April 30, 1979

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Frontlines

The new winner: Con Lit

Roger Caron began to write his Governor-General’s Awardwinning book, Go-Boy!, in the Kingston pen in December, 1963, using jelly beans. He had been in solitary confinement for a year. The guards on the catwalk above him were giving him trouble, and the isolation was driving him crazy. By Merilyn Read9 min

LORD OF THE RAY

She has craven eyes and haunches that could start a fire and it is all Ken Thomson can do to take his eyes off her. Lingering, re-establishing her form in his memory, he prys his eyes from the tiny ivory figurine’s Renaissance lines and prepares to re-enter reality. By Ian Brown8 min

Frontlines

The Soviet dissidents have a lawyer—in Montreal

Irwin and Ariela Cotier were married March 25 in Montreal. There were 300 guests at the reception. But the two people who drew Irwin and Ariela together, who were, in effect, responsible for the match, were most conspicuous by their absence: Avital Shcharansky was in Washington, lobbying for her husband, having dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on the eve of the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; her husband, Anatoly Shcharansky, was in the Tatar Republic, in the Kama River valley of the Soviet Union, in Chistopol prison. By Ken Becker7 min

Canada

B.C. bargain: double the fun

On the damp April evening that B.C. Premier Bill Bennett chose to make his televised election announcement, eight days after the federal call, one weary wag in the newsroom of the Victoria Daily Colonist grumbled, “Next guy that comes in here and wants to call an election will just have to get in line.” By Thomas Hopkins6 min

People

Psst! Margaret Trudeau, that very private person who has just published a book that tells the story of her short, unhappy life as Mrs. Prime Minister, has been trying to keep a secret: the name of her new boyfriend. "I'll tell you something I haven’t told anyone else” (how can she keep track?), she recently confided to a Paris Match reporter.

Standing up for what’s deep down — ‘wet’ history

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Archeology

Standing up for what’s deep down — ‘wet’ history

A month from now, Canada’s legion of amateur scuba divers will don their wet suits, top up their air tanks and plunge into clear and murky depths. A few will happen upon relics of antiquity, priceless artifacts with tales to tell of Canadian heritage, treasures worthless and endangered in their hands. By Peter Carlyle-Gordge5 min

Books

Out of the desk drawer and into the fire

Successful writers claim to have one in their desk drawer. Usually it is being “looked at again” with an eye to “working on it” now that the writer is a success. First novels, if all the calls publishers receive about them really reflect the existence of manuscripts, may be Canada’s largest resource. By Barbara Amiel5 min

Happiness is never having to say it’s permanent

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Medicine

Happiness is never having to say it’s permanent

An Ottawa architect in his late 20s breezed into Dr. Edward Shapiro’s office a while back, his 18year-old lady friend in tow. He wanted a vasectomy, he explained, so there would be no chance of getting the young woman—or the young women who might succeed her—pregnant. By Sarah Henry5 min

Show Business

Starmania’s salad days

It was the stuff a public relations man’s dreams are made of: the first rock opera ever to be written in French and the first Franco-Canadian collaboration on a musical extravaganza. In fact, the $1.7-million production of Starmania, currently playing Paris and scheduled to travel to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium June 29, was so awash in firsts that it almost missed the most important one—its own first night.

Column

‘Unwittingly, this scandalous lady has epitomized the election issue’

One of the strangest aspects of this very strange election is that no one dares mention the subject everyone is thinking about: Margaret. It is partially a measure of the grey, tentative Canadian nature and partially a measure of the supine Canadian press which, slavering, runs those truncated, jazzed-up, pre-shrunk hunks from her book but then refrains from discussing the larger issue. By Allan Fotheringham4 min

April 231979