The doors of the Phoenix Concert Theatre opened a little later than scheduled leaving an enormous crowd lining the sidewalk of Sherbourne St. in Toronto, buzzing with the anticipation of seeing guitar legend Yngwie J. Malmsteen. I had overheard one of the doormen say it had taken longer than anticipated to load in and set up Yngwie’s thirty seven Marshall amps hence the almost hour long delay to get inside. The crowd didn’t seem to mind the delay. It was one of the first nights we’ve had that wasn’t bitterly cold in this unusually late Spring in Southern Ontario, so standing outside wasn’t too painful at all.

The crowd, although lacking gender diversity, spanned many decades in age. The teenagers and twenty-something’s represented the eighties in fine form. Long hair, old school concert shirts and jackets, high tops and skinny jeans were in abundance. The energy was high as the doors opened and the night got underway.

Taking the stage first was a young thrash band out of New York City. Martyrd are a high energy,  retro thrash band with great stage presence. The singer (although a little screamy for my taste) had a great look with waist length hair that he had clearly honed as his secondary instrument. The hair solos were phenomenal!!! Martyrd are a little on the heavy side for me but definitely talented and tight.

The Phoenix is a great spot to see a show. The stage is a decent size, the sound is usually good and there isn’t a bad place to stand.  It’s a great place to people watch in between bands and tonight was no exception. I was loving the old school eighties style resurgence and amazed that the kids can (and more to the point want to) pull it off today. It was cool to see! My favorite person to watch (and that may be because he walked past us at least twenty seven times) was the guy we dubbed “Trinity”. He looked like he stepped right out of the Matrix movie. I’m not quite sure where one would even purchase a coat like that but it was most impressive. I would have asked but he looked a little preoccupied with taking himself far too seriously.
Anyway…

Second on the bill were The Ethan Brosh Band, taking the stage before the legendary Yngwie J. Malmsteen. Ethan Brosh has three bands. A vocal band (Angels of Babylon), an instrumental  band and a Bon Jovi Tribute band (Living on a bad Name). Performing tonight and for the first half of the tour was the instrumental band. I don’t think they had been on stage for more than thirty seconds before I knew they were something great!

Ethan Brosh is an incredibly talented, technically savvy, guitar maestro!  His sound is very retro, and reminiscent of the awesome technical skills of Vinnie Moore which took me back to a great place and time in my music archives. After an incredible set (although far too short) Ethan invited fans to come and chat with the band at the merchandise booth which I was eager to do as I had, in the last thirty minutes, become a huge fan. Ethan and his sister Nili  (rhythm guitarist) were genuinely happy to meet and talk to fans. I overheard Nili say that she had played with Tony MacAlpine, Impressive!!

Ethan was very humble, soft spoken and seemingly without ego. Surprising and somewhat refreshing for someone so young with so much talent. We chatted for a few minutes and before retuning to the concert hall, I purchased their newest CD “Live the Dream”. (Which has been on repeat in my car ever since).

You can check out Ethan on his YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ethanbrosh.

The lights went out, the smoke started and that unmistakable shredding guitar sound came pumping through the speakers louder than life!  The show opener was “Rising Force”. A great choice I must say!! As I looked to see who was belting out this awesome song I was instantly in shock and awe. None other than Trinity! Straight out of the Matrix and onto stage left behind the keyboard. Cool! I guess he’s entitled to take himself a little seriously. His voice was killer!! I’m a huge Jeff Scott Soto fan so I was prepared to be a little critical and instead was thoroughly impressed.

The singing was split between the keyboardist (Nick Marino) and the bass player (Ralph Ciavolino). Both were outstanding.  I was under the impression that Tim “Ripper” Owens was still singing for YJM but while at the merchandise counter had learned he was no longer with the group. The guy in front of me picked up a cd and asked “is this the one with the Ripper on it?” and the kid behind the counter replied “I don’t know, I’m not a fan of that guy, my Dad is way better!” Intrigued I was, I had to ask. “Who’s your Dad?”. “Ralph Ciavolino” he replied. “He’s the bass player and lead singer”. (Not entirely accurate but close enough and nice to see a kid so proud of his Dad.)

About four songs into the set, the bass player donned a Canadian hockey jersey. (YAY!!!) He wore it for the remainder of the set which must have been smoking hot as he, the keyboardist and drummer were crammed into slightly more than a quarter of the stage while the other three quarters was owned by the mighty Yngwie surrounded by his temple of Marshall stacks. (Did I mention there were thirty seven!) The band were tight but difficult to hear as the mix was over the top heavy on Yngwie. (About the same ratio as the stage placement).

The set ended with my least favorite YJM song of all time. “Heaven Tonight”. Really?!?! Ugh!!! Now it’s stuck in my head.  I can’t believe he even wants to do that song.

I’d tried to block out that they even tried to make that terrible foray into the Glam Metal scene! That could be why Odyssey was the last YJM album I bought. I didn’t recognize much material past 1988 as by that time I had, shall we say, moved on.

I turned to my friend Kevin and said ” Malmteen’s great but I really dig that Ethan Brosh Band”. “Absolutely” he said, “he’s like Malmsteen but without all the attitude!”  Well said Kev, well said!

Malmsteen came back out and did a two song encore. Black Star which I found completely underwhelming and then, just as I was about to completely lose interest, they broke into  “I’ll See the Light Tonight” for the final number. Marching Out was probably my favorite album released in 1985 so I was stoked. What a great way to end the show.

The “back up” band were fantastic and deserved much appreciation and respect although they, at no time, received any props, nor even an introduction from YJM. (Thank goodness for Wikipedia!).  Not a surprise, merely an observation.  It is, after all, all about Yngwie right?

The guitar tech was on stage for the entire show. Between the seventy five plus pick strips that needed replacing on what seemed like a minutely basis, the spinning, tossing and general vandalizing of the huge inventory of guitars, the fans trying to touch the “Maestro” and his gear, the tech looked as though he was nearing a complete nervous breakdown by the time the show was done.

There were a few technical glitches. (it was only the third night of the tour). At one point in the show, the bassist tried to fill dead air time by telling REALLY bad jokes, awkward!!!!! To make it just a little more awkward, more than once, when he reached the punch line, YJM broke into a test riff or a power chord just in time to cut him off. (Seemingly unintentional although we are talking about YJM so was it…really?!)

All that being said, there is no doubt that Yngwie was outstanding!! Of course he was, he’s Yngwie J. Malmsteen!  Would you expect anything less?

By Kaitlyn Sawyer

 Our travel and features writer for Thursday Night Magazine, Kaitlyn Sawyer, has just moved to Portland, Maine. She’s spent the last while residing in Bar Harbor with Acadia National Park as her backyard. Now she is shifting gears and moving into the city scene, and as she writers in her column, she only wants to embrace change. 

So I did it, I closed my chapter of island living. After a lucky seven seasons in hiking paradise, it’s a bitter sweet departure. My last night at Joe’s Smoke Shop was a last minute election party in November with locals rubbing elbows and killing off  the last our beer and liquors before buttoning up for the winter months. I featured drinks in red or blue cups and watch the state of Maine proudly make history, passing question number one for marriage equality. In hind sight, it was a happy night to finish on. A bitter sweet departure, indeed. When one door closes, another one opens….

Enter Vignola Cinque Terre, a farm to table fine-dining establishment, boasting a hand-picked, extensive wine list, fresh cocktails, and exquisite cuisine. In typical service industry fashion, I happened to be in the right place at the right time when a full-time bartending position opened up and I couldn’t resist making the leap. Despite my bartending focus changing from late-night booze slinging to wint pairings, there is no shortage of interesting characters that settle up to the bar.

During my first week of training, I’m the new chick, picking up shifts and working a spontaneous schedule. My first Sunday brunch double showcased quart after quart of spicy bloody mary’s and champagne concoctions. My latest muse is a sweet ginger-lime infused champagne sipper– a perfect way to recap the previous night’s poor decisions. A regular that I had been prefaced about settled up to the bar, ordering his usual poached eggs. David DeLorme founded DeLorme Mapping in 1976 and since then has pioneered innovative mapping technology and tools. His story is a fascinating one, a true Mainer with a passion for the outdoors. After decades of consumer mapping work, a diagnosis left him at a crossroads, in which he opted to open an organic farm in southern Maine. Very cool. As expected, he pulled out his Ipad at the bar to show satellite photos of my childhood home in Yarmouth and his farm. I love being inspired, finding that humbled individual out of the crowd amidst drink-slinging chaos, who has faced adversity and came out on top. He was kind enough to give me a DeLorme hat upon departure; A reward given to the most “interesting individuals” he encounters.

Tuesday tends to be the quieter night behind the bar and this one was no different. Near the end of my shift, Bobby Robins from the Providence Bruins came into my bar for one of our signature dishes. I admit, I am unfamiliar with the AHL scene in New England, since it’s been a while since I’ve been so close to our hometown boys, the Portland Pirates. Robins was a gentleman, humbled and polite, making it totally unexpected that his reputation features a whole bunch of penalty minutes. However, with years of professional hockey under his belt, I was more intrigued by his blogging: A talented writer sharing his inspirations, tribulations and daily life as a hockey player. It’s a reminder that professionals in the spotlight are human too and we are all challenged and tempted by something, but it’s how you cope that builds character. I highly recommend checking out his blog.

 Spring is upon us in Maine and I will be attempting to fill my hiking needs in Portland, Maine, without having a national park in my backyard. I’ve reacquainted myself with the gym, checked out some killer live music, scoped out new mountains to conquer, and met a whole different demographic of young professionals that I look forward to writing about. The future’s so bright; I’ve got to wear shades!

]]> http://www.thursdaynightmagazine.com/2013/04/21/new-city-new-bartending-gig-new-patrons-same-nightly-antics/feed/ 1 http://www.thursdaynightmagazine.com/2013/04/20/bombing-probe-focuses-on-2011-warnings-2012-chechnya-trip/ http://www.thursdaynightmagazine.com/2013/04/20/bombing-probe-focuses-on-2011-warnings-2012-chechnya-trip/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:07:48 +0000 Paul Fitzgerald http://www.thursdaynightmagazine.com/?p=1388 With one suspect dead and the other captured and in hospital wounded, the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings turned Saturday to questions about the men’s motives and to the significance of a trip one of the bombers took to Chechnya.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed early Friday after a shootout with police in Watertown, Mass., travelled to Russia for six months in 2012. Law enforcement officials are now conducting a review of that trip, to see if Tamerlan might have met with extremists or received training from them while abroad, current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials said.

“It’s a key thread for investigators and the intelligence community to pull on,” Kevin R. Brock, a former senior FBI and counterterrorism official, said.

On Saturday morning, federal prosecutors were drafting a criminal complaint against Tamerlan’s brother and suspected accomplice in the bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was wounded in the leg and neck and had lost a great deal of blood at the time he was captured Friday evening.

A spokeswoman for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Kelly Lawman, confirmed on Saturday that Tsarnaev was being treated there, but declined to comment on his condition. The FBI would be providing any updates, she said.

U.S. officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects would question him, but he was still unable to speak.

The FBI and local law enforcement agencies continued to gather evidence and investigate the bombings on Monday, the slaying of an MIT police officer Thursday night and the subsequent battle with the police that left another officer critically wounded.

The official said that the criminal complaint will likely include a constellation of charges stemming from both the bombing and the shooting, possibly including the use of weapons of mass destruction, an applicable charge for the detonation of a bomb. That charge, the official said, carries a maximum penalty of death. While Massachusetts has outlawed the death penalty, federal law allows it.

Questions also arose concerning the arrest and prosecution of the surviving brother, and whether he should be given a Miranda warning and other elements of constitutional rights in criminal cases.  Further attention surrounds the government’s early scrutiny of Tamerlan and whether possible warning signs may have been missed.

Investigators did invoke what the Justice Department has called a public-safety exception to delay the discussion of the Miranda rule with Dzhokhar.

Miranda rules require investigators to warn a suspect in custody of the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present. If prosecutors want to use statements at a trial that a defendant made in custody, the police must first have advised him of his rights, the Supreme Court ruled in 1966 to protect against involuntary self-incrimination. The court later created an exception, allowing prosecutors to use statements made before any warning in response to questions about immediate threats to public safety, such as where a gun is hidden.

The question applying those rules in terrorism cases arose after a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. After landing in Michigan, he was given painkillers for burns and confessed to a nurse. He also spoke freely to FBI agents for 50 minutes before going into surgery.

After he awoke, the FBI read Abdulmuttalab the Miranda warning, and he stopped co-operating for several weeks.

For the Tsarnaevs, further scrutiny surrounds the government’s early monitoring of Tamerlan and whether possible warning signs may have been missed.

As federal officials now step up their investigation, an important element will be the trip the elder brother made to Russia and Chechnya in 2012. In early 2011, the FBI said in a statement, “a foreign government” – now acknowledged by officials to be Russia – asked for information about Tamerlan, “based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.” A senior law enforcement official said they feared he could be a risk, and “they had something on him and were concerned about him, and him travelling to their region.”

The bureau responded to the request by checking “U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history,” the statement explained. The bureau also interviewed Tamerlan and family members. According to the statement, “the FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign,” and conveyed those findings to “the foreign government” by the summer of 2011. As the law enforcement official put in, “We didn’t find anything on him that was derogatory.”

Tamerlan did travel to Russia early last year and returned six months later, on July 17, a law enforcement official said. He spent most of the time with his father in Makhachkala, the capital of the Dagestan region, the men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, told a Russian interviewer, but “we went to Chechnya to visit relatives,” he said.

Members of the Tsarnaev family in Makhachkala recalled those interviews vividly. In an interview in Russia, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the two men, said that the FBI had questioned her older son closely. She recalled that they told her he was “an excellent boy.” But “at the same time they told me he is getting information from really, extremist sites, and they are afraid of him.”

The state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the father, Anzor Tsarnaev, about the FBI agents close questioning, “two or three times,” of Tamerlan. Anzor, who lives in a five-storey, yellow brick building in a working-class neighborhood of the city, recalled that the agents told his son, “We know what you read, what you drink, what you eat, where you go.” He said that they told Tamerlan that the questioning “is prophylactic, so that no one set off bombs on the streets of Boston, so that our children could peacefully go to school.”

Those comments, he said, disturbed him. “This conversation took place a year and a half ago. But there is a question, why would they talk about it then?”

Michael S. Schmidt and Charlie Savage contributed reporting from Washington; Ellen Barry from Moscow; Katherine Q. Seelye from Boston; and Julia Preston from New York. This story also appeared in today’s Globe and Mail Newspaper (April 20, 2013).

Tensions remained high Friday as thousands of police officers searched for the fugitive suspect wanted in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings, after another suspect died overnight following a violent standoff with police.

The details on the apparently crude but deadly explosives emerged as investigators appealed to the public for amateur video and photos that might yield clues to who carried out the attack. The chief FBI agent in Boston vowed “we will go to the ends of the Earth” to find those responsible.

A person who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still going on said the explosives were put in 6-litre kitchen pressure cookers, hidden in black duffel bags and left on the ground. They were packed with shrapnel, the person said.

The person said law enforcement officials have some of the bomb components but do not yet know what was used to set off the explosives.

A doctor treating the wounded appeared to corroborate the person’s account, saying one of the victims was maimed by what looked like ball bearings or BBs. Doctors also said they removed a host of sharp objects from the victims, including nails that were sticking out of one little girl’s body.

At the White House, President Barack Obama said that the bombings were an act of terrorism but that investigators do not know if they were carried out by an international organization, a domestic group or a “malevolent individual.”

He added: “The American people refuse to be terrorized.”

Across the U.S., from Washington to Los Angeles, police stepped up security, monitoring landmarks, government buildings, transit hubs and sporting events. Security was especially tight in Boston, with bomb-sniffing dogs checking Amtrak passengers’ luggage at South Station and transit police patrolling with rifles.

“They can give me a cavity search right now and I’d be perfectly happy,” said Daniel Wood, a video producer from New York City who was waiting for a train.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said there was no evidence the bombings were part of a wider plot. But she said security was stepped up as a precaution.

Similar pressure-cooker explosives have been used in Afghanistan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, according to a July 2010 intelligence report by the FBI and Homeland Security. Also, one of the three devices used in the May 2010 Times Square attempted bombing was a pressure cooker, the report said.

“Placed carefully, such devices provide little or no indication of an impending attack,” the report said.

The Pakistani Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the 2010 attempt in Times Square, has denied any role in the Boston Marathon attack.

The two bombs blew up about 10 seconds and around 100 yards apart Monday near the finish line of the 26.2-mile race, tearing off limbs, knocking people off their feet and leaving the streets stained with blood and strewn with broken glass. The dead included an 8-year-old boy.

“We started grabbing tourniquets and started tying legs. A lot of people amputated,” said Roupen Bastajian, a state trooper from Smithfield, R.I., who had just finished the race when he heard the explosions.

Gov. Deval Patrick said that contrary to earlier reports, no unexploded bombs were found.

Federal investigators said no one had claimed responsibility for the bombings, which took place at the world’s best-known distance race, held every year on one of Boston’s biggest holidays, Patriots’ Day.

“We will go to the ends of the Earth to identify the subject or subjects who are responsible for this despicable crime, and we will do everything we can to bring them to justice,” said Richard DesLauriers, FBI agent in charge in Boston.

He said investigators had received “voluminous tips” and were interviewing witnesses and analyzing the crime scene.

Boston police and firefighter unions announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to arrests in the bombing.

At a news conference, police and federal agents repeatedly appealed for any video, audio and photos taken by marathon spectators, even images that people might not think are significant.

“There has to be hundreds, if not thousands, of photos and videos” that might help investigators, state police Col. Timothy Alben said.

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said investigators also gathered a large number of surveillance tapes from businesses in the area and intend to go through the videos frame by frame.

“This is probably one of the most photographed areas in the country yesterday,” he said.

FBI agents searched an apartment in the Boston suburb of Revere overnight, and investigators were seen leaving with brown paper bags, plastic trash bags and a duffel bag. But it was unclear whether the tenant had anything to do with the attack.

A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details of the investigation said the man had been tackled by a bystander, then police, as he ran from the scene of the explosions.

But the official said it is possible the man was simply running away to protect himself from the blast, as many others did.

At least 17 people were critically injured, police said. At least eight children were being treated at hospitals. In addition to losing limbs, victims suffered broken bones, shrapnel wounds and ruptured eardrums.

Dr. Stephen Epstein of the emergency medicine department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said he saw an X-ray of one victim’s leg that had “what appears to be small, uniform, round objects throughout it — similar in the appearance to BBs.”

Eight-year-old Martin Richard was among the dead, said Rep. Stephen Lynch, a family friend. The boy’s mother, Denise, and 6-year-old sister, Jane, were badly injured. His brother and father were also watching the race but were not hurt.

A candle burned on the stoop of the family’s single-family home in the city’s Dorchester section Tuesday, and the word “Peace” was written in chalk on the front walk.

Neighbour Betty Delorey said Martin loved to climb neighbourhood trees and hop the fence outside his home.

Also killed was Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Mass., who had gone with her best friend to take a picture of the friend’s boyfriend crossing the finish line.

William Campbell said his daughter was “very caring, very loving person, and was Daddy’s little girl.”

About 23,000 runners participated in this year’s Boston Marathon. Nearly two-thirds of them had crossed the finish line by the time the bombs exploded, but thousands more were still completing the course, and the area around the finish line was crowded with athletes and friends and relatives cheering them on.

Davis, the police commissioner, said that two security sweeps of the route had been conducted before the blasts.

Patriots’ Day commemorates the opening shots of the American Revolution, at Concord and Lexington in 1775.

Richard Barrett, the former U.N. co-ordinator for an al-Qaida and Taliban monitoring team who has also worked for British intelligence, said the relatively small size of the devices in Boston and the timing of the blasts suggest a domestic attack rather than an al-Qaida-inspired one.

“This happened on Patriots’ Day — it is also the day Americans are supposed to have their taxes in — and Boston is quite a symbolic city,” said Barrett, now senior director at the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies.

Police Confirm Third Blast

At least two are dead and dozens injured after twin blasts rocked the Boston Marathon this afternoon. A third explosion nearby at the JFK Library is being treated as related.

Chaos erupted as paramedics treated the injured at the scene, some reportedly missing limbs. Competitors, race volunteers and spectators were diverted away from the race route.

“There are a lot of people down,” said one man, whose marathon bib No. 17528 identified him as Frank Deruyter of North Carolina.

Marathon crews carried one woman with a bloodied leg to a medical area set up for the race. A Boston police officer was also said to have sustained a leg injury.

The incident happened approximately three hours after the first marathon runners were said to have crossed the finish line, however thousands of participants were still running.

There was a loud explosion on the north side of Boylston Street, near the photo bridge that marks the finish line.

Footage captured at the scene showed smoke rising from the blasts. Aerial footage also showed blood on the pavement in the Back Bay shopping and tourist area.

“There are people who are really, really bloody,” said Laura McLean, a runner from Toronto, who was in the medical tent being treated for dehydration when the blasts occurred. “They were pulling them into the medical tent.”

Cheri Falgoust was waiting for her husband, a marathon runner, when she heard – and felt – a loud boom.

“I was expecting my husband any minute,” she said. “I don’t know what this building is … it just blew. Just a big bomb, a loud boom, and then glass everywhere. Something hit my head. I don’t know what it was. I just ducked.”

Authorities in Boston could not immediately confirm the number or severity of injuries.

Runners who had finished the race were diverted down Commonwealth Avenue and into a family meeting area.

If you’re a Canadian involved in the Boston Marathon explosion and need assistance, contact @TravelGoC 1-800-387-3124 or sos@international.gc.ca.

If you are concerned for a friend that ran the Boston Marathon today, you can see their last check-in here: http://raceday.baa.org/individual.html

That the world will end in 2012 is the most widely-disseminated doomsday tale in human history, thanks to the internet, Hollywood and an ever-eager press corps.

Recent hurricanes, unrest in the Middle East, solar flares, mystery planets about to collide with us – all “proof” of what the ancient Mayans knew would come to pass on 21 December.

According to a Reuters global poll, one in 10 of us is feeling some anxiety about this date.

Russians have been so worried that the Minister of Emergency Situations issued a denial that the world would end.

Authorities in the village of Bugarach in the South of France have barred access to a mountain where some believe a UFO will rescue them.

And survivalists in America – many of whom use the term “prepper” – have been busy preparing for all manner of cataclysm.

So I set out to find people who believe 21/12/12 is D-Day.

It was harder than I imagined, despite seeking out preppers, bunker builders, and even a Mayan shaman.

Eventually I turned to Morandir Armson, a scholar of the New Age and Esoterica at the University of Sydney, Australia.

“If you told me there were more than 5,000 people who genuinely believed the end of the world was coming rather than just having vague fears about it, I’d be surprised,” he says.

Armson adds that those people are probably “in the wilds of Idaho, heavily armed, and won’t talk to journalists anyway”.

The heightened fear around this date is, in his view and that of other experts, almost entirely due to the internet. More specifically they blame the blogosphere.

It is not how the whole 2012 phenomenon started.

In 1987, Jose Arguelles, a man who devoted much of his life to studying the Mayan Calendar, organised what was called the Harmonic Convergence, a sort of post-hippy Woodstock. It attracted tens of thousands around the globe.

The event was an attempt to “create a moment of meditation and connection to the sacred sites around the earth,” says Daniel Pinchbeck, author of 2012: The Year of the Mayan Prophecy.

It was also the beginning of what many in the loosely-defined New Age movement regard as a process in the transformation of our consciousness – a transformation that goes into full effect at the end of this year.

Pinchbeck calls 21/12/12 the “hinge point” of the emergence of a new, more enlightened age – not an ending point for all civilisation.

“It is quite clear that the Mayan system envisages a new cycle of the calendar beginning on the 22 December 2012,” says Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods, and something of a rock star in the world of ancient mysteries enthusiasts.

He says the ancient Mayan culture was a shamanic one. Those who left us the calendar were visionaries who were providing clues to this ending of one cycle and the beginning of another.

That is not to say that New Agers do not see catastrophic events as necessary in some way to this new birth.

In fact they tend to embrace eastern faiths and native cultures with their cyclical views of time. In these visions, the world has been and will be destroyed – to some degree – and we start anew.

Accordingly, some believe the Mayans were sending us a warning for 2012.

“We may see a lot of destruction,” says Pinchbeck. He points to Hurricane Sandy, which recently hit his home city of New York.

Many, including the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, linked that hurricane to global warming, which tends to be seen by New Agers as the main threat to our planet.

However the New Age movement is full of optimists. Crucially, they say we have a choice in how this story ends.

“We do not have to step over the edge of the abyss into darkness and destruction,” Hancock says, calling this point in time a “cusp moment.”

“It’s up to us. It’s totally up to us.”

Morandir Armson, the Australian scholar, says the belief that 2012 marks a positive shift is one also shared by UFO groups, such as the Ashtar Command and the Ground Crew. These groups have no headquarters but for internet sites.

He says they refer to themselves as “lightworkers” who believe a fleet of alien space ships hover around our solar system.

“By doing good works on earth [they believe] you can speed up the consciousness of our humanity,” says Armson.

In many ways, they emphasise the more positive aspects of the traditional Christian Apocalypse. The fire-and-brimstone part gets downplayed in favour of the glorious Kingdom to come.

Some 20% of Americans believe we are in the end times, and that they will see the return of Jesus Christ in their lifetime.

This month marks Advent in the Christian Calendar, during which Christians are encouraged to read from the Book of Revelation, the apocalyptic vision of St John the Divine.

“It’s full of gory and grotesque detail of how the wicked are going to be punished,” says Ted Harrison, author of Apocalypse When: Why We Want to Believe there Will Be No Tomorrow.

The twenty-first of December, however, is not on the biblical calendar and few, if any, believers in the traditional Book of Revelation are attached to this date.

The supposed date of the coming apocolypse, 21 December, also marks the Winter Solstice, symbolic in many cultures of the end of darkness and the renewal of the light.

It might, suggests Harrison, focus our minds on how we have been treating the planet and those on it, and how we could mend our ways.

In this respect, he says, “It might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s one hope. A remote one, but it is one hope.”

Every morning, my seven-year-old son and I ride the subway to his school, a  public elementary in Brooklyn. There are posters on the station walls, many of  them advertising movies and TV shows and video games, and often my son has  questions about these posters. “Is that a gun?” he asked me last week, about the  advertisement for “The Last Stand,” which shows a grim-faced Arnold  Schwarzenegger wielding a powerful piece of artillery. “What’s that?” he asked  next, after pausing in front of the poster for “Texas Chainsaw,” which shows a  figure with a muscled, bloodied arm holding a gore-smeared logging  implement.

The story above appeared in today’s New Yorker (online).

In the wake of Mayor Rob Ford’s stunning ouster from office on Monday, someone started a “Thank You Paul Magder” group on Facebook.

The group would have more aptly been called Thank You Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler.

Magder, a businessman, was the Average Joe face of the lawsuit that brought Ford down. Celebrated lawyer Clayton Ruby tried the case pro bono. But it was Chaleff-Freudenthaler — labour relations professional, Ryerson student, near-lifelong left-leaning activist, canny observer of City Hall procedure, 28 years old on Wednesday — who set the wheels in motion from the shadows.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland found Ford breached the province’s conflict of interest law when he voted in February to excuse himself from paying back a total of $3,150 to lobbyists whose donations to his football foundation he improperly accepted.

Ford, who plans to appeal, will remain mayor for at least the two-week grace period Hackland allowed. He will immediately seek a “stay” that would let him keep his job until the end of the appeals process.

If the stay request is denied, council will have until the second week of February to decide whether to appoint a new mayor, who would serve until December 2014, or call a byelection that would cost about $7 million. Lawyers differed on whether Hackland’s ruling prevents Ford from running in a byelection.

For now, at least, the larger-than-life mayor of Canada’s largest city has been banished over an error that went mostly unnoticed on the day it was committed — but that Chaleff-Freudenthaler thought worth pursuing.

“History will write him up as a hero,” left-leaning Councillor Joe Mihevc, who has known Chaleff-Freudenthaler since the latter’s childhood, said on Monday.

“He’s an obstructionist who’s never been happy with Rob Ford getting elected as mayor,” said right-leaning Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.

Chaleff-Freudenthaler works as a labour relations specialist for the Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario, which represents provincial civil servants. He is taking night classes at Ryerson for a bachelor’s degree in public administration.

A member of the library board from 2007 to 2011, a former leader of the Toronto Youth Cabinet, and a familiar face at City Hall since his late teens, Chaleff-Freudenthaler is something of an expert in the workings of the city government. After Ford’s Feb. 7 speech and vote, he researched the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act to see if Ford had possibly broken the law.

He then spoke to Magder, whose children he went to school with and who had volunteered on his unsuccessful 2010 school trustee campaign. With Magder on board for a potential lawsuit, he contacted Ruby, whom he had never met, to ask if he would be interested in taking the case. Ruby agreed.

Magder and Ruby have spoken publicly about their challenge and Hackland’s decision. Chaleff-Freudenthaler has refused to do so.

Silence is unusual for him: he has been an activist since the fifth grade, when he fought the proposed closure of his alternative elementary school. He later co-founded a high school student network that protested the Iraq war and demanded tuition freezes from Mike Harris’s provincial government.

As an adult, he proved a formidable Ford foe even before Monday’s landmark triumph. His detailed challenge to Ford’s campaign financial practices prompted a city committee to order an audit that may soon result in Municipal Elections Act charges.

After an angry Doug Ford confronted him in a City Hall hallway, he filed a successful complaint to the integrity commissioner. Ford apologized on the council floor — though he later called Chaleff-Freudenthaler a “little snake.”

And as vice-chair of the library board, to which he was appointed under David Miller, Chaleff-Freudenthaler was one of the most vocal opponents of Rob Ford-proposed budget cuts that council ultimately rejected.

Ford told reporters Monday that the case “comes down to left-wing politics. The left wing wants me out of here and they’ll do anything in their power to (do so),” Ford said.

Mihevc, who endorsed Chaleff-Freudenthaler for trustee, scoffed. “Adam is a community advocate, and he believes in good government,” he said. “He’s a sharp thinker, and he believes in the city. I say all power to him. He did for the city — he and Paul, working with Clayton Ruby — an important service. And that is to call politicians to account for their behaviour.”

In 2003, NOW Magazine named Chaleff-Freudenthaler one of 10 local “teens taking over.” Its title for him: “The Tory toppler.”

Daniel Dale writers for the Hamilton Spectator.