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Players to Plaintiffs

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The unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic has made 2020 a year to forget for businesses and industries alike. One of the hardest hit by the pandemic seems to be the live sports and entertainment industry. Many professional sports leagues have been postponed or cancelled, and only those with healthy financial resources or lucrative TV broadcasting contracts have survived. For smaller corporations...

Health Canada Approves Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine: A Welcome Safety Net?

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On February 26th, Health Canada officially approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine (called ChAdOx1) following clinical trials that displayed a 62.1% efficacy rate in reducing symptomatic cases of COVID-19. Health Canada’s approval followed a series of national regulators authorizing the vaccine for administration across the EU, the UK, India and Mexico.  Through a global vaccine-sharing...

Looking Back on Our Law School Summers

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Ryan: Hi all — since many of our 1L and 2L staff members and readers are in the midst of planning their summers, I thought it would be good for us to reflect on our 1L and 2L summers and provide some perspective. I’ll start by asking about the differences between the summer after 1L and the summer after 2L. How did you approach the two? Did anyone do the 1L recruit? Laura: I certainly felt...

Guess Who’s SPAC, SPAC Again – Part II

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A picture of Jay-Z on the left, a person taking care of marijuana plants on the right

In Part 1 featured in Issue 8 we endeavored to explore on a high level the nature of SPACs and how they operate. In Part 2, we will be your guide through a select few current examples of SPACs on the marketplace. Feel free to jump ahead to a particular SPAC that’s interesting, or read them all – but in any case, be sure to note the common motivations behind creating the SPAC, as well as the...

Nuclear Armageddon May be Closer Than You Think

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On 8 September 2020, the United States Air Force announced that it would award a contract worth $13.3 billion to the Northrop Grumman Corporation to construct new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) able to travel at least 9600km at a speed of Mach 23 (7889 m/sec). They plan on ultimately buying 600 missiles for a total cost of approximately $100 billion. It is no secret that the US’s...

The Better Living Centre

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Emblematic of the City’s failure to protect individuals experiencing homelessness Recently, 14 applicants, each of whom have been experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic, filed a lawsuit against the City of Toronto (Black et al v City of Toronto, 2020, ONSC 6398). One of the applicants, Mr. Cullen, was forced to use his Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit (CERB) to pay for hotels...

China’s price for saving the world may be too costly for the Biden Administration

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If countries can’t work together to decarbonize the economy and fight climate change, it is unlikely that the states will meet global pledges to emissions reductions in the Paris Agreement. This is nowhere more evident and worrisome than in US-China relations. Global warming is in large part a US-China problem; the two countries combined account for 43% of worldwide carbon emissions. Relations...

Highway of Death

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Canada Marks a Grim Military Anniversary On February 25th, we Canadians marked the 30th anniversary of a military massacre committed in our names that many in the West are completely unaware of – with critical details buried by the press at the time and little to no media or political attention since. The assault, launched by combined US, Canadian, French and British forces, resulted in the...

My Music: Contemporary Classical

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It may surprise you that many composers continue to write music in the classical tradition, broadly construed. One possible reason for the belief that the development of classical music ended some time ago is the “classical” label itself, which suggests that the category is historical. As well, it doesn’t help that “contemporary classical” is not really a coherent genre. Composers are engaging...

Looking for an Escape During the Pandemic? Look No Further Than Middle-Earth

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I woke up this morning groggy as usual. I showered, brushed my teeth, threw on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, and begrudgingly walked downstairs to start working. Eight hours later I returned upstairs, watched a few hours of mindless television, then surrendered back to my bedroom, feeling thankful, but resentful, that I made it through another day that felt like it was filled with absolutely...

Something Rotten in the State of Classical Music

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Music school demands much from every student, but for some, it takes far more than it gives.   An undergraduate degree in violin, cello, or piano performance is unlike any other major. To be accepted into an arts or sciences program, you must show, at the very least, good grades, but in the case of music school, prospective students are required to have already dedicated their entire...

Dancing and Letting Go

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“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”  – Alan Watts  With the continuous change in circumstances and the associated routines and emotions, it can be really difficult to keep adapting to new demands. I have found this to be especially true over the last few months with the overwhelming sense of responsibilities that arise...

March Madness – A Reminder to Take a Break

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March has finally arrived. March has always been my favourite time of the year because of the excitement surrounding the NCAA Basketball March Madness tournament. From a young age, my dad would print out the brackets and we would fill them out by hand. We would then track our success throughout the tournament with red X’s and blue circles. As I grew up, the pen and paper brackets evolved into...

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Do you want to speak French–particularly in the law?

Are you interested in learning about civil law, bilingualism in the law and legal studies?

Are you interested in…croissants?

Come join the Osgoode Francophone Association.

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Inside the NHL: A look at the early front runners for MVP

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The NHL season is just over twenty games old, and yet you can already make a strong case for certain players to win this year’s Hart Trophy for the NHL’s Most Valuable Player. Some, such as Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid who was crowned League MVP in 2017, are no strangers to this conversation. Other contenders, such as Jonathan Huberdeau, find themselves in uncharted waters. Below is a look...

Has the Premier League gone off the boil?

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Chelsea and United’s scoreless draw highlights the lack of fizzle in recent years As Chelsea gritted their way to a goalless draw at Stamford Bridge that saw them share the points with a visiting Manchester United, I was left a little deflated. As a Blues fan myself, I wasn’t happy that we had once again failed to win at home against United— a recurring trend since 2017.  The post-match...

Resistance Gallery

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Red Veil – Christianah Adeyemi: Red Veil embodies what it means to be Black living in the present age. There are many limitations Blacks face in the society and behaviours that we have to conform to just because we are perceived differently. This experience of having to be less of yourself is similar to a veil covering our faces and stopping us from being who we really are. However, our...

Volumes in Colour

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We as Black women are blessed with an adorning power. We are strong, because by being Black we are forced everyday to go to war with the ideas about our identities that introduce themselves and proclaim who we are as Black women before a word or formality ever escapes our lips.  Our skin speaks. We ask it to let our lips do the talking, but it cannot. Its position, coated in histories of...

Black Protest has given Canadians a standard of human rights, and a level of inclusion, equity and diversity. But there’s more to do.

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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Toronto Star in August 2020. It is reprinted here with the permission of the author, Anthony Morgan. Anthony is a lawyer and the Manager of the City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism (CABR) Unit. The CABR Unit is responsible for the implementation of the Toronto Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism. Overpoliced and...

Revisiting “The Velvet Rope”

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Janet Jackson

Rediscovering Janet Jackson’s 1997 release in a post-Timberlake apology world As someone born in 1998, I was far too young to have any vivid memories of the 2004 Super Bowl (yes, Tom Brady and the Patriots won that one too), the halftime wardrobe malfunction, or the immediate panic that it sparked. However, the subsequent cultural framings of the event have lasted throughout my childhood, and...

Tic Tacs For Coping with a Virtual World

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At this point into the academic year, the race to the finish line is already underway. It doesn’t take an academic veteran to know that this time of the year is crucial; Marsian energy is officially in full swing. For my non-astrologically inclined folks, this time of the year during a pandemic that has seized in-person interaction at all universities and transformed our living spaces to...

Urban Planning Has a Literacy Problem

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This article will be the first of a three part series and will take a look at the Jane-Finch community from a land use perspective. Shannon Holness, MES(Pl.) is an urban planner from the Jane-Finch community and her lived experience informs her approach to the practice. There are so many changes being introduced to the built environment of the Jane-Finch community. The Finch West LRT will spur...

Lawyers Move Out the Way

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Note: This article was written in response to Charn, J. (2013). “Celebrating the “null” finding: Evidence-based strategies for improving access to legal services” Yale Law Journal, 122, 2206. Charn takes an analytical approach in deconstructing the value of the right to counsel. Drawing on empirical studies of how litigants represented by lawyers fared in comparison to litigants with...

The Capitalist Revolt Against Wall Street

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What do Shaquille O’Neal, Occupy Wall Street, and internet pizza connoisseur Dave Portnoy have in common? Well, more than you might think. The GameStop saga, the growth of crypto and the recent proliferation of blank cheque corporations are all expressions of a much deeper cultural phenomenon bubbling underfoot. In recent weeks, the financial markets have dramatically re-entered the popular...

Arab Spring: How demands for reform continue to echo across the MENA nations 10 years later

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It has been ten years since the revolutionary high of the 2011 Arab Spring protests rippled across the Middle East and North African nations, underscoring the heavily fragmented nature of relations between rulers and the ruled. Despite the wave of protests that erupted in nations across the region, there were limited victories, and, to this day, the political and economic crises that fueled the...

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