Lindsey Vonn wins races—and hops fences

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:35 PM - 2 Comments

Lindsey Vonn has a badly bruised right shin. Or so we’re told.

Days before the Olympics kicked off, the U.S. skiing star-slash-swimsuit model said the pain in her leg was so fierce that she may have to pull out of the Games—a nightmare scenario not only for the American squad, but for every man who saw her on the cover of Sports Illustrated and suddenly became a fan of alpine skiing. Yet there she was on Wednesday afternoon, whipping the rest of the field—on the nastiest of downhill courses—for a runaway gold medal.

This morning, after a long night of celebrating, Vonn and her sore right shin were back in championship form, finishing atop the first heat of the women’s Super Combined with a time of 1:24:16. If she can tame the slalom later this afternoon, the undisputed heartthrob of the 2010 Games will also be its first athlete to capture two golds.

So how’s the shin? “It’s not good,” she told reporters after the first run. “It’s really hurting and I’m struggling with it. It’s definitely the most painful it’s been since I started skiing on it, but there’s nothing really I can do. I just have to try to do therapy and try to tough it out today.” That therapy, it seems, includes some fence hopping.

At Whister’s Creekside course, competitors exit the course through a red carpet-style runway lined with journalists and photographers. When she finished her final scrum a few minutes ago, Vonn didn’t bother waiting for someone to unlock the gate and let her through. To the horror of her handlers, she simply climbed over. “Are you sure you should do that?” asked one of the American officials standing with her. By then, she was already halfway over.

Safely on the other side, Vonn smiled for the cameras one more time, clicked on her skis, and glided away. Shin looks fine.

Moments of lucidity

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:34 PM - 67 Comments

Amid the kerfuffle over Lucien Bouchard’s renunciation of the separatist “dream” — desirable, perhaps, but not achievable — spare a thought for Jacques Parizeau. Most PQ leaders wind up disillusioned and embittered like Bouchard, loathing the party they once led and heartily loathed in return. Pierre-Marc Johnson, Andre Boisclair, even René Lévesque himself: all eventually lost their passion for the cause, and were reviled for it by the faithful.

But not Parizeau. Fat Jack still holds to the old religion with undiminished fervor. Not for him Bouchard’s pessimism. In his latest book, La souveraineté du Québec: Hier, aujourd’hui et demain, Parizeau remains as resolute as ever that Quebec’s independence is only a matter of time. If Bouchard’s intervention has made trouble for the PQ leadership, seeming to suggest they might as well give up, Parizeau’s did much the same, by suggesting the battle was nearly won.

And yet, in a way, Parizeau was always the most realistic of the separatist leaders — the most “lucide,” if you will. Levesque thought there could be such a thing as sovereignty-association. Bouchard insisted on proposing an economic and political partnership with what remained of Canada. Parizeau rejected all such half-way houses, reasoning, rightly, that the rest of Canada would never agree to it. And while Bouchard and other PQ leaders may have believed that the terms of separation could be negotiated, like a trade treaty, only Parizeau understood that the thing could never be negotiated: it could only be achieved by a sharp and sudden rupture — a unilateral declaration of independence, followed by a series of lightning-quick manoeuvres, the whole to be effected within days. A revolution, in other words.

That was the plan in 1995, whatever the wording of the referendum question, and by however narrow a margin it might have passed. Some of what Parizeau had in mind, such as his scheme to throw the Quebec Pension Plan into the currency markets to avert a collapse of the dollar, he has been bold enough to share with us. Other measures, the highways that would have been blocked and so forth, are known only to insiders. Suffice to say we dodged a very nasty bullet.

It wouldn’t have worked, of course: even Parizeau was a fantasist, at bottom. His coup would likely have failed within weeks, if not days, as capital fled, banks collapsed, Quebec’s courts ruled the government’s actions unlawful, and the promised international recognition failed to materialize. Among the less unpleasant consequences.

But it had a damn sight more chance of succeeding than Bouchard-style negotiations, which would have gone straight to nowhere, there being no lawful entity to negotiate on the rest-of-Canada’s behalf, nor any means of constituting one. Had negotiations ever got under way, it would soon have become clear that every issue was a zero-sum game, where one side’s gain was the other side’s loss (the debt? the territory? the Habs?). And if by some miracle the negotiators had arrived at a deal, the constitutional amendments required to enact it would have had to be ratified by every province, most by referendum. Not. A. Chance.

But then, the entire enterprise would have been undermined from the start by a logical paradox. Quebec’s sole bargaining chip in the negotiations would have been the threat of unilateral separation. But if such a threat were hollow, as Quebec’s presence at the table suggested, what incentive would we have had to negotiate?

So it’s a little rich for Bouchard to be posing as the voice of reason in this debate — as it is for him to profess himself so lately distressed at the PQ’s intolerance. This was the leader, after all, who scolded Quebecers for being the “white race” that has the fewest babies, who demonized Jean Chretien as a vendu, and who upheld, first to last, separatism’s fundamental premise: that it is intolerable to have to share a country with the Other. Even the sainted Lévesque, whom Bouchard holds up as a beacon of tolerance next to the current yobs, was not above pointing to Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s middle name to suggest where his true loyalties lay.

It’s possible, in sum, to measure who’s the more tolerant separatist, just as it’s possible to grade them on a scale of realism. But is it really worth the effort?

Who are these jackals that insist we must 'own' the podium?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:31 PM - 38 Comments

Jay Hill asks that you stop expecting so much our Olympic athletes.

I’m disappointed by the number of news stories focused on glitches and tough expectations on our athletes … when Alexandre Bilodeau won his event, the pundits obsessed that “finally” we won our first Gold here at home in Canada. What does his success have to do with what did or did not happen in 1976 in Montreal or 1988 in Calgary? … Personally, one of the most rewarding moments of these Olympics so far was the Men’s 1000m speed skating final featuring our very own Fort St. John native, Denny Morrison.  To be in the stands at the fabulous Richmond Oval with thousands of other Canadians hollering and whistling Denny on is an experience I’ll not soon forget. Although Denny didn’t win, I’m sure he’d be one of the first to agree, that just to have qualified to be there, representing Canada … the greatest country on earth … was a victory in itself!  Go Canada Go.

Williams keeping rank and pay

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:03 PM - 4 Comments

Colonel Russell Williams, the former commander of CFB Trenton accused of murdering two women and sexually assaulting two others, will keep his military rank and continue to collect pay until a verdict is determined in his case. Lieutenant Colonel Tony O’Keefe, a close friend of the accused murderer and the man overseeing his case for the military, spoke after Williams briefly appeared in a Belville Ontario Court of Justice by video, saying he would personally deliver the news to the colonel at the Quinte Detention Centre. Unshaven and dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Williams spoke his name when asked and said thank you after as his legal representative asked that his next court appearance be on March 25.  Williams will be represented by Ottawa criminal defence lawyer Michael Edelson, who is known for representing high-profile clients such as Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien and Nova Scotia Bishop Raymond Lahey.

CBC

South Korea takes on prostitution

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 9 Comments

In 2004, the South Korean government enacted new laws designed to crack down on the country’s sex trade, which by some estimates accounted for a whopping 4.1 per cent of GDP. To some extent, those regulations were successful: according to the Korean Women’s Development Institute, a think tank dedicated to researching women’s issues in South Korea, the sex trade now generates approximately 1.6 per cent of GDP, or about $14 billion annually (by comparison, South Korea’s agriculture industry accounts for roughly three per cent of GDP).

But Sealing Cheng, an anthropologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who specializes in sexuality, prostitution and human rights in South Korea, argues the government’s efforts don’t always work as intended. While the sex trade laws target pimps and brothel owners, and offer financial and vocational assistance for victims of prostitution, they also establish fines and jail terms for the approximately 269,000 sex workers in the country. “It makes life difficult for a lot of women who, for some reason, remain in the trade. If there isn’t adequate assistance for them, they won’t leave.”

The crackdown is also forcing prostitution further underground. When illicit massage parlours are raided, they often reopen as “hostess bars,” where women are paid for their company but don’t specifically have to sleep with clients, although they often do. “They’re moving too quickly for the government to shut them down,” says Whasoon Byun, a researcher with the Korean Women’s Development Institute.

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Andrew Lindsay Phillips (1966-2010)

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 3 Comments

Andrew Lindsay Phillips was born on May 24, 1966, to Dorothy and Fred Phillips in Ottawa, Ont., but grew up mainly in Jamaica and the Philippines, where his dad worked for CIDA and the Asian Development Bank. A curious, insightful boy with hazel eyes and chubby cheeks, Andy loved to tinker, building model airplanes and Lego cities. The eldest of three kids, Andy was mature for his age. “He knew everything,” says sister Liz, recalling how, as kids, he once calmed her down during a monsoon in the Philippines by explaining the science behind it.

An independent spirit, Andy took the family’s moves in stride. “It all meant new adventures for him,” says Fred, who had his pilot’s licence, and took Andy flying in Jamaica. At 12, he begged his parents to let him buy a “wreck of a motorcycle” to fix up, says Fred. Believing he’d never get it on the road, they relented. But working with a mechanic he’d befriended, Andy proved them wrong: within six months it looked like it had come out of a showroom, says brother Justin. Unbeknownst to his parents, he criss-crossed the Philippine countryside on the bike, revelling in the freedom.

In his quest to figure out how things worked, Andy was a voracious reader, and rarely needed instruction manuals when putting a machine together. An “experimental guy,” says Justin, he “tried everything”—including burying fireworks underground and setting them off, covering the family’s cars and fish pond in dirt. When he was in Grade 10 his parents separated, and he and his siblings moved back to the Ottawa area with their mom. He attended Merivale High School because it had a shop program.

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Corruption engulfs India’s army

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 5 Comments

Lt.-Gen. Avadesh Prakash, one of India’s highest ranking army officers, was just days from retirement when he was ordered to face a court martial recently over his alleged involvement in a controversial land deal. It is the latest in a series of corruption scandals to engulf India’s defence forces in the last few years.

Prakash is accused of abusing his position so a close friend and developer, Dilip Agarwal, could buy a 30-hectare parcel of land next to the headquarters of the army’s 33 Corps in West Bengal at a bargain-basement price. The scandal first came to light last year and Prakash was found guilty by a military court of inquiry in December. Though Lt.-Gen. V.K. Singh, the court’s convenor, recommended Prakash be fired, India’s army chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor decided that only light “administrative action” was warranted. As criticism grew that Kapoor was being too soft on Prakash, the defence minister, A.K. Antony, pushed for tougher disciplinary action against Prakash. Kapoor reluctantly agreed to a court martial for the three-star general: “The minister’s advice to [the] army chief amounts to being a direct order,” explained an unidentified official to the Times of India.

This is just one of the scandals to grip the 1.1-million man military force, in the midst of a multi-billion-dollar replacement of aged weaponry. There was the commander fired for selling subsidized alcohol on the black market, and the “ketchup colonel” who faked photographs of successful battles against militants, thereby winning promotions, by pouring the red sauce on civilians. Then last year, it was revealed that the silent “reconnaissance vehicles” purchased for covert missions behind enemy lines were in fact nothing more than golf carts used at exclusive military courses.

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Who on earth are they talking to?

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment

In the original pilot script for Modern Family, the creators included a subplot explaining why the show’s three wacky families were being filmed documentary-style. The idea was that the interconnected families were the subject of a movie being made by a Dutch exchange student; he was going to have a backstory and fall in love with one of the regulars. But by the time the show made it to air, the documentary filmmaker was nowhere to be seen, and as Modern Family has grown into the biggest hit comedy of the season, the characters have never shown any awareness that they’re being filmed. Co-creator Steven Levitan (Just Shoot Me!) made it official in an interview with the Television Critics Association, saying that the presence of the documentarian “felt like an appendage, like we didn’t need it.” Modern Family is now a show that uses documentary film techniques but never bothers to explain why; that’s why Levitan calls it “a family show done documentary-style.”

The mock-documentary is a staple of modern U.S. and British comedy, whether it’s the early movies of Albert Brooks, films like This Is Spinal Tap, or both versions of The Office. But in most of those projects, there’s been some attempt to justify the style of shooting and to follow some of the rules of a real documentary. The documentarian was an onscreen character in Spinal Tap, and on the original version of The Office, the show did an episode in which the documentary actually was released (providing new problems for the characters). On the U.S. Office, people mention the presence of the camera, look in its direction, and even try to avoid being filmed at tense moments. There’s none of that on Modern Family, where the characters never seem to know they’re being filmed, and where Levitan has said he doesn’t want to imitate “families who let cameras in their houses in real life. I just can’t stand those shows.”

Even the “talking head” segments, where characters are interviewed about what’s going on in their lives, are done without any indication of who they’re talking to. On The Office, characters answer questions and even say things like “shut up” to the off-screen interviewer, but on Modern Family, the same scenes are almost like dream sequences where the stars express their feelings to no one in particular. Some people have complained about the refusal to justify the format; New Jersey Star-Ledger critic Alan Sepinwall wrote that the show needs to make up its mind whether the talking heads are real or fantasy, because “the current approach is just distracting.” But Levitan has said the documentary is “just our style of storytelling,” a device to reveal characters’ feelings.

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Jobs Wanted

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 8 Comments

The process of rebuilding after the Great Recession has begun in earnest inside a dingy mall in Oshawa, Ont. There, some 200 men and women pass through the doors of an employment “action centre” each week in search of a new job and, in some cases, a complete reset of their lives. Many are former auto workers laid off after General Motors shuttered its Oshawa truck plant and scaled back production at a neighbouring car plant last year. Others worked at parts companies. Few have easily transferable skills and many don’t even have a high school diploma.

Connie Snelgrove is the centre’s coordinator. She briefly worked for a supplier that built car seats, but lost her job in 2008. “I was only there two years, so I knew what the real world was—that everybody else [without skills or an education] is making $8 to $10 an hour,” says Snelgrove. “But these guys have been making good money and have been in the same environment for so long. I knew they were going to be in for a culture shock.”

Once comfortably part of this country’s large middle class—loosely defined as people who are neither rich nor poor and measured by things like a steady job, home ownership and a pension—thousands of Canadians are now turning to people like Snelgrove for help after losing their jobs and suddenly finding themselves on the margins of society. The fact that the employment upheaval, which cost nearly half a million Canadians their jobs over the past year, comes at a time when many households are carrying near record amounts of debt has only served to compound the financial pain, raising the risk of missed mortgage payments and bankruptcies.

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Gordon Lightfoot: Still Alive!

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 2:42 PM - 31 Comments

Gordon Lightfoot, one of Canada’s biggest musical stars, died last night. Here are a few clips of him online:

As you can see, this post was originally about the death of Gordon Lightfoot, as reported in the Ottawa Citizen. The Citizen‘s report has been removed, because Lightfoot’s manager has confirmed that his client is about as dead as Jeff Goldblum. In fact, as I write this update, Lightfoot is on TV denying he’s dead. I choose to believe him; others might not.

Yes, it seems like the reports of Lightfoot’s death, as “confirmed” by newspapers, were premature. (Well, by definition, any report of a death is premature unless the guy is actually dead. This is one area where you are either right or wrong, no in-betweens.) This is a very good thing, but as someone said on Twitter, “we’ve lost a Canadian legend’s rumour.” So the celebrity death story of the day is of a celebrity who turned out not to be dead; that’s a welcome change.

Update: Now Toronto has the confirmation of his aliveness, and they’ve also saved the “official” death report that Canwest is currently scrubbing from their websites.

In the meantime, the clips are still good, so they might as well remain up.

Lightfoot as a guest on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969, singing “Ribbon of Darkness”:

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Gordon Lightfoot "very much alive"

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 2:37 PM - 3 Comments

Earlier today, Canwest news sources reported that Gordon Lightfoot died on Wednesday evening, but moments later those reports were taken down. Rumours that the iconic Canadian folksinger was dead were apparently confirmed through Ronnie Hawkins. “He died last night, I’ve had a couple of phone calls already,” he told the Ottawa Citizen on Thursday from his home in Peterborough, Ont. However, the Globe and Mail just dispelled the floating gossip with a quick call to Bernie Fielder, Gordon Lightfoot’s long-time friend, some-time publicist and road manager. Fielder confirmed that Lightfoot is “very much alive and in Toronto,” and claimed that the death report was “a prank” originating as “a Twitter coming out of Ottawa.”

Ottawa Citizen

Globe and Mail

Olympic luger had filed complaint

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 2:29 PM - 0 Comments

Months before Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a fatal training run at Whistler’s Sliding Centre, a fellow Olympic luger repeatedly complained about the track to Canadian and international luge officials. Venezuelan luger Werner Hoeger, who competed in the Turin and Salt Lake Games, lost consciousness and sustained a concussion during a training run crash in November, and attributed the fall to the unsafe design of the track. His complaint letters and emails raised many of the same issues now being discussed in the wake of Kumaritashvili’s, including international athletes’ lack of access to private runs. A spokesman for the Canadian Luge Association has declined to comment.

New York Times

Olympic Photos: Wednesday February 18th, 2010

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

How we talk about this

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 1:10 PM - 29 Comments

George Packer considers the way we discuss this stuff.

Broder wasn’t analyzing Palin’s positions or accusations, or the truth or falsehood of her claims, or even the nature of the emotions that she appeals to. He was reviewing a performance and giving it the thumbs up, using the familiar terminology of political journalism. This has been so characteristic of the coverage of politics for so long that it doesn’t seem in the least bit odd, and it’s hard to imagine doing it any other way. A couple of weeks ago, the Times ran a piece by its lead political reporter, Adam Nagourney, about a Republican strategy session in Hawaii: “Here in Honolulu, the strains within the party over conservative principles versus political pragmatism played out in a sharp and public way, especially as the party establishment struggled to deal with the demands of the Tea Party movement.” The structure of the sentence, and of the article, puts the emphasis entirely on tactics and performance. This kind of prose goes down as easily and unnoticeably as a glass of sparkling water, with no aftertaste. Readers interested in politics drink quarts of it every day without gaining weight. And Broder and Nagourney are at the top of their game.

John Wells on SOUTHLAND, NBC, and the Network Model

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 1:09 PM - 3 Comments

Southland has been, in a weird way, kind of a lucky show. It isn’t a great show, and if NBC had put the second season on at 10 p.m. as originally intended, it’s quite easy to imagine that it wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Instead, NBC’s decision to cancel it (without showing the 13-episode second season they’d already ordered) turned it into a cause celebre, a symbol of NBC’s ineptitude and what the Leno experiment was doing to scripted programming. It got the show a new life on cable, which it wouldn’t have had if it had just died a quiet death on a broadcast network. And John Wells, the veteran producer who hasn’t had a lot of success since his ’90s hot streak — ER, The West Wing, Third Watch — now looks like a rebel against the NBC establishment, rather than a producer who isn’t as reliable a hit-maker as he once was.

And Wells is taking advantage of his renewed fame, as he should be, to talk about what ails network television. His new interview with Forbes magazine has some good observations on the state of TV today. Some of the observations, obviously, are a bit self-serving: of course he preferred it when the networks were forced to buy all their shows from outside companies, because he works for Warner Brothers and makes his living selling shows to broadcast networks that don’t own them. (As he points out, outside suppliers will never completely die out because “they all buy some things from other people because they want to spread the risk on certain kind of shows. They tend to buy the very expensive shows from other suppliers so that the deficits can be handled by others.”) But he is right that the competition from cable has created a situation where much of network TV programming is — even compared to the past — relentlessly middlebrow and middle-of-the-road. Which in turn creates a situation John Wells, a reliable supplier of first-rate middlebrow entertainment, is too highbrow for the broadcast networks.

So now increasingly that kind of adult programming has migrated to basic and pay cable, which has really left the broadcast networks needing to work harder and harder to aggregate a large–and what I would consider vaguely blobby–middle audience. Frankly if you look at it in the terms of retailing, broadcast television was equivalent to the old Sears. They had high-end stuff and low-end stuff and everything in the middle–the old line at NBC was “mass and class.” You had the more high-end, classy programming and then you had mass entertainment. And the high-end or class part of that equation has in large part moved to cable.

I’d add that cable programming has also provided competition at the low end, so that networks stay away from certain types of shows (light action, videotaped sitcom) that are now mostly confined to basic cable. That’s an added factor in pushing everything on network TV toward the mushy middle.

Generation chasm

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 1:06 PM - 1 Comment

According to a new report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, young adults (18 to 29) are almost twice as likely to say homosexuality should be accepted by society as those 65 and older—63 per cent versus 35 per cent. Surveys showed that less than a third of the so-called Millennial adults saw Hollywood as a threat to their moral values compared to 44 per cent of those 30 and over. The gap narrowed on the question of evolution; while only 47 per cent of older Americans accepted evolution, 55 per cent of Millennials did, a figure that many scientists would still find alarmingly low. “Young people are more accepting of homosexuality and evolution than are older people. They are also more comfortable with having a bigger government, and they are less concerned about Hollywood threatening their values,” said the report, which was released on Wednesday.

Reuters

Beautiful game’s got debt trouble

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 2 Comments

The English Premier League, home to some of soccer’s biggest superstars and most storied clubs, is facing tough economic times. Overspending on salaries and transfer fees, along with a laissez-faire approach to governance—teams are often bought and sold by questionable characters, including Thailand’s disgraced former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who once owned the Manchester City franchise—has left many clubs buried under mountains of debt.

Last June it was reported that the 20 Premier League clubs owed a combined $5.2 billion. Two of the league’s most successful teams, Manchester United and Chelsea F.C., led the way with debts of roughly $1.2 billion each. Manchester United’s owners have since launched a plan to borrow $837 million to help refinance its existing debt load. Liverpool, another of the league’s famed clubs, has accumulated $400 million worth of debt since 2007. The 18-time Premier League champion was told earlier this month that it must cut existing debt by $167 million before bankers would consider refinancing the club’s existing loans.

And it’s not just the top clubs that are in trouble. Portsmouth, the worst team in the league, is buried under $101 million of debt; its players are not being paid on time, and last week the club shut down its website for a few hours because it couldn’t pay its service provider.

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U.S. television getting more diverse?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 12:56 PM - 2 Comments

The recent trend toward mostly-white casts on U.S. TV might finally be starting to reverse itself. This year’s pilot season on U.S. TV features a number of pilots with African-American leads. These pilots include “Undercovers,” the Mr. and Mrs. Smith-style show from J.J. Abrams (Lost, Star Trek), which stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Boris Kodjoe as a sexy spy couple, and a spinoff from Criminal Minds starring Forest Whitaker. Though there are still only four new drama pilots starring minority actors, it’s a big step up from the zero African-American stars on new dramas in 2008.

Hollywood Reporter

What Team Canada had for dinner last night

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 12:24 PM - 12 Comments

Team Canada The Canadian men’s Olympic hockey team ingested its carbs and protein in style Wednesday tonight at db Bistro Moderne, the popular Vancouver restaurant owned by famed New York chef Daniel Boulud and former B.C. Lion David Sidoo. Word that the team would be dining at the Kitsilano hotspot on its off-night between games had leaked by late afternoon; cops and restaurant security rebuffed the few intrepid fans who tried to talk their way into the place, which closed to the public while the team was there (with exceptions made for Maclean’s, a local paper and a few comely local lasses who sat in the bar area).

The team’s unmarked white bus pulled up at 6:30 and the players, who had just all met one another as a team two days previously, filed through the entrance bar area where many picked up a glass of beer. They then took their place at a long table where they were served “family style,” the food presented on platters, while managers and trainers fanned out at surrounding tables. Spending a night outside of the Olympic Village offered the team vital bonding and relaxation time, head coach Mike Babcock explained as the team chowed down on a delicious, well-balanced, management-approved dinner.

Chef Stephane Istel prepped charcuterie platters with duck pate en croute and duck prosciutto. Fibre arrived in the form of the house’s signature “Chop Chop” salad. The carb course was plentiful: ravioli, cavatelli and lemon fettuccine, followed by Loup de mer—black cod cooked in a salt crust served with white lemongrass butter—on a heavy platter chef Istel brought to the table himself. (Boulud was in town for the opening weekend but had flown home for another engagement.) More protein followed with the arrival of grilled rib-eye with a pepper-bearnaise sauce. For dessert there was apple spice cake and fruit platters. That wasn’t enough for some players who ordered up db Moderne’s famed $28 burgers—carnivorous concoctions stuffed with fois gras and short ribs. The wine flowed moderately during the dinner that wound down at 8:30 (Sidney Crosby nursed two glasses of red) and the mood was convivial following a previous night trounce, with everyone bursting into “Happy Birthday” for associate coach Lindy Ruff. It’s not difficult to guess what he wished for when he blew out the candles.

Olympic Mailbag: Dale Begg-Smith, Barenaked Ladies, Andrew Coyne’s secret identity

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:36 AM - 17 Comments

Welcome to the first Mailbag from the Winter Olympics, where every time a cowbell rings, an angel gets a migraine. (And cowbells ring a lot here – sorry, heaven.)

The following queries were actually submitted by actual readers. Remember – there are no stupid questions, unless you’re asking whether Mother Nature hates Canadians.

•••

Dear Scott:

I feel that I am not showing my “Spirit” nearly enough to suit these Olympic games. Do you have any tips, or possibly incomprehensible drunken phrases I may shout to better show this “Spirit?” – redzimmer

redzimmer –

Relax – there is no “right” way to show your spirit, unless you’re the hot girl sitting across from me right now at the Whistler Starbucks, in which case: toplessness.

[Waiting... waiting... and... nope, guess not.]

Anyway, redzimmer, there are a variety of techniques you can use to communicate your national spirit:

1. Wear a patriotic outfit. Dress in red. Throw on a T-shirt with Continue…

Mind the gap

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 29 Comments

Kevin Page has released his latest report. The Globe got an early look and summarizes as so.

In a report released today, Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page warns it’s not good enough for Ottawa to simply balance the books – because of the increasing squeeze Canada’s greying ranks will place on coffers.

He predicts that even if Ottawa slays the deficit, it will still have to confront an expanding “fiscal gap” in revenue over the decades ahead that rises to $20-billion to $40-billion annually within seven decades. This will arise as Canada’s work force shrinks in proportion to its growing pool of retirees, a trend that should both slow the growth of government tax revenue and increase demands for health-care spending and old-age benefits.

Canada should protest Karzai's latest slippery move fast

By John Geddes - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:17 AM - 9 Comments

UPDATED BELOW

A well-informed source tells me that Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai apparently plans to use a presidential decree today to eliminate foreign participation from his country’s vitally important Electoral Complaints Commission.

This would be an outrage. It was the Electoral Complaints Commission’s foreign members, led by Canadian Grant Kippen, who insisted on careful investigation and reporting on fraud in last year’s Afghan elections. Experience leaves little doubt that the Afghan members of the commission, appointed by Karzai’s government, on their own would not have been an adequate check on cheating.

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Why the NHL needs to be in the Games

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 15 Comments

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman can think of a lot of reasons why his league should not participate in the 2014 Winter Olympics, to be held in Sochi, Russia. Most fans can probably think of only one reason why it should—it would be great fun to watch. That lopsided score is bad for hockey.

In a meeting with Maclean’s editorial board late last year, Bettman put forth a comprehensively gloomy view on the prospects for NHL participation beyond the Vancouver Olympics this month.

February is a problematic month for the league, Bettman noted: “We’re about to hit the stretch runs. Teams are firing on all cylinders.” The Olympic break, he claimed, diminishes playoff momentum. Olympic rosters can have a significant impact on some teams, with the possibility of injury or fatigue. Flying time to Russia is another problem, as is the time difference. And Bettman said some owners, likely those in unprofitable southern U.S. cities (although he wasn’t specific), complain that for the NHL to “go dark” for two weeks reduces interest in hockey.

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It’s the best of times, and the worst

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

With the beginning of the Olympics, the attention of the world is now fixed squarely on Vancouver and Whistler, and you know what that means: this is the perfect time to steal the world’s stuff. Cover me while I swipe the Mona Lisa (thanks, I owe you one) and Coldplay’s instruments (now you owe me).

There are those who contend that the Olympics are an athletic Kumbaya to the world, a bonding experience in which we are all spiritually enriched by the pulse-pounding thrill of assorted Scandinavians proceeding downhill quadrennially. There are others who believe the Games are a folly, an abomination, a…a…a follomination!—not to mention a great way to keep in tip-top protestin’ shape between G8 meetings.

In truth, there are pros and cons to the Olympics. Let’s take a look:

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