The lost art of door-knocking

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 4:50 PM - 3 Comments

Andrew Steele notes new findings in electoral science.

Professors at Yale University studied the impact of three forms of voter communications by campaigns on improved turnout. They used a 30,000 person sample in 1998 for elections in New Haven, Connecticut. The findings are stark: Telephone canvassing has no significant impact on improving voter turnout. Direct mail has only a small impact on improving turnout. The method of communication that most improves turnout — and is the method that can best win your election — is face-to-face canvassing by volunteers.

The team at Yale hypothesizes that the drop in turnout since the 1960s in American politics is due to the decline in political activism and thus a decline in volunteers to knock on doors.

The eternal power of the written word

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 3:40 PM - 83 Comments

Jason Kenney explains the inspiration for his exchange with Amnesty International.

“I’m of the view that if you’re in a political forum making unfounded and unfair criticisms of government policy, expect to be called on it. My model in this is Stéphane Dion’s letter writing campaign against Jacques Parizeau and the PQ. I think it was very instructive to see a minister point out flaws in his adversary’s arguments. I think that’s what democratic discourse is all about . . . If they want to have a debate on these issues, fine. Let’s have one. That means I get my say.”

Mr. Dion’s skills, meanwhile, are being put to use as the Liberals discover the game of modern political fundraising.

The centrist conundrum

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 1:55 PM - 27 Comments

Mike Crowley considers the past and future of the Liberal party.

Take the first two attributes: centrist and moderate. By definition both of these mean that the Liberal party is really defining itself by positioning itself relative to policies advocated by others and is, therefore, reactive. To be centrist or moderate, some other party must first define what is left and right. This is hardly the basis for bold, visionary leadership. As far as “progressive” goes, it is one of the most broadly used and ill-defined political terms. Many provinces have Progressive Conservative parties advocating right of centre of policies, whereas the Progressive party of the 1920s and 1930s promoted free trade but was also aligned with some socialist ideology. The least that can be said is it is very difficult to be both reactive, at the core of the centrist and moderate monikers, and progressive at the same time.

Scientists discover genetic variations linked to MS

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:37 PM - 0 Comments

Scientists have discovered 29 genetic variations that are linked to multiple sclerosis, and many of them are related to the immune system, suggesting that MS is mainly an autoimmune disease, CTV reports. The largest study of its kind, it looked at almost 10,000 MS patients, and found that many of the newly discovered genetic variations are related to the development of the immune system’s T-cells, which protect against infections. This seems to confirm long-held beliefs that changes in the immune system trigger MS, in contrast to a controversial theory from Italian vascular surgeon Dr. Paolo Zamboni, who believes it’s related to blocked neck veins. Zamboni has promoted a vascular procedure to open blocked veins, which hundreds of Canadians have obtained at clinics outside the country.

CTV News

Blood test can determine baby’s sex at seven weeks

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

A simple blood test can determine a baby’s sex as early as seven weeks into the pregnancy, according to findings in The Journal of the American Medical Association reported by The New York Times. This test analyzes fetal DNA in the mother’s blood and can pinpoint sex much earlier than other options, including ultrasound. It’s also non-invasive. These tests have been available at drugstores and online for a few years but they haven’t been too popular, partly because of uncertainty over how accurate they were. But European doctors now routinely use these tests.

The New York Times

“Poor judgment” cited after Mountie leaves puppy in hot SUV

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:32 PM - 0 Comments

A B.C. RCMP officer who left a training puppy in a sweltering SUV has been put under supervision and been given a written guidance, an internal review into the incident says. The officer, from the West Shore RCMP near Victoria, was off-duty at the time. He left the 10-month-old puppy in his vehicle while on a fishing trip in July. Staff at the marina where he parked threw a tent over the SUV and sprayed it down with cold water in an attempt to cool the dog down. “It does appear the member obviously used poor judgment,” RCMP cpl. Annie Linteau told the CBC.

National Post

Food aid reaches more in rain-starved Somalia

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:29 PM - 0 Comments

Millions of Somalis remain at risk of starvation, even as the UN’s food agency says it has been able to penetrate deeper into the famine-wracked country. About 3.6 million people in Somalia could starve this year. The worst hit are those in areas of the country controlled by al-Shabaab rebels, who oppose Western intervention and have at times banned food aid, even as the Horn of Africa suffers through its worst drought in decades. Officials with the World Food Program say the agency now has access to some pockets of the country previously considered off limits. The organization is now providing aid to 1.5 million Somalis in the famine zone. Meanwhile, in Mogadishu, fears of a security vacuum are spreading. The rebels recently pulled out of Somalia’s largest city but peacekeepers and government troops have yet to assert full control.

Reuters

‘Hacktivists’, Anonymous plan to “kill Facebook”

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:19 PM - 0 Comments

The group of self-avowed ‘hacktivists’ known as Anonymous (also allegedly responsible for hacking PayPal and Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency) have released a video on YouTube in which they promise to “kill Facebook” on November 5. Anonymous says it is carrying out the operation—dubbed “Operation Facebook”—
because the social networking site compromises its users’ privacy, and sells user information to spy agencies in oppressive regimes, such as Egypt and Syria. 1.2 million people have watched the YouTube video so far, which was uploaded on July 16. Anonymous also announced via Twitter, that not all members within the group are involved in “Operation Facebook”.

CTV News

YouTube

Murdoch refuses to step down

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:14 PM - 0 Comments

Rupert Murdoch dismissed Wall Street’s concerns he’s too old and too out of touch to carry on as chairman and chief executive of News Corporation on a conference call with shareholders Wednesday night. Despite demands to retire, he said he won’t quit, and maintained that the News of the World hacking scandal isn’t hurting the rest of the company financially. Murdoch’s empire includes U.S. television networks, publisher Harper Collins, Twentieth Century Fox and satellite broadcasting in Asia and Europe. Despite the closure of the News of the World, Murdoch says  the company expects more than 13 percent profit growth over the next year.

The Independent

Cameron promises aid for riot victims

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:12 PM - 0 Comments

Businesses and homeowners damaged by the worst looting and rioting in London in decades are able to apply for compensation, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday. Those without insurance can apply for aid under the country’s riot damages act, he said. People will have up to 42 days to apply for financial help. Cameron expects approximately $320.4 million to be paid out in insurance claims, and about $32 million to be given out in aid to affected businesses. “We will not put up with this in our country,” Cameron said as police continued to arrest suspects in overnight raids.

CBC News

Matt Damon for President?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 3 Comments

Liberal filmmaker and political activist Michael Moore made serious internet waves on Wednesday when he suggested that 41-year-old Hollywood actor Matt Damon should run for the U.S. presidency. In a virtual town hall forum hosted by the blog FireDogLake, Moore argued that Damon’s credibility for the position lies in his willingness to express his political opinions, no matter who they may offend (Damon openly compared Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential campaign to a “bad Disney movie”). Political blogs and Hollywood gossip sites have been discussing the actor’s political credentials non-stop, but Damon has expressed no interest in running for office. But he has been active in criticizing the Tea Party recently, saying they are going to drive the American economy “off a cliff”.

The Globe and Mail

Take all the time you want . . .

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 1 Comment

Jamie Grill/Getty Images

For tired, overworked employees, it sounds like a dream come true: a job that offers the potential for unrestricted holidays. Forget the era of saving up precious vacation days. Instead, a growing number of companies now offer unlimited time off for their employees. But as the trend catches on, workplace psychologists warn unlimited vacations may not be the unbounded perk they seem.

Over the past few years, more and more companies have cast off the traditional rules surrounding paid leave. That’s partly because the lines between work and personal time have blurred, thanks to mobile computing and other technologies, making it harder for companies to keep track of exactly when and where someone is working. So rather than spell out rigid limits for holidays, the companies are allowing workers themselves to decide how much time to take off, on the condition that employees excel when they’re on the job and meet deadlines. The practice dates back to the 1990s, but gained fame in the last decade when Netflix adopted it. Since then, many smaller social networking companies, as well as law firms and consultancies in the U.S. and U.K., have followed suit, though so far Canadian companies have eschewed the perk.

No doubt workers who have already used up their vacation time and face another five long months before the end of the year are envious, but the unlimited vacation has its drawbacks, say experts. It’s supposed to boost employee morale, but there are concerns it could have the opposite effect. In a new legal paper written for the digital journal Bloomberg Law, Daniel McCoy and Dan Ko Obuhanych of the Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West warn that unrestricted time off can actually hurt employee spirits. “Some employees may believe that an unlimited vacation policy is akin to a ‘no vacation’ policy, particularly if the company has a workaholic culture where taking time off is discouraged,” they wrote. “Employees may feel a responsibility to limit the amount of vacation time taken, to fit in with their co-workers and the corporate culture.”

So a novel perk doesn’t always translate into reality. “It can be a good policy on paper, but you have to look at how it’s put into practice,” says Merv Gilbert, an organizational health psychologist in Vancouver. “There can be an implicit expectation that a company has this policy on paper, but it really doesn’t want you to use it.”

While most managers are no doubt wary of offering unrestricted time off out of fear that workers will disappear for months at a time, some experts believe that with open-ended vacations, many workers could end up taking even less time off than they otherwise would. When a company has a set vacation policy, an employee knows exactly how much time off his or her colleagues are permitted to take. In the absence of structured holidays, a race to the bottom may ensue as the realization sets in that the overachiever in the next cubicle hasn’t missed a day of work.

Those types of gnawing mind games are made worse when the job market is in the dumps, as it is in the U.S. All but the most self-assured workers may feel pressure to limit their holidays in order to keep their jobs. “In tough economic times there may be a belief that if I want to get ahead or stay with this company, I’d better not act on [the unlimited vacation offer],” says Gilbert.

Of course, that’s already a problem even when companies do have strict vacation rules. Research has shown that many employees already forego a chunk of their allotted time off. A study by Ipsos-Reid in 2008 determined that Canadian workers neglect to take the equivalent of 41 million vacation days a year that they’re owed. For these workers it’s the equivalent of giving $6.3 billion back to their employers, which is the amount lost in unclaimed paid holidays. Workaholics are the worst at taking time off, says Dr. Barbara Killinger, a psychologist specializing in work addiction. “[Workaholics] see themselves through others’ eyes, so if they are away for long, they worry people won’t see them as hard workers,” she says. In a company with no set rules for vacations, workaholics, who make up 30 to 35 per cent of the North American workforce, are more likely to succumb to their paranoia and may in fact take even less time off. Killinger says unlimited holidays may also be a way for companies to save money, since they would not have to pay out for unused vacation time.

Experts stop short of saying the unlimited vacation perk is an attempt at reverse psychology, but few bosses are likely to be upset if their underlings opt to put in more time at work as a result.

Canadian military to help Jamaica in hurricane season

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments

The Canadian military will send helicopters and dozens of personnel to Jamaica to help the country deal with the upcoming hurricane season, Defence Minister Peter McKay said Wednesday. The initiative will see 65 members of the Canadian Forces and three Griffin helicopters travel to the Caribbean country to conduct anticipated search and rescue operations. They will remain there until November. More than a dozen tropical storms have been forecast to hit Jamaica in the coming months. The Jamaican Defence Force does not have the capabilities to carry out search and rescue operations on its own. McKay’s announcement comes after the Canadian International Development Agency funded a $2.1 million disaster simulation exercise in Jamaica. The operation involved the country’s military, police, health ministry and other agencies.

Toronto Star

Flaherty says B.C. must repay Ottawa if HST scrapped

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 11:47 AM - 4 Comments

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters Wednesday that he expects British Columbia to repay $1.6 billion it received from Ottawa to implement the harmonized sales tax if it scraps the controversial levy. A province-wide mail-in referendum on whether to keep the HST ended August 5. Results aren’t expected until August 25. Flaherty said the repayment is in line with a 2009 accord between Ottawa and B.C. in which the province pledged not to eliminate the HST until July 1, 2015. An independent panel in B.C. estimated earlier this year that it would take 18 to 24 months for the province that transition back to a PST-GST system. The HST was implemented in July 2010 by the government of former Premier Gordon Campbell. The tax generated controversy in the province that led to this summer’s referendum. The HST applies taxes on more goods and services than the PST did.

Vancouver Sun

‘No good purpose is served’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 11:33 AM - 26 Comments

In Colombia yesterday, the Prime Minister attacked critics of free trade with the country.

“No good purpose is served in this country or in the United States by anybody who is standing in the way of the development of the prosperity of Colombia,” said Harper. ”Colombia is a wonderful country with great possibility and great ambition. And we need to be encouraging that every step of the way. That’s why we have made this a priority to get this deal done. We can’t block the progress of a country like this for protectionist reasons.”

… Opposition to the trade deal has come from critics such as the federal NDP in Canada. Similarly, U.S. lawmakers have dragged their feet on approving a similar free-trade deal with Colombia, citing concerns over human rights. But Harper scoffed at those concerns, calling them a phony excuse. ”I think there are protectionist forces in our country and in the United States that don’t care about development and prosperity in this part of the world. And that’s unfortunate.”

The free trade deal with Colombia was the subject of extensive debate in the House: see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

When I was reporting this piece on the House of Commons, MPs were debating a deal with Panama. The discussion I sat in on then—including debate between Scott Brison and Peter Julian and later Joe Comartin and Brad Trost—dealt with many of the same points of contention.

Trudeau and the ScrumMaster

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10:13 AM - 7 Comments

Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau was in Toronto to lend his support to Rugby Canada, who held a fundraiser and awareness campaign for Prostate Cancer Canada. In the middle of Toronto’s Dundas Square they set up a ScrumMaster machine.

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On the ground in central London

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 15 Comments

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

You know you’re in England when locals gather at the scene of a prospective riot armed only with cups of tea. On Camden High Street in central London—just across from the dank, urine-scented waters of the once-bustling Regent’s Canal—residents gathered Tuesday evening on the rooftops of boarded-up buildings to await pandemonium. They brought cameras and refreshments.

The night before, the neighbourhood was visited by hundreds of rioters, who wrestled with police from nightfall to early morning. The clash was part of a wave of violence that started Saturday in rough-and-tumble Tottenham, then spread, immobilizing large swaths of North London. Quivering (only slightly) in my bed, in a flat above a dollar store on gritty Camden Road, I listened to sirens, the patter of running and some especially foul-mouthed hollering.

A day later, Masud stood guard in front of his Camden Road convenience store. After Monday night, he was feeling nervous and planned to close early. His young employees were stationed up and down the street, ready to report the first sign of trouble. “I’ll close the minute I see something,” Masud said. As we talked, three Northumbria Police vans barrelled down the road. Evidently, the city had called for national backup.

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‘There is nothing recklessly imprecise about highlighting those obligations’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 34 Comments

On Tuesday, Paul noted the exchange of written words between Amnesty International and Jason Kenney. On Wednesday, Amnesty International responded to Mr. Kenney’s open letter.

You begin by chastising Amnesty International for raising these concerns when we should instead be focusing on human rights concerns in countries like Iran and North Korea.  Minister, we most certainly do.  A casual review of our most recent reports, actions and news releases covers such countries as Iran, Syria, Bahrain, China, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Georgia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.  We do regularly point to areas where we believe Canada’s own human rights laws, policy and practice are in need of reform.  Universal human rights principles apply as equally to Canada as they do to other countries.  Furthermore, the stronger Canada’s domestic human rights record is; the greater our leadership on the world stage. 

The Russians are coming

By Cynthia Reynolds - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:55 AM - 5 Comments

Jim Todd/OMAFRA; Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Stephen Gregory

In southwestern Ontario, in the middle of farm country, there’s a field that appears to have a major weed problem—but they’re not your typical garden-variety weeds. They’re Russian dandelions, and scientists believe they hold the answer to a seldom-discussed problem: the mounting worldwide shortage of natural rubber, a material that comes from a single tree (the Hevea brasiliensis—a.k.a. the Brazilian rubber tree), grown almost exclusively in one region (Southeast Asia), and which is crucial to our tire market. “We don’t view it as a strategic commodity like oil,” says the University of Guelph’s David Wolyn, one of a handful of Canadian scientists working to create natural rubber from the dandelions. “But there are 800 million cars on the road. Where’s all that rubber going to come from?”

The rubber-bearing properties of the Russian dandelion—which is actually endemic to Kazakhstan—have been known to Western scientists since the Second World War, when the U.S. was forced to search for an alternative source of rubber after the Axis powers seized control of the world supply. While synthetic rubber proved a useful substitute, it didn’t have the necessary chemical properties to completely replace natural rubber in tires, and it was entirely unsuitable for the heavy-duty tires of large vehicles, such as airplanes and military transports. (The general rule remains today: the larger the tire, the more natural rubber it requires.) However, research showed that the rubber fibres contained in the roots of Russian dandelions could serve as a viable—and domestic—alternative for these critical applications. When the war ended, the cheap source of rubber became available again and the science was shelved.

Now, precarious conditions affecting this US$20-billion market have hastened the retrieval of that decades-old research. Rapid development throughout China and India has caused demand for natural rubber to spike. Not only is supply failing to meet demand, it’s shrinking, as rubber farmers switch to more economical crops, particularly palm oil trees, and skilled rubber tappers migrate to the cities. Scientists also suspect climate change is altering growing conditions in Southeast Asia, resulting in poorer rubber harvests. As natural rubber prices have increased fivefold over the last decade, reaching an all-time high this April, and analysts estimate the global stockpile of tires at just 69 days’ worth of demand, efforts to cultivate the Russian dandelion are energizing. “It’s the best candidate we have to replace the Hevea tree,” says an industry expert who works with Penra, a U.S. consortium of scientists studying the dandelion and funded by government agencies and corporations such as Ford and Bridgestone. “It’s entirely feasible it can satisfy the North American market.”

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REVIEW: The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada’s Media in World War Two

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Most Canadians are probably still unaware of how active a theatre of war this country was between 1939 and 1945. Not only were we an arsenal and breadbasket for our allies, home to the war-sustaining convoy ports of Halifax and Sydney, and privy to secrets like the development of the atomic bomb, hundreds of Canadians died in East Coast U-boat attacks, while in B.C. there was a short-lived but real fear of Japanese assault. In short, we had secrets to keep and a censorship regime designed to do so. It was effectively voluntary: the government had weapons—threats of fines, imprisonment and closure—but its formally powerless Press Censorship Branch merely pointed out which proposed stories ran risks. A bold publication could have taken its chances and possibly, Bourrie argues, caused the entire system to crash.

But that possibility was always remote. The single most striking conclusion Bourrie comes to about the wartime relationship between censors and press is this: the censors—drawn from the ranks of the pre-war working media—were more resolute in their defence of press freedom than the often meekly obsequious press itself. Then as now, competitiveness drove media activity more than any other factor. With all papers under the same restraints, most news outlets, most of the time, were happy to combine complacency with patriotism, and not rock the boat.

In one notable case of far-sighted decency, it was the censors who fought off demands, by cabinet ministers and mainstream B.C. newspapers, for the closure of the Japanese-Canadian weekly New Canadian and the jailing of its editor. Tommy Shoyama kept his paper going through the war, until he was finally allowed to join the army in 1945. Later he became one of the most prominent Canadian public servants ever, a key figure in designing Saskatchewan’s pioneering medicare system and a federal deputy minister of finance. Censors as the good guys? Only in Canada.

REVIEW: The Good Muslim

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

It speaks to the depth of story in Anam’s second novel that the identity of the title character remains a mystery throughout. The obvious candidate is Sohail Haque, who turned to Islam after fighting in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. Now, some 13 years later, Sohail is the revered leader of a small community of devout Muslims who live in shacks on top of his mother’s home in Dhaka. For Sohail, religion is a salve for the psychic wounds he incurred during the war, the only way he can be “good” again.

By comparison, Sohail’s sister Maya is a heretic. An ardent nationalist, Maya is dismayed at her brother’s unwillingness to share heroic battle stories upon his return from the front. She disparages his gradual cleaving to Islam and is devastated by his marriage to the pious widow from across the road. When Maya tries to resuscitate Sohail’s love of the arts—rescuing discarded volumes of Rilke, Fitzgerald and Lawrence—Sohail burns the books. Maya then flees her family to work as a “lady doctor” in small villages where she saves scores of women and babies. Her continued flouting of religious conventions ultimately forces her to flee again, in 1984—this time back to her family—for her own safety.

But, as in Anam’s prize-winning first novel, A Golden Age, people’s experiences—of love, family, faith—are not so easily categorized. It turns out that Maya, too, can find solace in prayer; she even, for a moment, believes that her brother may have holy powers when his visit brings their mother back from the brink of death. And for all Sohail’s goodness, he has failed quite tragically as a father. Six-year-old Zaid runs around the compound untended, hungry and filthy. He longs to go to school, but Sohail sends him instead to a madrasa, where Zaid is abused.

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REVIEW: Vital Signs

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Plumbing a long, seemingly happy marriage is perennial fiction fodder that inevitably yields a mystery at its core. In her sixth novel, Tessa McWatt enters the terrain from an oblique angle: Anna, a beloved wife and mother of three grown children, has been diagnosed with an aneurysm dripping blood into her brain that has reduced her speech to “involuntary riddles” (“wet, sarcastic hibiscus,” she will say, or “braised harps strung in trees”). Left untreated, she could die at any moment, but surgery also could kill her.

Mike, Anna’s husband of 30 years, provides the first-person narration for this slim, powerful bullet of a book, a poignant post-mortem of an ongoing marriage. Mike is a devoted if selfish husband at sea without the woman he married, the family’s linchpin, fully rendered via flashbacks. When Mike snivels he’s “not worthy” of his worldly wife, who abandoned her literary ambitions to teach English at a Toronto community college and raise their three children as he built a graphic design firm, the reader believes him. He reveals that he bristled against domestic constraints with repeated adulteries that he debates disclosing to his wife, not to apologize but to share his wondrous discovery: “I never knew that defiance and betrayal could feel so f–king great.” Never does he consider that Anna might know this, too.

If there’s a complaint to be made with this finely rendered tale, it’s that McWatt is overly fond of overheated metaphors (“The yellow paint on the wall is cracked and blistering like our failed imaginations,” for one) that can clang against her usually elegant prose. Throughout, this is punctuated with Mike’s road-sign graphics (by illustrator Aleksandar Macasev), which seem gimmicky and distracting at first but slowly acquire a haunting, elegiac power. And what better reminder that marital mapping is only visible from the rear-view mirror?

REVIEW: A Stolen Life: A Memoir

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

When Jaycee Dugard appeared on TV in an interview with Diane Sawyer last July, her poise was astonishing. The California woman was kidnapped at age 11, held captive for 18 years, and raped repeatedly by her captor, Phillip Garrido. Dugard calmly acknowledged that certain sounds still haunt her—locks clicking, beds squeaking. She radiated compassion for her own children, to whom she gave birth when she was 14 and 17, and both of whom were fathered by Garrido. So dignified, so down-to-earth, so…normal. At least one viewer wondered: how is that possible?

Her new memoir sheds some light. In it, Dugard is candid about the horrors she endured, perhaps the worst of which were Garrido’s “runs”—long nights during which he binged on drugs and videotaped Dugard performing sex acts on him. But the book’s recurring theme is Dugard’s quiet determination, throughout her imprisonment, to love and be loved—not in relation to Garrido and his wife, Nancy, but with everyone else she met—a daddy-long-legs who lived above her makeshift toilet; the various cats she was allowed to keep as pets; eventually, her daughters. Perhaps Dugard’s most sanity-saving attachment was to her own mother, whom she never once stopped longing for. “I miss her,” she wrote plainly, year after year, in her journal. “Does she miss me?”

Over time, Garrido allowed Dugard into the backyard and even out in public—sometimes there were “family” excursions (Dugard was made to call Nancy “mom” and pretend she was her daughters’ sister). By then, she was so programmed by Garrido that she could barely make eye contact with anyone, let alone reach out for help. Still, readers can’t help but wonder, why did she never try to run? Sawyer pressed Dugard, but Dugard held her ground. She doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter. She survived. How many of us would have?

REVIEW: Plugged

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Anyone who finds the idea of Irish army peacekeepers inherently funny—as protagonist Daniel McEvoy, veteran of two harrowing tours of duty in Lebanon, puts it in his bemused manner, “you would use the Irish to keep the peace wouldn’t you, given they’ve such an excellent record of co-operation between communities on their own island”—is a potential Colfer fan. The Irish author has found commercial and critical success with his young adult series about Artemis Fowl, teenage criminal mastermind, and it was a safe bet that his first adult novel would also be a crime comedy. And Plugged—the title reflects both the shooting victims strewn through this tribute to 20th-century pulp fiction and poor Danny boy’s quest for a full head of hair—is very funny indeed.

McEvoy is a likeable mess of post-traumatic shock, convinced that the gypsy who told him he had an aura like “shark-infested waters” was sadly correct. But he’s a good guy. (Really: by page 31, he’s killed only four people, and each time—Gospel truth—it was self-defence. Actually, McEvoy has an irresistible urge to protect even total strangers, at least according to the army shrink who examined him after Danny volunteered to go back to Lebanon a second time.)

So when an occasional girlfriend, one of the hostesses at the scuzzy New Jersey strip joint where McEvoy works as a bouncer, is killed, and unlicensed cosmetic surgeon Zeb Kronski—the man responsible for McEvoy’s hair plugs and his sole friend in the world—goes missing, Danny goes looking for answers. He’s not a subtle man, and he quickly sets off a non-stop wave of violence involving homicidal cops, crooked lawyers, local Irish mobsters and his crazed upstairs neighbour. With Zeb—whether dead or merely missing—taking up residence in McEvoy’s damaged psyche, where he provides a sardonic Greek chorus of commentary, it all adds up to an exhausting but exhilarating ride, for character and reader both.