July 20, 1998

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COVER

BIG WHEELS

Charlene Couch wasn’t planning to get rid of her 1996 Oldsmobile—she just happened to fall in love with a spanking new 1998 Lincoln Navigator. The Saskatoon homemaker was smitten while driving past a Ford dealer in December. There in the front lot was a gargantuan $64,000 sport-utility vehicle—polished to perfection, its front end a waterfall of gleaming chrome.

The Mail

Debating 'The 100' Your cover story made for very interesting reading, but it did have many flaws, not the least of which was its treatment of women. You found room for 16 women among the 100 most influential Canadians: two of these were fictional characters; one, a Nation Builder no less, was singled out because “she gave her husband perspective and contentment”; one was a fortune-teller; one was a scam artist in the mining industry; and one was chosen because she had sexual liaisons with Tory cabinet ministers.

Canada

Turning the tide

David Anderson went fly-fishing last week. Under the circumstances, it seemed an act of monumental self-control. B.C. Premier Glen Clark had, after all, gone to Washington, where he suggested, most undiplomatically, that the federal fisheries minister is a traitor—and that the salmon deal his department had negotiated with Washington state was a sellout.

World

World NOTES

Rwandan Hutu rebels freed a 59-yearold Canadian nun after taking her to neighboring Uganda and holding her for four days, apparently to care for rebel wounded. The Hutu fighters, battling Rwanda’s Tutsi-led army, robbed a bank and a health centre where Sister Gisele Allard, a native of St.-Etienne, Que., often worked.

COVER

Blasts from the past

Donelda Warren is selling pop and hamburgers to perspiring Volkswagen fanatics at the annual June Jitter Bug car show in Niagara Falls, Ont. The sky is pale blue and the sun is as hot as the demand for Volkswagen’s New Beetle. Warren, an X-ray technician, knows firsthand just how lively that market is this year. By DANYLO HAWALESHKA6 min

POP MOVIES

movie season comes The Mask of Zorro, a romantic adventure starring Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas. Hopkins plays the retired Zorro, who is seeking a younger man to continue his heroic exploits.

World

Mismanaged care

Paul Ruskin admits it: he’s obsessed. “I’m compelled to keep fighting,” he says. “Sometimes I wish I could stop.” For a few hours every week for almost three years, through icy winter days and the sweaty heat of a Maryland summer, Ruskin, 53, has paced outside a hospital run by the health insurance company he believes bungled his wife’s medical care, leaving her with permanently impaired vision.

July 131998