June 18, 1979

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Canada

The Western powers that be

In the renovated elegance of Calgary's leatherbound Petroleum Club, there was only quiet satisfaction mingled with a noticeable increase in the density of cigar smoke. And in Ottawa last week there was a strikingly similar mood of quiet elation, without the usual bravura and ostentation that normally mark such historic occasions.

Frontlines

Detroit: the born-again city

The black teen-ager entered the lobby of the Detroit Plaza Hotel. He was about 14 or 15, nearly six feet tall, in black chino pants, a white T-shirt, black high-top sneakers. It was 11 a.m., a school day. The boy crossed the lobby and headed for one of the office towers of the Renaissance Center. By Ken Becker8 min

SPORTS

The day Bid went down

What can be said of the allure of the Belmont Stakes? Certainly not that it is "The Third Jewel of the Triple Crown.” That kind of stuff is the province of the network boys and the tabloid tub thumpers who call the World Series “The Fall Classic” and World War II “The Big One.” By Joe Flaherty7 min

People

Although at his tender age he’s yet to distinguish between an arabesque and a plié, three-month-old Alexander, the Pisces progeny of Nadia Potts, principal dancer for the National Ballet, and Harold Gomez, National Ballet clarinetist, is destined for a dancer’s peripatetic life. By Jane O’Hara6 min

Frontlines

Roger Lemelin: the Cap Rouge gadfly

Roger Lemelin is the bête noire of Quebec's intellectual elite. His taunt in Toronto that Quebec is becoming a new Iran set the city’s highpitched bank towers to quiver last month like timorous tuning forks in the coarse grip of a disco drummer. By David Thomas5 min

Theatre

Cutting fine glass at Shaw

The formula just might be working at this year's Shaw Festival. G.B.S.'s You Never Can Tell and Dear Liar, a dramatization of letters between Shaw and his favorite actress, combine for classy, glassy comedy. However, not all reflections cut so fine a figure, proof positive of that being Emlyn Williams’ The Corn Is Green, which certainly lives up to its name. By Patricia Keeney Smith4 min

World

The indelible journey of John Paul II

In Warsaw, the normally staid inhabitants paved his way with flowers; on the tank training range at Gniezno more than a million people, many of them farmers who had come by horse and cart, gathered to hear him preach; at Auschwitz he knelt in comparative solitude to pray at the monument to Father Maxmilian Kolbe, one of the four million victims at that concentration camp, who gave his life so that another man, still alive and the father of eight children, might live. By Sue Masterman4 min

Column

Has 24 Sussex been checked for termites and things that go bump in the night?

In Ottawa, the town where the taste buds went out to lunch and have never returned, there are so few decent restaurants that one dares not blow the cover of the best one. It is presided over by a lady who is as broad as her wisdom and she moaned this night—it being the day when Joe Clark was sworn in as prime minister—at the sudden invasion of freshly scrubbed Tory toffs eager to spend their new ministerial salaries. By Allan Fotheringham4 min

Business

Settling into a suicide seat

In the evening of the third day following his swearing-in as Canada's 31st finance minister, John Crosbie is finally able to allow himself two fingers of scotch and yet another idle thought. “Mathematics,” he says, eyes closed, feet on empty desk, “was always a weakness of mine.” By Roy MacGregor4 min

Lifestyles

Home is where you’re able to park it

Mobile homes-those used as principal residences rather than recreational vehicles—have not been objects of desire for most Canadians shopping for a house. There is a prejudice against such dwellings, which seems to be based on an idea that mobile homes are little better than slummy shacks filled with itinerants more ready to snatch washing from your clothesline than to settle down as responsible community residents. By Peter Carlyle-Gordge4 min

June 111979