Daddy Long Legs premières at RMTC

Residents fear mailbox crime sprees

Some North End residents are concerned new community mailboxes will become a target for vandalism and crime after the base of one was recently lit ablaze — before it was even installed.

The community mailboxes started to show up on Andrews Street within the last two weeks. Some have been installed, while at other locations, only the concrete foundation is in place.

“They just dumped them on the boulevard,” said Stephen Giesbrecht, who lives beside one of the boxes in the St. John’s neighbourhood. “They dumped them on the corner and then they were gone.”

One of the concrete slabs has already played host to a fire and some of the hardware needed to install the mailbox melted.

Frustration mounts as drug raids sweep problems out of downtown, into West End

West End business owners say their neighbourhood has been under siege for months, and some believe downtown police drug sweeps have made things worse by pushing more street disorder in their direction — and pushing customers away.

The trolls inside the Conservative tent

The Conservative Party of Canada has a troll problem. And it’s coming from inside the tent.

Once, trolls existed only in imagination. They were figures of mythical proportion, big and small. They lived solitary lives under bridges, in caves, or forests. They were considered dim-witted and mean. Best avoided.

Today, they are real, unavoidable, and ubiquitous on social media. They are anything but solitary. There are tribes of them out there and tribal is how they think and post. As for dim-witted and mean, others can opine but they are uniformly mean and dismissive.

Mean to anyone who disagrees with their views. Dismissive of any view but their own. They distribute questionable, at best, facts and opinions grounded in hostility towards anything or anyone deemed disagreeable or heretical to their world view.

Conservatives call on government to release U.S. trade offer details

OTTAWA - Federal conservatives are calling on the government to release the full details of the trade offer from the United States that Canada rejected this week.

In a letter to Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Canada-U.S. relations critic Shuvaloy Majumdar said while his party supports the government's decision to reject the deal, Parliament is in the dark on what was on the table.

"If there was a draft text of any agreement that both governments have seen, please release it. The U.S. administration has seen it. Your government has seen it. Canadians deserve to see it," Majumdar wrote.

"Even after addressing Canadians and the media, the public and Members of Parliament still remain in the dark on your government's demands in negotiations with the Trump administration.

Free Press arts team shares books for passing the dog days

When most people mention a “summer read” or a “beach book,” the types of writing they’re referring to is lighter fare most of us would consider enjoyable but not overly profound: think cosy mysteries, historical bodice rippers, otherworldy romantasies, fast-paced whodunits, chilling (but not too chilling) horror and, notably as of late, romance novels of all persuasions — perhaps, say, between two hockey players?

But not everyone dives into such popular picks over the summer months. Here’s what the Free Press arts and life team has been poring over in the past months…

Temporary Palaces, by Jeff Miller

If you spent your youth in the late 1990s/early 2000s going to protests, making zines, DIY art or punk rock — or, failing that, reading about it all in Adbusters magazine — and consider yourself a hopeless romantic, this new novel from Nova Scotia’s Jeff Miller is for you. Themes of idealism, artistic integrity, heartbreak and shared trauma are all on the menu for this will-they-won’t they pairing of punk rocker Ben and visual artist Alex, set amid the squats of Ottawa and the art lofts of Montreal.

Winnipeg team behind national LGBT monument spent six years bringing it to fruition

The Winnipeg team behind a national monument recognizing the LGBT Purge were in Ottawa to celebrate its official unveiling Friday.

Thunderhead is the work of local artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Liz Wreford and Peter Sampson of Public City Architecture, and knowledge keeper Albert McLeod, who served as cultural adviser for the project.

The team beat out 31 international submissions for the project, which is permanently located at 201 Wellington St. in Ottawa along the Ottawa River, in view of Parliament.

“We are a beacon internationally around the world of what democracies can do about inclusion, about human rights,” McLeod said.