December 7, 2009

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SOCIETY

THE TRUTH ABOUT PRIESTS

• Even to the eyes of a seasoned child pornography investigator, the photographs are horrific. One image depicts a young boy, no older than 12, standing on a wooden deck, a pair of white underwear pulled down around his knees. In the next shot, a different naked boy is sitting in an office chair, with two holy rosaries—one white, one black—dangling from his skinny neck. By MICHAEL FRISCOLANTI

WORLD

THE TERROR GAME

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen and immigration consultant living in Chicago, is at the centre of terrorism investigations in India and the United States that link him to plots in Europe and America—and to the massacre in Mumbai one year ago that killed more than 160 people. By ADNAN R. KHAN, MICHAEL PETROU

BUSINESS

GOING ONCE, TWICE.. .GONE

Ira Hopmeyer is sitting on a metal chair inside a stuffy sixth-floor room in a government building in midtown Toronto. A tall man with a mane of wavy brown hair, he is wearing a black suit, white shirt and red power tie. The 51-year-old made a name for himself as the chief executive and majority owner of the Toronto auction house Ritchies, which sold rare pieces of Canadian art to billionaire collectors and had a partnership with international heavyweight Sotheby’s. By CHRIS SORENSEN

NATIONAL

FAT CITY

If you want to know how hard times are hitting government workers, there’s a group of frank, friendly, tuned-in guys you could call up: Ottawa luxury car dealers. What’s it like selling cars in a city dominated by federal employees during a recession? By COLBY COSH

INTERVIEW

Former Tokyo hostess Chelsea Haywood on the alpha males, the money, and the peculiar conversations in Japanese men's clubs

Q.At 20, were you too old to model anymore? A: No. At 24 you’re too old! But I’d put on five pounds and my agents were saying I wasn’t thin enough. I was 112 lb., five foot ten and running 18 km a day to stay at that weight, and I wasn’t getting work. Q: So you decided to go to Japan, become a hostess, and write a book about it.

THE BACK PAGES

PRIME-TIME BLACKOUT

only other black comedic character on TV is Cleveland,” veteran TV producer Don Reo told the Kansas City Star, “and he’s a cartoon who’s voiced by a white guy.” Reo was trying to explain why his new show, Brothers, deserved to succeed: because of all the comedies premiered on the major U.S. networks this season, it was one of only two about an African-American family; the other one, The Cleveland Show, is a Family Guy spinoff about the show’s token black character (voiced, as Reo notes, by a white writer-actor, Mike Henry). By JAIME J. WEINMAN

MAILBAG

'Gary Bettman was booed at the Stanley Cup because of who he is and what he represents'

HOW SADLY emblematic of the mismanaged, ill-conceived rollout of flu shot access that NHL hockey players have been inoculated while most of those who buy tickets to their games have not been so fortunate (“Swine flu screw-up,” National, Nov. 23). But that won’t really matter because if this is a true pandemic, the great minds behind our national response will need the arena for a makeshift morgue.

THIS WEEK

NEWSMAKERS

Mississauga, Ont., native Jordan Wimmer cleared more than $1 million last year working for Nomos Capital, a London-based hedge fund. But all was not a bed of roses for the attractive, 29-yearold blond financier. Indeed, her blondness is at the heart of her $7-million wrongful dismissal suit against her multi-millionaire boss Mark Lowe.

ENVIROMENT

GOLD IN THEM HILLS

• Last month, the Squamish Nation okayed a controversial plan to erect a series of billboards on scenic native land. They weren’t just any signboards, but 300-sq.-foot blinking, digital billboards to advertise cellphones and cars. Negative reaction to the planned signs—some of which are set to line the spectacular route to Whistler— was so visceral the band was forced to scale back the design. By NANCY MACDONALD

THE BACK PAGES

The 'science' of global warming

“The gravest challenge that we face is climate change... Every one of our compatriots must feel concerned”—Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the French Republic; “The climate crisis threatens our very survival”—Herman Van Rompuy, “president” of “Europe”; “We cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change”—Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom; By MARK STEYN

November 302009