May 4, 1987

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COVER

DOME'S LAST DEAL

Federal Energy Minister Marcel Masse was winding up a low-key government visit to Bogotá, Colombia, when he cut short his trip to come back to his Ottawa office last week. He returned to attend an emergency meeting Thursday morning with two fellow cabinet ministers and a team of top-level bureaucrats.

WORLD

Paradise destroyed

The day after a bomb blew apart a crowded bus station in Colombo, Sri Lanka, last week, police were still picking human body parts from the rubble. In a grisly ritual, they stacked the remains in piles amid the smoking ruins. And by week’s end they had pieced together evidence that a total of 106 people had died in the powerful Tuesday rush-hour blast.

CANADA

Down and out on the farm

Saddled with debts and threatened by bankruptcy, Dale Frombach has little to show for 22 years of labor on his once-sprawling grain farm 35 km northeast of Regina. Since last fall’s harvest, he has sold 2,400 of his 3,200 acres, and last month he disposed of more than half his equipment—including a combine and a four-wheel drive tractor—at an auction that drew 500 onlookers.

HEALTH

Ottawa’s message to smokers: butt out

The gesture was largely symbolic—but Treasury Board President Robert de Cotret’s personal commitment to the government’s sweeping antismoking policy will likely cause him acute discomfort. At a news conference in Ottawa last week, federal spokesmen revealed plans to ban all tobacco advertising and promotion by 1989, phase out smoking in federal offices and other work areas across the country and force tobacco companies to print blunter warnings about the health hazards of their products.

MUSIC

Tapping pop music’s African roots

Chicago, self-declared home of the blues, is an American crossroads of race and culture. But even by local standards, th colors, rhythms and faces on tour recently at the city’s opera house were exotic. Black artists from Africa—the true wellspring of black music—dazzled the mostly white audience with a vibrant rhapsody of rhythm and harmony. By NICHOLAS JENNINGS6 min

LETTERS

Altered figures

I wish to set the record straight concerning your article “The tastes of the Mulroney family,” (Canada, April 27). The directors of PC Canada Fund were in fact fully aware of and approved the “arrangement” between the Prime Minister and PC Canada Fund.

COVER

THE NEW DEBATE ABOUT TAKEOVERS

The Bank of British Columbia and Husky Oil Ltd. went to Hong Kong investors. A British conglomerate claimed Ottawa-based Mitel Corp., a high-tech company, while Boeing Co. of Seattle outbid a Canadian rival for de Havilland Aircraft of Canada, one of the country’s money-losing Crown corporations.

COVER

A victory against formidable odds

Central Capital Corp. laid on smoked trout, lobster and champagne sorbet for 288 shareholders last week. The lavish reception following the annual shareholders’ meeting in Halifax celebrated the company’s successful first year as the nation’s newest financial power. By CHRIS WOOD5 min

30d

WORLD

Facing down the army

Argentina seemed finally to emerge from the shadow of its army last week. The country that has lived through six military regimes since 1930 stood united in support of its civilian president to banish the spectre of a seventh period of rule by the generals. By ANDREW McLEOD5 min

COLUMN

Morals of the money-makers

Last April John Shad, wealthy Wall Street investment banker, bequeathed a reported $26.6 million to his alma mater, Harvard University. Shad, who as chairman of Washington’s Securities and Exchange Commission is the head U.S. stock market cop, stipulated that the money be used to fund courses on business leadership and ethics. By Diane Francis5 min

April 271987