September 1, 1997

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WORLD

The rising force on the right

There’s not much to recommend the stretch of U.S. Highway 74 that slices through the town of Wingate near the southern border of North Carolina. Gas stations and fast-food joints—the common clutter of small-town America—line the roadside.

Books

Pennies from heaven

Perhaps the best way to measure how success has changed Susie Moloney is to compare her trailers. In the driveway of her modest home on Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario is a slightly decrepit, 4.5 m, blue and white trailer, with just enough room for two people to stand. By DIANE TURBIDE7 min

SPECIAL REPORT

WIRED TO LEARN

It is a classic good news/bad news story. Its central characters: teachers, parents, children—and technology. And chances are that it is playing now at a school, or in a household, near you. Some see it as the saga of a happy marriage between computers and learning, in which CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web are reinvigorating lesson plans and homework assignments, and technology is transforming Canadian kids into the problem-solvers of a new century. By VICTOR DWYER4 min

Environment

Paying the polluters?

For more than a year now, behind closed doors in a basement room of a bunker-like Paris office building, officials from Canada and 28 other countries have been negotiating a proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment that has sparked heated debate even before the deal has been signed. By RUTH ABRAMSON6 min

The Mail

How could you be so insensitive as to put the pictures of Clifford Olson and his victims on the front cover of the Aug. 18 issue (“A killer’s plea”)? The parents and relatives are already suffering as a result of his actions. Now, Olson has the opportunity to face them in his bid to become free of the penitentiary system.

Opening Notes

The scaffolding is down from the Peace Tower and a gleaming new copper roof on the Centre Block on Parliament Hill is in full view where three years of renovations to the front have wrapped up. All in all, the work so far seems to be a success, at least according to comments from tourists last week. By BARBARA WICKENS5 min

Canada

'HE IS LIKE AN ACTOR'

The true loyalty of Bouchard is not to external entities but to himself, to his “visage.” The dichotomy articulated in the brilliant and by now clichéd joke that René Lévesque is what Quebecers felt they were and that Pierre Trudeau is what they wanted to be is healed in Bouchard.

Backstage

Jean Charest: Staying on (for now)

American writer Elbert Hubbard observed: “A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.” As political punditry, the remark bears repeating only because it demonstrates how easy it is to be glib, succinct and demonstrably wrong, all in a single sentence. By Anthony Wilson-Smith4 min

Canada

Fighting for the fish

Once and perhaps twice this week, between 11:30 p.m. and midnight, Bill Broderick, his son and his brother will board their fishing boat and sail into the blackness of the North Atlantic. By 6 a.m. and the dawn’s early light, they will be 65 km out. By RAE CORELLI7 min

August 251997