October 6, 1997

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COVER

Privilege and Pressure

Even on a campus renowned for its architecture, the four imposing mansions that house McGill University’s faculty of law are dauntingly impressive. Their location on stately Peel Street, just a stone’s throw from the commercial bustle and gritty neon of downtown Montreal, only underscores their look of studied remove—an almost wilful obliviousness to the world outside their iron gates. By VICTOR DWYER

COVER

Academic Briefs

The faculty’s affiliation with the Health Law Institute offers opportunities to study and research in such hot areas as genetic engineering and health-care cost containment. In addition, the faculty has numerous courses in constitutional law. By SANDRA FARRAN

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Books

Beautiful dreamers

Biography can be shameless, biography can be disturbing and slanderous, biography can be no more than gossip disguised as scholarship, there are people who think biographies are essentially trivial, and that those who read them are probably self-indulgent voyeurs. By ROBERT FULFORD

CANADA

I've cried two rivers'

Rosie Neufeld and her husband, Grant Schmidt, live in a trailer next to their damaged home and a contaminated well. “The water is undrinkable, bathing is unpleasant and just forget laundry,” she says. Mould is starting to grow again on the wood frame of their house in Grande Pointe—despite weeks of cleaning and disinfecting with pressure sprays. By DIANE TURBIDE

BUSINESS

Taking on the giants

Once a week or so, a funeral procession passed by Boundary Bay Elementary School in South Delta, B.C., on its way to the local cemetery. Nine-year-old Lawrence Little sat in his Grade 4 classroom watching the procession through the window. By JENNIFER HUNTER

Opening Notes

Among Quebec’s political and business elite, who is staying and who fleeing is of vital importance. Now, the rumor mill has turned to the rich and powerful Bronfman family. The catalyst was the recent departure of Tom Axworthy, who for the past 13 years has been executive director of Charles Bronfman’s CRB Foundation, which produces Heritage Minutes for TV and movie theatres and supports a variety of charitable causes. By BARBARA WICKENS

World

Christian men on the march

Col. George Seiden works in the Pentagon, doing strategic planning for the U.S. secretary of defence. He has served as an adviser in the White House, and was on Gen. Colin Powell’s staff in 1991 when the United States threw Iraq out of Kuwait. By ANDREW PHILLIPS

Business

Asia's growling Tigers

The Buddhist monks in flowing orange robes had assembled at the ancient shrine to exorcise a very modern demon. As thousands of Thais, including several cabinet members, crowded around Bangkok’s Temple of the Emerald Buddha on Sept. 20, 100 clerics chanted and prayed for a way out of the country’s economic crisis. By TOM FENNELL

Canada

Return of the spenders

It was a happy Jean Chrétien who returned to his office after delivering his first speech of the new Parliament, settled into the prime ministerial chair and told his staff it was “one of those days when it feels good to be in politics because you know you’re leaving something behind for the country.”

September 291997