November 17, 1997

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SPECIAL REPORT

Portraits of diversity

Themantra a about APEC is “diversity." Its 18 members range from the world's two biggest and most sophisticated economies—the United Staes and Japan— to Papua New Guinea, a nation that still includes some people not far removed from the Stone Age.

Opening Notes

As a politician, Pam Barrett might have preferred a different kind of publicity. But in this case, the Alberta leader of the New Democrats didn’t have much choice. When word got out that police had charged Barrett’s former live-in partner, Stephen Douglas Edwards, 33, of Edmonton, with assault, Barrett found herself making news as the alleged victim in a domestic assault. By BARBARA WICKENS5 min

CANADA

Canada NOTES

Military police released details of the charges against Col. Reno Vanier, former commander of Canadian troops in Haiti. Among them: that he accepted a $2,000 bribe from a travel agency in the form of airline tickets, and filed a fraudulent travel-expense claim.

Another View

Visions of spending dance in our heads

The Christmas decorations are already up at the shopping centres, a handy metaphor for the premature visions of sugarplums dancing in some Canadians’ heads as they compile their post-deficit wish lists. What will we get this year, something nice, or more downsizing? By Charles Gordon4 min

WORLD

The voices of history

One thing about Richard Nixon: he never disappoints. Even in death, even a quarter century after his political disgrace, he still walks on the dark side of the American imagination. Here he is, in newly released tapes of his private White House conversations, raging against his enemies. By ANDREW PHILLIPS8 min

The Nation’s Business

The trillion-dollar man comes calling

The international circus officially known as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, being held in Vancouver at the end of this month, is bound to be dominated by China’s head of state, Jiang Zemin. Representing a quarter of the earth’s population and the fastest-growing economy in world history, he will be the most compelling and the most reviled of the 18 visiting heads of state. By Peter C. Newman4 min

November 101997