Carell Hints At Leaving The Office

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:56 PM - 10 Comments

Well, actually, he doesn’t hint it, he says it outright. But there’s enough wiggle room in there (“probably” and “I don’t think so”) that he could wind up staying longer. Still, this is unusually unambiguous:

Question: How long will you stay with The Office for? How many more series? How long does your contract run?

Steve: Contract through next season.

Question: And will you stay after that?

Steve: I don’t think so. I think that will probably be my last year.

As I say, this doesn’t actually rule out his deciding to extend his contract, but it does at least show that he’s seriously thinking about leaving and is willing to say so. No one could really blame him if he wants to leave after making (including next season) around 140 episodes. Like George Clooney, he’s built up his career in the right way, sticking with his hit TV series while taking the summers off to make bad movies (plus the occasional good one like 40 Year-Old Virgin); now comes the second phase of such a career, leaving the show and trying to see if he can actually make some good movies.

Would the show actually go on without him, if he does leave? I guess it depends on how NBC is doing by this time next year. As things stand now, The Office is one of the few decently-rated comedies it has (the two new shows on its Thursday night lineup are good, but not popular yet, and 30 Rock will never be popular). It has enough audience goodwill toward its large ensemble cast that it might be able to go on for a year without Carell; it wouldn’t be the same, but it wouldn’t be a completely different show, either. Some shows have to shut down if the star leaves; Cheers ended when Ted Danson decided he didn’t want to do another year. But The Office is more about the entire office than Cheers was about everyone who hung out in the bar; the characters are not primarily defined by their relationship to Michael. So I can definitely see the network deciding that a Carell-less office would perform better for them than another comedy they could put in its place. Because that’s probably true.

Also, isn’t it cute they way they say “series” when talking to North Americans, and we say “season” when talking to British actors? Forget world currency or one world government; we need one English word for a batch of TV episodes.

The last 36 hours or so in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:23 PM - 9 Comments

Mr Jaffer once emailed Tony Clement’s office, bringing to four the number of cabinet ministers who’ve had to acknowledge contact. The Globe reports more details of what Mr. Jaffer was or was not promoting. The Liberals ask John Baird to turn over some documents they say he hasn’t as yet. The owner of Sassafraz comments on the relative celebrity of Mr. Jaffer and Ms. Guergis. And something something Robert DeNiro’s son.

Nazim Gillani is due to appear before the government operations committee at 3:30pm this afternoon. The proceedings can be streamed via the link here.

China lifts ban on HIV-positive visitors

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

Just days before Shanghai is inundated with travelers for its world exposition, China has lifted a two-decade ban on those who carry the HIV virus or others with sexually transmitted diseases, the New York Times reports, also lifting a travel ban on those with leprosy. The changes were approved on April 19 and came into effect on April 24, amending a 1986 law governing quarantines and a 1989 law that regulates entry by foreigners. Although the ban on HIV-positive travelers has been lifted temporarily for other major events, this change is believed to be permanent, and was in the works since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The U.S. dropped a ban on HIV-positive visitors, in effect for 22 years, in January.

New York Times

What's next?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 40 Comments

In terms of what a compromise might look like, we refer again to some of the options already explored for establishing a forum that might safely review sensitive documents. The interim committee on national security that studied these sorts of issues in 2004 was chaired by Derek Lee, but also, perhaps notably, included the following members: Joe Comartin, Wayne Easter, Marlene Jennings, Serge Menard, Kevin Sorenson and Peter MacKay.

Also instructive is the parliamentary sub-committee on combatting organized crime which functioned largely in camera and reported to the House in 2000. That committee included members from all parties, including the aforementioned future defence minister.

Calgary gets frosted

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:02 PM - 12 Comments

A late April storm is thundering toward Calgary in a testament to the unpredictable nature of Canadian weather. Environment Canada is issuing a winter storm warning for 10 to 20 cm of snowfall from a low-pressure system blowing across the Rockies. Winds gusting to 70 km/h are also forecasted, and some areas in the southern foothills could be blanketed with 30 cm of the white stuff.

Calgary Herald

"Don't attack my dog or you might get shot … if you're a coyote"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 11:01 AM - 0 Comments

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas is armed and dangerous—at least to varmints. The Republican, who is currently running for re-election, yesterday revealed that he shot and killed a coyote during a morning jog in Feb. Perry, it turns out, never goes anywhere without his .380 Ruger with a laser sight. When the coyote made the mistake of menacing his Labrador puppy, the governor whipped it out and shot him dead. One question: does he have a spandex holster?

Associated Press

Hugo Chavez tweets

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 10:32 AM - 0 Comments

Earlier this year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his supporters to use social networking sites to combat his critics, telling them, “The Internet is a battle trench because it is bringing a current of conspiracy.” But why rely others to do that which you can do yourself? Chavez’s communications watchdog, Diosdado Cabello, announced on Tuesday that the Comandante has opened a Twitter account, and will soon be disseminating his own 140-character-long messages. His chosen handle, @chavezcandanga, quickly attracted some 400,000 followers. The micro-blogging site has proven to be wildly popular in Venezuela, where membership grew over 1,000 per cent in 2009.

Reuters

Hint: one of them has a moustache

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 27 Comments

CP/ Getty Images

Stephen Harper has a bounce in his step lately thanks to the polls. Sure, his numbers are down among men, but that’s nothing he can’t solve by claiming to be writing a book about cleavage or pressure washers. It’s springtime, the weather’s nice and he’s at 33 per cent, baby. Nothing beats the ego trip of knowing you’re being rejected by only two-thirds of Canadians.

It’s remarkable that Harper is in front at all given the 2010 he’s had so far. Fresh off his second prorogation, which went over about as well as my “Grown Men Who Heart Justin Bieber” Facebook group, the Prime Minister poured his soul into a 6,000-word Throne Speech that among Canadians was immediately reduced to a single question: “You’re going to do what to our national anthem?”

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Thank you for saying 'merci'

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 32 Comments

By Martin Patriquin

Long known as the humourless enforcers of Quebec’s language laws, the Office québécois de la langue française (OLF) has chosen to put a friendlier face on its new campaign to promote French in Montreal. Its slogan: “Merci de me servir en français” (“Thank you for serving me in French”).

Not everyone, however, is pleased with the message plastered on signposts throughout downtown Montreal, and on the reusable shopping bags the OLF has been handing out for free. For Mathieu Bock-Côté, author of La dénationalisation tranquille (The Quiet De-nationalization) and a frequent contributor to Quebec’s identity debates, the new slogan sends the wrong message. “It’s a form of reverse integration,” he says. “We’re now thanking people for speaking French, as if they’re doing us a favour. We’re saying we’re surprised we can still function in our own language.”

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British PM calls voter "bigoted woman"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 9:55 AM - 5 Comments

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught by a live microphone describing a voter he’d just met as a “bigoted woman.” Brown was climbing into his car after talking with Gillian Duffy when, having apparently forgotten he was still wearing a broadcast microphone, he called the meeting “a disaster.” “they should never have put me with that woman,” Brown said. “Whose idea was that? It’s just ridiculous…” The 65-year-old Duffy, who’d questioned Brown on issues including immigration and crime, said afterwards she was “very upset.” Brown subsequently called Duffy to apologize, but his opponents in the country’s election campaign have latched onto the gaffe just days before British voters are set to go to the polls.

BBC News

Reaction and perspective

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 9:41 AM - 21 Comments

Canwest rounds up the reviews of Mr. Milliken’s ruling. Ned Franks and Errol Mendes columnize their thoughts.

From the House, I would note (as I did) that when the Speaker was done, he was applauded by all sides of the chamber.

Blood and Bhutto

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 4 Comments

Imagine what Shakespeare could have done with Benazir Bhutto. In his world, her story might go something like this. A beloved king breaks tradition and decides his eldest child, not his eldest son, can inherit his throne. She is brilliant and beautiful. The king is toppled by a cruel despot, and hanged. His daughter is imprisoned. Her younger brother is found dead, probably poisoned. She comes out of exile to win the hearts of her people and become their queen. The older brother rebels against her rule and is killed. His daughter accuses the queen and her husband of plotting his murder. The queen loses her throne. Her husband is jailed. And after eight years of exile in a desert kingdom, she comes home to vie for the throne, and is assassinated.

Replace “king” or “queen” with “Pakistan’s elected prime minister,” then fold in a dizzying scenario of holy war, terrorism, dictatorship and conspiracy, and you have the bare bones of Bhutto—an epic portrait of Pakistan’s former prime minister, who was assassinated on Dec. 27, 2007. This remarkable new documentary, featured at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival (April 29-May 9), is a shattering tale of political and personal tragedy. Benazir Bhutto’s martyrdom did not get the attention of, say, Princess Di, but its impact was more profound, and the conspiratorial intrigue ran deeper. The long lens of a documentary, which telescopes history, has a way of asserting perspective. ­And Bhutto frames its controversial subject as one of the most charismatic and courageous women ever to wade into the political fray.

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B.C. cracks down on drunk drivers

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 9:27 AM - 4 Comments

The provincial government in B.C. has introduced what Solicitor-General Mike de Jong says are the strictest drinking-and-driving rules in Canada. Under the new rules announced Tuesday, police will be allowed to immediately fine and suspend drivers with a blood-alcohol level of 0.05 and higher. Those caught with blood-alcohol levels between 0.05 and 0.08 face an immediate three-day driving ban, possible vehicle impoundment and up to $600 in fines or fees. Under the current system, those drivers would get a 24-hour driving ban. Those caught with a blood-alcohol level above 0.08 will be subject to a 90-day driving ban and related costs of $3,750.

Vancouver Sun

Khadr in plea bargain negotiations

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 8:58 AM - 7 Comments

Omar Khadr may yet find his way back to Canada if his lawyers successfully negotiate a plea deal that includes his repatriation. Barry Coburn, Khadr’s lead U.S. lawyer, says there are ongoing plea bargain talks involving Khadr’s lawyers, his U.S.-based prosecutors, the convening authority, “and potentially the Canadian government.” Khadr’s return to Canada is a key part of those talks, Coburn says. Pre-trial proceedings against Khadr, who’s facing charges of murder, conspiracy and support of terrorism and is currently housed in Guantanamo Bay, are set to begin Wednesday.

CBC News

Showdown in the House

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 1:40 AM - 75 Comments

Louie Palu/CP

Before Tuesday’s historic ruling by the Speaker of the Commons in the matter of the Afghan detainee documents, there was much speculation he would come up with some sort of classic fudge of the kind so beloved of this country’s political class, one that would allow all sides to claim victory and do little else. You know: Parliament is right in principle, but the government is right in practice. Parliament has the right to demand the documents, and the government has the obligation to . . . treat their concerns seriously. Can’t we all just get along?

There were some attempts afterward to cast it in this light, but let there be no mistake: this was not a compromise. It was balanced, it was judicious, it was fair to all sides, but it was unequivocal: Parliament’s right “to send for persons, papers and records,” Speaker Peter Milliken ruled, is absolute and unconditional. There are no limits on it, and the government has no constitutional option other than to comply with Parliament’s will in such a matter, as expressed in the resolution passed by the Commons on Dec. 10. To accept the contrary notion, that the government may decide by and for itself which documents Parliament may see, and which it may not, “would completely undermine the role of parliamentarians in holding the government to account.”

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Futures market

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:19 AM - 347 Comments

I haven’t seen the strategy memo Stephen Harper received from his campaign staff within days after he was elected, but I have no trouble imagining some of the points that would have been on it. Point 1 or 2 in the Conclusions would have been something like this:

Conservatives are outnumbered in Parliament and the electorate, isolated at one end of the left-right spectrum, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. At your first sign of durable weakness your defeat will become certain and your political career will be over.

Note what this (imaginary, but I think realistic) point doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “Neatness counts” or “Friends make friends” or “Don’t upset the Speaker.” The median MP in this Parliament, if you were to line them all up in order from the most left-wing all the way to Rob Anders, is a Liberal. This Parliament’s equilibrium state is a coalition of left and centre-left parties in support of a Liberal prime minister. Stephen Harper can’t ever let this Parliament reach its equilibrium state if he wants to keep being prime minister. If you look at things this way, “Parliamentary supremacy” starts to sound like the end of his political career.

We’re heading into an unpredictable couple of weeks, but I think all of the above gives you some hints about how Harper is likely to respond to Peter Milliken’s ruling. There is a question of substance here (How did Canadian governments permit detainees to be treated in Afghanistan in the early years of this conflict?) and one of circumstance (How does a government respond to an assertion of MPs’ collective privilege?). I have a hard time mustering appropriate reverence for colleagues who don’t give a damn about the substance but who want to build observatories of circumstance. I’ve addressed the substance here and there (torture generally; the Colvin testimony); now, on the process question, perhaps it isn’t too prosaic to point out that if the Conservatives let Parliament get into the habit of majority rule, the Conservatives will not long form the government. You may think that’s a good thing. Stephen Harper will disagree.

So he will stonewall. He would rather fight an election on this question than concede. So far he has had some success at winning or avoiding elections. Every time the prospect of an election has increased sharply over the past four years, the Conservative poll advantage has increased. A few days’ brinksmanship is usually all it takes to put SNAP ELECTION? into a front-page Globe headline, and a distracted electorate starts to engage and polarize, and the Conservatives start to climb in the polls to the Liberals’ disadvantage. I think Harper’s reading of his interests will lead him to work hard to recreate that dynamic. If it works, either Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton will be very likely to rediscover a yearning to “make Parliament work,” which in that case won’t mean quite what Speaker Milliken intended it to mean.

If he manages to scare the rest of the Commons off balance yet again, Harper’s victory will displease many Canadians but it will not be empty or meaningless. It will be the only victory he has sought since January 2006: a chance to stay in power a while longer and make a few more decisions that will cement a broadly Conservative perspective on the way the country should be governed. A few more months during which Bev Oda, not Carolyn Bennett, will be setting the agenda for a G8 summit, and Jason Kenney, not Bob Rae, will have friends on the Rights and Democracy board, and Ken Dryden won’t be opening safe-injection sites, and so on. That’s the process I tried to lay out in this article, and even though some people still think Stephen Harper isn’t a conservative because his government spends a lot of money, I’m pretty sure that article remains a handy guide to understanding what will happen next.

“His rifle was pointed toward the chest”

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 10:28 PM - 9 Comments

Cpl. Steven Fournier snapped two photographs of the injured Taliban fighter, just in case the bearded man turned out to be a high-value target. It was Oct. 19, 2008, and as the camera clicked, Capt. Robert Semrau stood nearby, hovering over the badly wounded insurgent. “As I crouched down, I can hear a moan and a groan,” Fournier testified on Tuesday. “He wasn’t dead yet.”

Satisfied with his pictures, Fournier switched off the digital camera, grabbed his gun and began to walk away. He took only a few steps before the gunfire rang out. “I hear two shots behind me, in quick succession,” said Fournier, who immediately turned back around. “I see Capt. Semrau bringing his rifle to a slung position while he closes his ejection port. His rifle was pointed toward the chest of the person lying on the ground.”

Semrau is facing four charges, including second-degree murder, for the alleged “mercy killing” of an unarmed enemy fighter in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Military investigators never found the man’s corpse, and there is no forensic evidence linking his death to the captain’s C-8 rifle. But 18 months after the unprecedented charges were first laid, Fournier’s dramatic testimony offered the first real glimpse of what may have happened that day.

Semrau and Fournier were part of the same four-man Operational Mentor and Liaison Team (OMLT), a special unit of Canadian soldiers attached to a company of troops from the Afghan National Army (ANA). Their job was to “advise” the Afghans on basic soldiering skills, but they had no authority to give orders. On that particular morning, Semrau’s team was on patrol with ANA soldiers in a dangerous region near Lashkar Gah when they stumbled across the wounded man lying on a dirt path. It appeared as though he’d been shot out of a tree by a U.S. Apache helicopter.

Fournier said the unnamed insurgent had a “fist-sized laceration” in his stomach, and that one of his feet was mangled and bloody. “It was held on by some flesh and rotated 180 degrees,” he said. According to Fournier, the ANA commander on scene (Capt. Shafiqullah) said the enemy fighter was too wounded for medical treatment, and ordered his troops to continue moving south. “If Allah wants him, he will die,” Fournier quoted the captain as saying. “If not, he will live.”

The Geneva Conventions and the Canadian Forces Code of Conduct compel our troops to administer First Aid to all casualties, friend or foe. Under questioning from Capt. Tom Fitzgerald, the lead prosecutor, Fournier admitted that neither he nor Semrau provided any medical assistance to the man, even though they were equipped with pressure bandages and tourniquets. But Fournier also hinted at what could be a key part of Semrau’s defence: because the Canadian OMLT team had no authority over the Afghans, they could not overrule Capt. Shafiqullah’s decision to keep moving.

Fournier also said it would have been unsafe to dispatch an ambulance or a Medevac chopper into such an unsecured area. “Capt. Semrau said we would not treat him based on what the ANA commander said,” Fournier testified. “He said we should comply with what the ANA said.”

Minutes after encountering the man on the path, ANA soldiers found another Taliban fighter nearby—this one clearly dead. It was then that Fournier suggested photographing both casualties for intelligence purposes. Semrau agreed, but in a sign of just how careful the Canadians were with their Afghan hosts, he asked Capt. Shafiqullah’s permission. The ANA commander reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that Fournier photograph the men’s faces, and not their wounds.

Fournier, still a private at the time, snapped two pictures of the dead man first, then headed back toward the other casualty lying on the path. Semrau followed, as did an Afghan interpreter nicknamed “Max.” As they came closer, Fournier said he could see the man move his arm and roll slightly on his side.

Fitzgerald asked Fournier what happened after he took the second set of photos.

“Capt. Semrau tells myself and our interpreter that we can head back because we don’t have to see this.”

“Did he explain what he meant by that statement?” Fitzgerald asked.

“I understood it to mean I don’t have to stand here and watch a man die, sir.”

Semrau is the first Canadian soldier ever accused of homicide on the front lines of a war, and if convicted, faces a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for ten years. The 36-year-old has pleaded not guilty.

Fournier is scheduled to continue his testimony Wednesday morning.

The Commons: The House always wins

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 7:17 PM - 121 Comments

The Scene. “In his March 31 intervention, the Minister of Justice quoted from the 1887 parliamentary treatise of Alpheus Todd,” the Speaker said. “The Minister also cited Bourinot in 1884.”

This was, by these standards, riveting stuff.

“Had he read a little further,” Peter Milliken continued, “he might have found the following statement by Bourinot at page 281. ‘But it must be remembered that under all circumstances it is for the House to consider whether the reasons given for refusing the information are sufficient. The right of Parliament to obtain every possible information on public questions is undoubted, and the circumstances must be exceptional, and the reasons very cogent, when it cannot be at once laid before the houses.’”

From his seat, the Justice Minister chuckled at this reprimand. He may have by then—with a full 15 double-spaced pages left to be read—realized that the government’s case was lost. Continue…

Afghan detainee documents buried in a shipping container

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 6:37 PM - 9 Comments

The Military Police Complaints Commission heard Tuesday that documents it has requested regarding the transfer of Afghan detainees could take years to sort out. According to testimony by Maj. Denis Gagnon, the relevant files were “all thrown together in a storage bin, a sea container.” The process of Indexing and cataloguing those documents “may take years,” he said. A senior military official had testified earlier that some documents are being withheld in order to prevent information from leaking out. “We know full well that Canada’s enemies are ready to use that kind of information against our troops that are deployed there,” Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette said. “That is why there have been certain delays in producing those documents.”

Montreal Gazette

MAD MEN Invades Broadway

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 4:43 PM - 2 Comments

The new  Broadway revival of Promises, Promises, Neil Simon’s 1968 musical adaptation of The Apartment (with songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David), is another example of how Mad Men has had a lot of cultural impact despite its small viewership. The decision to revive the show is kind of puzzling, in the abstract. An Encores! concert revival in 1997 demonstrated that most of the score sounds very dated, and Simon’s script doesn’t add anything interesting to the original movie. The people who did the most to make the original show a hit star Jerry Orbach and choreographer Michael Bennett, are both dead. But Mad Men has made the ’60s office setting and sexual politics au courant.

The producers of the revival are so determined to copy Mad Men that they’ve changed the time period of the show from 1968 to 1962 — even though this makes very little sense, given that the sound of the score is as late ’60s as any musical except Hair. (The orchestrations, by Jonathan Tunick, were among the first to combine a traditional Broadway sound with the “canned” sound of studio recordings, including a wordless chorus of backup singers.)

It’s kind of inevitable, I guess: Mad Men has become a ’60s nostalgia piece even though it tries every second to tell us it’s not being nostalgic. I don’t think this necessarily means that viewers are taking the wrong lessons from it. But the show is about the adventures of people who live in a certain time and place, and if we like following these characters, we become fascinated by the way they dress and the social conventions they follow. So someone could get all the right lessons from Mad Men and still think its world is cool, because it entertains us.

By the way, speaking of Neil Simon, John Lahr has a long article about him in The New Yorker. It’s a well-argued piece, but doesn’t really convince me to like his plays very much. I find it interesting that he insists (and Lahr agrees) he’s not a writer of mechanical jokes that are divorced from individual characters, even though that’s definitely the way I see much of his writing. It’s a reminder that the goal of every good comedy writer is to write character comedy, and jokes that are not “jokey.” Even if the goal isn’t actually achieved.

The ruling

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 4:25 PM - 186 Comments

Below, the full English text of Speaker Peter Milliken’s ruling, delivered in the House over the last hour.

Further coverage from the Canadian Press, Globe, Canwest, CBC and CTV.

The Justice Minister has just now breathlessly read a statement that includes the phrase, “We welcome the possibility of a compromise.” Official Liberal reaction is here. Derek Lee’s reaction is here. Official NDP reaction is here.

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Government given two weeks to release detainee documents

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 4:03 PM - 33 Comments

House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken has ruled the government must turn over uncensored versions of documents related to the transfer of Afghan detainees. Milliken has sent government and opposition MPs back to Parliament’s Afghanistan committee, giving them two weeks to work out an agreement under which the secrecy of the documents can be assured. Should they fail to come to an agreement allowing for the release of the documents, Milliken said he could find the government in contempt of Parliament.

Toronto Star

Cops believed in Loch Ness monster

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 2:44 PM - 0 Comments

In the 1930s, Scottish police officers were so concerned that big-game hunters were going to stalk the Loch Ness monster that they asked London for advice. “That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness now seems beyond doubt,” wrote William Fraser, a senior police officer, “but that the police have any power to protect it is very doubtful.” At the time interest in a large monster inhabiting the deepest inland lake in Europe was at a fever pitch, following the publication of a picture purporting to show the creature. Reports of a huge animal living near the bottom of Loch Ness started in the sixth century and have continued on and off ever since. “The reason why the Nessie myth persists is it’s such a good story,” said Lee Barron, a lecturer in media and culture at Northumbria University. “We get a sense of wonder out of the ‘what ifs’ of it all. There are lots of monster in the lake myths around the globe, including the U.S. and Europe, but because of the sightings, the fake photos and the romance of Loch Ness, Nessie is the greatest of them all.”

Associated Press

Case for a saint

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 4 Comments

Darren Bonaparte

“Catherine Tekakwitha, who are you?” asks the lonely narrator in the opening of Leonard Cohen’s 1966 novel, Beautiful Losers. “Can I love you in my own way?” Arguably, Cohen’s muse, a 17th-century Mohawk convert whose enthusiastic self-mortifications reportedly generated a mysterious glow, has remained a pliant object of veneration—loved in many, many ways—largely because the Catholic Church has yet to canonize her, calcifying her image. That now seems about to change.

Beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, Tekakwitha’s sainthood awaits only a miracle that can stand up to the Vatican’s exacting standards. But after years of stymied attempts, her supporters have a meaty contender: Jake Finkbonner was five years old in 2006 when he fell playing basketball in his hometown of Ferndale, Wash., piercing his lip. Soon, that apparently inconsequential little cut was threatening his life. Struck with necrotizing fasciitis, the same flesh-eating disease that took former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard’s leg, Jake’s head swelled to “about the size of a basketball,” says his mother Elsa. Over the ensuing days, surgeons in Seattle stripped swaths of dead flesh from Jake’s face in an attempt to arrest the bacteria’s spread. “They basically filleted Jake,” says Elsa. “Every day we had him there at the hospital, we saw less and less of him.”

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