May 12, 1997

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World

Blair's blowout

From the kitchen window of his home in northeast England’s former coal country, Tony Blair can gaze out over lush green fields to the hills of Trimdon Grange. Once, Trimdon Grange was an enormous heap of rock and coal piled “20 times higher than the hilltops you see now,” says George Elliott, Blair’s neighbor from just down the lane. By BRUCE WALLACE8 min

Canada

attleground ONTARIO

The area known as Lincoln Heights in Waterloo, Ont., is the kind of instantly familiar place that could easily have served as the real-life inspiration for everything from television sitcoms to soap operas depicting life in suburbia. A subdivision built in the 1950s and 60s, its large, detached homes rest on neatly maintained, tree-filled lots.

COVER

Diary of a river battle

For the past three years, Winnipeg novelist Margaret Sweatman (Fox) and composer Glenn Buhr have been living near St. Norbert, three kilometres south of the Floodway. Sweatman worked on the top floor of their three-storey home, Buhr on the bottom level, and the rest was shared with their six children—two hers and four his, from previous marriages.