October 16, 1978

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Cover Story

A Flower for all seasons

The new smell of Quebec is known by its trade mark: No. 10. The odor may be appropriately described as flowery as it rises this fall out of pre-shave, after-shave, cologne, deodorant and the true savior of Christmas, soap-on-a-rope. The same number can be found pushing automobiles, skates, sticks and yogurt. By Roy MacGregor14 min

The noble experiment that did not work

October 17 is an anniversary for Pierre Trudeau, but there will be no celebrations in Ottawa. In 1968, four days after the founding of the Parti Québécois, Trudeau rose in the House of Commons to present his blueprint for linguistic justice—the Official Languages Act. By David Thomas, Graham Fraser9 min

The shape of things to come

As the 63 candidates enter the homestretch for the Oct. 16 By-election Cup, Maclean’s herewith presents a schematic look at the 15 ridings. Not all the horses will go the distance and, with apologies, we’ve left them off our chart. The facts and readings on front-runners are based on reports, filed 10 days before the vote, by six staff writers and four regional correspondents who trailed national leaders and candidates in seven provinces and talked to key party strategists.

16h

Letters

In your article, Giving the People What They Want (Sept. 25), you suggest some Liberal candidates might want to put some distance between themselves and Pierre Trudeau in the October byelections. In support of this, you quote Westmount candidate Don Johnston as saying, “I’ve known Pierre Trudeau for 20 years, but it’s troubling me.

56b

Theatre

All of the culture that money can buy

Item: One night last May, director John Wood headed for the wings of the National Arts Centre theatre to catch a few bars of his musical, William Schwenk and Arthur Who? “John who?” demanded an officious usher, promptly barring his way. But Wood had no reason to believe that he would be recognized, even after a year at the centre: hadn’t a security guard already refused to allow him into one of his own rehearsals? By Adele Freedman6 min

World News

Death of a salesman

Werner Lamberz, heir to East German leader Erich Honecker and his country's top trouble-stirrer in Africa, was killed in a helicopter crash in Libya last March. Reports at the time spoke of an accident but, for the first time in this exclusive report from Paris, Maclean’s correspondent Peter Lewis reveals that it is now believed Lamberz was murdered, and names three possible killers:

Canadian News

The national gripes fly home to roost

Out there on the byelection stump, in hotels that make strange bedfellows, rival campaigners are literally falling all over each other. One recent night in the dining room of Corner Brook’s Glynmill Inn, Brian Flemming, advance-manning a trip for Pierre Trudeau, stopped by the table of St. John’s Tory MP Jim McGrath, who was in town with Joe Clark. By Robert Lewis5 min

Cooling out the great ‘sipped disc’ furore

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Medicine

Cooling out the great ‘sipped disc’ furore

For the medical profession, what happened may have become a pain in the neck, but it was also a measure of how many people have a pain in the back. In early September at the Second World Congress on Pain in Montreal an American neurosurgeon presented a paper describing what one newspaper headline heralded next day as “a new operation to cure slipped discs fast.” By Wayne Clark5 min

36H

A World Of Thrills And Make Believe

The land of bluegrass has built white plank fences around its legends. And many of the most noted of these horse farms are still open to the public, with winding driveways that leisurely carry you past millionaires munching on grass. New Orleans, Louisiana, is the god child of France, with graceful iron-lace balconies overlooking the streets of the famed Vieux Carre.

Frontlines

Ombudsman as hustler: the other Bob Cooper

It isn’t easy to get Robert Cooper, CBC’s ombudsman, to stand still. He’s always on the run. Just on Ombudsman business alone he travels 100,000 miles a year. And now it seems, incredibly, there are two of him running. One is “the weird guy with the squeaky voice,” as he refers to himself, who fights for the little man three Sunday nights a month at 10:30. By Ernest Hillen4 min

36B

THE BECKONING OF THE SUN TO A RIM OF SAND

They’re white as spun sugar, though sometimes brown, and reached for and held on to by the impatient fingers of two great bodies of water. Ships have been tom apart and tossed upon them. Rockets have left them and climbed toward the moon. Both man and wild pony leave their wayward tracks to melt away upon them.

October 91978