Newsmakers '09: Good Samaritans
By Brian Bethune - Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 1 Comment
The Good guys of the year, like Capt. Sully and Kate Winslet
The citizens of Charlottetown
When a P.E.I. landlord dropped an unzipped bag of cash on a windy day, money began swirling through the air. Passersby pitched in, reaching under parked cars and chasing down fluttering bills. When it was all over, Ian Walker had every one of the 10,300 dollars he started with.
Faron Hall
Seven years of living homeless along Winnipeg’s Red River hasn’t blunted Hall’s humanity. In May, when a teenager fell into the freezing water 40 m away, Hall, a self-described “chronic alcoholic,” jumped in and brought him safely to shore. In August, Hall plunged in again, this time saving a drowning woman.
Chesley Sullenberger III
He may have a name better suited to a trust-fund brat, but Capt. “Sully” works for a living. He’s very, very good at his job. In January, he piloted his crippled Airbus A-320 to a near-impossible smooth landing on New York’s frigid Hudson River. All 155 on board escaped alive. Last man off the rapidly sinking jet, after searching it twice: Sully.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and James Cameron
If the Titanic trio weren’t rich before, the 1997 film took care of that. In May they gave some back, contributing $30,000 to the nursing-home fees of the ship’s last survivor. Millvina Dean, 97, died soon after, her final days free of financial concerns.
J.P. Neufeld
The Concordia University student spotted an Internet posting in which a British teen claimed he would burn down his high school within the hour. Neufeld alerted police in Norfolk, England, who arrested the suspect at the school.
Ian Cartwright
The retired Ontario Superior Court judge knows that there are innocent people in prison and that those who would free them are woefully underfunded in comparison with the Ministry of Justice. So in January he gave $1 million of his own money to the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. Cartwright won’t even get a tax break for his generosity.
David and Penny Chapman
After their ice cream plant in Markdale, Ont., burned down, the Chapmans told their 350 workers they would rebuild in town. Salaried staff would receive full pay for a year, hourly employees for four months—and, if necessary, the Chapmans would “take care of them” beyond that. One worker told a reporter she didn’t know exactly what that meant, but the Chapmans’ word meant “we’re going to be fine.”
Lisa Campbell
The University of California at Berkeley police specialist knew there was something not right about the man in her office seeking permission for a campus event. Rather than ignore the feeling, she set in motion the inquiry that saw Phillip Garrido arrested and Jaycee Dugard, the woman he had kidnapped 18 years before, set free.
Jack Windolf
When the Bollinger Insurance CEO sold half of his New Jersey firm, he picked up a US$500,000 bonus. Instead of keeping it, he gave each of his 434 employees US$1,000. His only request? “I like it when they spend it on themselves rather than pay bills.”
Unknown benefactor
Someone is determined to see women succeed in higher education, and not just students. This year, an anonymous donor gave US$100 million to at least 15 U.S. post-secondary schools, with a portion earmarked for scholarships for women and minorities. The only link between the institutions: large or small, they all have female presidents.
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Newsmakers
By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment
So a blond walks into a courtroom, A royal plot goes for naught, and a partridge in a pear tree
So a blond walks into a courtroomMississauga, Ont., native Jordan Wimmer cleared more than $1 million last year working for Nomos Capital, a London-based hedge fund. But all was not a bed of roses for the attractive, 29-year-old blond financier. Indeed, her blondness is at the heart of her $7-million wrongful dismissal suit against her multi-millionaire boss Mark Lowe. Sexist jokes, piggish behaviour and even an attempt to run her down on the street were part of a campaign of harassment, Wimmer testified last week. She told a London employment tribunal that Lowe made cutting personal remarks, emailed sexist “dumb blond” jokes throughout the office and cavorted in front of her with a stripper, causing her to suffer depression and an eating disorder. Lowe accused Wimmer of “gross distortions,” though he admits “entirely as a joke” to calling her “decorative” and a “dumb blond.” As for his emailed gag about a blond confusing a Corn Flakes box with a jigsaw puzzle, he says that “feeble joke” wasn’t told at her expense. Depending on the tribunal’s sense of humour, the joke may be on Lowe. Continue…
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Newsmakers of the week
By Lianne George - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 4 Comments
The GG raw food rivalry, Veronica finally wins Archie, and Kanye West is a “non-reader”
Seal of approval Inuit leaders are delighted by the positive publicity that Governor General Michaëlle Jean has attracted to the seal hunt ever since she appeared on camera last week snacking on a freshly slaughtered pup. During a visit to Nunavut, Jean partook in the skinning of a seal with a traditional ulu blade, and sampled a piece of its heart, calling it “fresh” and “delicious.” (According to Jean, this delicacy has the texture of sushi, but with a meatier taste.) One restaurant in Montreal told the CBC that sales of its seal appetizer have doubled since the video emerged. Adrienne Clarkson—in Nunavut last week, like Jean, for a symposium hosted by her husband John Raulston Saul—doesn’t see what the big deal is. She’s been eating raw food in the region for almost 40 years, and it never made headline news. “It’s nothing new to me, okay?” she told reporters. “I have a lovely sealskin coat . . . I’ve eaten raw food since 1971—and there you are.”
She said she wanted a revolution
For the first time since Sara Jane Moore, 77, was imprisoned for attempting to assassinate president Gerald Ford in 1975, she admitted last week that her actions were “a serious error.” Back in the mid-’70s, Moore, then a 45-year-old single mother, says she became caught up in the anti-Vietnam War protest movement in California. “I became immersed in it,” she told Matt Lauer, the host of NBC’s Today Show. “We were saying the country needed change. I genuinely thought that [shooting Ford] might trigger that new revolution in this country.” It was on Sept. 22, 1975, that Moore fired on Ford as he greeted a crowd in San Francisco. She missed his head by mere feet. After serving 32 years in jail, six of which she spent in solitary confinement, Moore was released on parole in 2007. Over time, she said, she “began to realize that I had let myself be used.” When host Lauer asked her why she was speaking out now, she said, “I think that one gets tired of being thought of as a kook, a monster, an alien.”
