Margaret Trudeau's last breakdown

By Anne Kingston - Friday, October 8, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Peter Bregg/CP/ Reuters/ Photograph by Jane Heller

Margaret Trudeau is sitting in the living room of her Montreal apartment, chatting about the Prime Minister and marijuana. No, the former flower-child chatelaine of 24 Sussex isn’t time-travelling back to her days married to prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the ’70s, smoking spliffs under the noses of her Mountie detail. She’s vibrantly in the here and now as conversation veers to the government’s stance on medical marijuana. “I think Mr. Harper has told us we could grow four [plants],” she says. “I’m tempted to grow four.” She’s joking—or seems to be. Trudeau’s pot-smoking days are behind her—mostly.

Now a mental-health advocate, Trudeau is more interested in the role marijuana use played in her bipolar disorder, a condition she made public in 2006. A little grass gave her focus, she says: “some light and joy and delight.” Too much triggered manic episodes. She still indulges—occasionally. “I fall off now and then, but very, very seldom,” she says. “I’m too cautious now.”

“Cautious” was never a word used to describe Margaret Trudeau, who arrived on the national stage in 1971 as the ravishing 22-year-old bride of a debonair 51-year-old PM. Their unlikely union, which produced Justin, Alexandre (known as Sacha) and Michel, ended in 1977 amidst lurid headlines that the PM’s erratic wife had bolted to photograph the Rolling Stones. Margaret filled in the details in Beyond Reason, her 1979 tell-a-lot, which revealed her “long tunnel of darkness” during her marriage and her affair with an unnamed man later identified as senator Edward Kennedy. In 1982, a second memoir, Consequences, detailed dalliances with the likes of Jack Nicholson and Ryan O’Neal as she flitted between continents seeking her own fame.

Continue…

A fresh take on Trudeau's act

By Paul Wells - Friday, October 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Chuck Mitchell/CP

In October 1970, Terry Mosher, the wonderful Montreal cartoonist known as Aislin, published a cartoon in Maclean’s. The subject was the FLQ kidnapping crisis and Pierre Trudeau’s invocation of the War Measures Act. Terry drew Jean Marchand, Trudeau’s justice minister, smoking a pipe and announcing, “Nous avons maintenant des listes de suspects!” We now have lists of suspects. Marchand is clutching the telephone directories for Montreal, Quebec City, Hull and Sherbrooke.

Ha! I don’t need to explain the joke, but what the heck: Aislin was saying the arrests under the War Measures Act were arbitrary and sweeping. He published his critique in one of the country’s largest magazines. And no ill seems to have come to him for his cheek.

This meditation is occasioned by the arrival on my desk of Trudeau’s Darkest Hour: War Measures in Time of Peace, October 1970, a fascinating anthology edited by Guy Bouthillier and Édouard Cloutier. The two men are long-time Université de Montréal profs. Bouthillier ran Quebec’s nationalist St. Jean Baptiste Society from 1997 to 2003, although the jacket bio doesn’t mention that. The book is published by Baraka Books, whose president is Robin Philpot, a likeable U.S.-born (UPDATE: Ontario-born, actually — pw) anglophone convert to Quebec separatism.

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Better know a talking point

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 11:53 AM - 0 Comments

From the official government lines distributed over the weekend.

The Ignatieff Liberals promise to force all Canadians to answer personal and intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of jail, fine, or both.

Though the threat of imprisonment is included in the Statistics Act of 1970, no one has ever apparently been sent to prison for refusing to answer the census. The threat of a fine appears in both the Statistics Act and the Census Act of 1870. Until 1951, the census was conducted every 10 years, afterwards every five years.

The following prime ministers then—assuming the threat of a fine was not momentarily suspended between 1870 and 1970—would seem to have forced Canadians to answer personal and intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of jail or fine: John A. Macdonald (thrice), Wilfrid Laurier (twice), Arthur Meighen, RB Bennett, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent (twice), John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Trudeau (thrice), Brian Mulroney (twice), Jean Chretien (twice) and Stephen Harper.

Dalton Trudeau

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

The Ontario Premier gets comparative.

In a closed-door meeting with MPPs on Wednesday, McGuinty deflected questions from members unhappy at the heavy-handedness of police in dealing with protesters—and the government’s complicity in failing to correct the mistaken impression officers had been given more powers.

“He told us, ‘Just remember, the same guy who gave us the Charter also gave us the War Measures Act,’” said one startled MPP, noting the premier also refuted calls from several members to strike a public inquiry into the G20 debacle.

In fairness to Pierre Trudeau, the War Measures Act was enacted in 1914, he merely invoked it in 1970.

For the sake of comparison though… Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on MPs reeling from wheelchairs and badly designed stationery

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Justin shocked by ‘lazy’ comments
Several MPs and senators took up the Canadian Paraplegic Association’s challenge to spend a day in a wheelchair. Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau was participating in the event for a second time. This year, he was given an electric wheelchair and was taken aback by the number of times he was called “lazy.” Defence Minister Peter MacKay liked his special rugby wheelchair; Winnipeg Tory MP Shelly Glover said the chair wreaked havoc on her nails. Halifax NDP MP Megan Leslie, who has short nails, also was in pain. Her hands hurt so much she asked her assistant to get her gloves. They made for an interesting fashion accessory: the only ones the aide could find were orange with white skulls on them. Leslie said the experience really was transforming, forcing her to rethink simple things like getting a glass of water and then not being able to bring it back to her desk because of needing both hands for the chair. Her biggest dislike? Sitting in elevators at everyone’s butt level.

‘Our country’s greatest shame’
At an anti-asbestos rally on the Hill, Hassan Yussuff of the Canadian Labour Congress said it was outrageous that at the same time asbestos warning signs were posted on the Hill (where the substance is scheduled for eventual removal), Canada is still allowing asbestos to be exported. Winnipeg NDP MP Pat Martin called Canada’s asbestos industry “our country’s greatest shame.” Martin actually worked in an asbestos mine after high school in the Yukon. “I turned 18 in an asbestos mine,” says the MP. His father begged him to get out of the mine, even offering him money as an incentive. Martin is now part of an asbestos medical study taking place at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital. Major working asbestos mines are located in Quebec in the riding of Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis.

An ugly letter from Ottawa
When a letter from an MP is needed to mark a special occasion such as a birthday or wedding anniversary, it is done up on special stationery with light green maple leaves and the coat of arms of all the provinces around the border. Toronto Liberal Rob Oliphant has been inquiring about whether the design could be changed to something more modern and aesthetically pleasing. Oliphant says because people frame these letters and they can stay up on walls for years, they should look good. He has support in other parties—Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow, for one, also thinks the design is horrible. Some, on the other hand, like Ontario Liberal MP Anthony Rota, like the look and think it’s ‘colourful.’ So far, Oliphant says, he hasn’t heard back from the parliamentary service people who produce the commemorative stationery.

Why she became an MP
The Rotary Club of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission recently held the 60th Rotary Adventure in Citizenship Program in Ottawa. Young people from across the country were brought to the capital to learn about Canada. At a reception, the youth met MPs from their home provinces. Newfoundland Liberal MP Siobhan Coady took part in the Adventure in Citizenship Program many years ago. Back then, when she was given a tour of the House of Commons, she sat in then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s seat. She decided then and there she wanted to become a politician, but not before making it as a successful businesswoman so she would have something to bring to the table. When Coady’s young visitors told the MP that people were making fun of their Newfoundland accents, she told them to tell their taunters to “go stick it.”

Photography by Mitchel Raphael

That which is actually funny

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM - 29 Comments

Glen Pearson notes the laughter that accompanied Jean Chretien’s return to Parliament Hill yesterday.

Outside of Chretien, it’s really hard to think of our last really funny PM.  Oh sure, there was Pierre Trudeau, but his wit was so knife-sharp that it often left others with nothing to say.  His understudy Chretien, however, told the kind of jokes I used to hear all through the years at the various firehalls I worked in.  What was funny about him was that he was “funny” – that’s all.  At times his humour was brilliant; at other times it could be slightly cruel; and then there were those occasions when it actually became a pragmatic and useful tool for creating ease and bringing out some kind of consensus.

Mitchel Raphael on MPs scarf skills and the G8 star who wanted to walk everywhere

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Hillary Clinton’s personal makeup shield
For the G8 foreign ministers’ conference, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stayed in the Karsh suite of the Fairmont Château Laurier, where famous Ottawa photographer Yousuf Karsh lived for 18 years with his wife, Estrellita Karsh. Famous Karsh photos in the apartment include ones of Pablo Picasso and George Bernard Shaw. The suite also has what Mrs. Karsh describes as “the sexy shower”—it’s lined with marble and has three tiers of water jets. CTV’s Tom Clark went to the Château to interview Clinton for his show Power Play. Before the interview, Clinton pulled out her makeup kit for a touch-up. Seamlessly her security detail moved in front of the cameras. When the freshening up was done they moved back into position. One G8 attendee, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, was very low maintenance, according to staff at the British High Commission who said his only demand was that he be able to walk everywhere. “He has lots of energy,” noted the staffer. While Miliband (who has been touted as a future leader of Britain’s Labour Party) was in the foyer of the House being interviewed by the CBC, a rare hush descended. People seemed star-struck by the politician—well, except for Industry Minister Tony Clement, who walked down the stairs loudly snapping his fingers, even doing it behind Miliband as he was being interviewed. “I am a snap-happy kind of guy,” he later joked when he realized what was going on.

MPs flaunt accessory chic
All parties were united in wearing blue to show their support for NDP Leader Jack Layton and his battle with prostate cancer. The men were given ties and the women scarves by Prostate Cancer Canada. Liberal MPs Martha Hall Findlay and Justin Trudeau traded. Trudeau made the scarf an ascot and wore it as the mandatory-tie-for-men in the House of Commons. “A tie is a tie is a tie,” he said. “I did the research.” Trudeau noted the ascot was also a way to remember his father Pierre Trudeau with “a bit of flamboyance.” The former PM died from prostate cancer and other medical complications. Other MPs also tried adding some panache to their blue made-in-Canada, 100 per cent Italian-silk accessories. NDP MP Megan Leslie tied hers around her neck, evoking airline stewardess chic, while Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose wrapped her scarf around her waist. All the parties paid tribute to Layton in their member’s statements before question period, an unusual departure. Normally, the statement made right before QP is by a Conservative trying to drag Michael Ignatieff through the mud. But this time Conservative MP Jim Abbott spoke about prostate cancer and said he told Layton he looked good in a blue tie. The NDP leader replied that his father (a Tory in Brian Mulroney’s cabinet) would have been proud. Prostate Cancer Canada president and CEO Steve Jones said the event was a milestone for his organization and that they could not have hoped for better awareness for the condition, one that he says one in six men will be diagnosed with in their lifetime. At a reception after QP, Layton, who has been on a health diet, joked he has never eaten more broccoli in his life. “No cheese,” his MP wife Olivia Chow reminded him. Chow herself was spotted grabbing greasy spring rolls. “I am eating them on Jack’s behalf,” she joked.

Why those reporters are  yelling at Michael Ignatieff
One CBC reporter has noted that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff chooses to take the loudest questions during scrums, which is annoying, they say, for those journalists who tend not to yell. NDP Leader Jack Layton, the reporter added, is much better at spreading the wealth—or being smart and picking the people he prefers to answer.

'We have to be consistent'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 8:09 AM - 45 Comments

Maxime Bernier delivered a speech to the Manning conference this weekend on conservatism and Quebec. The prepared text is here.

Conservative policies don’t need to be watered down to appeal to a substantial portion of Quebec voters. On the contrary, as I said to a Calgary audience recently, I believe that to succeed, we have to be consistent, to defend our principles openly, with passion and with conviction.

What conservative principles need in Quebec is to be sold with a particular attention to Quebec’s specific political culture, just as they are tailored to be attractive to an English-speaking audience. They have to be crafted as a way to solve the problems of all of Canada, including Quebec, and not as a reaction from one region against another. If we succeed in doing this, conservatism has a brilliant future in this country.

Rob Silver considers the implications.

Photo gallery: Politics and the Pen

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 12:34 PM - 2 Comments

The Writers’ Trust of Canada handed out their annual $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing to John English for Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000 at the annual Politics and the Pen gala dinner in the Fairmont Château Laurier ballroom. Politics and the Pen is one of Ottawa’s A-list events and and brings out top politicians and authors like Margaret Atwood and Russell Smith.

On the run

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 12:30 AM - 1 Comment

Included among the hundreds of films now online from the National Film Board is History on the Run, an entirely fascinating documentary about the media and the 1979 federal election that climaxes with a technical explanation of how best to light Joe Clark’s chin.

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Aside from the fashions, technologies and attitudes toward indoor smoking, I’m not sure much has changed.

I don’t see any 'vicious' betrayal

By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 2 Comments

Last week my editor mused that, in light of the recent death of J.D. Salinger, I might want to write about the “vicious” betrayal of Salinger’s privacy by Joyce Maynard. Maynard was Salinger’s live-in girlfriend for some months in 1972-73 when she was 18 years old and he was 53 (commonly known as an “abusive” relationship unless you are really important like Pierre Trudeau or Salinger, in which case the young woman is the exploiter). That’s how I came to dip into what George Steiner referred to as “the Salinger Industry,” which, incidentally, doesn’t need any stimulus money to keep going, even though he published only one novel and some short stories and then went dead quiet for the last 45 years of his life.

I stuck to a few primary sources: Salinger’s own work, his daughter’s autobiography Dream Catcher, and Maynard’s memoir At Home in the World, which she published in 1998. That’s the book that caused all hell to break loose, because in it she forfeited silence to write about her time with this pathologically private man.

I can’t imagine why anyone was upset with Maynard. I found her account of weirdo life in Cornish, N.H., with Salinger, veggies, and the great search for her simillimum to repair her vaginismus (look them up; I had to) absolutely riveting.

Continue…

Is our children learning?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 12:56 PM - 70 Comments

Conservative MP Larry Miller finds a sympathetic high school civics teacher.

A student asked about prorogation and Miller defended and explained that decision. The civics teacher then remarked, “I didn’t know the word prorogue,” then added he doubted many had…

Scott noted former prime ministers Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau shut down government four and 11 times respectively with no fuss. ”How come all of a sudden when he does it, Mr. Harper does it, everybody knows about it and there’s protests?”…

Miller blamed the media for prorogation criticism. He said the media have “worked it up” to “sell papers or sell TV shows.” ”The national media needs a story in Ottawa and they didn’t have one,” Miller said, to which Scott expressed agreement…

Scott next asked Miller why opposition parties “give the impression they’re a little softer on crime.” They’re “not pro-criminal but they seem to look after the criminal as much if not more than the victim. What is that?”…

At one point, a student passed a note back to Scott, which he said informed him he was asking too many questions. Scott paused and invited students to ask any. Who’s your favourite hockey team? one asked. “Boston Bruins,” Miller replied.

The dreaded invoking of Trudeau

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 96 Comments

Last weekend, Lisa Raitt held a town hall meeting in her riding. She brought donuts and maple leaf pins. At least a couple of her constituents were unpersuaded.

“The man (Harper) has become more of a dictator than Pierre Trudeau had ever done (sic),” said Paul Redvers, a Conservative voter in the last election. The Oakville resident said the government has broken campaign promises to cooperate more with other parties in Parliament and be more accountable to Canadians.

“Is your integrity so low you would rather stay on as a cabinet minister than confront Mr. Harper about proroguing government to avoid bad press?” Redvers asked Raitt.

Raitt denied the implication and said she has no fear of expressing local feedback to her caucus. “I will go and say these (things) are what my constituents are saying,” said Raitt, noting she had heard similar opinions at earlier town halls in Burlington and Milton Saturday.

Pierre & Maggie: The untold story

By John Geddes - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 10:56 AM - 34 Comments

There’s something dark, almost to the point of the occult, in the way Pierre Trudeau is often remembered. Scan across the shelf of books about him: titles refer to his “shadow,” the notion he remains “hidden,” and one even calls him a “magus.” The most famous biographical quote about him claims “he haunts us still.”

Perhaps it’s all this gloom that makes the story of his courtship and marriage such welcome leavening in the tale. The dancing entrance of Margaret Sinclair, quintessential flower child, brings to the story a tie-dyed splash of contrast, occasionally sheer silliness—not to mention doomed romance, rare beauty and rock-star celebrity. No wage and price controls or constitutional amendments in this chapter. Continue…

Deleted scenes (V)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 23, 2009 at 3:16 PM - 18 Comments

This is referenced briefly in the print edition, but here’s a more expansive take.

One could argue that the defining characteristic of Liberal leaders over the last half century is recovery. Pearson, Trudeau and Chretien struggled and recovered. Turner, Martin and Dion struggled and did not. Pearson wins the leadership in 1958 and promptly leads the party to what was then its worst ever defeat. Trudeau nearly loses to Bob Stanfield in 1972 and loses outright to Joe Clark in 1979, and comes back both times to revive his fortunes and win majority governments. And then there’s Chretien. Continue…

The Olympic bump

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 2, 2009 at 4:03 PM - 17 Comments

It has been speculated by various sources at various points that there is some benefit to the Conservative side in putting off an election until after the Olympics in Vancouver. That the resulting surge of patriotism will result in a similar surge of optimism about the country and support for the government that happens to be in charge at that time.

This perhaps sounds very plausible. Or perhaps it doesn’t. Either way, it would be nice, just this once, to sort out whether there’s any data to support this particular adventure in amateur strategizing. Continue…

'It doesn't seem important. It is.'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 44 Comments

The prepared text of Michael Ignatieff’s speech to the Canadian Club this afternoon.

I’m here today to talk to you about Canada’s place in the world—how we’ve lost it and how we can get it back.

The world is changing, and Canada has to change with it.  Our identity as a people will be defined by the place we find in the world that is taking shape on the other side of this global recession.

Canada was born inside two Empires, the French, the British, and we have matured beside the most powerful nation in history, the United States.

What happens to our identity, our place in the world, when the centre of gravity shifts to Asia? When India and China become the powerhouses of the global economy?

We should have nothing to fear from the rise of these new powers. A new world creates new opportunities for Canada. Opportunities to trade, to learn, and to create the global architecture of security for this emerging new world. But only if we have leadership that seizes these opportunities.

Ce que nous faisons à l’étranger contribue à nous définir. C’est le reflet de notre personnalité. C’est le reflet de ce que nous pouvons apporter au monde pour qu’il soit meilleur. C’est le prolongement de ce que nous sommes comme peuple.

By and large, Canadian politicians scarcely utter a word about Canada in the world on the hustings.  It doesn’t seem important. It is.

Continue…

Pierre Trudeau as a comics writer?

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 3 Comments

The oh-so-’60s tale of Michel Choquette and The Someday Funnies—the monumental comics collection that never happened (yet)—is one of the fabled hangovers of the 20th century’s most culturally tumultuous decade. For seven years in the 1970s Choquette, an exceedingly well-connected young Quebecer—Pierre Trudeau was a family friend—roamed the world on publishers’ advances and his own dime, gathering material for nothing less than a history of the previous decade in graphics form.

By the time he packed it in at Christmas 1977, with the last publishing possibility up in smoke, Choquette had material—the majority of it written and drawn by the same artist, but some a collaborative effort—from 200 people, most of them comics icons like Jack Kirby, but also including such figures as Federico Fellini, Frank Zappa and Pierre Berton. Exhausted, $300,000 in debt and with almost none of the contributors yet paid the $100 on offer, Choquette went home to Montreal, leaving the artwork in London and New York. Small wonder that Bob Levin, a San Francisco lawyer and comics aficionado who spent two years working with Choquette for a story (with samples of the art) in the August edition of The Comics Journal, calls The Someday Funnies, “the loudest of all never-were’s.” Continue…

'69 is a Liberal position'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 11:59 AM - 7 Comments

Dale Smith looks at Liberal courting of the gay community.

Also at Montreal Pride this weekend, I was reliably informed that the Liberals were out in full force with a cheeky slogan that says “69 is a Liberal position” – referencing of course the fact that it was in 1969 that Trudeau’s bill to decriminalise homosexuality was enacted.

Mitchel Raphael on the cabinet minister who loves Elvis

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Unfortunately Rahim Jaffer was busy that day
Helena Guergis, minister of state for the status of women, has been a regular at the annual Collingwood Elvis Festival in her Ontario riding. For three years, she says, the Elvis impersonators she rode with in the opening parade coincidentally all went on to become champions in various categories later in the festival. This year, though, she rode with a past winner, Gino Monopoli. The first album Guergis ever bought was one of Elvis’s. When she was young, Teddy Bear was her favourite Elvis song. “As I got older it was Devil in Disguise,” she says. Guergis now owns a huge collection of Elvis cassettes—her uncle gave them to her after he put the music onto disks for himself. Guergis says she wanted her husband, former MP Rahim Jaffer, to come to the festival and dress up: “I tried to get him to be the brown Elvis in this year’s parade.” She says if Jaffer will do it next year, she’ll go as Priscilla Presley. Jaffer, who lost in the last election, decided not to run again. The new Conservative candidate in his Edmonton riding will be Ryan Hastman, who used to be an aide to Stockwell Day.

Gandhi, Chavez and Trudeau gather
Members of the Gen II Global Peace Initiative held their second formal meeting in Toronto. The group is made up of activists who are the children or grandchildren of peacemakers and human rights leaders. The Toronto meeting included Martin Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr., Christine Chavez-Delgado, granddaughter of labour icon Cesar Chavez, and Montreal MP Justin Trudeau. After the group’s first meeting in London in 2007, Trudeau says he has kept in touch with Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, daughter of the assassinated Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, and Nadim Gemayel, son of the assassinated Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel. Rabin and Gemayel did not make it to Toronto, but Trudeau did meet for the first time Tushar Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. Trudeau says while his name can be a blessing and challenge in Canada, Gandhi has an international reputation to live up to. He says the two discussed the situation in Sri Lanka. (Trudeau has a large Sri Lankan community in his Papineau riding.) Gen II is still trying to build itself up. “We are all working with the legacies our ancestors left us,” notes Trudeau. “What we are trying to see is if there is a collective power. These are people who have worked hard to live up to the responsibility of the names they have been given.” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney addressed the group and welcomed them on behalf of the Canadian government. He also managed to add a little sparkle to the proceedings: just before entering the room, he opened a gift from a friend who had used gold glittery wrapping paper. The glitter clung to Kenney’s suit and was so fine it floated onto the garments of a few Gen IIers. Continue…

Take your shirt off

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 24 Comments

Margaret Wente makes a simple plea.

So which nation’s leaders are missing from this pin-up calendar of political hunks? You guessed it! Canada’s last athletic prime minister was Pierre Trudeau, who canoed, climbed mountains, dived the oceans and sired a child in his dotage. By contrast, neither Stephen Harper nor Michael Ignatieff would dare be caught in public without their shirts on. They prefer to stay indoors and think. Mr. Ignatieff may be attractive, in a certain New York Review of Books kind of way. But you get the feeling that neither of them goes outside unless he has to…

To be honest, I wouldn’t really want a ruthless KGB man as prime minister of Canada, or a sex-crazed old goat or a narcissist with a Napoleon complex. All I’m saying is, we could sometimes use a break from endless stories about federal-provincial relations and employment insurance. A little sex appeal in Ottawa might perk us up. And what could be so wrong with that?

Heirs apparent

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 20, 2009 at 4:02 PM - 2 Comments

Video evidence of the talk between Catherine Clark and Justin Trudeau is here. Judging from the comprehensive, cross-section coverage in the Saturday Globe, it is terribly important that you see this.

Newsmakers of the week

By Lianne George - Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Everyone loves a stampede
On Saturday, the leaders of Canada’s three major parties turned up in Calgary to take part in Stampede festivities and slip in a little meal-time campaigning. Speaking at a breakfast at the Calgary Zoo, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff blasted the Tories for their latest attack ads, which imply that the Bloc Québécois favours leniency for pedophiles. “I’m in politics to defeat the Bloc Québécois with real arguments,” Ignatieff told the crowd, “rather than slurs and vicious ad hominem personal attacks.” Not far away, at a barbecue in Heritage Park, Prime Minister Stephen Harper slammed the Liberals’ “timid and trendy” foreign policies and the NDP’s ethos of “tax and spend.” “Let the opposition parties threaten to get together to defeat us and replace us,” he said. “Canadians have been clear that they do not want another election.” Meanwhile, NDP Leader Jack Layton, invited by Calgary Herald reporter Don Braid to a barbecue at the Ranchmen’s Club, a well-known Conservative hangout, played nice, worked the room and, according to Braid, had “friendly chats with several people I wasn’t sure would talk to him at all.” He even braved a prairie oyster. “Not bad,” Layton said. “I think I’ll have another one.” Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on who Don Newman will miss

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

Somebody at Stornoway is out of sorts

Michael Ignatieff held a media garden party at Stornoway, his first since becoming Liberal leader. The Etobicoke Youth Jazz Orchestra from his Toronto riding provided the music. The party was supposed to go from 6 to 8 p.m., but when it started getting chilly, Ignatieff’s wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, invited the remaining guests into the house, where media folks stayed chatting with Iggy in the living room until 10:30. Zsohar’s and Iggy’s feisty feline Mimi was jumping all over the place. (She even jumps in Ignatieff’s cereal when he has breakfast.) The couple had got their second cat, Eric, the day before the bash so Mimi was in a bit of a huff. Stornoway’s chef, Josh Drache, calls Mimi “an evil cat.” Zsohar served biscotti in the living room, and, despite her jumping, even Mimi got a nibble.

Who knew our Senators were that fit?

Vancouver Conservative MP John Weston had several politicians, sports coaches, and Laureen Harper gather in front of the Peace Tower as part of his initiative to get MPs to invest at least “20 minutes 10 seconds” twice weekly in fitness activities. The amount of time is connected to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. When Conservative Senator Nancy Greene Raine told the crowd that 80 per cent of senators already had some sort of fitness regime, a few gasps were heard. Labour Minister Rona Ambrose brought her dog Luna to the event. When Peter Stoffer tried to pet the pooch, Ambrose warned the NDP MP that Luna hates men. But Luna liked Stoffer for some reason. As the group did a walking lap around the Hill, they passed AIDS activists dressed in black-and-white-striped prison uniforms protesting the criminalization of HIV transmission, saying it is the only potentially fatal pathogen being treated this way. The AIDS activists were supported by NDP MPs Libby Davies and Bill Siksay as well as Liberal MP Hedy Fry. Before the AIDS protest had wrapped up, another group of demonstrators arrived with effigies of Stephen Harper and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as the two leaders were meeting on the Hill for trade talks. The Uribe protesters’ music was so loud it drowned out the AIDS activists.

Luckily Don Newman ignored his CBC bosses

CBC Newsworld Politics host Don Newman will soon retire. He arrived on the Hill as a Globe and Mail reporter during Pierre Trudeau’s first government. He was the first print reporter to have a tape recorder. “I was laughed at and ridiculed both by broadcasters and by colleagues in the print press.” He has no plans to be a politician, although he notes his former fellow broadcaster Mike Duffy, who is now a senator, always had an interest in the upper chamber. Notes Newman, “I am very happy for him that he finally got where he wanted to go.” Newman hasn’t voted in a federal or provincial election since 1972 because he covers them. “I do vote municipally. I kinda know who is running for council. I vote for the school board although I have no idea who they are.” When CBC got the Newsworld channel, Newman was told by his bosses not to waste his time on it. They later admitted they were wrong. “I knew Newsworld was going to be a big success because Brian Mulroney would phone me personally on the commercial breaks.” Will he miss wearing makeup every day? “No,” says Newman. “But I’ve had a wonderful person [Joan Hodgins] who has done my makeup since 1993. I will miss her company every day.”

What’s Martha Hall Findlay wearing?

Toronto Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay was spotted wearing a sealskin ribbon she got from the government of Nunavut. Her Liberal colleague Anthony Rota, who has the fur industry promotion organization Fur Harvesters Auction in his northern Ontario riding, says he plans to get similar ribbons for all the Liberal MPs.