August 15, 1988

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COVER

BEYOND REACH

The crowd of 400 buyers shouted, pushed and pleaded. The nervous developer called in police to restore order, but, by the end of the day, that frantic scene in April over the purchase of 341 condominiums on the north edge of Toronto had become another angry flare-up in the struggle over affordable housing.

WORLD

A deadly IRA offensive

Raymond McNicholl was driving to work at a factory in Northern Ireland last Wednesday morning when the attack erupted. The 30-year-old father of one and part-time soldier in the province’s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR)—a mainly Protestant military unit recruited locally by the British armyslowed his car to cross a narrow bridge outside Cookstown, 65 km west of Belfast.

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FILMS

The stormy debate over Jesus and sex

In Hollywood, there is no star bigger than God. And the biblical epic once seemed the ideal answer to the widening expanse of the big screen. Moses parted the Red Sea in 1923’s The Ten Commandments, and again in the 1956 remake. Each time, the only reaction expected from the audience was awe. By Brian D. Johnson6 min

WORLD

Where was George and who is he now?

CAMPAIGN '88 Republican party strategists had planned the outing to underline their candidate’s virile tastes. While the Democratic party was selecting Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis as its presidential nominee in Atlanta last month, Vice-President George Bush went on a three-day fishing trip in Wyoming’s Shoshone national forest. By MARCI McDONALD6 min

CANADA

Neck and neck in Nova Scotia

It was a startling display of campaign theatre. As Nova Scotia Conservative Premier John Buchanan approached the podium at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax last week, the strains of Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now wafted from the auditorium’s speakers.

ANOTHER VIEW

Putting flamingos in their place

In Ottawa, the going rate for putting 40 plastic flamingos on somebody’s lawn is $45. For that, the lucky stiff also gets a sign carrying 40th-birthday greetings and the phone number of the flamingo company, plus a Polaroid snapshot of the festive scene. By Charles Gordon5 min

COLUMN

A job for the hacks and bagmen

I am foursquare in favor of free trade but I couldn’t be happier about John Turner’s strategy to use the Canadian Senate to block passage of the free trade treaty. This is because his dramatic and arrogant move serves two important public policy purposes. By Diane Francis5 min

MEDIA

USA Today—the television sequel

Six years ago, the U.S. communications giant Gannett Co. Inc. launched an audacious new venture—an upbeat daily newspaper that is distributed five mornings a week in cities across the United States and Canada. USA Today now sells an average of 1.63 million copies a day and has earned the grudging respect of many journalists, who admire the paper’s organization of information while attacking its relatively superficial handling of news.

WORLD

The king’s gambit

Until last week, the nightly news on Jordanian television included a full weather forecast for Jerusalem and the West Bank of the River Jordan. The TV weather map made no distinction between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jordan on the East Bank.

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COVER

GAMBLING WITH THE WALLS

Even Mendel Green, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in finding Canadian real estate for offshore investors, was impressed. In May, Green’s firm sent a driver to Pearson International Airport in Toronto to pick up four representatives from four of Taiwan’s richest families, who were interested in doing a little shopping. By JOHN DeMONT5 min

August 81988