A tough-on-crime bill that goes too far

By the editors - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 7 Comments

The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot

How tough is tough enough when it comes to crime?

A Maclean’s investigation this week by Ken MacQueen and Patricia Treble (“Too many cops?”) offers a surprising look at the unintended consequences of Canada’s recent tough-on-crime agenda.

The overall crime rate in Canada is at its lowest level since the early 1970s, and serious crime is similarly falling. This is good news, of course. And it may in large part be due to the fact that police staffing levels are at a 30-year high nationwide.

And yet MacQueen and Treble uncover plenty of statistical and anecdotal evidence to suggest it may be possible to have too many cops on the street. Beside the obvious budgetary issues, local constabularies around the country are spending a disproportionate amount of their time on increasingly minor offences in an apparent effort to keep busy. Drug possession and traffic violations appear to be the only significant growth areas in the national criminal portfolio.

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Why your teenager can’t use a hammer

By Cynthia Reynolds - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 145 Comments

Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

It’s hard not to laugh when Barry Smith starts telling stories about the hapless young workers he has to deal with. Smith, who runs Toronto-area roofing company RoofSmith Canada, tells of one who didn’t come to work because his cat had fleas, and another who jumped off a shed roof, even though he’d just tossed bags of nails into the garbage bin below. But the laughing tapers off when Smith, 46, talks about skills.

“They don’t know how to handle a tool properly,” he says quietly. “They’re bright kids, but they hold a hammer at the top instead of the bottom, so it takes four swings instead of one to get a nail in. They don’t know how to read the short lines on a tape measure and they’ve never used power tools, which makes you really cautious.” He says they can’t seem to detect the patterns of the work—you rip up part of the roof, that gets thrown down, that goes into the garbage—so they just stand around. “It can get really frustrating.”

There’s much talk about a coming crisis in the trades—that we simply don’t have enough new recruits to replace an aging workforce. By some estimates, Canada could face a shortfall of up to one million skilled tradespeople by 2020. To address this shortage, the government is funding a variety of incentives to attract young talent and it’s beefing up our apprenticeship training programs—registrations are at an all-time high. But a stumbling block has emerged that’s getting harder to ignore: by all accounts, we have the least handy, most mechanically deficient generation of young people. Ever.

It’s easy to see why.

Shop classes are all but a memory in most schools—a result of liability fears, budget cuts and an obsession with academics. Still, even in vocational high schools where shop classes endure, a skills decline is evident. One auto shop teacher says he’s teaching his Grade 12 students what, 10 years ago, he taught Grade Nines. “We would take apart a transmission, now I teach what it is.” Remarkably, most of his Grade 11 students arrive not knowing which way to turn a screwdriver to tighten a screw. If he introduces a nut threaded counterclockwise, they have trouble conceptualizing the need to turn the screwdriver the opposite way. That’s because, he says, “They are texting non-stop; they don’t care about anything else. It’s like they’re possessed.”

At home, spare time is no longer spent doing things like dismantling gadgets, building model airplanes or taking apart old appliances with dad; there’s no tinkering with cars, which are so computerized now you couldn’t tinker if you wanted to. A 2009 poll showed one-third of teens spend zero time per week doing anything hands-on at all; the same as their parents. Instead, by one count, entertainment media eats up 53 hours a week for kids aged eight to 18. As for those new apprentices? They’re signing up and then they quit. Depending on the province and trade, some 40 to 75 per cent drop out before completing their program.

In Nisku, Alta., John Wright, the technical supervisor at manufacturing company Argus Machines, oversees 12 apprentices in the welding, machinist and millwright trades. Three years ago, he started noticing two tiers of applicants, those with basic mechanical skills and a new crop who, as he says, had no clue what they were doing. He speculated the disparity stemmed from their upbringing.

“The ones from the farm community weren’t afraid to get in there and get dirty. They could figure out basic repairs. And when you have to feed the chickens and milk the cows every day, you learn how to show up to work on time.” Those who didn’t have hands-on experiences couldn’t grasp basic nuts-and-bolts mechanics, they couldn’t solve simple problems. Worse, they lacked the same work ethic, which made them too difficult to train. The implications reach well beyond the trades.

Occupational therapist Stacy Kramer, clinical director at Toronto’s Hand Skills for Children, offers one explanation for what’s happening. It begins with babies who don’t get put on the ground as much, which means less crawling, less hand development. Then comes the litany of push-button toy gadgets, which don’t exercise the whole hand. That leads to difficulty developing skills that require a more intricate coordination between the hand and brain, like holding a pencil or using scissors, which kindergarten teachers complain more students can’t do. “We see 13-year-olds who can’t do up buttons or tie laces,” she says. “Parents just avoid it by buying Velcro and T-shirts.” Items that—not incidentally—chimpanzees could put on.

When the first apes climbed down from the trees to explore life on the ground some three million years ago, it was their hands, no longer used for branch swinging, that helped trigger our evolution. Hand structure changed, enabling us to perform increasingly complex grips. The conversation between hand and brain grew more complex, too. We advanced to the unique ability to visualize an idea, then create that vision with our hands. That’s meant everything from developing tools to imagining airplanes to performing open-heart surgery. So what happens if that all-important hand-brain conversation gets shortchanged at a young age? Can it be reintroduced later, or does that aptitude dissipate?

“We don’t really know,” says neurologist Dr. Frank Wilson, author of The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture. “That research wouldn’t get through an ethics committee, even though it’s happening on a massive scale in our homes every day.” We only have these uncomfortable clues, such as young people who can’t visualize how to best wield a hammer. Or teens who, despite years of unscrewing bottle tops and jars, can’t intuitively apply the righty-tighty, lefty-loosey rule of thumb.

Predictably, this is affecting other industries that depend on a mechanically inclined workforce. After NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab noticed its new engineers couldn’t do practical problem solving the way its retirees could, it stopped hiring those who didn’t have mechanical hobbies in their youth. When MIT realized its engineering students could no longer estimate solutions to problems on their own, that they needed their computers, it began adding remedial building classes to better prepare these soon-to-be professionals for real-world jobs, like designing airplanes and bridges. Architecture schools are also adding back-to-basics courses. As for the trades? Veterans like Barry Smith have little choice but to attempt to nurse a hands-on ability among new recruits one hammer faux pas at a time, teaching the next generation of tradespeople just how to hit a nail on the head.

Indian wedding crashers

By Claire Ward - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 5 Comments

Kris Pannecoucke/Aurora Photos/Getstock

When Russell Brand crashed an Indian wedding in London last fall, the comedian took over the dance floor and later tweeted about his playful intrusion. The bride and groom, however, were not amused. As it turns out, they are not alone: in London and beyond, Indian wedding crashing is becoming something of a sport.

“Indian weddings are easy,” says Jee, a 28-year-old Oxford student and veteran wedding crasher. “There are so many people.” The Canadian student, who identifies as “brown,” is part of a growing crowd of twenty-somethings who crash Indian weddings for fun. Jee has done it 10 to 15 times, from Bangladesh to London, Edmonton to San Francisco. If you make friends, dance with a few girls, or talk up the older folks, it’s “harmless,” he says. “Everyone has a good time.”

So how does Jee get away with it? He brings a card for the newlyweds, and asks children for the names of the bride and groom. “Bring up leukemia or divorce,” he adds—“people don’t ask questions.”

Why old people are suddenly watchable on TV

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 0 Comments

Photo by Robert Voets/CBS via Getty Images

When Ted Danson was chosen as the new lead on CSI, the surprising thing wasn’t that a comedy actor (Cheers) was going to star in TV’s most famous gory forensic mystery. What stunned people was that a major U.S. show will have a hero who’s over 60. Danson, who was born in 1947 and has been bald since his sitcom days, had been playing character parts on shows like HBO’s Bored to Death. That’s what older actors usually do in television, where advertisers care mostly about reaching young viewers. But Bill Newcott, entertainment editor for the American Association of Retired Persons magazine, told Maclean’s there’s an increased awareness that “the longer the star has been out there, the more comfortable we are with them.” Older people are in.

Mark Harmon, who will turn 60 this year, is the star of the most-watched show on television, NCIS. Larry David is 64 and getting some of his best ratings on Curb Your Enthusiasm. And the recently announced Emmy nominees included 63-year-old Kathy Bates, whose Harry’s Law was one of the few successful new shows last season, and Betty White, who now specializes in jokes about her advanced age.

What’s causing this influx of people who are 60 and up? It may help that reality TV, which always seems to influence its scripted cousin, has been proving that you don’t need youth to get young people watching. American Idol has almost matched the success of the Simon Cowell years thanks to Steven Tyler, a man in his 60s who gets flirty with young contestants; he has completely overshadowed Jennifer Lopez, who is 20 years younger but much less popular with her own age cohort.

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Choking the oil sands

By Chris Sorensen and Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:21 AM - 18 Comments

Jiri Rezac/WWF/Polaris

Over the next few weeks, as many as 2,000 climate change protesters are expected to descend on Washington in an effort to draw more Americans into the debate over Alberta’s oil sands—one of the most carbon-intensive sources of fossil fuel on the planet. But this time, anti-oil sands groups aren’t focusing on the vast open pit mines near Fort McMurray, which one activist memorably compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s fire-spewing and charcoal-covered realm of Mordor, but on a major pipeline project that the industry needs to move forward with its expansion plans.

Supported by such high-profile environmentalists and left-leaning luminaries as David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, the protesters, who will risk arrest during their White House sit-in, hope to stop President Barack Obama’s administration from approving the proposed 2,673-km Keystone XL pipeline that is being built by TransCanada Corp. and would move crude oil from northern Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, north of the border, anti-pipeline rallies are scheduled to take place over the next few months in Vancouver and Ottawa. In addition to the Keystone XL project, the Canadian rallies will also focus on a proposed 1,170-km pipeline, built by Enbridge Inc., that would connect northern Alberta to an oil-shipping terminal in Kitimat, B.C., running through an area that opponents claim is pristine wilderness and the habitat of a sacred species of bear.
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REVIEW: The Family Fang

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

“It’s a sad world. It’s unforgiving,” sing Child A, age eight, and Child B, age six. “Kill all parents, so you can keep living.” The children are busking, A on guitar and B on the drums. The crowd cringes politely until a man yells: “You’re terrible!” and suddenly mayhem breaks out, half the onlookers defending the kids and half attacking them. A and B finish their set, and flee the fracas. Later, at a pre-arranged pickup location, their father—composer of Kill All Parents and instigator of said fracas—tousles their hair. “You really were terrible,” he tells them tenderly.

Welcome to the childhoods of Annie (A) and Buster (B) Fang. Their parents, Caleb and Camille, are artists who work with a unique medium: human vulnerability. Their “pieces” include plunging a planeload of passengers into agonizing awkwardness by staging a marriage-proposal rejection over the flight intercom. They have also dabbled in gunplay and self-immolation, and even flirted with incest. And, despite being advised by Caleb’s mentor that “kids kill art,” the Fangs have built their award-winning career on the (often involuntary) participation of Child A and B in each of their “strange and beautiful” creations.

Kevin Wilson recently had the illustrations of Annie and Buster that appear on the cover of his second novel tattooed on his left arm. It’s easy to see why he would want to keep such spirited and fallible characters close. As young adults, the siblings enjoy success in their own creative pursuits, then falter quite dazzlingly when each unwittingly pulls a Fang—Annie by one-upping a last-minute stage direction to bare her breasts, Buster by abandoning all journalistic integrity (and common sense) while reporting on war vets and “spud guns.” They wind up back at home, the last place either ever expected to go willingly. This allows the Fangs one final performance, through which Wilson cunningly blows up an essential truth about families—for all your efforts to escape from your parents, you spend most of your life trying to catch up with them.

AOL struggles to reinvent itself

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Reuters/Brendan McDermi

A decade ago, AOL was one of the most promising firms in the online world. Tens of millions of North American users relied on its dial-up Internet access services and came to know its trademark greeting, “You’ve got mail!” Today, its future appears murky as the former giant tries to claw back into the fold as a major Internet presence.

The company took a walloping on the stock market last week when its shares fell almost 26 per cent, hitting their lowest point since AOL ended its disastrous merger with Time Warner in December 2009. The sell-off occurred after it released second-quarter earnings, which showed total revenues were down eight per cent over last year. In response to the hit in share value, the company approved a scheme to buy up US$250 million of its own shares.

The market shellacking was a major blow for a company that’s been fighting for the past year to reinvent itself as a new media firm. It bought the news website the Huffington Post for US$315 million in February and the tech website TechCrunch last year. After installing Arianna Huffington as the head of its new Huffington Post Media Group, AOL opened several new websites—17 during the last quarter alone. AOL now boasts nearly 10 million unique visitors to its websites every month. That’s more than the New York Times, according to the company’s CEO, Tim Armstrong.

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The joy of politics

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Andrew Cash recalls his introduction to politics.

On a bracing day in February 2010, we mainstreeted along St. Clair, saying hello at cafés and small businesses. Two hours and four espressos later, Jack had delighted cashiers, business owners, seniors and hipsters alike. But I also saw the delight in his eyes; the whole experience for him was enlivening, positive – and hopeful. 

An hour before a fundraiser, I was standing outside the Dakota Tavern when I received a text from Jack, from his hospital bed where he was recovering from hip surgery: “I can call in via speaker phone on a BlackBerry and you can put it up to the microphone and I can say a few words to the folks,” he offered.

Now magazine has posted stories from its archives covering Jack Layton’s entire political career and Adam Radwanski recalls a few moments with the NDP leader.

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 11:51 PM - 0 Comments

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple who led the company to huge success with such products as the iPod, iPhone and iPad, announced today that he is stepping down from his position as CEO of the company. In a letter to shareholders, Jobs explained that he had promised to step down if he could no longer meet his duties and that “unfortunately, that day has come.” Jobs, who received a liver transplant as part of his treatment for pancreatic cancer, had been on medical leave for most of this year. He will be replaced as Apple CEO by Tim Cook, the chief operating officer of Apple, who has been running the company in Jobs’ absence.

BBC News

The Commons: Mourning Jack

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 6:55 PM - 106 Comments

Here lay Jack Layton. Here where he basked in the warm glow of the television lights and held forth each afternoon. Here before the grand door to our grandest room. Here where you can turn your gaze just slightly upward and see the Prime Minister’s office. Here a few flights of stairs below the ornate office that Mr. Layton was to occupy for the next four years. Here between the portraits of Borden and King, surrounded by carved sandstone, underneath a ceiling of decorated glass. Here wrapped in our beautiful flag.

Down the hall and around the rotunda and down another flight of stairs and then outside and along the path that leads to the magnificent Centre Block, a thousand people made their way to his casket. In Toronto, a thousand words written in chalk in a public square. On the lawn of Parliament Hill, probably several thousand millilitres of orange soda mixed in among the flowers and notes and balloons.

This is how we mourn and remember and mark and honour. Continue…

Was Jack Layton sufficiently upfront with voters regarding his health?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 4:04 PM - 21 Comments

Dogs gone

By Cathy Gulli - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 3:31 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Janine Budgell

When Janine Budgell, co-founder of the Iqaluit Humane Society (IHS), looked at her calendar for August, she balked. With only eight volunteers to offer their spare hours to feed, walk and clean up after 11 dogs, Budgell needed help. She put up posters, sent emails and “pleaded and begged,” she says, but “it didn’t work out.” The day Budgell had dreaded since IHS opened in 2008 had arrived: Nunavut’s first and only animal shelter would close.

On Aug. 9, once the dogs were adopted in Iqaluit or flown to shelters in Ottawa and Quebec, Budgell locked up. That evening, she went to city hall and told the mayor and councillors about the obstacles plaguing IHS: too few shelter personnel, and not one veterinarian living in Nunavut. Insufficient funding—the annual budget of $50,000 came from puppy washes, bake sales and bingo nights. An inadequate facility: at the shelter’s peak, 31 dogs were “jam-packed” in a one-bedroom apartment donated by the city. And rampant animal overpopulation. Nunavut, says Budgell, has “the highest incidence of reported dog bites to humans of anywhere in Canada. Extra dogs on the streets isn’t going to reduce that.”

Stray dogs have long been a problem in Iqaluit. Spaying and neutering only happens twice a year, when a vet comes to town. Even then, it’s at a cost that many owners can’t afford or refuse to pay. And breeding “southern” dogs such as terriers, beagles and poodles with traditional huskies or wolves has created a population unfit for the North—which owners realize too late. “They’re referred to as ‘Iqaluit specials,’ ” says Budgell, and lack “double-fur coats and blubber deposits.”

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Explaining the meaning

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 2:44 PM - 10 Comments

Readers of the Dish try to explain Jack Layton to an American audience.

It is perhaps too easy to say that politicians make people cynical, but perhaps the problem flows both ways, as the more cynical we become so too do the politicians.  Layton, for however one may criticize or traduce him, was anything but cynical: he was energetic and optimistic and these qualities made him immensely likable even to his foes.  Today, people are remembering the man and celebrating him as honourable.  It really is dulce et decorum est. 

A country is genuinely mourning a politician, believe it or not.

Looking back

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 1:22 PM - 8 Comments

The Agenda convenes a panel to remember Jack Layton.

The Agenda team also put together a compilation of some of Mr. Layton’s moments on TVO. Continue…

Facebook changes sharing controls

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 1:02 PM - 1 Comment

Facebook has announced sweeping changes to privacy control on the social networking website. Users can now approve or reject photos and posts that they are tagged in before the content shows up on their profiles. The move comes two months after Google launched Google Plus, a competing social networking site that allows selective content sharing within small groups. The changes will roll out in the “coming days,” according to Facebook.

CBC News

The Show That Deadline.com Brought Back

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Not long after I mentioned the endless Breaking In posts done by Deadline.com‘s Nellie Andreeva, she announces that the show will be coming back after being canceled. I don’t think I have ever seen a website campaign as hard to save a show as Deadline campaigned for Breaking In – other than fan websites set up especially for that purpose, I mean. Right after the cancellation, and for a long time after, there would be posts wondering why Fox canceled the show when it tested so well and the ratings after American Idol were better than other shows that ran after American Idol, and so on.

I don’t doubt that the show was newsworthy: it was, after all, given a second chance by Fox and kept in contention, while most shows are just plain canceled. But a lot of the Deadline posts seemed to be specifically from the point of view of the production company, Sony, suggesting (as I said before) that Sony was pushing very hard to save the show and was trying to do so, in part, by feeding a lot of information to to the press.

The Sony executives, who believed in the show and were trying to put as much pressure as possible on Fox, seemed to have a lot of success in getting stories about what a bad idea Fox had in canceling it, how the show got good ratings (they weren’t all that good considering the time slot, though they weren’t terrible), how the testing was great. When we saw Deadline.com posts about Sony’s fight for the show and Fox’s second thoughts, we were seeing showbiz news, but I think we were also seeing the result of a very successful campaign by Sony to keep the show in the news and keep the pressure on Fox. And that’s why Breaking In is back and Traffic Light isn’t. Even though the one time Breaking In aired away from Idol, its ratings were basically as bad as Traffic Light‘s. But Traffic Light didn’t have a high-pressure campaign on its behalf.

Maybe it shows the advantages, to the producers, of not being owned by the network: it’s doubtful that Fox’s own studio would have blitzed its own network as aggressively and endlessly as Sony blitzed Fox and the media. Sony, perhaps because it isn’t affiliated with a single network (even Warners has a stake in the CW), seems to be one of the most aggressive studios when it comes to selling its product to networks. This is the studio that got ‘Til Death an extra season by practically giving it away to Fox. This is the network that still has Rules of Engagement on the air, even if it’s on a Saturday. And on a more artistically acclaimed level, this is the studio that has managed to get three seasons for Community and might very well get more. When a network buys a comedy from Sony, executives should realize that if they try to cancel it, they’re going to wake up near the severed head of the old Columbia Pictures woman.

Sex scandal may topple Australian Labor Party

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:59 PM - 2 Comments

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard may be forced into a by-election by a possible sex scandal plaguing Labor backbencher Craig Thomson. Police are investigating allegations that Thomson, the former national secretary of the Health Services Union, used his union credit card to pay thousands of dollars to a brothel in Sydney. Thomson denies the allegations, arguing that his credit card was stolen and used illegally, and Gillard supports his claim. But if Thomson is convicted, he would have to step down from parliament, triggering a by-election that the Labor Party would likely lose (polls show that support for the party remains the lowest in the country).

The Independent

Libyan rebels use Waterloo-built robot against Gadhafi

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:55 PM - 0 Comments

A drone created by University of Waterloo graduates is being used in the fight against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The robot, called the Aeryon Scout, flies up to 500 metres off the ground to take pictures and stream video. Rebel forces use the drone to find Gadhafi forces without risking human life. The battery-powered unarmed drone is worth about $100,000 and fits in a suitcase-sized case.

The Record

Indian PM seeks end to hunger-strike protest

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:51 PM - 2 Comments

India’s Prime Minister has reached out to other parties, hoping to stem the political fall-out from an ongoing hunger-strike by anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare. Hazare says he has lost six kilograms during the protest, which has galvanized India and caused chaos for the political class. Hazare, a former local politician, has called for Indians to rise up in a “second freedom struggle,” this time against corruption (the first being against the British). Hazare has demanded the government pass stringent new anti-corruption legislation. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with lawmakers from all parties Wednesday, but remains hesitant to give in to all of Hazare’s demands.

Al Jazeera English

The Observer

Canadian consumers grow wary as markets flutter

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:42 PM - 0 Comments

Consumer confidence hit a two-year low in Canada in August as stock markets around the world lurched through weeks of volatile trading. The Conference Board of Canada’s index of consumer confidence dropped 6.6 points to 74.7, driven down by fears over future job growth and a sense that Canadians are putting off major purchases. Consumers in the Prairies remain Canada’s most confident, according to the board. Confidence in the Prairie provinces dropped eight points to 90.5. B.C. Consumers were the only ones to grow more confident in August, climbing 1.1 points to 86.1.

Canadian Press

Gadhafi defiant, elusive as Tripoli fighting continues

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:33 PM - 0 Comments

Moammar Gadhafi released a defiant audio message through Libyan media still loyal to his regime on Wednesday, pledging to fight “until victory or death.” Gadhafi remains elusive even after rebels captured his fortified compound of Bab al-Aziziya in Tripoli on Tuesday. While the rebel forces control much of the capital, pockets of resistance remain as Gadhafi loyalists continue to fight. CNN reported Wednesday that there was heavy gunfire near Tripoli’s Rixos hotel, where pro-Gadhafi gunmen had been holding more than three-dozen foreign journalists since the weekend. CNN correspondent Matthew Chance, who was among them, said the journalists were frightened and unsure whether they would be killed or used as human shields. He said they were released when the young gunmen holding them hostage decided to let them go. As fighting continues in Libya, several towns remain loyal to Gadhafi. A spokesman for his forces told Libyan state television, which has been taken over by the rebels, that pro-Gadhafi forces will re-take Tripoli.

Washington Post

Live stream: Jack Layton lies in state in Ottawa

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:31 PM - 0 Comments

Click on the image below to watch streaming coverage as mourners pay tribute to NDP leader Jack Layton.

Harper visits Resolute Bay

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:27 PM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered his condolences to the community of Resolute Bay, Nunavut, on Tuesday. “Though Resolute appears on the map to be a very long distance away from many Canadians, the reality is that the families here are in the thoughts and prayers of millions of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.” Harper’s annual Arctic visit commenced only two days after the First Air flight crash that killed 12 people and injured 3 others this weekend. Among the victims was a little girl, a couple due to be married and a New Brunswick construction worker who had overcome his fear of flying to board the plane. Harper is also scheduled to visit a gold mine in the town of Baker Lake.

CTV Edmonton

Layton’s casket lies in state on Parliament Hill

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

The casket containing the body of Jack Layton lies in state in the foyer of the House of Commons in Ottawa on Wednesday. Quiet descended on the crowd as Layton’s casket arrived. Draped with a Canadian flag, the casket was carried into the centre block of Parliament by six RCMP officers in ceremonial red serge. Layton’s widow, NDP member Olivia Chow, walked alone behind the casket. She was followed by Layton’s two children Michael and Sarah, and his granddaughter Beatrice. After the coffin was placed on a raised platform, dignitaries entered the room to pay their respects. Among them were former Governor General Michaëlle Jean, Laureen Harper, former NDP leader Ed Broadbent and interim leader Nycole Turmel. Fifty-four NDP MPs are also expected to pay their respects to their deceased leader as he lays in state in Parliament. On Friday, Layton will be moved to Toronto City Hall, where he will remain until his state funeral at Roy Thompson Hall the following day.

The Toronto Star