September 5, 1988

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COVER

Our Threatened Planet

If scientists are right, the world of the 21st century will be a harsh, inhospitable place. Many experts predict that by the year 2030, a hotter global climate will have scorched some agricultural regions, including parts of Canada’s grain belt, into near-desert—a disaster that would generate crop failures around the world.

CANADA

Backtracking on pornography

In 1962, during the dawn of the sexual revolution, a storm over obscenity reached the Supreme Court of Canada. The issue: whether D. H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was obscene. In the book, Lawrence portrays Connie Chatterley as having a number of casual sexual liaisons.

WORLD

A nation on a tightrope

There was blood in the streets of Pakistan’s cities last Wednesday, but, for a change, it was not caused by political, ethnic or religious strife. Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Moslems poured into the streets to celebrate their holiest day, Ashura. By ANDREW PHILLIPS6 min

COVER

LITTLE ROOM AT THE INN

Early this year, as a heavy smog hung over Mexico City, two boys playing soccer watched a bird fall to the grass nearby—and die. A doctor, who also saw birds falling through that haze, collected several dead birds and took them to the city’s National University laboratory.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Ragtime in the ad biz

They were irresistible targets. In a single steamy Toronto week in mid-August, Canadian-owned MacLaren Advertising and Foster Advertising Ltd. were both sold to companies owned by an American industry giant, Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. of New York City. By PATRICIA CHISHOLM6 min

COVER

A NEW WORLD FOR THE FUTURE

Among scientists, the phrase Biosphere II summons up the promise of great advances. In September, 1990, U.S. scientists plan to seal eight volunteers into a huge pollution-free shell of concrete, stainless steel and glass containing a replica of the planet’s natural environment.

COVER

THE THROW-AWAY SOCIETY

Rancher Stanley Rowe is deeply involved in the booming tourist industry in the rugged southern Cariboo country of British Columbia’s Interior. But the 58-year-old Rowe says that he is concerned about the potential threat that a project near the small community of Cache Creek poses to his business.

COVER

WARNINGS FROM THE SEAS

Most New York City residents have adjusted to the huge slicks of garbage floating near the entrance to their city’s fabled harbor. But that familiar sight paled beside the stomach-turning debris that marred nearby beaches serving the city this summer.

BOOKS

Salacious peeks into writers’ lives

Ever since James Boswell jotted down the table talk of his idol, the great 18th-century author and talker Samuel Johnson, readers have been almost as fascinated by what writers say and do as by what they write. And while few biographers have ever surpassed Boswell’s immortal The Life of Samuel Johnson, literary biography has become a bestselling form of literature.

CANADA

Home stretch in a three-way race

The Halifax waterfront was lined with souvenir sellers, hotdog vendors and holidaymakers. And there were jugglers competing with other performers last week for the tourists’ attention. One athletic young woman dazzled her audience by keeping three flaming batons aloft as she balanced precariously on a unicycle. By CHRIS WOOD6 min

August 291988