February 2, 1998

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A Summary of the Rules

The deadline for contributions for the 1997 tax year is Monday, March 2, 1998. Your maximum deductible contribution is 18 per cent of your 1996 earned income to a maximum of $13,500. From this, you must subtract any pension adjustments if you are a member of a pension plan. By Steven G. Kelman

World

Soul-searching in cuba

There were many reasons why Cubans turned out last week to welcome Pope John Paul II to their homeland—and not all of them were obvious. Many, to be sure, came to celebrate a Roman Catholic faith suppressed for four decades. Others were simply curious, drawn to Cuba’s biggest public spectacle in years.

World

CAN HE SURVIVE?

To anyone visiting Washington from another country—or planet—last week, it might have made perfect sense to conclude that there are two Bill Clintons. The first is the poised, articulate, intelligent man who has presided over the United States for five years with—as even opponents acknowledge—considerable skill and imagination.

Canada

DEATH OF A CHOIRBOY

Kenneth AuYeung, a 17-year-old student at Saint Michael’s Choir School in Toronto, often told his friends: “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.” He was a straight-A student with an agile mind and a passion for computers—the kind of kid who volunteered at a local convalescent hospital in his spare time and shovelled the snow when his parents asked him to.

COVER

AN UNLIKELY PARTNERSHIP

The most intriguing question triggered by last week’s mega-merger between the Royal Bank and the Bank of Montreal is this: how will two strong personalities as different as Matthew Barrett and John Cleghorn survive their marriage of convenience? The answer is that they probably won’t. By Peter C. Newman

WORLD

Power and the JFK syndrome

Bill Clinton has never been shy about drawing comparisons between himself and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The 42nd President of the United States has, in fact, always claimed that it was America’s 35th chief executive who inspired his long trek from the little town of Hope, Ark., to the White House. By BARRY CAME

Show Business

Another laugh riot

The push is on to get everything right. With only a week to go before Second City Toronto’s splashy new theatre on Blue Jays Way welcomes an opening-night crowd, workers are busy putting on last-minute touches. In the foyer, untended cigarettes burn in scattered ashtrays, as buzz saws whine and hammers thump in a syncopated, nerve-jangling symphony. By JOE CHIDLEY

Buisiness

The dollar takes a dive

It started with queasiness in the B.C. lumber industry, then spread to Bay Street as a currency illness that showed signs of lingering like a nagging winter cold. The Asian flu—that exotic virus blamed for sapping the strength of much of the world’s economy—has struck Canada with an unsettling array of symptoms. By JOHN GEDDES

CANADA

Power to the people

For the past three months, Prince George, B.C., has been a community furiously divided. Mean-spirited arguments have broken out between normally civil neighbors; the benign letters section of the local daily newspaper has been filled with invective. By JENNIFER HUNTER

January 261998