February 25, 1980

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Canada

THE SECOND COMING

For his fifth national campaign, the gunslinger transformed himself into a monk with a mask and he walked mostly in an 18-cent shadow. He rose like Lazarus from a political grave to claim the most resounding parliamentary victory of his career. By Robert Lewis8 min

Sports

Look back in anguish

The XIII Olympic Winter Games, were officially opened on a Wednesday in mid-February, but the temper and pattern of mismanagement was officially set the day the illadvised notion was sanctioned that a sleepy Adirondack community could duplicate its feat of 48 years ago. By Hal Quinn6 min

People

Old-fashioned values

It is getting harder and harder to find a girl-next-door type in Hollywood, but former Ice Capades star Lynn-Holly Johnson fits the bill with her perfect teeth and old-fashioned values. Johnson’s first film, Ice Castles, was a tear-jerker on blades but her latest work finds her skateless as the fantasy daughter of Bette Davis in the occult thriller The Watcher in the Woods. By Marsha Boulton6 min

Lifestyles

Rabbits do it but they never mow the roof

Take five concrete eggs, slice off the tops and replace them with skylights. Join the eggs together, bury them in the ground, clear away a view at one end and what have you got? Bill and Paula Lishman’s dream home, scheduled to burrow its way into a hilltop near Port Perry, Ontario, this spring and become one of Canada’s first completely underground homes. By Mark Czarnecki5 min

World

One more tango in Paris

As press conferences go, it had been choreographed with a flourish. On cue, two priceless Aubusson tapestries had swung open over the stage of the glittering grand ballroom of the Elysée Palace, and French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had broken into a diplomatic duet in perfect unison rapping the Soviets over the knuckles for invading Afghanistan and endangering détente. By Marci McDonald5 min

Q&A: Bob Goudzwaard

Reluctant rider on NATO’s wagon

In December the North Atlantic Treaty Organization made one of the most crucial decisions of its 31-year history: to modernize its European nuclear strike force with 572 medium-range nuclear missiles aimed directly at the Soviet Union.

Art

Private flights and phantoms

Label it surrealism, or Dada, or nihilism, or just plain craziness, but something emerged in Europe from the wreckage of the First World War that was to capture the minds of a generation of artists coming of age in the jazz era. It was less an idea than a rumor: that reason was dead but one could stay alive by retreating into the world of dream and fantasy; that art was dead but a new art could be created that would startle its viewers into new awareness by exposing them to images dredged up from the subconscious; and that, if you listened carefully, you could learn more about art and living from schizophrenic babble, children’s doodles and aboriginal fetish-objects than from all the museums and libraries in Europe. By John Bentley Mays4 min

Backstage: New Delhi

Like mother, like son

It was Christmas time in New Delhi—still a few days away from the general election held Jan. 3 and 6—and at 12 Willingdon Crescent a game was being played that will soon be having its impact on the lives of 660 million people. Indira Gandhi, her family and a few close friends were sitting around the luncheon table playing the “numbers game.” By Peter Niesewand4 min

Education

The slow rise of a rapid-learning system

Looking not at all like Russian spies who reportedly use the method to absorb complex secret codes and learn languages in as little as 24 days, students at a University of Toronto French class sink into plush swivel chairs and in a light hypnotic trance breathe in time to recorded music while a voice chants information, oscillating dramatically from whisper to shout. By Diane Francis4 min

Column

‘If you can’t stand the meat, get out of your kitchen’

During the federal election’s 60 days of derision, the potshotting politicians were almost able to convince Canadians that these are the worst of times. Almost. Joe Clark replayed old slow-motion movies of Pierre Trudeau’s 11 years in power in the hopes that voters would be seized with phobia once more. By Roderick McQueen4 min

February 181980