Polar bear trade survives

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:36 PM - 1 Comment

The people trading polar bear skins, teeth and claws are breathing a bit easier today after the UN shot down a motion that would see the international trade halted. Proponents of the U.S. backed ban told the UN wildlife meeting in Doha, Qatar, that the sale of skins is hurting populations that are already in danger due to habitat loss resulting from climate change. But a group of countries led by Canada, Norway and Greenland successfully argued that the ban would severely impact the economies of indigenous people, and that the trade actually does little to harm the overall population of the bears. Conservationists are upset that the ban failed. “(They) have turned their backs on this iconic species,” said Jeff Flocken, spokesperson for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. There are about 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the world, but it’s believed that their numbers could decrease by up to two thirds as their habitat, which is almost exclusively Arctic ice, melts away over the next 40 years.

CBC News

Maclean's Interview: Paul Whang

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:30 PM - 8 Comments

Photographs by Andrew Tolson

Dr. Paul Whang, 53, who trained at McMaster University in Hamilton and at Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital, is currently an anaesthetist at Humber River Regional Hospital in west-end Toronto. His specialty offers him a unique perspective in the operating room—a key member of the OR team, but primarily an observer, mainly of the patient but also of the surgeons and nurses. He has worked at a half-dozen Toronto-area hospitals, and in his new book, Operating Room Confidential, he offers a frank, sometimes surprising and often funny account of his behind-the scenes recollections.

Q: Why did you write this book?
A: Have you read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential? He talks about what really happens behind the kitchen doors. It was raucous and funny and informative. And I realized many people have a certain idea when they watch shows like House or ER, and some of it is true but a lot of it isn’t, and in addition there’s a lot of things and routines and rituals that we go through in the OR. That was the inspiration right there.

Q: Are your colleagues going to like it?
A: Well, they’re getting more and more interested, and sometimes that’s interesting: when we’re working in the OR and something happens, they look at me and say, “Paul, don’t put this in the book.” I have to promise, “Don’t worry! Names will be hidden.”

Continue…

Don't you people read newspapers?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:18 PM - 16 Comments

Jeff Jedras considers the Prime Minister’s YouTube interview, and similar forays by the leader of the opposition.

What didn’t we get? Questions on the horse race. On polling. On electoral gamesmanship. No “will you force an election” or political “whose is bigger” questions. To judge by nearly every press conference I’ve seen with Harper and Ignatieff, with nearly every pundit panel on the political talk shows, with most analysis pieces from the columnists, you’d think electoral chicken and the horse race is the issue of most concern to Canadians.

When Canadians get the chance to question their political leaders directly, though, that’s not what we get. We get questions on issues of policy that are important to them for a rainbow of reasons.

Tiger Woods "would like to have a threesome with you and another girl you trust"

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:13 PM - 1 Comment

For Tiger, things have gone from bad to worse… to downright nasty. The latest: alleged mistress Josyln James has created a new website, which features text messages she received from the golf legend. The messages themselves range from the banal “I like when you do that to me” and “I need that so bad,” to the more risqué “I would love to have the ability to make you sore” and “I want to be deep inside you,” to….Well, you can see them for yourself at http://www.sextingjoslynjames.com/Home.html

SextingJoslynJames.com

Alex Chilton dies

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

Alex Chilton, the veteran rock musician who had a big influence on the pop music from the ’60s onward, died yesterday in New Orleans at the age of 59, from what is thought to be a heart attack. As a teenager, Chilton enjoyed a number one hit with his group The Box Tops; in the ’70s, the guitarist/singer/songwriter joined the group Big Star, where he co-wrote many songs including “In the Street,” which was used as the theme song for That ’70s Show. Chilton’s work with Big Star became a big influence on many other bands; in 1987, the band The Replacements recorded a song called “Alex Chilton” as a tribute to him. In the 1980s, Chilton moved to New Orleans and started a solo career with a more jazz-based style.

New York Times

Bauer recalls kids' hockey sticks

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:08 PM - 3 Comments

Bauer Hockey has been forced by Health Canada to recall as many as 100,000 junior-sized sticks because they may expose children to hazardous levels of lead. The suspect sticks include 13 models made in a factory in China and sold since 2004 (for a complete list, hit the Hockey News link below). The recall follows an earlier warning about lead levels in junior and youth models of the Nike Bauer Supreme One50 composite. On the upside, young players now have an excuse for poor performance on the ice: they were weighed down by leaden sticks.

The Hockey News

So sad

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

Gordon Parker, a professor of psychiatry at the University of New South Wales is leading an international team of psychiatrists who want the ancient condition of melancholia listed as an illness in its own right in the 2013 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The affliction was originally described in the fifth and fourth centuries BC by the Greek physician Hippocrates, who identified sufferers as being plagued with ongoing “fears and despondencies”. But in the 20th century, the illness fell out of favour with doctors who now must choose between minor and major depression when diagnosing patients. But Parker believes melancholia, which affects people from birth and is not brought on by environmental factors, is a separate condition that usually only responded to certain types of antidepressants or electroconvulsive therapy. Treating melancholic patients with psychotherapy or counselling did not help and often led to higher rates of suicide, he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Telegraph

Wider eczema warning urged for kids: FDA

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:02 PM - 1 Comment

Eczema drugs might need expanded warning labels after dozens of new cases were reported of cancer and infection in children, according to documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Reuters reports. According to FDA scientists, 46 cases and 71 infection cases were reported in patients aged 16 and younger between 2004 and 2008, related to Novartis’ Elidel and Astellas’ Protopic. Warnings about cancer and infection are already carried by both drugs, but should be expanded to include new reports, they said, while other FDA representatives said the warning label for Valtrex, a herpes drug, was “insufficient” for some central nervous side effects in children. The FDA will weigh these recommendations before taking any actions.

Reuters

Evolution favours shorter and heavier women—like it or not

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 72 Comments

Photograph by Hans Neleman/ Getty

What might our granddaughter’s granddaughter’s granddaughter’s granddaughter’s granddaughter look like? Shorter and stouter, says a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If current trends continue, its authors predict, then by 2409 descendants of the women in the study will have evolved to be one kilogram heavier and two centimetres shorter than their 2010 foremothers.

For years, some scientists heralded the end of human evolution. The post-industrial homo sapiens, they argued, was free of the kinds of “survival-of-the-fittest” pressures that could drive large-scale genetic change. In 2008, Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, gave a much-hyped lecture entitled “Human Evolution is Over.” “Not so,” says Stephen Stearns, co-author of this latest study, professor of evolutionary biology at Yale University, and founding editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. “The basic take-home is that humans continue to evolve,” Stearns told Maclean’s.

“One [could express] the result as: women are going to get shorter and fatter,” he explains. But he prefers a different bent: “There is natural selection against women being slender.” Stearns’s work shows that plumper, shorter women tend to bear more children—who carry on those same traits. His analysis drew on data from the Framingham Heart Study: a survey, begun in 1948, that collected medical information from 5,209 subjects, and monitored them and their offspring for 60 years.

Continue…

Madoff beaten in prison

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Three sources have confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that Bernie Madoff was so badly beaten by a fellow inmate last December he had to be treated for a broken nose, fractured ribs and cuts to his head and face. At the time, the Bureau of Prisons said rumors of an assault were false and that Madoff’s visit to the prison hospital at Butner prison in North Carolina was the result of dizziness and hypertension. But now a former inmate reveals that the Ponzi schemer, who is eight months into his 150-year sentence, was assaulted by “beefy man” with a black belt in Judo over money he believed he was owed. The details of the injuries couldn’t be independently verified. Denise Simmons, a spokeswoman at Butner, said, “We have no knowledge or information to confirm he was assaulted.” That the 71-year-old Madoff isn’t talking about it isn’t surprising, the paper notes: “It’s not uncommon for prisoners to deny being beaten because they don’t want to risk a reputation as a snitch, according to prison experts and prisoner advocates.” One former inmate also revealed that Madoff offered financial advice: “I was trying to get into day trading and he’s like, ‘That’s not for you. That’s for individuals like me with millions to spare,’ ” he said.

Wall Street Journal

A Canadian aquarium in NYC

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:55 AM - 1 Comment

New York City’s Times Square: famous for flashing lights, a singing cowboy, millions of tourists and soon, perhaps, penguins, sharks and tropical fish. That, at least, is the dream of Toronto developer Jerry Shefsky. Recently, the 76-year-old went public with a preliminary deal that his firm, Aquarium Developments Corp., reached with the landlord of 11 Times Square to build an aquarium in the bottom floors of the skyscraper. It would include 600,000 gallons of water, a collection of exotic fish and mammals, as well as a pirate museum. If all goes according to plan, the doors could open as early as September 2011. “It’s anything but an aquarium in the format you might imagine,” Shefsky told the Wall Street Journal.

But almost as soon as his aquatic proposal began to make waves, Shefsky stopped talking. “We’re still working on taking the preliminary agreement and turning it into a final agreement,” says John Piper, the spokesman for Aquarium Developments Corp. Though Piper says the company is “very excited” about the project, it doesn’t want its fate to be decided in the media. “We want to be careful going forward,” he says. (The building’s owner, New Jersey-based SJP Properties, declined to comment.)

The trepidation is understandable. Shefsky has a long history of pitching fantastical-sounding aquarium projects. In 1997, his was one of three bids shortlisted to build an aquarium in Paris’s Place du Trocadero, near the Eiffel Tower. (He lost.) Other plans have included aquariums in Las Vegas, Toronto and Ottawa. But only one, which opened in Newport, Ky., just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, in 1999, has come to fruition so far.

Continue…

Why is Iacobucci playing along?

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:51 AM - 167 Comments

Photograph by Adrian Wyld/ CP

As the Watergate scandal deepened, the U.S. Senate struck a committee to investigate. Headed by Sen. Sam Ervin, it had broad powers to subpoena documents and compel evidence, together with a staff of investigators and legal counsel.

On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield, Richard Nixon’s deputy assistant, told committee staff that discussions in the Oval Office were routinely tape-recorded. Before long, judge John J. Sirica had launched proceedings to force the president to hand over the tapes. Nixon refused, citing executive privilege, but in the end complied with a Supreme Court ruling ordering their release, with consequences that are well known.

But suppose the U.S. Congress functioned like Canada’s Parliament, and Nixon had the powers, not of a president, but of a prime minister of Canada. The committee, uncertain of its jurisdiction and with little in the way of staff or resources, would very likely never have learned of the tapes’ existence. Had it persisted with its inquiries, Nixon could have shut down the committee, and the Congress with it. And, rather than defend his case in court, Nixon could have hired a former Supreme Court judge to “advise” him on whether to release the tapes. And that would more or less be that.

Continue…

Confident, truly huge beauties

By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 27 Comments

Photograph by Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Who will make her Oscar dress, I asked myself, as I suspect countless plus-sized people must have been asking. (I’m not a plus-sized person myself but have wish-fantasies of being one—in the right places, that is.) All you saw for the first pre-Oscar hour were skinny white person after skinny white person, like me only decades younger, and all just so incredibly thrilled to be here on the red carpet mantra-ing, “I never dreamt of this when I was growing up…,” not before the age of four anyway. The men wore Tom Ford and Burberry, the women Chanel, Versace, and Valentino with their wrists like Masai tribeswomen all tunnelled up with bangles courtesy of Chopard—which is funny when you remember that the Kenya Masai live with their bangles in huts made of dried merde. But which designer was going to get the starring dress of the night, the super-plus of all pluses?

Meanwhile, you couldn’t but wonder how it is possible for stomachs to be so absolutely flat. God, I know how difficult it is even when you starve for 36 hours to get into the special dress (and then at dinner reach for a piece of bread, which, as one New York stick-person reprimanded me, “is not the staff of life, Barbara.” So no bread that evening). Sandra Bullock, looking as whippet-narrow as a human can be, told the interviewer that after the ceremonies she was going to go out “and have a cheeseburger, deep-fried fries and a milkshake.” Oh yes, and visit the emergency room with a volvulus if she did half of that—there can’t be room in her intestines for a sorbet.

I digress. Along came the much-anticipated dress: the outsized Marchesa dress wearing Gabourey Sidibe. Draped chiffon, sapphire blue like the name of the author of the novel Precious, with sparkly bits around the neckline and hips. A size beyond 26, the same designer that Sandra Bullock, size zero, was wearing. “You look good, girl,” said the interviewer, using the lingua franca of African-Americans.

Continue…

The Battle for Okinawa

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 7 Comments

Photograph by Shizuo Kambayashi/ Associated Press

It’s tradition to celebrate 50 years of marriage with gold. But in January, the golden anniversary of the U.S.-Japan military nuptials—the landmark 1960 Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security that united the two nations in holy (armed) matrimony—was celebrated not with precious metals or affectionate toasts, but with mounting tension and a growing unease about the future of the U.S.-Japan security alliance.

It’s all come to a head in Okinawa, a southern Japanese prefecture made up of dozens of tiny islands. Ever since the area fell to the Allies in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, the U.S. military has used the islands as a stronghold in the Pacific. Today, about half of the almost 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan are concentrated here, in an area that represents just one per cent of Japan’s land mass. It is also here that the pugnacious new Japanese PM is making his first stand: threatening, with broad Japanese support behind him, to boot the Americans off the island.

Calls for the U.S. to reduce its military footprint in Japan have been building. In 2006, the U.S. answered those calls head-on: signing a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) deal with Tokyo that would relocate some 8,000 troops to Guam by 2014 and move the bustling Futenma air base to a less populated part of Okinawa. For a while, the situation calmed. But last September, Japan held a general election—and the Liberal Democratic Party, which ruled the country for 54 of the last 55 years, lost. Now, Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, who ran in part on a platform of distancing Japan from the U.S., is at the helm. And while his wife steals headlines with bizarre claims that her “soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Hatoyama has been working more quietly to erode Japan’s relationship with the U.S.

Continue…

Finally, a product to brag about

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 7 Comments

Photograph by Albert Gea/ Reuters

Steve Ballmer, the über-enthusiastic CEO of Microsoft—who once jumped around on stage and screamed himself hoarse at an employee event—was in Toronto last October to energize a hotel ballroom full of IT managers about the company’s new Windows 7 operating system, a replacement for its much-maligned Vista OS. As had become customary at such appearances, Ballmer took a self-deprecating swipe at Vista—“there was a lot of noise in the system, let’s call it that, after our last launch”—and boasted that audience members need not worry about the company’s latest creation.

Turns out it wasn’t just cheerleading. Thanks to positive reviews and pent-up demand (many of the world’s computers had still been running versions of Windows XP, first introduced in 2001), Microsoft recently said it sold some 90 million copies of Windows 7 since it went on sale last October. In the first month alone, Windows 7 sales were nearly double any of the company’s previous OS launches. And while rival computer-maker Apple has been enjoying record sales for its Mac machines lately, market data suggests that Windows 7 is helping Microsoft once again add to its already dominant 92 per cent market share. The OS that comes bundled with Mac products, meanwhile, has lost share three of the last four months, according to research firm Net Applications, and is down about five per cent from its October 2009 high.

Windows 7 “is selling well and has been generally well received,” says Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. “I think it was important for them to get Windows 7 right and I think, for the most part, they have.” He adds, however, that it’s difficult to tell how many Windows 7 customers are people who are buying PCs for the first time and how many are upgrading. Still, with the Vista debacle fading in the rearview mirror, Ballmer once again has something to scream about.

All in

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 10:45 AM - 94 Comments

Liberal Derek Lee stood in the House, just a moment ago, and filed a question of privilege on the House’s demand that the government produce documents related to Afghan detainees. The NDP’s Jack Harris has followed with his own question of privilege, as has the Bloc’s Claude Bachand. Further interventions have been made by Bob Rae, Tom Lukiwski, Pierre Paquette and Larry Bagnell. The government argued, in part, that the question of privilege came too far after the breach—the order of the House having been issued December 10—but the Speaker has ruled that there is no objection to be made on timeliness.

The Speaker has now deferred debate on the matter until further submissions can be heard.

Here is the question of privilege that Lee had previously drafted. It seems to match quite closely his remarks today (though I’m not sure if it’s exactly what he presented today).

Here is the text of the motion that Harris proposes to move if the Speaker agrees a breach of privilege has occurred. Continue…

Holland’s anti-Islamic crusader

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 23 Comments

Photograph by Empics Entertainment/Keystone

There was never any doubt that Geert Wilders could talk the talk; this most disagreeable Dutchman, head of Holland’s far-right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party (PVV), is famous for mouthing off—mostly against Muslims. (He is famous for equating the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and for claiming that “Islam is the cause of all our problems.”) The question has always been: could he walk the walk? Well, he’s walking. And there’s new concern that he could walk his way to the prime minister’s office.

During the Netherlands’ local elections last week, the PVV made major gains—carrying the city of Almere and placing second in The Hague. In no time, critics and supporters alike were painting those local victories as a sign of what is to come when the country holds national elections in June. Said Wilders, in a victory speech on Wednesday: “Today Almere and The Hague, tomorrow the Netherlands. We are going to take the Netherlands back from the leftist elite that coddles criminals and supports Islamization.”

His plan to “conquer the entire country” is ambitious—but Wilders’s pledges to “ban the Quran,” unleash “urban commandos” on city streets, and uphold “Judeo-Christian values” are selling well in a country torn apart over immigration policy. A new poll projects that, in June, the PVV will nab more seats than any other party.

Marc Chavannes, a Dutch journalist and professor, laments that his country “is certainly not showing its best face.” Elsewhere, the broader repercussions of a win for Wilders are being sized up. Some express their concerns obliquely: a column in the U.K.’s Telegraph wondered if “Geert Wilders [is] the new William of Orange,” the 17th-century Dutch prince who took the British crown—sweeping in, at the invitation of Protestants, to prevent a Catholic dynasty from ruling the land. Others feel no need to mute their disquiet: shortly after Wilders’s municipal victories were announced, Germany’s Die Tageszeitung newspaper featured a front page photo of Geert Wilders smiling broadly—with a taped-on Hitler moustache.

State of the Afghan army, police: not what you'd hope

By John Geddes - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:48 AM - 23 Comments

The federal government’s seventh quarterly report to Parliament on Canadian military and development work in Afghanistan was tabled late yesterday without fanfare. These reports have become routine, but through the bland, bureaucratic prose, they still provide a glimpse—often an unsettling one—of the situation in Kandahar.

The most pressing question, as the 2011 deadline for bringing Canadian troops home approaches, is what progress is being made toward beefing up the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP). When Canada pulls out entirely next year, and the U.S. begins a planned drawdown of its forces, the Afghans will have to shoulder more of their own security burden. Yesterday’s report doesn’t inspire confidence.

Continue…

The Greatest one

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:30 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by: Adrian Wyld/CP (left), Friso Gentsch/Keystone(middle), Christophe Ena/AP(right)

There’s home-ice advantage, and then there’s having your home just metres from the ice. A year and a half ago, Clara Hughes, one of Canada’s most decorated Olympians, rented an apartment with her husband a short walk from the Richmond speed skating oval. The move let her train on the very ice she would race on during the Olympics, while providing her with all the creature comforts of home—her own bed, her own kitchen, and more importantly, her own espresso machine. It worked. In the final race of her long and shining career, a beaming Hughes took home the bronze in the 5,000-m race.

But living in the Vancouver area all this time did something else for the 37-year-old skater. Last summer, while out for a drive downtown, Hughes took a wrong turn and found herself in the heart of the Downtown Eastside, the gritty neighbourhood that’s home to thousands of souls who’ve taken their own wrong turn in life. The sight shocked her. “I couldn’t believe I was in Canada, that this reality exists in our country,” she said the day after her race. “People were just shells of themselves. It was surreal.” So Hughes, who suffered her own problems with alcohol and drugs as a teen, announced she will give her $10,000 winner’s bonus to the Take a Hike Foundation, a sport group that helps troubled youth. “I feel like I can leave town now, that I didn’t just come and skate in circles, because it always meant more to me than that.”

Only Hughes could win an Olympic medal on home soil and chalk it up to skating around in circles. But that’s Hughes. She is someone who can say “I don’t focus on medals” and truly mean it, yet at the same time channel all her energy to push her body to the limit in competition. As role models go, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one, a quality she strives for. There’s a reason Canadian Olympic organizers selected her to carry the flag during the opening ceremonies.

Continue…

We were best when it counted

By Ken MacQueen and Jonathon Gatehouse with Jason Kirby - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:30 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Mark Ralston/ AFP/ Getty Images

There are tides and rhythms to an event that spans 17 days and includes 82 countries—an event so large it is capable of altering the emotional climate of a city, a province, a nation; indeed, the moods of many nations. Rather like the weather at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, which flip-flopped time and time again from monsoon to shorts and sunshine.

From a Canadian perspective, the run of these Games—from early stumbles to triumphant conclusion—went a bit like speed skater Christine Nesbitt’s 1,000-m race on the first Thursday at the Richmond Oval. At the start gun, 24-year-old Nesbitt later said, “Instead of skating I kind of panicked. I had a slip after two or three steps.” Sometimes when that happens it’s hard to regain control. Just 200 m into the race Nesbitt was in a dismal 15th place. At 600 m she had clawed back to ninth, and the podium seemed an impossible reach. But she prepared mentally and physically for such things. The only way forward is to draw on your training, stick to your plan and to make sure no one can accuse you of giving up. And so she raged through the last lap, throwing herself across the line to win Canada’s third gold medal by two one-hundredths of a second—still scowling at herself for not having run a perfect race.

It was later that night, after the medal presentation ceremony at BC Place, that Nesbitt finally unclenched. Yes, she allowed to a couple of Maclean’s reporters, she was feeling better now. It’s just that she thought she could do better, she said. “I don’t want to regret anything, right?” Then the smile grew bigger. “But if you don’t have the race of your life and you still win gold, it’s pretty sweet.”

Writ large, these Games followed a similar path to a “pretty sweet” conclusion. The organizational and emotional equivalent of those first 200 m were indeed the worst: struggling through the tragic death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili hours before the opening ceremonies; warring against the elements for control of Cypress Mountain; fighting premature claims the Games were hell-bent for disaster; staring down international rants that we were too hungry for medals, and domestic bleats that we weren’t hungry enough.

Continue…

They want to be, under the sea

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

Photograph by George Ruhe/Associated Press

For as long as the U.S. Navy has had submarines, women have been banned from serving on them. Now, it looks like one of the last great bastions of U.S. military discrimination will fall. Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote a letter to Congress, detailing his intention to phase in women’s submarine service.

Though women have been serving on navy warships since 1993—they make up 15 per cent of navy personnel—the navy’s 71 in-service submarines have always been off limits. Many have defended that gentlemen-only code. Some voiced concern that because of the notoriously close quarters, women would arouse underwater sexual tensions. Others made economic arguments, claiming it would be too expensive to retrofit subs with co-ed facilities. Elaine Donnelly served on a 1992 presidential commission on the issue. She has explained: “The passages are such that it would be impossible to pass without touching.” Donnelly also cited poor air quality aboard subs, which she says could pose a risk to the embryos of pregnant women.

Today, those views are being pushed aside by some loud voices—like that of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who thinks “women ought to have full career choices for a range of careers in the navy and that includes serving on submarines.” Indeed, the submarine issue has become part of a broader reassessment of women’s combat roles. “I think it’s time,” said Gen. George Casey last month, “that we take a look at what women are actually doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then we look at our policies.”

Assuming that Congress does not object, vessels will soon be modified to include separate women’s quarters. It is expected to be about a year before the first female reports for submarine duty.

Ahoy, matey!

‘Old Bear’ has his day

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Morry Gash/Associated Press

The crowd didn’t bother waiting for the podium ceremony. Halfway through the final end, with Kevin Martin’s rink up by three in the gold-medal match, a few fans started singing O Canada. It spread slowly at first, section by section, but by “God keep our land glorious and free,” the entire place was belting out the anthem. Even Martin—Mr. Serious—couldn’t keep from smiling.

Eight long years after a heartbreaking silver medal in Salt Lake City, the best curler in the world had his Olympic gold, beating Norway and their diamond-checkered pants in the men’s final. The 6-3 win capped off Canada’s best day at the Vancouver Games (three gold and one bronze) and marked a raucous return to glory for the country’s other national sport. “Finally,” Martin said, the invisible monkey gone from his back. “It’s been a lot of work and a lot of years, and it feels really good. I said to the guys when we were coming to the podium: ‘It’s like we’re walking through a dream.’ ”

It was certainly a dream tournament for the Martin rink, which didn’t lose a single match on the way to gold. Their play in the finale was equally dominant. Third John Morris had the game of his life, landing one double takeout after another, and the skip sealed the deal in the seventh end with a perfect freeze in the circle that set up two points and a commanding lead. After both sides exchanged singles in the eighth and ninth, it was anthem time. “You get tingles and jitters up the spine,” said Marc Kennedy, Martin’s second. “You’re up three, you have a home crowd in the Olympic Games, and they’re singing the anthem. It just doesn’t get any better.” Thomas Ulsrud, the Norwegian skip, actually leaned over to Martin and said: “You’ve got to love this crowd, don’t you?’ ”

Continue…

On top of the World

By Charlie Gillis with Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

After the Golden Goal, when jubilant members of Team Canada had finished mobbing Sidney Crosby, when the sticks had been gathered and the players made their way to the long blue carpet for their medals, a pleasing sight unfolded in Canada Hockey Place. The crowd began bobbing, twisting, to the rhythm of the Black Eyed Peas, and for a moment, you could look around at thousands of red maple leafs—on flags, placards, T-shirts and jerseys—brought to life simultaneously, as if by a gust of wind.

Down on the ice, the man of the moment looked up and smiled. Minutes earlier, Crosby had slid the puck under U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller for what will surely count among the greatest goals in Canadian hockey history—right up there with Paul Henderson’s in 1972. Now, as he stood at the end of the line awaiting his Olympic gold medal, the crowd began chanting his name. “Cros-by! Cros-by! Cros-by!”

There are moments in sports that define an athlete, and some that define a country. But seldom do the two converge as neatly as they did in the men’s hockey final at the 2010 Winter Games, where Canada defeated the U.S. 3-2. Crosby’s goal seven minutes, 40 seconds into overtime cut short an improbable comeback by the Americans and unleashed four years’ worth of pent-up emotions, dating back to Canada’s ignominious defeat at the Winter Games in Turin. Those feelings had only deepened in the early days of these Olympics, as Canadians had been alternately pitied and mocked for various glitches, not to mention our disappointing medal haul that first week.

Continue…

An Anglo truce

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 24 Comments

Photograph by Clement Allard/Canadian Press

Quebec, so the cliché goes, is home to poutine, smoky bars and maddening language debates, and indulging in all three is something of a rite of passage. Alas, a recent government health initiative means the combination of fries, cheese and gravy will effectively be outlawed from the cafeterias of many government institutions by 2012, while lighting up in any public space has been illegal for nearly five years. Language issues, meanwhile, are far less the stuff of spittle and hot blood than they once were. Battles between English and French used to occupy the headlines and even spill out onto the street. Now most English Quebecers apparently choose to stay quiet.

Fighting language laws seems especially passé. Twenty years ago, the right to have English on exterior commercial signs spawned an English rights movement that saw the birth of the Equality Party, and renewed linguistic tension across the province. Now, as Premier Jean Charest’s Liberals prepare to clamp down on English education rights, the old guard of that movement is lamenting the distinct lack of rage in its ranks. “Anglos don’t want to stick their necks out anymore,” says Robert Libman, former leader of the Equality Party. “There’s a sense of ‘What’s the point?’ The white flag has been waved, and it’s now lying encrusted on the ground.”

The current fuss—or lack thereof—is over an amendment to the current language law. In 2002, alarmed by a trend of parents exploiting what it called a legal loophole, the governing Parti Québécois outlawed a somewhat obscure practice that allowed certain students, otherwise ineligible under the province’s language law, to attend English school: if they attended a private English school for a year, they and their siblings could receive public education in English forevermore. (Under Quebec law, only those with a grandfathered right can attend English school.) The PQ’s Bill 104 closed the loophole—but lawyer Brent Tyler challenged the law all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled it unconstitutional last October.

Continue…