February 19, 1979

View Full Issue Table of Contents

Canadian News

Talking a good game

As last week’s constitutional conference crept into evening TV, the principal actors responded almost as if on cue. There, grouped around the table in heated debate over “patriation” of the constitution, were Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the cool rationalist, Ontario’s phlegmatic Bill Davis, Saskatchewan’s professorial Allan Blakeney and Quebec’s stormy René Lévesque, representing four political parties, three distinct regions and the two official languages. By Ian Urquhart9 min

Frontlines

Woodcock: America’s presence in Peking

In en Woodcock is a dealer. A haggler in contracts and clauses. Lean as a bean pole, mean as a junkyard dog when it comes to striking a bargain, he has just negotiated himself into history. For Woodcock, the fiery-tempered former labor leader, is now sure to become the first United States ambassador in Peking since Mao Tse-tung’s Communist forces took control of mainland China in 1949. By William Lowther7 min

12d

Letters

I must take exception to the general tone of the article Making Winter Fun (Jan. 8). Winter has been putting in an annual appearance for a number of years and most Canadians I have known have managed to enjoy it despite Roy MacGregor’s statement: “. . .

Lifestyles

There’s room at the top, but not too much fun

Executive . . . the word instantly conveys a magic sense of power. It’s used to denote prestige in everything from men’s underwear to hotel suites. And from the first Canadian entrepreneurs, who parlayed beaver skins into nationhood,down to John D.Rockefeller and auto executive “Engine Charlie” Wilson,who confidently predicted that what was good for General Motors was good for America, the tycoons of business have loomed larger than life. By Rita Christopher5 min

People

They envision Jackie Gleason in the part of Elvis’s agent Colonel Tom Parker and Elizabeth Taylor in the role of his mother. But finding the right hipswiveller to fill Presley’s blue suede shoes and black leather pants is another story. By Jane O’Hara5 min

Behavior

Crime as a terminal problem

Bruce Christensen was known among his peers as a “computer alcoholic.” For months, the bright, 19year-old education student at the University of Alberta in Edmonton had been obsessed with outwitting the institution’s $4-million Amdahl 470 V-6 computer. By Julianne Labreche5 min

World News

Señor Carter in Tehran West

As President Jimmy Carter read the briefings for his Mexican visit this week he was left to ponder a mission as delicate as his efforts in the Middle East and as sensitive as any power play involving China or the Soviet Union. The task before him: to patch up a neglected friendship with a neighbor which, seemingly overnight, has turned from a poverty-stricken satellite into a rich and powerful country which must be courted into playing the role of “stable” oil supplier—a role which the U.S. now fears Iran and other Middle East states may be about to abandon. By William Lowther4 min

Column

The new cast of premiers: Arrow-shirt men, coiffed, puffed, almost interchangeable

It is somehow wildly appropriate that the improbable project called Canada be patched together in a recycled railway station. Beneath the vast vaulted ceiling of what used to be the foyer of Ottawa’s Union Station, the 11 acrimonious and spasmodically wellmeaning men who would rule our fate, sit and meditate and pick nits and reshape our tremulous future. By Allan Fotheringham4 min

Frontlines

Don Gray at work: stil delivering

It’s about noon as Don Gray’s mobile store pulls up at a white-shingled house in Collina Corner, New Brunswick. Mrs. Evelyn Muir, a retired schoolteacher in a mauve sweater over a green dress, has been waiting and was just beginning to fret because he’s a bit late. By David Folster4 min

Show Business

Man with the golden grunt

Things were hardly going smoothly on the set of Agency, a Canadianproduced feature film, budgeted at $5 million, recently shot in Montreal. Valerie (Superman) Perrine was in her dressing room throwing up, a victim of a virulent flu bug. By Wayne Grigsby4 min

A classic way to take the load off your feet

40d

Design

A classic way to take the load off your feet

A good chair, like a good cigar, is , hard to find. Designer Thomas Lamb believes he has found the former. “I’m a romantic,” says Lamb, gazing at a windswept and snowy stretch of Lake Ontario beyond the warehouse windows of his Toronto studio. “I also like honest structures. By Merike Weiler4 min

February 121979