January 8, 2001

View Full Issue Table of Contents

Business

Wiring the World

Barely a year ago, it was a relative unknown: a private, Vancouver-based company called Worldwide Fiber Inc. It sounded, to the uninitiated, like a relic of British Columbia’s old economy— a pulp and paper mill, maybe, or a chain of health-food stores. By Ken MacQueen5 min

COVER HEALTH

Big-city Headaches

Betty Watt is about midway through a typically hectic 12-hour day. She is seated in her cramped, cluttered office on the second floor of Toronto General Hospital. Her desk is littered with papers, the phone is ringing, and the doctor at the door urgently needs her attention. Watt, a grandmother of four, shares responsibility with a partner for staffing and scheduling of what she calls “the most expensive real estate” in the hospital—22 operating rooms where some of the country’s top surgeons routinely perform complex, high-risk operations. By D’ARCY JENISH5 min

World

European Blues

Throughout his political career, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has displayed a penchant for richly symbolic gestures. So it was not an accident that he chose Weiden in der Oberpfalz in which to deliver a solemn pre-Christmas message. By Barry Came5 min

COVER HEALTH

‘I Wanted to Help People’

It is 7 a.m. on a frigid December day, and the emergency department at Cornwall General Hospital is under pressure. Half a dozen patients lie on stretchers in rooms and hallways because there are no beds available. Christianne Godard, a critical-care nurse who has worked two 12-hour shifts in the preceding three days, arrives at the hospital after being called in for an extra fourhour shift because of the backlog. By MARK NICHOLS5 min

December 252000