Paying good money for awesome ideas
By Anthony Davis - Friday, June 17, 2011 - 0 Comments
The Awesome Calgary Foundation is bring great ideas to life
Calgary’s Higher Ground Café was especially busy one Thursday evening last month, but it wasn’t caffeine alone that had the crowd buzzing. Ideas were brewing too—one of which earned its originator $1,000 from the recently founded Awesome Calgary Foundation.
A small group of trustees—brought together by former eBay executive Lori Stewart—put up $100 a month each to fund the no-strings-attached grants. Among the four people who got 90 seconds to pitch their “awesome idea” on this night was a comedian in search of funding for his documentary, and an inventor seeking cash to build “Second Wind,” a device that could extend the usable time for the breathing apparatuses used by firefighters. But the winner of the ACF’s second event was Kiran Somanchi. The 27-year-old fast-talking petroleum engineer’s idea—“a mix of decentralized dance party, flash mob, vote mob”—is to use social media to amass a crowd of Calgarians in one location on Aug. 21, before sending them on an attention-grabbing march through Calgary’s more interesting neighbourhoods—all in the hope of spurring some civic pride.
Stewart, a technology business consultant, started Awesome Calgary because ever since moving there from Silicon Valley seven years ago, she’s found the city’s conservative, petroleum-oriented mindset stifling. “I felt like I’d been in a bad relationship with Calgary,” she says, “that I didn’t fit here.” But by working on Naheed Nenshi’s mayoral campaign last fall, she discovered others wanting something different for her city, too.
There are 89 chapters of the Awesome Foundation worldwide, including ones in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. “We just want to believe in people’s ideas,” says Stewart. And the power of belief, she’s sure, will turn ideas into action.
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Running from Syria's regime
By Adnan R. Khan - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 1 Comment
Refugees at the Turkish border tell of horror and brutality as Bashar al-Assad tries to crush the uprising
Osman Orsal/Reuters
From Guvecci, there is nothing that gives an impression of the brutal civil war playing out in Syria. In this predominantly Arab village in Turkey—the Syrian border a mere kilometre away—olive groves and pomegranate orchards on terraced hillsides blend together in an almost perfect picture of harmony and peace. But over the hills to the east, a massacre is playing out. According to the thousands of people fleeing for safety across Turkey’s border with its troubled neighbour, the Syrian regime has escalated its siege against pro-democracy demonstrators to an unprecedented level.
As of June 14, more than 8,000 people were being sheltered in refugee camps, while an estimated 10,000 more have massed along Syria’s border with Turkey, fleeing what they describe as an all-out assault on unarmed civilian protesters in cities and towns like Latakia, Hamah, Baniyas, and most recently, Jisr ash Shughur, only 15 km from Turkey. Near Guvecci, the displaced are taking shelter in olive groves as near to the Turkish border as they can reach, placing their trust in the Turkish army and the hope that the Syrian military will not dare attack them under the watchful eyes of the Turks and international journalists who have set up their cameras on rooftops in the village.
“They are safe here,” says Nadir Guzmen, a farmer living in Guvecci. “Many of us have family in Syria so these are our own people. We will help them in any way we can; they are welcome to cross the border. I have already helped 20 refugees from Jisr ash Shughur reach the refugee camps here in Turkey. The injuries I’ve seen have been terrible—gunshot wounds, broken faces—it’s really terrible what the Syrian regime is doing to its people. So many of the people I helped take to the hospital have died. This is a genocide.”
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Caravaggio does Ottawa
By Sara Angel - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 0 Comments
His work took Europe by storm. 400 years later, we still can’t get enough of him.
Photographs by Blair Gable
He was a fighter, rebel and murderer. He wore his clothes until they were rags, ate off his paintings, chased women and men with equal vigour, escaped from prison, and died at age 39 in a fit of fever. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, best-known simply as “Caravaggio,” is one of 17th-century Rome’s most scandalous figures. He is art’s original bad boy—and 400 years after his death we still can’t get enough of him.
Centuries before Twitter and PR agents, word of Caravaggio’s talent spread so fast within his lifetime that legions of imitators (known as Caravaggisti) in Germany, France, Flanders, Spain, Holland and Italy started to paint just like him. Single-handedly he not only changed the course of art, his influence was so profound that it is still being felt today. How Caravaggio’s style impacted so many other artists—including superstars Georges de La Tour, Jusepe de Ribera, Artemisia Gentileschi and Peter Paul Rubens—is the story behind the National Gallery of Canada’s major exhibition Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome, which opens this week. For all sorts of reasons, the exhibit is a coup for the National Gallery. There has only ever been one other major show of the artist’s work in North America, and that was over 25 years ago at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
According to Marc Mayer, the gallery’s director, throughout the next two months (the exhibition closes in September) 75,000 visitors will make a pilgrimage to Ottawa for what promises to be “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one of the most influential artists who ever lived.” But if recent findings are any indication, Mayer’s estimate might just be on the conservative side. According to a study last year by University of Toronto art historian Philip Sohm, Caravaggio has surpassed the Renaissance genius Michelangelo in popularity, making him a close second to Leonardo da Vinci as the world’s most celebrated Old Master.
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Antimatter: the stuff of science fiction
By Colby Cosh - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 0 Comments
There isn’t much antimatter in the universe, but a team of Canadians is trapping atoms of it
Chukman So/Alpha; Alpha/CERN
Particle physicist Makoto Fujiwara has been studying antimatter professionally for 12 years. But his interest in the exotic mirror-image of ordinary matter dates back to a Japanese boyhood full of science fiction and pop-sci expository literature. “Experimenting with antimatter means peeking into a missing other side of our universe,” he says. “Nobody, for instance, has ever been able to measure what happens to antimatter in a gravity field. When you drop an apple, it falls down. What would happen to an anti-apple?” Physicists, he says, would expect it to behave exactly like its twin; but until they watch it happen, they can never be certain.
Fujiwara (who is affiliated with the University of Calgary and the national TRIUMF particle-physics consortium) and other Canadians are moving ever closer to planting one of those anti-apple trees. There isn’t much antimatter around in our universe. Tiny amounts are being created all the time by cosmic-ray and radioactive-decay processes, but when antimatter comes into contact with ordinary “positive” matter, both are annihilated instantly. Beams of antimatter particles can be created in a vacuum, however, and the ALPHA Collaboration, an international team that includes the Canadians, has been working on the next step: combining those particles into atoms and molecules of actual antistuff, and magnetically trapping that stuff long enough to study it.
The natural starting point is with the simplest of the elements: hydrogen. A hydrogen molecule has just one electron and one proton, and so an antihydrogen atom can be made from one anti-electron (a “positron”) and one antiproton. These particles are exotic little beasts, but if you have ever had a PET scan you have already benefited from the routine use of antimatter. Positrons are what the “P” stands for.
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'May 2 was a great day for all young Canadians'
By Erica Alini - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:01 AM - 6 Comments
Pierre-Luc Dusseault, the youngest person ever elected to the House of Commons, made his first remarks in the House yesterday.
I am here to speak on behalf of all the people in my riding, and also on behalf of all young people across the country. I received congratulatory messages from hundreds of young Canadians who were inspired by my election, and I plan to work tirelessly to show that we young people have a place in public debate and that we can achieve very good results. May 2 was a great day for all young Canadians. Since the election, they can count on a strong voice made up of several members who truly understand their reality. It is finally time to show that every Canadian, regardless of origin, gender, occupation or age, has a place in this important political institution.
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When Tories agree to disagree
By Paul Wells - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 42 Comments
Paul Wells on how Harper told his party that Canadians think like they do. The hubris was almost Liberal in its scope.
Fred Chartrand/CP
My Big Book of Columnists’ Clichés contains only two templates for covering a political party convention. That’s all we need, usually. The first carries the suggested headline, “Internal division splits a once-great party in two.” The second is headlined, “Party brass clamps down; well-oiled machine squeezes out dissent.” Just pick the form that fits, fill in a few blanks, and you can be at Hy’s by 5.
Unfortunately, last week’s Ottawa convention of the Conservative Party of Canada didn’t fit either of the Big Book templates. A few commentators tried to squeeze it in under Well-Oiled Machine, but it didn’t really fit.
Conservatives gathered for the first time since they met in Winnipeg in 2008. It was the party’s first important event since Stephen Harper won his majority on May 2. The PM was in a good mood. He spent a surprising amount of time onsite. On Friday night he skipped an NHL playoff game so he could party-hop. The delegates were in a good mood. Reporters were free to wander around the convention floor unhindered. Even Terry Milewski.
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Review: La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life
By Anne Kingston - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
Book by Elaine Sciolino
Trying to dissect the French art of seduction is a bit like running Monet’s paints through chromatography to discern their magic. But in her compelling new cultural study, New York Times Paris correspondent Elaine Sciolino does a valiant job of deconstructing what she calls the “official ideology” of French society—one that animates daily interactions and world-stage diplomacy.Exploiting the enviable access provided by her position, Sciolino plumbs the topic with forensic rigour, interviewing presidents, chefs, lingerie designers, perfumers, even her butcher. Her bid to define the elusive topic amuses some of her subjects (one man tells her Frenchmen’s self-awareness of seduction is akin to “goldfish not knowing what water is like”). But it also renders her an astute cross-cultural guide. Americans see seduction only in sexual terms, Sciolino points out, whereas the French regard it as a means to beguile, delight and persuade in every aspect of life, even as an end in itself.
Throughout, she’s a generous gossip and engaging observer, sharing that French women never parade naked in front of their husbands (it preserves mystique), it’s bad form to say “bon appétit” before eating (referring to bodily functions is gauche), and how entrenched attitudes toward femininity played out in the controversial burka ban.
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Colonel who?
By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
The Canadian military’s efforts to forget Russell Williams started long before his guilty plea
Nathan Denette/CP
As soon as Russell Williams stood up in court and admitted his crimes, the military severed all ties. The killer colonel was promptly booted from the air force for “service misconduct” (the gravest breach possible) and became the only officer in Canadian history to have his commission revoked. The Forces even torched his uniform.
But it turns out that the military’s efforts to forget the name Russell Williams actually began many months before his October guilty plea—when a team of contractors tore up his former office at CFB Trenton. According to documents obtained by Maclean’s under the Access to Information Act, the “cosmetic work” was ordered by the chain of command on Feb. 10, 2010, just 48 hours after Williams was charged with two murders and two sexual assaults. The renovations left behind no trace of the disgraced commander: construction crews tore out the carpet, repainted the walls and replaced every piece of furniture. “This should be considered high-priority work,” Lt.-Col. Sean Lewis, Trenton’s engineering officer, wrote in an email to colleagues. “Please be patient while we get these renos done.” The remodelling cost taxpayers $10,336 ($6,656 for material; the rest for labour).
Capt. Jennifer Jones, a base spokeswoman, insists that the facelift had nothing to do with boosting morale. “The renos were needed for some time but scheduling a week to get them done was challenging,” she says. “The office’s vacancy allowed the construction engineering folks to get in there and get them done.”
In the meantime, another order was circulated via email: “Pictures of the previous Wing Commander on the honour walls should be removed.”
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What's blocking up the Keystone XL pipeline?
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
The proposed U.S. route for oil sands crude is facing intense scrutiny
Jimmy Jeong/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Stephen Harper has urged Barack Obama to approve it. Alberta’s energy minister demanded that the President “sign the bloody order,” already. But the soft-spoken diplomat leading the American government’s review of TransCanada Pipelines Ltd.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Daniel Clune, is keeping his cards close to his chest. The approval of the US$7-billion, 2,700-km pipeline that would bring oil sands crude from Canada, through the U.S. heartland down to the Gulf Coast, has become one of the biggest issues between Canada and the U.S., a hot environmental cause south of the border—and a tug of war between two departments of the Obama administration.
To the pipeline’s backers, the approval process is dragging on longer than any before it—but for critics who oppose building infrastructure to tie the U.S. to even more carbon fuels, and oil sands in particular, it’s whipping by too fast. The State Department has said it will made a decision by the end of the year, and its every move is being scrutinized on both sides for evidence that oil interests have captured the Obama administration—or that federal bureaucrats are about to sabotage the national interest by scuttling a golden opportunity to create jobs and help wean America off Middle Eastern oil.
Congress is watching closely. House Republicans, who tout the pipeline as a “no-brainer,” have introduced legislation to try to fast-track a decision by Nov. 1. Meanwhile, in the Senate, a Republican and a Democrat, both from Nebraska, have expressed concern about the safety of the pipeline, which would traverse their state’s important agricultural aquifer. Several recent leaks in the existing Keystone pipeline that runs from Alberta to the Midwest have heightened those worries.
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Good news, bad news: June 9 – 16, 2011
By macleans.ca - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
Dirk Nowitzki is named MVP as his Dallas Mavericks win the NBA title, while nuclear workers in Japan reportedly exceeded radiation exposure limits
Good news
Dirk Nowitzki is named MVP as his Dallas Mavericks win the NBA title. (David J. Phillip/AP)
Setting it straight
Federal government lawyers took a justified bruising from judges of the Ontario Court of Appeal at hearings on the fate of Canada’s prostitution laws. The Crown is appealing a decision that struck down bans on brothel organizing. The government argued existing Criminal Code provisions had only a “remote connection” with increased sex-trade risks. The judges exploded in disbelief. “What’s ‘remote’ about a law that prevents a prostitute from having a bodyguard?” asked Justice James MacPherson. The judges also admonished an effort to compare prostitutes—practising a business that is legal in itself—with drug pushers.
A slick move
Bowing to technical realities, the U.S. auto-service company Jiffy Lube is abandoning its rule that oil should be changed in any car every 3,000 miles (or 4,800 km). As engines and gasoline quality improve, manufacturers have lengthened recommended intervals between changes to as long as 16,000 km. Jiffy Lube will now follow the makers’ advice for each model. It’s a reminder that even in hard times, the auto sector has been improving in ways we barely bother to notice.
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The one bureaucrat we’ve all come to trust
By the editors - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
Few taxpayers will quibble with Sheila Fraser’s effectiveness
Mohammed Salem/Reuters; Adrian Wyld/CP
Ineffective government programs. Reckless spending by bureaucrats. Taxpayers’ best interests ignored. Sheila Fraser may have retired at the end of May, but the auditor general’s report released last week bore the unmistakable stamp of her efforts over the past 10 years.
As usual, the report covered a wide variety of topics of great interest to taxpayers. Chief among them was the mystery of the $50-million G8 Legacy Fund. Originally approved by Parliament “to reduce border congestion,” it was instead spent on gazebos, docks and flower pots in cabinet minister Tony Clement’s riding. Fraser’s interim replacement John Wiersema described the process as “very unusual and troubling.” (The good news was that the entire bill for the G8/G20 summits was $664 million, substantially below the $1.1 billion originally budgeted.)
The report also reminded Canadians of the embarrassing living conditions on native reserves, despite billions in federal funding; all of which suggests better governance on reserves, and not more tax dollars, is the condition necessary to make a difference. And it found the Department of National Defence has “dropped the ball” in reforming the Canadian Forces reserves’ pensions, and that the government is making “unsatisfactory progress” in managing large information technology projects.
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In conversation: Gary Bettman
By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 5 Comments
What he thinks of future franchise relocation, the Aaron Rome hit and the culture of the game
Photograph by Christopher Wahl
A franchise move, a new discipline czar, a controversial hit, and a see-saw Stanley Cup final; it’s been a busy couple of weeks for the National Hockey League’s commissioner. Prior to Game 5, he sat down to reflect on a season of wins and losses.
Q: Not presuming any outcomes, but what would a Canadian team winning the Stanley Cup after such an extended period of time mean for the game of hockey?
A: I think it would be tremendously exciting for fans of the Canucks. But in the final analysis, who wins the Cup isn’t as important as how good the final was—how exciting, how dramatic, how entertaining, how skilful. If you’re a fan of the Canucks—or Bruins—you’ll be excited beyond belief if they win. If you cheer for somebody else, you’ll be more interested in how good the hockey is.
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Rae’s plans and the new Speaker’s muscle
By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 3 Comments
Jake Wright/Hill Times; Photographs by Mitchel Raphael
A special performance by Raffi
In honour of her birthday last week, Green Leader Elizabeth May had Happy Birthday sung to her by famous children’s singer Raffi Cavoukian. Raffi, who was in Ottawa to visit May and see her in action as a new MP, lives in her B.C. riding. The singer and MP met when May hosted an Ottawa TV show, and they have been friends ever since. Raffi had an album out at the time called Evergreen Everblue. The 20th anniversary edition of that album was recently released with two new songs about environmental sustainability, Cool It and Sustainable. Raffi, known for such classics as Bananaphone and Down By the Bay, has not done any new children’s songs for nine years.
That Tory blue is looking fabulous
At the recent Tory convention, party members voted to support any religious organization’s right to refuse to perform same-sex marriages. Meanwhile, a group of gay Conservatives at the convention, held at the Ottawa Westin, hosted “The Fabulous Blue Tent,” a hospitality suite open to all. One of the organizers, Jamie Ellerton, a former aide to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and now a top aide to Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, rented special pink and blue LED lighting for the occasion and hired hip electronic DJ Trevor Walker from Ottawa’s eclectic Mercury Lounge. The party went on until 3 a.m. Ministers in attendance included Kenney and John Baird. Among the Conservative MPs were Patrick Brown, Rick Dykstra and newly elected Toronto Tory Ted Opitz (who beat Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj by 26 votes in a recount). One Tory attendee quipped: “The Conservatives have made progress clearly by upgrading from a closet to a ‘fabulous blue tent.’ And if you keep throwing fabulous parties they have got to love you.”
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Rain or shine, the monopoly must end
By Andrew Coyne - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 134 Comments
Andrew Coyne on why Canada’s postal service should open up to competition
Jeff McIntosh/CP
The current strike at Canada Post (perhaps you hadn’t noticed: it started last week) presents a curious spectacle: an all-out struggle for control of a company whose main line of business—carrying bits of paper from one point to another—is rapidly disappearing.
It isn’t just email, which has reduced the letter to more or less the same function that telegrams once performed, something you send on formal occasions but otherwise wouldn’t think of using. Nearly everything that Canada Post once charged to carry is being vaporized. Cheques are giving way to electronic funds transfer; catalogues to online shopping; CDs, DVDs and books to iTunes, Netflix and Kindle.
And yet, notwithstanding a 17 per cent plunge in volume per address in the last five years, it still carries 11 billion pieces of mail a year. Some customers in particular—small businesses, charities, rural and elderly correspondents—remain dependent on “snail mail.” For them a strike is an inconvenience, and even if some take the opportunity to make the switch to electronic transmission—never to return—for many others the post office is their only choice.
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The life and times of Jack Layton
By John Geddes - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 54 Comments
The NDP leader has left a lasting legacy on Canadian politics
Photographs by Peter Bregg; Courtesy of Jack Layton
Jack Layton died after a months-long battle with cancer in the early morning hours of Monday, August 22. He was 61. Below is Maclean’s post-election cover story on the charismatic NDP leader, originally published on June 16, 2011. For more on Jack Layton’s life and his fight against the disease that would eventually take it, click here.
The Hudson Yacht Club, founded in 1909, doesn’t look like a promising spot for a young left-winger to get his first real taste of rebellion. The sailboats bob at their moorings near a sandy beach on the shore of Lake of Two Mountains, formed by the widening of the Ottawa River before it empties into the St. Lawrence just west of Montreal. The clubhouse of cream-coloured stucco and cedar shingles looks like the kind of place that would have a cozy private bar, decorated with nautical pennants—and it does. Over the mantle of the stone fireplace, there’s even a framed portrait of the Queen.
Jack Layton pretty much lived at the club during the summers of his childhood and teenage years. His parents, after all, were pillars of Hudson’s well-heeled English-speaking community. They sailed an 18-foot lightning, but the club’s main appeal for Jack was its outdoor pool. He was a fast swimmer. In an old black and white snapshot of the club’s competitive team, he’s the wiry kid wearing a medal around his neck and the grin that would later become famous.
Behind that halcyon image, though, was a reality that began nagging Jack as a teenager in the mid-1960s. Hudson’s population of about 3,500 was perhaps three-quarters English at the time. But what about the rest—the less prosperous French-speaking families? They weren’t members of the club. Either they couldn’t afford the fee, or they didn’t know anyone who might invite them to join. With Quebec’s Quiet Revolution well under way, the club presented a glaring example of how the province’s linguistic divide tended to run along economic and social fault lines. Layton recalls growing uneasy about the fact that while he swam in the club’s first-rate pool, the French kids were cooling off in the polluted river.
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As he lifted his leg, I watched, enviously
By Barbara Amiel - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 6 Comments
Stoic about most things, Arpad and Maya were pulled up short by the Great Dane in a smoke grey tutu
Kijiji Canada
Sniff, sniff, not a reference to me noisily crying, but the theme last Saturday at Toronto’s annual Woofstock gathering at St. Lawrence Market. Arpad and Maya were fairly indifferent about going but they climbed into the minivan with an air of cynical resignation, the specialty of Hungarians of any species. “It’s Woofstock’s ninth year,” I told them, “and there will be more dogs there than anywhere else in North America.” (I’m not certain that was true but the lady on the Weather Network had pronounced it with the same certainty she announced thunderstorms that afternoon, which fortunately was also wrong.) Actually, neither of my dogs is particularly interested in socializing with anyone but each other and me—a characteristic of kuvasz that makes even my intact male welcome at dog parks—but I wanted to go so they took me.
The atmosphere was a little cheesy, a bit like the Easter fun fair on Hampstead Heath, with lots of foul-smelling fast food. I dragged them into a Kijiji booth to be photographed for the Internet. “Would you fill out this release form?” the chirpy young lady asked, flourishing a clipboard. This immediately registered her as a non-dog person. I have two hands. One had Maya (42 kilos and underweight) and the other had Arpad (50 kilos and growing). If I could have put them in a handbag, which I was not carrying, her request would have made sense.
You can see how the ordinary becomes extraordinary through the eyes of a master filmmaker like Fellini or an artist like Brueghel. Lots of two-legged people of varying shapes and sizes gathered to talk while their four-legged companions made their own commentary. A tiny manicured toy poodle quietly lifted its leg and urinated on the hind leg—well, ankle, really—of a Great Dane as their owners chatted unaware. The harlequin Great Dane, being a gentle giant, simply looked around, sniffed and turned away. If only nations could react so wisely to such provocation, I thought. Well, no, I didn’t think that. I watched enviously and wished I had the bloody nerve to lift a leg and do the same thing on a long list of humans.
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Stephen Bronfman is betting big on Montreal's future
By Martin Patriquin - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
Bronfman’s famous relatives fled the city long ago
Photograph by Roger Lemoyne
There are a couple of reasons why Stephen Bronfman seems to be smiling more than usual these days. Having failed in his bid to purchase the Montreal Canadiens last year, the eldest child of billionaire Charles Bronfman got quite a consolation prize by luring the Habs’ former president Pierre Boivin to Claridge Inc., the private investment firm the 47-year-old has run for 15 years. Scoring Boivin, who will serve as Claridge’s president and CEO, is a coup for the small investment house: as one of Quebec’s most respected business minds, he was reportedly courted by some of the biggest companies in the province.
Mostly, though, Stephen Bronfman is decidedly optimistic about the future of Montreal—which, coming from a Bronfman, is good news for the city. Though the family made their name and much of their fortune in Quebec through liquor behemoth Seagram’s, practically all of the members of the sprawling Bronfman family tree have left.
The reason represents a familiar narrative in Quebec’s history: the province’s political upheaval, beginning with the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976, caused a monumental flight of capital, mostly to Toronto. This included Stephen’s cousins Peter and Edward, who departed shortly after selling off their ownership of les Canadiens in 1978. Stephen’s father Charles debarked for New York, while American cousin Edgar Jr.’s disastrous reign as head of Seagram’s is the stuff of dubious legend.
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Are you going to eat those fries?
By Alex Ballingall - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
A school board in San Antonio will soon be monitoring students’ lunch choices
Tom Reel/The San Antonio Express-News/AP/KEYSTONE
Kids accustomed to wolfing down nothing but chicken nuggets and fistfuls of fries might not feel as comfortable doing so at several elementary schools in San Antonio, Texas. In what some say is a bizarre mix of Orwellian intrusiveness and health-conscious fanaticism, the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) is poised to become the first to install high-tech camera systems that will monitor and identify all the food students eat in five of its school cafeterias.
Roberto Trevino of the San Antonio Social and Health Research Center received a US$2-million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to execute the idea. The hope is that it will help accurately measure what children are eating and eventually affect their food choices. “We know the present research science is not accurate,” says Trevino. “Most of it depends on self-reporting, on surveys, on pencil and paper. We’ve been funded to develop a new instrument to measure human nutrition.”
This is important, he says, because accurate accounts of nutritional intake are vital in the fight against childhood obesity. According to the Texas Children’s Hospital, more than 40 per cent of children in Texas are obese or overweight. “In order for us to attack that problem we need to understand it, and in order to understand it we need better measuring tools.”
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Another civil war in Afghanistan?
By Michael Petrou - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 6 Comments
Many Afghans are saying no to any deal with the Taliban
Mikhail Galustov/Redux
Rust-crested skeletons of Russian tanks line the road that snakes through the mountainous Panjshir Valley, 100 km north of Kabul. More lie among the wheat fields, grapevines and tulips that cover almost all of the flat spaces between cliff walls and the silty river rushing between them. The tanks are war trophies and perhaps a warning.
It was here that the Afghan mujahedeen fought the Soviets to a standstill during the 1980s before forcing them from the country, and here also that Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance retreated when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Despite support from Pakistan and Osama bin Laden’s Arab Brigade, the Taliban never subdued the valley. For five years, they were held back here by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the military commander known as the Lion of Panjshir. Massoud rejected the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Islam and the often-murderous ethnic Pashtun supremacism that went with it. He was assassinated by al-Qaeda agents posing as journalists days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and never lived to see his soldiers march back into the Afghan capital two months later.
Today, Massoud lies in a hilltop tomb visited daily by dozens of Afghans from all over the country. The Panjshir Valley remains an anti-Taliban heartland. Insurgents rarely penetrate it—though in some of the villages below its mouth they are said to have spotters who watch for kidnapping opportunities. But many Panjshiris, among other Afghans who opposed the Taliban during its time in power, are angered by developments elsewhere in the country that they see as a betrayal—namely President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to make peace with the Taliban, and concessions they fear he might offer to strike a deal.
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Newsmakers: June 9 – 16, 2011
By Nicholas Köhler and Ken MacQueen - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
A 65-year murder mystery solved, Bieber takes a beating, and Danny Williams has got game
Isaac Brekken/Getty Images
Done in by the velluvial matrix
Grads from the University of Alberta’s faculty of medicine were enjoying an after-dinner speech at their banquet last week when the words of Dr. Philip Baker, dean of the medical school, sounded vaguely familiar. “A couple of students recognized the term ‘velluvial matrix,’ ” class president Brittany Barber told the Edmonton Sun. “They googled it on their phones.” It showed Baker has borrowed heavily from a speech delivered last year at Stanford by Dr. Atul Gawande, a Boston surgeon and a writer for the New Yorker magazine. Accusations of plagiarism prompted an apology from Baker, who said he was inspired by Gawande’s speech, which “resonated with my experiences.” Baker added that he’s since spoken to Gawande, who “was flattered by my use of his text, took no offence and readily accepted my apology.” The university is investigating.
Dementia’s painful toll
It’s only been a few weeks since Ralph Klein and his wife, Colleen, revealed that the former Alberta premier is suffering from progressive dementia. Although the couple is said to be heartened by the good wishes they’ve received from across the country since then, Ralph’s decline, at age 68, has been rapid and devastating. “He’s starting to get a little bit worse,” Colleen told Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid. “I’m not sure he always recognizes me anymore. He never says my name.”
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A constant reminder of my failings
By Scott Feschuk - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 4 Comments
Scott Feschuk on how the to-do list is meant to organize your life, and yet it’s so easy to ignore
Photographs by Andrew Tolson; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute
A New York museum currently has on exhibit a number of mundane to-do lists left behind by the famous and the obscure. Consider it a wake-up call: if there’s even a small chance that any of our lists will one day wind up on public display, we need to start padding them with made-up tasks that will impress future generations—such as “Fistfight with bear” and “Rehearse with A. Jolie for sex Olympics.”
What’s striking about the exhibit is its simple truth—that over centuries of technological progress and changing social mores, there has endured one vexing constant: the eternal struggle to get one’s s–t together.
I could fill a museum wing with the sad artifacts of my failed attempts to stay on top of things. I have scrawled lists on the front of envelopes and on the backs of my hands. I have purchased daytimers pricey and cheap, large and tiny. Last year, I bought a nifty box that housed a separate little agenda for each month. Before the end of February, I had lost April.
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Who's suing whom?
By Cigdem Iltan - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 1 Comment
A round-up of weird and wacky lawsuits from across the country
Alberta: A former high school student says she was seriously injured when her desk collapsed and is suing Edmonton Public Schools for $200,000. The woman alleges she suffered post-traumatic headaches and joint dysfunction—the result, she claims, of the desk supplier or manufacturer’s negligence and the school’s failure to maintain the desks.
Manitoba: A Winnipeg hospital is suing its auditor for allegedly failing to notice $1.5 million skimmed from a hospital-operated ATM over the course of a decade. According to the lawsuit, hospital staff—not the auditor—discovered that a finance clerk who had access to cash used to replenish the bank machine had allegedly defrauded the hospital. The hospital alleges that its auditor misstated assets in financial statements and did not act in accordance with “generally accepted accounting principles.”
Ontario: Two seniors are suing Ottawa transit for injuries they suffered after falling on a bus, allegedly because of bad driving. One woman says she fell after the bus jerked to a stop, while the other says she fell when the bus sped up too quickly. The women are each seeking $2.1 million in damages.
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Madagascar: Island of earthly delights
By Kate Lunau - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:55 AM - 0 Comments
The island is a treasure trove of unique creatures—more than 600 of them
Harald Schuetz/WWF Madagascar
Madagascar is one of Earth’s last great tropical wildernesses and, in the past decade, scientists have found an incredible 615 new species there, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Among these discoveries—including 385 plants, 42 invertebrates, 17 fish, 69 amphibians, 61 reptiles and 41 mammals—some sound almost too fantastic to be believed. The cork bark leaf-tailed gecko, for example, looks like a crawling piece of bark, with its craggy tan-coloured skin. The massive tahina palm flowers only once in its life, producing a spectacular bloom before it dies. And Berthe’s mouse lemur, the smallest known primate, is so tiny it can fit in the palm of your hand.
The fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar is home to five per cent of our planet’s animal and plant species, and more than 70 per cent of them can’t be found anywhere else. Its landscape is widely varied, from tropical rainforest to volcanic mountains, broad plains and desert; surrounding waters are home to some of the world’s largest coral reef systems. With better sampling techniques and DNA analysis, scientists are finding species there they’d never previously observed.
Madagascar’s rampant biodiversity can be partly explained by its unique geological history, says Richard Hughes, the WWF’s regional director in Madagascar, reached over the phone from the capital of Antananarivo. The island split off from the African continent about 165 million years ago, and broke free from India over 80 million years ago; human settlement there, he notes, “only dates back around 2,000 years.” As a result, plants and animals have had a long time to evolve in isolation, inspiring some scientists to call Madagascar the eighth continent.
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Save the earth, kill a camel
By Stephanie Findlay - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:55 AM - 5 Comments
Australia is turning its cross-hairs on gassy camels
Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images
A dead camel in Australia may soon pay off in carbon credits. Down under, where feral camels are running rampant in the rangelands and producing unholy amounts of methane, the government is proposing an official camel cull to help combat climate change. There are 1.2 million feral camels in Australia, and with few natural diseases and no natural predators, the population is expected to reach two million by 2020. One camel emits an estimated 45 kg of methane a year—the equivalent of a metric tonne of carbon dioxide. (In contrast, a passenger car emits about 5.2 metric tonnes annually.)
Under the proposed new regime, expected to become law this summer, accredited marksmen will be able to shoot the animals for carbon credits. “Potentially it has tremendous merit, because feral camels are a dreadful menace across the whole of arid Australia,” said Mark Dreyfus, Australia’s parliamentary secretary for climate change. Camels were first introduced to Australia in the late 1800s to work in the outback. Today, in the age of planes, trains and automobiles, the humped beast is just an exotic pest—albeit a gassy one.
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Review: The Thirteen
By Jenn Cutts - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments
Book by Susie Moloney
In horror writer Susie Moloney’s long-awaited fourth novel, time is running out for a coven of suburban witches in Haven Woods. Magic gave them everything they’d dreamed of, but now one of their circle of 13 has died, and things are beginning to fall apart. One of the group, a successful baker, hears a terrible screeching in her head whenever she tries to bake, while another, newly thin, finds pots of irresistible food bubbling on her stove, which she manages to shovel into her mouth despite the fact that her fingers have begun falling off. The women desperately need a 13th member, as well as a fresh young sacrifice.Enter Paula Wittmore. The call she gets from one of her mother’s oldest friends seems innocent enough—her mother Audra is ill, and it’d be best if Paula and her 12-year-old daughter Rowan returned to Haven Woods, where life is almost always perfect, but for the occasional gruesome and deadly accident. As Paula tries to work out what exactly is making her mother sick (yellowing eyes, white hair sprouting from her body), and why Audra seems so desperate for her daughter and granddaughter to leave, she learns that her mother’s 11 closest friends have fallen on hard times of their own, and she and Rowan are just in time to play frightful roles in the witches’ plans to turn things around.
Moloney has been called Canada’s Stephen King, and the Winnipeg-raised author attracted buzz in the late ’90s when her novel The Dry Spell earned a seven-figure advance and was later optioned by Tom Cruise’s production company. The Thirteen is a creepy-fun read, with characters ready-made for a Hollywood casting call.
