TV Time Slot Hijinks
By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 25, 2010 - 0 Comments
I read an article in Variety over the weekend — I can’t link to it because of the paywall, so good business move there, Variety — about ABC’s smash success with Modern Family, and the question of whether they can leverage it to create a really dominant comedy lineup, the way NBC did with The Cosby Show in the ’80s. No comparison is perfect, and I don’t think any network now can do quite what NBC did in the ’80s: that network was extremely lucky, because it already had several good comedies on the air (developed by the great Grant Tinker) that simply weren’t getting enough eyeballs because the whole network was in such bad shape. The network, realizing that Cosby was a likely hit, followed it with three pre-existing comedies in new time slots, and those shows all became hits. ABC doesn’t have that; like all the networks — even CBS — they cut way back on their half-hour comedy production when they thought (as in the ’80s) that the hour-long drama with comic elements was going to become the big new thing. The Cosby revival of comedy, real though it was, wouldn’t have happened if the network had had to try and produce new hit comedies from scratch; NBC already had committed itself to comedy development for two years before Cosby came along.
But as ABC tries to develop new comedies and considers whether or not to open up another comedy night (the collapse of nearly all their new dramas may make them less reluctant to try this), one of the big questions is what they’re going to do with their most valuable piece of real estate, the slot after their one big comedy hit. This slot is currently occupied by Cougar Town, which loses a lot of Modern Family‘s audience but still posts the second-best comedy numbers on the network. It’s a classic time-slot hit, in other words: a good show that can do decently after a big hit, but probably wouldn’t do so well anywhere else. CBS has something similar going on with Shat My Dad Says, which has performed better than it probably deserves — it’s gone up in the ratings for two straight weeks — but is probably not good enough to pull an audience anywhere else. So, if you’re a network, what do you do with that slot: do you keep a time-slot hit there for another year or two, knowing that its performance is pretty good in the abstract, or do you try and use that slot to launch another show that could possibly become a hit on its own?
The issue of what to do with these post-hit timeslots is more pressing than ever this season because it’s very clear that after a hit comedy is the best place for a new show to be. It’s been noted several times that the dramas mostly bombed this year while the comedies have mostly done decently. That’s true — except the reason is that most of the comedies were placed after established hit comedies; Outsourced is doing okay because it comes after The Office. The exceptions are Raising Hope, which is after a big hit but not in the same hour (the “time slot” effect applies much more at 8:30 than at 9, since at the beginning of the hour people are more likely to switch to a drama), and Running Wilde, the only new comedy with the misfortune not to come right after a successful show, and not coincidentally, the only big flop comedy of the season. ABC’s Better With You, which comes after the middling success The Middle (though The Middle is my favourite ABC offering) has ratings that fall somewhere between Outsourced and Running Wilde; BWY managed to get a pickup for a full season, whereas Running Wilde bombed largely because it had the bad luck to be after a new show. It seems like ratings for new comedies in a weak season are entirely dependent on the comedies introduced in previous seasons.
This season’s crop, in any case, isn’t likely to provide the new big hits that networks are looking for. So when they do introduce new comedies in midseason and next season, they’ll have to decide what they’re looking for in their post-hit spots: are they trying to find a show that can stay there comfortably for a while? Or are they trying to use that as a springboard for comedies that can stand on their own?
There’s no clear rule as to how a valuable slot should be used. NBC rarely used the post-Cosby Show slot as a “springboard” slot. Instead they left Family Ties there for several years, moving it only when they came up Continue…
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The Commons: Repeat after Rona
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 6:35 PM - 0 Comments
The Scene. To his credit, Christian Paradis did not avoid the House this afternoon. No doubt knowing he would face a new round of questions about the latest in an unfortunate series of circumstances, the former minister of public works and current minister of natural resources took his seat along the front row all the same.
No doubt knowing he would not have to rise to answer a single one of these questions, he surely did so quite comfortably.
“Mr. Speaker, in September 2007, one week before it closed, the request for proposals for renovation of the West Block North Tower was amended and the qualifications needed to bid dramatically downgraded,” Liberal Marcel Proulx said first, reviewing the newest revelation for the benefit of the House. “Experts in the construction industry have said this would have benefited only one bidder, LM Sauvé.”
Nearly every other day of the last month has brought some new curiosity such as this—another clipping to tape to the wall in search of connections. Were it not for Richard Nixon, it might all be the stuff of whispered conversations around the booths at Hy’s. As it is, 38 years after those two-bit burglaries, we sit around the press gallery wondering how properly to attach the suffix “gate” to the situation.
Once more it is difficult to know whether to curse or thank the 37th president of the United States. Continue…
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Should buyers beware?
By Jason Kirby - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 5:20 PM - 0 Comments
Deciding whether to rent or buy should be based on a lot more than just the asking price
Mary Altaffer/AP/ DARRYL DYCK/CP
In mid-November, Vancouver’s condo king, Bob Rennie, will take a very public mulligan. That’s when he plans to relaunch sales at the troubled Millennium Water development, the site where Olympic athletes bunked during the Winter Games. For all the praise designers and visitors from around the globe have heaped on the project’s cutting-edge, ultra-green features, the $1-billion Millennium Water sorely lacks one crucial component—buyers. Two-thirds of the 740 units in the complex sit empty. Hence Rennie’s plan to jump-start sales by way of discounts, an HST tax holiday, and a break on property taxes and maintenance fees—initiatives that could knock 14 per cent off the initial price tag of some units.
Vancouver taxpayers, who are ultimately on the hook for any losses, aren’t the only ones eager to know if the gambit pays off. In the eyes of prospective buyers in the city, and across the country for that matter, the high-profile project has become a touchstone for whether the real estate market is about to tank. And for first-time buyers sitting on the fence, the prospect of a sharp correction on the horizon is just one of the factors they must consider before taking the plunge.
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Canada-US Happenings
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 5:03 PM - 0 Comments
From today’s Inbox:
– Perrin Beatty, President and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is the luncheon speaker tomorrow at the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC. He’ll be talking trade, borders and regulations. From his speech: “I believe that it is time for the national leaders to commit the United States and Canada to a new generation of negotiation, to take the Canada-U.S. partnership to a higher level. The time is right, and the need is apparent.”
– The Canadian American Business Council will hold an event in Vancouver on Nov. 5 to analyze the impact of the mid-term elections on US policy going forward. Obama at the Mid-Term: Where to Next?
Featured speakers: Obama Administration officials from the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy
Honourable Stockwell Day, Treasury Board of Canada
Joel Babbit, CEO and Co-Founder, Mother Nature Network
Dawna Friesen, Global TV National News Anchor
Aaron Leibowitz, Republican Strategist
Marie-Lynne Desrochers, VP, Global Transaction Solutions, RBC Royal Bank
Susannah Pierce, Head, Government Affairs, Shell Canada
Janice Adair, State of Washington liaison, Western Climate Initiative– And congratulations to Colin Robertson, the former Head of the Advocacy Secretariat at the Canadian Embassy in Washington and as Consul General in Los Angeles, well known to Canada-watchers in DC, who is being made an honorary captain in the Canadian Navy.
“Honorary Naval Captains are quite visible, attending significant naval, Canadian Forces and public events and ceremonies in uniform across the country. … Honorary Naval Captains act as bridges between military and civilian communities, representing diverse areas of Canadian society, from politics and business to journalism and the arts. They bring with them unique skills and connections that help to strengthen the navy’s ties to Canadian communities and to promote a better understanding of maritime defence issues.”
This blog awaits your photo in uniform, Colin.
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Montreal firm bid far less than competitors for Parliament Hill reno
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 5:03 PM - 7 Comments
New docs show bid was nearly $2 million below second-lowest estimate
The Montreal construction company that was awarded the now-contested $8.9-million contract for a Parliament Hill renovation project bid $2 million below the second-lowest estimate, new documents show. That’s a big margin, given that the four other bids came in within $500,000 of each other. How LM Sauve, the construction company, made it to the shortlist for the reno, and then won over other much larger companies, is the question at the heart of the controversy over the contract. The RCMP is investigating a possible breach of lobbying rules and anti-corruption laws but Paul Sauve, head of the company, maintains that his firm was qualified for the job, citing past work on federal office buildings in Montreal, and upcoming project on Vancouver’s city hall. He says he hired Tory-connected Quebec businessman Gilles Varin to help get the work and paid him $140,000 for his efforts. Though LM Sauve won the job in 2008, the company went bankrupt a year later and lost the contract.
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Food crisis on the horizon?
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 4:27 PM - 0 Comments
Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines warned of possible shortages
The costs of staple foods and vegetables have reached their highest levels in two years, and rising food prices and shortages could cause instability in many regions, the Guardian reports. This instability, though, may simply reflect volatility in global commodity markets as countries climb out of recession. “Prices are volatile and there is a lot of nervousness in the market. There are big differences between now and 2008 [when riots over food shortages broke out in 25 countries]. Harvests are generally better, global food stocks are better,” said Chris Leather, Oxfam’s food policy adviser. “We may not get to the prices of 2008 but this time they could stay high much longer, “said Abdolreza Abbassian of the UN food and agriculture organization.
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The weather outside is frightful
By Leah McLaren - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments
Some London politicians have the answer for dealing with a snowfall: give everyone a free shovel
Horst Friedrichs/Anzenberger/RED
Start digging.
That’s the message one local government is giving London residents worried about what is predicted to be an unusually snowy winter for the British capital.Camden Council, which accounts for a large swath of north and central London including Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and Primrose Hill, has unveiled a plan to encourage residents to shovel their sidewalks by providing them with the tools to do so. More than 2,000 wooden-handled, plastic snow shovels have been purchased by the local authority to be handed out for free to residents, shopkeepers or community groups.
It’s a nice gesture, by Canadian standards anyway. And a helpful one for a nation that is better accustomed to umbrellas and wellingtons than to windshield scrapers and Sorels.But here in Britain (where even the short-range weather forecast is notoriously unreliable), the program has sparked anger among some local residents. They think it’s the government’s job to deal with snow—a rare occurrence in the south of England, and one that invariably sets off a wave of public panic before temporarily grinding the country to a halt. (Last winter’s unusually cold and snowy winter resulted in the closure of schools, businesses and public transit and reportedly cost the country as a whole more than $100 million in road repairs.)
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Toronto 18 ringleader sentenced to 16 years
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments
Fahim Ahmad could be eligible for parole in just over three years
The 26 year-old head of a foiled plot to bomb targets in Toronto and Ottawa has been sentenced to 16 years in prison by a Brampton Court. Fahim Ahmad plead guilty to participating in a terrorist group, importing firearms and holding training camps to instruct his followers on how to assault targets like Parliament, the Canadian Broadcasting Centre and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service headquarters. Judge Fletcher Dawson found that although Ahmad led the plot, he was never actually close to carrying out an attack. He also acknowledged that Ahmad, who says he’s no longer intolerant of western people or other religions, was remorseful of his actions, saying “I am not dealing with someone who remains openly defiant. Perhaps I’m only optimistic, but I see prospects of rehabilitation.” The Crown asked for a sentence of 18 years to life, while the defense requested a 12 year sentence. Ahmad, who’s been in prison since 2006, will be granted double credit for his time in jail, meaning he could be eligible for parole in three and a half years.
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Quiz: Are you "Elite"
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments
I can’t find a link to this quiz that ran in yesterday’s print Washington Post so I will reproduce it here.
The article, by Charles Murray, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is entitled:
“The tea party is right. The ruling class is out of touch.”
David Frum’s takedown is here.
I took the quiz and got a big, round zero. I confess: I can’t tell a soybean field from a mixed martial art. I am “isolated and ignorant.” How about you?
Quiz Questions:
1. Do you know who Jimmi Johnson is? (The really famous one, not the football coach.) Yes/No
2. Can you identify military ranks by uniform insignias? Yes/No
3. Do you known what MMA and UFC stand for? Yes/No
4. Do you know what Branson, Mo. is famous for? Yes/No
5. Have you attended a meeting of a Kiwanis or Rotary club? Yes/No*
6. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker as host of “The Price is Right?” Yes/No
7. Have you ever lived in a town with fewer than 25,000 people? (During college doesn’t count.) Yes/No
8. Can you named the authors of the “Left Behind” series? Yes/No
9. Do you live in an area where most people lack college degrees? (Gentrifying neighborhoods don’t count.) Yes/No
10. Can you identify a field of soybeans? Yes/No
ANSWERS:
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'People show empathy'
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 1:25 PM - 0 Comments
On the eve of Omar Khadr’s guilty plea, his lawyer vents.
“People show empathy,” Edney said of Canadians’ reaction to Khadr’s life story, which for the past eight years has seen him held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ”(After) the fact, nothing happens. I feel, not only the Canadian government, but the Canadian people have let down a citizen, a most vulnerable citizen.”
The Harper government has apparently agreed that Mr. Khadr will be moved to Canadian custody after a year of his sentence.
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Happy Treehouse of Horror Day
By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 12:55 PM - 0 Comments
Twenty years ago today, a hot new show called The Simpsons was in its first full season, and decided to do a Halloween special consisting of three short segments based on classic horror or science-fiction stories. Of course, as we all remember, the special got such a dismal reception that the producers of The Simpsons decided never to do anything like that again. And by “never again” I mean “twenty more times.”One thing about the “Treehouse of Horror” special is that it’s a living reminder of the days when writers didn’t think we’d ever know the titles (unless the titles were displayed onscreen). The actual onscreen title was always “The Simpsons Halloween Special,” but the first one was officially titled “Treehouse of Horror,” and the subsequent specials, being sequels, were all called “Treehouse of Horror II, III,” and so on, even though the first one was the only time the actual treehouse appeared. Once the internet and DVDs had made the official title known to everybody, they had to actually call it “Treehouse of Horror,” but they’d never have used that name if they thought we would ever know it.
As for the actual content of the specials, I sometimes find it interesting to see if the segments will have happy or sad endings. In the first special, even though the segments weren’t taking place in “reality,” the first two segments actually brought everything back to the Simpsons status quo: in the first segment, their new Amityville-style house commits suicide and they have to go back to their old house; in the second one, the aliens deposit them back on Earth and everything is as it was. In the second special, they felt comfortable enough to have fantasy endings to the dream sequences, but each of the three segments has a basically happy ending (Kang and Kodos are defeated thanks to the awesome power of a board with a nail in it; Bart gives Homer his body back, and so on). When David Mirkin came on board as showrunner in season 5, he decided to amp up the blood and guts in the Halloween specials and actually try to make them scary; he also started doing segments with genuinely depressing endings, like the segment with Bart and the gremlin on a bus. Since then, the segments have gone back and forth between happy and unhappy endings, though they’re not usually as dark as they were in seasons 5-8, when they often had genuinely bitter, nasty twists a la The Twilight Zone.
And speaking of which, if it wasn’t for The Twilight Zone, would there even be a Treehouse of Horror? That has to be the most frequent source of story material for those shows — maybe less so in recent years, as there are fewer writers who grew up watching the reruns.
Finally, what’s your favourite Treehouse of Horror segment? I think “Dial ‘Z’ for Zombies” (from season 4) is usually my favourite — though in my opinion it’s the standout in an otherwise weakish special, where you can sort of tell that the other two segments came out poorly and were saved by endless redubbing and re-cutting. A close runner-up is “Time and Punishment” (season 6), which has led me to expect Mr. Peabody to tell Sherman “Quiet, you!” whenever I see a Rocky and Bullwinkle rerun.
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The last man who believes in something
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 12:17 PM - 0 Comments
Liberal MP, and touring author, Ken Dryden makes a statement in the House.
Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago I visited the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre in my riding. Among other things, the centre offers programs for children with suspected mental health problems and their parents. I sat around with some of the mothers and asked them why they were there.
Most of them are new to Canada, their own mothers live far away, no family and no mentors around, and this is their first child. Those 10 new things that happen every day in a child’s life, why? Is this normal? Is this a problem? What should they do? They learn from the staff and they learn from each other. They have made friends. Their children have made friends. They feel comfortable. They feel at home.
If anyone ever for a moment wonders why governments can matter, why taxes can matter, why cutting is not the answer to everything; if anybody ever for a moment wants to know why multiculturalism in some countries struggles and why this multicultural Canada works, go to Hincks-Dellcrest. It is inspiring.
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Denis Simpson, One of the Original Polkaroos, Dies
By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:43 AM - 0 Comments
A sad coda to the recent round of Polkaroo-mania: Denis Simpson, one of the show’s rotating hosts, has died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 59.
Even the obituary doesn’t reveal that the male hosts played Polkaroo, though I don’t know if that’s because there wasn’t room or because it was a secret. In any case, there’s a fuller obituary from xtra.ca (which also doesn’t mention that he was Polkaroo) and “Retrontario,” the YouTube channel devoted to the good old days of Ontario television, has an excerpt from one of his episodes:
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Google Street View admits to stealing more info
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:42 AM - 0 Comments
Service took more of Internet users’ data than believed before
On Friday, Google wrote in a blog post that it was “mortified” upon learning out how much Internet users’ data its Street View service had taken. The company said the cars retrieved private data including e-mail addresses, URLs, and passwords from residential Wi-Fi networks. “We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place,” wrote Alan Eustace, a senior vice president of engineering and research, in the blog post. Analysts say the admission will probably incur more fines and potential lawsuits for Google. Already, regulators in Canada, U.S. and many countries in Europe are undergoing investigations about privacy violations.
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Arctic is permanently warmer, scientists say
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:36 AM - 0 Comments
Region probably won’t return to its former, colder state
“Return to previous Arctic conditions is unlikely,” according to an international group of scientists from countries including Canada, the U.S., Russia and Denmark, Reuters reports. Conditions there have a powerful impact on weather in middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, where much of the population lives, and last winter’s heavy snows in the U.S., northern Europe and western Asia are linked to higher air temperatures in the Arctic, they found. There is widespread evidence of Arctic warming, they agreed, with surface air temperatures rising above global averages twice as quickly as the rate at lower latitudes, partly because of a process called polar amplification. This is when warming air melts snow and ice, which is white, to show darker water or land, which absorbs heat and speeds the effects of global warming. In the round-the-clock sunlight of Arctic summers, it happens even faster.
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Toronto 18 leader faces sentencing
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments
Fahim Ahmad said he would “cut off” heads in Parliament
The 26 year-old head of a foiled plot to bomb targets in Toronto and Ottawa will be sentenced Monday in a Brampton Court. Fahim Ahmad has already plead guilty to participating in a terrorist group, importing firearms and holding training camps to instruct his followers on how to assault targets like Parliament, the Canadian Broadcasting Centre and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service headquarters. The Crown is asking that he be sentenced to 18 years to life, while the defense is requesting a 12 year sentence. Thirteen adults, seven of whom have plead guilty, and five youths have been detained since 2006 in connection with the case.
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One in ten teens have same-sex partners: report
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:28 AM - 0 Comments
Number is almost double what previous research found
In a new study, 9.3 per cent of teens reported having same sex partners, almost twice the number that reported doing so in a 2002 study of Massachusetts and Vermont teens, Reuters reports. Published in the journal Pediatrics, the study looked at more than 17,000 teens in New York City, and found that those who had sex with only their own gender, or with both, were more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour and be at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. About half of the 18 million new cases of STDs reported each year are among people aged 15 to 24, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
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Khadr pleads guilty to all charges
By macleans.ca - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:22 AM - 0 Comments
Lawyers reportedly discussed eight-year cap on total sentence
Omar Khadr has pleaded guilty to all five terrorism charges against him as part of a deal that would limit his sentence. Khadr admitted he conspired with al Qaeda and killed a U.S. soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan. The terms of his deal were not released, though lawyers have reportedly talked about him serving one more year in Guantanamo Bay, before spending another seven in Canada.
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Under what treaty would Khadr come home?
By John Geddes - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments
News that Omar Khadr pleaded guilty this morning to war-crimes charges before a U.S. military tribunal comes with reports that, after serving another year in Guantanamo Bay, he will be allowed to apply to spend the rest of an eight-year term in a Canadian prison.
There are many questions left to be answered about the details of the plea bargain and the stance of the Canadian government on this disturbing case. But here’s one that springs to mind: Under what treaty would Khadr be repatriated to serve out a sentence in Canada?
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By-election expectation
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 10:19 AM - 0 Comments
In addition to each party dismaying of its chances—the Conservatives, for instance, are suddenly quite keen on Michael Ignatieff—it will no doubt be said over the next two months that by-elections naturally favour the government or opposition.
Here then is Wikipedia’s list of federal by-elections. By my count—excluding the case of Bill Casey, the Conservative MP who was expelled from caucus, won as an independent and was succeeded, after retiring, by a Conservative—the government of the day has held 22 of the 31 seats contested in by-elections over the last 30 years. Opposition parties—again excluding the Casey situation—have held 26 of 38 seats.
By respective percentage, governments held 71% of the time, opposition parties held 68% of the time.
By total seats, governments went into those 69 by-elections with 30 seats and emerged with 29.
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Watching Wall Street squirm
By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments
A devastating documentary unravels the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at a hearing in Washington in 2009 | Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News/Getty Images
The surging popularity of documentaries in recent years can be personified by two ungainly, cartoon-like personalities: Michael Moore and the emperor penguin. Moore has directed four of the 10 top-grossing documentaries during the past decade, including Farenheit 9/11, which holds the No. 1 position. Right behind it, March of the Penguins leads a host of nature and environmental films that occupy another five spots. This year has produced a remarkable crop of hard-hitting documentaries, films about big issues designed to sound an alarm and make us angry. But they have a more sobering style; they’re not personality-driven. There’s no Moore or Bill Maher or Al Gore performing for the camera as a hectoring tour guide. These are movies that pummel us with pure fact.
Lucy Walker’s Countdown to Zero marshals indisputable data to show that the world is closer to the brink of nuclear catastrophe than at any time since the Cold War. With Waiting for “Superman”, David Guggenheim, the director of An Inconvenient Truth, charts the dire crisis of America’s school system. And now, in a devastating documentary called Inside Job, Charles Ferguson unravels the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown, laying blame with the tenacity of a criminal prosecutor.
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Would you like some freedom fries with that?
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 9:01 AM - 0 Comments
Maxime Bernier addresses the faithful in Quebec City.
Supporters of big government have been in power for fifty years. They have brought us to a constitutional and economic dead end. Every day they endanger our prosperity and freedom a little more. It is high time for supporters of freedom to get together and propose a new realistic vision of Quebec’s future.
Let’s state it loudly and forcefully: we need a smaller, less interventionist and less centralized government in Ottawa; but also a smaller, less interventionist and less controlling government in Quebec City. A new chapter in Quebec’s history is being written beginning today. And together, through the strength of our convictions, we are the ones who shall be its main characters!
As to the question of federal spending power, there is plenty to be read. For the sake of argument, a paper written for the Library of Parliament in 1991 concludes as follows. Continue…
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Chilean miners, miracle men
By Michael Petrou - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
SPECIAL REPORT FROM CHILE: A miraculous story of endurance and escape
Reuters/ Photograph by Lorenzo Moscia
Manuel González and his team prepared for this moment for weeks. There had been practice runs. And he knew every detail of the Phoenix capsule that would carry him more than 600 m below the desert mountain, to the tomb that had held 33 of his fellow miners for more than two months.
But González, a mine rescue worker with Codelco, Chile’s state-owned copper company, could not imagine exactly what he would find and how he would feel when he stepped out of the capsule, the first man from the surface to personally greet the trapped miners since they were buried alive in August. He was struck first by the high heat and humidity, like walking into a sauna. Then the men, wearing only shorts, their skin wet with sweat, gathered around him, smiling and clasping his hand.
“I felt joy to see them, to be in that place and know they were well. That made it easier for us,” he told Maclean’s.
González says he tried to demonstrate leadership, so the trapped men would have confidence in the rescue process. The original plan was for the Phoenix capsule to ascend empty and return with another member of the rescue team. Instead, González strapped in Florencio Ávalos, 31, whose face, captured in a video probe 17 days after the San José mine collapse, showed the world the miners were, astonishingly, alive.
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A golden opportunity
By Jasmine Budak - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
The sky-high price of gold has sparked a modern-day rush to Ontario’s mining towns
Production at companies such as Northgate Minerals is at full throttle; Kirkland Lake is scrambling to keep up with its growth | Northgate Minerals Corporation/ Town of Kirkland Lake
With the price of gold currently hovering around US$1,300 an ounce—up 45 per cent since early 2009—Ontario’s mining towns are exhibiting the classic symptoms of a boom: inflated house prices, overbooked hotels, frantic construction, labour shortages and a collective sense of optimism after decades in a slump. Across the province’s northern gold belt, defunct mines are being revived and exploration activity has taken an almost frenzied pace, the product of gold being an investment safe haven amid global economic uncertainty and a weak U.S. dollar. “I’ve been here a long time,” says Brock Greenwell, statistical analyst for Ontario’s Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry. “And 2010 is looking like a record year for gold exploration. It’s unprecedented.”
There are 12 gold mines operating in Ontario, with four more slated to start production by 2012. And, with exploration expenditures for precious metals—mostly gold—expected to exceed $620 million this year in the province (compared with $389 million in 2009), it’s a safe bet that more mines will follow. “It’s an absolute boom,” says Bill Greenway, economic development officer for the municipality of Red Lake. “There are 40-plus exploration companies here at any given time.”
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The coming Tory majority
By Colby Cosh - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Conservatives could rule more than half the country by next fall. What’s behind the blue surge.
Jacques Boissinot/CP/ John Woods/CP/ Pawel Dwulit/CP
David Alward is not the planet’s most impressive politician. The New Brunswick Conservative leader lacks the emotional fire of his Liberal rival Shawn Graham. He’s 50 years of age, and looks exactly 50. His French could best be described as the “your dad reading sarcastically off a cereal box” kind. His opposition to last year’s attempted sale of NB Power assets to Hydro-Québec had economists gnashing their teeth in frustration. His post-secondary education was earned at Bryan College, the evangelical institution in Dayton, Tenn., named for William Jennings Bryan after he fought the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial” in the town and died there. (The college’s Center for Origins Research still flies the banner of young-Earth creationism today.)
But on Sept. 27, Alward did something no one has done in New Brunswick since Confederation: he held a governing party to just one term in office, beating Graham in a landslide. He had started the campaign with his party behind the Liberals in voter intentions, and his personal ratings even further back. But the pollsters’ voter-satisfaction numbers hinted that New Brunswickers hadn’t forgiven Graham for the NB Power deal.
