Who says Quebecers don’t love the royals?

By Anne Kingston - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Mathieu Belanger/Reuters

If Ottawa provided the Kodachrome picture-postcard royal welcome, Quebec offered William and Catherine a more complex cinéma vérité depiction of the country they claim to want to know. Canada’s two solitudes collided during the couple’s two-day, two-city Quebec sojourn as separatist and anti-monarchist protesters, though in the minority, determined the agenda. Fear of a repeat of Prince Charles’s 2009 visit to Montreal, when eggs were hurled at his car, prompted organizers of William and Kate’s tour to not schedule walkabouts in the cities. Their concerns appeared founded, as several dozen protesters from pro-independence group Réseau de Résistance du Québécois appeared at Ste-Justine Hospital, the first stop of the couple’s eight-hour swing through Montreal. Chants of “Will and Kate, Will and Kate” vied with “royals go home” in French and English. And a few eggs were thrown, one landing on the back of an older woman who had waited hours in the sweltering heat.

Clearly forewarned, the duke and duchess exited their car briskly upon arrival, barely acknowledging the crowd. After an hour touring the neonatal, high-risk pregnancy and cancer wards, they exited under heavy security as black SUVs blocked the crowd of some 500—much to the crowd’s disappointment, including 11-year old Victoria Sicurello, who had hoped to hand Kate roses and a handmade card.

A similar 10-to-one well-wisher-to-protester ratio was evident at their next destination, the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec, where they took part in a cooking lesson with students and dined on Brome Lake duck, Charlevoix lamb and an Îles-de-la-Madeleine lobster soufflé.

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Entertaining Will and Kate

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 16 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

From 2003 to 2006, Fox Television carried a strange TV comedy called Arrested Development. It featured a story arc involving a failed actor named Tobias Fünke who auditions for the theatre troupe Blue Man Group because he thinks it’s a support group for depressed men. For several episodes, Fünke wears blue body paint, which comes in handy when he realizes he can blend in with the blue parts of outdoor billboards, allowing him to spy on the rest of his family.

For a while, on July 1, I wondered whether Kate Middleton was inspired by Tobias Fünke when she decided to show up at the big Canada Day celebration on Parliament Hill dressed as a Canadian flag.

In a release to the Ottawa press rabble, “the Press Secretary to TRH the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge” described Kate’s outfit as “a cream dress by Reiss, with The Queen’s Maple Leaf brooch and a hat by Sylvia Fletcher at Lock and Co.” From any distance, however, the most striking thing about Kate’s outfit was that it was red at both ends—hat and pumps—and whitish through the middle, except for the reddish purse where the maple leaf would be if she were flapping sideways from a mast, not that I would ever advocate such a course of action.

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A gift fit for a king

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 9 Comments

All in all, it does make a charming souvenir gift. Just ask the Prime Minister. A copy of Maclean’s May 15, 1939, souvenir edition of the 27-day royal visit made by King George VI and his consort Queen Elizabeth—Prince William’s great-grandparents—formed part of a personal gift from Stephen Harper and his wife, Laureen, to the prince and his wife, Kate, on the occasion of their current visit to Canada. (The gift also included a copy of Chatelaine of similar vintage.) The 1939 royal tour of Canada, the first ever visit of a reigning monarch to the Crown’s senior dominion, was like no other royal visit before it, and Maclean’s, naturally, treated it as such.

In many ways the souvenir issue, with the king’s portrait on its cover, set the template for the magazine’s coverage of royal visits ever since. That included printing the Queen’s portrait first, on the cover of the otherwise business-as-usual May 1 issue: early recognition that the royal women, whether as rulers or consorts, from Elizabeth II to Diana, princess of Wales to Catherine, duchess of Cambridge, have always been the stars of the show. Photos were a huge part of the special edition, including a shot of the two royal children, who had been left at home for this arduous cross-continental odyssey: princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, seated at a piano.

But it wasn’t just that George VI was a reigning king that infused his arrival with historical significance, but rather how—by what right—he was reigning over us. In 1937, King George, the first monarch crowned since the 1931 Statute of Westminster established the full independence of the self-governing dominions, was also the first to swear in his coronation oath to govern Canada by its own laws and customs. The monarchy was now the final institutional glue holding the Empire (soon to be Commonwealth) together. Although not yet formally king of Canada—that legal change in title didn’t occur until his daughter’s reign—George was very much coming to his dominion in that capacity. The tour marked another step, both real and symbolic, on the long road to equality between motherland and former colony that had, so far, stretched from the Canadian Corps’ victory at Vimy Ridge in 1917 through Canada’s seat at the Versailles peace treaty negotiations two years later and the Westminster statute and the coronation oath.

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There’s still time to bring sexy back

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

CP; ISTOCK; Getty Images; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

There’s a big fuss every November when People magazine names its Sexiest Man Alive. Then the hype fades. No one bothers to monitor how His Sexcellency is coping under the pressure of this illustrious yet challenging office. No one except me, that is. Warning: intrepid journalism ahead.

We are past the midway point of Ryan Reynolds’s term as Sexiest Man Alive. What began amid such promise—with speeches filled with words like “hope,” “change” and “buttocks off which you could bounce a nickel”—now lies in sexy, sexy tatters.

Sensing weakness, rival contenders are already massing for this fall’s gruelling sexiness primaries—raising funds, filming attack ads (“Reynolds: soft on camouflage fleece!”) and putting on their shirts, so as to be better able to sexily remove them.

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Our upper house of ill repute

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 40 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

The Senate is Confederation’s original sin, the great stain on the fathers’ handiwork, from which much greater evils have flowed. Structurally, it has contributed to the divisions and weaknesses that have bedevilled the federation. Without some constitutionally appropriate vehicle for expressing the concerns of the regions in federal politics, it has been left to the premiers, inappropriately, to do the job.

Worse, however, has been its corrosive effects, compounded over time, on our political ethics. It is of course intolerable that a free people should be governed, even in part, by those to whom they did not expressly grant such power. That would be true even if the Senate were filled with Solomons, and not the bizarre cargo of bagmen, strategists, failed candidates, criminals, cranks and other political problems that prime ministers have traditionally solved by the expedient of the Other Place.

Yes, some senators do good work. Committees of the Senate often produce thoughtful reports. But they have no more democratic right to translate their views into law, to move, amend, pass or reject bills and otherwise exercise the powers of legislators than I do. Though by convention the Senate’s powers are less than they appear on paper, they are still more than any patronage house should rightfully have, and have been exceeded on more than one occasion.

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What does Prince William have in common with John Galliano?

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 1, 2011 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment

Some of the personal accoutrements of royal life—consider the jewellery—invoke envious admiration in lesser mortals; others—those hats—tend more to incite sympathy or, to be honest, outright derision. Clearly royalty has more sartorial obligations than privileges. It’s impossible to say what Prince William might choose to don if he had a choice, but his look, it seems, is not without its fans. Consider John Galliano, once PM to two royal houses of haute couture, Givenchy and Christian Dior. Before his recent disgrace—the designer is defending himself against hate-speech charges after alleged drunken anti-Semitic rants—Galliano often wore outfits that could be labeled Xtreme Wales.

10 new rules for saving 3D cinema

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 4 Comments

Paramount Pictures; Getty Images; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

It was hailed as the biggest revolution in cinema technology since colour. But less than two years after the triumph of Avatar, 3D seems to be wearing thin. For the first time since the new digital format was launched, the majority of viewers are choosing to watch 3D movies in 2D versions—at least in the U.S., where a 3D ticket bears a $5 premium. There, 2D outpaced 3D at the box office by about 60 per cent for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Kung Fu Panda 2, Green Lantern—and in advance sales for the final Harry Potter movie. Canada is another story. “We see movies consistently outperforming in 3D,” says Cineplex Entertainment spokesperson Pat Marshall, explaining that Cineplex charges just a $3 premium. But as American audiences abandon 3D, studio executives who once embraced it as cinema’s salvation are sounding the alarm. Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of DreamWorks Animation, called the trend “heartbreaking.” Blaming a glut of bad 3D movies from other studios, he told the Hollywood Reporter: “We have disappointed our audience multiple times now, and because of that I think there is genuine distrust.”

3D’s big test is Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which opened Tuesday. James Cameron convinced Michael Bay to shoot in 3D, providing the tech he created for Avatar. But armed with that third dimension, Bay’s blitzkrieg style of kinetic action is exhausting to watch. And it will take more than a sci-fi sequel to restore our faith. To cop a phrase from Bill Maher, here are 10 New Rules for saving 3D:

1. Sell 3D and 2D tickets at the same price. Studios complain 3D movies cost more to make, while exhibitors carp about upgrading theatres. Who cares? Viewers suspect they’re being gouged. If you’re trying to acclimatize the audience to an iffy new technology, level the playing field. That would also be the acid test of 3D quality—to see how many people would still choose to see the 2D version.

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How do you get a smoker to quit?

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 6:09 PM - 0 Comments

The Statement: “These labels are frank, honest and powerful depictions of the health risks of smoking, and they will help encourage smokers to quit, and prevent children from smoking.” (Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of health and human services, 06/21/2011)

On Tuesday, the FDA ramped up its war on tobacco by introducing nine new graphic warning labels for cigarette packages. This means that after decades of having only text caveats, America’s smoke packs will feature soot-stained lungs, rotten teeth, cadavers, and crying babies.

Given all the attention paid to labeling, Science-ish wanted to know: how much does packaging matter to smokers? And do non-smokers pay attention to the warnings? Continue…

The definitive ($600) cookbook

By Anne Kingston - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Culinary splendour: The six-volume cookbook is a visual delight to pore through. Recipes from famed chefs are printed on water- and tear-proof pages.

Alison Fryer, the manager of Toronto’s Cookbook Store, recalls how anxious she was ordering 10 copies of Modernist Cuisine before its publication in late March. “We didn’t know if we would sell them,” she says. Her concern was reasonable: with a $600 price tag, the six-volume set is the most expensive newly published food book in history. Fryer needn’t have worried: the store has sold 35 copies; now she’s fretting about filling demand. “I can’t get them fast enough,” she says, standing amid a new shipment of boxes containing the 2,438-page, 47.3-lb. set housed in a Plexiglas box. The audience for the authoritative reference is diverse—“chefs, food scientists, people who travel for food, people who like to know what chefs are thinking.” Last week, a culinary college in Nebraska desperately called in search of a copy. Currently in its third printing, it’s sold out in the U.S. Fryer now has a new anxiety, she jokes: “People are blaming us for putting their backs out.”

It’s the latest status injury. Modernist Cuisine, self-published by Nathan Myhrvold, abetted by the fortune he amassed in his 14 years at Microsoft, has been heralded as a culinary landmark. In the forward, Spanish chef and food wizard Ferran Adrià praises it as “a stepping stone to the future of cooking” and “a book that raises expectations of what cooking can be.”

The volumes, a visual delight to pore through, are classified by subject: history and fundamentals; techniques and equipment; animals and plants; ingredients and preparations; plated dish recipes; and a spiral-bound “kitchen manual” with recipes from famed chefs cleverly printed on water- and tear-proof pages. Throughout, Myhrvold and co-authors Chris Young and Maxime Bilet detonate culinary orthodoxies with creative gusto: wine can be successfully aerated in the blender, they claim; a one-hour stock made in a pressure cooker is as flavourful as the eight-hour version; it doesn’t damage steak to flip it on the grill repeatedly; there’s no definitive proof that eating fibre reduces the risk of colon cancer. While centrifuges and freeze-dryers are routinely employed to create novelties such as “meat jerky” from watermelon and carrot foam, those lacking the gizmos will find a font of information—from insights about nutrition and food safety to a whimsical version of the Colonel’s secret KFC recipe.

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Another civil war in Afghanistan?

By Michael Petrou - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 6 Comments

Mikhail Galustov/Redux

Rust-crested skeletons of Russian tanks line the road that snakes through the mountainous Panjshir Valley, 100 km north of Kabul. More lie among the wheat fields, grapevines and tulips that cover almost all of the flat spaces between cliff walls and the silty river rushing between them. The tanks are war trophies and perhaps a warning.

It was here that the Afghan mujahedeen fought the Soviets to a standstill during the 1980s before forcing them from the country, and here also that Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance retreated when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Despite support from Pakistan and Osama bin Laden’s Arab Brigade, the Taliban never subdued the valley. For five years, they were held back here by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the military commander known as the Lion of Panjshir. Massoud rejected the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Islam and the often-murderous ethnic Pashtun supremacism that went with it. He was assassinated by al-Qaeda agents posing as journalists days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and never lived to see his soldiers march back into the Afghan capital two months later.

Today, Massoud lies in a hilltop tomb visited daily by dozens of Afghans from all over the country. The Panjshir Valley remains an anti-Taliban heartland. Insurgents rarely penetrate it—though in some of the villages below its mouth they are said to have spotters who watch for kidnapping opportunities. But many Panjshiris, among other Afghans who opposed the Taliban during its time in power, are angered by developments elsewhere in the country that they see as a betrayal—namely President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to make peace with the Taliban, and concessions they fear he might offer to strike a deal.

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Covering Afghanistan: logistics and ethics

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 10:13 AM - 2 Comments

I have recently returned from Afghanistan. The first of several articles appeared in last week’s magazine and was posted online earlier this week. A second appears in print today.

Given that I have previously criticized journalists accepting junkets, I think I’m obligated to reveal and discuss the nuts and bolts of my reporting over there.

To get to Kandahar, I accompanied Lt.-Gen. Peter Devlin, Canada’s chief of the land staff, on a military flight from Ottawa to Kandahar, with a stop at the Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany. The Canadian Forces covered the cost of this leg.

Myself and reporter Alec Castonguay then toured throughout Panjwaii district, including several forward operating bases and patrol bases, with foot and light-armoured vehicle (LAV) patrols between them. During this time I was dependent on the Canadian Forces for food, water, and shelter. The also provided me with protective kit, including a ballistic vest, glasses, and helmet. Maclean’s covered other incidental costs, the most pricey of which was life insurance. Continue…

The incomparable Kate Bush

By Elio Iannacci - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 1 Comment

Kate Bush wishes people would stop “prattling on” about divas. “I don’t understand why so many are against a ‘diva,’ ” the 52-year-old singer says via phone from her island estate, located in the thick of the Thames River near Reading, just west of London. “I think it equals mastery. If a woman is given this title, you know there is some serious work going down in her life.”

It’s apropos that Bush would be an advocate for the classic, operatic sense of the d-word, as few pop stars today are as cerebral about making music as she is. The English singer-songwriter is as notorious for making her fan base wait for new material (she’s released only one album of original material in 17 years) as she is for not talking to the media. To further put things into perspective, her latest disc, Director’s Cut—which reworks songs from past albums The Sensual World and The Red Shoes—is an encyclopedia of literary and cinematic references. In fact, the most intriguing cut on the just-released Director’s Cut—a song called Flower of the Mountain—has great history. Taking nearly 25 years to record the song “properly” (a past version was used as the title track to 1989’s The Sensual World), Bush has completely rewritten the track’s verses and choruses for the new CD.

“My original idea for the lyrics to Flower of the Mountain was to use text from James Joyce’s Ulysses and have it be the base of the song,” says Bush. “In the late ’80s, I approached the Joyce estate for permission to use the book and I was refused. When it came to starting up Director’s Cut, I thought I just had to go and ask again. I was enormously surprised that they said yes! The original is okay, but releasing it [in 1989] always felt like a bit of a compromise to me, really.”

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The Commons: The anachronistic idea of accountability

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 13, 2011 at 6:38 PM - 39 Comments

The Scene. “I think we always answer the questions to the best of everybody’s ability at the time,” Government House leader Peter Van Loan explained to reporters one day last week, “with the information they have on hand and I think that hopefully if the tone continues we’ll see more and more clarity.”

It is on this basis, one assumes, that it was decided it would be to the best of everybody’s abilities at this time for Tony Clement to remain seated and say nothing more to the House about this business of the G8 Legacy Fund. Presumably this decision was finalized soon after Mr. Clement peaked out from behind John Baird at a news conference last Thursday to suggest that the process by which the government of the day receives the consent of the people’s representatives to spend public funds is “anachronistic” and that this somehow explains why he and a half-dozen small town mayors were compelled to divvy up money authorized for the Border Infrastructure Fund to build gazebos and public toilets in Muskoka.

A year ago Mr. Clement was only too proud to tout his government’s capacity for publicly funded trinkets and landscaping, but so as to avoid any more incidents of polysyllabic rumination, the government has delegated all House comment to John Baird. Officially, because it was he who ultimately had to sign off on Mr. Clement’s gazebo selection. Unofficially, one presumes, because no one can dance a rhetorical jig quite like the current Foreign Affairs Minister. Continue…

How to fix our politics

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

“Can you imagine a doctor saying, ‘Well, I never thought of becoming a doctor before’?” asks Alison Loat, co-founder of Samara, a charitable organization dedicated to the study of Canadian democracy. Indeed, one would probably not entrust their health to a brain surgeon who claimed to have come to the profession quite by accident, made it through a confusing and mysterious nomination process, and shown up for the first day of work feeling mostly unprepared for the surgeries they were expected to perform. And yet, we expect little more of our parliamentarians.

For sure, politics is a pursuit neither easily explained, nor particularly well-regarded. The job of elected office itself is subject to wide interpretation and powerful competing pressures. But if the political process is to be improved upon, it may require dealing with these issues of confusion and ill repute, up to and including how we might build a better politician.

Two years ago, Loat and her team set out to conduct exit interviews with recently defeated or retired members of Parliament. In a series of reports based on those conversations, Samara has raised a number of questions about the political experience: from the nomination process to the power of political parties and the competing views on what exactly the job of an MP is supposed to be. First and foremost among these concerns is how many former MPs claimed to have come to elected politics quite inadvertently. To Loat, this goes to the very nature of how we talk about politics as something one might—or, rather, should not—aspire to. “We don’t encourage people to consider public life as a way to spend their time or something to consider in their careers,” she says.

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How Syria is redefining the concept of brutality

By Erica Alini - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 11 Comments

Hussein Malla/AP

Amjad Baiazy’s brother caught only a few frantic sentences from that cellphone call, which was to be the last thing anyone would hear from his sibling. Baiazy had been stopped at Damascus International Airport by the Syrian security forces; as he spoke, they were dragging him to some detention facility–he didn’t know which one. Over three weeks after his arrest on May 12, family and friends know nothing more of the fate of the 30-year-old who was boarding a plane from the Syrian capital, where he was visiting relatives, back to London, where he had been studying and living for the past four years. He is now officially “disappeared,” one of the thousands of Syrians who have been detained, often incommunicado, by the country’s nefariously famous Mukhabarat, the intelligence service.

Outside Syria, a host of cosmopolitan young people with a past in London is struggling to understand what just happened to their friend. “My first reaction was shock and disbelief,” says Nada Bouari, 30, a Lebanese-American, now living in Jordan, who befriended Baiazy while studying in London. “What on Earth could be the reason for somebody like Amjad to be arrested?” asks Munir Nuseibah, a 29-year-old Palestinian and a Ph.D. candidate at London’s Westminster University. Among his pals, Baiazy, a freelance consultant, is known for his passion for Arab literature, for organizing memorable poetry and movie nights at the prestigious Goodenough College, a residence for postgraduate students that is his current home address, and for his activism on gender and environmental issues, including in his native Syria. But not for his political advocacy. According to Bouari, “He is the last person who could be considered a threat for Syria.”

But to a Syrian regime that has been battling anti-government protests for over 2½ months, it doesn’t seem to matter whether one is apolitical and not even living in the country. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad knows full well that the popular movement that is demanding his exit is a mass uprising spread across the country, says Ammar Abdulhamid, a long-time Syrian activist who now lives in the U.S. Becoming a leader of this revolution takes maybe a bit of charisma and basic knowledge of how to operate a laptop or smartphone to coordinate the protests, he says—expendable skills that can quickly be replaced. And that’s why the regime has given up trying to target the heads of the movement, and opted for terrifying the entire population by jailing anyone who even remotely arouses its suspicions, says Abdulhamid. All over the country, detention facilities are overflowing, and makeshift jails are being set up in schools, playgrounds, hospitals and even animal farms, human rights group Amnesty International told Maclean’s.

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Free food fight

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 12:25 PM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Cole Garside

By 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, the breakfast sandwich assembly line at the Subway restaurant on Granville St. in downtown Vancouver was in overdrive—English muffin, pre-cooked egg, sliced ham and cheese, then into the oven. Brush away crumbs. Repeat. Despite the frantic pace, the lineup spilled out the door and down the street, drawn by that siren call of the tired and hungry morning consumer—a free breakfast and coffee.

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but when it comes to breakfast, fast-food chains are doling out meals and coffee to anyone who’ll take them. Last November, Burger King Canada gave away free coffees every Friday, having earlier handed out complimentary breakfast sandwiches. Subway’s one-day breakfast and coffee giveaway was its second in 10 months. Meanwhile, McDonald’s has blitzed the morning crowd with free coffees five times since 2009, with each event lasting between one to two weeks.

The goal is invariably the same each time—to get as many new people as possible to try their offerings with the hope that some moochers come back for more as paying regulars.

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I fought the lawn, and the lawn won

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 18 Comments

Getty Images; iStock; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

This column has long dedicated itself to breaking important news, and I’m proud to continue that tradition with my latest shocking exclusive: there are, like, way more dandelions this year.

But it’s not merely their numbers that should alarm us—it’s their size. The ones in our yard are bigger than usual this spring. How much bigger? I’m pretty sure I saw a bunch of elves making cookies in one.

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to set off a nationwide panic—but over the weekend I stooped to yank out a particularly robust dandelion and it tried to reason with me. I ended up leaving it in place, where it has since acquired advanced motor skills and a hunger for human flesh.

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The ones to watch

By macleans.ca - Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 12:15 PM - 14 Comments

If Malcolm Gladwell is right, and it really takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a craft, the following 11 Canadians—all of whom are younger than 25—have been incredibly busy. Among this gifted bunch is a 13-year-old figure skater who recently became the youngest junior men’s champion in the nation’s history, a 15-year-old whose research could change how autistic children are educated, a multi-award-winning film director who’s only 16, and a 23-year-old small-town mayor with some big ideas—and a day job.

And while these phenoms aren’t household names, this won’t be the last you hear of them. In January 2000, Maclean’s named a young guy from Burnaby, B.C., one of the “faces of the future.” At the time, the 24-year-old had just landed a gig as the opening act for Dionne Warwick, and told the magazine that if he ever became rich and famous he’d take his parents to Paris and buy his grandfather season tickets to the Vancouver Canucks. That young singer’s name was Michael Bublé.

Photograph by Richmond Lam

Léa Clermont-Dion – Activism

“I’m not an activist.” These aren’t words you’d expect to hear from Léa Clermont-Dion. After all, the 20-year-old native of Gore, Que., has dedicated herself to the issues of body acceptance, gender equality and the portrayal of women in the fashion world for much of her life. At 14, she organized a university conference bringing together Quebec’s best-known feminists. In 2007, at 16, Clermont-Dion, who suffered from anorexia herself in her early teens, and Jacinthe Veillette started a petition calling for the promotion of healthy body image and an end to the “hypersexualization” of women, particularly in the fashion world. The petition, which proposed a seven-point charter, garnered 20,000 signatures; Clermont-Dion lobbied the Association of Canadian Advertisers, which along with several other media, fashion and education groups endorsed the charter’s principles. Her initiative also caught the eye of Christine St-Pierre, the province’s culture minister, and in 2010, the Quebec government adopted la Charte de l’image corporelle saine et diversifiée (the charter for a healthy and diverse body image), which seeks to lessen the instances of body issues among women and men. It is a first of its kind in North America.

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Wham, pow: it’s Superputin!

By Erica Alini - Friday, June 3, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 8 Comments

Superputin.ru

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger may have had his upcoming Governator comic killed after details of his marital infidelity were splattered in gossip magazines across the world. In Russia, though, the news cycle is actually helping rocket Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to the big league of cartoon superheroes. Superputin, A Man Like Any Other, an online comic strip, was released last week, and is already an Internet phenomenon—courtesy of its timing, which coincides with the run-up to the presidential election next year.

Superputin, allegedly the work of a Russian PR freelancer who received no input from the Kremlin, features a kimono-clad Putin darting to rescue a bus from an al-Qaeda bomb attack. Helping him is the cartoon version of President Dmitry Medvedev, described as a “gnome raised by bears” with an obsession for gadgets. The gentle parody of Russia’s political duo registered three million views in its first week, but has also stirred criticism for portraying the political opposition as brain-hungry zombies.

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Photo gallery: Anime North 2011

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 4:29 PM - 0 Comments

Click on thumbnail to enlarge