Opposition lashes out at Harper’s ‘arrogance’
By macleans.ca - Monday, July 11, 2011 - 3 Comments
NDP and Liberal MPs say Tories’ post-election hubris will lead to downfall
Opposition MPs are warning Prime Minister Stephen Harper that his post-election confidence will eventually harm him. The comments from both Liberal and NDP MPs come after Harper spent the weekend at the Calgary Stampede, where he boasted in a speech that his Conservative Party had become “Canada’s party.” He also claimed the Liberal Party’s era of electoral dominance was over and that the NDPs success in Quebec would be temporary. Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said in a statement that Harper’s “triumphal arrogance” reveals his divisive and polarizing style of politics. NDP MP Joe Comartin, meanwhile, told The Globe and Mail that Harper’s attitude is of the same sort that led to the downfall of the Liberals.
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Confiscated Iranian munitions explode at Cyprus army base
By macleans.ca - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:28 AM - 0 Comments
12 killed, enormous power plant knocked out of commission
98 containers of confiscated Iranian munitions exploded at a military base in Cyprus on Monday. 12 people were killed and the island’s largest power supplying station (half the island relies on its resources) is out of commission. Nearby homes were damaged and the blast was felt for miles. Both the Cyprus defence minister and army chief resigned following the explosion. The munitions were confiscated in 2009 when a Cyprus ship stopped an Iranian ship from sailing to Syria with the munitions on board—a violation of UN sanctions on Iran. The Cyprus government kept the munitions in scorching hot conditions, likely responsible for the blast.
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Gordon Brown also targeted by News International
By macleans.ca - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:24 AM - 0 Comments
Tactics used to obtain his private information allegedly included posing as Brown
Gordon Brown, former Labour Party leader and UK Prime Minister, may have been a target of the phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News International for over 10 years. Journalists from the News of the World, recently closed down amidst a massive hacking scandal, used various tactics to access Brown’s voice mail, bank account, medical records and other personal information. It is not known yet which of these tactics—which included posing as Brown to get his information, and use of Glen Mulcaire, the paper’s specialist in phone hacking—were illegal and which merely “breached his privacy but not the law.” According to the Independent, Brown is expected to announce today that he was a target of the hackers, and comment on the issue.
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Canada is world’s 12th biggest arms dealer
By macleans.ca - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 3 Comments
Majority of exports go to NATO allies, but less friendly countries also made purchases
Business has been brisk for Canadian weapons dealers over the past year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, as a boost in exports has vaulted them into the 12th biggest exporters in the world. Canada had previously ranked 15th in the world in 2008 and 2009. The Report on the Export of Military Goods from Canada for 2007-2009, published by the Department of Foreign Affairs, reports Canada sold $1.4 billion worth of military gear to 70 countries between 2006 and 2009. And while most of the exports found their way into the hands of friendly nations—52 per cent went to NATO allies such as Britain, France, Germany and Norway—notorious human rights violators like Saudi Arabia, China, Libya and Tunisia were also sent Canadian-manufactured weapons. It’s worth noting the figures above don’t include exports to the U.S., which are kept private and have been estimated to be worth $1.5 billion to $2 billion per year.
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Prince Charles and Camilla targets of phone hacking
By macleans.ca - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:18 AM - 0 Comments
News of the World reportedly bribed royal protection officer to obtain numbers
British authorities say they issued a warning to Buckingham Palace after coming across evidence Prince Charles and Camilla may have had their phones hacked. At least 10 members of the royal household are believed to have been targeted by News of the World’s specialist phone-hacker, Glenn Mulcaire. The revelation follows reports the tabloid bribed a royal protection officer in order to obtain the private phone numbers of the royal household. Previous statements by police have identified only five royal victims—Prince William, Prince Harry and three members of staff who were named in the trial of the News of the World’s royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, in January 2007.
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Pro-government demonstrators attack U.S. embassy in Syria
By macleans.ca - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:16 AM - 0 Comments
Follows U.S. visit to opposition stronghold
Pro-government demonstrators in the Syrian capital of Damascus have reportedly attacked the U.S. embassy. According to the Associated Press, witnesses said protesters supporting the country’s embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, smashed windows of the American embassy and raised a Syrian flag above the compound. Some also wrote anti-American slogans in graffiti, calling the U.S. ambassador a “dog.” Similar protests were held outside the French embassy in Damascus Monday, where security guards reportedly fired into the air to drive back demonstrators. The protests come days after U.S. and French officials travelled to Hama, which has been a hotbed of anti-government sentiment in recent weeks.
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Better oversight through databases
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:12 AM - 17 Comments
While Parliament struggles with its primary task, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has launched a new website to organize government spending information.
The IMD is a structured database of budgeted and in-year expenditures listed by vote for each federal department and agency. Working with existing data sources, it is the first database that ensures congruence between the estimates and in-year financial reporting. The IMD permits legislators to identify significant variations in planned and actual spending, as well as key differences among fiscal years. This allows members and committees to focus their attention on areas that merit in-depth scrutiny.
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Is subsidized daycare bad for kids?
By John Geddes - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 5 Comments
A surprising new study says Quebec’s $7-a-day daycare is leaving children worse off
CP
In public policy, few subjects are as sure to spark fierce debate as child care. Prime Minister Stephen Harper portrays a stark divide when he talks about his Conservative policy of giving parents $100 a month for every child under six, and how he scrapped the previous Liberal government’s plan to pour billions into deals with the provinces to expand subsidized daycare. “We took money from bureaucrats and lobbyists,” he says, “and gave it to the real experts on child care, and their names are Mom and Dad!”
If daycare advocates have lost the battle in Ottawa, at least for as long as Harper is in power, they’ll always have Quebec as a beacon of hope. Starting in 1997, the province implemented a low-cost universal child care policy along the lines of the European model. The number of subsidized daycare spaces in the province soared to 210,000 last year, from just 77,000 in 1997. Nothing like it has been tried anywhere else in North America.
But now three Montreal researchers have studied the Quebec experiment, focusing on how the rapid expansion of $7-a-day daycare seems to be reflected in Quebec kids’ scores on a school-readiness test. Their findings are potentially explosive. “In summary,” they write, “the effects of the program are found to be negative for five-year-olds and less convincingly negative for four-year-olds.”
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Why Jack Layton needed a human shield
By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments
Elizabeth May
Politicians with bad hips
At Toronto’s 31st annual Pride Parade it was all about party leaders in rickshaws. Green Leader Elizabeth May rode in one as she has in every parade since having a hip replaced in 2007. This time, NDP Leader Jack Layton, who still walks with a cane after hip surgery, was pulled in one covered in rainbow flags. His team was prepared for all the people who insist on spraying politicians with huge water guns—a nightmare for anyone with a BlackBerry. At one point Layton’s wife, MP Olivia Chow, took a water cannon shot in the back to protect him. Chow then opened a rainbow umbrella to deflect further H20 assaults from Layton’s left flank; a volunteer opened a huge orange umbrella to protect him on the right. May is waiting to have surgery on her other hip and says after that she will be able to walk in the Pride Parade. The Liberal MP presence was diminished this year. Interim leader Bob Rae and Carolyn Bennett were the only two elected Grit MPs. Rob Oliphant, who was defeated in the last election, was also in attendance. Rae’s wife, Arlene Perly Rae, demonstrated powerful arm strength as she tossed bead necklaces into the crowd. One shot accidentally hit a photographer and she quickly went over and apologized.
‘Screw the cottage’
There was much anger and campy commentary over Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s snub of all Pride festivities. (Ford said he always goes to his cottage for Canada Day weekend and would not be attending Pride.) Former Toronto mayors were well represented. David Miller and Barbara Hall marched and Mel Lastman sent a letter that was read at the Metropolitan Community Church service before the parade began. Ford mockers were out in force. One man dressed as Ford held a sign saying “Screw the cottage.” Many wore Ford masks. “More people wore them on their ass than their face, which sums it up,” noted Fab magazine associate editor Drew Rowsome.
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Review: Turn of mind
By Kate Lunau - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments
Book by Alice LaPlante
Part medical thriller, part murder mystery, Turn of Mind tells the story of Dr. Jennifer White, an elderly surgeon who may or may not have murdered her best friend. It opens with the death of Amanda O’Toole, a 75-year-old woman whose mutilated body is found in her Chicago home. For reasons that aren’t known, four fingers on her right hand have been expertly removed. White, a renowned doctor (now retired) who once specialized in complicated hand surgeries, was Amanda’s neighbour and closest friend; after the police find several suspicious clues, she also becomes the prime suspect in her murder. Whether Jennifer is guilty, though, remains a mystery even to her: she suffers from Alzheimer’s, and her memory is quickly slipping away.Jennifer narrates the story in broken fragments that jump forward and back in time, reflecting her own mounting confusion—and frustration—as her mind deteriorates. From this hazy picture a few sharp details emerge, most vividly about Amanda, who’s not just a friend, but also Jennifer’s rival. These two stubborn women butted heads over relationships, money, and especially Jennifer’s children, Mark and Fiona. With none of her own, Amanda became a second mother of sorts to her best friend’s kids, occasionally testing their loyalty in a way that threatened to pull Jennifer’s own family apart. Still, what sorts of actions Jennifer might take to protect her husband and kids—even from Amanda, her best friend—isn’t clear until the end.
Turn of Mind is the first novel from Alice LaPlante, an award-winning non-fiction writer. Narrating through Jennifer’s voice, which leaves certain details just out of reach, LaPlante does a great job of building suspense, finishing with a twist that most won’t anticipate. Beyond being just a satisfying summer read, this book is an examination of a long, complicated friendship, and the capacity of two people who love each other to hurt each other, too. No one in this novel is really innocent: not Amanda (even if she’s ultimately the victim), not Mark or Fiona, and not Jennifer.
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Why Harper is never in cellphone range
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments
Unlike Barack Obama, Stephen Harper prefers to limit his Blackberry use
When, in the lead-up to the last federal election, the Conservative party wanted to portray Stephen Harper as dedicated and hard-working, the resulting television ad showed a solitary Prime Minister at his desk, going through stacks of presumably important files. Nowhere to be seen were the familiar trappings of the modern office: no BlackBerry, no computer, just a man and his pen.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Harper does use a laptop and an iPad—to research his hockey book, check on the status of bills through Parliament’s website, and work on speeches. But Harper has, in fact, never owned a BlackBerry. And he stopped using a cellphone and email after becoming Prime Minister in 2006. “I’ve actually taken the view as Prime Minister that if I start using these things, then I’ll be doing them myself instead of my staff,” he told the Toronto Star a couple of years ago. “So I make sure the staff knows how to work all the BlackBerries and all those things, and I try and keep focused on the big picture.” The Prime Minister also acknowledged security concerns.
U.S. President Barack Obama famously fought to keep his BlackBerry when he took office. He was ultimately allowed to keep the cherished device, but with added security measures, including a select list of friends and advisers with whom he is allowed to communicate. Obama has since said the gadget had lost some of its appeal under his new circumstances. “I’ve got to admit, it’s no fun because they think that it’s probably going to be subject to the Presidential Records Act, so nobody wants to send me the real juicy stuff,” he told The View last year.
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Weighing a new option
By Tom Henheffer - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments
Canadian researchers are looking to change the way things are measured
As with so many yo-yo dieters, the weight of a kilogram is constantly in flux—at least at an atomic level. But Ottawa researchers are hoping to get the kilo’s waistline permanently in check by changing how it’s measured.The kilogram is currently defined by the International Prototype Kilogram, a golf-ball-sized cylindrical weight made out of platinum alloy. Because a kilogram is a physical object, it constantly releases and collects atomic particles, meaning its mass—and the mass of all kilograms—is always changing. ““If [the IPK] moves up or down the others have to follow,” says Barry Wood of the National Research Council in Ottawa. “It’s totally artificial.”
Wood and his team are heading up a movement to measure kilograms against the charge of an electron, a natural constant, using a type of specialized motor called the watt balance. “You can lift mass with a motor,” he says. “If I know how much current I’m putting into the motor, that tells me details about how much I’ve lifted.” Since the NRC purchased the watt balance (pictured below) from the British government two years ago, Wood has been using the room-sized metal machine to determine exactly how much current is needed to lift a kilogram. The data, which has so far cost $2.5 million to collect, is compared to two other watt balances in the U.S. and Switzerland, and used to calibrate the devices to make their results consistent.
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‘Five wrongs do make a right honourable’
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:37 AM - 41 Comments
Touted by his party as a man who proved all the expert prognosticators wrong, Stephen Harper continues to make predictions of his own about his opponents’ chances.
“Quebec’s honeymoon with the NDP will pass. As many provinces know well, no honeymoon passes as quickly and as completely as one with the NDP…
“I believe the long Liberal era is genuinely, truly ending. As with disco balls and bell bottoms, Canadians have moved on,” Harper said to laughter and applause.
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David McCullough in conversation with Kenneth Whyte
By Kenneth Whyte - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments
On presidents who were failures, the trouble with historians, and how to tell a story
Photographs by Cole Garside
Historian David McCullough has won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for his biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman. His new book, The Greater Journey, is about high-achieving Americans in Paris between 1830 and 1900, and how they changed the world.
Q: This should be easy. I’ve only got one question. How do you tell a story?
A: I grew up with stories. My father was a wonderful storyteller. He enjoyed the person he was telling the story about, some character who did something odd or had figures of speech. He was a salesman and he met all kinds of people, from going down into coal mines to calling on the executives of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. I grew up with three brothers, and we all loved the stories of days past when there had been floods or fires or some adventure that he’d been on or knew about. I’m not quoting exactly, but E.M. Forster said, “If I tell you the king died and then the queen died, that’s a sequence of events. If I tell you the king died and the queen died of grief, that’s a story.” So it’s understanding the human equations involved, and I particularly have always liked plays, movies, novels where plot derives from character rather than outside forces. All my books, not just this one, are about a journey.
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Blue Gene Lonechild
By Emma Teitel - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments
At 12, he marched across Canada to protest lenient penalties given to many violent criminals
Illustration by Team macho
Blue Gene Lonechild was born in Vancouver on May 15, 1983, to his mother, Spirit Lonechild, a peace activist, and a father he would barely know. Blue was the eldest of Spirit’s three children and spent his first few years in a high-rise apartment with his mother and her best friend, Cindy, whom he called “Dad.” “I guess I was the more authoritarian one,” says Cindy. “Spirit usually said yes.”
Spirit vowed to give her son everything she never had. “I even let him pick the menu for all our dinners,” she says. “Beef liver was his favourite. He could eat a whole package in one sitting.” Blue met his biological father twice: once in Vancouver when, says Spirit, the man took Blue from his crib and staggered drunk down Davies Street dodging police cars, and again at 12, in an arranged meeting at Port Angeles Island in Washington. “Blue wasn’t impressed,” says Spirit.
Spirit and Blue moved to the Lazy River trailer court in Port Coquitlam, B.C., when Blue was three. Blue toured the trailer court grounds on his Big Wheel in the spring and skated the Coquitlam River in the winter. “We would sing all the way to the ice,” says Spirit. “A combination of native and English songs, but Tears in Heaven was one of his favourites.” Blue was bold and kind. He pulled his baby teeth out at the age of six and used the funds deposited under his pillow to buy his mother carnations. “He treated women with a gentleman kindness,” says Spirit.
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The royal visit: So much more than a photo op
By John Fraser - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 0 Comments
William and Kate’s first great adventure as a married couple breathed new life into an old relationship
John Stillwell/Getty Images
Amongst the unbelievers of the Crown in Canada, you could almost touch the chagrin, from sea to sea, as the extraordinarily successful 2011 royal tour unfolded last week. William and Kate, the newly minted duke and duchess of Cambridge, the future king and queen of Canada, didn’t just come and see and conquer: they vamped us. They did it with warmth and charm and youthful sexiness, then topped it all with a reminder, unambiguous and impossible to ignore, that the ties that bound us “from days of yore” still have the power to renew something very important in our history.
“Will and Kate” are now part of the Canadian story. A big part. Those monarchists who have tried over the years, like Queen Elizabeth II herself, not to be “fair-weather friends” were almost as stunned as the unbelievers as they watched this beautiful and caring young couple walk into our tale and hearts with such aplomb and grace that they seem to have started a whole new chapter.
It was more than just a gesture that, on Canada Day, Catherine wore the maple-leaf-shaped diamond pin the Queen wears so often when she comes to Canada and that had been loaned to the future queen for this trip, the first great adventure in the couple’s married lives after their storybook wedding. The brooch was also a kind of talisman of the past joining them to the future.
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Celeb-onomics
By Erica Alini - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments
Can celebrities make economic policy sexy?
Getty Images, ISTOCK; Photo Illustration by Lauren Cattermole
Want to get people to pay attention to that driest of issues: monetary policy? Get a Hollywood celebrity to tweet about it. Better still, one whose resumé includes rehab, house arrest and an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet. That’s what the National Inflation Association, an organization that describes itself as “preparing Americans for hyperinflation,” did last week. It paid Lindsay Lohan to slam the Federal Reserve on her Twitter account. It read: “Have you guys seen food and gas prices lately? U.S. $ will soon be worthless if the Fed keeps printing money!” The tweet, initially attributed to Lohan herself, quickly made the rounds in gossip, mainstream and business media. It may have helped focus minds on macroeconomics (albeit briefly), but the tweet did little to improve Lohan’s image, after reporters pointed out that the NIA’s main aim appears to be pitching investors on penny stocks and that the group is not the conservative non-profit the starlet said she believed it to be.
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Can South Sudan survive?
By Matteo Fagotto - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments
The capital is booming, but infrastructure is non-existent and tensions are mounting
William B. Plowman/Redux
Hands moving nervously, her gaze staring at a nearby table, Sarah Clero Rial still remembers vividly the memories of her troubled past. Rial is Southern Sudanese, now a single mom with three kids and a job in both the United States and her home country; in 1991, she was just a young African girl living in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, after having barely escaped the civil war that was raging in the south of the country at that time. “Living in the South was really tough. There were continued shortages and a lot of tension, stabbings and shootings. Many people were killed or simply vanished,” she recounts. “When my family decided to move to the North, we took the last train from Wau to Khartoum before the railway was closed.”
But even if moving to the capital saved her life, being a Christian and southerner was never going to be easy in the Islamic and Arab-dominated North. The rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) were fighting against a government whose policies were perceived as pro-Arab and oblivious to the lack of development in the South, and coming from that region meant arousing the suspicion of the Sudanese authorities. One day, Rial’s life changed abruptly and forever: arrested for wearing a traditional African skirt—unacceptable in a city governed by strict sharia-based rules—she was tied up and put on the back of an open police truck. Then she was driven around Khartoum for the whole afternoon, as a warning for whomever might have thoughts of doing the same.
“People were throwing dirt at me, launching all sort of insults. It was really humiliating,” she says. She was eventually released, but deep in her heart, her decision had already been made. “My personal revolution started that very moment,” she says. “I realized that I would have never changed my habits and accept to be a second-class citizen in my own country.”
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Reining in the mortgage king
By Jason Kirby - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 2 Comments
The finance ministry’s legal oversight of the CMHC was long overdue
In March, Maclean’s warned that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the quasi-governmental insurer that underwrites $500 billion of residential mortgages, answers to no one—not Canada’s top financial regulator or even the minister of finance. That all quietly changed last month when Ottawa passed a law that puts the CMHC strictly under the watchful gaze of both the finance minister and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI).
With the new law, CMHC must hand over “prescribed books, records and information” and make those records available to the public. The legislation also allows the minister to set capital requirements and impose fees to compensate the government for the risks it assumes by backstopping mortgages.
CMHC has always said the money it sets aside to cover insurance losses exceeds that required by OSFI. But Finn Poschmann, a C.D. Howe researcher, told the House of Commons finance committee the new law is overdue. “There are a number of informal arrangements through which our oversight agencies are able to have a look at what it is that the CMHC does and the risks to which taxpayers are exposed,” he said. “However, it is an informal arrangement. It’s good to have this in legislation.”
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America with no Apple?
By Alex Ballingall - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments
Samsung and Apple are trying to get each others’ products banned from the U.S.
Ahn Young-joon/AP
Samsung upped the stakes in its patent dispute with Apple last week when it called on the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban imports of Apple’s iPhone and iPad from China, where they are made. Apple is expected to respond with a similar request, raising the possibility that the tech giants will be choked off from the American market. The two sides have traded accusations of copyright infringement since April, when Apple accused its South Korean rival of ripping off its smartphone and tablet designs. For its part, Samsung has filed similar lawsuits against Apple in Germany and Japan.
While Apple has dominated the tablet market, Samsung has emerged as a big player, too, and is expected to pass Nokia as the world’s top producer of smartphones this year. Ironically, the two companies have enjoyed a close business relationship. Apple is one of Samsung’s biggest buyers of computer chips and screens.
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Carmaker comeback
By Jason Kirby - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments
The auto sector leads the North American economic recovery
Jim R. Bounds/Bloomberg/Getty Images
In 2009, when there seemed no bottom to how far the economy might fall, a series of photographs circulated online showing thousands of unsold cars piling up around the world. With consumers paralyzed by the credit crisis, automakers filled docks, vast meadows and even abandoned airport runways with the vehicular glut. The striking yet surreal aerial photos could have hung on a gallery wall were it not for the economic devastation they represented. Today, some economists are once again warning the world is on the cusp of another crisis as Greece burns, gas prices remain high and America’s job market stagnates. Only this time instead of pulling down the global economy, the auto sector is seen as the best hope of jump-starting the recovery.
Call it Cars 2—not the animated big-budget sequel making its way through theatres, but the return of cars and trucks as key drivers of the critical U.S. economic machine. “Americans still love their cars,” says Michael Burt, who tracks industrial economic trends for the Conference Board of Canada. “The types of vehicles they may purchase will change, but they’re continuing to buy.” The question now is, how long can America’s love affair with metal and rubber overcome the economic headwinds?
On the surface, the auto sector’s performance in June seemed disappointing. When American sales for the month were tallied, the results fell short of analysts’ forecasts. Sales growth came in at 7.1 per cent, according to Autodata Corp. That was less than the eight to 10 per cent analysts had predicted, and slower than the growth registered in May, which was already a sluggish month.
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Review: Lovesick Japan: Sex Marriage Romance Law
By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Book by Mark D. West
Love and sex in Japan have long exercised a strange fascination over the Western intellect. Consider the strangest fruit in the orchard: a novel, The Apprentice, written by Lewis “Scooter” Libby, set in turn-of-the-century Japan, which contains the sentence: “At age 10 the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons.” Allowed to go out of print, it enjoyed a brief vogue after Libby, a former Dick Cheney adviser, became embroiled in the Valerie Plame scandal, was disbarred, and went to jail.Now, in Lovesick Japan, an American law prof parses love, sex and marriage in thousands of Japanese judicial decisions—divorces, sexual assaults, molestations—for an arresting glimpse into Japan’s secret heart. West, who has written widely on Japanese law, argues the rulings betray an underlying assumption among Japanese judges that “physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and interconnectedness in personal relationships” are largely absent between the sexes—even from marriage vows (West reports one bride promised not so much love as to greet her husband “with a smile on my face when he comes home late from drinking, and to moderate my purchases of brand-name handbags”).
Could it be otherwise? A 2006 government survey found half of Japanese men and women had no relationships of any kind with members of the opposite sex, not even friendships. Many men pay for their first sexual experiences. An astounding number of both men and women remain virgins into their 30s (how-to books for late starters advise men to clip their fingernails before the act). Where love does surface, it’s seen by judges as “an overwhelming, disorienting force to which people unwittingly cede self-control.” Judges therefore view marriage as necessarily loveless, and conjugal sex (when it happens at all) as largely procreative.
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Who says Quebecers don’t love the royals?
By Anne Kingston - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments
Well-wishers outnumbered protesters 10 to one
Mathieu Belanger/Reuters
If Ottawa provided the Kodachrome picture-postcard royal welcome, Quebec offered William and Catherine a more complex cinéma vérité depiction of the country they claim to want to know. Canada’s two solitudes collided during the couple’s two-day, two-city Quebec sojourn as separatist and anti-monarchist protesters, though in the minority, determined the agenda. Fear of a repeat of Prince Charles’s 2009 visit to Montreal, when eggs were hurled at his car, prompted organizers of William and Kate’s tour to not schedule walkabouts in the cities. Their concerns appeared founded, as several dozen protesters from pro-independence group Réseau de Résistance du Québécois appeared at Ste-Justine Hospital, the first stop of the couple’s eight-hour swing through Montreal. Chants of “Will and Kate, Will and Kate” vied with “royals go home” in French and English. And a few eggs were thrown, one landing on the back of an older woman who had waited hours in the sweltering heat.
Clearly forewarned, the duke and duchess exited their car briskly upon arrival, barely acknowledging the crowd. After an hour touring the neonatal, high-risk pregnancy and cancer wards, they exited under heavy security as black SUVs blocked the crowd of some 500—much to the crowd’s disappointment, including 11-year old Victoria Sicurello, who had hoped to hand Kate roses and a handmade card.
A similar 10-to-one well-wisher-to-protester ratio was evident at their next destination, the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec, where they took part in a cooking lesson with students and dined on Brome Lake duck, Charlevoix lamb and an Îles-de-la-Madeleine lobster soufflé.
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Letting their guard down
By Anne Kingston - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 0 Comments
Will and Kate adopt the island’s laid-back vibe—except when racing each other in dragon boats
Better luck next time: Will gives Kate, a far more experienced paddler, a hug after the race
Prince Edward Island is famously known as the cradle of Canadian Confederation. Now, after William and Catherine’s action-packed 24 hours in the country’s smallest province, it can also lay claim to being the incubator of a new, far more informal royal protocol. In the space of a few hours, the world watched the newlyweds competing fervently against one another in a dragon boat race, hugging affectionately after, then even more shockingly for anyone schooled in monarchical mores, eating in public, heretofore a no-no.
The island’s laid-back mood was clearly contagious. Even under a light drizzle, the couple appeared relaxed at their first official duty at Province House, the provincial legislature and site of the 1864 Charlottetown conference. The duchess was less formally attired than previously during the tour, wearing a cream knit dress with a sailor’s bow and navy stripes, nautical details that paid homage to the Maritime setting.
After signing the Province House guest book, handshaking and posing for photos, the duke and duchess greeted an enthusiastic crowd filled with “I [heart] Will and Kate” signs and T-shirts. “What are you doing standing in the rain?” Kate asked one speechless teenage boy who looked as if he’d faint.
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Capital charmed
By Patricia Treble - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments
Ordinary mortals and VIPs alike succumbed to William-and-Catherine mania
Mark Large/Getty Images
It’s been called a royal tour and a media event, but for Prince William and Kate, it was surely something else: a nine-day “intro to Canada” crash course. The start was to be relatively slow and sombre: some mandatory basics in Ottawa, before peeling off to the regions for the fun stuff, like dragon boat racing and street hockey.
However, while the itinerary in the capital was predictable, the size of the crowds and the couple’s determination to interact with them were not. The mania for Will and Kate started in earnest at the very first event: laying a wreath and a bouquet of flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. After that sombre occasion, the pair spent an unexpectedly long time mingling, talking to scores of veterans and ordinary citizens. (Some 25,000 were there.) The timetable went out the window—the Governor General was left waiting patiently at Rideau Hall—as the couple mixed with the crowds.
And this, it soon became clear, was not an isolated incident but a precedent. The usual rules of royal etiquette were abandoned for the entire Ottawa visit, not only by touchy-feely throngs determined to get face time with William and Kate, but also by the couple, who signalled their approval of the casual exchanges by shaking so many hands that British commentators speculated about the potentially hazardous consequences for the royal digits. No gesture, however casual, was ignored by the 1,300 accredited journalists confined to “media pens.” When William was offered sunglasses by a spectator on the Hill, he laughed, popped them on for a photo op—wild excitement amongst the TV cameramen—then returned them to their owner. It wasn’t just ordinary mortals who succumbed to the fever: two lines of RCMP officers were needed to hold back rows of invited Canada Day VIPs who had morphed into a squealing mob of Bieber-esque groupies.
