September 15, 1980

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Canada

ALBERTA DEMANDS ITS DUE

Calgary oilman Don Harris ran out of patience with the 620-year-old Douglas fir growing on a beach adjoining his cottage at Invermere, in southeastern B.C. For 60 years the tree had been a nesting spot for osprey, a protected predatory bird, but Harris was tired of the fowl-smelling droppings icing his veranda and car. By Suzanne Zwarun17 min

CANADA

The agony and the ecstasy of Terry Fox

He wasn’t suddenly smitten, but early last week Terry Fox knew something was terribly wrong. The hopping, running 22-year-old amputee was well over the halfway mark in his coast-to-coast odyssey to show Canada he could do it—and to raise funds for cancer research. By Warren Gerard9 min

Ideas

Suicide: an irrational act rationalized

Jeri Elliott has her life—and her death—well under control. A social work professor at Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, she unabashedly enjoys the good life—a fulfilling career, financial security and a childless and happy marriage with Tom, a guidance counsellor. By Margaret Cannon7 min

People

The slicked-down hair and full moustache were new, but the haughty style was familiar as Freddie Mercury’s vocals scorched through 48 speakers. In one of the few sellout grandstand shows at the Canadian National Exhibition which closed last week, his group, Queen, dazzled 26,000 with an eye-blitzing light show and plumes of dry ice for 100 minutes. By Marsha Boulton7 min

Profile

The search for peace in a world of war

Norman Zinkan Alcock is a small, frail 62-year-old scientist who earns $4,300 a year and a fair bit of ridicule for heading the Canadian Peace Research Institute (CPRI), a nonpartisan and emphatically nonprofit research and publication organization located in Oakville, Ont. By Val Ross7 min

World

But will they make it work?

He had hung on for two weeks as Poland’s crisis swirled around him, and his countrymen had begun to suspect that he might just manage, against all the odds, to retain his shaky throne. But time ran out suddenly on Friday night for Edward Gierek, the Communist party boss whose muddled economic doctrine had steered Poland straight toward disaster, with the dramatic announcement that he had been taken to a Warsaw clinic with heart trouble. By Peter Lewis7 min

Tankheads float into inner consciousness

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Lifestyles

Tankheads float into inner consciousness

God must be having a good laugh. The same Western technology that some say has killed Him has turned its sights on those Eastern mysteries that were imported to fill the continent’s religious void. Now, faster than a Hare Krishna chant, “tankheads”— users of a simple invention called the tank—reach instant Eastern-style inner consciousness while at the same time finding relief from Western stress and even those universal physical pains that conventional medicine can’t touch. By Kaspars Dzeguze6 min

Health

An airtight problem in need of ventilation

Man created his own weather— warm or cool to suit his fancy at the switch of an air-conditioner, furnace or humidifier. Then he took a deep breath, declared indoor air fit and proceeded to forget about it. That was a mistake. “Not even labs, scientists or universities thought the topic worth pursuing,” says Graham Adams, director of the building code branch of the Ontario Ministry of Housing. By Sharon Clark5 min

Follow-up

New homes, old dilemma

"This is a most delicate and sensitive operation and one which critics are understandably ready to capitalize on.” By 1970, when this apt warning appeared in a department of regional economic expansion (DREE) progress report, the Newfoundland resettlement program had closed down dozens of small communities, moving their people into larger centres. By Geoff Hunt5 min

Justice

Agent Orange comes home to do battle

The army shipped Franklin Sorensen to Vietnam in August, 1969, a' 20-year-old Baltimore boy barely out of boot camp. He joined the 169th Assault Helicopter Co., attached to the 25th Infantry Division. “A bastard unit,” he recalls. “Whoever needed us, we went.” By Michael Posner5 min

September 81980