Philip Alves

The producers of the fifth estate, the CBC’s investigative TV series, called me up one day asking if they could use some photos I shot in early July, 2008, of a protest by Progressive Moulded Products employees after the company shut its doors. I jumped at the chance.

Anger. Despair. Hope. A year after the abrupt closing of bankrupt auto parts maker Progressive Moulded Products, feelings among many of the company’s nearly 2,400 former workers are mixed.

A Concord company has been hit with a $70,000 fine in connection with the 2007 death of an employee. On June 26 in the Ontario Court of Justice, Impex Granite and Marble was convicted of a violation under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

But bylaw enforced on a complaint basis only Frances Stern sounds as if she’s on the verge of pulling her hair out in frustration. The owner of 2 Hot Blondes Hair Salon in Thornhill says she’s being picked on in an unfair fight over signs. “Why single me out?” she asks rhetorically from a couch [...]

“Good morning,” Anne Vandrie says to someone who’s just walked into Pennywise Thrift Shop on a Monday morning. “Customers are coming in,” she says before turning her attention back to the visitor. “Good morning. Wonderful. Thank you very much.”

Hankering for a new bathroom but the recession has you hugging your wallet a little tighter these days? If you are, you’re not alone and the federal government knows it.

Laid off workers aren’t the only ones who need help during a recession, says Heidi Garcia, human performance specialist with Karico Performance Solutions. Companies need to make full use of their employees’ talents to survive and thrive, though many don’t, she says.

The job market is a crowded place these days. Layoffs continue apace as the recession drags on and companies claw back. The Canadian economy shed 83,000 jobs last month, bumping the unemployment rate up to 7.7 percent, according to Statistics Canada’s February employment report, released last week. Ontario alone lost 35,000 of those jobs and the province’s unemployment rate of 8.7 percent is the highest it’s been since April 1997.

Every dark economic cloud has a silver lining, even in this gloomy recession. Small- and medium-sized businesses — those that employ fewer than 100 people — make up nearly 97 percent of Vaughan’s 9,000-plus business base. Each faces unique challenges but all can take steps to survive and prosper.

Billions in federal tax dollars to stimulate an ailing economy. Tens of thousands losing jobs. Home sales down. Foreclosures up. The news is grim. Just how grim, though, depends on who you ask.

What started as a cool bit of self-promotion for one Woodbridge business quickly changed into a fashionable cross-promotional runway show for many. Normand Richer’s original idea was to hold something of a modest open house on Nov. 29 for Aesthetic Therapies Laser Clinic, which he owns with his wife Patricia Gomez. That was before the Nov. 8 Fashion Takes Action Green Gala in Toronto.

A Concord company has been hit with a $250,000 fine in connection with the death of an employee.