Maclean's

Exit laughing

The Mary Tyler Moore Show may be retiring at the end of this season but the Mary Tyler Moore empire will, with luck, go on forever By David Cobb21 min

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Things best left alone?

Genetic research could save mankind, or destroy it. Now that science can create new life, should it be allowed to do so? By Michael Enright17 min

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On a typical day in the office of Dr. Lise Fortier, the waiting room is full of women of every age—so many of them that there are not enough chairs to go round. The office is located in Montreal’s comfortable Outremont district, but Dr. Fortier’s patients cut across social and ethnic lines. By Dr. Lise Fortier16 min

Blood money: what Red Cross donors didn't know

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Health

Blood money: what Red Cross donors didn't know

A bitter behind-the-scenes struggle between two of Canada’s most respected organizations is about to break into the open, bringing with it at least some of the sordid details of a murky world—the $400-million-a-year international trade in human blood. By JOSEPH MacANTHONY12 min

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canada

No quarter asked, and none given

When René Lévesque arrived late at 24 Sussex Drive for dinner with the other nine provincial premiers and Pierre Trudeau this month, the anticipation of welcoming “the new boy,” as one premier called him playfully, was in the air. Lévesque was steered into the centre of the official group photograph—as it turned out, an asymmetrical mix of first ministers, standing and sitting, that seemed to evoke the current sense of national imbalance. By ROBERT LEWIS7 min

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A referendum, even separation won’t answer the Canadian Question. They will merely focus it

The victory of the Parti Québécois was neither an accident of history nor the erratic product of spontaneous growth. It marks the return to political power in Quebec of a school of thought that has always played a key role in our collective life and has now freed itself from old psychological constraints that led it to be highly critical of the functioning of Confederation. By Claude Ryan5 min

Chirac is no De Gaulle-but that isn’t stopping him from trying

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The World

Chirac is no De Gaulle-but that isn’t stopping him from trying

“My bulldozer,” the late French president Georges Pompidou used to call him fondly. Others have not been so kind. But in the weeks since he rallied 70,000 cheering, chanting Frenchmen under the freshly designed banner of his new Rassemblement pour la République in a vast concrete exhibition hall at Paris’ Porte de Versailles—the largest political convention in the country’s history—there has been little doubt that former premier Jacques Chirac has emerged as the new strong man on the French political horizon, with every intention of living up to his nickname.

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Press

The Georgia Straight goes straighter

To appreciate the present editorial direction of the Georgia Straight, Canada’s longest-surviving counter-culture newspaper, you have to remember Acidman. A frisky monument to the thumb-your-noseat-society ethic of the late 1960s, Acidman once helped to precipitate a shutdown of the paper by Vancouver city officials when he appeared in his usual cartoon space, wearing only a T-shirt and an erection, with an arm around Jesus Christ.

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Everything you wanted to know about Quebec, Lévesque and the future of Our Great Nation

Mr. Fotheringham, you’re an expert on Quebec? No. But I suffer from an overdose of common sense. Could you help me out of my confusion on this entire Lévesque-Quebec-Separation scene? Certainly. What is it you wish to know? Well, the pundits are dazzling me to death with their expertise. By Allan Fotheringham5 min

Why should an NDP premier hook up with Trudeau? There are reasons

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Review

Why should an NDP premier hook up with Trudeau? There are reasons

Suppose someone were to tell you that the Premier of Manitoba was a prime candidate to join the Trudeau cabinet. What would your response be? Ridiculous, Ed Schreyer is a New Democrat! Absurd, he isn’t even an MP! Inane, why should he drop a sure thing for a patently unsure thing?

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Those who teach, won’t

Were this any other holiday season, the silence that surrounds Quebec City’s Laval University campus would be just the result of students away on mid-term break. But this year, the empty classrooms and laboratories have another origin: the longest professors’ strike in Canadian history, and one that—even after an expected January settlement—seems likely to leave a residue of rancor and frustration. By DENNIS TRUDEAU4 min