September 5, 1977

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Interview

The night of October 23, 1974, was gustily warm, barometrically nondescript. But it was supremely memorable, for the handful who were at Convocation Hall on the University of Toronto campus, as the night singer Cleo Laine was introduced to a Canadian audience. By Cleo Laine, John Dankworth12 min

Letters

Time, gentleman, please. You too, lady

In The Hustler (August 8) Barbara Amiel criticizes me for closing a bar in the Consulate’s reception area in a rather rude way. It seems to me that, in all fairness, she should mention that she and Dusty Cohl were the only two drinking wine at 3 p.m.

Canada

That Day of Reckoning is closer at hand

General James Wolfe and Lord Durham notwithstanding, Quebec has become the world’s largest unilingually French territory. At 6.28 p.m. on a Friday at the end of last month, only a few hundred yards from the Plains of Abraham where New France fell 218 years ago, the Parti Québécois government brought an end to five months of sometimes acrimonious, often frustrating but mostly merely tedious debate over its Charte de la langue française. By GRAHAM FRASER6 min

Careers

She walks in beauty—and gets paid damned well for it

You’ll see them at the glass-roofed Courtyard Café in the ivy-covered Windsor Arms Hotel in downtown Toronto just about any time of day: actors, actresses, directors and assorted creative types; rock/pop singers and musicians from the nearby Soundstage studio; elegantly coiffured, suitably bored jet-setters and aspirants pausing between shopping and hairdressers; and, inevitably, nubile oglers stargazing through heavy mascara and cow lashes. By GARY WEISS5 min

All the puff fit to print

The crime of the year

When defense lawyer Jay Clarke finished his impassioned summation to the jury in a sensational Vancouver rape trial last month, he was promptly spat upon by a female spectator. Clarke, in his zeal to obtain an acquittal for his client, a wealthy Vancouver businessman charged with raping his real estate agent, had just told the British Columbia Supreme Court jury a “funny story” about another rape trial, with the punchline: “Hang onto your hat, baby, I’m going to f--you till your ears fall off.” By JUDITH TIMSON5 min

The Referendum Debate

How can Trudeau preserve die whole when he can’t even define its parts?

The balance of economic power in Canada has shifted. The West is emerging as the preeminent economic force in the life of Canada. It is the West and the North that will provide the cutting edge for the future. The Maritimes have lost the dominant position they occupied at the time of Confederation, and southern Ontario, which has grown rich on its exploitation of Confederation, at last recognizes that fact. By Hu Harries5 min

August 221977