Luckily, Ed Mirvish was attached to something much closer to our mandate: he saved, restored and maintained the Royal Alexandra Theatre, almost single-handedly reviving Toronto’s theatre culture. Let’s talk about that and deal with the neon signs another day.

The Royal Alexandra Theatre was designed by John M. Lyle and built between 1906 and 1907. It took its name from Alexandra of Denmark, consort to King Edward VII. Toronto was rich with theatres at the turn of the century but they lacked the elegance theatre goers had grown used to in New York and London. The Royal Alex was the solution.

The force behind the project was a man named Cawthra Mulock.

Mulock had inherited a foundry and a fortune when his great aunt died in 1897. He was still a young man—the press deemed him “the boy millionaire.” Mulock put his money to good use in the world of business but also took it upon himself to nurture the city’s arts culture.

At the helm of the Royal Alexandra Theatre Company he commissioned the New York architectural firm Carrère and Hastings with simple instructions: “Build me the finest theatre on the continent.”

Carrère gave control of the project to John M. Lyle. Lyle grew up in Hamilton and studied architecture at L’ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. At the time he was working in New York with Carrère. He returned to Canada to act as the firm’s local associate, something they were required to have by Ontario law. By the time construction began, it appears that Lyle was working independently of Carrère.

The theatre was built in three sections, the lobby, auditorium and stage, each a progressively bigger box. The first box, the auditorium, catches the eyes of passer-bys with its elegant balustraded windows and sparkling lights that ran beneath a crested parapet. The building’s interior featured Italian marble, ornate walnut and cherry staircases and a huge mural titled “Aphrodite Discovering Adonis” painted by Canadian artist Frederick S. Challener.

The theatre was a technological marvel. Mulock insisted it be built with steel from his foundry, which drove construction costs $750 000, dwarfing the original budget, but it also made it one of North America’s first “fireproof” buildings.

It was the first North American theatre without any obstructed views; the steel frame allowed Lyle to construct cantilever balconies without using support beams or pillars. This is a relatively rare feature even today.

Finally, there was a hole in the floor near where the orchestra played that they covered with grating. On hot days, they dropped blocks of ice in to keep people in the most expensive seats cool: the continent’s first air-conditioned theatre.

The Royal Alexandra, North America’s first and only royalty-sponsored theatre, opened August 26, 1907 with a production of Top O’Th’ World. It was a grand spectacle featuring Anna Laughlin and a massive cast.

Within ten years of its construction the theatre was one of the most important Canadian stops for touring theatre companies. This was helped, in part, when the rival Princess Theatre was destroyed in a fire, immediately justifying the Royal Alex’s fireproof frame.

When Mulock died in 1918 the Royal Alex stood as the brightest monument to a life of entrepreneurship, philanthropy and quixotic imagination. It does to this day.

The good times didn’t last though. After World War II musicals started to aspire to larger scales and the Royal Alex was no longer adequate to house them. Soon after the popularization of television convinced many Toronto theatre goers to stay home. The Lieutenant Governor’s mansion, which used to feature prominently in the King Street area, was torn down and turned into a railway marshalling yard. Other buildings slowly made way to warehouses and factories and the Royal Alex remained a single point of light in the heart of an industrial centre.

The final nail in the coffin came when the much larger and more modern O’Keefe Centre (now the Hummingbird Centre) opened in 1960 and pulled most of the Royal Alex’s remaining audience away.

When it was put up for sale in 1963, the Royal Alex was only operating 12 weeks of the year. Toronto’s theatre community was in shambles. A bid put in to level the theatre and put up a parking lot, which would likely have been sold to a company looking for a home for its new office tower. There was a building boom in the city and many historic buildings fell to similar plans.

In a move that shocked almost everyone Honest Ed Mirvish put in a bid and bought the Royal Alex for $215 000. He didn’t know a thing about theatre, but it didn’t matter: he knew a good deal when he saw it. It was one of the most pivotal events in Canadian cultural history.

A surprisingly soft-spoken Ed Mirvish described his reasoning in an interview with the CBC. “There were two reasons…. First, I felt it would be a very bad thing if this theatre were demolished. And secondly, I believe it has a tremendous potential as a business venture.”

Mirvish shut down the theatre for the following year, its longest period of inactivity since its construction, and hired Herbert Irvine to restore it. All told, Mirvish sank more than $600 000 in the theatre before selling a single ticket.

The Royal Alex re-opened with a production of Never Too Late, starring William Bendix, produced by Ed Mirvish.

Mirvish stayed mostly in the theatre’s background, offering the building up to touring production companies, but he did collect a few impressive credits. He produced Hair in 1970, which had a 53-week run in Toronto, and Godspell, featuring a cast of unknowns including Martin Short and Eugene Levy.

Ed began buying warehouses around the Royal Alex and converting them to restaurants. Places like Ed’s Warehouse, Ed’s Folly and Old Ed completed the formula and gave King Street the upscale look and feel it maintains today.

Today the Royal Alex sits at the centre of North America’s third largest theatre community in North America. Up the road is the Princess of Wales Theatre, constructed by the Mirvishes in the early ’90s for $50 million. On the other side, and a bit up Yonge Street, is the Canon Theatre, managed by Mirvish Productions

Balancing the streetscape, across from the Royal Alex, is a different kind of monument: Roy Thomson Hall. The difference between the two is perhaps the best way to describe Mirvish’s legacy. Roy Thomson was a brilliant businessman who scarcely gave a cent to charitable causes his whole life. The building was named when Thomson’s estate, headed by Ken Thomson donated $5.4 million to its construction. Thomson’s legacy, at least in terms of the community his hall serves, runs only as deep as the name; a simulacrum, an imitation, of Mirvish’s legacy purchased by a reverent son.

When the Mirvish’s began selling their restaurants and Toronto buildings named Ed went down to nearly nothing the King Street culture remained. That’s why I’ll remember Ed Mirvish—because I truly believe that even if he couldn’t make another penny from theatre he’d still support the community. I think he really cared about King Street, that he saw his business ventures as a way to help people.

In terms of bricks and mortar, Honest Ed shares his King Street monument with Cawthra Mulock, but shares his legacy with no one. It’s Ed’s town. I’ll miss him.

I first heard about this year’s tuition protest when the RSU rejected my bursary application. Chris Drew sent the e-mail. “It is not easy to be a student in 2007, and making the decision to select recipients was a difficult task,” he told me. He went on to tell me about the evils of the McGuinty government, that tuition had become unreasonable and that RSU bursaries weren’t the solution.

“Please consider getting involved in the campaign to REDUCE TUITION FEES. When we work together, we can make a difference.” I sent a reply, something to the effect of “go to hell.” I can’t remember what I expected it to accomplish but it felt good doing it. He responded within an hour. He’s sorry. He’s not well off himself. He wishes there were more he could do.

I hear the truck before I see it: crowing megaphones, thumping music and the throbbing rhythm of the diesel engine. The driver of the white flatbed, sympathetic to the cause, donates the use of his truck every year on the condition that he can fly his banner on the cab: CAW Local 4268. From there, the RSU, with help from the Canadian Federation of Students, sets up everything they need for their offensive on the back of the truck: microphone, PA, DJ, hot chocolate and apple cider. It’s the mobile stage of the revolution, the mechanized platform of machine politics.

A sizeable crowd has gathered in front of the truck, attracted by grand ideals, spectacle and free toques. There’s a disproportionate number of journalists — and why wouldn’t there be? It’s a good, easy story: lots of visuals, outrage and a conveniently placed mass of human interest tangents. “Joe Rayment is a fourth-year journalism student who’s accumulated $22,000 debt.”

But who are we kidding? We know the game: protesters give the media their story, media gives the protest exposure, politicians respond and everybody contents themselves with their progress. I take out my notebook and join the ranks of uninterested observers.

Speakers take turns at the mic, giving speeches and leading us in chants. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” says Judy Rebick, social activist. “I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to answer ‘Reduce Tuition.’” There’s a pleasant energy in the crowd, hope for the revolution. I decide there’s a good photo in this: the crowd, the placards and banners, all lined in front of Rebick on the truck.

I step out on Lake Devo so I can fit it all in the frame, focus and push the button. The shutter doesn’t open. The cold’s sapped the camera’s battery — reality pervades.

The truck drifts down Gould Street at 11:30 a.m. and the whole calamitous mess follows behind chanting. It rounds Yonge Street like a paper dragon dancing, just happy to be in the streets.

***

The last time I believed the government cared about tuition was during the 2003 provincial election. I was new to university and the age of majority and hadn’t yet learned to ignore political promises or the posters I found stuck to walls.

I read the party platforms waiting for the elevator: NDP will lower tuition; PC will give us more loans; the Liberals, playing to their strength, will freeze tuition and maintain the day’s status quo. The Liberals won and the Canadian Federation of Students started putting self-congratulatory ads around campus. We could make a difference, they said.

***

The Liberals hired ex-nemesis Bob Rae to look into the issue. They lifted the freeze last fall, allowing for 8 per cent increases in professional courses such as law and medicine and 5 per cent increases for undergraduate degrees.

On Yonge Street, once the parade passes, so does the mood. The cold sets in, the music and chants become yelling and noise and a row of cars is faced with the reality that they’re going to spend the next leg of their trip at slow walking speed. I follow well behind the crowd listening for what it sounds like to non-participants. “What do we want?” asks Nora Loreto, RSU president-elect, over a megaphone. “Reduced tuition,” she answers to herself.

Protesters from other schools join us on the way and by the time we pull into King’s College Circle at the University of Toronto, the crowd’s about 200 strong. Loreto hands the stage over to speakers from the CFS.

Someone starts into another speech of outrage and self-congratulation and my attention drifts to a group of white signs making their way through the ocean of maroon “Reduce Tuition” placards. “CFS fees suck,” reads one. “Get back to class truant hippies,” reads another. “Do you want a) socialism b) quality of education?” With an asterisk below: “The correct answer is b.”

The signs are attached to a group of Trinity College students making their way through the crowd dressed inexplicably in judge’s robes. They circle around and stand to the east of the crowd. The police and some journalists follow for exactly the same reason: conflict. “Why don’t you do this tomorrow?” a police officer asks. “They planned this. They have permits.

“You’re going to start fights.” One of the judges eyes me taking notes and asks if I’m with the media. Yes, I tell him without looking up. He stands beside me for a minute and then rejoins his pack. There are maybe 20 judges protesting a protest of hundreds. They’re a vast minority and I’m not playing their game; it’s not good enough.

The judges agree not to speak to the protesters or follow them on the parade route and the police allow their presence. They settle neutered in the courtyard and endure the jeers of the crowd until it leaves for Queen’s Park.

***

I sat down one day and decided I’d set up interviews with three people who might actually be able to do something about tuition: John Tory, Howard Hampton and Dalton McGuinty. It’s an election year and I have a captive audience of nearly 20,000 students, albeit mostly ones who don’t vote.

Just the same, I figured it might be politically profitable for them to speak to me.

John Tory’s office told me he’d be happy to talk, which was a little surprising. The Progressive Conservative Party’s tax-cutting philosophy makes it hard to reduce tuition and loan schemes aren’t usually popular with groups such as the CFS. Later in the day Tory’s communication director called me back to tell me the interview would have to be over the phone.

The next day I got another call telling me Tory could no longer speak with me, he’d be travelling and would be “nowhere near a phone” until after my deadline. I asked about his exotic location: Ottawa.

They forwarded me to Jim Wilson, the PC education critic. He called me a day later, while I was sleeping, and left a message on my voicemail: tuition is too high. The PC wants to make post secondary more accessible. The election platform hasn’t been set yet, but they’re meeting with students to figure out a solution. Sounds good.

Hampton got back within a half hour, which made sense. The NDP is sympathetic to tuition cuts and is usually invited to speak at these days of action. They would re-regulate the professional courses such as law and medicine, setting limits on tuitions that sometimes approach $20,000 a year. They’d freeze tuition, maybe roll it back and make post-secondary school generally more accessible. Again, it sounds good.

McGuinty wouldn’t speak to me. Chris Bentley, the Liberal Colleges and Universities Minister, called me back in a timely fashion though. He explained to me that under the Liberals, post-secondary enrolment is up 22 per cent, or 86,000 students. They’ve invested $700 million in improving the quality of schools and handed out grants to 120,000 students, three times more than before. They’ve asked students to make an additional investment in their education but it’s a reasonable one.

When I push him about what he’s saying, he points to the records of the other parties: the NDP promised freezes and cuts in the ’90s and under the Rae government, tuition went up 50 per cent. When Mike Harris was elected, he cut post-secondary operating grants by 20 per cent and deregulated tuition for professional courses, which, depending on the course and school, allowed tuition to go up as much as 1,000 per cent.

He makes all good points, I tell him, but the Liberals were elected in my first year and I’ve come very close to dropping out the last two years because I couldn’t afford tuition and living costs. I still haven’t paid off my tuition and between my line of credit and credit card, I paid $130 in interest last month. You’ve had three years, why should I vote for you now?

“Sir, with respect,” he answered, “if you’re arguing your own case and you just want to write an article about your own case, if that’s what this really is, that’s one thing. But the fact is is it’s not worse for students in need.” Which isn’t at all what I said. He points me to a website they’ve set up for students like me who don’t know where to look for scholarships and bursaries. There’s a section that tells us the difference between the way funding was then and the way it is now. “You can check it out, and then you can find out what institutional support is available. But the facts do not support the statement you just made,” he said. I yelled. It was unproductive.

***

The protest travels to Queen’s Park in the most convoluted route imaginable: five right turns stretched over miles of unnecessary road in sub-zero temperatures. A block away from where we started they’d erected a stage beside the parliament building. The Black Eyed Peas blast over the speakers by the stage when the protesters round the corner. They’re more than a thousand strong now and an hour behind schedule. “My humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.”

The judges wait patiently at the top of the park. A man approaches the judges, stops 10 feet away and puts a megaphone to his mouth. “Rich kids go home. Rich kids go home.” Contented with his progress, he walks away and lets the passing crowd take over. After a few minutes of abuse, a parade marshal asks the judges to stand on the other side of a hedge to avoid conflict.

A woman takes the stage and delivers what must be the twentieth speech I’ve heard in three hours. “We’re here to send a message to the McGuinty government that we’re united against tuition hikes,” she proclaims and then breaks into chant. “Sol sol sol, solidarity!” “So so so, socialism’s dead!” answer the judges, emboldened by the fervour of the moment and their new armour of greenery.

There are a few quick speeches and a Kardinal Offishall concert. Someone throws a snowball at the judges and their leader launches into a spiel about free speech and intelligent debate. I point to one of their signs, “He has ‘hippy’ underlined twice. How is that intelligent debate?”

“I think I should point out that we’re not united around a particular cause,” he tells me. Another judge sidles up to the conversation. “In fact,” he points to the other judge’s sign, Tuition Cuts Hurt International Students, “I don’t agree with his point at all.” Argument erupts amongst the judges, adding to the arguments they were already having with protesters. Some people with banners file in in front of them to hide them from the crowd and cameras. It was as valid a move as any other that day.

I leave before festivities finish; it’s cold and I can guess what’s going to happen. The NDP will address the protest. The Liberals won’t visit the protest but will list their accomplishments to the media later. The Tories will make as little noise as possible. No one will accomplish anything, this is just routine. There’s nothing here but politics and a massive display of mutual masturbation.

Sid Ryan, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, takes the mic as I’m walking away. He speaks of grand ideals in syllables and exclamation points, tinged in an Irish accent. It’s pleasing to the ear.

“My Lords,” Lord Bingham began his opinion for the House of Lords, Britain’s highest court: “This appeal raises two questions on the law of libel.” Those two questions were, first, the right of a corporation to sue without proving damages, and second, something more significant for journalists: “the scope and application of what has come to be called Reynolds privilege, an important form of qualified privilege.

The case was Jameel v. Wall Street Journal Europe. Shortly after 9/11 the newspaper ran a story alleging that the Saudi national bank was monitoring certain bank accounts for terrorist connections in cooperation with the U.S. The president of one of the companies named sued for defamation. The Journal couldn’t prove the truth of its claims because it couldn’t name its sources.

An ordinary libel case might have ended right there. But seven years ago, British courts opened a loophole – “Reynolds privilege.” It’s been of little real use to journalists since, and Canadian courts have so far averted their eyes from it. But the Lords blew Reynolds wide open with their ruling in Jameel and let loose a legal tsunami that could yet splash the ermine robes of the Supreme Court of Canada – and cast a damper on libel plaintiffs who have had it so good on these provincial shores.

And that’s a big if. But if the world does change, grateful Canuck scribes may want to raise a pint of Guinness to an Irishman named Albert Reynolds for suing Britain’s most venerable paper.

• • •

The year was 1994. Albert Reynolds, prime minister of the Republic of Ireland, had stepped down amidst parliamentary scandal. The following weekend, The Sunday Times ran a front page story: “Goodbye gombeen man – Why a fib too far proved fatal for the political career of Ireland’s peacemaker and Mr Fixit” The Times’s story repeated claims that Reynolds had intentionally misled Parliament; Reynolds sued for defamation.

Libel law is a balance between protection of personal reputation and freedom of expression. Historically, in Britain and the rest of the commonwealth, the law has tilted dramatically toward privacy. Until Reynolds v. Times Newspapers all plaintiffs had to prove was that what was printed lowered their reputation in the eyes of the right-thinking public. After that the burden of proof shifted to the writer or publisher, who usually had only one option: prove the printed statements were accurate.

Instead, the Times argued that the defamatory statements were protected under a legal principle called “qualified privilege.” This protection applies when people say possibly untrue things in particular situations. For example, Canadian and British journalists can print defamatory accusations if they’re made in court. In the US, privilege extends to all comments on public officials provided that they are printed without reckless disregard or malice.

The jury rejected the Times’s argument but refused to award damages to Reynolds because, in its view, the article wasn’t malicious. The judge later upped the damages to one penny. Both sides appealed.

After three years of trials, retrials and appeals, the House of Lords came down with a decision that widened the qualifications for qualified privilege dramatically: the press would be protected if tenets of “responsible journalism” were followed. Lord Nicholls, writing for the court, illustrated this idea with ten comments designed to help future courts determine whether or not journalists had acted responsibly in a particular set of circumstances. Among these: the credibility of the information, the tone of the article, and the urgency of the issue. The Times lost its case on the eighth point, which requires that the article should contain “the gist of the plaintiff’s side of the story.”

As Toronto lawyer Peter A. Downard says, the Reynolds ruling “essentially involves the court adopting, on an ongoing basis, almost a code of conduct for journalists. The theory being that if journalists are to be given some degree of immunity in damaging people’s reputations, then they are going to have to prove that that immunity is well-earned by responsible conduct in particular ways.”

Although Reynolds went for the plaintiff and against the press, many lawyers saw hope for a more positive climate for investigative journalism. At first, says Amanda Ball, an expert on British media law at Nottingham University, “people were describing it…as a paradigm case. It could potentially massively shift the balance towards the defence” But in the next seven years, only two defendants succeeded in persuading a court that their journalistic practices had met the Reynolds standards. Judges were following Nicholls’s list so specifically that his points became hurdles, not aids, to libel defendants. Whatever responsible journalism was, almost no one, it seemed, could meet its standards.

Then came Jameel.

• • •

Since both the American and Saudi governments refused to comment officially, The Wall Street Journal’s 2002 story relied on anonymous sources. Given the secretive nature of the Saudi government, proving that it covertly monitored bank accounts would be impossible; the only feasible way to argue this case was on the grounds of qualified privilege. The court of appeal rejected the paper’s Reynolds argument on the narrow grounds that the journalists had failed to get Mohammed Jameel’s comment on their story. The Journal had tried contacting him the night before publication but he was unavailable at the time. The newspaper declined to delay publication. But, as the Lords would later find, Jameel was in no position to know the government was monitoring his accounts; waiting would not impact the story.

Last October, the Law Lords dropped their bombshell. Lord Bingham not only saw fault in the way the lower courts had ruled on Jameel, but criticized the whole history of interpretation of Reynolds. The courts had lost sight of the Reynolds forest, focusing instead on the trees – the list of ten standards. As the Lords saw it, two questions underlie Reynolds: was the article on a matter of public interest? And was “responsible journalism” practised? In the Lords’ view, the Journal’s story had met these standards.

The Law Lords allowed that a clear definition of “responsible journalism” would need to evolve in coming years of litigation. They did, however, emphasize several points: journalists should take reasonable steps to verify what they print, should honestly believe that what’s printed is true, and, where reasonable, should contact people named to give them a chance to respond. “It’s the English courts doing what the Americans did in the early ‘60s really,” says lawyer Bert Bruser, who frequently advises The Toronto Star. If it plays out the way the Law Lords intend, the ruling will give journalists greater confidence to pursue serious journalism, which was Nicholls’s original purpose.

As unsuccessful plaintiff Mohammed Jameel himself commented to the Associated Press: “[T]he Court of Appeal ruled that I was libelled. The House of Lords ruled that I was not because it was reasonable for The Wall Street Journal Europe to print something that was false. So be it. I was only ever interested in proving that the allegations were untrue.”

• • •

Here in Canada, another libel action started with a story published in the days after 9/11 and ended last October. But it went rather differently.

On September 25, 2001, The Ottawa Citizen printed an article under the headline, “‘Renegade’ OPP officer under fire — Const. Danno Cusson, who left his post for New York, told to leave Ground Zero.”

Cusson had been hailed as a hero for defying orders and eventually quitting his job to help with the 9/11 rescue effort. The story left a positive impression of Cusson, but included a New York State Police officer’s allegations that Cusson hindered the rescue efforts and falsely identified himself as an RCMP officer trained in K-9 rescues.

Cusson sued the Citizen for libel, and the story’s author, Douglas Quan, was grilled on the stand about his reporting. According to the Citizen’s subsequent trial report, Cusson’s lawyer, Ronald Caza, took issue with Quan having failed to report certain things that the ex-cop had told him:

“I want you to show me where you wrote in this article that he gave his police badge to everyone,” the lawyer told Quan, reviewing a copy of a transcript of his interview with Cusson.

“I did not reflect that in the story,” Quan replied. “I did put in the story that he was adamant in his denial” of having represented himself as an RCMP officer.

“Is there anywhere in the story that Danno Cusson … said he showed his badge to everyone?”

“There is no reference to a badge, correct,” replied Quan.

And so it went on. In the end, a jury found that the New York State police officer’s comments were libellous, and that the Citizen was at fault for printing them; Quan’s attempts to balance the story weren’t good enough, in the eyes of the court. Rejecting the newspaper’s Reynolds-like defence of qualified privilege, the court ordered the Citizen to pay $100,000 in damages. That award came just two months before the ruling in Jameel. A pity, according to Toronto media lawyer Brian Rogers, who says the Lords’ opinions could have helped the newspaper’s defence.

The Canadian and British legal systems ran in a single vein until 1949, when Canada achieved judicial independence. Even since then, the British tradition of common law continues to hold sway in Canada, excluding Quebec, and our courts look to Britain for guidance when there is no domestic precedent. As a result, up until Reynolds, Canadian and British libel laws were virtually identical. Reynolds has since been argued, considered, and rejected by Canadian courts — but only on basis of the particular cases. “As a defence, notionally, [the `responsible journalism’ privilege] is there in our common law as far as I’m concerned,” Rogers says. It’s just that there hasn’t yet been a trial that’s forced the issue.

What will happen when that crucial trial comes along is far from certain. Will tomorrow’s Canadian journalists feel as constrained as today’s to print only those possibly defamatory statements that they’re ready to prove as true in a court of law? Or will they rest a little more easily on the knowledge that they have done their jobs with all due care? And who will decide what the standards of care are?

Lord Hope, writing in support of his colleague Bingham, described “responsible journalism” as “a standard which everyone in the media and elsewhere can recognize.” But does “elsewhere” include this True North? As hundreds of stories – on both sides of the Atlantic — have ended: Only time will tell.

Click here to read Peter A. Downard’s analysis of the Jameel ruling.

-joe rayment.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a doctor from Argentina. In 1956, he befriended the then-exiled Fidel Castro in Mexico and eventually returned to Castro’s homeland to wage a guerrilla war against the Batista regime. Che was a key figure in Castro’s 1959 victory.

Korda’s photo of Che became known as Guerrillero Heróico. It’s the single dominant image of Che and one of the greatest icons of the 20th century. After the memorial, Korda cropped the background out of the photo. He described the look in Che’s eyes as “angry and grieved,” but stripped of context and the surrounding scenery, they look defiant, determined and hopeful. After Che’s death, the image grew legs of its own. It has been bought, sold, used and changed so many times that what it means today only scarcely resembles what it once did.

When Korda submitted his work to the Cuban newspaper Revolucion, the editors accepted photos of Castro and the French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, but rejected the one of Che. Korda thought it was a striking image. He stuck it to the wall of his Havana studio, where it sat for years, collecting nicotine stains.

Che served as the President of Cuba’s National Bank and later as the Minister of Industry, where he performed poorly. In 1965 he left the comforts of Cuba to spread the revolution abroad. Over the next two-and-a-half years, his death was reported several times in the Congo and the Dominican Republic, but never proven. In 1967, a man showed up at Korda’s door. He didn’t introduce himself, he just presented a letter from a high-ranking Cuban official asking Korda to help this man find a good picture of Che. “This is my best Che picture,” he said pointing to the portrait on the wall. The man agreed. When he returned the following day Korda gave him two fresh prints, free of charge for a friend of the revolution.

The man turned out to be Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the left-wing Italian publisher most famous for smuggling the Doctor Zhivago manuscript out of the Soviet Union. Feltrinelli had been in Bolivia negotiating the release of the French philosopher Regis Debray, who had been captured as part of a guerrilla force. Debray told Feltrinelli that Che Guevara was the leader of the guerrilla forces in Bolivia, and that the Bolivian forces were closing in. Foreseeing Che’s assassination, Feltrenelli saw an opportunity. He took Korda’s photo back to Italy and started printing posters.

On October 9, 1967, Che’s corpse flew over the Bolivian Jungle, strapped to the right skid of a helicopter. “Shoot, coward,” Che told his executioner, “you are only going to kill a man.” The Bolivian army captured Che the day before with the help of CIA agent Felix Rodriguez. In his autobiography, Rodriguez describes a conversation with Che: “Commander,” Rodriguez said, “Our ideals are different. But I admire you. You used to be a minister of state in Cuba. Now look at you – you are like this because you believe in your ideals.” Che was shot not long after, and his body was flown to Vellegrande, the capital of Bolivia. The Bolivian army exhibited the body for several days to prove that they had indeed killed Che Guevara. They opened his eyes to increase the resemblance to his living self and presented him to the media. The Christ imagery wasn’t lost on anyone, and here the Romans had cameras.

General Ovando, commander-in-chief of the Bolivian army, wanted to cut off and preserve Che’s head for identification purposes. He was eventually settled to cutting off Che’s hands and taking fingerprints. After a bizarre series of events, the preserved hands were smuggled back into Cuba. Castro was going to put them on public display until the Guevara family protested. The body of Che stayed in Bolivia, in an unmarked mass-grave and was not found until 1997.

Photos of triumphant military officials crowding around Che’s corpse hit the media. At the same time, posters of Guerrillero Heróico started spreading: copyright Feltrinelli. According to Korda, Feltrinelli sold between one and two million posters using his image. Korda didn’t make a cent. Nor could he have if he wanted to: Castro refused to observe international copyright laws, dismissing the protection of intellectual property as imperialist bullshit.

With the photos of Che’s corpse seared into his mind, Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick started producing Che posters. “It was my way of saying, ‘Fuck them. They’re not going to forget Che Guevara. They’re not just going to chop him up and dump him there.’” Fitzpatrick produced a drawing for the Irish magazine Scene a few months before Che’s death. He based it on Korda’s photo, which had somehow made its way into a German magazine called Stern, small and unaccredited. Scene rejected it. It was too radical.

After Che died, Fitzpatrick started making posters and pamphlets. “I felt this image had to come out, or he would not be commemorated otherwise, he would go where heroes go, which is usually into anonymity,” he said in an interview with Aleksandra Mir, a conceptual artist out of New York.

Fitzpatrick sent the image to the satirical magazine Private Eye and they sent it to art critic Peter Meyer. Meyer liked the image so much he invited Fitzpatrick to take part in an exhibition called “Viva Che!” He produced two new pieces for the show, also based on Guerrillero Heróico. One was a large, elaborate oil painting. Almost as an afterthought, he made a silkscreen print. Red background, Che’s face, simplified through the process, in black. He coloured in the star on Che’s cap with a yellow magic marker. Both pieces, along with everything else he submitted, disappeared while the exhibition was touring through Eastern Europe. All that remains of them are copies.

Almost immediately after the exhibition Fitzpatrick started seeing his red and black rendition of Guerrillero Heróico multiply around him. “I was kind of annoyed at first. I kept thinking, ‘that’s my effin’ image.’ You know what I mean? You sort of have a proprietary interest in it. It was pride. The first thing they did was take my bloody name off it.” He eventually came to embrace the fact. Fitzpatrick never asserted his rights to the image, he just watched variations of his print spread across the world. No one would forget Che now; maybe his message will spread with his face.

Lee Zaslofsky joined the anti-war movement in 1967. When he was drafted in ’68, he decided to come to Canada, forever entangling himself with the movement. He has attended his fair share of protests on both sides of the border. “Back in my day, during the Vietnam War, Che’s image was much more edgy, much more frightening to the authorities. It had much more content than it does now, I think.” Che’s image became an icon of the movement. For most, it was just a symbol of dissent, but there was a wing that wanted to follow Che’s example literally. They wanted the movement to become a revolution. Before he died, Che sent a message out of his Bolivian camp calling for “two, three, many Vietnams” to ensnare and break the American machine. When his image started to appear on banners and t-shirts the message was still fresh. “To many Americans, that was horrifying,” Lee says. “In those days, it was a viable approach. I mean China had shown that the biggest country in the world could be taken over by revolutionaries. And Vietnam, the same thing. People believed that that kind of thing could happen, and they saw it all around them. It was happening.”

As time went on the body grew cold and the threat passed. The image drifted away from Che’s revolutionary reality toward a more palatable figure of rebellion. How far it’s drifted is up for debate. Lee looks at the people wearing Che Guevara T-shirts these days and doesn’t see much more than a fashion statement. “It’s just a way of connecting yourself, in a very minor way, with someone who has become an icon of rebellion … He was a politician who believed in revolutionary politics. I think that kind of meaning has pretty well been ironed out of him.”

In 1999, one of Korda’s friends gave him a copy of FHM. His image of Che was in it. On a two page spread was Che’s face with the words “Hot Fiery Bloody Smirnoff” in the bottom right corner. In the background were bottles of vodka and hammer and sickles, the sickles replaced with chilli peppers. It was an ad for Smirnoff’s new spicy vodka. Korda was furious. “Hundreds of companies used my photo, but none has been as offensive,” said the photographer at the time. Korda sued Lowe Lintas, the agency that produced the ad. It was settled out of court, Korda donated the money to a Havana hospital, and he became the official copyright owner of Guerrillero Heróico. He died eight months later and his daughter inherited the rights.

A few years ago a company called Fashion Victim contacted Jim Fitzpatrick. They wanted to use his image of Che and they wanted to do it legally. Fitzpatrick told them that he didn’t own the copyright and that he wouldn’t accept royalties. The two parties were working out a deal to forward the royalties to a Cuban aid organization when Fashion Victim contacted Korda’s estate. The estate sold them the exclusive North American rights to the image and Fashion Victim ended negotiations with Fitzpatrick. Legally, Fashion Victim is now the only company in America who can produce T-shirts using Guerrillero Heróico. Fashion Victim’s shirts are made in Honduras, presumably in sweatshops. In 2004, sales grossed roughly $4 million. His image remains intact but his message has been thrown to the wind.

***

At Bang-On T-Shirts on Yonge Street, Che’s a big seller. He hangs on the wall next to T-shirts with Jim Morrison and Chuck Norris. Ronald Reagan’s in the front window. Warhol’s Elvis is in the corner. David Bowie. Super Mario. A lot of the people who buy the Che shirts at Bang-On are young kids. They’ve seen them on the chests of their heroes and now they want one too. They come in asking for that guy with the beard or Fidel Castro.

“Regardless of anything else, they look at it and have a sense of belonging,” said Deena Jacobs, a clerk at the store. “They feel that it says something, even if they don’t know what it means.”

I’m standing in a huge hole outside Hamilton, Ontario with soldiers, scientists and directors. Giant piles of sand surround us on all sides.

Yesterday I was walking up Yonge Street on my way to buy fresh soil for my dying flowers. Some guy stopped me and asked if I wanted to be in a movie. Apparently I look like a soldier—or an extra. And just like that, I enlisted in a labour force that’s more than twenty-five thousand strong in Toronto alone: show business.

Now, twenty hours later, I’m here in a quarry. This is less glamorous than I imagined. The movie’s called Zoom. Tim Allen’s starring as a superhero. I think we’re supposed to be in the desert.

1035 hrs. I line up with the other extras outside a big white tent. Inside, a wardrobe man, skinny and bald, is handing out fatigues. He asks in a Caribbean accent what size boot I want. I tell him and get a pair of size twelves thrown at me. I grab the rest of my costume and dart my eyes to see where everyone’s getting dressed. Someone in front of me drops his pants and starts changing. “What the fuck are you doing?” the wardrobe man yells. I find a hiding spot between two tents and change quickly: green T-shirt, desert camo pants and jacket, a helmet and goggles. Body armour and a sidearm (another line-up) complete our costumes.

The patches on our jackets give us our new names: Ryder, Skidmore, Scabices. My name is Thomas. The guy behind me gets to be Hammer. I turn the vest inside out and read the tag: “Outer Tactical Vest (OTV) with all soft ballistic panels and 9 mm or lesser threats. Made in Vietnam.”

A crowd of people dressed exactly like me passes by. I follow. We go to the main tent and meet sixty more of me. We are the grunts of the movie industry dressed like the grunts of the military, here for nine bucks an hour and a free lunch.

1055 hrs. From what I understand of my role, I’m part of an army unit that discovers some unknown evil in the desert. Presumably, the military tries and fails to conquer this evil, at which point it resorts to superheroes. I might be wrong though. They tell me what to wear and how to act, but never why.

The quarry is desolate and huge. Or it would be if it weren’t for the maze of white-walled trailers sprung up in its belly. I get lost wandering around, peeking into actors’ trailers and daydreaming about my apartment, my bed, my flowers.

The wardrobe tent is now the lunch tent for unionized actors. I’m no longer allowed in. Next to it, about a hundred feet long, is the tent for guys like me. It’s filled with collapsible tables, folding chairs and lounging soldiers. In the far corner a game of table hockey is underway. A crowd huddles around a portable DVD player watching Monster- in-Law.

Newspapers on a table report suicide bombings in Baghdad yesterday: more than 150 dead. Someone points to a picture of a solemn American soldier: “Look, it’s exactly the same uniform!” I take a seat with the grunts and wait for my call to duty.

1230 hrs. Sitting in the tent, the soldiers start to distinguish themselves. Across the table is Oswald. Or at least that’s what the patch on his chest reads. He looks like Vin Diesel. He’s intimidating at first, but the longer I’m here the more I see a strong, accepting quality to him. Next to him is Ryder, a stout Palestinian who constantly cracks terrorist jokes about himself. Nearly asleep in his chair is a skinny black guy named White. He eyes me jotting this all down in my notebook. “Look at this guy, he’s writing home to his wife.

In the centre of the group is Green. Green looks a little like Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man. He has a wife and son and works weekends as a bouncer. He’s been an extra for years, and has plans of moving up in this business. He wants to start setting up locations for movies.

We are all non-union workers—”cash guys.” The people you see crossing the street over Mark Wahlberg’s shoulder, the faces in the stands at Hilary Duff’s football game, the man running Wayne Campbell’s watermelon stand. Short-term, no benefits, no stability—every face you don’t remember.

1435 hrs. “Move out, soldiers!”

We line up for costume inspections. The wardrobe man and a woman in a reflective vest walk up and down the line, buttoning buttons and scrutinizing haircuts. “I think your sideburns are too long,” the woman says to the kid next to me. “I think we should cut them back.”

“I actually can’t do that, I have a photo shoot for a band on the weekend.”

“Maybe we can hide you in the back. I’ll have to talk with my bosses. If they can’t, they might ask you to go home.”

I turn to the guy on the other side of me, “Hey, I wonder if this is how the army gets people to Iraq. ‘Come on, you’re gonna be in a movie.’” He doesn’t laugh. Further down the line I hear the wardrobe man yell. “You can’t work a belt? Your mama dress you in the morning?” I pass my inspection with flying colours; I look real. Back in the tent, some downtrodden soldiers are getting their heads shaved at the makeup tables.

Then we wait.

“Yeah I build bombs all the time. Me and my cousins blew one up at the other side of this quarry once.”

“I’m ghetto, baby. I don’t even have a barber, I just sharpen a chicken bone to cut my hair.”

None of it means anything. It’s just talk to kill time.

1500 hrs. A man walks in wearing a reflective vest and baseball cap. “I need nineteen guys,” he yells. “You. You. You,” he says, pointing at my table. It’s good news for the regulars—it’s a small shot with a chance at a decent spot on camera, maybe even a film credit. The directors will need us back if they do any more shooting for this scene.

We walk out of the village and deeper into the quarry. “Don’t kick the rocks,” the man tells us. “Some of them are props.” We stop by a cliff face and they place us behind General Larraby (Rip Torn) and a scientist (Chevy Chase). Walk here, here and here, they tell us, and look soldierly. We do it once, then again, and again.

No, the director says, something’s wrong. We go back to point A and a director juggles us around to get the proper aesthetic. “You know what he’s doing?” Chevy pipes in. “He’s moving all the black people to the back.” I get moved up and Green gets stuck in the back, hardly on camera.

1815 hrs. Our final shot is big: all the extras come out for this one. In this scene, a giant alien attacks our base camp, or maybe that’s just what they’re telling us to get the reaction they want. The soldiers’ job is to look busy, and then surprised. The directors position us around the scene like chess pieces.

Rip Torn waits in a chair that says Rip Torn on it. He’s joking with a group of soldiers positioned in front of him: “There are kids your age in Iraq for real right now. And you guys get to be here, pretending. Chicken shits.”

1840 hrs. The directors call a wrap. I wander back to the village and line up to turn in my uniform. While I’m waiting, Chevy Chase drives by in an SUV. He calls “ten-hut!” out the passenger window and some extras salute. Our bus pulls off at sunset. My life as a fake soldier disappears. I take comfort in the approaching city lights.

-joe rayment.

Sometimes, you have to do something ridiculous to break the monotony of city life. But good chaos takes planning. Here’s how to do it.

Dream up a concept
Inspiration is everywhere. Look to your personal experiences for ideas.

“All you need to do is take an activity from your childhood, multiply the number of participants and put it in an urban setting,” says Newmindspace’s Kevin Bracken, organizer of the Dundas Square pillow fight.

If you still can’t think of an idea, steal one.Sites like Torontoist.com and the SpacingWire (www.spacing.ca/wire) are good place to see some of Toronto’s stranger ideas. Watch The Globe and Mail’s Social Studies and the Toronto Star’s Ideas sections for odd events from the rest of the world.

Joel Friesen of Culturehole.com turned the TTC into a giant board game after being inspired by a transit map. “I realized that the map is a perfect layout for this game that I used to play as a kid.” He swapped plastic pieces for people, board for transit system,and turned the city into a life-sized version of the old board game Scotland Yard.

Watch your timing
Tie in your idea with a recognized event and people will be more accepting of it.

When you’re asking people to come out,they’ll ask you why they’d want to dress up and parade around the city. When you’re parading, people will ask why there are 50drunken bunnies in the street. “Because it’s Easter” is a good enough answer for everyone.

A week before Christmas, about 100 Santas met for a BurnOn.ca event called Santarchy. They spent the night wandering the city, smoking pot, drinking beer and singing classics like “Deck my balls” and “I’m dreaming of a White Russian.”

They also get away with this every year.“I think the thinking is, it’s bad publicity for the police to arrest a whole bunch of Santas a week before Christmas,” says organizer Dave McKay.

Keep it simple
Keep your event as straight forward as possible—complicated rules will only make people hesitant about participating. The ideal structure is simple, but produces complex and surprising behaviour.

Every Thursday night, Matt Collins meets about a dozen university students and musicians to play a game of Manhunt.

It’s a hide-and-seek variant played in a different part of the city every week. One person is declared the man hunter, or “it,”and everyone else has two minutes to hide. Playing games in a place like Casa Loma makes you see it in a whole new light—plus it offers some great hiding places.

When a man hunter touches you, you’re“brainwashed” and become a man hunter too. As man hunters grow in numbers, they strategize to corner the remaining fugitives.
Ninja Bakesale Photo by Joel Friesen

Do it cheap
Asking everyone to bring a little something goes a long way to offset costs. If possible,buy materials second-hand or make them yourself. Never charge people to participate. Part of the reason the city can be boring is because all the best things are reserved for the rich.

Joel Friesen’s Ninja Bake Sale cost him next to nothing. When he announced it, he asked everyone to bring “honourable” baked goods. He also posted instructions on how to make ninja masks out of T-shirts on his website. The day of the sale, Friesen and his friends were able to raise funds for ninja awareness while hardly spending a cent of their own.

Put the word out
Think of communities that would like your event. They’re your target audience — advertise to them. One posting on the right message board will get you more participants than a hundred untargeted fliers.

“Send them the message, and if they think your idea’s interesting they’ll forward it along to their friends,” Dave McKay says.“Complete strangers will show up, but they’ll be like-minded strangers.”

For most of the events McKay organizes, he targets the cacophony or theatre communities.This worked great for Santarchy, but the same groups weren’t interested in Critical Ass, a nude bike parade down Queen Street. Instead, he targeted bicycle activists and nudists. The voyeurs found the event themselves.

Pick people up
You are your best billboard. If you turn the city into a playground, people will want to join in — let them. In the case of Santarchy, Santas bring extra hats to give out on the way and absorb people as they go.

When Globe writer Liz Clayton tagged along for a game of Manhunt, David Suzuki happened to walk by. “Hey, David Suzuki,do you want to play Manhunt with us?” He declined, but they had the right idea.

Adapt
These events are all about recontextualizing the city. They’re about taking something cold and functional and turning it into something fun.

If every one of these steps goes catastrophically wrong, work with it. Adapt. You can reconceptualize your mistakes.

Kevin Bracken made every effort to make sure there was nothing going on in Dundas Square the day of his pillow fight. In spite of this, when people arrived with their pillows,they were met with an anti-gun rally.They were talking about moving the fight to city hall when deputy mayor Joe Pantalone asked them if they wanted to join in.

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you turnaround for a minute?” announced Pantalone on stage. “We can learn a lesson from these kids: that we should fight not with guns, but with pillows.” All the television cameras turned from the stage to capture the fight. Bracken couldn’t be happier with how things worked out.

“We had our pillow fight in the commercial heart of the city, Dundas Square, with many smiles and not one problem.”

-joe rayment.