Poet James Frazer writes: "For 22 years he ruled Parliament Hill, now he’ll stare you down from the $50 bill. It’s always been hard to know what exactly he stood for, our steward through the Great Depression and the 2nd World War..." READ MORE
Review: Taste Of The War Years
To read this delightful account of wartime eating is to comprehend for the first time our mothers’ fascination with liver. Livestock organs have today vanished from many supermarkets including items that butchers once creatively marketed as “variety meats”: calves’ brains, tongue, tripe and kidneys. None blighted so many childhoods as liver: liver loaf, minced liver, liver sauté, and fried liver and onions, a dense, grey, mealy dish that could only be choked down with ketchup. “Eat liver frequently,” decreed the 1944 Official Food Rules. An entire generation of homemakers took the admonishment to heart long after victory was ours. Food Will Win The War is a fresh and lively account of the Canadian dinner plate. It peers into the corners of the historical cupboard to uncover the most intriguing details of the home front experience. Researchers rarely delve into diet in documenting the past, though the results are always revealing. Who is not wiser on learning Lester Pearson’s favourite lunch was a poached egg? Or that Britain’s Ministry of Food decreed rice soup with haddock as Christmas Day supper in 1917? READ MORE
Caught Billing Paris Holiday
Dr. Mona Nemer, cabinet’s Chief Science Advisor, was caught trying to bill taxpayers for a personal holiday in Paris, Access To Information records showed yesterday. Her staff withdrew thousands in expenses after the Department of Industry challenged the charge: "We have a situation." READ MORE
RCMP Write Up 45 Staffers
The Mounties last year disciplined 45 civilian employees for wrongdoing from illegal drug use to “being dishonest,” says a new report. Commissioner Michael Duheme said the public deserved better: "Canadians expect the highest standards from us." READ MORE
Gov’t Excuses Illegal Hiring
Cabinet says the Bank of Canada didn’t mean to act unlawfully when it hired replacement workers in breach of the Canada Labour Code. “The Bank respects the law,” cabinet wrote in response to a Commons petition censuring management for misconduct in a lengthy strike with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. READ MORE
A Million Using Tax Clinics
A million Canadians a year are now using free clinics to file their annual tax returns, according to Revenue Agency figures. The latest data follow remarks by a former Minister of Revenue that most taxpayers were functionally illiterate: "When these people receive documents, they are not able to understand what is written there." READ MORE
Say Robot Cars May Kill Jobs
The Department of Transport yesterday commissioned a $100,000 study on anticipated benefits and job losses resulting from widespread use of robot cars. In-house research earlier showed Canadians are typically wary of automated vehicles and don’t trust the software: "Canadians are considerably more likely to be apprehensive about these technologies than to be welcoming of them." READ MORE
Guest Commentary
In 1968 as a law student I started a club on campus. We organized many protests. We rallied outside the South African Embassy. We were noisy. We shouted. We carried signs that read, “We Are All Equal.” Once we were confronted by police on horseback. Barclays was a leading supporter of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Its subsidiary was the largest bank in the country and became the target of a National Union of Students campaign, “Boycott Boerclaybank.” When I reflect now, I think those years shaped me as a person.
