Spy — satire with a stiletto
The 1980s were golden for satirists in New York City, as blowhard personalities such as mayor Ed Koch, the Yankees’ George Steinbrenner and garish hustler Donald Trump dominated the mediascape. Celebrity headliners from Spike Lee and Madonna to Darryl Strawberry also crowded the tabloid fronts. Upstart magazine Spy took full aim, with a brazen style…
A phony crisis: tourism blooms in Montreal
My impression from discussions over recent years with New Yorkers and Europeans, especially young people, is that they have an almost absurdly positive view of Canada generally and Montreal specifically
Census and sensibility: Anglo angst deflated [2018]
Talk of decline and ‘exodus’ comes easily to media, but federal figures are more realistic by David Winch, October 1, 2017 MONTREAL – The touchiness in Quebec about demographic issues could be described, apologies to Jane Austen, as census and sensibility. Following the release of the 2016 mid-term federal census (in August 2017), reactions to…
Havana home run: Cuba loves its baseball
by David Winch, Montreal Gazette March 13, 2015 HAVANA – It is late February, sweltering hot, and the Cuban baseball season is in full swing. We are racing in a shiny 1955 Dodge taxi to the stadium, where hometown team Industriales will face cross-island rivals Pinar del Rio this evening, in game 2 of a…
Telecommuting: city jobs move to country locales
The scenic Townships region near the U.S. border is drawing more city professionals from Montreal, who find small-town life accessible in an online world by David Winch, Montreal Gazette January 8, 2017 KNOWLTON — Susan Pepler wanted to try a new neighbourhood. A downtown Montreal denizen, the Concordia grad and Dawson-certified designer was happy and…
Love and war in Geneva
Ariane, married to the bored and detached fonctionnaire Adrien, is trapped in a life of banal social-climbing in Geneva, with its vivid social taboos. She soon becomes triangularly linked to Adrien’s superior, the very haut fonctionnaire Solal.
Dien Bien Phu and after: the U.S. inherits an intractable conflict
You thought the Vietnam war was lost by 1974? Turn your clocks back two decades Almost 70 years after the French defeat — and, all credit due, the Vietminh victory — at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam,1 lessons continue to be drawn from a military confrontation that saw the defeat of a well-equipped Western…
Prisoners of age: old folks in jail
LIFE SENTENCE Older inmates are packing U.S. prisons and colouring them with shades of gray Foreword from the book Prisoners of Age (2000): http://www.prisonersofage.com/home Photos by Ron Levine Text by David Winch “My prison is becoming a old folks home” — Warden of 3,000-prisoner Angola state penitentiary in Louisiana I was young and…
Bangkok is calling, but UN staff don’t hear it
From the archives: 2010 The city is bursting with activity. Its downtown pulses like a mini-Tokyo. The country is growing prosperous, and gleaming towers rise at every turn. Yes, it’s not hard to boost Bangkok and Thailand. And yet, who wants to work there? by David Winch, UN Special magazine, March 2010 photos: Pierre-Michel Virot…
Les Lumières en Amérique: America and the Enlightenment
As North America was about to erupt with the American revolt against imperial Britain in the late 1700s, many liberal currents in Europe were feeding this move toward freedom. My 2009 essay for a panel discussion on the Enlightenment held in Divonne, France focused on the connections between American revolutionary thinkers, principally Paine and Jefferson,…