling along Yonge are usually drawn to the store because of the delicious, sweet smell wafting from its open window. "Open-window stores like this are really popular in Belgium. They're everywhere," Nadal says. "If one or two people line up, other people will come see too."

On the weekends Nadal, a George Brown culinary student, makes up to 800 waffles. Each waffle is anywhere from three to six dollars. Although the repetitive nature of the job doesn't seem to bother him. "I love it," he says about working in the hole-in-the-wall store. "I love to cook."

While the online community gives Wanda's mixed reviews, mostly agreeing that the plain waffles are delicious while the fancier ones need some work, the line-up out front suggests otherwise.

Photo Credit: Foodhogger

New fashion is old clothing

Spring is a new season, and with it comes new fashions, but recently the new fashions are old fashions: vintage, second-hand and thrift-store finds are the way to go this season.

Cassie Cowie, 19, created and runs her own online consignment store, MYEXCLOSET, in three different cities: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
"Fashion is always coming and going, and what better way to bring trends and styles back with vintage and second-hand. It is a very authentic way of doing it, instead of buying a new version of the trend re-vamped," Cowie wrote in an email.

Luckily, Toronto has a great collection of thrift stores. Plus, there is the Toronto section of Preloved, a company that creates new high-end fashion pieces out of old clothes.

Tess Roby is a 16-year old student at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts. She mostly shops at Value Village because it's cheap, but she likes to buy new clothes every season from stores like H&M, which she says is very good.
But Roby thinks that a lot of stores, like Urban Outfitters for example, "pull their ideas from vintage shoppers" and use them to create more expensive fashions.

"I definitely like that [thrift] one-of-a-kind," Roby says. "Sometimes there can be stories behind clothes." A friend of hers once bought a dress from 69 Vintage that was a traditional hand-made Dutch dress.

Isabel B. Slone also has a lot of thrift clothing. She writes Hipster Musings, which gets 5,000 to 6,000 visitors a week. She picks thrift clothes from the 80s and 90s that are "cheap, outrageous and tacky, which kind of suits my personality," she says.
"Designers are always looking through their archives for present inspiration from the past," Slone says about thrift fashions effecting new fashions. "Everything in fashion seems to get recycled eventually."

*Photo Credits: Alexandra Auger and Isabel B. Slone

Facebook Unites Canadians to Fight Against Prorogation

"A lot of people at that rally hadn't been to a rally before,” said community activist Laurel Anne Daly about an anti-prorogation demonstration that took place in downtown Toronto on January 23. “There were old people walking with canes in the street,” she said.

People from all corners of the country- the politicians, the media, the young and the old- have banded together over the past couple months to demonstrate against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament.
"People, I think, understand that it was an abuse of power," said Daly.

Facebook played a large roll in the organization of rallies across Canada.

A group created on Facebook called "Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament" informed people, united Canadians and encouraged nation-wide action.
Christopher White formed the group. He's a student at the University of Alberta, formed
There are now 224,920 members.

"This is the first time that many Canadians are getting involved," White wrote in an email regarding the mass participation of Canadians.

“That rally at Yonge and Dundas was packed. We were spilling out onto the street," Daly said. She has been attending rallies for more than 20 years, but she thinks this recent one Toronto was so successful because of the Facebook group.
Facebook made all information easy to access. The group kept Canadians informed about the issue and let everyone know about the different rallies that were taking place across the country.

"The co-ordination done by Facebook was superb," Daly said.

But Facebook can't take full credit for Canadians’ will to join the protests against Harper.
"It has only been possible because Canadians were willing to stand up and unite, take the issue off of Facebook and work towards achievable goals," White wrote.

"Facebook played a role in it," wrote White, "but I think it just tapped into an existing river of anger over the continued erosion of our democratic institution."

NFB's Screening Room Leading the Way for Canadian Content

The National Film Board of Canada's Screening Room launched last year, making Canadian films accessible to the world. But it's only a small portion of an already minute amount of Canadian content available on the web.

Michael Geist wrote about NFB in his article NFB Unreels Online Smash Hits.
"The NFB may never replace YouTube in the minds of most when it comes to Internet video," Geist wrote, "but a series of innovations have highlighted the benefits of an open distribution model and the potential for Canadian content to reach a global audience online."

Having a Canadian website, available to the entire world, showing intelligent, well-made and creative Canadian videos is great.

"There's a lack of Canadian content," says Willow Knoblauch, formerly the head of managing live videos on BlogTV.ca (now only available in the United States as blogtv.com).

Videos posted on sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV and BlogTV are often unintelligent or uploaded illegally by "excitable 14 year olds".

But YouTube and other user-generated-content sites can still include intelligent, innovative material. "For people that actually use it for what they're supposed to, it's a stepping stone to launch themselves into what they really want to do," says Knoblauch. That could be anything from acting to short films, animation or production. "It's a good platform for creative people."

So far, NFB's Screening Room seems like the best Canadian video site out there. Knoblauch thinks its a huge step in the right direction. "It's guaranteed, original, Canadian content."

Online Media: Is It Taking Over?

According to Clay Shirky, an American writer, the publishing industry is going to become extinct in the very near future.
He outlines his thoughts in the article Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.

After newspapers die, readers will receive news online written by "excitable 14 year olds" rather than trained journalists.

Getting news online isn't a problem. Getting news from a potentially uninformed 14 year old is.

But there is hope yet for print journalists! We're not completely S.O.L.

"A lot of people still love the actual physical act of flipping through pages. They still hold that dear," said Kim Shiffman, senior editor of PROFIT.
Shiffman edits an online publication that posts reports and data. But she said that print is the vehicle for long-form storytelling. "It doesn't seem like people like to read that kind of thing online."

"As a reader, I like to hold things in my hand," said Megan Griffith-Greene, editor of Chatelain and Shameless magazines. On the weekend, Griffith-Greene likes to read the paper, but during the week, she gets her news online.

So, yes, the week-day newspaper is dead. During the week, everything will be online. It is fast and easy to access.
But, it is likely there will be a weekend newspaper. It’s part of a relaxing weekend morning for most people.

Shirky is right. We don't need news on paper, but we do need journalists. Journalists will survive. Newspapers won't.

Photo Play

Tree in winter. Photo by Daveybot on Flickr.

Haiti: Speedy Text Message Relief

More that $25 million dollars has been donated to the Red Cross by Canadians since Haiti was hit by an earthquake last week, said a Red Cross spokesperson Tanya Elliott on Monday.

Such speedy fund-raising was made possible by today's technology. Phone companies have made it possible to send a text and instantly donate five dollars. Or, people can donate any amount of money online.

Last week, the government told Canadians they would match donations up to $50 million dollars.
On Tuesday, the International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda, announced that the government is contributing $80 million dollars to relief efforts in Haiti.
It seems the government has finally kept a promise.

The CBC has made a web page about Haiti Relief information. It includes a list of all registered charities and a list of numbers to text to instantly donate money to a charity.

Text message donating is a good idea. It has probably gotten a lot of younger people involved. It’s easy and hassle free. People are more likely to punch in a number, a few letters and press send.

According to the Canadian government, 665 Canadians are still unaccounted for, 13 have been killed and 1,206 have been evacuated back to Canada.

The Economist on Harper: Summary

Recently The Economist, a London-based magazine, published a chastising article about Harper's decision to prorogue parliament.

The article jumped on Harper's excuses for the suspension.
According to The Economist, Harper' real reasons for the prorogue are as follows:

• he couldn’t deal with the economic troubles and the Olympic games
• the government has been under attack regarding detainees being tortured in Afghanistan and Canada’s huge amount of carbon emissions

The Economist says that this move is purely "self-interest" for Harper, pointing out that "Harper has form," since he did the same thing last winter to dodge certain unwanted problems.

Crime and Punishment: The Root Problems

Jim Rankin was one of the reporters that worked on the Star's Special Report Crime and Punishment. It is a thorough look at the state of crime in Canada.
Rankin spoke in lecture today.
Basically, crime is committed by people who are from a certain demographic background. They:

• are living in poverty
  
• have little education
  
• are mentally ill
  
• have addictions and behaviour problems

Rankin's conclusion for crime prevention in Canada targets these root problems.
Better housing, support systems for students and rehabilitation for the mentally ill and addicted would help.
Target the roots, and further up there is less crime, more stability and less people in prison.

Putting people in prison does not help reduce crime. It may deter criminals for a short time, but in the end it only makes problems worse.
The United States has this problem now.
Millions of dollars are spent on a problem that is never fixed. Money is spent on the prison system and has little effect.
Money should be spent on education, rehabilitation and support programs. This would target the problem at the root and stop it before it grows into something out of control.