November 20, 1978

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Cover Story

KIDS WITHOUT RIGHTS

A sweetly smiling young woman on a busy Ottawa street pats a child on the head and the child says: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The child is a midget who doesn’t like being treated as a child. Andrew Cohen’s true story of the “cuteness syndrome” makes the point. By Warren Gerard8 min

World News

A despot’s last-ditch stand

The familiar voice crackling out over the Iranian airwaves was unaccustomedly hesitant. The short, ramrodstiff man who had held his country in a vise-like grip of fear for a quarter of a century seemed shrunken and suddenly frail on screen. By Marci McDonald8 min

Frontlines

George Steiner thinks!

Dressed in funereal black, at first glance George Steiner looks as if he might have spent the last 25 years in the cloistered bank vaults of Geneva. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Paris-born critic and English professor is a truly international figure, as at home in Chicago where he studied as he is in Cambridge or Geneva where he now divides his teaching year.

Fashion

How the beaver turned to gold

It hasn’t yet reached the point of kittynapping, but given the consumer’s yen this year to throw a fur—any furon her back, owners of the lustrous Persian cat or the ombre-hued Siamese might be wise to keep a close eye on their pets’ nocturnal outings. By Barbara Amiel5 min

Canadian News

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evi

He is an ex-wartime intelligence officer who drops Latin phrases with : the grace of falling leaves, yet he was “notoriously bad” at all the RCMP code words. He was ambassador to Germany during the Cold War and in the Middle East during the 1967 Six-Day War, but as head of the Security Service he says he didn’t “know one end of a microphone from the other.” By Robert Lewis5 min

Canadian News

Menachem Begin on the road: The misunderstandings remain

It had promised to be little more than diplomatic potlatch—a routine goodwill tour from which both sides would emerge with modest gifts. But by the time Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin ended his six-day official visit to Canada on Sunday, the political definition of “routine” had changed dramatically. By Michael Posner4 min

Health

Hypertension: medical world under pressure

Paul Ormsby went to his physician for a routine checkup and found he was suffering from hypertension. He was placed on a course of drug therapy but, as he didn’t feel sick to begin with, he didn’t see much point in taking his pills and easily persuaded himself to discontinue treatment. By Brenda Rabkin4 min

Frontlines

Fame begins at 91

Barker Fairley is an elemental man who seems exempt from the vicissitudes of mortality. At 91, his spirit is as ebullient as champagne, and he has been spared the bodily and mental decrepitude which sometimes overtakes men far younger than he. By Hubert de Santana4 min

Little fish in a big pond catch nothing but trouble

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Labor

Little fish in a big pond catch nothing but trouble

Stan McCreary hasn’t been fishing long enough to acquire the gnarled, weather-beaten facial trademark of the veteran British Columbia commercial fisherman. The fresh-faced 32-year-old, who still looks much like the fellow who left university eight years ago with a few hundred in his pocket to start fishing, seems to have everything going for him: By Rod Mickleburgh4 min

Television

A medical show breathes new life and possibility into a stifled medium

Snug in a chemical snooze and swaddled in surgical green, a pale, blonde boy named Peter Chapman lies supine on an operating table and awaits the knife. Peter, at 11, has endured open-heart surgery twice before. Scar tissue will make this third cutting of his heart more difficult. By William Casselman4 min

November 131978