September 22, 1997

View Full Issue Table of Contents

The Nation s Business

Mining the riches of urban real estate

The God damn real estate business,” Peter Munk is telling me. “It’s a graveyard of the human ego.” Why, then, is he getting deeper and deeper into it, while taking a $535-million hit by shutting down four of his gold mines? “Why did I switch?” he shoots back. By Peter C. Newman4 min

Column

The battle to right history's wrong

Some 12,000 Canadians served during the Second World War on merchant navy ships that were a lifeline to Britain and other Allied nations fighting the Nazis. More than one out of eight died, and about 2,000 of these veterans are still alive. Some of them, like Phil Etter of Belleville, Ont., By Diane Francis4 min

Canada

Canada NOTES

Ottawa and the provinces settled a dispute over who will bear the cost of setting up a new national blood agency. Under the agreement reached last week during a meeting of health ministers, the federal government agreed to pay $81 million of the setup costs, estimated to be between $100 million and $150 million.

For The Record

British music's déjà vu

Once dismissed as hopelessly passé by anyone under 30, The Beatles are suddenly hip again. The release during the past two years oí Anthology is partly responsible for the new vogue, with many offspring of baby boomers among the millions snapping up the three double-CD sets and the eight-video package. By NICHOLAS JENNINGS4 min

Opening Notes

For her first book, literacy advocate Arlene Perly Rae tackled a project dear to her heart: getting youngsters excited about reading. Rae asked well-known Canadians to describe the books that “woke you up or stirred your soul.” The result is Everybody’s Favourites: Canadians Talk About Books that Changed Their Lives, a de facto resource guide to some of the best in literature for children and teens (not to mention adults). By BARBARA WICKENS5 min

September 151997