What has already entered history as “the Denver speech” clarified some things for us all. It gave lucid expression to what had hitherto been only a latent popular emotion. It signaled that Canadians had stopped asking whether the American sickness was contagious and now were discussing ways to immunize themselves against it.
MEL PROFIT’S moustache droops in a Fu Manchu curve. His blond hair, despite a token mid-summer trim, still flows to a luxurious length. And he wears long, billowing, hooded caftans and dashikis, the kind of clothes that he stocks in First Asylum, the boutique he owns and runs in midtown Toronto.By JACK BATTEN4 min
One thing about mercury is that it is highly toxic: it can cause tremors, numbness, blurred vision, deafness, diarrhea and, sometimes, death. It can also cause mental instability, and the expression, “mad as a hatter” comes from the fact that many workers in the hat industry, where mercury was once used extensively, went insane from inhaling its vapors.By WALTER STEWART4 min
True, most of us don’t beat our wives or belt our children. Guns bother us. So does the sight of blood. We’re a peace-loving society. Or are we? The second Maclean’s-Goldfarb Report digs deeply into the raw emotions that shape our social attitudes-and discovers... We're More Violent Than We ThinkBy DOUGLAS MARSHALL13 min
THE CELL MEASURES a good seven feet by five. It is for two persons, a second bunk piled on top of the first. A space of seven feet by five isn’t much for two men, especially if it has two bunks, a lavatory, two foot-wide planks fixed to the wall, one to serve as table, the other as seat.
BOOK PUBLISHING, says Jack McClelland, Canada’s bestknown book publisher, is “the easiest commercial business to get into. It requires no qualifications and no training. All it requires is $5,000 and a manuscript. But that isn’t the trick — the trick is to stay in the business once you’ve got there.”By ROBERT WEAVER4 min
ONE BRIGHT night in May, walking along a derelict CNR track through the Forest Hill district of Toronto, I felt quite sure that I would never have a house. There are some big ones in there, but what I was looking at were their gardens, shadowy behind a ragged screen of lilac and Chinese elm, and what provoked my self-pity was the thought that I really had nowhere to plant my vegetables.By JON RUDDY4 min
SOME CRASS sportswriter once said that watching sailboats race was only a little less thrilling than watching grass grow, and he had a point. As a spectator sport, yacht racing probably ranks a notch above chess and a notch below tether tennis; and this is one reason why, when a Canadian scores an extraordinary triumph in this fiendishly competitive international sport, most of us never even hear about it.By MURRAY BURT11 min
THERE’S A SENSE in which Canada’s supposedly moribund television production industry is very much alive, gloriously healthy and ready to take on the three corners of the broadcasting world in arms. Unfortunately, this professional confidence is confined to that area of television the average viewer likes least, the 12 minutes out of every hour when the public airwaves ripple and thunder across the country with commercial messages.By DOUGLAS MARSHALL4 min
WHEN CONFINED in a test tube, a population of bacteria first explodes and then falls to extinction. It has exhausted the resources of space, air, water and food. Our planet is as closed and finite a system as a test tube. For all our technology and intelligence, we can’t escape the fate of the bacteria, unless we limit our population to a level our environment can support.By D. A. CHANT3 min
CANADA’S POSTAL SERVICE is in trouble. Slow mail, lost letters, labor unrest, sinking morale and rising deficits have become almost routine. Canadians are paying more for postage, and getting less; they are complaining more, to less effect, and the immediate future looks even bleaker than the past or present.By WALTER STEWART11 min
When a 15-year-old schoolboy from Cobalt, Ontario, decided he’d hitchhike from his home to Alaska, it seemed an incredible adventure. It was — but one he shared with the crowdBy CLIFFORD J. LARABIE7 min
The story you want is part of the Maclean’s Archives. To access it, log in here or sign up for your free 30-day trial.
Experience anything and everything Maclean's has ever published — over 3,500 issues and 150,000 articles, images and advertisements — since 1905. Browse on your own, or explore our curated collections and timely recommendations.WATCH THIS VIDEO for highlights of everything the Maclean's Archives has to offer.