The more things change

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 11:36 AM - 17 Comments

Jacob Serebrin looks at how the discussion of education policy has and hasn’t changed since Lester B. Pearson addressed the University of British Columbia in 1965. He also digs up a Canadian Press clip from the time that recounts the heckles Mr. Pearson was treated to at that speech and one earlier in the day.

Shouts of “Yankee parrot” and “go back to the U.S., Mike” greeted the prime minister as he spoke for 35 minutes almost without pause before 2,900 in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

He seemed to be replying to the hecklers when he said: “Whining anti-Americanism is not the same as vigorous Canadianism.”

Earlier, he faced good-natured needling as he spoke to about 4,000 students at the University of British Columbia.

“What’s new, pussycat?” one student shouted as Mr. Pearson was quoting statistics on university financial problems from the recent Bladen report. “Mike for the Senate,” another interjected as the 68-year-old Liberal leader finished his speech.

Taking a test helps learning more than studying, report shows

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 11:33 AM - 3 Comments

Taking a test actually helps people learn, more so than several studying techniques, according to new research in the journal Science and reported in the New York Times. Researchers found that students who read a passage and then took a test asking them to recall what they read retained about 50 per cent more information a week later than did students who used two other methods. One of them was to repeatedly study the material, and the other was to have students draw detailed diagrams of what they were learning. Both those other methods are very popular, and seem to give students the illusion they know the material better than they actually do. By remembering information, we organize it and create connections that our brains later recognize, it seems, although the exact reason retrieval testing works still isn’t known.

New York Times

Skilled chess players use hidden brain parts, study shows

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 11:31 AM - 0 Comments

A new Japanese study shows that professional chess players use a different part of their brains than amateurs do. Tracking blood flow in the brain to see spikes of activity, they found that master players of shogi (a Japanese game that’s similar to chess) use two regions of the brain to make important moves. Amateur players use the precuneus area of the parietal lobe, but professionals use the caudate nucleus in the centre of the brain. Extensive training seems to have shifted the area of the brain.

Reuters

Give Mr. Harper his due

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 10:31 AM - 99 Comments

On two occasions now, in respective attempts to numerically summarize his five years in power, the Prime Minister’s prorogation record has been woefully shortchanged—here by the National Post a week ago and here by the Globe and Mail today. Mr. Harper has prorogued Parliament not twice, but thrice.

In December 2009, his doing so inspired nationwide protest. In December 2008, he did so to avoid the likely defeat of his government in the House of Commons. But Parliament was first prorogued on his advice in September 2007, when he asked that the resumption of parliamentary business be pushed back a month so that his 19-month-old government might present a new Throne Speech.

Though lacking in the controversial context of the two more recent prorogations, Mr. Harper’s first did not go unnoticed and did receive some criticism, including the following editorial from the Montreal Gazette. Continue…

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 9:38 AM - 1 Comment

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of January 17th, 2011)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Whose Canada is it anyway?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 9:23 AM - 59 Comments

The Liberals have returned serve with two short adverts on the Harper government.

That non-weapon sure is pointy

By Colby Cosh - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 9:23 AM - 112 Comments

I am unpleasantly surprised to find Colleague Geddes sowing nonsense in the Quebec National Assembly kirpan debate—a conversation that has quite enough of it already. In his introduction to a Q&A with Liberal Sikh MP Navdeep Bains, Geddes links to the 2006 Supreme Court decision in Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite‑Bourgeoys, stating that the court “found that the kirpan is a religious symbol, not a weapon.” Begging his pardon, the court found no such thing. The court’s members are carefully trained in logic: it would never occur to them that an item had to be either a religious symbol or a weapon, and could not possibly be both. That would be a pretty silly conclusion! Justice Charron actually wrote:

There is no denying that this religious object could be used wrongly to wound or even kill someone, but the question at this stage of the analysis cannot be answered definitively by considering only the physical characteristics of the kirpan. …In order to demonstrate an infringement of his freedom of religion, Gurbaj Singh does not have to establish that the kirpan is not a weapon. He need only show that his personal and subjective belief in the religious significance of the kirpan is sincere.

The court didn’t find for the appellants on the grounds that “the kirpan is not a weapon”. Indeed, all parties to the suit accepted the premise “that the kirpan, considered objectively and without the protective measures imposed by the Superior Court, is an object that fits the definition of a weapon.” The court found for the appellant because the school board’s zero-tolerance policy towards weapons, based largely on fears that the presence of a knife would somehow allow spooky negative vibes to propagate throughout the school, did not constitute a minimal infringement upon the rights of a religion that happens to insist upon the carrying of a weapon. (Anyone who has studied the remarkable history of the Sikhs can only be surprised that they don’t carry about five of them.)

I hate to break it to Nav Bains and to admirers of leading comparative-religion scholar Michael Ignatieff, but reciting “It’s not a weapon” won’t give us a magic wormhole we can all leap through to avoid debates over religious accommodation in public services. As I understand matters, and I am perfectly prepared to receive instruction on this point, the whole point of the kirpan is that it’s an avowedly defensive weapon. The reference books, including those written by Sikhs, tell us that it is worn precisely to signify and reinforce the Sikh’s wholly admirable preparedness to protect his faith, his community, and innocent human life. I suppose I could have added the words “just as a handgun might be”, but that would send altogether too many of my readers scrambling for the Preparation H.

Respectable efforts to establish a modus vivendi on the kirpan in secured public spaces can’t begin with evasion if they hope to be successful (and certainly it sets a terrible precedent for evasion to be designated courage). I’ll add that the problems are not really all that thorny for those of us who have never consented to fanaticism about security theatre or to cretinizing “zero tolerance” of blades in schools.

The next-door neighbour from hell

By Anne Kingston - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 28 Comments

Neighbourly dysfunction is a staple on Desperate Housewives (Ron Tom/Everett Collection/Getty Images)

Bad-neighbour stories typically involve noise, parking, property-line disputes, unkempt yards, sofas on the front porch. But residents of an affluent north Toronto enclave, tell the tale of a more recent neighbour-from-hell variation: the administrative terrorist. The conflict began in 2008 between a prominent businessman and the owner of the construction company that built his house—a $400,000-plus project—who also lives in the area. The businessman accused the builder of substituting inferior materials and not following plans or honouring his warranties. “He was a shoddy builder,” he alleges. One frustration, he says, was that the exterior window surround was built with six-inch stones, not 10-inch stones. Another was the builder had been slow to fix an outdoor tap that topped up the swimming pool.

The builder tells a different story: “[The client] spent more than he intended; he asked for things that weren’t part of the contract, and he manufactured deficiencies.” The matter went to court, resulting in suits and countersuits; issues remain before the courts, which is why none of the parties agreed to be named. A few months into the fight, witnesses report, the businessman turned into a neighbourhood building-code vigilante, calling in inspectors to check other houses the builder had constructed in the area, even reporting hedges that were mere inches higher than code allowed. “He would get up at 6 a.m. every morning to move his car three houses to block access to a building site,” the builder claims. The businessman counters that the builder blocked his car and spewed obscenities one morning when he was driving his children to school.

When the businessman saw the builder’s name associated with the annual fair for the local school, which his children attended, he threatened to pull his own sponsorship. “He told the principal, ‘I’ll bury you in policy,’ ” says a neighbour. The businessman says he reviewed the school bylaws and noticed the school was in flagrant violation of many of them. One casualty was a lottery for the daycare centre, which was shut down for lack of a proper licence. “They lost 40 per cent of their funding,” says his neighbour. He even tried to ban cotton candy at the fair because it didn’t comply with the school’s healthy-eating policy. “The nitpicking was unbelievable,” says one resident. “He could have cured cancer with the time he put into creating problems in the community.” The businessman’s vigilance “created total paranoia,” says a neighbour, so much so residents were afraid he’d report their annual Canada Day fireworks display, which didn’t have a licence.

Continue…

We get the politics we pay for

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 180 Comments

Watching the latest batch of Tory attack ads, the overwhelming feeling is not of revulsion, but fatigue. They’re disgusting enough, in places; the slurs on Michael Ignatieff’s loyalty, the misleading quotations, the half-truths. But my God, are they familiar.

Is there a school somewhere where they churn out these announcers with the perpetual sneer in their voices? Do they get extra credit for mastering the derisory half-chuckle? The grainy surveillance-camera footage, the unflattering images, the sense of mortal danger if this criminal/madman were ever let near the levers of power: how many thousands of times have we seen exactly the same tone, the same approach, the same ads?

That’s not to say there aren’t grains of truth in the ads. It’s true that Ignatieff went along with the last attempt to form a coalition government, and won’t rule out another; that he once proposed a carbon tax; and yes, that he used to live in America. On some of these, criticism is legitimate. But criticism, not vilification. The literal truth of a charge is not sufficient. Tone is also important, as is proportion, and context. That’s if you want to be, you know, persuasive.

Continue…

How to translate double-talk

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 42 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

“The real lesson of Canadian history,” Stephen Harper told a Montreal audience, is “that while conservatives have come to power by exploiting a nationalist strategy in Quebec, such coalitions have never lasted very long. Indeed, they have ended in political disaster.”

Perhaps you will have guessed already that he didn’t say this recently.

“The broad lesson of history,” Harper told his Montreal audience—in January 2002—“is that Canada’s natural governing coalition always includes the federalist option in Quebec, not the nationalist one.” He called on the Canadian Alliance, which he was campaigning to lead, to “undertake the long-run work necessary to become a federalist option in Quebec acceptable to a significant number of Liberal as well as anti-Liberal voters.”

Then he became the leader of the Alliance and forgot all that stuff. He ran candidates like Jean-Pierre Blackburn, the most nationalist of Quebec Tories, in previously Bloc ridings. He passed the House of Commons motion calling “les Québécois” a nation, a move that provoked Michael Chong to resign as intergovernmental affairs minister.

Continue…

Feeling the pain of rich alpha males

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Everett Collection

Traditionally, Hollywood’s vision of class has been pretty straightforward. The rich tend to be villains, while honest working folk are portrayed as heroes, battling corrupt tycoons, arms dealers, environmental rapists and Wall Street psychopaths. Exceptions to the rule are the Old Money capitalists who represent a golden age of ethical profit, and the ordinary Joe who strikes it rich as a paragon of the American Dream. But since the recent economic collapse, the optics of class warfare on the big screen have shifted. The archetypes may still be in place, but we’re starting to see movies that play like the American Dream in reverse—tales of over-entitled businessmen who fall from grace and inspire empathy instead of contempt.

Last year we had Up in the Air, starring George Clooney as a high-flying hatchetman who helps corporations eliminate employees, then falls victim to downsizing himself. This year’s model is The Company Men, a sharp ensemble drama about a trio of executives who suddenly find themselves out of work when their Boston-based manufacturing conglomerate is forced to consolidate.

Bobby (Ben Affleck) is a cocky sales director whose ego hits a brick wall one day as he breezes into work, bragging about his golf game, only to meet silent stares from colleagues who already know he’s been fired. Next up on the chopping block is Phil (Chris Cooper), a fearful alcoholic who worked his way up from the factory floor and can’t imagine life without the company. Finally, there’s Gene (Tommy Lee Jones), a straight-shooting elder whose shipbuilding division is gathering rust as he commutes to meetings on the corporate jet. He’s a lifelong pal of the conglomerate’s CEO, but it’s not hard to guess that money will trump friendship.

Continue…

NFL Picks: These ones are for half the marbles!

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, January 21, 2011 at 5:52 AM - 15 Comments

Scott Feschuk Last week 3-1 Playoffs 5-3 Overall 134-105-9

Scott Reid Last week 1-3 Playoffs 2-6 Overall 114-125-9

•••

Green Bay (minus 3.5) at Chicago, Sunday, 3 p.m. ET

Forecast for kickoff: Cloudy, minus 6°C

Feschuk: During a normal week, the 16 NFL games are dissected by 100 talking heads on sports radio. But come the week of the conference championships, there are just two games being “analyzed” by 1,000 talking heads – or 1,001 when you factor in Tom Jackson’s evil twin who picked the Patriots last week. (Jackson hasn’t actually used that excuse yet, but it’s coming.) Bottom line – analysts can start talking themselves into worrying about things that aren’t worth worrying about. (A similar principle is behind how dozens of people have somehow talked themselves into believing Al Davis is still alive.)

Nightmare on Elm Street 6: Freddy vs. JaMarcus

To my fellow problem gamblers, I implore you: Do not allow yourself to be distracted by Continue…

In defense of P.K. Subban

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 9:13 PM - 44 Comments

They called him an original, but Dave “Tiger” Williams was, in truth, the logical product of his era—a clowning marauder who understood that hockey’s sideshow had become, on many nights, its main event.

And better to star in the sideshow, he reasoned, than take a non-speaking role in the feature presentation.

That evening in December 1980 when he rode his stick down the centre of Maple Leaf Gardens might now be regarded as Williams’s apogee: he’d just scored his 17th goal in what would be a career-best 35-goal season, and though not important in the context of the game, it meant a lot to him. It was his first game back in Toronto since the Leafs had shipped him off to Vancouver, and the Canucks were on their way to an 8-5 romp.

So after shoving the puck past Leafs’ goalie Jim Rutherford, Williams climbed aboard his fibre-ply and rode it pony-style down the ice, firing imaginary six-shooters into the crowd. “Hey, you’ve got to put on a show for the folks,” he later told the Toronto Star. “After all, this is show business, and there’s no business like show business.”

Right, that. But the reaction to Williams’s celebration seems noteworthy today for its mutedness, considering the newfound standards of decorum in the National Ho-hum League. There were no scolding opponents, no clapped out coaches-cum-commentators preaching to Williams about “respect for the game.” Gardens fans—harbouring residual affection for their old jester—actually cheered. But you’d never know it from reading the morning papers: neither the Star nor The Globe and Mail mentioned the crowd’s reaction at all.

Flash forward three decades, to a game last week at the Bell Centre in Montreal. Continue…

That Dang Bang BIG BANG

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 6:23 PM - 17 Comments

First off, the comedy event of the evening is the return of Parks & Recreation, finally forming a Danielsverse hour with The Office as God intended. Watch it.

Non-events include the beginning of Perfect Couples‘ official run in a time slot that can’t possibly hurt it: after a low-rated show, up against American Idol. (Actually, as Modern Family‘s strong performance last night demonstrates, Idol is not — especially now that it’s lost a step or two — a killer of shows that already have a loyal viewership. Shows that are trying to get a loyal viewership, or shows that just plain nobody wants to watch like Live To Dance, are another matter.)

And then there’s Big Bang Theory, which has had a rather strange season in terms of its place in pop culture. Successfully anchoring its own night, getting more awards recognition and heading into syndication (the Comedy Network already has it in frequent reruns), it’s becoming more of a pop-cultural presence, and yet there’s also a sense that its moment has passed. Partly because it’s up against Community, which means it’s not getting as much attention online, but mostly because it just didn’t quite get over the hump that separates the good from the great.

Its best season was its second, and that’s not at all uncommon for a comedy, but the second season was a bit… I’m not going to say nobody thought it was great, because it did, in fact, get quite a lot of critical praise that year (all the more impressive because it’s not the sort of show that usually impresses critics). I’ll just say that I personally really enjoyed seeing it improve and gel and turn out some really good episodes, but it never quite seemed to be at that point where it was turning out a batch of great episodes, rather than good episodes with great moments. That’s a bit different from a show that peaked in its second season like How I Met Your Mother. That show also had flaws you could point to, but at its best, it was producing episodes that were so satisfying that the flaws were irrelevant.

Big Bang was more the kind of show where you could point to some fantastic scenes without being totally convinced by the episode, or even remembering exactly what happened in the episode. Maybe that’s part of the whole CBS esthetic. The showrunner of the NCIS twins has frankly said that he doesn’t think audiences remember plots, just moments. That’s actually true, particularly in television (think as far back as all those Twilight Zones where we remember the big twist without being certain about what led up to it) so maybe Big Bang has something similar in mind with its loose, baggy storytelling, where the plots are often thrown away or unresolved, and the only thing that matters is to have a basic situation that leads to some comedy scenes. I didn’t think the show, even at its best, turned this kind of thing into great episodes — to do that, the scenes have to be not just funny but absolutely damned spectacularly funny. But it was a legitimate approach, at the very least, that helped it stand out from all the over-plotted sitcoms on the air.

Anyway, the third season was uneven and the fourth has just been mostly disappointing, though I generally liked the controversial “Sheldon builds a robot” episode (while being surprised that the staff supposedly Continue…

How men can avoid divorce mistakes

By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 0 Comments

iStock; Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

“Smart, fair-minded, hard-working good men make all sorts of mistakes in divorce. Executives and professors and doctors make the same mistakes as plumbers and truck drivers,” according to Joseph Cordell in The 10 Stupidest Mistakes Men Make When Facing Divorce. The lawyer and his wife run a bustling St. Louis law practice specializing in men’s divorce. “You can’t make a mistake we haven’t seen,” he writes.

Among the biggest mistakes is moving out when your wife tells you to leave. Men go, thinking, “A little time apart might ease the tension.” Don’t do it, warns Cordell. Stay. Sleep on the couch if you care about custody. “If the father has moved out, he may be portrayed as the ‘absentee father’ or as having ‘moved on’ without his children,” he points out. That brings him to another top mistake: neglecting the kids. “We see it all the time. A couple splits up. They agree to share responsibilities for the kids.”

In the book, he gives an example: “Suppose the mom misses one of Junior’s baseball games. Well, people say, that’s understandable; after all, she’s a busy single mom. On the other hand, suppose the dad misses the next game. Well, people say, he’s a dad who doesn’t care very much about his kids. That is the level of unfairness and illogic we encounter all the time. Male clients have to face up to it.”

In court, Cordell warns his clients not to be ill-prepared. “A wife’s attorney has a surefire way of attacking a dad who claims to be more involved than he is.” Her lawyer simply asks questions about the kids: “What colour is Jill’s favourite sweater? What kind of breakfast cereal do they like?” Dads who are “working eight, nine, 10 hours a day aren’t going to know all that stuff,” he adds. Get familiar with the kids’ schedules, he tells men. “When are their music lessons and sports practices? When do they brush their teeth? What are their friends’ names?”

Blabbing to your wife is another mistake. “The most destructive conversations typically seem to happen late at night on Friday or Saturday, usually in the kitchen,” he writes. “Both husband and wife are tired, and maybe one or both has had a drink or two. She says, ‘I’m going to win.’ He says, ‘No, you’re not, because my lawyer is going to say that you took Valium and that you made a mistake on your financial forms. I’m going to get the kids and I’m going to have to pay you little or nothing.’

“What happens next is she tells her lawyer what she’s learned. Her lawyer fixes the mistakes on the financial forms and prepares to show that her doctor prescribed Valium because her husband was driving her crazy.”

Revealing too much information on the Internet is a big mistake, too, he writes. “Too many men decide they need to reinvent themselves as they emerge from a failed marriage, and they put forth their new image on Facebook or MySpace.” Bad idea. “You don’t want to appear in court representing yourself as quiet, churchgoing and sober, and then have opposing counsel present a MySpace page that shows you playing beer pong.”

If you’ve got a new girlfriend, take a close look at what she’s posting, too, Cordell tells clients. He gives the example of a husband who pleaded poverty during proceedings only to learn in court that his new girlfriend posted news of the expensive jewellery he’d given her.

When men ask his firm, “What can my girlfriend put up on Facebook about me and our relationship?” Cordell says their answer is: “Nothing. Not a word. Not a single photo. Nothing.” He goes further, telling men to buy a new computer at the first sign of marital discord. “The cost of a new computer is cheap compared with the cost of an incriminating browsing history.”

He also warns men to “tell your lawyer about all your Internet habits at the outset.” “We’ve been able to persuade judges that a mom can’t be doing the best job possible with her kids if she’s spending five or six hours a day glued to Facebook. She’s literally stealing time from the kids. If the same argument can be lodged against you, your lawyer needs to know.”

Le shrug

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 5:19 PM - 76 Comments

Angus Reid asks Canadians if they feel they’re better off now than they were five years ago.

But Canadians in general aren’t so sure they’re better off than they were in 2006, when Harper took power, according to the Angus Reid survey. Asked how they felt compared to five years ago, just 30 per cent of those polled said they were much better or moderately off, 29 per cent said they were about the same and 38 per cent felt they were worse off.

Week in Pictures: January 17th – 23rd 2010

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 5:10 PM - 0 Comments

Now it's 'permanent'

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 5:01 PM - 0 Comments

ALFREDO ALDAI/EPA/KEYSTONE PRESS

After more than 40 years of violent conflict, the Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) announced this week that a ceasefire it enacted in September will be “permanent” and “verifiable by the international community.” If it holds, the truce could bring to an end the last armed independence fight of any consequence in Western Europe. Designated a terrorist group by the European Union, ETA has killed more than 800 in its quest for a Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwest France.

Reaction from the Spanish government was muted. It has heard such promises before: a nine-month ceasefire in 2006 ended after an ETA bombing at a Madrid airport. But since that attack, arrests of senior leaders and declining public support have weakened the group, and Spain appears confident it has the upper hand. It is calling for ETA to give up arms without hope of a political payoff. “The only communiqué we want to read from ETA is that ETA declares the end in a manner that is irreversible and definitive,” said Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba.

Ethical economists

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 4:40 PM - 2 Comments

In the wake of the Great Recession, economists were accused of missing the obvious warning signs of the financial meltdown. More recently, critics have suggested an even more sinister failure—that conflicts of interest clouded many economists’ forecasts. A study of 19 economists by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that the majority failed to disclose paid affiliations with financial organizations while offering expert advice to the media and in their research. It concluded that the profession should establish a code of ethics.

This month, 300 economists signed a letter to the American Economic Association calling on the group to adopt such a code, requiring members to disclose “relevant sources of financial support and relevant personal or professional relationships.” Last week the AEA agreed to raise the issue at its annual meeting. While there is still reluctance to police the profession, the debate is a small step toward rehabilitating the dismal science.

The End: Rajinder Sodhi | 1953-2011

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 4:40 PM - 7 Comments

Rajinder Sodhi was born on May 23, 1953, in Rajpura, a city in the Indian state of Punjab. He was the oldest of four sons by Hartirit and Amirt Sodhi, farmers who raised livestock and tended to fields of corn and wheat.

In the early 1970s, when many Indians were immigrating to Canada, Hartirit urged his eldest boy to go to “the promised land.” To help pay for Rajinder’s journey, his father sold the family farm. The Sodhis moved to a one-room apartment, in which they kept chickens, separated by a hanging sheet. Amirt sold the eggs, and Hartirit got a job at the local post office.

Rajinder boarded a plane, alone, bound for Winnipeg in November 1972. He was 16, sporting a turban and dreading the cold. His parents had arranged for an acquaintance to meet him when he arrived, but that person never showed up. “It was pretty tough from the get-go,” says Arvin Sodhi, Rajinder’s son.

On the plane, Rajinder had met another young man from Punjab. Unlike Rajinder, Bicky Dhaliwal, then 17, spoke a bit of English. Bicky helped Rajinder get a ride from the airport, and for nearly a year, they shared a cramped $25-a-month attic apartment, with a hot plate and two single beds. “We used to cry together,” recalls Bicky. “We missed our parents.” But their main focus was survival. “We were just trying to stay in Canada,” says Bicky, “this strange country.”

Rajinder, who adopted the name Paul, worked many odd jobs: for 70 cents an hour, he’d clean dishes in the kitchens of pizza joints, iron clothes at a garment factory, or help run a convenience store. He longed for authentic Indian food and would often spice up Canadian offerings: tuna sandwiches made with turmeric, cumin, garlic, ginger and mayo, or curried baked beans.

In the late 1970s, Rajinder took courses in agricultural sciences at the University of Manitoba. He loved gardening and considered moving to Alberta, where he might find a job at an agricultural company and farm.

In the end, he opted to drive a taxi in Winnipeg, which allowed him to send money back home to his parents so that they could buy a new house, and to his siblings for their eduction. In 1980, Rajinder purchased his first cab, which he viewed as both a business and a vehicle for himself in one. During the ’80s, his taxi business grew to about 30 cars. He also owned a grocery store, a flour mill, and had investments in India. In 1983, through an arranged marriage, he wed Adarsh Kapoor in India. Together, they had three children: Amandeep, Sumanpreet, and Gurpal. (Arvin, who was born in 1978, was a son from a previous relationship.) Rajinder’s life was on track, and his Indian network was being recreated in Winnipeg, as he encouraged family and friends to migrate. He often trumpeted driving a taxi to newcomers as a way of making a good living.

But he never forgot about his homeland. In the late 1980s, Rajinder bought 500 acres of farmland in Punjab, and dreamt of returning to the agricultural life his parents had given up for him. A decade later, he moved his family to India, where he planned to farm sugar cane. Rural India, however, was a world away from Winnipeg, and the Canadian-born Sodhi children had difficulty adjusting. Within a year, they all returned to Winnipeg. As with his first start in Canada, Rajinder had no job prospects, and again looked to the taxi business, eventually purchasing two cabs.

Over the years, Rajinder helped many others begin again, too. By 2011, some 40 Indian families had obtained their Canadian citizenship with his assistance, and he was known to give out loans to people who were in need. One of those he encouraged was Kulwinder Sodhi, a nephew’s wife. When she came over from Punjab in 2006, she felt displaced, disappointed by her job prospects. Rajinder would tell her, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, you’ll get a job,” says Kulwinder, who now works in technical support at MTS.

In 2009, Rajinder semi-retired, driving part-time because, Arvin says, “otherwise he’d go crazy.” On Jan. 3, 2011, shortly after Rajinder picked up his second passenger of the day, his Toyota Prius, cab No. 200, collided with a Cadillac. Two days later, he died in hospital. That morning, Kulwinder was supposed to finalize her citizenship. “Due to him, I am in this country, and he left on the same day I took my oath,” she says. Rajinder was 57.

Are you better off today than you were five years ago?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 4:34 PM - 47 Comments

Who's suing whom

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 4:20 PM - 1 Comment

Newfoundland:
Forty people injured in auto collisions with moose have signed on to a class-action lawsuit against the provincial government, claiming it is its responsibility to halve the moose population of Newfoundland. There are 125,000 moose in Newfoundland: one moose for every four citizens, which the plaintiffs’ lawyer claims “exceeds ecological standards by five to 10 times.” In response, the government stated that it is “confident in its moose management strategies and highway maintenance programs.”

Prince Edward Island:
A veterinarian is suing the University of Prince Edward Island for $250,000, claiming the school forced him into retirement. He had worked at the school since 1996 on a renewable contract basis, and in December 2009, he alleges, the school denied him two positions he had applied for in favour of younger candidates.

Ontario:
A career criminal sentenced to 23 years in prison is suing the federal government, alleging that he was placed in solitary confinement for more than three years and denied family visits, leisure activities and rehabilitation programs. Convicted of bank robbery and attempted murder in 1994—he shot three police officers in Port Perry during his getaway—the Kingston man has a total of 160 criminal convictions dating back to 1968, and has escaped from three different prisons during that time.

Alberta:
An Edmonton woman is suing a clothing store after she walked into a sliding glass door, claiming she suffered severe injuries after being knocked to the floor. She argues that the door should not have been closed when the lights were on and customers were still being served.

British Columbia:
A Coquitlam woman is suing Air Transat after an unsecured food cart allegedly came rushing toward her seat as her plane was landing in Cancun, Mexico. She says she suffered a number of injuries, including neck and back pain.

Canadian terror suspect to face extradition

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 4:15 PM - 25 Comments

An Edmonton man suspected of supporting terrorist groups responsible for killing U.S. troops in Iraq is fighting extradition to the United States. The RCMP arrested Sayfildin Tahir Sharif on Wednesday following a request made by the FBI, and appeared in court Thursday to face extradition. If extradited, Sharif will face “some of the most serious charges an individual can face,” his lawyer, Bob Aloneissi, said. The charges include supporting a terror group and conspiring to kill Americans abroad, and the RCMP are also looking into whether there was any criminal activity committed in Canada. Sharif is accused of aiding a multinational terror group that was responsible for carrying out a 2009 suicide bombing in Mosul, killing five U.S. troops. If convicted, he will most likely be sentenced to life in prison.

CTV News Edmonton

Feel like North Korean tonight?

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 3:40 PM - 2 Comments

KCNA/Reuters

North Korea is better known for famines than cuisine, but that hasn’t stopped Kim Jong Il from recently expanding his international chain of restaurants. While an Okryu Gwan restaurant has been open in China for years, the food empire now has locations in Nepal, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, with another planned for curious Westerners in Amsterdam. “Everyone knows that it is run by the North Korean government,” the manager of the Dubai location told the National, a U.A.E.-based daily, proudly adding that the cold noodles and pickled cabbage come direct from North Korea. Although the food is similar to that of any Korean restaurant, the “saccharine keyboard music” is distinctly northern. There’s also traditional fan dancing and karaoke each night.

But not everyone is having fun. Despite selecting seemingly loyal North Korean workers, the chain has suffered some defections. A worker from the Nepal location slipped out of the country and re-emerged in Seoul. And a manager from the Chinese location reportedly dined and dashed, eventually ending up in South Korea, after he was pressured to send $30,000 a year in remittances to the Dear Leader.