March 23, 1987

View Full Issue Table of Contents

COVER

THE GOLD RUSH

The wind howls. High atop a ski jump, blue-suited Ron Richards pushes off to begin his descent. “I think he was about seven years old when he won his first competition,” says a man. Cut to the speaker, the skier’s father, Ron Sr. of Oshawa, Ont. Stocky, wearing a redand-white sweater and a modest smile, he sits before a shelf of ski trophies and says, “I have to bite my tongue and not be the proud father and talk about it.”

HEALTH

Spreading the news about AIDS

At first, the television advertisement produced by the Danish National Board of Health is confusing. A capital letter I, alone onscreen, gradually droops and collapses to the strains of a Viennese waltz. But the message becomes clearer when a condom is fitted over the letter and it recovers its vigor. By JOHN BARBER9 min

BUSINESS ECONOMY

Memotec’s tangled roots

The value of the prize was in dispute. Officials with the Montreal-based telecommunications firm Memotec Data Inc., which purchased Teleglobe Canada for $488.3 million on Feb. 11, were still weighing the deal last week. As part of the buy, due to close by March 31, Memotec is supposed to pay the Crownowned Canada Development Investment Corp. (CDIC) $18 million in excess profits that Teleglobe is expected to earn in 1987. By TOM FENNELL8 min

COVER

THE BIG MONEY BATTLE

Barry Frank, a media consultant who specializes in maximizing revenues from televised sports events, has an unusual memento—a framed ace of spades—on the wall of his spacious East Side Manhattan office. For Frank, senior group vice-president of Trans World International (TWI), a division of the International Management Group, the playing card is a souvenir of the day he helped the Calgary Winter Olympics organizers obtain $309 million (U.S.) for the U.S. television rights to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.

COVER

A LINEUP OF STARS

Many of the stars to watch at the 15th Olympic Winter Games in Calgary next February are the medallists at this year’s world championships in the skiing, skating and sledding sports. The tally:

WORLD

In the shadow of the 'Islamic bomb’

When India became the Third World’s first nuclear power in May, 1974, triggering a low-yield atomic device in the Rajasthan desert, Pakistan’s then-president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, reacted passionately. Pakistanis, he said, would “eat leaves and grass, even go hungry” to draw level. By ANDREW BILSKI6 min

BROADCASTING

CTV’s bitter family feud

The axe finally fell at week’s end— and it fell heavily. After weeks of speculation, the CTV Television Network bowed to the cost-cutting demands of its owner-affiliates and fired 20 people from its news and current affairs division. Among the highprofile casualties: By RAE CORELLI6 min

CANADA

A safe haven no longer

For Frank Dimant, a Jew whose parents survived the horrors of the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps, March 12 was the beginning “of a new era” in Canada. On that day the federal government announced that, after almost 40 years of inaction, it would begin tracking down and prosecuting war criminals who had found refuge within Canadian borders. By MADELAINE DROHAN6 min

DATELINE GREENSBORO

Warm welcomes for forgotten allies

It is Sunday morning in Greensboro, N.C., and the rain spattering against the modern stained-glass windows of the First Lutheran Church is about as close to winter as North Carolina gets. In one pew, Rmah Dock and five fellow Vietnamese Montagnards, all neatly dressed in donated sports jackets, stand among the genteel parishioners in their Sunday best. By JULIA BENNETT6 min

COVER

LIFE ON THE FAST TRACK

Life at the top of the mountain is sweet for Pirmin Zurbriggen. With an impressive string of 11 victories this season, the 24year-old Swiss national is clearly the best skier on the men’s World Cup skiing circuit—an accomplishment that has placed him in an elite group of 10 skiers who earn more than $390,000 a year. By DANIELLE KEEFLER5 min

March 161987