Watch and learn, kids

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 51 Comments

Rick Eglinton/ Toronto Star

Struggling to decipher a Shakespeare play has been a long-standing rite of passage for students in high school. Today that chore has been eased somewhat. Rather than plod through the text, Grade 9 students at some Canadian schools instead watch a movie in class. Romeo + Juliet, with Leonardo di Caprio and Claire Danes, is a popular choice.

It’s certainly easier on the eyes. But not everyone is happier. “When I found out my son was watching a movie rather than actually opening a book and reading the words on paper, I was shocked,” says Karen Huff, the mother of a Grade 9 student at a high school in Waterloo, Ont. “They seem to watch an awful lot of movies in school these days.”

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Air India inquiry concludes, recommends national security czar

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 2:22 PM - 2 Comments

Today, a 4,000-page report will be released to the families of the victims of the 1985 Air India explosion, which killed 329 people in one of the world’s deadliest terrorist strikes. It was also the largest case of mass murder in Canadian history. The inquiry concluded that authorities should have known Air India was a likely terrorist attack. It also contains recommendations for improved security in Canada, particularly that Canada create a role for a security czar to oversee disputes between the RCMP and CSIS. This person would be the ultimate security authority, the Globe and Mail reports, directing terrorism prosecutions and helping to get them through the courts. Justice John Major, who led the inquiry, said there are holes in this country’s security systems that need to be mended. Major’s report also recommended compensation for the families who, he said, were often treated as adversaries, AP reports.

Globe and Mail

Associated Press

Renaissance artist Caravaggio death solved

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 2:08 PM - 0 Comments

The mystery of the untimely death of Caravaggio, the talented, violent and controversial Italian renaissance painter, has been solved, the Guardian reports. Recently excavated remains in Tuscany, which are suspected to be the artists’, have extremely high levels of lead in them. Scientists are “85% sure” that they are Caravaggio’s remains and believe that the lead poisoning was one of the causes of his crazy behavior, and his short life (he died aged 38). Caravaggio was infamous for his drunken brawls and his astounding realism in his paintings, which placed him at odds with the Catholic church. “The lead likely came from his paints – he was known to be extremely messy with them,” said Silvano Vinceti, the researcher who announced the findings.

Guardian

Haunted by Satanic verses

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 3 Comments

SHERWIN CRASTO / AP

Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses earned him a spot on the short list for the Booker Prize and, more famously, a death sentence from Iran’s then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who decided it was blasphemous. Rushdie was forced into hiding; the Japanese translator of the book was murdered; and more than 30 Turkish intellectuals burned to death when Islamist arsonists attacked a hotel in Sivas where a Turkish writer who had translated the text was attending a cultural festival.

For a young Iranian hoping to thumb his nose at Iran’s Islamic government, and at radical Muslims in general, translating and promoting Rushdie’s novel must be among the most inflammatory actions one could undertake. But Barmak Behdad, an Iranian Kurd who earlier this year translated The Satanic Verses into Kurdish, was motivated as much by art as by politics. “I love this book,” he said in an interview with Maclean’s. “This is one of the best works of literature ever written.”

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Fine dining at a chain restaurant

By Jacob Richler - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Chris Mason Stearns

What I am presently surveying—aside from the most fetching collective of waitresses you can find a Mari usque ad Mare, guaranteed—is a cluster of seven delicate hand-cut butternut squash-stuffed ravioli, pleasantly drenched in beurre blanc, sprinkled with a little truffle oil and garnished with pine nuts and crisp-fried sage. The setting is new, but I have seen, eaten and loved this dish before.

The first time was nearly a decade ago, when a scaled-down portion appeared briefly before me as part of a long, three-figure tasting menu at Rob Feenie’s exquisite Lumière, in Kitsilano, Vancouver. We next met next door a couple of years later at the Lumière Tasting Bar, and our last encounter was in the neighbouring bistro—Feenie’s. A casual place, that, but not quite so much as the venue today: the flagship Bentall Centre location of the Cactus Club Café, where since 2008 Iron Chef Feenie has been employed as executive-chef-with-an-incomprehensible-title (“Food Concept Architect”).

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Guergis and Jaffer expecting a baby

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 1:07 PM - 3 Comments

Canada’s scandal-plagued couple, Rahim Jaffer and Helena Guergis, are expecting a baby. Jaffer says he skipped Wednesday’s scheduled appearance before a parliamentary committee to investigate allegations of illegal lobbying because he was accompanying his wife while she was taking medical tests. Jaffer says that Guergis is three months into a “high-risk” pregnancy. MPs from all parties expressed their disappointment that Jaffer was not able to make the meeting, and concurred that Thursday would be his last chance to give a clear testimony. “I know there were other demands on my time this afternoon, but I truly believe that the right place for me was beside my wife, while she was undergoing these tests, and when she received the results,” Jaffer wrote in a statement emailed to media. He is scheduled to appear at 9 a.m. today for another committee meeting.

Toronto Star

He got the inside story on Facebook

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

The Facebook Effect
David Kirkpatrick

As a business genre, the “inside story” of a corporation’s rise to glory tends to suffer from either a lack of access to key people and colourful backroom details, or the heavy-handed feel of a public relations department at work. But while David Kirkpatrick’s treatment of Facebook risks falling into the latter category—“Facebook co-operated extensively . . . as did CEO Mark Zuckerberg”—the social networking giant’s meteoric growth (it now boasts nearly half a billion users) and all the talk about it one day supplanting Google means any insight into Zuckerberg’s thinking is a welcome development—and not just because of the 26-year-old CEO’s reputation as being as difficult to read as he is brilliant.

Perhaps the book’s biggest revelation is the degree to which Zuckerberg is possessed by a long-term vision for Facebook as a tool to humanize the Web. His steadfast belief that sharing information—much of it personal—makes society better off is, according to Kirkpatrick, at the root of most of the privacy debate currently enveloping the company. It sounds like PR spin, but the sheer number of times Zuckerberg has stubbornly refused rich takeover offers from deep-pocketed suitors, ranging from Microsoft to Viacom, lends credence to the idea that he’s driven by more than just dollars.

Facebook’s transformation from Harvard dorm room start-up to Silicon Valley phenomenon is a fascinating tale: the rented home office in Palo Alto, Calif., that hosted raucous parties in addition to late night coding sessions; the culture clash between young programmers and older executives; and, notably, Zuckerberg’s frustrating ambivalence (for investors at least) about the need for a business model. Where Kirkpatrick falls short is his reluctance to take a critical stance on key questions, including a lawsuit by three former Harvard students who claim Facebook was their idea, and whether it’s time for Zuckerberg to hand over the CEO’s chair to a more experienced executive. Then again, Zuckerberg’s strong-willed idealism may be what’s needed to rule Facebook and its nearly 500 million users, an unwieldy population that needs a great leader as much as it does a good manager.
- CHRIS SORENSEN

Medium Raw: A bloody valentine to the world of food and the people who cook
Anthony Bourdain

By “bloody valentine,” Anthony Bourdain must have been thinking “massacre.” That would explain the former chef’s gleeful gun-down of such sacrosanct food-world icons as Alice Waters and the “supremely irrelevant old f–ks” who run the James Beard House. Bourdain’s loathing for one well-known food writer is so intense he gives him his own chapter: “Alan Richman is a Douche.”

The former heroin addict and “angry f–k-up” claims to have mellowed since coming to fame a decade ago with Kitchen Confidential, an exposé that warned diners never to order fish on Monday—a directive Bourdain now recants. Then again, he also claims to abhor pretense and the “douche-oriented economy” while dropping that there’s a “Francis Bacon in the crapper” on Adnan Khashoggi’s yacht. But to read Bourdain for consistency is to go to McDonald’s for nutrition. He describes the best meal of his life, a Rabelaisian blow-out at the French Laundry, then writes it left him “struggling mightily not to spray truffle-flecked chunks into the toilet.” And he praises Chicago chef Grant Achatz, while describing a meal at his Alinea as one of the “longest and least pleasurable” of his life; one course was “a slab of pork belly, dangling senselessly from a toy clothesline.”

Bourdain offers ribald relief amid culinary-world suck-ups. He recalls a run-in with Food Network star Sandra Lee (the “hellspawn of Betty Crocker and Charles Manson”) who got inappropriately touchy-feely: “the feel of Sandra’s icy predatory claws working their way up my spine and around my hips—like some terrifying alien mandibles.”

Bourdain’s at his best using his platform to honour unsung kitchen heroes, devoting a chapter to Justo Thomas’s daily deboning of 700 lb. of fish at New York’s Le Bernardin. Later, he takes the kitchen worker to eat there for his first time. Finally, one funny valentine with not a splatter of blood.
- ANNE KINGSTON

The Ninth
Harvey Sachs

Beethoven’s ninth and last symphony is no longer the longest piece of music ever written, but it’s still the biggest; Sachs, a veteran music writer, notes that the revolutionary choral “Ode to Joy” finale has been one of the greatest influences on the arts, and its celebration of universal justice has been appropriated by every political movement. How did one symphony become a phenomenon greater than music itself? That’s what Sachs seeks to find out by writing not only about the music (which he describes in great detail), but the political and social movements of the time: in an era of government crackdowns against the ideals of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, Beethoven’s music was part of a “rearguard action against repression.”

Sachs also shows us how the symphony helped to create the modern idea of what he calls “the cult of genius.” Before Beethoven, artists were supposed to please the public—or their rich patrons. Beethoven did what he wanted and the public had to have “a willingness to meet him halfway.” Sachs demonstrates how this idea was taken up not only by composers like Wagner, but writers and thinkers who saw Beethoven as a representative of artistic independence.

What Sachs doesn’t do, surprisingly, is tell us much about the musical world the ninth existed in. Except for a few throwaway references, we barely hear about the other music being played in 1824, or its similarities and differences with Beethoven’s. So while we know that the audience was surprised by the music, we don’t quite know what they were expecting. Just because Beethoven couldn’t hear the music of his era is no reason we shouldn’t know what it was like.
- JAIME J. WEINMAN

Rush Limbaugh
Zev Chafets

In the acknowledgement to his even-handed biographical treatment of the right-wing American political and media phenomenon Rush Limbaugh, Chafets writes that almost no New York publisher was interested in a Limbaugh book “that didn’t have the word ‘idiot’ or ‘liar’ in the title.” A slight exaggeration (perhaps), but a believable one, and one that fits Chafets’s persuasively argued theme. Regardless of the merits of the liberal case against Limbaugh, after 20 years of derision he is flourishing, perhaps more than ever—Hollywood-level rich and 2008 Barack Obama-level influential. By the time of Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, Limbaugh had become the de facto head of the Republican party. His no-compromise militancy was crucial in sinking the new President’s search for bipartisanship and wreaked considerable damage on what looked, only two years ago, like a new Democratic ascendancy. His political enemies really ought to consider taking him seriously.

Limbaugh, 59, came out of Missouri a fairly typical baby boomer. He didn’t register to vote until he was 35. On the two burning questions of boomer politics, Limbaugh smoked dope twice, inhaling both times, and happily avoided the draft via a convenient if inglorious medical exemption—a cyst on his buttocks. Much-married, a smoker and a drinker, personally tolerant of all sexual orientations, he is emphatically not a member of the evangelical wing of his party. He is, instead, a small-government, free-enterprise fundamentalist.

Limbaugh’s true opposite number, Chafets argues, is not a liberal political figure but another media titan, Oprah Winfrey. His radio audience, 72 per cent male, exactly mirrors Oprah’s 72 per cent female TV viewers. Both audiences idolize their stars, who both use their personal struggles—in Limbaugh’s case, addiction to prescription drugs and deafness—to forge emotional bonds with them. American liberals, having seen a succession of political anti-Limbaughs fail utterly on the radio, might consider appealing to Winfrey.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

Canada’s Big Biblical Bargain
Jason Kalman and Jaqueline S. du Toit

Most Canadians know something of the Dead Sea scrolls: the first discovery in 1947 by Bedouin nomads after two millennia buried in a cliffside cave, and subsequent finds over the next nine years in 10 other caves; the controversy the texts have sparked over what they reveal about early Judaism and the origins of Christianity; and the endless debate over who owns them now, still making news last year as the scrolls visited the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

What few realize, however, is that a key portion of the scrolls was once set to be permanently housed in Montreal. Half of the 16 scrolls shown at the ROM, in fact, were purchased from their Bedouin finders by a Jerusalem museum with money provided by McGill University. Its $20,000 contribution bought 500 manuscript fragments and, according to Kalman and du Toit, was crucial to keeping the collection intact and available to scholars. In exchange, McGill was promised ownership.

But the politics of the scrolls, described ably (if with a certain academic dryness) by Kalman and du Toit, is almost as fascinating as their contents. Neither Israel nor Jordan could lay claim to the territory in which the first find was made—Israel didn’t even exist—but after the 1948 partition war, the Jordanian kingdom occupied it and East Jerusalem, where the finds were housed. When the 1952 discovery of thousands of tiny fragments in Cave 4 prompted a worldwide call for financial aid from academic centres, McGill was the first to respond, using a donation from a member of the Birks jewellery family.

The scrolls never arrived in Montreal. After years of anguished diplomatic correspondence, and rising Arab nationalism, Jordan announced in 1961 that they were too precious to the 15-year-old kingdom’s “indivisible history” (and, as royal officials privately noted, its tourist trade) to ever permanently depart. The university was reimbursed. It was an understandable decision by the Jordanians, but the fragments didn’t bring them benefits for long: when Israel took East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, it moved the scrolls—as a key part of its heritage—to Israel proper, a legally questionable move still under protest in Toronto in 2009.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

Scout, Atticus & Boo
by Mary McDonagh Murphy

Everybody agrees Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a great novel. What everyone can’t agree on is what makes it so great.

There is no questioning the novel’s remarkable success or longevity. This classic of youth and racism in small-town Alabama during the Great Depression has been in print continually since it was written in 1960. It won Lee a Pulitzer Prize and the admiration of readers everywhere. It’s also the only novel Lee, who still lives in Monroeville, Ala., ever wrote.

In honour of the book’s 50th anniversary, Murphy attempts to nail down some of the reasons behind the Mockingbird phenomenon. Murphy interviewed many of the novel’s most famous fans for a TV documentary and collects 26 of those transcripts in this book. According to Murphy’s informants, the book’s secret lies in its precise sketch of small-town life. Or its searing examination of injustice. Or the memorable characters of Scout, the precocious tomboy narrator, her straight-arrow lawyer father Atticus Finch, and shadowy anti-hero Boo Radley.

All are perfectly valid reasons, of course. Unfortunately, Scout, Atticus & Boo suffers from frequent repetition of these possibilities. And too many of the sources seem to be other writers politely envious of the fact that Lee only had to write one thing to establish her towering reputation. “Look, I wish I’d written the book,” says black novelist James McBride, summarizing the majority view.

The most interesting comments tend to come from less competitive participants. Rosanne Cash, daughter of country singer Johnny Cash, calls the book “a guide to parenting.” Oprah Winfrey claims it laid the groundwork for her famous television book club. After she read it in grade school, Winfrey pestered everyone she knew to give it a read as well. All said, if you’re looking to celebrate the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, you might as well read the original one more time and decide for yourself why it’s still great.
- Peter Shawn Taylor

Government reaches pardon bill agreement

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 12:29 PM - 31 Comments

Federal politicians have agreed to fast-track an abridged legislation that could prevent notorious offenders like Karla Homolka from applying for a pardon. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said all federal parties reached an agreement and that a small portion of Bill C-23—a bill that would tighten that pardon process and restrict access to pardons—would be passed in the House this week. Toews denied that the bill was aimed at one person, but Homolka’s name was raised as parties debated the issue. It recently came to the government’s attention that Homolka would be eligible to apply for a pardon on July 5, and unnamed sources cited in a CTV report claimed she intended to do so. Homolka was released from prison on July 5, 2005 after serving a 12-year sentence for the rape and murder of teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. Bill C-23 was first introduced on May 11, but the government did nothing to move it forward until this week. Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a special interest in the case and demanded his government act quickly The result is a bill that would replace pardons with “record suspensions” that would be more difficult to obtain and take longer to get. The remainder of the bill will remain in committee as C-23B and will be studied in the fall.

Globe and Mail

Dutch court convicts Somali pirates

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 12:03 PM - 0 Comments

The Netherlands is the first European country to convict modern pirates, reports the New York Times. Five men will serve five-year sentences for a failed attempt to commandeer an Antilles-flagged freight ship sailing through the Gulf of Aden in January 2009. Somali pirates are currently awaiting trials in France, Spain, Germany, the U.S. and Kenya, which has convicted 18 pirates since 2007. The prosecution asked for seven-year sentences, but the judge was lenient saying he took into account “the difficult conditions in Somalia that led the men to piracy.”

New York Times

Who doesn’t get into Canada

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 77 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON

Midway through last summer, when much of official Ottawa was away at the cottage, a revealing document landed on the desk of Canada’s top immigration bureaucrat, deputy minister Neil Yeates. Prosaically titled “Social and Economic Outcomes of Second Generation Youth,” the four-page memo showed little regard for the political correctness typical of government correspondence. “Chinese and South Asians are the most likely to have university degrees or higher, and to be employed in high-skilled occupations,” observed the summary, which was prepared by departmental bureaucrats and released recently through access to information. Second-generation youth of Caribbean and Latin American origin don’t fare so well, the memo went on; they tend to obtain lower levels of education than native-born Canadian kids and wind up in less skilled jobs.

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Israel to ease Gaza blockade – but only over land

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 11:33 AM - 0 Comments

Israel is allowing more goods to reach the Gaza Strip through land, but the sea blockade will remain in place, says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. There has been international pressure for Israel to allow more humanitarian goods into the Palestinian territory after nine people died trying to break the sea blockade on May 31. Hamas is demanding a complete lifting of the blockade. “Gaza especially needs construction material, which must be allowed to come in without restrictions,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters UK. Israel says that it will continue to block construction materials from entering Gaza in order to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military capabilities.

Reuters

Birmingham halts camera surveillance in Muslim suburbs

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 11:14 AM - 3 Comments

Police in Birmingham, England are apologizing for not being upfront about the source of their funding for 169 license-plate-tracking cameras that are being installed in predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods. There were angry public meetings last week after residents learned that virtually every car trip in Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook will be recorded and stored for two years. Officials with the Safer Birmingham Partnership (SBP), the coalition of local police and government responsible for the cameras, told the Guardian that their decision to blanket Muslim areas reflected general crime statistics, not just counter terrorism intelligence.

Guardian

No room for the view

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 14 Comments

Photograph by Nick Westover

It’s just steps from Granville Island and Kitsilano Beach, and with to-die-for views of English Bay and the snow-tipped North Shore mountains, this 10-acre site at the south end of the Burrard Bridge—among the last open stretches of undeveloped city waterfront—may be the Lower Mainland’s hottest empty lot. Empty except for a totem pole and a thick tangle of blackberry bushes, the site belongs to the Squamish Nation.

And it will soon play host to a massive new real-estate development: a $1-billion, two-tower, mixed-use job that will, according to early drawings, block the city’s carefully preserved ocean and mountain views and dramatically densify sleepy Kitsilano.

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Obama's authenticity trap

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 10:56 AM - 68 Comments

One of the more pointless aspects of the whole BP spill fiasco is the ongoing debate about whether Obama’s reaction to the whole thing has been appropriate. Has he shown enough anger? Too much anger? Has he been too cerebral? Too dispassionate?Too uncaring?

Please.  The assumption that what is required, more than anything else, is authenticity is one of the most pernicious aspects of our political discourse. Of course Obama had it coming, to some extent, since his whole brand is “authenticity”. But now he, and the public, are facing the double-edged nature of authenticity as the litmus of leadership: we think we want authenticity only until we see it:

An article by Julia Kirby in the HBR does a good job of highlighting just what is wrong with this whole approach to leadership. Here’s the problem:

In the current criticism of Obama, we’re seeing another form of double bind, at least as difficult to navigate. Today Show’s Matt Lauer found him frustratingly cerebral, but how would the general public have felt if he’d been visibly enraged? As one writer, William Jelani Cobb, told CNN: “It would have fed deeply into a pre-existing set of narratives about the angry black man.”

To see the trap in action, you don’t even have to play the race card:

Towards an understanding of the understanding

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 10:55 AM - 22 Comments

After conferring with both sides (or at least two of the three sides) of the detainee document agreement, it would seem that this much is agreed upon.

If, in the process of producing documents, the government believes that all or part of a document may be covered by solicitor-client privilege or cabinet confidence, that document will be sent directly to the panel of arbiters. The panel of arbiters will then decide what from those documents can be disclosed to the ad hoc committee of MPs. If the panel of arbiters does decide that the document is subject to privilege, they must explain their decision to the ad hoc committee of MPs.

Revenge of the '80s

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 2 Comments

Photo Illustration by Bradley Reinhardt

Oliver Stone’s new movie, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, will bring Gordon Gekko back to the big screen after more than two decades. This surely means that rival studios are already rushing to make sequels to other big films of the 1980s. What has become of some of the most famous characters of that era? And how will they have adapted to very different times?

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North Korean love affair

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 3 Comments

KELD NAVNTOFT/EPA/KEYSTONE PRESS

It was a friendly invitation from one paranoid dictatorship to another. In the lead-up to the World Cup in South Africa this month, Robert Mugabe’s government invited the North Korean soccer team to come to Zimbabwe to acclimatize and train before their big games. The North Koreans accepted the gracious offer in April, until they found out where exactly they would be training.

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Steppe dance with the Kremlin

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 1 Comment

Astakhov Dmitry/Corbis

Last week, Ukraine abandoned a long-held goal: to join NATO. In a bill submitted to parliament by President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine barred itself from joining the 28-member military alliance—a jarring shift from the policies of predecessor Viktor Yushchenko, who sought closer ties with the West. “The main element of predictability and consistency in Ukraine’s foreign policy is its nonaligned status,” said Prime Minister Mykola Azarov as he submitted the bill. Observers call it proof positive that, less than four months into Yanukovych’s presidency, the country is moving firmly back into Russia’s embrace.

Yanukovych has moved quickly to shore up Ukraine’s crumbling relationship with Russia. In April, he extended Moscow’s lease on Sevastopol (a major naval base on the Black Sea) for 25 years after the current lease expires in 2017, securing a cheaper deal on Russian gas for his cash-strapped country in return. Yanukovych has also pledged to sign a friendship treaty with Russia calling for closer economic integration. If its $19-billion loan request to the International Monetary Fund falls through, the country says it may seek bilateral loans from Russia.

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Mitchel Raphael on John Baird's mom, his Grade 7 teacher, her sister . . .

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 5 Comments

Kelly Block and the Bloc
MPs from all parties took home prizes at Maclean’s fourth annual Parliamentarians of the Year awards ceremony held in the West Block. For the fourth time in a row, Nova Scotia NDP MP Peter Stoffer won for Most Collegial. (Stoffer said he voted for Liberal whip Rodger Cuzner, a fellow Nova Scotian, who came in second.) Ted Menzies got the prize for Hardest Working MP. It was the first year the Bloc won awards: Gilles Duceppe for Most Knowledgeable and Robert Bouchard for Best Represents Constituents. There was even a joke that the party was on a roll when it was announced that Saskatchewan Conservative Kelly Block had won for Rising Star. Toronto Liberal MP Bob Rae won for Best Orator, which was not surprising since he seems to be one of the few MPs who can ask a question in the House without reading from a piece of paper and can even do a follow-up question that takes into account the answer he just got from the government. The big winner of the night, though, was Transport Minister John Baird, who was named Parliamentarian of the Year.

Attending the awards ceremony was Baird’s mother, Marianne Anderson. Anderson told Capital Diary she tapes question period every day and watches it in the evening. Besides her son, her favourite people to watch in QP are Liberal MP Hedy Fry and NDP Leader Jack Layton. Also there to honour Baird was his Grade 7 teacher Kay Stanley, who happens to be Tory Senate leader Marjory LeBreton’s sister. “John was a very curious student,” said Stanley, who is credited with getting Baird into politics. Stanley used to have a phone in her classroom because she was head of the local teachers’ federation. But she was also heavily involved with the Progressive Conservative party and once received a call during class from then-PC leader Joe Clark. That really impressed Baird. “I never thought my sister and John would end up in cabinet together,” says Stanley. LeBreton said Baird always calls her “Marg, like in The Simpsons. So I call him Homer.” Laureen Harper, who often has Baird as her date at Ottawa social functions, was also at the party. When Stephen Harper famously surprised guests at the National Arts Centre by playing the piano, Mrs. Harper said Baird got a text from a friend saying: “It’s a real drag when your date’s husband shows up.” The night of the awards, Baird had a fundraiser scheduled in his riding so he sent Defence Minister Peter MacKay there in his place. Labour Minister Lisa Raitt, who was at the Maclean’s awards ceremony, said she learned that Baird has two stories he tells every time at fundraisers. She said that when she heard one of them the first time, “I thought it was the funniest joke I ever heard and I believed it as a true story.” Baird describes going to a rickety old house no one ever hits while campaigning in the dead of winter. The person opens the door and says, “Who are you and why are you bothering me? I hate everything to do with the government.” Baird’s punchline? “I’m Dalton McGuinty and I’m here to get your vote for the Liberal party.” Baird’s award wasn’t without controversy. According to Toronto Liberal MP Rob Oliphant, “Anyone who has such great disdain for Parliament and parliamentary procedure makes it an embarrassing evening for Maclean’s. It makes a mockery of the contest.” Though Newfoundland Liberal MP Scott Simms noted that, “given the fact Parliament is immature, maybe it’s a good choice. Despite the bravado, Baird is an approachable guy. But I once called him a blowfish in the House.”

The MP and the pilots
Tory MP Patrick Brown hosted a special reception in the West Block for Air Canada’s pilots union. There are more than 200 Air Canada pilots who live in Barrie, Ont., the city Brown represents. That’s because pilots, Brown explained, must live close to the airport they work out of and Barrie is near Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. The Barrie pilots have a monthly pub night and a hockey league. Brown says Barrie is nicknamed “Terminal 4,” a reference to when Pearson had three terminals.

Jason Kenney couldn’t stop laughing
During a scrum on his immigration bill, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was told that Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis, an outspoken MP who at times rubs people the wrong way, was complaining that had the bill in its current form been around when he immigrated to Canada from Greece, he would not have been allowed into the country. A cheeky journalist immediately asked, “Will the bill be retroactive?” Kenney started to crack up and couldn’t continue.

One ballroom, two very different days
The Council of Arab League Ambassadors in Ottawa held a celebration to showcase their countries in the Fairmont Château Laurier ballroom. Tables were set up highlighting a variety of Middle Eastern cultures, though Palestinian representatives kept their table empty as a sign of mourning for the aid flotilla that attempted to reach Gaza. The honoured guest was Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella. Treasury Board President Stockwell Day’s aide noted that the previous day the room had been made kosher by rabbis because Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was supposed to have had an event there but had to return to Israel early to deal with the flotilla crisis.

The Maclean’s Parliamentarians of the Year party was sponsored by TD Bank Financial Group, Pfizer Canada, the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC), the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association and Wayne Gretzky Estates winery and was hosted in association with the Historica-Dominion Institute and L’actualité.

Stasi Standoff in Berlin

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

In Berlin, a dispute revolving around who gets to explain the dark days of the old East Germany is taking shape at the former headquarters of the Communist regime’s secret police, the Stasi. A private group, Anti-Stalinist Action (ASTAK), has been running a memorial in Building 1 of the vast complex for more than 20 years. Now the government wants to create its own national memorial to those dark days in Building 1, and ASTAK has been told to vacate the premises, with its government funding ending this month.

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'Destructive type of behaviour'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 5 Comments

While Keith Ashfield dismisses concerns, Greg Thompson stands by his version of events and, in an interview with the CBC, explains how he brought his concerns to the attention of the Prime Minister’s Office. Meanwhile, the Premier of New Brunswick is displeased.

Who's afraid of Dino the bear?

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

ISTOCK

Dopey and starving after a long winter’s nap, Dino the bear began searching for food—and wandered into the limelight. The 385-lb. brown bear, nicknamed by the Italian media, has been frustrating farmers in the Italian Alps with his attacks on their cows, chickens and sheep. Though brown bears are protected by Italian law, the farmers want Dino shot. His fans (nearly 15,000 on a Facebook page) are insisting he be allowed to live.

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Bestsellers

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of June 14th, 2010)

Fiction

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LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

The G20 summit: A billion-dollar waste of time

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 77 Comments

Adrien Veczan / CP

For a meeting that is supposed to make the world safer and more secure, the combined G8/G20 summit in Huntsville, Ont., and Toronto seems to entail an enormous amount of destruction and dislocation.

Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country has been turned into a walled security zone. The most valuable few acres of real estate in the country—downtown Toronto—will be isolated and protected for the benefit of 20,000 international dignitaries, delegates and journalists. And keep in mind the $1.2-billion price tag only represents taxpayers’ costs to host the summits.

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