TV On DVD: Interview With Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, Creator of DESIGNING WOMEN
By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 21, 2009 - 1 Comment
The first season of Designing Women is coming out on DVD next Tuesday. To promote the DVD release, the show’s creator, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who wrote most of the episodes, gave interviews to journalists… and also to me. Here are some excerpts:
Q. Why was there such a delay in releasing the show on DVD? I’d heard it was about music rights, but I didn’t hear much music on the DVDs, except “Georgia On My Mind” [the theme song].
A. A lot of it [the music] is out now. That’s what we did. We removed a lot of the music. I’m just a music freak. Very few producers or writers bothered to buy music for their shows, and I bought pop songs all the way through for five years. It was very expensive, but I was spoiled by Jeff Sagansky at CBS; he just allowed that. I learned a good lesson, because it held up the DVD for years. Anyway, it’s out now, and it’s pretty much music-less, except for the score. In a way I think it [the delay] worked out for the best. I think there’s such a lack of strong, big-shouldered women in comedy that it’s worked to our benefit. I’m glad it’s coming out now, because I think it’s going to sell even better; I hear more people saying that they miss the loud-mouthed women like Roseanne and Candace and Bea, and all the women who paved the way. We don’t have many of them now.
Q. You came on not long after The Golden Girls…
A. I thought they went off before we went on. I don’t think we were ever on at the same time.
Q. No, Golden Girls started in 1985.
A. Are you serious? This is shocking. I had no idea. I thought Golden Girls was like 1980. You’re very informative.
Q. Was the network looking for something like The Golden Girls?
A. No. They hired me to do something else. I was going to do a pilot about a man, and one day I got in my car and I said “I can’t write this.” So they said “What do you want to write?” And I said: “I just want to write some Southern women who aren’t like the usual Southern women you see on television, and I want to have some beautiful, sexy feminists who are man-loving.” I thought feminism had been so vilified; you were a man-hater if you were a feminist. So I thought, I’m going to make these women beautiful, sexy and desirable, but they’re going to be feminists. That was the point of Designing Women. [And] to put it frankly, I wanted to show smart hicks. I felt that the American television scene had been only informed by Jed Clampett and The Dukes of Hazzard. I didn’t like that; that didn’t jive with where I came from, and my family. I wanted to show another side of that, and I think these women did that pretty well.
Q. Were there any cast members you had in mind from the beginning?
A. All of them. I knew Dixie and Delta from a show I did called Filthy Rich. They were brought to me by a wonderful casting director named Fran Bascomb; I fell in love with them and I said “We’ll do another show together.” Amy Annie and Jean had been on some dramatic show together, and we thought, if we get these four together, we’ll really have something.
Q. In the enclosed booklet, you talk about the production designer [John Beckman, a veteran production designer who had done many big Warner Brothers movies in the ‘50s] and the importance of the set. What made the set different from other sitcoms?
A. It seemed to me that a lot of sitcoms, when I was growing up and after I became a writer, all had the same look. It didn’t look very rich; it’s kind of tinny and anemic and unmemorable — not everything, but most things. I wanted something really grand. I guess we wanted to be pretentious. And here comes this 90 year-old guy, John Beckman, a national treasure. With the ageism factor in Hollywood, they tried to discourage me. They said “You wouldn’t want to meet this man; he’s too old.” Well, of course, I had to meet him, and he was everything I thought he would be. The set just looks like a place where there’s going to be some grand women: the staircase, the little atrium in the back. It’s big, it’s wide, it’s open, it’s very Broadway-esque. I had never given that [set design] any thought at all. I thought the only thing that matters is the acting and the words. But John Beckman really taught me something there. I think that set became a little bit iconic.
Q. You also mention in your booklet essay that you didn’t get many notes from the network. I get the impression that there were more shows in the late ‘80s than today where the networks didn’t give a lot of notes. Was there any reason why you didn’t get a lot of interference?
A. TV is a very corporate environment today. Back then it was more about individual personalities. You have to find somebody who emerges as a really strong figure who’s going to back Continue…
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Obama spokesman: Cheney lying
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 5:04 PM - 2 Comments
Earlier today Dick Cheney made a speech in which he defended enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees and said that intelligence gained from the interrogations was used to prevent specific attacks. He went on to make the allegation that:
“This might explain why President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate. What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against, and which ones not to worry about. Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11.”
“It’s almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.”
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs was just on CNN saying this is absolutely untrue.
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Recognizing what's right with Parliament
By From the Editors - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments
For the first time, a Conservative MP, Jason Kenney, has won the Best Overall award
Voter participation in Canada’s 2008 federal election unhappily set an all-time low. While it was once commonplace for 75 per cent of Canadians to vote for their politicians, last year just 59 per cent did. In a modest bit of encouraging news, however, voting by politicians is on the rise.
This issue marks our third annual Parliamentarians of the Year Awards. And along with partners L’actualité, the Dominion Institute and Ipsos Reid, Maclean’s is pleased to report that participation in our election, which sees members of Parliament vote for their peers, has hit an all-time high. Continue…
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Obama on closing Guantanamo
By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 4:54 PM - 0 Comments
Vows to shut the doors by January 2010
President Barack Obama has again pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, saying the remaining 240 prisoners can be dealt with without increasing the risk to American citizens. He said courts, military tribunals, regular prisons, and transfers to other countries can be used to ensure that prisoners who remain a threat are not released. The Democrat controlled Senate is not so optimistic; the vast majority of senators voted to keep the detention centre open. But Obama says Guantanomo must be closed because it undercuts US moral authority and helps fuel terrorist recruitment campaigns. The President is hoping to reach a compromise that will pass in Congress before a final vote on US anti-terror legislation next month, allowing the prison to be closed by January 2010.
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Econowatch
By Steve Maich - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 4:15 PM - 0 Comments
A weekly scorecard on the state of the economy in North America and beyond
David Rosenberg ranks up there with the very best economic minds currently practising the dismal science, and last week he returned home to Toronto, to a new job as chief economist with Toronto firm Gluskin Sheff, after a seven-year stint as lead economist with Merrill Lynch in New York.While he was south of the border, Rosenberg became known as one of a precious few economists willing to warn of serious trouble ahead. While most of Wall Street constructed complicated justifications for the gravity-defying surge in housing and stock prices, Rosenberg warned again and again that it would end in tears. As we all know by now, it did. And, in all honesty, it’s been a fair bit worse than even Rosenberg predicted. It spread pain around the world and, ironically, destroyed Rosenberg’s own firm. Even the men who paid his salary weren’t paying close enough attention to his sobering analysis of a market gone mad.
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The End of the Regular TV Season
By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 3:57 PM - 0 Comments
I think 30 Rock‘s last big meta-joke, about the fact that a “year” on TV ends when the season does (“What are you talking about? It’s May!”), is my favourite joke about the end of the regular season. The most famous is probably this one, where an episode was literally stopped in mid-story by the arrival of the summer hiatus, but like a number of jokes from Moonlighting, it maybe goes a little overboard with the fourth-wall-breaking. Though what made it famous was the moment at the end when it turns out that while everybody else is an actor on the series, “David” and “Maddie” are apparently real people who will continue having unresolved sexual tension throughout their separate vacations. That’s the sort of meta-humour that can make your head explode if you think about it too much.
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Newsmakers of the week
By Lianne George - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 3 Comments
John McCain’s mom talks back, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy criticizes the pope, and Woody Allen sues American Apparel
Roberta’s flackSenator John McCain’s mother, the feisty Roberta McCain, 97, won’t tolerate bullies on her team. Appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last Wednesday, she dismissed Republican pundit Rush Limbaugh as a glorified “entertainer.” “What he represents of the Republican party has nothing to do with my side of it,” she said. “I don’t know what the man means, I don’t know what he’s talking about.” Limbaugh was one of her son’s harshest critics during the 2008 presidential election. More recently, Limbaugh suggested that her granddaughter, Meghan McCain, who sees herself as the fresh new face of the GOP, should take a hike.
B.C. may get its Citizen of the Year back
Twenty years ago, Frank Hertel, 72, a charismatic Victoria businessman who pledged to turn Vancouver Island into a high-tech mecca, fled Canada to avoid tax evasion charges. On May 9, Interpol arrested him at Heathrow Airport in London, where he is now in jail, awaiting an extradition hearing. In 1984, Hertel founded a company called International Electronics Corp., which specialized in oil and thermal power, with the help of a federal program allowing for scientific tax credits. The Victoria Chamber of Commerce named him “Citizen of the Year,” but in 1985, Revenue Canada reported that he owed $30 million in back taxes and began seizing assets. In 1986, after being slapped with tax evasion charges, he fled Victoria for Venezuela, where he is said to have lived for a time in a large house in Caracas. “He knew everybody in Venezuela,” his former lawyer George Jones told the Victoria Times Colonist. “It was remarkable.” His bail was set at $900,000.
Guests: call first Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, leader of the Burmese pro-democracy party NLD, is on trial for breaching the conditions of her house arrest after she allowed a strange American man to stay in her home for two days. John Yettaw, a 53-year-old Vietnam war veteran, allegedly swam up to her home—uninvited and for unknown reasons—using homemade flippers. Suu Kyi alleges she told Yettaw to leave, but that he refused, saying that he was exhausted. Suu Kyi has been detained for most of the last two decades, and was due to be released after serving a six-year sentence on May 27. Critics say Burma’s military government is using these charges as an opportunity to silence Suu Kyi for another three to five years. Members of her legal defence team met with her this week at the Rangoon prison where she is being held. She told them: “Don’t worry about me. I will face whatever happens.” Her chief lawyer, Kyi Win, however, blames Yettaw for the whole mess, calling him “a fool.”
Bruni’s secular life Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is now on record as the only first lady of France—a predominantly Catholic nation—to have ever criticized the Pope. Speaking with the French women’s magazine Femme Actuelle, Bruni-Sarkozy called Pope Benedict XVI’s refusal to support the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa “damaging.” “I was born Catholic, I was baptized, but in my life I feel profoundly secular,” she says. Last week, as though offering up an Exhibit A, a Paris auction house announced its intention to auction off a nude drawing of Bruni-Sarkozy as part of a collection called “Pin-up.” Also featured in the collection are photos of the burlesque star Dita von Teese, dressed as a nurse and as a dominatrix.
Old man Caulfield J.D. Salinger, the notoriously reclusive American fiction writer, swore off publishing new works decades ago. For a Swedish-American writer named John David California, however, Salinger’s silence is an open invitation. California’s debut novel, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, is an unauthorized sequel to Salinger’s classic coming-of-age story Catcher in the Rye. In 60 Years Later, Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, now 76 and known as “Mr. C,” flees a nursing home (it was a prep school in the original) to search, once again, for answers to life’s great questions in the streets of New York. “He’s still Holden Caulfield and has a particular view on things,” California, 33, told the Guardian. “He can be tired, and he’s disappointed in the goddamn world. He’s older and wiser in a sense, but in another sense he doesn’t have all the answers.” California dedicated his book to Salinger. “Maybe he will get upset,” he admits. Critics argue that the prospect of this book is so horrific, it can only be a hoax.
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Ron Howard makes boring movies
By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 4 Comments
The former child star has done interesting work, but get him behind a camera . . .
Ron Howard wants you to know he’s dedicated his whole career to never offending anyone. When Angels & Demons (opening May 15), his sequel to The Da Vinci Code, got the expected accusations of anti-Catholicism, Howard took to the Huffington Post to write that the new film is just “an exciting mystery, set in the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome,” and that it “treats the Church with respect—even a degree of reverence—for its traditions and beliefs.” The way Howard blogs is the way he makes movies; he specializes in taking big budgets, stars and subjects and turning them all into respectful, reverent, and slightly dull movies. He’s almost made an art out of being bland; as he put it in 2006, “I’m the type of person that likes to please everyone.”Based on comments like that, it would be easy to dismiss Howard as simply another Hollywood middlebrow. And yet the former child star has done some interesting work—just not as a director. As co-founder of the production company Imagine Entertainment, he has his name on some well-regarded television series like 24 and Sports Night. Most famously, he’s one of the producers of Arrested Development, which he also narrated, and will perform both of those functions on the upcoming Arrested Development movie. Apart from being able to spot good material, he has a genuine sense of humour about himself; last year he reprised his characters from The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days in the most famous pro-Obama ad of the election cycle. But put him behind a camera and, except for a few appealing comedies from early in his career (like Splash and Night Shift), he makes films that hit you over the head with pro-social messages, accompanied by heartwarming music, overwrought lighting effects, and lots of sentiment.
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Maclean's Interview: Ruth Reichl
By Kate Fillion - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 1 Comment
Gourmet magazine’s editor Ruth Reichl on having a crazy mother, being a bad daughter, and food, forgiveness and Gene Simmons
Ruth Reichl, former restaurant critic for the New York Times and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine for the past 10 years, was raised in a household where food was frequently inedible. Her mother, already familiar to readers of Reichl’s three bestselling memoirs as a larger-than-life serial food poisoner, had no culinary talent. But, as the author recently discovered, her mom was more influential than she had realized.Q: Your new book, Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along The Way, evolved from a speech you gave that opened, “My mother was a great example of everything I didn’t want to be.” Was it frightening to say that in front of an audience of women?
A: I wrote the speech in a burst of inspiration, then put it away and didn’t think about it. But when I got up in front of 1,500 people—I was one of the last speakers at this event, everyone else was saying, “I want to thank my wonderful mother”—I looked down at the page and thought, “Oh my God, this is not the sort of speech you are supposed to give.”
When I said, “I wake up every morning grateful that I’m not my mother,” there was this audible gasp. But it was too late to change anything, so I just went on. When I ended there was this stunned silence, but I noticed that Diane von Furstenberg, who was sitting next to me, was crying, and Christiane Amanpour came up and said I’d made her think about her mother. Then later, I started getting emails from tons of people I didn’t know, saying, “That was my mother you were talking about.”
Q: Why do you think that feeling of not wanting to be like your mother resonates with so many women?
A: For people of my generation, we all saw that our mothers had very restricted lives. These women were capable and smart, but they literally had nothing to do and were very unhappy. They were handicapped by the fact that women, in the 1950s, essentially weren’t allowed to work. After World War II, all the women who’d been running the factories and really enjoying what they were doing were told to go home and let the boys have the jobs. So they went off to twiddle their thumbs and be miserable. I’m very grateful that my parents didn’t bring me up thinking that some man was going to take care of me. I always knew I’d have to support myself.
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Bearskin sale brings big trouble
By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 2 Comments
Hickey faces up to six U.S. charges, five years in prison
When the special-care home Dwight Hickey was operating in Sandersville, Ga., ran into financial woes in 2005, the Canadian sold his polar bearskin rug, which he had received in the mail from Yellowknife that June, for $4,000. He soon relocated to New Brunswick, and moved on—or so he thought. But U.S. officials allege that Hickey illegally imported and sold parts of an endangered animal. Now the Fredericton man, who faces six U.S. charges, and up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, is at the centre of one of the most bizarre extradition cases in recent memory.According to court documents, the disputed bearskin first came to the attention of U.S. authorities shortly after it was sold. The buyer had contacted officials, inquiring about the lawfulness of owning the 1.5-m long rug. He was told he needed a Canadian export permit, and got in touch with Hickey. When the paperwork didn’t arrive, however, the U.S. District Court charged the 55-year-old, alleging he “did unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally engage in . . . the importation, possession and sale of wildlife.” The U.S. applied for Hickey’s extradition in February; on April 3, he was committed to custody. Now it’s up to the minister of justice to decide whether or not to hand him over—a process that could take up to 150 days.
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Order an extra box of datesquares for the fifth floor cafeteria — ITQ is coming home.
By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:33 PM - 26 Comments
That is if by “home”, she means “The Hill” – which, as luck would have it, is exactly the case. After such a long absence — okay, it’s only been a few weeks, but you know what they say about politics — your intrepid liveblogger is, however, a little bit worried that she may be out of the loop, as far as the latest twists in the plot, so why not help her through the reacclimatization process, and tell her what, if any, of the following she should actually spend some time thinking about, in advance of Monday, when both she and the Commons will make their respective triumphant returns:
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Lax laws, dead puppies
By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:33 PM - 2 Comments
NB criticized for lack of enforcement on animal cruelty
When it comes to animal cruelty, New Brunswick is leading the pack in the worst way possible, according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund. The international organization, based in California, said NB’s weak animal cruelty laws, lack of enforcement, and small penalties, make it one of the worst provinces for animal abuse (along with the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Quebec). The criticism follows cross-province protests over an NB man who was acquitted of animal cruelty charges for killing five puppies with a hammer. T.J. Burke, the province’s justice minister, has asked Ottawa to amend its laws and says changes will be made to NB’s SPCA Act.
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Nerds do it better
By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:32 PM - 0 Comments
IT guys are the new champions of love; British sex survey
Sorry gym rats, but a British survey of 2,000 men and women has found that IT workers are the most selfless and adventurous in the sac of any professionals. Eight of 10 had no fear of sex toys, and put their partners needs above their own. Fitness professionals were the least adventurous and most selfish, but they did win in one category; when it came to stamina they left the nerds wheezing in the dust.
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Eco-friendly bags may make you sick
By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:28 PM - 8 Comments
Study shows reusable shopping bags may pose health risk
Although great for the environment, a new study that tested reusable shopping bags found they may be making you sick. In a study by The Environment and Plastic Industry Council, 24 reusable bags were tested and found to contain varying counts of yeast, moulds and bacteria. Researchers say the potential health risks include food poisoning, bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections. The bags don’t pose a risk, however, if they are washed regularly and dried well. The study was conducted on bags that were mostly less than a year old, and randomly selected in downtown Toronto. Researchers say 64 per cent of the bags tested were contaminated with some bacteria, while 30 per cent had elevated bacterial counts that were more than what is considered safe for drinking water. Forty per cent of the bags had yeast or mould, and some had “an unacceptable presence of coliforms.”
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Stand back, gentlemen! Only science can settle this dispute! Lame online polling science!
By Paul Wells - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 29 Comments
And you know what the question’s going to be, don’t you.
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Europeans catching too much cod?
By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 6 Comments
They allegedly got 444 tonnes of cod bycatch off the Grand Banks
When it comes to cod, there haven’t been plenty of fish in the sea since the great cod stock collapse of 1992, which led to a fishing ban so that the endangered species could recover. But now, European fishers have sabotaged that effort, according to information leaked to the World Wildlife Federation-Canada.The controversy revolves around cod “bycatch,” which occurs when fishers unintentionally capture cod while trolling for other creatures. In 2008, European fishers were allegedly to blame for 70 per cent of the cod bycatch that occurred off the southern Grand Banks of Nova Scotia, reveals data WWF-C received from sources close to the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, which manages those waters. That’s 444 tonnes of cod bycatch—way above the 420 tonnes limit that WWF-C had recommended to NAFO in 2007. It says that Canadian boats were responsible for some of the remaining 30 per cent of excessive bycatch.
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Naylor on the knowledge economy
By Paul Wells - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:04 PM - 20 Comments
David Naylor, the University of Toronto’s president, delivers a speech on research, innovation, and Canada’s business culture that’s eerily similar to a column I published last week. Drawing from some of the same sources I used, Naylor makes a few points that should simply become common currency among people who want to discuss how Canada can use ideas to improve its economic performance:
• The post-recession economy will have lower global growth potential than the pre-recession economy. So it’s important not to forgo potential productivity gains.
• Canada has a long history of forgoing potential productivity gains.
• It’s tempting to be complacent about our level of educational attainment. We have high post-secondary-education participation rates only because we have a lot of people in community colleges. Our university attendance is middle-of-the-OECD-pack and our grad-school attainment sucks.
• Science, engineering, technology and math aren’t the only useful disciplines of study. The humanities and business education are important too. Just ask Jim Balsillie.
• It’s important, not only to have broad-based research funding, but special incentives to attract leaders in their fields. In that regard, “Hat’s off on this score to the federal government for introducing 500 new Vanier Scholarships for doctoral students. Valued at $50,000 per year, and desiged to compete with Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships, these top-tier awards for domestic and international graduate students send a very positive signal about Canada’s commitment to nurturing outstanding talent.”
• “We can and must get the three federal Granting Councils back on a modest growth trajectory” to insure all those shiny new taxpayer-funded labs are used to full capacity by the best investigators. But it’s business performance of R&D, not university research, where Canada seriously lags.
• The biggest challenge isn’t this or that program or institution, but a risk-averse culture that has to change.
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'You yourself are a cosmopolitan global citizen'
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:03 PM - 72 Comments
A Canadian writes home.
I am worried, Canada. I am partly worried for myself: when I come back to serve you with the knowledge and experience I have gained from afar, will you call me opportunistic and turn on me too? But I worry more for you: once you start rejecting the skills and knowledge of your own citizens where will that leave you, O[h] Canada?
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Terrorist bets on good sentence
By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 3 Comments
Saad Khalid says he was a minor player in Toronto 18 plot
Saad Khalid has spent the past three years locked inside Unit 1K, a maximum-security prison wing reserved for select members of the “Toronto 18.” He is still living there today—surrounded by fellow terrorism suspects—despite his sudden decision to plead guilty and throw himself at the mercy of the courts.It is easy to assume that Khalid, now 22, would have been whisked away to a different location as soon as he entered his surprise plea on May 4. Not only is he the first to break ranks and confess, but he is the first to confirm that a core group of the accused—himself included—plotted a bomb attack on Canadian soil. However, Khalid’s lawyer says his client has no reason to feel threatened and no reason to request a transfer. “He has not made a deal with the Crown to testify,” says Russell Silverstein. “[The others] understand that he is not going to be implicating anyone.”
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Process/mess
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:44 PM - 77 Comments
Kory Teneycke, July 15. “Mr. Khadr faces serious charges. There is a judicial process underway to determine Mr. Khadr’s fate. This should continue.”
Lawrence Cannon, Nov. 20. “Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges. He is being held and it’s our government’s intention to follow and respect the process that’s in place and, of course, to respect American sovereignty on this issue.”
Deepak Obhrai, Nov. 21. “Mr. Speaker, our position remains unchanged, because unlike many prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr has actually been charged with serious crimes and is in a judicial legal process to determine his guilt or innocence, and we support this process continuing.”
Stephen Harper, Jan. 13. “He has been accused of very serious matters. And there is a legal process that has to be taken.”
Barack Obama, today. “There are 240 people there who have now spent years in legal limbo. In dealing with this situation, we do not have the luxury of starting from scratch. We are cleaning up something that is – quite simply – a mess.”
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Harvey Lowe 1918-2009
By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment
He kibitzed with Fats Waller, wowed Parisians with his yo-yo, and taught Julie Christie to smoke opium
Harvey Lowe was born in Victoria, B.C., on Oct. 30, 1918, the 10th child of Ming Yook and Lowe Gee Quai. His dad was one of three brothers who set up tailor shops on Government Street, near the B.C. legislature and the iconic Empress Hotel. According to Chinese tradition, Harvey’s father wore his hair in braids and kept a concubine; Yook, who was Canadian-born, had her feet bound. When Harvey was three, Gee Quai died suddenly. Yook supported her large brood as best she could by tailoring. Harvey, who attended Northridge Elementary School, was her delivery boy. In Grade 6, he saved up for a week to buy a 35-cent tournament yo-yo, a Duncan 77. Quickly mastering the toy, he began entering competitions in Victoria and Vancouver, picking up a Raleigh bike as a prize, and catching the eye of local promoter Irving Cook.Cook, who would become like a father figure, got a tutor to help with Harvey’s studies and took the 13-year-old across Canada by train (in B.C., the Trans-Canada Highway was then no more than a couple of wagon tracks hanging from the walls of the Fraser Valley). After winning every Canadian competition he entered, Harvey set sail for London on an ocean liner, where he won the first ever World Yo-Yo Championship at the Empire Theatre in 1932, collecting $4,600 in prize money. The yo-yo fascinated Europeans, especially the French; for three years, as the craze swept the West during the Great Depression, Harvey, who had over 1,000 yo-yo tricks up his sleeve, performed at soda shops and nightclubs across the continent. (He visited the Eiffel Tower so often that guards began letting in “the little China boy” for free.) Cook sent Harvey’s mother $25 per month. Harvey, who performed in a white tie and tails, earned an additional $1.25 per diem—most of which he spent on clothes.
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Visitation
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:33 PM - 52 Comments
If Michael Ignatieff were only interested in returning to Canada if he could be prime minister, why did he run in the 2006 election? Why not wait for the fate of Paul Martin’s government to be determined and return only in the event that it lost, Martin stepped down and the party leadership became available?
If Michael Ignatieff were only interested in returning to Canada is he could be prime minister, why didn’t he leave after losing the Liberal leadership race to Stephane Dion? Why bother remaining when it seemed, at least initially, that Mr. Dion would be the next prime minister of Canada?
Stephen Harper resigned as an MP in 1997 and returned to politics only when the opportunity to be the Canadian Alliance’s candidate for prime minister presented itself. What is the difference then between the ambitions of Mr. Ignatieff and the ambitions of Mr. Harper?
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Your Toss It Up-date
By Paul Wells - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:24 PM - 8 Comments
We’ve come to expect a mob like this at Toss It Up on Sparks St. whenever the Maclean’s crew heads over for lunch, a not-infrequent occurrence. Recession-proof formula for a successful Ottawa restaurant:
• Crowded
• Loud
• Staff shouts numbers at odd intervals
• There are forms to fill out
• Establishment name evokes thoughts of regurgitation
• Food’s good.
Apparently the last point trumps the others.
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Winning over Pakistan
By Adnan R. Khan - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 4 Comments
The ‘peace deal’ was just Step One in a broad Taliban agenda. What’s next?
Two months ago, Bashir Hussein was hoping that a peace deal between the Taliban and the provincial government in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) would finally bring an end to the violence that has plagued the Swat Valley for the past two years. The 75-year-old principal at the al-Mannar public high school in Mingora, Swat’s main city, says he’s seen so much violence in that time that the preceding decades of peace feel like a distant memory. After the accord was signed, some measure of normalcy returned to the school, one of the few co-ed institutions that remained open throughout the Taliban takeover of Pakistan’s mountainous north. But not without changes: Hussein renovated the school building to comply with the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law that bars any interaction between males and females, religious studies were given more attention, and the female staff were ordered to wear burkas, the all-encompassing shroud commonly worn by women in the ethnic Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.Hussein says he did what was necessary to keep his boys and girls learning. “There was a time, before the deal came into place,” he recalls, “when I told my staff that if they wanted, they could go back to their villages and I would close the school. But one of the teachers stood up and said, ‘No. If you are going to die here, we will die with you.’ ” The accord signed in February, giving the Taliban de facto control over a large swath of territory northwest of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, was a kind of blessing. Hussein and his staff could go on with the task of educating Swat’s youth, as long as they followed the Taliban’s anachronistic code of conduct.
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Michael Wilson weighs in on Arthur Erickson
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:03 PM - 1 Comment
Ambassador Wilson Issues Statement Following the Death of Arthur EricksonWashington, DC, May 21, 2009 – “I was deeply saddened to learn of Arthur Erickson’s passing. Canada, and the world, have lost a remarkable architect, one whose accomplishments spanned the globe. Here at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, I have the good fortune of working in one of his inspiring buildings every day, and I hope that his designs will continue to lead innovation and originality in the next generation of international designers. He never forgot the quintessentially Canadian touchstones in his design of our iconic Embassy.”
Arthur Erickson was chosen by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to design the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC. His design won widespread acclaim and was officially opened in May 1989 by then prime minister Brian Mulroney. Erickson designed countless buildings around the world including the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, San Diego Convention Center, the Napp Laboratories in Cambridge, England, California Plaza in Los Angeles, and most recently the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington. May 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Embassy of Canada residing in the Erickson building in Washington, D.C.
