I dug up (so to speak) how journalists on CAJ-L discussed the 1999 snowstorm that paralyzed Toronto and led then-mayor Mel Lastman to call in the army.

While the world agonizes over Gaza, a much worse conflict-driven catastrophe is unfolding in Sri Lanka, writes  Martin Regg Cohn, the Toronto Star's deputy editorial page editor (who did reporting stints in both Asia and the Middle East).

From AP via TheStar.com:

Lasantha Wickrematunge, a prominent Sri Lankan journalist and outspoken critic of the government's war on ethnic Tamil rebels, was sure he was marked for death.

Three days after he was gunned down, execution style, Wickrematunge's newspaper published a haunting, self-written obituary Sunday in which he says his writings placed him in peril and adds: "When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.''

The Globe and Mail's Konrad Yakabuski argues that this recession should be nowhere near as nasty as its 1982 and 1991 predecessors.

However, the Bank of Canada issued two surveys Monday that suggest business is still feeling gloomy.