Too little, too late

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 9:56 AM - 6 Comments

Rather quietly, the government seems to have released some kind of paperwork related to the purchase of new fighter jets.

Some 55 F-35-related documents were apparently tabled before the Parliamentary Procedure and House Affairs Committee Thursday, however, those inside the committee room were not immediately aware of it … NDP defence critic Jack Harris slammed the latest figures that include select U.S. government tables that have been deemed unclassified, suggesting the breakdown still doesn’t constitute an “independent cost analysis.” “What they’ve provided now under duress is something that’s totally inadequate,” he said.

The Parliamentary Budget Office is apparently experiencing similar communication issues with the Defence Department. And so it apparently falls upon our John Geddes to sort through it all.

Things we can learn from Jack Layton's father

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 7 Comments

Two new adverts from the NDP.

Second spot is here.

The future: Trudeau vs. Kenney

By Paul Wells - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 224 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

In April 1993 Ralph Klein was the new premier of Alberta and he was trying to decide how serious to be about cleaning up the province’s budget. The big symbolic issue was MLA pensions. Tory legislators had run up huge deficits. Now many were preparing to retire on cushy taxpayer-funded pensions.

Klein said he couldn’t just retroactively change the terms of those pensions. That put him on a collision course with the 24-year-old head of the Alberta Taxpayers Association. Fellow by the name of Jason Kenney.

Klein accosted Kenney after a news conference—“red-faced, sputtering, and barely coherent,” Ken Whyte later wrote in Saturday Night magazine—to complain about the way Kenney was pressuring him.
“The media-savvy Kenney was on four open-line shows within 24 hours,” Whyte, who now publishes this magazine, wrote. “The next 10 days were misery for Klein.” Soon the premier caved in and retroactively scrapped his colleagues’ pension deal.

I thought about that moment this week when Justin Trudeau found himself on his own collision course with Kenney.

These days Kenney is the federal minister of immigration. He’s released the latest edition of a citizenship guide for new immigrants. “Canada’s openness and generosity,” it says at one point, “do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, ‘honour killings,’ female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence.”

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Hollywood decides smart is now sexy

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by John Baer

If there was a pill that would make you super-smart, would you take it? Sure you would. I’d pop one right now if it would help me find my way to the next sentence a little faster. That’s what happens to the protagonist of Limitless, an ingenious new thriller about mind-doping. Eddie Mora (Bradley Cooper) is a deadbeat author crippled by writer’s block. He runs into an old acquaintance who slips him a designer drug called NZT, a transparent little pill that’s like Viagra for the brain. It’s said we use just 20 per cent of our grey matter; this pill activates the remaining 80. With instant access to his brain’s entire data bank, and all neurons firing at warp speed, Eddie finishes his book in a flash, learns new languages overnight, masters martial arts, seduces women with blinding charm, and cooks up wily algorithms to become a Wall Street wizard—brokering the biggest corporate merger in history with a crusty old-school tycoon (Robert De Niro). As with most drug trips, there’s a downside: the movie begins with a flash-forward of Eddie perched on the ledge of a skyscraper, about to jump, with a trail of dead bodies behind him.

Harnessing a magic bullet to conquer the world is a fantasy older than Faust. But Hollywood traditionally favours the muscular variety. It likes its blockbusters dumb, its superheroes simple. Genius is always suspect, the stuff of psychopaths and mad scientists. Even Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man has to gird his brilliance in a clunky suit of robotic armour. Lately, however, the movies have become infatuated with the notion of pure brain power. Last year’s most ballyhooed summer blockbuster was Inception, Christopher Nolan’s twisty thriller about spies who use their mental prowess to invade dreams. And 2010′s most critically acclaimed hit was The Social Network, in which teen egghead Mark Zuckerberg outflanks Harvard’s jocks to create Facebook. (Portrayed as the Marco Polo of geeks, he’s as much villain as hero. But in a jiu-jitsu feat of media spin, the real-life Zuckerberg used the movie as a foil, emerging as a philanthropic crusader while airbrushing his image on Oprah and Saturday Night Live.)

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How do you replace the show’s star?

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 9 Comments

CTV; GEtty Images; Photo illustration By Taylor Shute

When Charlie Sheen was fired from Two and a Half Men (for what his studio’s lawyers described as “shocking behaviour”), the world began arguing over whether the show would replace him or simply never film another episode. But in a more quiet way, other shows were already preparing to replace stars who aren’t Vatican assassins. The Office is doing a story arc that will lead to the exit of Steve Carell, who announced a year ago that he would not be renewing his contract. And the nudity-filled cable drama Spartacus: Blood and Sand recently hired a new actor to play the title role after the original star, Andy Whitfield, announced he had cancer.

Fans of a show often would prefer it to be shut down rather than see it change too much. Salon.com critic Matt Zoller Seitz implored The Office not to go on without Carell: “He is The Office, for better or worse, and anything after his departure will necessarily feel like a postscript.” But that can’t happen unless a network has something better to put in the show’s place, and The Office, Two and a Half Men and Spartacus are all among the biggest hits on their respective networks.

That means when the star is unavailable the writers will have to find a way to carry on. Most shows, unlike Spartacus, prefer not to recast the main character. The X-Files responded to David Duchovny’s departure by bringing in an actor from Terminator 2 to play a very different lead. When Valerie Harper was removed from her self-titled show Valerie, the producers killed off her character and changed the name to Valerie’s Family. Chip Keyes, one of the showrunners on Valerie, told Maclean’s that a situation like that is hardest on the writers, who have to “break stories and prep scripts that include an as yet unknown main character and actor,” and that his team had to shoot an entire episode without knowing who would star in it: “We’d shoot those scenes later and drop them in.”

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Does Layton have the nerve?

By John Geddes - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 80 Comments

Photograph by Christopher Wahl

Jack Layton’s return to the floor of the House after hip surgery early this month prompted a rare outpouring of warmth in a bitterly partisan Parliament. As the NDP leader rose stiffly to acknowledge an ovation from all parties, his standing on the federal scene appeared higher than ever. Yet there was an undercurrent of political danger for him even in that moment. With the chance of a spring election growing by the day, would Conservatives and Liberals applaud Layton quite so warmly if they viewed him as a serious threat? At just 60 years old, and only eight years after entering federal politics, he seems at risk of turning into one of those figures, a Robert Stanfield or an Ed Broadbent, more respected than feared.

Still, he remains a man to watch in the pre-election jockeying now consuming Ottawa. The tabling of the budget next week, coming amid the flurry of ethics issues now buffeting Stephen Harper’s government, offers the three opposition parties ample opportunity to fell his Conservative minority—if they have the nerve. To survive, if indeed the Prime Minister wants to put off a campaign, he needs just one of them to vote with him. Layton looks like his best hope. In an interview with Maclean’s, though, he sounded far from conciliatory. He rhymed off measures he wants added to the budget on pensions, health, home-heating costs and home renovations. Asked to elaborate on how much buy-in from the Tories on what combination of these items might satisfy him, Layton declared, “It isn’t a buffet.”

All or nothing sounds like bluster, but Layton says Harper’s situation is comparable to what Paul Martin faced in 2005. Back then, with the Tories and Bloc Québécois salivating to bring down Martin’s scandal-weakened Liberal minority, Layton traded his support for $4.6 billion for NDP priorities like affordable housing and mass transit. Harper now faces charges his party cheated to overspend on ads in the 2006 election, allegations International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda lied to MPs, and accusations that his government denies parliamentarians basic information on how much implementing its policies will cost. It all adds up, Layton argues, to a good time for Harper to learn the virtues of compromise. “If you are going to work in a minority context,” he says, “you are going to have to do some things that you don’t totally agree with.”

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Music: Rhapsody in New

By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 11:58 PM - 4 Comments

Visiting Toronto on Monday, I went to the Yorkville record shop where I usually leave some of my money and bought the CD you see above. Details here. I haven’t been much of a fan of symphonic Gershwin. Orchestras sometimes seem to view his music as a chance to take a vacation from serious work. But my antipathy began to wear down when I heard Marc-André Hamelin play the Concerto in F with the NAC Orchestra in 2008. It’s pure Gershwin, but it’s also worthy of a fine orchestra and a great soloist.

Anyway this new thing is the best damned recording of symphonic Gerswhin I’ve heard. The soloist, Stefano Bollani, is a jazz pianist I haven’t investigated in detail, but he plays the Concerto and the Rhapsody in Blue by the book, without improvised additions. The real star here is conductor Riccardo Chailly’s Leipzig orchestra, razor-sharp, attentive to every detail, sweetly romantic in ballad passages, often ferocious elsewhere. Chailly takes a lot of the tempos faster than I’m used to hearing them. His band roars through it all. I’m having a blast listening to this performance.

Better government through datasets (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 11:33 PM - 10 Comments

A note from Stockwell Day’s office, received just now in regards to the “disrepute” clause cited here.

It was never our intent to limit freedom of expression, which is a Charter right.  That clause is being removed from the licence.

The Carson show

By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 11:32 PM - 121 Comments

It never rains but it pours. Last night some of my Conservative friends were furious at the harshness of the rhetoric the Prime Minister’s Office was using to distance the government from Bruce Carson, who was one of Stephen Harper’s most trusted and well-liked advisors. Today they saw more of the complete story and suddenly the PMO had a lot less explaining to do to its own partisans.

Carson has more to explain. I’ll pause only to say, with feeling, that an accusation is no proof of guilt, before moving on to crassly tactical considerations. To wit: does this increase the likelihood of an election? Continue…

Egypt votes, freely and perhaps spectacularly

By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 10:34 PM - 12 Comments

On Saturday Egypt will vote on constitutional amendments designed to pave the way for presidential and parliamentary elections, and then for a constituent assembly to write an all-new constitution. That’s five weeks after Hosni Mubarak stepped down. Everything I’ve seen leads me to believe this haste is genuinely a result of the ruling military council’s distaste with ruling, unconstitutionally and undemocratically, in the aftermath of a popular democratic uprising. They seem to want to hand off to more legitimate structures, processes and representatives.

It may not be that easy.

The amendments seem likely to be rejected by voters. (This post has a lot of links; for the best overview of the situation, ignore the others but follow this first link.) The whole process raises serious questions. That’s not proof of bad faith; you can’t get from dictatorship to democracy without raising serious questions. But among the questions are whether the military council has any constitutional standing and whether Egypt still has any kind of functioning constitution; and why on earth presidential candidacy is apparently restricted to men and clearly forbidden to anyone with a non-Egyptian spouse. Continue…

The F-35 jet cost controversy: now we're getting somewhere

By John Geddes - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 8:49 PM - 116 Comments

Dan Ross Deputy Minister of Defence holds news conference on the acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, in Ottawa (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand)

The increasingly heated debate over what it will cost Canada to buy the new F-35 fighter jet has, from the outset, bogged down on one point—the unwavering contention of the federal government that Canada will pay way less per jet than the U.S.

This just seems, on the face of it, difficult to believe. The F-35 story features  many other variables, vagaries, arcane disputes—all accompanied by acronyms and jargon of the sort that military procurement always generates in such unwelcome plentitude.

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The plot thickens

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 5:59 PM - 55 Comments

This morning, the office of Indian Affairs Minister John Duncan confirmed a discussion with Bruce Carson. This evening, APTN adds to its investigation of Mr. Carson’s activities.

A former senior advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper was lobbying Indian Affairs to land water contracts potentially worth millions of dollars for an Ottawa-based water company that employed his fiance who was an escort.

The name of Michele McPherson, 22, appears on a secret contract witnessed by Bruce Carson that guaranteed her 20 per cent of all gross revenues from sales related to water contracts on First Nations reserves, according to a copy of the contract obtained by an APTN investigative team.

Towards contempt

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 19 Comments

After two days of hearings, the opposition members of the Procedure and House Affairs committee are ready to declare the government to be in contempt of Parliament. Having reviewed the documents tabled by the government this week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer agrees with the opposition.

There remain significant gaps between the information requested by parliamentarians and the documentation that was provided by the GC which will limit the ability of parliamentarians to fulfill their fiduciary obligations.

NBC Renews All The Stuff People Still Like

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:59 PM - 7 Comments

This was not unexpected given that Parks & Recreation does okay after The Office and Community has become The Show in its second season (not the most popular show, not even the one that will win Emmys, but the one that has the most buzz around it), but NBC has taken both of those comedies off the bubble and renewed them for 2011-12.

Bob Greenblatt’s statement that Community is “a solid foundation for Thursday night” sounds ominously like he’s planning to keep it at 8 on Thursdays, which I think would be a bad sign, not for the show (which has proven it can do just enough to survive anywhere, at least while NBC has worse problems) but for the network’s willingness to be aggressive and not settle for low ratings in important time slots. Though you could argue that, especially if Idol remains on Thursday next season, NBC’s chances of regaining any kind of leadership on Thursdays are pretty much gone and they should concentrate on trying to find hit shows on other nights. Whatever; the network will have plenty of holes to fill and a show like Community, with a small but indestructably loyal (and demographically-desirable) audience, is perfectly capable of filling them.

The reputation of Community, as I said, has developed very quickly from a sort of charming cult show into the most worshipped comedy since, probably, Arrested Development. (And it looks like it will end up making more episodes than Arrested Development ever did.) Modern Family creator Steven Levitan said a while back that he “like[d] some aspects of Community,” causing Dan Harmon to get really angry at what he saw as a damning-with-faint-praise insult. This season Levitan has been effusive about how great Community is, and it’s gone from a show that was neglected by the Emmys to one that many showrunners worship — it’s the show they wish they were making.

I preferred the first season, or rather the second half of the first season. I theoretically love it when shows do different types of episodes every week, and one thing I’m grateful to Community for is that it’s showing the importance of the individual episode as a unit, at a time when many shows have given up on it and go into full-fledged soap opera (or in the case of sitcoms, two or three little stories woven together with no real unity of approach). But I just found it funnier last year. My reaction to a lot of the “big” episodes sometimes winds up being silent admiration (except for the Christmas episode, which I didn’t like); the “little” episodes are usually the ones that make me laugh, even when (like “Mixology Certification”) they’re not particularly jokey.

Obviously the show deserved to be renewed and I’m glad it was. I wonder if the show’s new status in the industry will be reflected in the Emmy nominations — or if it’s still not popular enough with some voters (older voters, perhaps? voters who find it too gimmicky?) to get over the hump. We’ll see; I’d expect Modern Family to dominate again, since like Community (and 30 Rock) it represents much of what insiders think a sitcom can be at its best, and it has the advantage (from an Emmy-winning point of view) of being a hit.

As to Parks & Recreation‘s Emmy chances, I have even less of a clue; it’s my favourite current sitcom but while it did get a nomination for Amy Poehler, it’s not clear just how far its reputation has spread, and its late start this season might not help. Rob Lowe probably raised its profile a bit, but I would still expect some Showtime thing to get the nomination instead.

Better government through datasets (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:43 PM - 18 Comments

David Eaves lauds the creation of a new open data portal, but questions the fine print (which includes a clause that users  ”shall not use the data made available through the GC Open Data Portal in any way which, in the opinion of Canada, may bring disrepute to or prejudice the reputation of Canada”).

The license on data.gc.ca is deeply, deeply flawed. Some might go so far as to say that the license does not make it data open at all – a critique that I think is fair. I would say this: presently the open data license on data.gc.ca effectively kills any possible business innovation, and severally limits the use in non-profit realms.

A nation's grief

By Nancy Macdonald with Nicholas Köhler. - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:35 PM - 2 Comments

Asahi Shimbun/Reuters

At exactly 15 minutes to three in the afternoon, on Friday, March 11, 2011, Japanese time, in the moments just preceding the 9-magnitude earthquake that in the space of three minutes would wreak more havoc on Japan than that country has experienced since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Natsuko Komura was riding a horse along the Pacific coast in the northeastern city of Sendai. Rie Wakabayashi, 36, sat in a bus in Tokyo bound for a business meeting in the high-end Roppongi Hills complex. Chris Nixon, a 35-year-old American employed in the financial services sector, was working from his home in Chiba prefecture, next to Tokyo, his new wife, Aya, nearby.

In those same moments, 125 km off Japan’s east coast and 10 km beneath the ocean surface, the Pacific plate abruptly dove under its tectonic neighbour—the North American plate atop which northern Japan sits. That geological event, the consequence of eons’ worth of pent up energy, tore a gap into the Earth’s crust 400 km long and 160 km wide and pushed Honshu, Japan’s long main island, almost three metres. So gargantuan was the shift, scientists later calculated, that it rejigged the position of Earth’s axis by 16 cm and sped the planet’s rotation up by 1.6 microseconds, imperceptibly shortening our days. It was the largest quake in Japan’s history and tied for fourth largest in the world since 1900.

Just as Wakabayashi felt the ground move, then begin to shudder violently for more than two minutes, her transit bus had rolled under a Tokyo overpass; so intense was the quake that she feared it would collapse and crush her. Around 370 km north of her, in Sendai, Komura jumped off her horse, ran to her car and sped away from the coast. “The traffic lights had stopped working and there was massive congestion—rows and rows of cars,” she later told the BBC. In Chiba, Nixon and Aya stepped outside their home and held onto an outer wall.

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A case of tunnel vision in Calgary

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:26 PM - 7 Comments

When it comes to municipal headaches, airports rank right up there with potholes and property taxes. The complaints usually stem from expansion efforts, and the aircraft noise and car traffic that inevitably comes along with it. In Toronto, for example, waterfront condo owners are vowing to shut down five-year-old Porter Airlines, which has turned the once-sleepy island airport into a bustling regional hub.

In Calgary, the problem is road access. The local airport authority is building a new runway at Calgary International Airport that will require the closure of a key artery leading to the terminal from the city’s northeast. The solution that’s been on the books for years is to build a traffic underpass below the proposed runway, but it was only last month that city council, after much coaxing from new Mayor Naheed Nenshi, finally approved the controversial $295-million project. In general, opposition to the proposal has focused on cost and the fact the tunnel will serve a relatively small, albeit growing, part of the city.

Now the airlines are complaining. The tunnel is scheduled to open at the same time as the new runway in 2014, but WestJet CEO Gregg Saretsky has said he’s concerned the underpass may raise unforeseen safety and security issues, bogging down the airport’s badly needed expansion, which WestJet is depending on to accommodate its own growth. While other airports have roadways that pass underneath runways and taxiways, most were built prior to 9/11. Saretsky has also cited potential safety risks, including the threat that planes landing in icy conditions will be in close proximity to traffic. It sounds alarmist, but airline spokesperson Robert Palmer said WestJet can’t afford any delays. The airport is operating at capacity and WestJet continues to grow, he said. “The runway is critical to both organizations.”

What not to hide in your wallet

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:25 PM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: Among Canadians, those in the West Coast province are the most sympathetic toward the poor, according to a new poll for the Salvation Army. There, only 17 per cent believe that all the poor need in order to improve their lives is “to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” In contrast, 36 per cent of their Prairie neighbours feel that way. And the disparity widens dramatically when comparing those who are “jaded” and believe lower-income residents have “lower moral values.” Only five per cent of those in B.C. fall into that category, compared to 21 per cent of Albertans.

Alberta: When it comes to buying a house, 39 per cent of Albertans are willing to plunk down extra money to get a brand-new home, compared to a national average of 22 per cent. Seventy per cent of prospective homebuyers in the province are in the market for a place that doesn’t need any work.

Saskatchewan: Premier Brad Wall is the most popular premier in Canada, with a 63 per cent approval rating. Kathy Dunderdale, Newfoundland and Labrador’s new premier, finished second with 55 per cent. Meanwhile, the bottom spot was snagged by Quebec’s Jean Charest, who is backed by a measly 13 per cent.

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Like a mini star wars

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:09 PM - 1 Comment

Sunday Alamba/AP

When insurgents launched a rocket-propelled grenade at an Israeli tank in the southern Gaza Strip last Tuesday, they had no idea they were about to make battlefield history. Within a heartbeat of the trigger pull, a smaller rocket was automatically launched from the vehicle and detonated in mid-air, wiping out the RPG before it could cause any damage.

The event marks the first time the new Israeli Trophy system, a vehicle-mounted defence mechanism that identifies, tracks and destroys anti-tank missiles, has eliminated a projectile in active combat. Developed by Israeli weapons firm Rafael, it has only been in limited deployment for two months, but is now poised to be widely integrated over the next year. “The system will significantly reduce the anti-tank injuries in the next confrontation,” said Brig.-Gen. Agay Yechezkel, a spokesman for the Israeli military.

The system isn’t cheap—it costs about $1 million per unit—but is so advanced that it can even track projectiles back to their origin, alerting soldiers to the location of insurgents. Considering it also saved the Israeli tank crew’s lives, Trophy may be well worth the price.

More than she could chew?

By Erica Alini - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:04 PM - 0 Comments

Raymundo Ruiz/AP

After being hailed as her country’s bravest woman last year, the 20-year-old police chief of a Mexican border town roiled by drug violence made headlines again this week for seeking asylum in the United States. Marisol Valles Garcia, a criminology college student and police chief in Praxedis G. Guerrero, took six days of leave last week, and hasn’t returned yet. The unexplained absence comes less than six months after she had startled Mexico and the foreign media for being the only one to hand in a resumé for the job of police boss in Praxedis, a battleground for rival drug cartels seeking to gain control of an important trafficking route.

Garcia faced the task of restoring a semblance of public security in a town just a few kilometres south of Ciudad Juárez, where over 3,000 people were killed in drug-related violence last year alone. But when she took time off work—allegedly to care for her sick baby—rumours quickly spread that she had fled to the States after receiving multiple death threats and escaping a kidnapping attempt, something Mexican authorities haven’t confirmed. She has now been fired. Filling her post won’t be easy: last time, it took about 14 months.

This grand branding exercise

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 2:54 PM - 75 Comments

The two-year Economic Action Plan™ announced by the Harper Government™ in 2009 will apparently be extended by another year. This will apparently be dubbed the Next Phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan™.

Herein the Prime Minister’s remarks to a luncheon in Brampton this afternoon.

“Chairman Rhodes, President Leiba, the Honourable Bill Davis, head table guests, colleagues from the Parliament of Canada, representatives of provincial and municipal government, ladies and gentleman.

“First of all, my thanks once again to the Boards of Trade of Brampton and Mississauga for accommodating me today.  It’s getting to be a bit of a habit, or maybe we should call it a best practice.

“Anyway, it is almost exactly two years since I was last with you – I think in this very room – and at that time, I laid out the details of the First Phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan.

“Today, I’m here to talk to you about the Next Phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, which, of course, will be elaborated in some detail in next week’s federal budget.

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Week in Pictures: March 15th – 21st 2011

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 2:13 PM - 0 Comments

One For The Ages: Jack Nicklaus And The 1986 Masters

By John Intini - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

Before Tiger Woods wrapped his Cadillac Escalade around a tree, nobody doubted he’d surpass Jack Nicklaus’s record for most career major championships. But now, with Tiger stuck at 14, the Golden Bear’s 18 seems safer with each passing tournament. Marking the 25th anniversary of Nicklaus’s final, and finest, major triumph—the 1986 Masters at 46—comes Clavin’s new book, which reminds fans how everyone, most notably his fellow competitors, counted ol’ Nicklaus out that year. After all, he hadn’t won a major in six years. And in the three months leading up to the Masters, his best finish was a 39th.

That only added to the drama, of course, which culminated in perhaps the greatest championship Sunday shootout of all-time. Describing the putt on No. 17 that catapulted Nicklaus to the top of the leaderboard for good, Clavin writes, “He lunged forward, his tongue curled at the front of his mouth as if he had just caught sight of a huge steak, and he raised his putter in the air like a sword to lead true believers into battle.”

As well as the story of Nicklaus’s come-from-behind win, Clavin stitches together a history of the tournament and its famous course, Augusta National. It’s here the book is at its best. Clavin writes how the course, created by golf legend Bobby Jones, was turned into a cattle ranch during the Second World War; Augusta National was closed during the conflict and this was considered a cheap way to keep the grass on the fairways under control. Or when Dwight Eisenhower, then president-elect, had to be plucked from quicksand by secret service agents on No. 12 after trying to hit his ball from a sandbar following an errant tee shot.

The book suffers from too much play-by-play and not enough colour commentary, but its greatest weakness is the lack of analysis from Nicklaus. The golfer’s only thoughts are taken from the books he’s written himself. Still, One for the Ages is a good primer for diehard fans who wait anxiously to see the pros tee it up next month for the famous green jacket. Someone should send Tiger a copy.

The Blue Light Project

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 1:52 PM - 0 Comments

In an unnamed city in the not-too-distant future, a bomb-wielding terrorist storms the set of KiddieFame—a reality show for wannabe child stars—and takes dozens of hostages. Strangely enough, the only person he’ll speak with is Thom Pegg, a disgraced investigative journalist whose career was ruined after he was caught fabricating sources, and who now works at a trashy celebrity tabloid. That’s the premise of The Blue Light Project from Timothy Taylor, whose novel Stanley Park was a finalist for the 2001 Giller Prize.

With the hostage-taking as a backdrop, two other characters meet and connect. Hometown hero Eve, who won Olympic gold in the biathlon years earlier, jogs through the streets at night, looking for her long-lost brother and a new identity after her win. Eve is drawn to Rabbit, a street artist at work on a hidden art installation that aims to network the entire city. Meanwhile, on the darkened set of KiddieFame, Pegg meets with the terrorist, who talks about the power of what he calls “anti-fame”: the thrill of secret identities and acts. We never learn the terrorist’s real name.
Touching on themes like celebrity, art and technology, Taylor’s book echoes the work of another well-known Vancouver writer, Douglas Coupland. Taylor is adept at finding new ways to say some familiar things, but he tends to overreach at times: the subplot in which Eve looks for her brother feels extraneous, as do excerpts from a book Pegg later writes about the hostage-taking.

Even so, The Blue Light Project is an enjoyable read, with memorable characters and a few beautifully written scenes, like the one when Rabbit’s massive art project finally comes to life. Taylor’s incisive questions about the world we live in, and where it could take us, will resonate with readers after the book is done.