October 1, 1967

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Every once in a while, a theory comes along that explains EVERYTHING. Darwin invented one. So did Karl Marx. So did Freud and so, of course, did our own Marshall McLuhan. And now meet Clare Graves, a U.S. college professor who’s devised a theory that explains why China is belligerent, why hippies act so cool, and why you’re not getting along with your boss or your mate

IF YOU’VE DESPAIRED of making sense out of life — and worse still, the people you have to deal with — take heart. At last someone’s come up with an easy-to-understand system that appears to explain everything. The idea’s so simple that it’s fast becoming a favorite cocktailparty game. By NICHOLAS STEED

RUSSIA FROM TIP TO TIP

I WENT ON AN eight-day trip to Russia with 100 fellow citizens, described as "prominent Canadian businessmen.” in connection with the inauguration of Air Canada's new service from Montreal to Moscow. We had a marvelous time. Everyone asks for "impressions,” but it is not easy to sort out impressions from the confusion and excitement of traveling 13,000 miles, in eight days, through totally unfamiliar country without knowing the language. By HOWARD ROSS

HOW LAURIER LAPIERRE STAYS FAMOUS

IT WASN’T SUPPOSED to be a political visitation. Laurier LaPierre, former TV star, present politician and — by his own semi-serious admission — future prime minister of Canada, had been invited down to Summerside, PEI, to judge the island’s Centennial beauty pageant. By BLAIR FRASER

BRUCE HUTCHISON’S UNKNOWN CANADA

MY LIFE FORKED when I purchased some acres of an old farm outside Victoria and, 25 miles away, a cabin beside a mountain lake. From then on I had to walk two diverging trails and follow two different trades at the expense of both. In those days, in the best of times and the best of countries, a poor man could easily buy real estate but, under a law unrecognized by any legislature, he could not truly own it by mere exchange of money and documents.

REQUIEM FOR A CRAZY PARADISE ISLAND

IT WAS BRIAN HOGAN, an enterprising young executive with the Toronto Telegram, who invented The Ultimate Weapon to save Toronto Island from the greedy maw of the Metropolitan Toronto Parks Department. At about the time when some of us had begun to suspect there was no longer any hope of preventing the parks commission turning the residents out, tearing down their houses and making the island into Total Park, a bridge party was held to help pay for the mural an artist had painted on the vicarage wall. By ELIZABETH GRAHAM

THERE'S A NEW WAY TO HAVE A BAY?

THERE ARE TWO remarkable things about psychoprophylaxia, the newest childbirth-made-easier method for modern mothers. The first is that its very existence as a new, and therefore controversial, way of having babies proves that childbirth — or women, or both — hasn’t properly emerged from the dark ages. By ALAN EDMONDS

DOES IT PAY TO GO BANKRUPT?

ALL ANGUS KEMP WANTED to do was get a color TV set before the new fall shows came on. The trouble was that Kemp — we’ll call him that because it’s not his real name — already owed 28 creditors $7.700. And when a finance company repossessed his blackand-white set it looked as though he wouldn’t be viewing the premieres at all. By JON RUDDY

HELP ME, DOCTOR, FOR I AM SICK

WELL, AS YOU CAN SEE, I’ve got a waiting room — the secretary sits at the end — and a consulting room. It looks less clinical than a general-practitioner’s office. There’s only one door into the consulting room, although many other psychiatrists have two, so patients never see each other. By NICHOLAS STEED

MAILBAG

Ralph Cowan for PM? / Stage & critic

HATS OFF TO Ralph Cowan (Can Ralph Cowan Defeat the French Single-handed?). As a WASP who was born and raised in Quebec, I agree with Cowan 100 percent on the problems of French Canada. If he ever becomes prime minister there will be a lot of Canadian WASPs returning to Canada to back him.

HELP ME, FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED

IT IS FRIDAY EVENING and Father Pius Riffel is an exhausted man. Under his eyes he has those darkyellow patches that you often see under the eyes of television producers and other men who have long ago given up the idea of ever catching up on their sleep. By IAN ADAMS

September 11967