The name “Mesopotamia” derives from a Greek term meaning “land between the rivers.” The Royal Ontario Museum’s latest major exhibit, which opens on June 22, takes this literally, as visitors flow between painted representations of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on the floor.

Presented by the British Museum and rounded out with pieces from institutions in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World covers 3,000 years of human development in the cradle of urban civilization. Most of the 170 artifacts on display have never been shown in Canada.

There are a lot of chefs in the kitchen for the Canadian premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, a triptych set in three time periods that tells the stories of amateur actors (played by real actors) involved in staging performances of the story of Christ. Three different Toronto independent theatre companies, all with reputations for innovative staging and creation in their past work, each tackle one of the three acts. Ordinarily, such a complicated arrangement would be to a show’s detriment, but not in this case. While you need to be prepared for a marathon of theatre (the show runs four hours, incluing two intermissions), you’re certainly going to get your money’s worth.

“A cross between Woodstock and the Algonquin Round Table,” is what Michael Redhill called it. Dorothy Parker grinding out an electric cover of “The Star Spangled Banner”? Well, not quite. Rather, Redhill, the literary curator for Luminato 2013, was describing A Literary Picnic, the annual festival’s celebration of storytelling, creativity, and the written word.

The 2013 Toronto Jazz Festival descends on the city this Friday with a huge “free for all” event. That means all of Friday’s programming at every Jazz Festival venue is, yes, completely free of charge. There will be concerts from local favourites Molly Johnson and Mary Margaret O’Hara, plus a show by Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves, who will be launching the fest from its epicentre, Nathan Phillips Square.

Here’s a rundown of some of the shows worth checking out on Friday—and during the rest of the festival, when you’ll actually have to pay.

Folks who are planning on having a swim in the pool at Scadding Court Community Centre over the next few days may find themselves a little disappointed. Those who want to go fishing, however, will probably be ecstatic.

For the rest of the week, the Community Centre will be holding its annual Gone Fishin’ event, meaning its indoor pool will be an indoor fish pond. The pool has been drained, dechlorinated, and refilled with 2,000 rainbow trout, to be caught by local children and families.

Protesters gather at St. James Park on Monday. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/photopia/8092688906/in/pool-341900@N21/"}HiMY SYeD{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/pool/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Roughly two dozen protesters—and an almost equal number of reporters—gathered in St. James Park on Monday to mark Occupy Toronto‘s one year anniversary. The gathering, which featured all the flags, dogs, signs, and acoustic guitars that people have come to expect from the Occupy movement, felt like part protest and part class reunion.

“The goal for me is to just see old friends,” said Occupier Christopher Lambe. “I think this is a day where people are going to come to this park for years to come, for the rest of my life—to reconnect with all these old people and think about those 40 days. Because a lot happens when you’re living in such a small space with 200 other people, and it hasn’t really been done, and it was pretty interesting.”

Lambe said that no one organized the anniversary celebration, but that it developed in typical Occupy fashion out of a consensus in their online community. “We threw it out there and said ‘What do you want to do?’” he said. “’Do you want to come here and have an artful display? Make music, do paintings, have an art installation, and chat and reminisce?’ And everyone wiggled their fingers and said ‘Yeah!’ So we put it up on Facebook and did what we did.”

He added that the anniversary celebration was much more artistically minded than the original protest, with plays, music, and collaborative visual-art pieces. “Last year, roaming around with a bunch of signs and yelling our faces off didn’t really get the message across in the way we wanted it to, so this is probably a better way,” he said. “There’s going to be a play in the gazebo, and the script is all verbatim things that were said in the park over the 40 days. A journalist gathered all the quotes and put them together. So it’s our story, put together in a much better way than we could do it.”

While Lambe was upbeat about the gathering, other Occupiers were less sunny. Heidi Stoecklin was one of the members of Aurorans for World Peace who came down to commemorate Occupy Toronto. She blamed, among other things, the corporately-owned media for the poor turnout.

“The media didn’t give us any sort of lead-up or any sort of credit. If they’d talked about it, there would be way more people here,” she said, adding that some former Occupiers probably had their spirits broken in the past twelve months.

“The media is not there for the people, and the police are not there for the people. We saw a lot of the will of the people diminished in that time. The world saw that the corporations and the coppers and our fascist police state will win.”

Fellow protester Sonny Yeung seemed to disagree. He pointed out that many of the movement’s concerns have gained traction with governments over the last year.

“I think some of our issues have been addressed,” he said. “In Ontario, the NDP was able to pressure the Liberals so that those making more than $500,000 will be paying a 2 per cent surtax; in Quebec, the PQ government is interested in taxing the wealthy; and in the States, if Obama is reelected, he’ll let the Bush tax cuts expire.”

Lambe said that, 12 months after the fact, his major takeaway from Occupy Toronto has been this: Change doesn’t come from political systems. It comes from people.

“The solution to our problems isn’t about demanding change, or demanding something from those in politics. It’s about demanding something from ourselves; a more open heart, a more charitable heart, a more benevolent heart. It’s about changing within ourselves and who we are as a society.”

The women of Toronto have had enough of feeling unsafe on their streets.

That was the overarching message at the rally and march that took place in and around Christie Pits Park on Monday evening. The protest was a response to a series of sexual assaults—10 reported attacks in the last two months—that have taken place in the Annex, all suspected to be the work of one man.

The rally was the brainchild of local resident Liz Brockest.

“It was a really gut reaction,” she said. “I felt like something had to be done. On the spur of the moment, I created a Facebook event. My intention was just have a small community meeting where we could strategize around things that could happen, but this community is angry, and this community is not going to tolerate violence. So this is where we are now.”

“Where we are now” was a rally with roughly 300 people—mostly women, but with a sizeable contingent of men, as well—listening to speeches from Anna Willats and Deb Singh of the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre. Willats decried the attacks, saying they are a result of a larger rape culture. Parkdale-High Park MPP Cheri DiNovo touched on a related point when she described attending a similar march 45 years ago and said that change was long overdue. Area councillor Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina) was also on hand, and called on his fellow men to stand up against violence against women. He added that he was pleased to see so many people coming to speak out against violence in their neighbourhood.

“This is about a community coming out and saying, ‘You know what? We’re a community that cares about one another,’” he said. “It’s about people stepping up when something is threatening their community…. It’s important for us to say, ‘This is a safe community,’ and to get eyes out on the streets to keep it that way.”

Longtime activist Farrah Khan helped Brockest organize the event. She said that the rally wasn’t just about taking back the streets. It was also meant to create a broader dialogue around consent, and to advocate for support services.

“We want to have a real dialogue around support services, both for victims and for the perpetrators of violence,” she said. “And we want to remind governments to stop cutting those services.”

Brockest said that she was pleased with the turnout, and attributed it in part to a collective anger following a summer that has been marred by a number of high-profile sexual assaults across the city.

“There’s just been so many,” she said. “We’re hearing about them at Queen and Sherbourne, at Parliament and Gerrard. There was a series of attacks up at York University; there were some in Kensington Market that they believe may be connected to [the Annex attacks]. It’s just been so much.”

She added that while the rally was specifically about the attacks in the area surrounding Christie Pits, she hoped it would cause people to speak out against violence against women as a whole.

“Right now, we’re fighting against stranger assaults, but most assaults happen in homes and are done by people we know,” she said. “We want to draw attention to that, too.”

WHERE: Bay Street

WHEN: Wednesday, August 22, 9:30 p.m.

WHAT: Concerned Torontonians first marched in solidarity with Quebec students back in May, taking to the streets with pots and spoons to rally against the Quebec government’s attempt to clamp down on tuition protesters. Those solidarity marches are still going on, though they’ve predictably become smaller over time. Last night, this one marched up Bay Street and then west on College, with 50 or so protesters and a few officers on horseback keeping watch.

A crowd of about 200 gathered outside the Russian consulate in Toronto at noon today, to rally against the conviction of Pussy Riot over their recent protest song, performed in a Moscow church in March of this year. The guerilla performance, which lasted just a few seconds, was recorded and went viral on YouTube; three members of the punk band have been in prison since they were arrested a few days later. Today, a judge found the three women—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich—guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and sentenced them to two years of corrective labour (with time already served counting toward that). The judge described her sentence as lenient, softened by the fact that two of the women have young children.

The Toronto protest included many Russian expats, as well as others showing their support for free expression in Russia. One protester we spoke with, Alla Kadysh, came here from Russia nearly 20 years ago. “Two years for singing a song?” she said, incredulously. “There is separation of church and state in Russia; this is the law.” She told us that among the people she knows still in Russia—and especially among the younger generation—there is an appetite to keep protesting, despite the increasingly harsh penalties for doing so. There were protests outside the Moscow court where the verdict was read today; several participants and observers (including Russian opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov and chess master Gary Kasparov) were arrested.

Over 300 people gathered in Dufferin Grove Park last night to protest in solidarity with the Quebec student uprising. They eventually marched all the way to Yonge and Bloor, and beyond.

Despite a threatening bank of clouds and the occasional spit of rain, parents, babies in strollers, young people, Davenport MPP Jonah Schein, socialists, union workers, and grandparents alike showed up clutching all manner of pots, pans, casserole dishes, and spoons—a style of protest known in Quebec as a manif casserole. Decked out in the requisite red squares, which have become the emblem of the protest, the crowd first milled about uncertainly in the park.

“It should be better organized,” said York University student Kavh Boveeiri. “There are a couple hundred or so [here]. There should be thousands!”

Still, those in attendance knew exactly why they had come. Heather Shand had brought her kids, ages three and five, to last week’s Toronto manif casserole to teach them the importance of solidarity with the Quebec protestors. She added: “I think [the Toronto protests are] resonating in Quebec. I think that they understand that they’re not alone, this is not in solitude, that we’re here in solidarity.”

Peter Hogarth of the International Socialists waxed eloquent on the broader social mandate behind the Quebec student strike, as inspired by the Occupy movement and its focus on economic inequality.

“I’ve been really inspired by the courage and determination of the Quebec students and the social transformation you see going on in Quebec,” he said. “It’s extending beyond a mere student strike. It’s about civil liberties and what kind of society people want.”

Although Hogarth conceded that students in Ontario have been more apathetic about tuition costs, he doesn’t think that necessarily means they’re not mad. “People are under a tremendous amount of pressure, in Ontario and around the country,” he said. “They’ve got a huge debt load. They’re working. Most students I know are working one or two jobs in addition to their course load. Apathy is often suppressed anger.”

The protest meandered uncertainly through west-end side streets before lurching onto Ossington, and then onto Bloor, where the group quickly picked up speed as a small faction of police on bicycles pressed on ahead to ward off oncoming traffic.

Though one contingent tried to divert the march onto St. George Street, the majority surged on, seemingly determined to make it to Yonge and Bloor. The booming of the drums, the clattering of pans, and the cheers from the crowd resonated off nearby buildings as many bystanders urged the march on. By the time the protest reached College and Church, however, only a handful of participants remained.

Last night’s outing was more street party than protest (the previous week’s event attracted an estimated 1500 people), but it appears, at least, that there is still some appetite for social change, even post Occupy. As protester Syed Hussan put it, “Governments have to fall to the will of people. They can fall soon or they can fall harder later.”

Meanwhile, from Leslieville…

Another casserole protest was scheduled for the east side of the city, in Leslieville. It was, to say the least, slightly anti-climactic. At one point, the protesters, who numbered roughly 15 at the height of the demonstration, were outnumbered by police, who mostly stood by the fence at the meeting point in Leslie Grove Park and looked bored.

Still, the Leslieville protesters had promised a march. And march they did, clanging their way along Queen Street East, north on Pape, and then looping back along Dundas Street and down Jones Avenue to the park. While their numbers were small, they were nothing if not enthusiastic.

According to protester Julie Devaney, who says she decided to come to the protest in part because she was inspired during a recent trip to Quebec, the Leslieville casseroles will become a regular occurrence. She expects turnouts to improve.

“I don’t think there was any great organizing effort this week,” she said. “I think this will be the first of increasingly bigger marches. Those of us who did show up today are going to put some effort into actually pulling people out.”

Although the initial turnout was small, Devaney was pleased to get some supportive honks from passing cars and a few folks coming out onto their porches to join in the percussive protest.

“This is a way for people to have fun, make noise, be engaged, and show, in a much broader way, what we stand for,” she said. “Next week, when we’re better organized, people will remember that this happened last Wednesday, and will start to connect that with the giant movement in Quebec and the growing movement across the country.”

WHERE: Dufferin Grove, through the streets to Dundas and Gladstone, and eventually near Bathurst and Bloor

WHEN: Wednesday, May 30, 8 p.m.–12 a.m.

WHAT: Canadians in cities across the country took to the streets last night, marching in solidarity with Quebec students who have been protesting tuition increases and recent government attempts to clamp down on those protests. Toronto’s manif casserole was good-humoured and upbeat. People gathered at Dufferin Grove and then marched along major and residential streets, out-manoeuvring police several times along the way: a lead group would march along while several meters back the rest of the crowd would turn down a different street. There were many shows of support as they went, people coming out of their homes with pots and pans to cheer on marchers—who in turn were handing out red squares to people they passed.

When the march arrived at Gladstone and Dundas, several of the marchers tried to convince the participants to move east along Dundas towards downtown, warning people in the crowd to leave if they had children with them. Event organizers quickly engaged this splinter group, after several heated arguments the crowd turned west (not east) onto Dundas. By about 11 p.m. the rally had made its way north to Christie Pits then headed east along Bloor, and finally down to Queen and Spadina; participants dispersed peacefully into the night around midnight.

Reporting by Dean Bradley.

Two summers ago, a lot of things we said about this government—then a minority—centered around its perceived slide towards authoritarianism. By July 2010, the Harper Conservatives had suspended parliament twice, both times out of naked self-interest, suggesting that the canary in the coal mine of Canada’s democracy was clinging with one claw to life. This was before the defunding of KAIROS, and well before Harper’s alleged attempts to isolate and vilify opposition to his agenda, referring to certain environmental organizations as “enemies” of the “government and people of Canada.”

And as we’ve learned in the last month, all of these abuses predated the most egregious charges ever brought against the Tories’ failed sense of accountability. In late February, a Postmedia/Ottawa Citizen investigation revealed that several ridings, many long-held Liberal strongholds that fell to the Conservatives, had reported misleading automated calls before the election, all telling voters that their polling stations had moved. In many cases, the “new” polling stations were on opposite ends of town, outside their supposed ridings. With voters scattered and the process obstructed, it’s a form of electoral fraud, and in some way or another it looks like members of the Conservative Party were involved.

This past Sunday, several hundred Torontonians gathered to protest those robocalls and demand a full federal investigation of the matter—calls the Tories have so far rejected.

Where we are in 2012 shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. Politically, the signs and symptoms have been evident for a long, long time. But as with any government for whom transparency and democracy are anathema—which is pretty funny with this group, all things considered—it’s often been the most visibly heavy-handed repression that bespeaks everything we may not want to know about the Harper Government.

We now have a majority government that barely falls short of maligning environmental activists as terrorists, the same government whose ministry of public safety permitted a surveillance campaign of political activists before the G20 that set records for law-enforcement excess in Canada. And even when hanging by a minority thread, we’ve had a government that nonetheless managed to manipulate the system to ensure its own survival—and effectively declare Canadian democracy moot in the process. It is a government aided by institutional violence.

The Tories’ handling of the recent allegations of electoral fraud reveal the ultimate hubris of this government, and are an ultimate assault on Canadian democracy. “Robogate” makes the police-state chicanery of the Montebello and G20 summits the tip of an eerily deceptive iceberg, hinting at but not fully illuminating the power-hungry depths to which this newly minted majority, or some members thereof, will sink.

“In 14 ridings,” wrote Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt, “Liberal supporters reported receiving misleading calls from live people.” This is in addition to the 18 ridings—everywhere from Guelph to Prince George—that reported confusing automated messages before the May 2 general election, each from a call centre under Conservative employ, each claiming that polling stations had moved to inconveniently far-flung places. When all ridings were reported, the Conservatives had finally taken Parliament, locking down four years of unfettered rule with the magic 166 seats. “According to Bob Rae’s latest count,” Den Tandt continues, “the tally of affected ridings, for Liberals alone, is 27.”

166 seats—the critical number. “That’s a margin of 11,” Den Tandt concluded. “That means the legitimacy of the Tory majority is in question. It’s simple math.”

This weekend, that’s something thousands of Canadians from every corner of the country rallied to remind this government. Collectively, it was an exercise in staying on message that comes at a necessary time, considering the coverage that has filtered down through our national media over the past few days. Muddling the issue, headlines at the CBC indicated that Liberals, too, have used robocalls in the past, as if the use of an automated calling service is the real problem. It’s not. The problem, categorically, is that it appears we have a government whose complete deficit of accountability extends to democracy itself, using a resource familiar to all political parties—robocalls—to confuse, deflect, distract, or otherwise obstruct voters. To “lock the doors of Parliament,” as the late Jack Layton said of Harper’s prorogation, is one thing. But to suppress democracy at the grassroots level, among the people of Canada itself, is the one unforgivable crime against democracy that a government can commit. It reflects contempt for a nation which put its trust in you, and if there’s anything Harper has in spades, even before he had any political relevance in this country, it’s that.

Exhorting Canadians to take action, Sherif Azer, assistant secretary general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, and an influential force in the 2011 revolution that brought down Hoszni Mubarak, was the last speaker at Sunday’s rally. It was fitting. Joining the message shared by speakers like LeadNow.com’s Matthew Carroll and Fair Vote Canada’s Wayne Smith, Azer encouraged Canadians to change the system, suggesting that what Canada needs is a “Canadian Spring”—a sentiment we first heard from Brigette DePape last June. “Many people died where I come from just to give a lesson to governments,” Azer said, “that the power of the people will prevail one day. My message for the governments is never underestimate a demonstration, never underestimate the legitimate demands of the people.”

Or perhaps it was another speaker who said it best, all the way back in 2005. “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”

That speaker was Stephen Harper, and he was right. But in 2012, his government isn’t “rapidly losing” that moral authority. His government has lost it altogether.