A bitter pill for Cold-fX

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:48 AM - 1 Comment

If you don’t have a cure, sometimes it’s best to treat the symptoms. So it was that Afexa Life Sciences Inc., the newly renamed company that makes Cold-fX, has agreed to pay $7 million to investors who filed a class-action suit over the firm’s botched launch of its product in the U.S. It’s the latest blow to Afexa (formerly CV Technologies), which has had a rough ride the past few years. The suit came after the company got in trouble for stating consignment deliveries to U.S. retailers as revenue. Last month, five senior officers of the company stepped down and were forced, under a settlement with the Alberta Securities Commission, to pay $740,000 in fines. Underlying all this is growing doubt about the company’s future, as data crunchers and clinical experts have questioned whether its ginseng-based products actually work. Could be a long winter for Afexa.

Edmonton Journal

Joe Comartin's straight-talk express

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:48 AM - 11 Comments

The NDP MP does not sound particularly enthused about the government’s EI legislation.

Windsor-Tecumseh MP Joe Comartin says an Employment Insurance bill tabled by the Conservative government Wednesday doesn’t live up to the way it was characterized by the human resources minister. ”I guess my initial reaction is what’s not in it,” said Comartin of the bill, which was tabled in the House of Commons at around 3:30 p.m. after parliament was disrupted by an anti-seal hunt protest. ”We just don’t see how they claim it will cost $900 million and benefit 190,000 people.”

Europe—not North America—is now world’s richest region: report

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:42 AM - 2 Comments

In the 1986 animated classic An American Tale, Fievel the mouse and his family immigrate from Russia in 1885 to the U.S., where “the streets are paved with cheese.” But if Fievel were looking for a more prosperous life today, he might be better off staying on his side of the Atlantic. According to a global wealth report released on the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brother’s bank, it’s Europe—not North America—that can now claim to be the richest region in the world. The report, authored by the Boston Consulting Group, found that during the recent downturn wealth dropped 22 per cent in the U.S.—almost twice the worldwide average. Though the U.S. is still the richest nation in the world, it’s no longer part of the the richest region. By comparing the value of assets held by the asset management industry, the group found that while North America had $29.3 trillion, Europe had around $32.7 trillion.

Spiegel Online

Exercise: good for our brains?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:41 AM - 1 Comment

If lab mice run as much as they like, their brain function improves; if they’re forced to run harder than that, it improves even more, according to researchers from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. In fact, mice who were pushed to race on treadmills show evidence of molecular changes in several parts of their brains. Meanwhile, those that could run at their own pace on the treadmill, an activity most mice enjoy, saw brain function change in only one area, the New York Times reports. Researchers have long known that exercise changes brain structure, and affects thinking; ten years ago, California scientists showed that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells. But should the exercise be strenuous? Must it be aerobic? And are cognitive changes permanent? Many questions remain. Answers, though, are starting to emerge: in one study, 21 students at the University of Illinois were asked to memorize a series of letters, then pick them out from a list of flashcards. After either sitting quietly, running on a treadmill or lifting weights, they were asked to perform the task again; after running, they did better on the test, and continued to perform better after cooling down. “There seems to be something different about aerobic exercise,” says Charles Hillman, an author of the study.

The New York Times

On Catholicism

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:41 AM - 12 Comments

From Dominic LeBlanc’s scrum after QP yesterday.

Question: Sir, as a Catholic, are you concerned about protesters dressing up in religious garb?

Dominic LeBlanc: I, usually that kind of costume would be reserved for Hallowe’en.  That’s a little over a month from now.  So maybe they’re just a bit early.

‘Virus hunter’ Bonnie Henry on H1N1

By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 2 Comments

Dr. Bonnie Henry is a physician, preventative medicine specialist, and epidemiologist—or “virus hunter.” Before becoming the director of public health emergency management at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, she fought outbreaks of SARS in Toronto and the Ebola virus in Uganda. Dr. Henry is leading emergency preparedness for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Her new book, Soap and Water & Common Sense, documents our constant battle against viruses, bacteria and other bugs, including the new pandemic strain of H1N1. Continue…

An indictment of the system

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 1 Comment

The crime was shocking. According to police, Scott McGillivary stepped outside his Winnipeg home for a cigarette on Aug. 11, noticed two young men in his backyard, told them to leave, and was shot dead. Now, the Winnipeg Free Press reports that the accused killers, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old, had been involved in 18 sentencing hearings related to 39 separate criminal charges since 2005. Their offences ranged from car theft to assault, and they repeatedly violated court orders. If ever a case raised questions about revolving-door justice, this is it.

Winnipeg Free Press

Mitchel Raphael on the top MPs who tweet

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 4 Comments

So then Harper’s cat said to Ignatieff’s cat . . .
More and more MPs have joined the social networking site Twitter, but keeping track of all the tweets can be cumbersome. That’s why 27-year-old Trevor May, a Vancouver-based Web developer, created politwitter.ca, a site dedicated to bringing together the tweets of Canada’s elected officials as well as political media types and commentators. It also includes satirical tweeters. One user posts from the perspective of Stephen Harper’s cat under the username cheddar_harper (the real Cheddar has been dead for quite some time), and another writes as Iggy’s cat Mimi under the username mimi_ignatieff. After Iggy’s recent election rallying call, cheddar_harper sent mimi_ignatieff this message: “Is ur dad serious about this election? I don’t want to move. Cats hate moving house so much.” Another satirical user called laytonsmustache once tweeted: “Jack just gave me a quick coat of ‘non-flammable’ factor 30 wax . . . looks like there’s gonna be some fireworks in QP today.”

Some MPs get their staff to Twitter for them but those tweets are usually easy to spot, says May, who adds that a good sign MPs are doing their own tweets is they often reply to other tweets and talk about being at an event. He says so far, unlike in the U.K. and the U.S., no Canadian MP has gotten into hot water over a tweet. One of the top MP tweeters, according to May, is Vancouver Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh, who is in his early 60s. His aide Braeden Caley, who is on the executive of the Young Liberals of Canada, showed Dosanjh how to tweet a few months ago and the MP has never looked back. Dosanjh says tweeting is a great way to communicate in real time and that an MP’s life has many short time slots that are perfect to fill with tweeting. Twitter’s 140-character limit is also good for the MP, Dosanjh says, because he is a very slow typist. Another Twitter king (also prodded by his hipster aide, Jamie Ellerton) is Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who says it is a great way to keep track of what members of his caucus have been up to and lends itself to more personal interactions. He had a flurry of Twitter activity when he tweeted how he was at an event next to the National Post’s Don Martin and jokingly noted that he was surprised the journalist was still sober. Other top tweeters are Heritage Minister James Moore, NDP Leader Jack Layton and Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow who, May says, holds the record for the parliamentarian who posts the most pics on Twitter. At the NDP convention in Halifax, 35-year-old MP Megan Leslie attended a New Democrats’ Twitter party and got snapped at for only producing four tweets since joining the social networking site. She promised she would do more once the House of Commons allows the necessary application to be loaded onto her BlackBerry. Continue…

The year of the rat

By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 9 Comments

Halina Siekanowicz doesn’t usually name the rats she is trying to kill, but she had to admire “Robbie’s” ingenuity. It was a typical extermination job at a Toronto business for the owner of Lady Bug Pest Control. Robbie, the last rat standing, had a route that included skittering along a length of pipe. Siekanowicz set out a piece of sausage as bait. Her preference is a fine link of Polish from a good deli, not the chemical-laden junk they peddle as sausage at the supermarket. “If it’s not good, they’re not going to eat it,” she says. “Rats are not so stupid.” In front of the bait she laid a glue trap that should have held the rodent fast, but Robbie had other ideas. She watched in fascination as Robbie gnawed at the wall above the trap, until the glue was coated with debris. “Then he walked away on the piping, over the glue trap and got the sausage as a reward,” she says. “We have nothing compared to their brain.”

It took three weeks, but Robbie is no more; done in by a poisoned sausage. But there is always another rat. Behind Robbie is a writhing, rutting, ever expanding horde. Indications are they are massing for what threatens to be a creepy winter, in Vancouver, in traumatized Swift Current, Sask., in apprehensive Alberta—and especially in Toronto, where a summer garbage strike left the population fattened and fecund. While the weather is mild, they are content in their outdoor burrows, munching on gardens, fallen fruit, compost and garbage. But winter is coming, says Siekanowicz. “Sooner or later, those buggers are going to go inside of the houses,” she says. “And thanks to them, we’re going to have more jobs. We cannot complain.”

Veteran Toronto exterminator Art Bossio, owner of Advantage Pest Control, is also predicting a winter invasion. “They’ll start looking for homes, factories or restaurants—that’s when we’ll get the brunt of the calls,” he says. “But even now our calls have probably doubled over what they were last year.” Sometimes the warning signs pop up in a most unpleasant fashion. Bossio has had at least a dozen calls this year from people who’ve lifted the lids of their toilets to find rats bobbling in the bowl. Some are drowned, others are frantically treading water after crawling up the drainpipe. “They can swim up to two miles,” says Bossio. What they can’t do is clamber up the slippery porcelain. “Once they’re in there, they’re basically stuck.”

Continue…

Getting into the game

By Julien Russell Brunet - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:58 AM - 4 Comments

The Eurythmics had it only partly right. Back in 1985, the British pop duo of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart recorded Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves with the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. A modern feminist anthem, the song makes this interesting observation: “The inferior sex has got a new exterior. We got doctors, lawyers, politicians too.” Indeed, much of that has come true. At several Canadian medical and law schools, women now outnumber men. But there’s one traditionally male-dominated field where men are still a clear majority—and where women’s representation has even declined in the past few years: engineering.

According to Engineers Canada, the number of women enrolled in engineering programs was on the rise for a full decade before plateauing in 2001, when 20.6 per cent of students were women. But since then, as more and more men have taken engineering, the number of women has remained flat. Since 2001, the proportion of female engineering students has dropped nearly every year, to just 17.3 per cent in 2007, and a mere 17.1 per cent in 2008. At the University of Toronto, for one, women comprised 26.6 per cent of engineering students in 2001, but just 21.4 per cent in 2008. And the phenomenon is not confined to Canadian universities: female enrolment in engineering has plateaued across North America. Continue…

Arrogant and Incompetent: the deep rot at Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:57 AM - 15 Comments

The Toronto Star’s John Goddard tells a sad and familiar tale.

Way nicer than those Seinfeld guys

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:55 AM - 0 Comments

Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the most formulaic sitcoms on television today. Every episode of the show, beginning its seventh season on HBO Canada on Sept. 20, has a similar plot—creator/star Larry David plays a lovable loser hatching zany schemes that don’t work out, in the tradition of The Honeymooners. The story arc of the new season, a reunion of the cast members from David’s previous show, Seinfeld (as themselves), will bring new viewers to Curb. But it might also highlight the fact that Curb is less revolutionary than Seinfeld was.

Not that David’s production method on Curb is the stuff of traditional sitcoms. The lines on Curb are improvised on the set, a process that Seinfeld and Curb producer Larry Charles says “allows for a very spontaneous experience on-camera that then translates to the audience, I find, and enhances their experience as well.” But the plots are scripted in advance, and like an old-fashioned sitcom, David builds them around certain story ideas repeated over and over, usually involving Larry becoming obsessed with some social convention; in a typical story, he becomes determined to find out if someone is tipping more than him in a restaurant. Seinfeld sometimes repeated plots, but it was also known for minimalist storytelling, like the episode where the characters spent the whole time waiting for a table. Not Curb: the new season’s plots are built around sitcom tropes like wacky misunderstandings, but in R-rated versions (Larry mistakenly thinks a couple is having oral sex in their car). “It looks like it has no form,” says Kevin Wright, senior vice-president of programming for HBO Canada, “but it actually has the bones of a classic sitcom in terms of hitting the marks and paying off jokes and bringing together B and C storylines.”

Continue…

Where did you go, Marcus Welby?

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:49 AM - 2 Comments

You have to be crazy to become a family doctor in Canada, right? Everyone knows they’re overworked and underpaid, and there aren’t nearly enough of them. So how come more and more medical students are shouldering their huge debts and going into family practice residencies—at rates not seen since the early ’90s? “I want to be a family doctor,” says Simon Moore, a fourth-year med student at the University of British Columbia, “because it entirely blew away my expectations.”

Moore originally planned to specialize in emergency medicine. He wanted the thrill and immediacy of saving lives in an ER. “My original impression of family medicine as a specialty was that you work in an office from 9 to 5 and you see warts and rashes and sore throats,” he recalls. But his opinion changed during his third year in med school, which he spent at a practice in Chilliwack, a city of 80,000 in B.C.’s Fraser Valley. He realized that as a single doctor serving a large community of patients, his opportunities went far beyond booster shots and blisters. “You can spend time in the office if you want, but other than that you can catch babies, you can do maternity, you can do emergency medicine, you can do surgical assists—the spectrum is much broader.” Continue…

If the end comes, don’t count on me

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

Given the choice, I’d prefer we don’t have an apocalypse. Sure, on some level it would be cool to live in a dystopian hellscape in which man is pitted against beast and one’s very survival depends on staying a step ahead of the ruthless hordes of flesh-ravaging mutants, but then again I already spent two years working in politics.

Despite being a human male with my very own testosterone, I am afflicted by a number of great fears: heights, tight spaces, unicorns (that pointy horn isn’t for show, little girls—what do you think caused Care Bears to go extinct?). But my greatest great fear is the unfolding of a scenario under which the vast majority of humanity is wiped out in an unspeakable cataclysm . . . and somehow I remain alive.

You’d think the prospect of improbable survival against absurd odds would bring relief, even joy. Perhaps for you and the resulting zombie king. But the toil of rebuilding civilization will inevitably expose me for what I am: useless. Completely useless. Skill-lacking, mistake-making, job-avoiding, thumb-hammering, handyman-calling useless. This is no false modesty: 40-plus years into my existence, I cannot be relied upon to construct anything more complex than an enchilada.

Continue…

Soccer takes a dive

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:11 AM - 7 Comments

The Globe has a big feature today on A3 on the supposed “science” of the soccer dive, including an interview with some psychologist who has published a piece on diving in the excellently-named Journal of Nonverbal behavior. But honestly, it doesn’t a scientist to spot a dive, and I remain completely flummoxed as to why referees are duped so frequently.

I explained it all ages ago:

When a normal human is tripped or stumbles, the automatic reaction is to thrust out a leg in the direction of the stumble, plant the foot, and allow the leg to absorb the force of the tilt and retain the body in an upright bipedal position. It’s a skill virtually every human learns by the age of four, and any professional athlete has mastered it. You simply cannot make it to the dinner table — let alone as a pro — without being able to stand up.

Countering the “staying upright” instinct is hard, and soccer players have to practice  to make themselves fall down. My friend JP, with whom I played four years of varsity soccer at McGill, had mastered it. The trick, as he showed me, was to train yourself to let your legs go limp as soon as you are tackled. It’s similar to the idea of letting your body go limp when you are about to crash your car.

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of September 15th, 2009)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

"The radar will not"

By Paul Wells - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 8:59 AM - 24 Comments

Barack Obama’s decision to scrap an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, in the (Google-translated) original Polish. Repercussions discussed in English over here.

EKOS: Deadlock picked? (35.1/29.9/16.5/9.0/38.9)

By kadyomalley - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 8:52 AM - 79 Comments

So, based on these results, as well as the numbers we’ve seen from a few other pollsters whose names do not begin with the letter I,  it looks like we’ve got ourselves a five point gap between the two leading contenders (insert wounded grumbling from already tender NDP supporters here):

Conservatives: 35.1 (+0.9)
Liberals: 29.9 (-0.9)
NDP: 16.5 (+1.8)
Green: 9.0 (-1.1)
Bloc Quebecois: 38.9 (-0.9)
Undecided/Ineligible: 13.3 (-1.6)

I’ll put up the regionals once I’ve had time to plow through the data tables, but really, the numbers haven’t shifted all that much. Which is kind of surprising, actually, considering all the sound and fury emanating from all sides that marked The Return of Parliament (But For How Long?), not to mention the public uprising that was allegedly brewing over The Election Nobody Wants (And May, As It Turns Out, Have Been Staved Off For The Moment) and, of course,  the dark rumblings over The Anti-Democratic Coalition They Want Even Less (Or So We Are Constantly Informed). Is anyone out there still paying attention, or have y’all (well, not y’all, of course) just given up?

Anyway, once again, the bonus questions provide the most scope for speculation and analysis, at least as far as ITQ is concerned.

Continue…

It took a while but Section 13 is dead

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 7:40 AM - 161 Comments

“Nice to see you all,” said Athanasios Hadjis, the Canadian “Human Rights” Tribunal’s vice-chair (i.e., judge), as he surveyed his courtroom in Ottawa last year. “More of an interest than there was before.”

Indeed. The packed benches that greeted him were a rare sight at a CHRT trial, and especially at the Marc Lemire trial, where the prosecutors—the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission—had demanded that everyone other than them be banned from the courtroom, including the defendant, who would be graciously permitted to watch proceedings by video. That doesn’t sound quite like the right to confront your accuser in open court. But hey, given all the other safeguards of Canada’s judicial inheritance the Dominion’s “human rights” regime trashes, what’s one more faggot on the bonfire of liberties?

Judge Hadjis was, by that stage, in the fifth year of the Canadian state’s investigation of Marc Lemire, webmaster of freedomsite.org and accused Section 13 hate-monger, and appeared from my seat in court anxious to throw the book at him. “We’re done,” he said at several points during the day, swatting aside some intervention or other. Jurisprudentially, Judge Hadjis was outta there and eager to add Mr. Lemire’s scalp to the CHRT’s trophy room. In that long ago spring of 2008, the rules were very simple: under the Canadian “Human Rights” Tribunal, to be accused of a Section 13 thought crime was to be convicted. In the entire history of Section 13, every defendant brought before the CHRT had been found guilty. It would be unfair to compare this to the justice systems of Saddam Hussein or Pol Pot, since even those eminent jurists felt obliged to let someone off once in a while just for appearances’ sake. Only in Canada was a 100 per cent conviction rate merely reassuring proof of the Dominion’s humane progressive commitment to “human rights.”

Continue…

I Have Seen the Future of Political Communication and it’s a Hologram of Mike Duffy

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 6:41 AM - 33 Comments

I’ve witnessed a lot of terrifying things in my time – I’ve seen John Goodman eat spaghetti, for God’s sake – but nothing comes close to this: it’s the head of Reluctant Senator Mike Duffy staring directly at me through my computer screen and greeting me by name.

Okay, the name he actually says is “Stephen,” but that’s because this version of the new Duffy computer infomercial was personalized for blogger Stephen Taylor. Or maybe it was prepared so our Prime Minister could ease his way to sleep each night listening to the Independent Conservative senator repeatedly coo his name and itemize his positive qualities. You have a firm handshake, Stephen… you’re good with a hammer, Stephen… you look nice in green, Stephen… Either way, <shudder>…

Welcome to the future of political communication and size 54 suits that will haunt your nightmares! According to Taylor, “the automated Duffy has a whole bank of names to read from in the Conservative Party’s latest innovative fundraising and voter ID widget.” Conservatives began receiving their personalized Duffygrams last night. That’s what party members are calling them – Duffygrams. I guess that beats calling them Aiiiiieeeeeee!-mails.

Here’s how they work. You click on the thingy or whatever and up pops Duffy, who Continue…

Former Tory MP charged with drunk driving and possession of cocaine

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 12:47 AM - 0 Comments

Police reportedly charged former Edmonton-Strathcona Tory Rahim Jaffer with drunk driving and possession of cocaine on Sept. 11. Authorities are said to have stopped him as he drove through Caledon, Ont., about an hour and twenty minutes from Angus, hometown of his wife, Simcoe-Grey Tory MP Helena Guergis. Guergis has since released a terse statement, saying only that she “[takes] this very seriously” but won’t be making further comments until more information comes out. As the Edmonton Journal points out, Jaffer, who lost to the NDP Linda Duncan in last year’s election, used anti-drug rhetoric in his electioneering. “In the run-up to the election, Jaffer’s campaign took out an advertisement on 630 CHED radio that made reference to remarks NDP leader Jack Layton made in 2003 about his appreciation of marijuana,” writes Karen Kleiss. “Edmontonians understand how difficult it is to make sure our children make the right choices, especially on serious issues like drug use,” the ad went.

Edmonton Journal

Edmonton Sun

The inevitable appeal to irony

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 11:56 PM - 0 Comments

In accordance with the rules governing incidents of politicians coming into such trouble, the Edmonton Journal digs up the anti-drug attack ad run by Rahim Jaffer’s campaign during the last election.

“Jack Layton and the Ottawa NDP have publicly supported the legalization of marijuana. In fact when asked about marijuana Jack Layton called it a wonderful substance which Canadians should be free to smoke at home or in a cafe. Edmontonians understand how difficult it is to make sure our children make the right choices especially on serious issues like drug use. The Conservative Party supports drug free schools and getting tough with drug dealers who sell illegal drugs to children. Don’t let our schools go up in smoke..on October 14th vote Conservative. Authorized by the official agent for Rahim Jaffer.”

A close of friend of Jaffer’s insists he will be proven not guilty of the charges against him.

Bloodsuckers and aging rockers

By Tom Henheffer - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 10:57 PM - 0 Comments

Suck is a raunchy rock ‘n roll comedy about a bunch of quickly aging losers terrified of being forced into a life of sweater vests and day jobs. They’re in a laughably unsuccessful band, but things begin to change after their bass player returns from a one-night stand pale, afraid of light and thirsty for blood. One by one they each sell their souls for a one-way ticket to stardom. The cast includes a host of rock legends—Alice Cooper, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Moby—and renowned actor Maclcolm McDowell. Rob Stefaniuk writes, directs and stars as Joey, the band’s dopey leader, who lets the world fall apart around him in order to keep living his rock dream. At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Maclean’s talked to Stefaniuk and Rush’s Alex Lifeson, who has a comedic turn as an irritable border guard. Continue…

Another Celebrity Death: Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 9:49 PM - 3 Comments

There are just too many celebrity deaths to keep up with. Today we lost Mary Travers, the “Mary” of Peter, Paul and Mary; she was 72 and died of leukemia. The group, of course, was one of the definitive acts of the ’60s, musically, politically, and in the fact that the group ended when the decade did. (By the end of the ’70s they got back together, and continued to tour together until Travers’ health declined.) Some of their biggest hits, like “Puff the Magic Dragon,” are pure ’60s, but when they sang “If I Had a Hammer” they made it sound like a topical ’60s song, even though it wasn’t. A lot of acts from the ’60s, particularly in the U.S., bridged the cultural gap between the seemingly happy-go-lucky Kennedy era and the “turbulent” mid- ’60s, which in many ways merely brought a lot of late ’50s/early ’60s issues into sharper focus. Peter, Paul and Mary, like Bob Dylan (whose song “Blowin’ in the Wind” was a big hit for them), belong to both versions of the ’60s, though not quite as much to the harder-edged, less folkish late ’60s.

And here they are in 1966 singing “Early Morning Rain” by Gordon Lightfoot.

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