November 19, 1979

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Frontlines

Exile in her own write

Mavis Gallant had not cared for the photograph which showed her pinioned to her apartment sofa like some astonished butterfly suddenly caught on a collector’s skewer, wide hazel eyes fixed in terror. The fear had been real enough. She regarded the media’s incursions into her life as some people might an assault causing bodily harm—something to be avoided. By Marci McDonald11 min

World

IRAN BOILS AGAIN

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had declared it a day of mourning to commemorate the deaths of students gunned down while protesting against the Shah exactly one year earlier. But as the hundreds of thousands of people marched past the sprawling United States embassy complex on Tehran’s Taleghani Avenue, the U.S. Marines inside the gate had no particular reason to be concerned. By Ian Mather, Ian Urquhart7 min

20b

Frontlines

Eric Nicol’s joys and pains-of humor

Eric Nicol’s first play ran 28 years. The 1942 premiere at the University of British Columbia starred the likes of Lister Sinclair, Norman Campbell and Arthur Hill (who all graduated to prominence in the entertainment world) in the raunchy sex farce that pitted engineer Joe Beef against English Professor Brackish for the hand of the heiress Cassandra. By Paul Grescoe5 min

People

New Wave’s answer to Anne Murray is probably best encapsuled in The Biffs, a sextet from Scarborough, Ontario, which, coincidentally, features one of the songbird’s nephews, Chris Langstroth, on saxophone and hair dryer. The Biffs revel in the tasteless images of kitsch epitomized in songs such as Domesticat (lyric: I chipped my mother's Corning Ware) and Flying Saucer on a Stick. By Marsha Boulton5 min

Cities

Paris hurt to the core

Beneath the voluminous canary-yellow big top where the semi-annual circus known as Paris ready-to-wear collections unfolded, the message was resoundingly brief. Amid the staccato glare of flashbulbs, the star of the 1980 summer fashion season was unveiled, only to reveal itself as that brand-new old favorite, the miniskirt. By Marci McDonald5 min

Labor

A colossus takes his leave

Just one block from the White House on 16th Street, Washington’s poshest downtown thoroughfare, sits a marble-faced office building. There are always two or three limousines parked in the curved driveway. In the lobby is a mother-of-pearl replica of a Moslem mosque in Jerusalem, a gift from Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan. By Ian Urquhart5 min

Theatre

The way we were, at centre stage

In Broadway’s biggest hit this season there’s a dog act, a tribute to fandancer Sally Rand and doves that fly into the outstretched arms of a pretty girl. The songs are old standbys and the skits are the same ones that charmed audiences of burlesque 65 years ago. By David McCaughna5 min

Frontlines

The bomb for Argentina?

Having just read your article on the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), The Deal That Never Was (Oct. 15), and their predicament since the loss of a Candu reactor sale to Argentina, I can only say that I am delighted. Let the Argentinians have their nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs.

Canada

Bad things come in small packages

For years, Vancouver reporter Don Hunter had been aware of the bare, bizarre details of the kettle-bomb murder case—high explosives implanted in a General Electric kettle which, in 1972, blew up Gurmail Sidhu and his new wife, Parmjeet, in their New Westminster, B.C., apartment. By Paul Grescoe4 min

Frontlines

Masters of the mountains

The young Bedouin leads his wellfed camel across the granite and sandstone scree below Mount Sinai and tethers it to a discarded engine block in a line of four-wheel-drive Dodge vans. The vehicles, like the camels, belong to the Jebeliya tribesmen—mountain Bedouin who live in the Sinai highlands which Israel this week will return to Egyptian control. By Eric Silver4 min

November 121979