Run of the Isle
John DeMont
pp.16-18

Looking to build a cottage of your own on pei’s red soil? Before investing your family jewels, read up on the Island’s Land Protections Act, which is a tad less boring than it sounds.

If Islanders are passionate about their past, it’s because they’ve fought hard to control their own destiny. To read up on the Island’s dramatic history, check out resident University of Prince Edward Island historian Edward MacDonald’s If You’re Stronghearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century (Charlottetown: Peibooks, 2000) and John DeMont’s Citizens Irving: K.C. Irving and his Legacy (Toronto: Doubleday, 1992). More recent happenings are reported in the Island’s biggest newspaper, which claims, on its website, to “cover PEI like the dew.”

Dalvay by the Sea is the historic hotel featured in the story where you can get a little R n’ R after reenacting the Athenian glories at Marathon. Don’t try to cover more than 10 km, though, without boning up on some training basics.

Animated Discussion
Christopher Michael
pp.8-22

Although Japanese animation depicting sex between youths is legal in Japan, Shotacon such as Boku no Pico will likely never cross the Pacific and see distribution in Canada. R. v. Sharpe was a landmark 2001 case in which the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the provisions in the Criminal Code that outlaw the possession of child pornography, ruling that child pornography law represented a demonstrably justifiable limitation of section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. For his part, the accused mounted a defence arguing that: child porn and child sex abuse are separate sociological entities; child porn can inhibit sexual abuse by providing potential abusers with a form of catharsis; and written child porn (in this case, Sharpe’s own) contains artistic merit along the same lines as the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom. Only on the last count did the scc allow Sharpe an exception, permitting him to retain victimless (or fictional) written and visual materials of his own creation for his own personal use.

Much of the Japanese anime canon—a vast body of work that encompasses video games, television series, and film—is legal for import. Short for animeshone, a transliteration of the Japanese loanword for the English “animation,” anime first made it big in the West with Astro Boy, syndicated in 1963 by nbc studios. Since then, mech-oriented Robotech (Harmony Gold, 1985) and Voltron (World Events Productions, 1984), Sailor Moon (Cloverway International, 1995), Dragon Ball Z (FUNimation Entertainment, 1989), Pokémon (OM-Animation Studio, 1997), Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (Sunrise, 2000), and others have attracted dedicated viewers in North America. On celluloid, Akira (Telecom, 1988), Ghost in the Shell (Bandai, 1995), Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli, 1997), and Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli, 2003) have won the most accolades outside of Japan, with Spirited Away garnering a total of 35 film awards including the 2003 Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Readers interested a detailed history of anime and its various subgenres should leaf through Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy’s The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation since 1917 (Stone Bridge Press, Revised Edition, 2006), investigate Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on anime, or (at least) browse the “about” page of the Harvard Anime Society’s website. For the latest in anime news, the Anime News Network—self-described as the Internet’s “most trusted” source of anime news—should do the trick. Finally, the sexually audacious may be interested in a quick look at Wikipedia’s entry on Hentai, which provides an overview of anime’s more erotic subgenres, Shotacon included.

Suburban Renewal
Michel Arseneault