Tuesday January 06, 2009
New Tory senator faces harassment complaint
Patrick Brazeau, national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and one of 18 new Conservative senators, is facing an allegation he sexually harassed one of his female employees.The complaint from the former congress staffer was transferred last week to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and has not become public until now, even though the harassment was alleged to have occurred in late 2007 and early 2008.
Canada lagged in helping get citizens out of Gaza
Canada only asked Israel for help in getting its stranded citizens out of Gaza after hundreds of other foreign nationals were able to depart, and as a ground assault was preparing to roll in.
Powder-hungry skier says he'd break the rules again
Graham Haywood and three other skiing buddies sparked a rescue effort that included an RCMP helicopter last week when they slipped out of bounds at B.C.'s Grouse Mountain Resort into ''an extremely hazardous and avalanche-prone area.''
A gracious team, a grateful nation
''Congratulations, Canada.''It takes a lot of grace for an 18-year-old who has just swept away more tears than sweat to say such a thing, but Magnus Svensson Paajarvi had more to say.
A gracious team, a grateful nation
Thirty-eight seconds.That's all it took to launch Team Canada on its way to a surprising 5-1 victory over Sweden and a record-tying fifth-straight gold medal in the World Junior Hockey Championship.
Report on Business 
New Internet-ready TVs put heat on cable firms
The Internet has proven it can handle television, but is TV prepared to handle the Internet?For years, technology companies have tried in vain to bring the Internet onto the screen at the centre of North American living rooms. Although TV shows have made the migration to the Web, to date, it has been a one-way road.
U.S. car wreck hits Canada
Canada plunged into the grip of a full-blown automotive recession last month as vehicle sales tumbled 21 per cent, led by a slump among auto makers that had been performing well.
Caisse engulfed by political battle
A political dispute has thrown Canada's biggest pension fund manager into turmoil, just weeks before it expected to post huge losses.After just four months in the job, and two months after taking medical leave, Richard Guay, the chief executive officer and president of the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, is stepping down to be an adviser to the fund, which will now be managed by a chief with a ''transitional mandate'' for six months.
Set another place for the receiver
In the end, if this is the end - and Killian Murphy believes that it's the end - neither Vera Wang's Grosgrain plates nor Barbara Barry's Musical Chairs teacups nor Jasper Conran's pretty peacocks on green chinoiserie place settings could save Waterford Wedgwood PLC from shattering like crystal stemware on an unyielding kitchen floor.
MADOFF SCANDAL PUTS SEC ON HOT SEAT
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is facing a sweeping internal investigation into allegations its officials ignored complaints about Bernard Madoff for 10 years and were influenced by Mr. Madoff's clout and personal connections to SEC staff.
Globe Sports
Canadian claims bronze in debut
Kelsey Serwa has learned that when one door closes, another opens.The 19-year-old from Kelowna, B.C., was released from the Canadian alpine ski team at the end of last season. But she didn't have much time to think about her future as she hopped a plane to British Columbia and finished second in the Canadian ski cross championships to veteran Anik Demers-Wild.
McCabe feels revived, ready for boo birds
Bryan McCabe's return to Toronto means Vesa Toskala will likely be given a break from the fickle fans at Air Canada Centre tonight.The inconsistent Toronto Maple Leafs goalie occasionally has felt the scorn this season that was reserved for McCabe in his days in Toronto.
Make that five golds in a row
Late in the second period of the gold-medal game, Sweden was down two goals and wasting power-play opportunities without even threatening Dustin Tokarski in the Canadian net.At the other end, Swedish goaltender Jacob Markstrom had lost his composure, and Sweden's collection of gifted offensive players could barely complete a simple pass.
Make that five golds in a row
Late in the second period of the gold-medal game, Sweden was down two goals to Canada and wasting power-play opportunities without even threatening Dustin Tokarski in the home team's net.
How a sexagenarian stays hot
How he loves to wax philosophical.''If we're hoping, or dreaming, about the end results,'' the head coach of Canada said before last night's final game, ''then we're liable not to get them.''
Globe Life
YOUR MORNING SMILE
Is being lax a prerequisite for relaxation?- Sudhir Jain, Calgary
Downward dog, upward fertility?
Trudy Lingham had been trying to conceive for two years when she went to her first yoga for fertility class in Vancouver. While she enjoyed the yoga, she was intimidated by all the talking and felt stressed listening to the stories of other women's fertility struggles.
DOABLE HUG YOU NOT TEASE YOU SAY 'I LOVE YOU' IMPOSSIBLE NOT WAIT UP NOT BACKSEAT DRIVE STOP NAGGING
Iwill lose 25 pounds by July 1. I will stop smoking. I mean it.I will have a more positive attitude. I really mean it. Most New Year's resolutions don't make it halfway through January. And resolutions about your teenagers? You're lucky if you get past 2 o'clock in the afternoon on New Year's Day.
The perils of transplant tourism
George Archer, at the age of 78, travelled to Lahore, Pakistan, in May, 2006, for a kidney transplant. Three weeks later he came home to Montreal, jubilant, with the kidney of a 22-year-old man. But jubilation would soon turn to pain and regret.
Conspicuous spending: That's un-P.C.
Here's a New Year's prediction that has a 100-per-cent chance of coming true: People are going to pay way more attention to their personal finances this year.
Globe Review
Years in the making, 10 days to film
Over many gruelling months in 1919, following the last shots of the First World War, the leaders of the major powers and a host of other delegates met in Paris to piece together a new world order. Owing to the pitfalls of modern documentary filmmaking, it has taken the National Film Board of Canada and a host of broadcasters even more time, a number of years, in fact, to create a film of those events.
Is he truly ill, or a Hollywood-style King Lear?
''Here I am talking to some of the smartest people in the world and I didn't even notice,'' states Lieutenant Columbo, slyly, to a brilliant murderer and his Mensa-esque colleagues, in the episode The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case.
Tories say building money 'is flowing'
More than 16 months after the Conservatives announced a far-reaching, seven-year infrastructure plan valued at $33-billion and made up in part by the $8.8-billion Building Canada Fund, cultural projects across the country have yet to see a federal dime. But the Tories now say the approved beneficiaries have only to begin construction and submit proof of their spending and the dollars will be handed over.
A drama with all the subtlety of a chuck-wagon race
Look out, Calgary! Run, duck, take cover. CBC Television is about to unload a large dollop of codswallop about your great city and its environs.Okay. Who am I kidding? Nobody in Calgary, except perhaps the crack-addled alley-dwellers, is going to avoid a big ol' splashy drama set in the city. Everybody is going to watch. All I'm saying is, you've been warned.
A defiant lament for a changing South
OXFORD AMERICAN'S10TH ANNUAL MUSIC ISSUEVarious artistsOxford American magazineSeparation Blues, in Oxford American's annual music issue, is the title of Sven Birkerts's article on sixties singer-guitarist Patrick Sky. Separation blues, as if there were any other kind.
Editorials
Measured action on the ground
The ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, to prevent the firing of rockets into Israel, is consistent with the Israeli government's prudent, limited war aims.Though the invasion is unlikely to change Gaza in the medium or long term, the rocket attacks are intolerable and must be stopped at their source before more Israeli civilians are killed. If the Israel Defence Forces have to return again and again, to suppress new supplies of such rockets, so be it.
The back burner
It is difficult to imagine that the federal government is not interested in examining the factors surrounding the outbreak of listeriosis that killed 20 Canadians last year. It is in the Conservatives' interests, after all, to ensure that no similar tragedies occur under their watch. But the government's apparent failure to launch an investigation it promised early last fall raises the unsettling thought that its pledge was made largely to prevent the issue from jeopardizing its prospects in the election campaign.
World junior hockey
When a parent finds his or her children locked in a violent squabble over a game or toy, the first move is to pull the combatants apart. The second, by far the more frustrating, is to ask how the fight began - an inquiry that invariably shackles the parent with an endless chain of purported provocation and reasonable response. It is usually best to send the gladiators to their respective rooms to cool off and to reflect on the essential weakness of losing self-control.
Comment
Dear Iggy, this is not a year for an election
The 2008 federal election seemed remarkable for how little it changed. The Conservative government remained, the exchange of insults continued to substitute for parliamentary debate. But, in late November, reality struck. We have entered 2009 with politics transformed.
What is the UN waiting for? Deploy a strong force to Gaza
I first served in the Gaza Strip in 1963, seven years after Lester Pearson's diplomatic stick-handling led to the creation of the United Nations Emergency Force, the UN's first peacekeeping force. I served there for two years, living with more than 1,000 other Canadian soldiers in Camp Rafah, just inside Gaza. I returned to the region eight years later, this time to Cairo and Ismailia as part of Canadian support for UN ceasefire protocols after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I have returned to the region many times during the past decade.
Forecast: Our economic fate remains entwined with that of U.S.
No one precisely knows how bad the economy will be in Canada in 2009. The forecasters, predictably, do not agree, except that the economy will contract, unemployment will rise and fiscal deficits will again become the order of the day.
China sails into new world order
This week, three Chinese vessels join an international task force operating in the Gulf of Aden to protect shipping from attacks by Somali pirates, marking the first time since the 15th century that Chinese warships have sailed so far from home.
Obituaries
BEN BOYLE
Patrick Watson of Toronto writes about Ben Boyle, whose obituary appeared Jan. 3, 2009.Benny Boyle and I were distantly related and he told me in detail, shortly after he was repatriated in 1945, about the flight that led to his being downed during the Second World War and his subsequent imprisonment by the Germans.
INGER CHRISTENSEN: 73
Inger Christensen was a Danish writer who built experimental poems, essays and novels around systematized and mathematical structures.One of Denmark's most famous poets, she was best known her poetry collections det (1969) and alfabet (1981). Her works were organized around her firmly held views that poetry is not truth. Instead, she said, ''it is a game, maybe a tragic game - the game we play with a world that plays its own game with us.''
LAST WORDS
It was a great game.Bing Crosby, 1904-1977(after completing a golf tournament in Spain)
Globe Real Estate
Shopping for bargains of a different kind
Blame it on the frightened consumer: As Cushman and Wakefield LePage national retail manager John Crombie sees it, retail real estate is all based on consumer confidence - ''and, frankly, who feels confident these days?''
REIT watch*
Non-residential activity stronger than expected
U.S. construction spending fell less than expected in November as record activity on non-residential projects helped offset another steep decline in housing. The Commerce Department reported yesterday that construction spending dropped by 0.6 per cent in November, less than half of the 1.3-per-cent decline economists expected. A 4.2-per-cent fall in housing construction was partly offset by a surprisingly strong 0.7-per-cent rise in non-residential activity. But economists are concerned that non-residential projects will falter as developers deal with a severe financial crisis making it hard to get financing amid a year-long recession that has curbed the appetite for new shopping centres and office buildings.
Science
Water pockets causing tremors under Vancouver Island
Researchers at the University of British Columbia are offering an explanation of recurring tremors underneath Vancouver Island: pockets of water deep under the earth that act as a lubricant between tectonic plates.
Education
Residential schools apology deeply moved Harper, changed his views
Aboriginals across Canada were moved to tears last June in a wave of deep emotion to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Indian residential schools apology on the floor of the House of Commons.
Ontario union wants ban on Israeli academics
A proposed resolution by a major Ontario union to ban Israeli academics at the province's universities has sparked a bitter debate between leaders on both sides over an Israeli attack on a Gaza university.
Headmaster is named for Royal St. George's
Royal St. George's College named its next headmaster yesterday, as the Toronto preparatory school announced the hiring of a senior faculty member from another prestigious school, Upper Canada College.
