October 13, 2008

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BUSINESS

IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE

It may have been the oddest coalition of dissenters you’ll ever see: hard-core southern conservatives allied with ultra-liberal members of the Congressional Black Caucus, bluecollar Republicans from the Rust Belt, and a couple of dozen conservative Democrats known as the “Blue Dogs.”

WORLD

SWINGING OHIO: THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN

Dan Bailey is 78. He sits on a plastic lawn chair on the neatly swept front porch of his modest house that backs onto train tracks. They once led to a thriving rail yard where his father had been a brakeman, back when the steel mills and towering shoe factories were humming, back when it was Bailey’s job to deliver coal to the 13 schools in town (now there are two), back when, he points out, his underwear was not yet made in Bangladesh, and when the little American flags the young ladies hand out in the park on the Fourth of July were not yet made in China. By LUIZA CH. SAVAGE

100b

SOCIETY

HURTS LIKE THE DICKENS

I’ll try to make this as painless as possible. No, on second thought, I won’t do that: because if it were painless, it wouldn’t be about payback, would it? In my part of the world, we have a ritual interchange that goes like this: First person: “Lovely weather we’re having.” By MARGARET ATWOOD

SPECIAL REPORT

THE TOP 100

Below are the 100 companies in Canada with the most to offer workers. The companies are not ranked—they are classified by industry and presented in alphabetical order. (X) Indicates number of Canadian full-time employees CONSUMER SERVICES By RICHARD YEREMA, Patricia Treble

SPECIAL REPORT

‘THE WORST JOB I EVER HAD'

The worst job Robert Meggy ever had, bar none, was working as a “pea-viner” in B.C.’s Fraser Valley. A pea-viner, for the uninitiated, takes the unholy tangle of harvested pea vines and pods, and shovels them onto a conveyor belt where the peas are mechanically separated. By JASON KIRBY, KEN MACQUEEN

TECHNOLOGY

WHO REVIVED THE ELECTRIC CAR?

It must have been hard not to gloat. Chris Paine—filmmaker, eco-activist, gadfly to the lumbering beast of the U.S. auto industry—was sitting on a panel as a special guest of General Motors Corp., sharing thoughts on the future of transportation. By CHARLIE GILLIS

MAIL BAG

THE SPECIAL Campaign Edition (Sept. 29) with its three covers devoted to Stephen Harper, Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton arrived in the mail yesterday and I wanted to say thank you for the fine series of articles on the party leaders. I enjoy the time I spend reading your magazine.

SOCIETY

PAY BACK TIME

Q Your new book is called Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Of all the things you could be writing about—at this point in your career, the whole world’s open to you—you chose to write about money. A: No, I chose to write about debt. It’s a different thing.

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HISTORY

INDIAN SUMMER

More than 20 Cree bands, including those of Big Bear and his close friend Little Pine, smoked the tobacco. In early October 1870, the Cree met the Assiniboine in the Vermillion Hills and rode west together in the largest force they had ever assembled. By RUDY WIEBE

NATIONAL

GREEN? WHO, ME?

Toward the end of last year, the Prime Minister embarked on his usual round of exclusive interviews. The news was not good. He told the Globe and Mail exclusively that Canadians should brace themselves for the impact of pending federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, warning that “mandatory reductions impose costs. By ANDREW COYNE

October 62008