MARGARET ATWOOD
author
She could have retired and lived off her royalties long ago, but Atwood’s still cranking out brilliant novels, contributing to minuscule magazines and mentoring young writers. She remains politically engaged, saving the birds, to name just one of many causes. Oh yeah, and she has more Twitter followers than some of the biggest pop stars.
Sellout rating: 1/10
GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR
musicians
Frankly, we wish the Montreal post-rock orchestra were a little more willing to compromise. They try to keep journalists out of their shows (that doesn’t stop us, but still) and won’t do interviews or provide reasonable promo photographs. Their fiercely anti-capitalist stance sometimes feels like a naive relic of another era, but you have to give them credit for sticking to their guns and successfully operating outside the systems they despise.
Sellout rating: 1/10
DON McKELLAR
writer/actor/director
After winning a Tony for co-writing The Drowsy Chaperone in 2006, McKellar could have cashed in on his left-field Broadway hit. Instead, he continued to work with Canadian producers and directors – scripting and co-starring in Rhombus Media’s Blindness, writing Bruce McDonald’s This Movie Is Broken and acting in Reg Harkema’s Leslie, My Name Is Evil and Dilip Mehta’s Cooking With Stella, which just makes his cameo as a slumming American filmmaker in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World that much funnier.
Sellout rating: 1/10
CANADIAN STAGE
theatre company
Canada’s largest not-forprofit theatre company hit a low when it started staging cheesy musicals and middlebrow Broadway dramas. But it’s done a 180 under new artistic director Matthew Jocelyn, who’s mounted a mix of international works, like head-scratcher Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter, and homegrown pieces (the striking Studies In Motion, by Vancouver’s Electric Company). Even this summer’s High Park offering, The Winter’s Tale, isn’t one of the usual crowd-pleasers. All impressive, but will the shows sell out?
Sellout rating: 1/10
JAMIE KENNEDY
chef
With his telegenic good looks, locavore legend Kennedy could have been a Food TV superstar. Instead, he shied away from the cameras to focus on things like cooking with integrity and saving the planet one french fry at a time. Fool!
Sellout rating: 2/10
JIM GUTHRIE
musician
He’s paid his indie rock dues with stints in Islands and Royal City and in his own solo career, as well as co-founding Three Gut Records, but more people know his work through the Capital One jingle Hands In My Pocket. More recently, Guthrie wrote music for a video game and told NOW that he actually feels more at home doing scores than songs. But that’s how he keeps his own art untainted by commercial associations.
Sellout rating: 3/10
FEIST
musician
Despite her extraordinary success, the first thing about her that comes to mind is that 1234 iPod ad. But while having it crammed down our throats like that may have ruined the song for many, it also helped turn her into a viable pop star when radio wasn’t giving her much support. As much as it pains us to admit it, Feist selling out to Apple proved to many that the exposure from ad placements can be just as vital as the licensing fees.
Sellout rating: 4/10
GREG COUILLARD
chef
Now running two cantinas in sleepy Mexico, we always loved the restless bad boy Couillard, who has cooked in 34 kitchens in the last 38 years. But the iconoclastic chef was also the first local toque to make a deal with the devil (a supermarket chain) when Loblaws added his signature Jump-Up Soup to its President’s Choice line.
Sellout rating: 4/10
Sian Richards
THE NATIONAL BALLET
dance company
The artistic director of Canada’s biggest dance company has to please a core audience with the classics while enticing newer fans with contemporary works. Some of Karen Kain’s attempts at mainstream commercial crossover have been crass: Rooster, set to music by the Rolling Stones, for example. But last winter’s Chroma, choreographed to music by the White Stripes was a revelation. And Kain has thrilled audiences with the work of young Canucks like Crystal Pite, Sabrina Matthews and Peter Quanz.
Sellout rating: 4/10
RUSSELL PETERS
comic
Homegrown boy Peters has changed the model of stand-up superstardom, using social media to get his material out and then selling out stadium shows here and abroad, making him one of the world’s top-earning comics. He’s donated lots of cash to his old high school and Brampton Civic Hospital, and keeps his eye out for younger talent (Gilson Lubin, Debra DiGiovanni, Arthur Simeon). But what’s up with his surprise hosting of Charlie Sheen’s Canadian tour dates? Hope the Ma-Sheen paid his enabler well.
Sellout rating: 4/10
NUIT BLANCHE
all-night art party
We love the pricey, big-name, senses-drenching light and sound mega-installations at the all-night art event and don’t begrudge the event its major corporate sponsors, but what if organizers applied a kind of creative economy and sprinkled that cash around? What if the artsy extravaganza relied less on famous draws and more on a wider choice of smaller superb spectacles by lesser-known artists? Just askin’.
Sellout rating: 4/10
TIFF Bell Lightbox
film and festival venue
Having proven its viability as a year-round festival venue by assimilating the likes of Cinéfranco, Sprockets and Hot Docs, the Toronto Film Festival’s cathédrale du cinéma is still defining its identity as a day-to-day megaplex. Is it selling out to program Saturday matinees of 80s hits like Krull and Gremlins when programs could be digging deeper into the French New Wave or American film noir? Or is that just a reality of operating a five-screen venue? If they announce a Michael Bay: Director Of The Decade series, we’ll know we’re in trouble.
Sellout rating: 4/10
CHILLY GONZALES
entertainer
Gonzales celebrates selling out as part of his ongoing critique of false humility in indie rock. He’s one of the few musicians who boasts about getting his song in an iPad commercial while complaining that it hasn’t sent him to the top of the charts like Feist’s Gonzales-produced 1234. He’s open about how the money he made producing Feist and other high-profile musicians allows him to do ridiculous things like making the feature-length film Ivory Tower, about a chess game. Does being a proud sellout count?
Sellout rating: 5/10
LG FASHION WEEK
runway shows
We know blatant sponsorship makes today’s fashion world go round, but LG Fashion Week’s increasingly chummy relationship with global corporate matchmaker IMG is starting to strain relationships with long-time local backers and even the overworked photo pit.
Sellout rating: 5/10
TORONTO STAR
daily newspaper
The Toronto paper may have been established by striking printers and sworn to social justice and righting the ills of capitalism, but that didn’t stop the daily from preparing the psychological ground for Rob Ford. It pounded relentlessly at former mayor David Miller, accusing him of wild spending and financial mismanagement, most of it trivial. (Can you say “bunny suit”?), thus establishing the climate of indignation for Ford’s gravy train. The Star’s reportage on the G20 file, though, has been impressive. And endorsing the NDP? That’s gotta count for something.
Sellout rating: 5/10
NATURE CONSERVANCY OF CANADA
environmental org
There’s no recent example of a big green sellout like, say, Burt’s to Clorox or Kashi to Kellogg. Or anything on the scale of Sierra Club’s endorsement of Clorox Greenworks’ cleaning products. Then there’s Tree Canada. Who the fuck isn’t a partner of Tree Canada (Shell, TD) and its crappy SFI-certified toilet paper? The Nature Conservancy of Canada, though, has some answering to do for taking a $2.5 million “donation” from Enbridge last year even as the gas company plowed ahead with plans for a pipeline from the oil sands to BC. Does it matter that the cash will be used to protect habitat? Tough one.
Sellout rating: 7/10
BILL BLAIR
police chief
The progressive mayor’s choice for top cop has worked wonders with community policing ini-tiatives and showed admirable restraint during the Sri Lankan protests when some of them took to the Gardiner Expressway to get noticed. Then the G20 hit. Blair made excuses for the over-the-top actions of his cops, even lied to protect some among the rank and file and displayed for the media protesters’ “weapons” that weren’t weapons at all to justify police heavy-handedness. Some critics say Blair should have resigned. But he had less control of the action than people think.
Sellout rating: 7/10
TORONTO
via the Pam Am Games 2015
The Games were sold as a boon for development on the waterfront and a catalyst for much-needed infrastructure, namely Transit City. But some $23 million had to be raided from the city’s landfill monitoring budget to cover surprise soil remediation costs at the Games’ swimming pool site in Scarborough. And the province has fast-tracked more polluting diesel instead of electric trains on the airport-Union Station link to meet the Games deadline. The athletes’ village planned for the Lower Don lands is messing with the development mix envisioned for the eastern waterfront.
Sellout rating: 7/10
BRUCE COCKBURN
musician
More than a few activist types must have thought they were having a nightmare when the earnest singer/songwriter actively opposed the long gun registry. Seemed like a strange stance for someone who worried about Dangerous Times. Then again, it explains why he accepted an actual rocket launcher from the military when he performed his protest anthem If I Had A Rocket Launcher for Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
Sellout rating: 7/10
102.1 FM
radio station
From its humble Brampton beginnings in the 70s as CFNY until the early 90s, 102.1 FM was one of the most adventurous radio stations on the continent. Despite failed attempts to change to a more conventional format each time it switched owners, it wasn’t until 1992 that Maclean-Hunter mandated more conser-vative playlists, killing off the freewheeling approach that made it so vital in the 80s. DJs quit on air, and loyal listeners called for a boycott, but the marketable modern rock format stuck, putting the Spirit Of Radio in the past.
Sellout rating: 7/10
SCARBOROUGH BLUFFS RESIDENTS
wind turbine opponents
Call it a bad case of NIMBYism or call it passing wind. Scarberians who inhabit the tony enclaves above the Bluffs sold out a greener energy future for all of us (and the jobs the project would have created) by opposing a landmark plan to erect wind turbines offshore in Lake Ontario. All because, well, the clean energy generators would mess with the view. Yes, the Bluffs are historic. True, too, that wind turbines kill bats and birds. But we’d be more sympathetic if it weren’t for the fact that a small but vocal wing of the PC party from farm country was in the background pushing the panic button.
Sellout rating: 7/10
TORONTO
via street furniture
Toronto’s street furniture deal with Astral was offensive not only because it unleashed ad creep on our streets. Even worse, the sellout of public space happened for all the wrong reasons, all of them financial, after we got screwed in a similar deal for garbage bins with Eucan. (Remember them?) The millions in advertising that Astral promised haven’t materialized. And both the space-age bins and bus shelters come with huge design flaws: the foot levers to open the flap for waste on the bins bust and the bus shelters don’t keep blowing snow off your toes.
Sellout rating: 8/10
MARK McEWAN
chef
From Pronto to North 44 to Bymark, celebu-chef McEwan has attracted a well-connected clientele who’ve followed him to the Hazelton Hotel’s One. But then he got greedy and created the Fabbrica trat in Don Mills and the McEwan gourmet grocery store (aka the Mac’s Milk of the Bridle Path). In his attempts to raise his profile, he’s become the Simon Cowell of TV’s Top Chef Canada.
Sellout rating: 8/10
DALTON McGUINTY
Ontario premier
Sold right down the river: that’s what happened to Transit City when Preem McGuinty, aka Mr. Green Energy, succumbed to Ford Nation and ditched the transport plan. That $8.2 bil originally offered for light rail all over the city, including transit-challenged Finch West, will now be hogged by one single stupid obsession, putting the whole Eglinton light-rail line underground just so Ford can guarantee motorists a road monopoly – and McGuinty can hang on to a few seats in Toronto come the fall election (maybe).
Sellout rating: 9/10
CELINE DION
pop singer
One of the highest-earning performers in the industry, Céline Dion bends over backwards for ad dough. Not only did Air Canada advertising executives help write You And I for the airline’s ad campaign, but Dion also released the track as the album’s only single and shot the video at Pearson, just in case we weren’t already completely grossed out. Just a step up from running the DaimlerChrysler logo and slogan in the packaging of her One Heart album – because giving the corp the licence to four songs from the disc wasn’t profitable enough.
Sellout rating: 9/10
JAY MANUEL
fashion personality
The Next Top Model mentor used to be the warm and fuzzy face of an otherwise ruthless reality TV franchise. But when he signed on to creative-direct a line for Sears, which set the scene for Attitude’s debut catwalk show in March with a terrifying, 20-foot-tall, extra-airbrushed photo of Manuel’s mug, he went from aspiring-model bestie to evil fashion overlord in a flash.
Sellout rating: 10/10
PETER MUNK
philanthropist
The fat-cat philanthropist has his name on hospital wings for his generous charitable donations. But Munk is also chair of Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold mining company, linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of indigenous people and environ-mental disasters on the planet. He explained away gang rape accusations against workers at the company’s Papua New Guinea operations earlier this year by saying “gang rape is a cultural habit” in that part of the world. Now he’s donating $35 million to U of T to build the Munk School of Global Affairs – with strings attached to ensure the school’s teachings are in tune with his political views.
Sellout rating: 10/10
Cheol Joon Baek
ROB FORD
mayor
Captain Tax Fighter started with a $300 mil surplus. Now we’ve got a $785 million (and growing) deficit. Ford budget = shell game. El Fordo isn’t exactly earning every penny of that $165,000 salary he’s collecting from his beloved taxpayers either, keeping hours at the family business and a light calendar of official events – that is, when he’s not meeting with alleged fraudsters connected to the cops’ kickback problems in the entertainment district a few years back.
Sellout rating: 10/10
