This fall, we begin a new film screening series at the TRANZAC (292 Brunswick Avenue), featuring documentaries and narrative films that tackle current political and social issues. The series kicks off on September 25 with WAL-TOWN, director Sergeo Kirby’s NFB-produced look at the business practices of mega-retailer Wal-Mart and the ongoing debate of the company’s effect on towns across Canada.

With Wal-Mart Canada eyeing Toronto’s historic Kensington Market neighbourhood for future development, public attention has again turned to Wal-Mart and the radical effects of the retail giant’s business practices. When RioCan announced plans to install a 125,000-square-foot Wal-Mart in the former site of Kromer Radio (just beside the distinctive, fabled Kensington Market), the Friends of Kensington Market formed to oppose the deal, and Toronto City Council passed a bylaw to freeze current development on the Bathurst strip.

The screening of WAL-TOWN will shed some light on the current Kensington situation, as well as tie into the September/October issue of This Magazine: our annual Corporate Hall of Shame issue. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by This Magazine editor Lauren McKeon, debating some of the issues raised by the documentary and the current Kensington Wal-Mart proposal.

The Every Film Is Political series is a fundraiser of This Magazine‘s Red Maple Foundation. Tickets, to raise much needed funds for the ongoing print operations of the nearly 50-year-old publication, will be $15 at the door for the screening and include a copy of the Corporate Hall of Shame issue. Event is on Sept. 25, doors open at 6:30 p.m.

This Magazine would like to thank CUPE Ontario for their support of this event. For information about their Stand Up for Fairness Campaign please visit standupforfairness.ca.

You can also buy tickets in advance at our online shop and get the 2013 Corporate Hall of Shame issue now, plus last year’s Hall of Shame as a free bonus issue!

Photo: Target Canada Facebook

Forget St Patrick’s Day and Easter, March 2013 is Target month. The American big box store opened its first three Canadian stores yesterday, with one each in Guelph, Milton, and Fergus, Ont. These are the first of 24 set to open this month. By the end of this year, up to 135 Targets will cover the great white north. For the sake of comparison, there’s an average of 35 Targets per state in the US.

Is that the direction we’re heading in? Canada is already home to over 300 Walmarts, according to their website. When Walmart invaded in 1994 (was it only that long ago?) they bought out all of the 122 Woolco stores. History repeated itself in 2011, when Target bought 220 Zellers stores to renovate and move into. They even sold 39 locations to Walmart.

Sixty shoppers waited in line at the Target store opening in Milton yesterday. Two hundred people lined up starting at 6 a.m. for the 8 a.m. opening of the Guelph store. We get the hype: in place of Walmart’s in-store McDonald’s, all Target locations will have a Starbucks and an Apple shop. But I expected more from you, Canada.

How come our shoppers are so pumped about a store that supports unethical sourcing and sells cheap plastic merch, anyway? Or maybe it’s simpler to consider: What good can Target possibly bring? Target stores will supply 27,000 jobs upon completion, but try telling that to the former Zellers workers who lost theirs.

When most Zellers buildings were sold, employees assumed that they could stay. It’s only fair, they thought. It’s on the same turf and it’s practically the same store. However, Target wants to give all potential hires an “equal” chance — meaning these unionized Zellers workers would start from scratch. If they once held senior positions or received benefits, these would be lost. Target will have about double the workers per store than Zellers did.

American Target workers have come forward about their low wages and the company’s anti-union attitude. Recent US headlines like, “Workers Locked Inside Target Stores Overnight” and “Workers Cleaning Target Store Threaten to Strike” don’t bode well for the corporation’s reputation, either. This is the high cost of low price all over again.

At least customers can “expect more, pay less” as the slogan goes, or can they? Naysayers deny that Target can offer the same low prices as in the US. You’ve probably noticed, but stuff costs more here. Not to mention we have higher taxes and transportation and labour costs.

“A Target store with Canadian prices is no big deal, a Target store with American prices is what we want,” said a commenter on a Canadian Press article. And I can’t help but agree with that logic. Target has powerful branding and high-demand products behind them, but its discount prices won’t outdo those of Walmart anyway.

And that’s what we’re stuck with — two evil big-box bully stores instead of one. The red and white Target is shiny and new, but beyond the gloss is just another Walmart. “Buy Canada,” read a Canadian Tire sign near a Target on Monday. Either we tell Target with our loonies that they’re good fer nothin’, or watch other smaller businesses crumble.

A frame from Mike Holmes' new book, "This American Drive." Courtesy Invisible Publishing.

When Mike Holmes passed through Toronto on his reading tour last fall, he warned the audience, “I’m a cartoonist, not an author.”

Holmes is, in fact, both. His latest work, This American Drive, is not just a novel with pretty pictures. Weaving traditional storytelling and elements of the graphic novel with unexpected ease, the book is Holmes’s memoir of his road trip from Halifax to his then-girlfriend’s parents’ home in Texas. Along the way he passes through the America of our imagination—full of fast food joints and rock ‘n’ roll icons.

Aside from Holmes’s dry wit and and hilarious drawings, the book is also pleasant to the touch. Its thick, textured cover and smooth cream pages alert the reader that Invisible Publishing’s books aren’t your average corner-store-comics fare. Publisher Robbie MacGregor stresses the importance of making books that are as appealing to the eye as to the brain. This small Nova Scotia publishing house makes a point of finding new authors who might otherwise slip under the radar.

Holmes says he’s never really noticed a difference between Canadians and the world south of the border—a fact he drives home in his book with a humourous illustration of the first few miles beyond the Maine border: a Tim Hortons, a Walmart, and an Irving station.

“Oh Maine. Come join us,” he coaxes from the page. “We’ll treat you right.”