The little old lady from Manitoba

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 1:19 PM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Press/Frank Gunn

Canadian actress Frances Bay, grandma to the stars, died the age of 92 in a Los Angeles hospital on Friday, Sept. 23, 2011. The following profile was published on January 23, 2008, prior to her receiving a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Frances Bay. Like so many character actors, she has a face that’s instantly recognizable yet hard to place. She’s best known from Seinfeld — as the peeved lady who bought the bakery’s last loaf of marble rye bread only to have Jerry Seinfeld snatch it out of her hands. Gaining cult status as “the marble rye lady,” Bay popped up in two more Seinfeld episodes, including the series finale. You might also remember her as Fonzie’s grandma in Happy Days. Or Adam Sandler’s grandma in Happy Gilmore. Or Kyle MacLachlan’s aunt in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet — staring at a robin perched on a windowsill with an insect in its beak and uttering the film’s penultimate line of dialogue: “I don’t see how they could do that. I could never eat a bug.”

Frances Bay, who turned 89 this week, must be the oldest Canadian actress still working in Hollywood. She has appeared in some 30 movies and over 100 TV shows, even though she didn’t launch her screen career until she was 60. And she has the distinction of gracing the final episodes of two other classic sitcoms — Happy Days and Who’s the Boss. Now friends and family of the actress, who grew up in Dauphin, Man. (pop. 8,000), are petitioning to cement her reputation with a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto — alongside names like Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, and Shania Twain. An online campaign (www.petitiononline.com/franny) has drawn almost 3,000 signatures, and glowing letters of support from Henry Winkler (Fonzie), Monty Hall (who asked that her star sit next to his), and Seinfeld, who conceded that she “stole the scene as the ‘Rye Lady.’ ”

All this is especially poignant now that Bay does her acting in a wheelchair — her right leg was amputated below the knee in 2002 after she was hit by a 17-year-old driver while crossing the street. She was on her way to a bakery, looking for a special Thanksgiving dessert.

The daughter of Anna and Max Goffman — Russian Jews who immigrated to Canada to escape czarist tyranny — Bay was born in Manville, Alta. But the family soon moved to Dauphin, where her parents ran a clothing store. (She had a brother, Erving Goffman, who became an eminent sociologist.) Bay began acting in school plays, often cast as a princess, a role that stuck as she pursued a career onstage in Winnipeg and on CBC Radio. After a string of princess parts, Bay recalls grumbling to the director, “When am I going to play more character roles?” His reply: “My dear, you are a princess now and you will stay a princess as long as you can.”

After studying with acting legend Uta Hagen in New York, Bay became enthralled with Winnipeg’s leftist New Theatre Group in the 1930s. “It was when labour unions were struggling to be recognized,” she says. “I wasn’t a labour sort of person. I’m a middle-class Jewish gal. But this theatre was so exciting. I’m a socialist today, if that means anything.” Bay went on to host a CBC radio show during the Second World War and with her dulcet voice she became known as the sweetheart of Canadian troops abroad.

After the war, Bay put her career on hold to have a family. Her husband, Chuck Bay, was her childhood sweetheart. She vowed to marry him at nine, when she first glimpsed him across a playground in Dauphin, but waited until she was 26. Chuck was a clothing executive with a Harvard M.B.A., and a job that took them to the United States. “It was the pre-feminist period when, at 6 o’clock, dinner should be on the table,” recalls Bay. “I had a child, and I was devoted to my husband’s career. They’re both gone now.”

Her son died tragically at 23. (Chuck died in 2002, and she lost her leg five months later.) After her son’s death, Bay resumed her career, playing her first TV role in Kojak, then making her film debut in Foul Play (1978). In films from Twins to The Grifters, and TV shows from ER to Anne of Avonlea — for which she won a Gemini — she found her niche as Everygrandma, the eccentric old lady with a twinkle in her eye. David Lynch couldn’t get enough of her: after Blue Velvet, he cast her in Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, and its movie spinoff, Fire Walk With Me.

In an effusive letter to the Walk of Fame selection committee, Winkler called Bay “an inspiration,” explaining that, as “my make-believe grandmother on Happy Days, she was in truth my only grandmother.” His own grandparents had died in Nazi Germany. Sadly, Frances Bay never had a chance to have her own grandchildren, but Dauphin’s princess became grandma to the stars.

Study reveals harsh toll of surrogacy

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 1:07 PM - 1 Comment

Surrogate mothers often feel deep depression and separation anxiety after handing over their babies, a new study shows. Researchers say the the findings should serve as a warning to those who screen potential candidates for surrogacy. The role of surrogates remains little studied. At a conference this week, a lawyer admitted that the legality of surrogacy agreements has never really been tested in court.

National Post

Former GG continues to rack up public bills

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:56 PM - 25 Comments

Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson has billed the government for more than $500,000 in secretarial help since leaving her post, the Toronto Star revealed Friday. Clarkson’s office defended the payments. The former GG gets hundreds of letters and dozens of requests for speaking engagements related to her time in the job every month, a spokesman said. NDP MP Pat Martin called the payments “ridiculous.”

Toronto Star

Nicolas Sarkozy’s best man investigated in arms-sale probe

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:56 PM - 0 Comments

A financial scandal threatened to engulf French President Nicolas Sarkozy Thursday after two of his associates, including the best man at his wedding, were placed under formal investigation in an arms-trading probe. Nicolas Bazire, now the head of a luxury goods line, stands accused of handling illegal kickbacks tied to arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the 1990s. The money was allegedly used to fund the failed presidential campaign of former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. Bazire was the best man at Sarkozy’s 2008 wedding to Carla Bruni. Thierry Gaubert, another close associate of Sarkozy’s, is under investigation for the same alleged crimes.

The Independent

Float plane crash on Yellowknife street kills two

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 0 Comments

Two people are dead and seven injured after a Twin Otter float plane crashed into a house on a Yellowknife street early Thursday afternoon. The plane went down on a narrow peninsula that juts out into Great Slave Lake after it clipped a building and hit some power lines. The plane, which is owned by Arctic Sunwest Charters, was carrying two crew members and seven passengers. People on the street reportedly rushed to clear debris and help the injured after the plane went down, the CBC reports. RCMP Const. Kathy Law told the CBC that the plane was coming in for a landing on Great Slave Lake when it crashed between two buildings. The identities of the deceased will not be released until next of kin have been notified.

CBC News

Cameron and Harper call for ‘decisive action’ on global economy

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:39 PM - 1 Comment

British Prime Minister David Cameron, visiting Ottawa on Thursday, joined his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper in calling for “decisive” action on curbing the European debt crisis. Cameron was in Ottawa for a brief bilateral visit, meeting in private with Harper before addressing the House of Commons. In his speech, he emphasized that he would never support Britain’s entry into the eurozone—the area made up of European countries using the euro—but that his country has a vital interest in that region’s economic stability. “The problems in the eurozone are now so big that they have begun to threaten the stability of the world economy,” he said. Both Harper and Cameron joined other world leaders in signing an open letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who will chair the upcoming G20 meeting in Cannes. The letter expresses the perceived urgency in reinstating investor confidence in global markets and curbing public debt in many countries.

CBC News

REVIEW: Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage

By Anne Kingston - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:29 PM - 1 Comment

The HBO show Big Love’s depiction of a polygamous fundamentalist Mormon marriage stoked controversy and drew a big audience. Now the family that inspired the series have written an intriguing, rotating, first-person(s) account of their union that produced 24 children. It reveals that polygamy requires more labour and sacrifice than most of us are willing to put into a monogamous marriage.

The Dargers, all raised in plural unions, knew one another growing up. Joe’s simultaneous courtship of cousins Alina and Vicki, though disconcerting, is candidly rendered, with the women experiencing jealousy and insecurity, suppressed passions and much negotiation. Joe and Alina wed legally in 1989; the same day he married Vicki in a church ceremony. A decade later, Vicki’s twin, Valerie, and her five children joined the clan after she was given a church “release” from her union to an abusive husband. Eventually, the quartet began speaking publicly to engender tolerance of what they see as their right to religious expression.

Obvious points of curiosity are addressed. Sexual intimacy (“nothing kinky,” writes Joe) is organized on a rotating nightly schedule; the wives never discuss sex lest it spark jealousy. Polygamy is no male sexual bonanza: “there are easier and cheaper ways for men to get sex,” Joe writes, as only a man with two wives sharing a birthday and two with the same wedding anniversary would know. The women, all distinct and opinionated personalities, view one another less as rivals (though it happens) than as “soulmates.” Their 5,500-sq.-foot, 10-bedroom Salt Lake County house is run with precision but also flexibility. That polygamy renders women vulnerable is addressed, if in passing. Imprisoned Mormon sect leader Warren Jeffs horrifies him, Joe writes, as did some Big Love plot lines—which isn’t surprising. Real life in this case is far more tame.

Pakistan warns U.S. it may lose key ally

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:22 PM - 4 Comments

Pakistan is warning the U.S. that it may lose an important ally if it continues to wield accusations of Pakistani support for insurgents in Afghanistan. Speaking to Geo TV in New York, Pakistani Foreign Minister Rabbini Khar addressed the U.S. directly. “You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people,” she said. “If you are choosing to do so and if they are choosing to do so it will be at [the United States’] own cost.” The statements come a day after Mike Mullen, the top officer for the U.S. military, accused the Pakistani intelligence agency of supporting Afghanistan’s insurgent Haqqani network in several attacks in recent months, including last week’s attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. He called the Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence service.

Should officials have to reimburse the government for the personal use of government jets?

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:01 PM - 10 Comments

How to nearly end up in Guantanamo

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Koring obtains new documents related to the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Margin notes on CSIS documents related to the conversation, marked “Secret” and now in the possession of The Globe and Mail, highlight the fact that Mr. Abdelrazik was only on a U.S. no-fly list – insufficient to keep him from returning to Canada. It’s unclear what transpired during the conversation, but soon afterward both Air Canada and Lufthansa abruptly cancelled Mr. Abdelrazik’s ticket home. He would spend another five years in forced exile.

The “Canadian Eyes Only” documents also reveal for the first time officially that U.S. security agents wanted Mr. Abdelrazik shipped to Guantanamo Bay. If CSIS managed to delay Mr. Abdelrazik’s return in 2004, it had the effect of buying time while U.S. agents worked to render him to the notorious camp for suspected terrorists.

Debating justice reform: maybe it’ll have to happen in court

By John Geddes - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 11:29 AM - 12 Comments

Response to the government’s omnibus crime bill has been fascinating to watch. Thoughtful observers, like Dan Gardner over at the Ottawa Citizen, despair over the government’s refusal for some years now to offer anything like a reasoned argument for its approach, especially on limiting the discretion of judges by imposing more mandatory minimum penalties and no longer allowing  ”house arrest” sentences in many cases.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson doesn’t seem to feel any need to explain himself. (His office and department offered only bare statistics, for example, when I asked for some explanation about why he wants to stop judges from handing down conditional sentences for some crimes.) Given the Conservative majority, I suppose he’s right: the government has the numbers in the House to pass the sprawling law without bothering to seriously answer its critics.

Continue…

Stingray Meets Big Brother

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 11:26 AM - 0 Comments

I watched the “Person of Interest” pilot last night, and was not very impressed. There were a couple of things I liked about it in theory: the small cast, and the decision to give away more information than these shows usually do. (There will be ongoing mysteries, presumably, but it wouldn’t work if they tried to make a big mystery out of how Michael Emerson’s character is getting his information. A show whose plots are based on rules needs to explain those rules up-front.) And it does seem like a somewhat personal project for Jonathan Nolan: as his brother’s co-writer on “The Dark Knight,” he dealt in a symbolic way with the ramifications of the post-9/11 surveillance state, and he’s now dealing with these issues more directly in his own project.

But for its strengths, “The Dark Knight” was not known for great dialogue, and “Person of Interest” carries on that Nolan tradition: much of the dialogue is flat and without personality. And there’s almost no humour in the whole hour. I’m not saying that every show needs to be funny, but some kind of light touch does help to sell a crazy premise. (I’ve been on this before, but shows like “Breaking Bad” or “Buffy” use humour to signal that the writers are not unaware of how absurd the premise is – and that frees us up to take the serious parts seriously. “Person of Interest” acts like every single moment could be part of a realistic crime drama.) As it is, you could imagine what a Stephen J. Cannell type of approach might have done for this show and this lead character in particular. He’s a dour, charmless stick most of the time, which is a problem, because the guy who investigates the crimes does need to have some social skills of some kind. If he spends all his time spying on people and occasionally beating them up, it gets dull. But it’s hard to imagine Jim Caviezel charming people, assuming disguises, or just generally doing anything that requires some sense of fun on the part of the character.

Another thing: this is, in conception, basically a two-character show, but the two characters have no real tension. They are established by the end of the episode as basically the same in everything that matters. They don’t argue much, they don’t clash, they have similarly quiet and reserved personalities. They might be able to gin up some conflict over moral issues or whether this week’s Person is a potential victim or killer. But people don’t watch these shows for the mysteries, they watch them for the characters, and this is an odd-couple show that seems to be smoothing out the differences between the couple. It’s like if Mulder and Scully were different ages, but both of them pretty much agreed about the supernatural. Or if Hardcastle and McCormick (one of two superior shows of which PoI is most reminiscent, the other being “Checkmate”) didn’t yell at each other. (I should note that the “Hardscastle” pilot, being a stronger piece of dramatic construction than this one, took the step of forcing the young hero, on the threat of jail, to help the old guy. The young hero of course wound up liking it and liking the old guy, but he didn’t just nod and brood and start investigating crimes because some old man made speeches at him.) These people are far too compatible. This is one reason why – unless a considerable amount of re-tooling of the characters goes on – I don’t see how more emphasis on the mythology could help that much. Mythology is interesting insofar as it provokes different reactions from distinctly different characters. Here we have two men who, like the Knight Rider guy, “do not exist” and whose motivations are pretty similar. You could practically flip a coin to decide which one will have doubts about all this power and which one will go all power-mad.

If we can’t get tension and fun from the interaction of the two main characters, maybe we can get it from the people they investigate. But this is doubtful. And not just because this isn’t a big strength of J.J. Abrams productions. The idea that the people of interest could be killers or victims – that they could be bad or good guys – plunks us right into the middle of the standard problem of any regular mystery: the person has to spend a large portion of the story seeming plausible as either a good or bad guy. It’s hard to get very interested in a guest character when you don’t have enough reliable information about them. I know the format of the traditional vigilante-justice show (and how strange it is to describe such a thing as “traditional”) got played out: we saw the bad guys terrorizing the good-guy guest characters until the hero stepped in to help. But it seems like in trying to avoid that, and create a sense of moral ambiguity, Person of Interest is just going to wind up being another one of those shows that offers ill-defined guests. And if the Person of Interest is not interesting, that’s a much bigger problem than not having enough mythology.

Probably I’m coming perilously close to the old familiar mistake of asking a show to be something other than it is: Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams, two guys who take their stories very seriously, are not going to suddenly turn into another type of writer and fill the show with funny dialogue and cool cars. They want to do a serious show about the post-9/11 era; you either take it seriously or (like me) you can’t take it seriously and stop watching. But on its own terms, I don’t really see how this show can spin off interesting stories on a regular basis.

Cutting the right taxes

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 61 Comments

Scott Clark and Peter DeVries propose a new tax plan to fix the government’s structural deficit.

First, the current plan has only slightly reduced the high effective marginal tax rates imbedded in the personal income tax structure, which seriously inhibit labor force participation. Without getting into detail, what is required is a lowering of the marginal tax rates. This could be expensive. Lowering all rates by 1 percentage point could cost $5 billion annually. Getting rid of all the special tax preferences introduced over the past five years would be a start.

Second, the government should restore the two points to the GST bringing back the $13 billion that was lost. This would more than pay for the cut in tax rates for all Canadians but would also allow a larger reduction in the corporate tax rate than is currently planned.

Fear on all sides

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Bruce Anderson listens to the rhetoric.

In answer to almost any question about the economy, the Prime Minister and his ministers are at pains to tell Canadians how the perilous state of the global economy keeps them up at night. There’s not a lot of hope in their message: They talk about how employment is up since the onset of the recession, but in reality it’s a “let’s ensure we don’t get hurt too badly” theme. This is an unusual thing for incumbents to do – but for the moment anyway, it’s sensible strategy.

The opposition parties are also focused on fear, not surprisingly. There’s a difference of course: They are focused on how much worse things will get if Ottawa doesn’t do something. This would be a stronger political footing if news from the rest of the world didn’t get it its way. Canadian economic troubles are routinely drowned out by far more shocking situations, in so many other places.

Continuing to proceed, eventually

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 10 Comments

Though the Conservatives have touted the cost of crime to explain its justice legislation, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews declined yesterday to say how much would thus be saved as a result of the government’s new measures. Instead, of the legislation’s effects, he offered the following.

We believe that eventually the crime rate will continue to proceed in the right direction.

Newsmakers: Sept. 15-22

By Alex Ballingall, Jonathon Gatehouse, Cathy Gulli, Nicholas Köhler, Chris Sorensen, and Patricia Treble - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Tim Wimborne/Reuters

Siren car swan song

The last of America’s most popular police car, the Ford Crown Victoria, rolled off an assembly line in St. Thomas, Ont., last week. The Ford plant closure, first announced in 2009 at the nadir of North America’s manufacturing doldrums, puts 1,100 people out of work in the rust-belt town, best known as the place where Jumbo, the P.T. Barnum circus elephant, died after being hit by a train in 1885. Big and blocky, the Crown Vic had long been popular with police departments and cab companies for its durability and roominess. Still, it got just 10 km a litre and had sold poorly—yet another dead jumbo in St. Thomas.

A scrumbag

It was just six weeks ago that Mike Tindall married Zara Phillips, the Queen’s granddaughter. But the honeymoon is definitely over for the muscular captain of England’s Rugby World Cup squad. While out celebrating a tournament-opening victory over Argentina this week, Tindall and his teammates got tipsy and scrummed several young ladies in the bar. Good clean fun, until the papers back home got hold of the photos of Tindall canoodling with a “mystery blond.” We are not amused.

Tough assignment

Shortly before U.S. Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer received the Medal of Honor for rushing into an Afghan “killing zone” to rescue 36 troops in 2009, the 23-year-old and his family met privately with President Barack Obama. They weren’t alone. João Silva, a New York Times photographer whose legs were blown off by a land mine last October in Afghanistan, was invited by Meyer and Obama to capture the meeting. Silva found the assignment—his first outside the confines of military hospitals where he is undergoing extensive rehabilitation—difficult on prosthetic legs. Though the photographs were deemed “strong” by his paper, Silva said, “I wasn’t getting the shots. I was missing the shots.”

Billionaire boys’ club

RIM’s fall from tech-industry grace has hit a symbolic milestone for Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, co-CEOs of the Waterloo, Ont.-based company, who have lost their status as billionaires. Both Balsillie and Lazaridis own five per cent of the company shares, a chunk that was worth an estimated US$1.9 billion in February. Now their shares are worth about US$640 million, according to Bloomberg estimates. This month, Jaguar Financial even advised RIM to sell itself off. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-based phones chipping away at RIM’s former glory, maybe BlackBerrys just aren’t as sexy anymore.

Wilderness tipoff

Kristoffer Clausen became a folk hero in his native Norway when he spent a year living off the harsh land with just a rifle, fishing rod and a dog for companionship. A book recounting his adventures, which began in 2009, became a bestseller and spawned a TV series and even a sponsorship deal. However, a local newspaper recently revealed the story was just too good to be true. It turns out that he’d supplemented his spartan live-off-the-land lifestyle by shopping in malls, living in a Swedish cottage for a month and even renting a car. “I’m sorry for doing it,” he finally confessed. “I’ve been an idiot.”

Don’t stop believing

If the myth persists that housewives lead boring lives, look to Michaele Salahi for proof of the contrary. The star of the (cancelled) Real Housewives of D.C. was reported missing by her bankrupt wine merchant husband Tareq after she disappeared last week. Six hours later, the rakish blond turned up in Tennessee—where she was romancing Neal Schon, guitarist of the ’80s band Journey, who described their relationship as “intimate and passionate.” This attention-grabbing charade should come as no shock: Salahi and her husband crashed a White House dinner in 2009, claiming they were invited, and she once fibbed about working as a Washington Redskins cheerleader. Why lie when your real life is this unbelievable?

Alberta’s great race

Gary Mar had a good week. The prospective leader of Alberta’s indefatigable Progressive Conservative government handily won the first round of voting in the party’s leadership race, winning 41 per cent of the tally at a convention in Calgary. Just a few days later, Mar gained requisite right-wing “cred” when two fellow leadership candidates—Ted Morton and Rick Orman—emerged from his campaign bus to give him their endorsement. The upstart Wildrose party has threatened to dig into the PCs’ right flank with rhetoric that echoes that of the Tea Party. So it’s little wonder that Mar was all smiles as he and his two big-name supporters spoke of his fiscal conservatism and economic level-headedness. After all, if Mar wins, he’ll immediately become Alberta’s newest PC premier: perennial top dog in the province.

Rehab? No, no, no.

Canada’s youngest multiple killer, who went by the online handle Runaway Devil, has resurfaced as a freshman at a Calgary university. The girl, who can’t be named by law, was just 12 when she convinced her 23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Allan Steinke, to kill her mother, father and eight-year-old brother inside their Medicine Hat, Alta., home back in 2006. Her 10-year sentence, part of which was spent at an Edmonton psychiatric hospital, will be completed one year after she is scheduled to graduate in 2015. But the girl’s lawyer now says her rehabilitation plan has been derailed after the Calgary Herald revealed details about her studies. A sentencing review has been postponed.

Oh Jackie

Jacqueline Kennedy was just 34 and four months a widow when she submitted to a recorded interview with Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and one-time aide to her husband, president John F. Kennedy. The chat is part of an oral history of Camelot released last week that reveals a woman of sharp judgment. Indira Gandhi, later India’s PM, was “pushy” and “bitter.” French president Charles de Gaulle was an “egomaniac.” Martin Luther King Jr., meanwhile, was “a phony” who carried on extramarital affairs. She reserves her harshest criticism for former Canadian PM John Diefenbaker, whom she met during a visit with her husband in May 1961 and calls “painful.” During a lunch, the Dief “insisted on telling all these Churchill stories . . . calling him old Winston or ‘the old boy’ or something.” Boring.

Raccoon love

It took two brothers, Bill and Eric MacDonald, whose lives both revolve around the same street in Stratford, P.E.I., a whole week to realize that each of them had adopted orphaned baby raccoons one day this past summer. Bill, 69, found his outside BJ’s International Truck Centre, the family business, and took him in, buying kitten milk and a small bottle. He and his wife, Joan, named him Rambo because, Bill says, “he destroys everything,” including eating two keys off Joan’s laptop. One day, Eric, 72, who lives across the street, visited Bill’s office and spotted Rambo. “He thought it was his ’coon,” Bill says. Eric had adopted Rambo’s brother the same day and called him Rascal. But Bill and Eric must soon release the animals. Rambo already weighs 10 lb. “After they get a year old they get to be ferocious,” says Bill.

Wives on the bus

When world leaders and dignitaries gather, there is plenty of pomp to the affair: red carpets are rolled out, flags are raised, armoured cars convoy. Unless, perhaps, the politician is a woman. Last week, during a gathering of Pacific nation leaders, Julia Gillard, the prime minister of Australia, was kicked off the “leaders’ bus” and redirected to the bus for political wives. Gillard’s aide corrected them, and the PM took her hard-earned seat.

Rat castle

Toronto City Hall has long had problems with mice and squirrels—never, you might be surprised to learn, with rats. But last week, a big bruiser of a rodent found its way into budget chief Mike Del Grande’s office, and later bit a city worker sent to remove it. The interloper was just one episode in a whole panoply of goings-on at City Hall, where Mayor Rob Ford—he of “gravy train” fame—has been attempting to push through budget cuts. Quipped left-leaning Coun. Adam Vaughan of the animal: “It was looking for gravy, it didn’t find any so it ate a city worker.” The rat was put down. Even dead, he is likely more popular than the mayor, whose approval ratings have tanked.

Golf’s next great?

Teen golf prodigy Alexis Thompson became the youngest ever LPGA Tour winner last week, stunning the golfing world. The 16-year-old—who, at 12, became the youngest woman to qualify for the U.S. Open—called the win the “best feeling ever.”

Good news, bad news: Sept. 15-22

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

Stefan Rousseau/Getty Images

General defence

Gen. Walter Natynczyk, under fire this week over reports he took $1 million worth of trips on government jets since 2008, says he will reimburse taxpayers and pay for flights if the Prime Minister asks him to. Natynczyk has proven to be a tough and reliable soldier, and there’s no doubt he will do what’s right in this case, whatever that turns out to be. Still, it appears he should be cut a break. In some cases, the planes would have been flying whether he was on them or not. And his travels around the world—whether to rally troops or attend repatriation ceremonies for dead soldiers—are all part of his weighty responsibility as the chief of defence staff.

Into the light

What a week for scientific discovery. First, dinosaur feathers were found preserved, exquisitely, in Alberta amber. Ryan McKellar, a University of Alberta paleontologist, found 11 samples in hardened tree sap—what is described by the journal Science as “the richest amber feather find from the late Cretaceous period,” some 70 million years ago. Also, astronomers found the first planet orbiting two suns. That means that at the end of every day on Kepler 16b—200 light years from Earth—there are two sunsets.

Continue…

Believing In Badness

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

I was going to write something about why the new Charlie’s Angels is turning out to be a stiff (in quality and ratings) while the original show was a hit. But Linda Holmes beat me to it. Though I didn’t think the script for the new show was completely unworkable (but then, this type of show doesn’t depend on the actual writing, so it’s hard to judge), in execution it’s turned out to be rather cynical and pointless. And I think an obvious difference between the two version is that Aaron Spelling was completely committed to making trashy television. As a commenter here said a couple of years ago, Spelling’s shows “were dumb, but they weren’t dumbed down,” meaning that what he gave the viewers was exactly the kind of thing he liked. Charlie’s Angels, the original 90210, Melrose Place, Charmed and all the other Spelling hits had what we might call sincere stupidity: they were ridiculous, but they were giving us what the producer loved, not just what he cynically thought the audience would love. The first Charlie’s Angels movie, while it had a sense of irony about the material that Spelling (the most un-ironic producer in TV) wouldn’t have countenanced, also enjoyed being trashy and did its best to be fun on that level. The new version just gives the impression that everyone wishes they were doing something smarter.

One of the most traditional show business myths is the idea that you can have a hit just by pandering to the lowest common denominator; someone with a flop will say that he or she could have a hit by selling out. But I don’t think that’s exactly true. Something written out of hate and contempt for the audience is probably not going to succeed, because people can sense when nobody’s having fun. If something bad succeeds, it’s often going to be something bad that was done with conviction, just like the good stuff that succeeds.

Of course, you can’t read people’s minds, so you can’t say for sure that certain shows are done out of cynicism. You also can’t say for sure that nothing good has ever been created out of secret contempt. (Sometimes the creators manage to succeed through open contempt, by channelling that contempt into something interesting or personal, making it fun for them. Like the creators of the Batman TV series disliked the comics and thought they were ridiculous, so they created a satire of comic books. But they found an approach that worked for them; I don’t think the show would have succeeded if they had dutifully tried to write a serious comic book story as if they believed in it.) But I do think that making a hit is more complicated than just pandering to the lowest common denominator; if that worked, then making a hit would be much easier than it actually is.

Right place, right time, right party

By Paul Wells - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 24 Comments

Right place, right time, right party

Stephen Harper sent his regrets and a note, which was read to the 300-odd revellers the other night at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel. “Special greetings to Ted Byfield and Preston Manning, who have done so much to inspire, inform and lead the conservative movement in Canada,” the Prime Minister’s note said.

The occasion was a “victory celebration” for a defunct magazine that never made anyone rich. The magazine was Alberta Report. Well, sometimes it had other titles, but we’ll stick with that one. Its founder was Ted Byfield, an irascible right-wing coot—I do not believe his friends would disagree with that description—and a mentor to dozens of journalists who went on to other roles, including this magazine’s Ken Whyte, Mark Stevenson and Colby Cosh.

But as I’ve said, the Report shut down in 2003. So what’s to celebrate? Power. “The West Is In,” the party invitations read. The reference was to the Harper Conservatives’ majority government. The dinner’s souvenir program promised a “national gala to reunite the original authors of Harper’s historic victory.”

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In Quebec, construction chaos ahead

By Martin Patriquin with Philippe Gohier - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 6 Comments

Photography by Roger Lemoyne

It has become a cliché to say Jean Charest has nine lives. The Quebec premier, who has spent more than half his life in politics, has made a sport out of defying expectations with his ability to spring back, catlike, from political disaster. At 36, he brought the federal Progressive Conservative Party from the brink; in 2003, at 44, he overcame an earlier loss to Lucien Bouchard to become premier, and has ruled ever since.

Until recently, Charest had seemingly turned his rather disastrous year in office into this comeback-kid narrative. This is no small feat. Over the last 12 months, Charest’s Liberals weathered allegations of favouritism in the selection of judges, an embarrassing flip- flop on the development of shale gas resources, and have been dogged by news that the party had been the recipient of hundreds of thousands of donations (some legal, some not) from several of the province’s largest engineering and construction firms—the very ones who won lucrative construction contracts from the Ministry of Transport. Far from backing down, Charest mused he might even take a fourth kick at the can.

What a difference one leak can make. Last week, a scathing report on the province’s construction industry, leaked to La Presse and Radio-Canada, stymied Charest’s legacy and, more importantly, gave Quebecers a glimpse at the scale of corruption plaguing the province’s construction industry.

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Israel alone

By Michael Petrou - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 43 Comments

Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

Israel has never had a surplus of friends in its neighbourhood. But almost since its founding it could count on an alliance with Turkey, one of the strongest nations in the Middle East. And for more than three decades its southern border has been protected by a solid peace treaty with Arab powerhouse Egypt. Now these two pillars of Israeli security may be crumbling.

Turkish-Israeli relations frayed last year when Israeli commandos stormed a flotilla of ships from Turkey trying to reach the Gaza Strip in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade, killing nine. Turkey demanded an apology; Israel refused. Bonds between the two countries have ruptured further since. This month, Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and froze military co-operation with it. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says his country is committed to ending Israel’s blockade of Gaza and has pledged that Turkish warships would protect convoys of aid to the Palestinian territory. The “Turkish navy is prepared for every scenario—even the worst one,” he told an Egyptian newspaper.

Erdogan’s boast came as he toured the newly liberated Arab countries of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Erdogan received a hero’s welcome. Turkey is a rising power, and for aspirant democrats in the region it is a model. The Turkish prime minister repeatedly denounced Israel during his tour, comparing it to a spoiled child, while urging the Arab League to support a Palestinian bid for full membership in the United Nations.

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Taking West Edmonton mall to New Jersey

By Richard Warnica - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 2 Comments

Wonderland: The controversial project would turn a wetlands into 700,000 sq. m of entertainment and retail space—the largest mall on Earth

The American Dream is endlessly malleable. That’s what makes it great, really. As a slogan, it can speak to free enterprise, or immigration or the God-given right to appear on reality TV. If you stretch it far enough, the American Dream can be whatever you want it to be. Even if you’re not American. Even if your dream is a super-mall with a ski hill on a swamp in New Jersey.

Alberta’s Ghermezian family opened the West Edmonton Mall 30 years ago this month. At the time, it was the largest retail complex in the world. Eventually it grew to include a skating rink, an amusement park and a wave pool. In a lot of ways, it reimagined what a mall could be. For a while, it also looked like it would be the first of many to come. The Ghermezians—father Jacob and sons Eskander, Nader, Bahman and Raphael—helped open the Mall of America, a behemoth of similar scope, in Minnesota in 1992. They had dreams of megamalls in Maryland and Las Vegas. But those projects foundered. In the meantime, other malls overtook the Ghermezian set. Today the West Edmonton Mall is either the third or the fifth largest in the world, depending on who’s measuring. The Mall of America is way down the list, behind rivals in Dubai and Beijing.

But now the Ghermezians have plans to get their title back. In May, their Triple Five development company signed a contract to take over what, if all goes as planned, would become the largest mall complex on Earth. The Ghermezian blueprints call for 700,000 square metres of entertainment and retail space on a controversial plot in the wetlands of New Jersey. About US $2 billion has already been spent on the project, with another $1.7 billion scheduled to come. Along with Triple Five staples such as minigolf and a water park, the complex will boast a skydiving centre and North America’s first indoor ski hill. Sketches of the site look almost eerily like parts of the West Edmonton Mall. But Triple Five says the project is all red, white and blue. In fact, the Ghermezians have dubbed it “The American Dream at Meadowlands,” a name they say speaks to “opportunity”—for jobs and tourists and tax revenue—but that one local columnist called “not just dumb [but] downright blasphemy.”

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Okay, Arcade Fire won, but it won’t happen again

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 2 Comments

Jason Moore/Zuma/Keystone Press

Going into the gala for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize, two things were clear. First, Arcade Fire, who were nominated for The Suburbs, were the overwhelming favourite to take home the award. Gala host Grant Lawrence made it clear early in the evening when he suggested the Montreal band was facing off against “nine dark horses.” As a fellow scribe put it, Monday night’s contest was “Arcade Fire versus the world”—or at least, indie Canada.

Second, the Polaris Prize isn’t meant to be a popularity contest. The award’s only criterion is “artistic merit.” This was repeated like a mantra throughout the evening, lest anyone be under the impression that mainstream recognition, clever videos, or album sales might be in play at an awards show featuring bands most Canadians have never heard of. And therein lay the tension—how would the Polaris Prize jury reconcile the fact that Canada’s bestselling band might also be its best band? Can a band that sells out arenas and whose last album hit No. 1 in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. still be credible with the indie crowd?

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The prosperity gap

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

Alex Himelfarb considers the ramifications of inequality.

When Warren Buffett argued that the rich should pay more than they do (heck, even Adam Smith believed in progressive taxation), across the U.S. media we were told what a dangerous idea this is. Why would we penalize productive folk only to give the money to the unproductive?  Why do we penalize success, they ask?  Here, in Canada, the language is softer.  Why would we tax so-called job-creators?  Of course there are important economic considerations in how much and whom we tax – but “job creators”? As though they  do not benefit from earlier generations more willing than us to sacrifice and pay taxes to build and defend a country of opportunity? As though the rest of us somehow do not contribute to the growth in the economy through our labour, consumption and creative ideas?