For teachers and others

Postings at this site represent materials that can be used in classrooms and other learning activities. Please credit, quote the sources from which the material was originally taken. Merci.

Today's posts

If article does not appear in listing at the right, click on the date and conduct a search. Bon lecture!

archives/2005_10_22

2005/10/for-france-toronto-is-future.html
2005/10/france-orders-positive-spin-on.html
2005/10/sorrows-of-haiti.html
2005/10/americas-watch-haiti.html
2005/10/in-french-letters-and-politics-racism.html
2005/10/Lewis and Clark materials
2005/10/history-and-charm-combine-in-quebec.html
2005/10/rebel-with-cause.html
2005/10/referendum-10-years-after.html
2005/10/new-quebec-dynamic.html
2005/10/umfk-board-hears-about-acadian.html
2005/10/maine-reaches-out-to-france.html
2005/10/international-human-rights.html
2005/10/visor-debate-intensifies-in-nhl.html
2005/10/montreal-halloween-mood.html
2005/10/translations-open-window-to-local.html
2005/10/dancing-indian-nun-puts-estonians.html
2005/10/honoring-great-lady-from-maine-by.html
2005/10/heed-beauty-of-obscure-birches.html
2005/10/keep-eyes-peeled-for-maines-cold-river.html
2005/10/nouvelle-france_22.html
2005/10/nouvelle-france-flimsy-frock-opera.html
2005/10/nouvelle-farce-oups-faute-de-frappe.html
2005/10/frances-protectionist-stance.html
2005/10/franco-american-jurists-and-lawyers-in.html
2005/10/alouette-inspired-comic-book.html
2005/10/sunken-cheddar-defeats-divers.html
2005/10/divers-cant-find-sunken-50000-cheese.html
2005/10/scene-heard-saratoga-reads-should.html
2005/10/what-is-your-greatest-source-of-pride.html
2005/10/canada-mccain-cuts-potato-plant-jobs.html
2005/10/authors-organize-to-support-school.html
2005/10/penn-state-fayette-plans-film-festival.html
2005/10/food-and-history-in-mendota-mn.html
2005/10/social-intercourse.html
2005/10/polite-revolution.html
2005/10/love-letter-to-canada-and-get-well.html
2005/10/huguenot-walloon-tercentenary-half.html
2005/10/pinnacles-are-possible-advertising.html
2005/10/politically-incorrect-just-plain.html
2005/10/exploring-inhabited-country.html

For France, Toronto is the future

For France, Toronto is the future

CAROL GOAR
Toronto Star
Oct. 21, 2005. 01:00 AM
To Azouz Begag, minister for the promotion of equal opportunity in the French government, Toronto is like the North Star, pointing the way on issues of tolerance and social inclusion.
"I'm here to learn," the 48-year-old novelist-turned-politician said. "We are convinced that Toronto is the capital of diversity. It's the incarnation of modernity. You have already reached the future we are trying to implement."
Begag, the first member of a visible minority ever appointed to the French cabinet, was in Toronto this week to participate in the International Metropolis Conference on immigration and cities.
In truth, the minister explained in an interview, France admits so few newcomers these days that integrating them into its cities isn't much of a problem. The real challenge is fighting discrimination against immigrants who arrived long ago.
His late father was one of them. He came from Algeria after World War II seeking work. He lived in abject poverty in a racially segregated ghetto of Lyon all his life, never learned to read, never learned to speak French and never felt at home in his adopted country.
"We have millions and millions of people of African origin who live in the poorest conditions and the poorest neighbourhoods," Begag said. "Because of their skin colour, they are not considered fully French by their fellow citizens.
"I want to end that discrimination. I want to act as a bridge between the old France and the France of the future. I have a dream that, one day, people who belong to all minorities will be a source of phenomenal enrichment for our society."
His own life story is source of hope to those of African descent.
Begag was born in 1957 in a "bidonville" — a shantytown consisting of corrugated iron huts — on the outskirts of Lyon. Although both of his parents were illiterate factory workers, they encouraged him to get a good education. Blessed with an agile mind and a fierce desire to succeed, he excelled at school, eventually earning a PhD in economics.
He became a university lecturer and a specialist in the emerging field of urban social economics. At the same time, he drew on his life experience and knowledge of the tough immigrant neighbourhoods surrounding French cities to become a prominent author and filmmaker.
"I was known for my novels," Begag said proudly. "But after 25 years of reflection and conceptualization, I wanted to serve my country. It was time to go into combat."
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin — himself born in Morocco and raised in Venezuela — invited Begag to join his cabinet five months ago, in the new position of minister for the promotion of equal opportunity.
His mandate was to break down the barriers confronting people of colour, women, individuals with disabilities and seniors. That meant changing hiring practices, housing policies, workplace rules, social conventions and, most important of all, public attitudes.
He got a taste of how difficult it was going to be when his cabinet colleague, Nicolas Sarkozy, minister of the interior, vowed to turn a high-pressure hose on a troubled Paris suburb to cleanse it of migrants and troublemakers.
A radio interviewer asked Begag to comment. "I cleanse my shoes or my flower pots," he said cryptically.
The minister played down the incident this week, insisting he has neither the time nor the taste for political infighting. He aims to build support by showing that equality can be a way of life, not just a government slogan.
Coming to Toronto was part of the process. "I want to be able to go back to France and say: `Go to Toronto. Meet the people and you'll see what diversity means. It's not altruism. It's a source of economic and social vitality.'"
Begag would not emulate all of Canada's policies. He made it clear that he considers Ontario's experiment with Muslim tribunals — cancelled last month by Premier Dalton McGuinty — a bad mistake. And he stood strongly behind France's decision to ban the hijab (Muslim headscarf) in schools, an approach that runs counter to Canada's tolerance for religious symbols.
But in terms of embracing globalization, he regards Toronto as the trailblazer. "We'd like to follow your path, keep what is good and learn some of the pitfalls of dealing with (ethnic) complexity."
Begag's stay was brief. He had to leave midway through the conference for a cabinet meeting in Paris. But he hopes to come back. He is fascinated by a city where races get along, cultures mix, the mainstream changes and everyone seems to think it's normal.
Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Additional articles by Carol Goar
Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

France Orders Positive Spin on Colonialism

France Orders Positive Spin on Colonialism

- By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer
Friday, October 21, 2005
www.sfgate.com
(10-21) 16:20 PDT PARIS, France (AP) --

France, grappling for decades with its colonial past, has passed a law to put an upbeat spin on a painful era, making it mandatory to enshrine in textbooks the country's "positive role" in its far-flung colonies.

But the law is stirring anger among historians and passions in places like Algeria, which gained independence in a brutal conflict. Critics accuse France of trying to gild an inglorious colonial past with an "official history."

At issue is language in the law stipulating that "school programs recognize in particular the positive character of the French overseas presence, notably in North Africa."

Deputies of the conservative governing party passed the law in February, but it has only recently come under public scrutiny after being denounced at an annual meeting of historians and in a history professors' petition.

An embarrassed President Jacques Chirac has called the law a "big screw-up," newspapers quoted aides as saying. Education Minister Gilles de Robien said this week that textbooks would not be changed. But the law's detractors want it stricken from the books — something the minister says only parliament can do.

The measure is one article in a law recognizing the "national contribution" of French citizens who lived in the colonies before independence. It is aimed, above all, at recognizing the French who lived in Algeria and were forced to flee, and Algerians who fought on the side of France.

Unlike other colonies, Algeria, the most prized conquest, was considered an integral part of France — just like Normandy. It was only after a brutal eight-year independence war that the French department in North Africa became a nation in 1962, after 132 years of occupation.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has equated the law with "mental blindness" and said it smacks of revisionism. The Algerian Parliament has called it a "grave precedent."

The friction comes as France and Algeria work to put years of rocky ties behind them with a friendship treaty to be signed this year.

"Morally, the law is shameful," said University of Paris history professor Claude Liauzu, who was behind the petition, "and it discredits France overseas."

France was once a vast empire, including large holdings in Indo-China and Africa. It unraveled in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly calmly.

However, France suffered ignominious defeats in Indo-China and Algeria. Paris only called the Algerian conflict a "war" in 1999. Throughout the fighting, and for decades thereafter, France had referred only to operations there to "maintain order."

In colonial times, French textbooks typically depicted the French presence in the colonies as that of benevolent enlightenment, with a clear mission to civilize.

The newspaper Liberation this week published drawings from "France Overseas," an illustrated colonial Atlas of 1931 that showed "before" and "after" drawings, one a sketch of Africans cooking and eating another human being, the second a school house on a well-manicured street with a French flag flying overhead.

The Association of History and Geography Professors has asked that politicians "end the practice of manipulating history" and abrogate the law.

The separate petition by history professors gathered 1,000 signatures in three weeks, said Liauzu.

"We're in a rather crazy situation," he said. "They say the law won't be applied but it's up to lawmakers to cancel it."

Beyond the real concerns over the political manipulation of historic events, there is another danger of falsely misrepresenting French colonization, Liauzu said.

"France is a country profoundly marked by immigration" with the majority of French from immigrant stock, Liauzu said. By failing to tell the truth, children of today's immigrants "are deprived of any past."

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/10/21/international/i092309D87.DT

The Sorrows of Haiti

The Sorrows of Haiti

by Stephen Lendman; October 20, 2005
ZNet | Haiti
On February 28, 2004, in the middle of the night, the U.S. again invaded Haiti. It abducted and forcibly removed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by its staged coup d'etat and flew him against his will to the Central African Republic. Aristide today remains in exile in South Africa but vows to return. The Haitian people demand he be allowed back and restored as their rightful and legal president.

With the U.S already stretched beyond its capacity in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and currently condemned worldwide for flouting international law, inviolable Geneva Conventions it's a signatory to, and our own sacred Bill of Rights, why now Haiti. The country is very small [about 3 times the size of Los Angeles], has a population of about 7.5 million and is the poorest country in the Americas. Why did the U.S. intervene with so much else on its plate? Think back to the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 when the U.S. asserted its exclusive right to dominate the Americas. Now update to the present and a reinterpretation of that Doctrine has arrogantly expanded to cover the entire planet - and outer space. Think of it, the U.S. will tolerate no rival and has now staked its claim [an exclusive franchise] to dominate all other nations and the oceans and the heavens. In an inversion or perversion of Woody Guthrie's great song for the people - "This Land Is Your Land" - a fitting anthem for U.S. arrogance might be "This Earth is My Earth....this earth [and the outer space above it] was made and now belongs to the U.S.A." That includes Haiti, and sadly for its people that tiny, poor country lies much too close to the U.S. The lament and aphorism of Mexican dictator [from 1876 - 1910] Porfirio Diaz who said......"Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the U.S." is also true for Haiti and all other countries in the region as well.

The February, 2004 U.S. invasion was only its latest incursion into that poor and defenseless country. The U.S. did it before in 1915, stayed for 19 years, and caused extreme human suffering and death to the Haitian people. It also did it in 1994, stayed for 5 years, reinstated an overwhelmingly democratically elected President, and then made it impossible for him to govern effectively and be able to serve the interests of the Haitian people, especially after the 2000 parliamentary election which was contested over a handful of parliamentary seats. After the opposition cried foul, the Inter-American Development Bank froze desperately needed loans [already approved] which were never reinstated for the rest of Aristide's tenure. The IDB also forced the Haitian government to commit to the onerous burden of repaying and servicing past "odious" debt. The debt burden was so great that in 2003 Haiti was forced to send 90% of its foreign reserves to Washington to pay it.

Now the U.S. government and its military again are setting and directing policy using the fraudulent fig leaf of a so-called U.N. "peacekeeper" contingent. Who can know how long we'll now maintain control this time [through a proxy U.N. force, direct U.S. occupation or just a subservient puppet government] or how much more misery and death we'll inflict on the benighted and long-suffering Haitian people. Clearly on that February, 2004 night the U.S. again flouted international law with another illegal invasion and subversion of the rights of a sovereign state and its democratically elected president to serve its own roguish imperial interests - a shameless act but sadly hardly new for a nation that's done it repeatedly throughout its history.

It first began when the early settlers took native Indian land through force or chicanery and murdered many millions in the process. As the colonies grew, expansion spread west and south and by the 1840s became a policy called "Manifest Destiny" [first used by Jackson Democrats] to promote and justify a strategy and practice of ruthless predatory expansion to include all territory south of Canada, coast to coast, as well as the annexation of Texas and conquest and seizure of half of Mexico. In the Guadalupe-Hidalgo peace treaty with Mexico in 1848, the U.S. "graciously" allowed Mexico to keep half its country [although some U.S. officials wanted it all} - the southern half with the majority Mexican population the U.S. did not want as U.S. citizens, fearing they would pollute the white Christian ethnic North American stock [sound a little like a 19th century Nazi Aryan philosophy of racial purity and superiority?]

Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt continued U.S. imperial adventures and expansion annexing Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and American Samoa after the war with Spain. The Canal Zone was taken a few years later, and after many more years of savage and bloody war, killing somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 million or more [shades of Vietnam and Iraq], the Philippines finally succumbed and became a U.S. colony. The imperial tradition continued throughout the 20th century, especially after WW II when the U.S. was the only powerful nation left unscathed from the ravages of that brutal war. It took full advantage creating and exploiting the myth of "communist barbarians" at our gates [a post WW II version of Reagan's later "war on international terrorism" in the 80s and Bush's "war on terrorism" today - all of them shams to scare the public to allow those in charge the ability to do as they please in "defense" of the nation]. After the Soviet Union collapsed, we desperately needed a new threat but had no problem finding many - Manuel Noriega in Panama, Saddam in Iraq, the North Koreans, Columbian drug lords, Fidel, the Iranian Ayatollahs, Hugo Chavez and anyone else we choose, the only qualification being a head of state unwilling to serve U.S. interests. Jean-Bertrand Aristide tried and failed to do it both ways - to follow U.S. dictates as well as serve his own people as best he could including raising Haiti's appallingly low minimum wage, disbanding its notoriously brutal military and having the courage to sue France for reimbursement for that country's 19th century imposed indemnity Aristide now estimated to be $21 billion adjusted for inflation and with 5% compound interest. All that and more was intolerable for the U.S., so he had to go. Before discussing events and conditions in Haiti today after the coup, let's go back to the beginning to examine the plight of the Haitian people from the time the Spanish first arrived in 1492.

Few people in all human history have suffered as much as the people of Haiti. From the arrival of Columbus to the present, the Haitian people have been victims of enslavement, genocidal slaughter [including death from smallpox and other western diseases the local inhabitants had no resistance to], and later brutal exploitation and predation. The indigenous Arawak, or Taino, population suffered near total extinction [from as many as 8 million in 1492 to only 200 50 years later], astonishing even when compared probably to the greatest overall genocide ever that occurred in all the Americas where, according to historian Ward Churchill, the indigenous population of perhaps 100 million was reduced by 97 - 98%. After the Spanish moved to the eastern two thirds of the island, now known as the Dominican Republic, in the early 1600s, the French colonized the western third [Haiti] and repopulated it with black African slaves.

The French Revolution in 1789 changed everything and inspired the Haitian people, who considered themselves French, to demand their own freedom. Led by Toussaint L'Ouverture and others they staged their own Haitian Revolution from 1791 - 1803, defeated the French, and established the first free and independent black republic anywhere on January 1, 1804. Throughout the 1800s the new nation went through intermittent periods of brief enlightened rule and considerable oppression and turmoil. The French eventually regained influence and control over the country's leadership and affairs and forced the independent nation to pay tribute to France for their freedom and independence, an amount equal to billions in today's dollars. It was an impossible burden.

>From inception the U.S. never recognized Haiti and embargoed and harassed the new nation for its first 6 decades fearing its freed slaves might inspire a similar revolt here in the south. But the U.S intended to exercise its influence and dominance in the hemisphere and did so with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 when it stated that the Americas were no longer open to European colonization and that the U.S. would not interfere in European affairs. Beginning in 1915, the U.S. invaded and occupied Haiti using as a pretext the incredible claim that the Germans [during WW I] sought to occupy the country. The U.S occupation lasted 19 years until 1934 during which time it ravaged Haitian society and institutions and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the defenseless people. The U.S military routinely committed atrocities, the most infamous being in 1929 when the Marines slaughtered 264 protesting peasants in the town of Les Cayes. "Corvee [or forced] labor" [de facto slavery] was also employed and enforced brutally, and for the first time, the U.S military [just like today in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere] tested its new weapons including aerial bombing years before the Nazis did it infamously against the Spanish Republican government in Guernica in support of the eventual fascist dictator, General Franco.

When the first U.S. occupation finally ended, the war crimes against the Haitian people continued under a U.S. trained proxy army which became the Armed Forces of Haiti. Conditions got progressively worse, especially under the "Papa Doc" and then "Baby Doc" Duvalier regimes from 1957 - 1986. "Papa Doc" established a personal and repressive paramilitary group, the Ton Ton Machoute, to intimidate and terrorize the Haitian people. When the people finally overthrew the "Baby Doc" dictatorship in 1986, a series of provisional governments ruled until 1990 when Haitians in an election judged fair and free elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide president with 67% of the vote, an unexpected shock to the U.S. Aristide took office in February, 1991, but his time in office was cut short by a September coup involving the still intact and active Ton Ton Machoute and supported by the U.S. For the next 3 years the military ruled and exercised a renewed reign of terror against the Haitian people using paramilitary death squads as a favored technique. The principle terror group was called FRAPH, led by Toto Constant, an admitted CIA agent who took his orders from Washington. Constant now lives in New York, safe from prosecution for his crimes, but apparently also is involved now with the new puppet government and its savagery against the people. During this time Aristide lived in exile in the U.S.

The Clinton administration finally struck a deal with Aristide in 1994, and used a vote by the U.N. Security Council it engineered to send a U.N.[largely U.S.]international contingent to Haiti ending military dominance and restoring constitutional rule. One month later President Aristide and other elected officials returned to Haiti. The "peacekeeper" contingent entered and remained in Haiti until 1999 not to restore democracy but to insure political and economic continuity as dictated by IMF instituted neoliberal structural adjustment policies of privatizations, debt servicing and cuts in vital domestic social programs. The U.S. struck deal allowed Aristide to return to nominal power as long as the policies of the ousted military junta remained essentially unchanged. As mentioned earlier, Aristide tried to do it both ways and failed [by U.S. standards]. He demobilized the army, pursued human rights violators, respected human rights and freedoms and tried to raise the disgracefully low minimum wage. In short, he governed like a "democrat."

When the full and true story of Jean-Bertrand Aristide is finally told, it will portray a noble and humble man who gave of himself honorably to serve the interests of all the people of Haiti. His only failure was his inability to overcome the brutal and corrupt power of the U.S. and its determination to see him fail. And that determination never diminished even though, hard as it was to do, his government complied with its obligation to service its debt with its external creditors in hopes of being granted new loans by the World Bank, IMF and Inter-American Development Bank to do so. This new and earlier funding [intermittently frozen and then cut off completely after the 2000 election] led to a spiraling of Haiti's overall debt and debt servicing obligation forcing the country to cut back its already insufficient attention to basic social services for the people in desperate need of them. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and in 2000 had a shocking estimated unemployment rate of between 60 - 80%. Today with the extreme level of violence and turmoil it may be even higher, and the country is a total economic and social disaster. I'll return to events today shortly.

In 1995, a pro-Aristide multi-party coalition called the Lavalas Political Organization took power with an overwhelming majority in parliamentary elections. In 1996, with Aristide unable by Haitian law to succeed himself, Rene Preval, an Aristide ally and Prime Minister in 1991 won the presidenial election with 88% of the vote, again shocking the U.S. After several years of political gridlock, Aristide was reelected President with 92% of the vote [representing the Lavalas Family Party which he formed in 1996] in November 2000 and took office in February 2001. Opponents immediately claimed the election process was unfair because of the calculation of percentages for the runoff election in 7 senate races. This was a minor technical matter not affecting the balance of power and finally resolved a year later when the 7 senators resigned. The opposition also claimed Lavalas failed to end corruption and was unable to improve the Haitian economy. After several years of U.S. instigated and supported opposition turmoil, late 2003 scheduled elections couldn't be held, and Aristide refused demands to step down. That fateful choice turned out to be the beginning of the end of the Aristide presidency and the Lavalas party.

Serious anti-Aristide protests began in January 2004 including violent clashes in Port-au-Prince. In February, an armed insurrection erupted in Gonaives that a local group may have instigated. A militant gang, calling itself the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti, then used this opportunity to join the uprising. The Revolutionary Front was a paramilitary army which was formed, heavily armed, trained and funded by the U.S. in the neighboring Dominican Republic. The so-called "National Endowment for Democracy" had been funding the civilian opposition and may have also aided the paramilitaries. In addition, the CIA, based on its 50 year history of fomenting insurrections and coups, may have been heavily involved as well. The rebel gang included former members of the hated and feared FRAPH. It was led by Guy Philippe, a former police chief involved in the 1991 coup ousting President Aristide, and FRAPH and former Ton Ton Macoute member Jodel Chamblain, guilty of years of terrorism against the Haitian people. Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, also guilty of years of terrorizing the Haitian people, may also have been involved. President Aristide had disbanded the Haitian army after replacing the military dictatorship in 1991 and only had local lightly armed police facing a superior force it was no match for. The rebels swept across the country, first taking control of Gonaives, then Cap-Haitien [Haiti's second largest city] and finally Port-au-Prince right after the U.S. instigated coup with President Aristide already in the Central African Republic.

As a proxy force for the U.S., the rebels were serving the U.S. goal of again making Haiti a U.S. colony [like Puerto Rico}, supplying wage slave or serfdom labor, enriching the local business interests and U.S. corporations, and run by a puppet regime now and henceforth behind the false facade of a nominal democratically elected government. In addition to its total of over 700 known military bases worldwide today in 38 countries and a military presence in at least 153 countries, the U.S. also is attempting to militarize the Caribbean and South American regions to control Haiti and its Central American neighbors and to intimidate and put political pressure on Venezuela, Cuba and any other Central or South American country that might elect a less than subservient leader. What's happening in the South American Andean region under "Plan Columbia" [to be pressured even more with a new base in Paraguay that has angered its neighbor, Brazil] is what's planned for Haiti, Central America and elsewhere in the region. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. in Haiti plans a permanent military presence in the region to assure its imperial goals succeed, and presently is minimizing its interest and presence behind the fig leaf of so-called U.N. "peacekeepers" from other countries.

In Haiti today, "peacekeeping" is Orwellian language concealing a brutal reign of terror against the Haitian people, the Lavalas party and all its members and all others seen as potential threats to U.S. policy. The Haitian people today, just like the people in Iraq, face daily cold-blooded murder, torture, rape and sexual abuse, hunger, a complete breakdown and absence of all essential social services as well as brutal crackdowns and conditions of utter depravity, all served up by the so-called "peacekeepers" [from countries including Brazil, Canada, France, the U.S. -behind the scenes but very much in charge - and others}. Lavalas party leaders and members not already murdered or imprisoned are currently in hiding and are being hunted down. Puppet U.S. installed acting "president" Gerard Latortue [brought in from Florida to assume his role] jailed at first without charge Lavalas Prime Minister Yvon Neptune [he has now been charged] and Father Gerard Jean-Juste, both seen as threats to U.S. interests because of their service to and overwhelming support by the Haitian people. They remain there under cruel and brutal conditions, and without intervention by or strong demand and pressure from the world community will probably die there. Months ago Yvon Neptune underwent a hunger strike and several times was reported to be near death. This writer does not know more about his condition today, but apparently he is still alive and still in prison.

Examples of what's happening daily are assaults and cold-blooded murder carried out against alleged Lavalas supporters by the Haitian National Police {PNH], FRAPH thugs and UN "peacekeepers." Multiple attacks have been carried out in Cite Soleil, Bel Air, Solino and elsewhere where innocent Haitians have been shot and killed. Frequent street protests against the puppet government have been broken up violently, and known Lavalas supporters and officials are tracked down and when found either murdered or imprisoned without charge and without recourse to legal or other help. Perhaps the most blatant example of brutal violence against innocent Haitians took place on August 21, 2005 in a soccer field in Gran Ravin-Martissant in front of 5000 soccer fans. As many as 50 Haitians were massacred by the PNH and red-shirted killers. When a shot was fired, people panicked and ran and were either shot or hacked to death with machetes. Although there was a U.N. post across the street, no U.N. "peacekeepers" were there to protect the victims.

In addition to all the violence and abuses detailed above, Haitian men, women and children are victims of human trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation [of women and children for forced prostitution], forced labor [de facto slavery], debt bondage and chattel slavery. UNICEF estimates as many as 300,000 Haitian children are affected plus many thousands of women. Many additional thousands of men also have been and still are being forcibly taken to the Dominican Republic and other countries to work as "sugar slaves." Modern-day slavery is a major problem for Haitians today and also for many poor in other developing countries where the masses of impovished people are easily exploitable while their governments {including in Haiti] do nothing to stop it. As many as 30 million people worldwide are thought to be affected.

Sometime this fall the U.S plans to hold supposedly "democratic" elections to be run by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council {CEP]. The process is hopelessly fraudulent and flawed, and precise information on all that's happening is unclear. What is known is that voter eligibility roles are being "electorally cleansed" of all "political dissidents" [meaning Lavalas/Aristide members and supporters], and no anti-government activity is being allowed in the streets. Any occurring is being put down violently. Also, the number of polling stations have been reduced from 12,000 in earlier elections all across the country to 800 this time, eliminating those in rural areas where most of the poor are. In addition, the puppet government designated "political dissidents" have been prohibited from running for office [again with the obvious meaning}. Furthermore, expected voter registration totals at election time range from about 7% of pre-"electorally cleansed" eligible voters to about 50% of eligible voters post "cleansing." This will be another example of what economist and media and social critic Edward Herman calls a "Demonstration Election." Professor Herman wrote a book in the 1980s documenting sham elections in Nicaragua and other countries, controlled and "rigged" by the U.S. to be sure their "acceptable" candidate won. The process has been repeated many times, most recently in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and soon in Haiti. Many people here in the U.S. believe, as do I, that this country also is guilty of staging "demonstration elections" as seen in 2000 when Democratic candidate Gore won Florida and was elected President, but 5 U.S. Supreme Court Justices refused to allow a total state recount to prove it, effectively annulling the Florida and true electoral college vote to chose their candidate, Republican Bush, as president. The process repeated again in 2004 in Ohio and elsewhere, this time with "rigged" electronic voting machines the main, but not only culprit, again selecting Republican Bush. The fall, 2005 election in Haiti is even more out of line as only those candidates known to be subservient to U.S. imperial interests are allowed on the ballot. The Haitian people want none of it, and it remains to be seen how many of those left unpurged from the rolls will actually turn out and vote. So much for democracy, but it certainly will be portrayed that way.

Long before the 2004 coup deposing President Aristide, the U.S. corporate media began a process of demonizing him, unjustly accusing him of corruption, conducting a fraudulent election and other crimes and abuse. Just as it always does before, during and after all U.S. incursions against other countries, the dominant corporate media unquestioningly backed the U.S. position, even with no credible evidence to support it. Instead of investigating and reporting the facts honestly as good journalists should, the media giants all lined up as dutiful and complicit flacks and acted as mere transmissions agents of state propaganda. As a result, the public was told and believes lies and has no idea what's really happening or why. Today the major media reports almost nothing about Haiti, and the public is unaware that the daily horror happening throughout Iraq is also happening in Haiti. Haiti has become a black hole, out of sight and out of mind, with little hope of relief. The U.S. public knows nothing, and the world community, except for the CARICOM nations in the region, doesn't care or act responsibly. As a result, the long-suffering Haitian people pay a dear price. But these courageous people have endured for over 500 years, and if their past and present strength is prologue, they will never give up until they are free at last from any colonial master.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=8968

Americas Watch Haiti

San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

10/19 Americas Watch Haiti: Continue Oppression and Killings in Haiti+Video!
by Lee Siu Hin Friday, Oct. 21, 2005 at 10:55 AM
info@PeaceNoWar.net (213)403-0131 Los Angeels, CA USA
On Friday, September 23, 2005, the Director General of the Haiti National Police Leon Charles, UN Force Commander Lieutanant General Augusto Heleno Ribiero Pereira of Brazil, and the Special Representative of the United Nations Juan Valdes of Chile were convicted of violations of Haitian law and international law including crimes against humanity. This verdict was delivered by the jury of the First Session of the International Tribunal on Haiti. The Tribunal was held in Washington, DC at George Washington University at the Elliott School of International Affairs.


Americas Watch Haiti
Continue Oppression and Killings in Haiti+Video!
October 19, 2005
Americas Watch is the Project of ActionLA Coalition and Peace No War Network
URL: http://www.ActionLA.org
http://www.PeaceNoWar.net

Important Video about the July 6, 2005 U.N. Killings in Haiti
[Real MPEG]
Americas Watch's Haiti Updates
http://www.peacenowar.net/Americas/News/Oct%2019%2005--Haiti.htm
The First Session of the International Tribunal on Haiti: Report
By: Joe DeRaymond
September 23, 2005
Washington D.C.



On Friday, September 23, 2005, the Director General of the Haiti National Police Leon Charles, UN Force Commander Lieutanant General Augusto Heleno Ribiero Pereira of Brazil, and the Special Representative of the United Nations Juan Valdes of Chile were convicted of violations of Haitian law and international law including crimes against humanity. This verdict was delivered by the jury of the First Session of the International Tribunal on Haiti. The Tribunal was held in Washington, DC at George Washington University at the Elliott School of International Affairs.

The International Tribunal on Haiti has been organized by a coalition of Haiti solidarity groups, including the Haiti Support Network, and supported by the Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC – lasolidarity.org), which sponsored and funded the Tribunal. The Tribunal will continue for several sessions over the next seven months, to investigate reports of human rights violations and seek accountability for crimes against humanity. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark is the lead member of the Commission of Inquiry that will investigate charges generated by the Tribunal. The Commission will conduct fact-finding inquiries in Haiti, the United States and other countries. The verdicts of the Tribunal will be used to generate a case that will be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Haiti screams for your attention. It is a killing field in its structural poverty, and in the constant violence visited upon the impoverished population by rogue police forces aided, horribly, by United Nations "peace-keeping" troops. The Tribunal brought together a distinguished group of experts and eyewitnesses to expose the crimes being committed against the people of Haiti.

The Tribunal is structured in a fashion similar to United Nations Tribunals, a procedural conflation of European and Anglo legal traditions. The presiding Judges are former Haitian Ambassador Ben Dupuy, Attorney Brian Concannon, and Attorney Lucie Tondreau. The Investigating Judge is Attorney Tom Griffin, assisted by Attorney Lionel Jean-Baptiste. The Chief Prosecutor is Attorney Desiree Wayne, assisted by Attorneys Kim Ives and Ray LaForest. The Jury is an international panel of citizens chosen for their interest, knowledge and ability to assess the testimony.

The indictment charges 21 individuals with violations of Haitian and international law. It delineates the justification for assigning criminal responsibility to those individuals, specifically, "No distinction has been made based on official capacity. Official capacity…shall not exempt a person from criminal responsibility." This is a crucial point to be made in this era of State repression, a point made at Nuremberg, and a necessary recognition that a person cannot commit atrocities in the name of a State or institution and then use the uniform or position as a justification for the crime.

The defendants are UN personnel, US military personnel, Canadian military personnel, French personnel, members and former members of the Police Nationale d’Haiti (PNH), and members and former members of the former "rebel" force that assaulted Haitian society in 2004.

The initial charges list 15 counts of attacks, executions and massacres that occurred between March of 2004 and August of 2005. Each count includes the killing of civilians and each describes an act of terror against the civil population. These violent crimes occur within a social and political context that has been stripped of democracy by the governing powers, namely, the United States, Canada and France. The Prosecution began with an exposition of the history of Haiti, and the events that led up to the coup of February, 2004, which removed the elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide and ushered in the wave of violence addressed in the Indictment.

The first witness was Jeb Sprague, an expert on the destabilization of Haitian society prior to the coup, representing the Latin America Solidarity Coalition. He charted the web of organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, the United States Agency for International Development, the National Democracy Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce that created an "unnatural" opposition to Aristide. The programs of such groups as the International Republican Institute, funded by the NED, were called "democratic enhancement", but were really a means to create discord in a nation weakened by harsh economic sanctions imposed by the United States.

Canadian journalist Ives Engler then presented his testimony on the roles of Canada, the United States and France in the destabilization of Haiti. He spoke of "The Ottawa Initiative on Haiti", held in Ottawa on January 31 – February 1, 2003, at which Otto Reich, OAS representatives, and Canadian officials decided the fate of Haiti, with no Haitians present. His findings were submitted to the Tribunal. (See "Canada in Haiti, Waging War on the Poor Majority", 2005, by Ives Engler and Anthony Fenton, Red Publishing, Fernwood Publishing.)

The next witness, Attorney Ira Kurzban, represented the government of Haiti during the government of Aristide in its attempts to collect monies stolen by the Duvalier family, and to recover reparations from France. He noted the 13 years of opposition that Aristide faced upon his initial electoral victory in 1991, which included the advice of Jimmy Carter, that he not take the office that he had won so convincingly. Mr. Kurzban testified to the kidnapping of Aristide by US Special Forces, and to the corrupt nature of the US-installed government after the Feb. 29, 2004 coup.

The last witness in this phase of the inquiry was Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, the Minister of Migration in the Aristide government, who testified to his kidnapping and expulsion from Haiti under threat of death during the coup.

At this point, the Tribunal had been presented with the background to the period of crisis faced by Haiti at the time of the coup of February 2004. A government of rebel thugs armed and trained by the United States was in control of the streets of Haiti. It should be noted that this initial exposition of the context of Haiti today was presented in thumbnail fashion, and was treated with some skepticism by the Judges, for good reason, as it did not address directly crimes against humanity. The Prosecution argued that the testimony was important to understand the intentional subversion of civil society and Haitian democracy in Haiti by the United States, Canada and France. Therefore, there exists today an inability for existing institutions in Haiti to deal with the crimes in the Indictment. The Judges allowed the testimony after argument, with the admonition to the jury that they had discretion as to the weight granted the evidence.

The testimony of any one of the witnesses at this session could have consumed the night’s work. Each had extensive oral, video or written evidence to present to the Tribunal, and much of it had to be submitted rather than presented in full. The appearance in one place of so many powerful testimonies to crimes in Haiti was very effective to prove the case for the Prosecution. The necessarily truncated presentations were also a reminder that a Tribunal or court scenario is not always the best venue for creating drama. There is ground to be covered, much to be done in a limited time.

The next witness was Kevin Pina, a US journalist freshly released from a Haitian jail. He testified about his arrest on September 10, when he uncovered a marauding group of Haitian National Police in the house of the imprisoned priest Jean Juste. He then provided personal and video testimony of the events he has witnessed during his years in Haiti. The video clip he showed of the massacres in Cite Soleil on July 6, 2005 was a powerful exposition of the poverty and terror that are daily life for Haiti. He testified to the participation of the UN occupation forces in the indiscriminate slaughter in poor neighborhoods. He has recently completed a video documentary, "Haiti: the Untold Story".

Pina was followed by Tom Griffin, who gave a capsulized version of his Human Rights Investigation of November, 2004. This report is available from EPICA, www.epica.org. It is an indispensable resource to understand Haiti 2005. It covers all aspects of the current situation, with photos and interviews of the key players in the struggle, not least the people of the barrios. It documents the incompetent, criminal occupation of the UN, as well as the sinister actions of the HNP and irregular Haitian forces.

Seth Donnelly was the final witness. He had been a participant in a human rights delegation in July of this year, sponsored by the San Francisco Labor Council. He was a witness to events in Cite Soleil surrounding the July 6 massacre. He had interviewed UN officials, and had produced a video of the events he witnessed. His video and testimony corroborated the statements of Kevin Pina.

The Prosecution chose to ask the jury for a verdict on the guilt or innocence of three of the defendants; Leon Charles, the former Director General of the Haiti National Police, Lieutanant General Augusto Heleno Ribiero Pereira of Brazil, UN Force Commander, and Juan Valdes of Chile, the Special Representative of the United Nations. Eleven of the jury of 12 voted guilty, one abstained. Thus, the Tribunal started with a judgment against the managers of the massacres, the architects of the policy of terror. The verdicts and the cases of all defendants were referred to the Commission of Inquiry for further investigation.

Ramsey Clark addressed the group at the close of the session. He sketched the history of Haiti, the perfidy of George W. Bush’s attitude toward an elected government: "’Aristide must go’, Bush said". He noted the value of the recent Tribunal on the War in Iraq, and the need for such mechanisms by which people could hold governments accountable. Clark will lead a Commission of Inquiry to Haiti in October to gather further evidence and eyewitness testimony. The coming sessions of the International Tribunal on Haiti will further expose the reality of Haiti to the world, and will solidify a case to present to the International Criminal Court at The Hague for criminal prosecution.

Useful Links:

Past News from Haiti Crisis
Feb 23, 2004 | March 2, 2004 | March 11, 2004

Useful Haiti Links

History of US Military, CIA Involvement in Haiti

=================================================================
ActionLA
Action for World Liberation Everyday!
Tel: (213)403-0131

URL: http://www.ActionLA.org
e-mail: Info@ActionLA.org

Please Donate to ActionLA!
Send check pay to:
ActionLA/SEE
1013 Mission St. #6
South Pasadena CA 91030
(All donations are tax deductible)

Please join our ActionLA Listserv
go to: http://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/actionla
or send e-mail to: actionla-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Please Join PeaceNoWar Listserv, send e-mail to: peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

www.PeaceNoWar.net

Original article is at http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/10/1776640.php Print comments.

In French letters and politics, racism is all the rage

Reading Between the Lines
In French letters and politics, racism is all the rage
By Daniel Aldana
October 20, 2005
Copyright 2005 Maisonneuve Magazine

Michel Houellebecq is France’s freshest literary export in decades, and true to form, he is a nicotine-stained, booze-soaked novelist with a pitiless view of human failings who harbours fond memories of Stalin.

The first French writer since the years of Sartre and Camus to sell hundreds of thousands of books both inside and outside France, Houellebecq (pronounced “well-BECK”) is a notorious bad boy—he was taken to court for hate crimes in 2002 after he called Islam a moronic religion. He’s also an intellectual outsider who fixed computers for the government in his twenties and now towers over French letters, in large part for daring to ignore the paraphernalia of postmodern literary theory and writing crisp, realist prose.

His bleak novels about alienated white-collar workers outline the shipwreck of our civilization—modern life, he tells us, is reliably and extraordinarily miserable. In his first novel, Whatever (1994), he writes, “Just like unlimited economic liberalism, and for analogous reasons, sexual liberalism leads to an absolute impoverishment.”

For Houellebecq, free-market competition is distinguished by incessant struggle and loneliness; he blames the free-love New Left of the nineteen-sixties for extending it to the sexual realm, depriving us of the warmth and generosity needed to make love properly (feminism, which he calls the most idiotic of ideologies, is assigned a fair bit of blame).

His portrayal of poverty among young men of North African extraction is even less subtle—brushing aside economic conditions, he describes their issues with violent crime as the result of a moral decline. It doesn’t help that Islam, he argues in Platform (2001), is a hypocritical anachronism that substitutes rage for a frank acceptance of our animal natures.

When Houellebecq isn’t moralizing—he writes in The Elementary Particles (1998) that a “metaphysical mutation” is signalling the end of the world as we know it—he indulges in science fiction. His latest vision, inspired by the Raeliens and laid out in The Possibility of an Island (available to Canadians in spring 2006), is of a small colony of clones studying their own ancestry. His goofy pseudo-science comes off a bit sardonically, the musings of a man without hope.

These savage tirades against modern times have struck a nerve in France’s body politic, currently seized by a dramatic crisis. First came the 2002 presidential election, when Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National, an extreme-right party with fascist overtones, edged out the Parti Socialiste candidate Lionel Jospin to forge a two-man runoff against incumbent conservative Jacques Chirac. Chirac did win overwhelmingly in the end and the right now governs France, but the episode has left a bitter taste in voters’ mouths.

This was especially stunning because Jospin had just served five very successful years as prime minister. But he had governed from the centre. The declaration, during his presidential campaign, that his platform was not socialist confirmed the frustration of many supporters, who deserted him for the extreme left.

The second shock came this May, when French voters rejected the draft European constitution in a referendum. A former French president had drafted it; it was supported by the leaders of every mainstream political party and all the mainstream media—the French people ignored them all.

The extreme right voted “no” out of xenophobia, while most of the left declared itself pro-Europe and voted “no” anyway, fearing the constitution would endanger French social protections through free-market reforms. What united the right and left’s negative stance was anger and frustration at the country’s political elites and the neo-liberal consensus driving their policy.

French voters are turning away from the centre en masse in search of new leadership. But while their rage is directed against free-market policies, the left has been unable to organize itself behind a coherent leadership or program.

Not so on the right. With the 2007 presidential election looming, a menacing figure has stepped into the vacuum.

Nicolas Sarkozy is France’s most popular right-wing politician. The son of Eastern European immigrants, he rose to prominence outside France’s traditional elite channels, making him something of an outsider. At fifty, he is also much younger than most of his rivals, a fact he emphasizes by being strangely energetic on TV.

Presently the mayor of a wealthy suburb of Paris and France’s minister of the interior (the French system is bizarre: politicians often hold diverse portfolios simultaneously; the interior portfolio typically covers policing, national security, and immigration matters), he is desperate to be France’s next president.

His politics are simple: replace the current welfare state with a free-market, one heavy on police repression. Economically, he wants to make France more like Britain and the United States, mainly by privatizing state companies and cutting taxes and social spending. His reforms would poison the French Republic on both a practical and ideological level—make France more like an Anglo-Saxon country and you basically kill it.

Sarkozy’s remedy is to coat the arsenic with aspartame: not democratisation, but populist authoritarianism and borderline bigotry. Nicknamed the “first cop of France,” he has threatened to “clean out [rough neighbourhoods] with a dirt blaster” and infuriated critics and the relatives of victims killed in recent fires by promising to evict thousands of squatters without a solid plan to re-house them.

His principal victims are immigrants. In August, Sarko (as he is nicknamed) scolded France’s regional prefects for managing to expel only 12,849 illegal aliens in the last eight months—this year’s quota is 23,000 expulsions. He even demanded that each prefect pull off one publicity stunt before year-end to be held up as a local example.

In his now-you-see-the-real-me-now-you-don’t strategy, Sarkozy’s message to voters seems to be, “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”—a beautifully supple appeal to emotions too politically incorrect to voice out loud. (Incidentally, this was the slogan of the British Conservatives earlier this year during the UK’s general election.)

This way of thinking is replicated in Houellebecq’s novels, which are stuffed with despair at rising crime rates, racist and anti-Muslim rants and a healthy dose of misogyny. These ideas are expressed primarily through a sense of self rather than as a coherent political position.

The gritty psychological realism is framed by an obsessive attention to commercial detail. Houellebecq always gives his reader the brand name of food, wine, clothing, stores and cars; he critiques and quotes extensively from real texts, like a tourist’s guide to Thailand, a John Grisham thriller or an underwear catalogue. It’s the oldest trick in the book of realist fiction: submerge difficult ideas in a resonant description of the physical world.

Discussing Agatha Christie’s literary style, Houellebecq laments that she neglects “the pleasure of discovery” only to focus on “the pleasure of recognition.” Yet Houellebecq does no better. Reading about his protagonists—thinly veiled self-portraits—the excitement comes from entering Houellebecq’s mental universe, where we’re delighted to discover, in a literary work, both our own silly fixation on brands and our own unspeakable discomfort with sexual competition, soul-numbing jobs—and dark people.

Houellebecq, the author, can distance himself from his fiction, but it’s a technicality. Whether or not he deeply believes all that he writes, readers are clearly feeling what he’s feeling.

We shouldn’t get carried away: Houellebecq is not a definitive cipher for decoding all of French society; and Sarkozy is by no means guaranteed to be the country’s next president. But the immense popularity of each reminds us that the importance of literature includes the political, and that the appeal of a certain politics can depend more on what one feels—on a sense of self—than on what one thinks.

To better understand the rage simmering in France today, you should probably read Houellebecq. The same goes for the socialists in suits struggling frantically to connect with the “people.”

Daniel Aldana is a Toronto-based writer who has lived and studied in France. He’s definitely thinking what you’re thinking.

http://maisonneuve.org/index.php?&page_id=12&article_id=1857&p=1

On the path of Lewis and Clark from the Continental Divide to the Pacific

On the path of Lewis and Clark from the Continental Divide to the Pacific

Sunday, October 2, 2005
By DAVID HORSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST

DISPATCH FROM LEMHI PASS, Sept. 18 -- Depending on which side of the Continental Divide I stand, it is either 1:30 Pacific Time or 2:30 Mountain Time. I am in either Idaho or Montana. Time and place are that elastic on this mountaintop.

[Excellent materials for classroom use.]
Online extras, and more articles on the trip
See a photo gallery, find useful links and more
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/lewisandclark/

Here, it takes very little imagination to move from the 21st century and go back 200 years -- 200 years and 37 days to be precise -- to the moment when Capt. Meriwether Lewis climbed up this ridge with a three-man scouting party and took a step as momentous in its way as Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon. With that step, he brought the Northwest into the history of the United States.

To read this piece and the series:
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/242800_focus02.html

History and charm combine in Quebec City

History and charm combine in Quebec City
The traditional home of French-Canadian culture, it reflects the early New World and the cosy comforts of bistros
 
Sara Benson
King Features Syndicate
Saturday, October 22, 2005
vancouversun.com

Founded in 1608, Quebec City is the traditional spiritual home of French Canada. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, this northern enclave encompasses cobblestone streets, clifftop perches and narrow passageways that reveal churches and hotels poised for panoramas of the St. Lawrence River below.

The walled old city, called Vieux-Quebec, is split between the Haute-Ville (Upper Town) and Basse-Ville (Lower Town). History hounds can't get any higher than at La Citadelle de Quebec, a fort at the peak of Cap Diamant (Cape Diamond).

The changing-of-the-guard ceremony on summer mornings gives a peek at Canada's colonial past. In Parc des Champs-de-Bataille (Battlefield Park), the British defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, sealing the province's fate. Today the Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec displays rare works drawn from Canada's Inuit nations as well as a trove of Quebecois statuary, much of it evincing a rustic Catholicism.

Caleches (horse-drawn carriages) convey mad romantics around the Old Town. For walkers, a five-kilometre circuit atop the walls can be a meditative hike; from May to October, guided tours depart from the Porte St.-Louis. In 1633 French explorer Samuel de Champlain built the chapel that was transformed into the impressive Basilique-Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Quebec in the Latin Quarter. The Musee de l'Amerique Francaise next door tells the tale of French settlement in the New World. Wandering around the museum's quiet seminary courtyards and peering at the purported relics of saints will uplift your soul.

More earthly pleasures await inside the Chateau Frontenac, one of the grand luxury hotels built by the Canadian Pacific Railway just before the turn of the 20th century. This castle-like hotel is backed by the grassy strolling grounds of the Terrasse Dufferin. After your visit, ride the funicular or risk the Escalier Casse-Cou ("Break-Neck Stairs") down to the Lower Town, centered on the Place Royale. Follow the hordes along rue du Petit Champlain and into the Musee de la Civilisation, which delves into the culture of first nations peoples.

Venture farther outside the walls around the Vieux-Port (Old Port) area. Catch a ferry across the St. Lawrence to the town of Levis for the views back to the city. Amble along rue St.-Paul, its antiques and vintage shops overflowing with early 20th-century-modern wares and reminders of more pastoral times.

Yet don't think Quebec is stuck in its past. There's a modern, even bohemian side to this city. Feel it in the gentrifying St. Roch district, with its art galleries on rue St.-Vallier Est. DJs spin at L'Aviatic Club nearby inside the sumptuous Gare du Palais train station. Outside the Upper Town's western walls, traipse along rue St.-Jean right into a heady mix of fashion-forward boutiques, cosy bistros and bars.

Quebec is a city for all seasons. In summer, free performances happen in the public squares of the Upper Town, especially near the Hotel de Ville (City Hall). Or brave the deep freeze during February, when the Carnaval de Quebec winter carnival creates ice sculptures, snow slides, and fetes of music and drink, and visit North America's only ice hotel. Elsewhere in "La Belle Province," you can go skiing in the quaint resort towns of the Laurentians or, in the warmer months, escape to pastoral Ile d'Orleans, an island of apple orchards, wineries and farmhouse restaurants that cook wild game.

Wherever you wander in Quebec, take time out to revel in the unrushed pace of life. It's the province's joie de vivre you'll long for as soon as you leave.

Where to Stay: Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac (1-418-692-3861, 1-800-257-7544, www.fairmont.com/frontenac, doubles from $300) is a luxe landmark in the Upper Town. The boutique Hotel Dominion 1912 (1-418-692-2224, 1-888-833-5253, www.hoteldominion.com, doubles from $175) is a modern retreat near the Old Port. A 30-minute drive west of town, the unique Ice Hotel (1-418-875-4522, 1-877-505-0423, www.icehotel-canada.com, doubles including two meals from $600) enthusiastically welcomes children. It's usually open from early December to early April.

Where to Eat: Pay homage to tradition at Aux Anciens Canadiens (1-418-692-1627, 34 rue St.-Louis), which, although touristy, dishes up authentic Quebecois specialties inside a 17th-century home. Also in the Upper Town, casual Casse Crepe Breton (1-418-692-0438, 1136 rue St.-Jean) serves savoury and sweet crepes, while Le Saint Amour (1-418-694-0667, 48 rue St.-Ursule) is an haute French dining destination for courting couples. Outside the walls, the bohemian cafe Le Hobbit (1-418-647-2677, 700 rue St.-Jean) offers belly-warming nouvelle fare.

For more information: Contact the Quebec City & Area Tourism and Convention Bureau (1-418-641-6654, www.quebecregion.com).

Sara Benson is the author of several Lonely Planet guides to Canada.

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/travel/story.html?id=ee423149-0f41-4a21-821f-df4f7f0796b9

Rebel with a Cause

Rebel with a Cause
Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making delivers the Quebec perspective on the man

By CATHERINE DAWSON MARCH
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Page 8
Globeandmail.com


One thing's for sure, only the CBC would air a movie like Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making.

The two-part miniseries is a dense, intense, four-hour drama about what made Pierre Elliott Trudeau Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It has sex, brawls, fancy cars and sharp intellectual arguments. It can also be eye-glazing; discussions about federal-provincial relations, the separation of church and state and readings from Cité libre come off as good-for-you TV. The miniseries is often more history lesson than absorbing TV drama. (That is, unless you are a Canadian history nut, and they are out there.)

Trudeau II is a prequel to Trudeau, the 2002 miniseries that examined his days in office and the country's fascination with the man. Trudeau II, conversely, covers the early years, from teenager to the 1968 Liberal leadership convention. Writer and producer Wayne Grigsby, who wrote both movies, has said that this time it's a portrait of "Trudeau the Quebecois" where the first film was "Trudeau the Canadian."

Familiarity with Quebec's past will certainly help viewers keep up with the story as it rockets through the decades. We see teenage Trudeau (played by Tobie Pelletier) chafe under the iron rule of Duplessis and, as he gets older, baffled at the mindset of the majority of Quebeckers content to live with their church-run society.

The big difference between the two films is, of course, Stéphane Demers, the new actor playing Trudeau as an adult. Colm Feore won a Gemini for his portrayal, but he was tied up making The Chronicles of Riddick (hardly Trudeau II's intellectual equal, but it's likely the money was better). Quebec actor Demers, in his first English starring role, steps in quite capably. The first glimpse we get of him is through a haze of smoke in an opium den in China. (This prequel may not have the flash or visual appeal of the first film, but it does dig into the juicy bits of the former PM's life.) He doesn't quite master Trudeau's every facial tick (as Feore did), but Demers has more latitude: This movie covers Trudeau before popular images of him were burned onto public memory.

Demers's Trudeau also gets his hands on more women, though the film reduces Trudeau's significant relationships to just three (his first sweetheart, played by Fanny La Croix; Michèle-Barbara Pelletier as the one who got away; and Suzanne Clément as the married one). Each affair reveals more about Trudeau, the man, than any speechifying or pointy-headed pontificating ever will. He loved 'em and left 'em, if not physically, than emotionally.

Also missing from Trudeau II is director Jerry Ciccoritti, who, like Feore, won a Gemini for his efforts. He was busy working on other projects as well. Instead, Tim Southam (The Bay of Love and Sorrows) directs the long-awaited prequel.

The original plan was to film this prequel simultaneously in English and French, which would have been a sensible and fitting tribute to the man who instilled bilingualism in the country. But that didn't happen either. The funding red tape caused many delays and Grigsby was disappointed to lose support from Radio-Canada. So, the film's mostly Quebec actors speak in English, but they do it with that delicious accent and inflection that feels so very Montreal.

What is included in this film is a little of Trudeau himself, in the very early years. Sons Justin and Sasha wrote to the Public Archives of Canada allowing Grigsby to include the grainy black and white home movies shot by their grandparents. We see our 15th prime minister in short pants, and in one shot, sticking his tongue out at us. An early Trudeau salute, if you will, and a signal of things to come.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051022/GT43REBEL/TPEntertainment/TV

REFERENDUM 10 YEARS AFTER

REFERENDUM 10 YEARS AFTER
Quebec still torn on future in Canada
But, given a clearly worded question, voters would elect to stay, poll finds

By BRIAN LAGHI
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Page A1
Globeandmail.com, OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

Quebeckers are just as divided over independence as they were a decade ago, although they would comfortably vote to stay in Canada if the question were put to them clearly and directly, a new poll indicates.

Ten years after the referendum that almost broke Canada in two, Quebeckers say they would vote to remain in Confederation if asked clearly whether they want to secede. But the survey also finds a stubborn attachment to sovereignty despite the breathing space of a decade, indicating that federalist forces have failed to erode sentiment for independence.

"It's a little bit 'the glass is half full, the glass is half empty,' " said Allan Gregg, chairman of the Strategic Counsel, which conducted the poll for The Globe and Mail and CTV News. "But the sad part, from someone who is an unrepentant Canadian, is that after 10 years, we have not created one scintilla of a greater bond with Quebeckers than we had when were on the verge of near-death."

Asked how Quebeckers would vote if they faced a question similar to the one posed in 1995, 48 per cent said they would opt for the Yes side, compared with 47 per cent who would vote No. The other five per cent didn't know.
Advertisements

And on a related question of whether Quebeckers are in favour of holding another referendum, 49 per cent said they were while 48 per cent were not. Moreover, 59 per cent of Quebeckers surveyed said they believed the Yes forces would win the next referendum. In the rest of the country, 49 per cent of Canadians believed a majority of Quebeckers would vote Yes in another referendum while 44 per cent said they would vote No.

The poll surveyed 1,000 Canadians between Oct. 6 and 13 and is accurate to within 3.1 percentage points 95 per cent of the time.

The Quebec sample comprised 500 individuals. The results come just a week before the anniversary of the 1995 referendum, in which sovereignty was defeated 50.6 per cent to 49.4 per cent.

Mr. Gregg said the results demonstrate that the past 10 years have "created a whole new generation of prospective sovereigntists."

The results were, however, leavened by findings that a majority of Quebeckers would vote No if asked directly about secession.

That appears to back Ottawa's decision to create the Clarity Act, which allows the House of Commons to override a referendum result if it deems the question unclear or if results are not supported by a clear majority. The act also states that any question not solely referring to secession would be considered too ambiguous.

The poll found that 66 per cent of Quebeckers and 68 per cent of the rest of the country support the requirement for a clear question. When asked whether they would vote "to secede from Canada to become an independent country," 53 per cent said No, compared with only 43 per cent who said Yes. Another 4 per cent didn't know.

"I think there is an appetite for finality right now," Mr. Gregg said. "An appetite not simply in English Canada, but even in Quebec."

He added Canadians might "thank their lucky stars" for the Clarity Act, which many assumed would harm the federalist cause.

The closeness of the 1995 outcome shocked the nation and many federalist politicians, who, five years later, passed the act. Many characterized the referendum question as muddy and blamed it for the tight outcome.

It read: "Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership, within the scope of the Bill Respecting the Future of Quebec, and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995."

(The June 12 agreement pledged that the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois and Action Démocratique du Québec work together to achieve such a partnership with the rest of Canada after a Yes vote.)

While the polling results on the need for a clear question might be heartening for federalists, the poll also finds a clear divide between Quebec and the rest of the country on what constitutes a majority.

Fifty per cent of Quebeckers said a simple majority of 50 per cent plus one is enough for the province to leave Canada, while 74 per cent in the rest of Canada said it was not. Of those who said a simple majority was not enough, 54 per cent said the bar should be set at more than 70 per cent. Mr. Gregg said that demonstrates that Canadians outside the province wouldn't accept the outcome if the Yes side won by a simple majority.

That said, the Canadian voting public appears sanguine about the possibility of a breakup, with 76 per cent telling pollsters they'd be willing to negotiate a new partnership with an independent Quebec.

On the question of whether Quebeckers feel more sovereigntist or more federalist over the past 10 years, 60 per cent said they haven't changed their views. Twenty-three per cent said they were more likely to support sovereignty, while 16 per cent were more prone to the federalist argument.

Survey says

A new poll suggests Quebeckers remain divided on whether to hold a referendum but would reject independence if asked directly.

Would Quebeckers vote yes to a referendum using the same questions as in 1995?

Yes: 48%

No: 47%

Don't know: 5%

Do Quebeckers favour holding a referendum on sovereignty?

Yes: 49%

No: 48%

Don't know: 3%

Do Quebeckers support seceding from Canada to become an independent country?

Yes: 43%

No: 53%

Don't know: 4%

Is a majority of 50%+1 votes sufficient for Quebec to separate?

QUEBECKERS

Yes: 50%

No: 47%

Don't know: 3%

REST OF CANADA

Yes: 22%

No: 74%

Don't know: 4%

If 50%+1 is not enough, how much is needed?

QUEBECKERS

More than 55%: 14%

More than 60%: 26%

More than 65%: 18%

More than 70%: 41%

Don't know: 1%

REST OF CANADA

More than 55%: 11%

More than 60%: 18%

More than 65%: 14%

More than 70%: 57%

Don't know: 1%

Should the rest of Canada negotiate the separation of Quebec?

QUEBECKERS

Yes: 59%

No: 37%

Don't know: 4%

REST OF CANADA

Yes: 62%

No: 34%

Don't know: 4%

Should it also negotiate a partnership with an independent Quebec?

QUEBECKERS

Yes: 91%

No: 8%

Don't know: 1%

REST OF CANADA

Yes: 72%

No: 25%

Don't know: 3%

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051022/POLL22/TPNational/Canada

The new Quebec dynamic

The new Quebec dynamic

By BRIAN LAGHI
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Posted at 3:13 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Ten years ago, Mike Robinson packed three of his four children into his old Land Rover and drove them to Montreal to join tens of thousands of other flag-waving Canadians in the desperate final days before the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty.

The rally that jammed a downtown square three days before the Oct. 30 vote was a terrifically patriotic experience for his children and something he owed his country, Mr. Robinson said. But it was also a-once-in-a-lifetime event that he would not take part in should the issue arise again.

“If there is another referendum — and I'm by no means convinced that there will be — the next time Quebeckers will have to make up their own mind about staying,” he said. “They can't expect the same grand gesture as 1995 from the rest of Canada.”

Mr. Robinson, an Ottawa consultant who has played senior roles in Prime Minister Paul Martin's election and leadership campaigns, said he thinks Quebeckers will no longer be wooed with constitutional negotiations or symbolic acknowledgments of their distinctiveness. It's an attitude Mr. Martin appears to share.

Ten years after Quebec rejected sovereignty by just over one percentage point, much has changed in the battle between the separatists and the federalists, not the least of which is the gentler and, some might say, more timid approach of the federal government.

Gone are the Canada logos that once dotted the province under the auspices of the sponsorship program that so discredited the Liberal Party. Gone, too, is the centralizing and aggressive style of former prime minister Jean Chrétien and the letter-writing campaigns of his intergovernmental affairs minister, Stéphane Dion. In their place is a prime minister who is counting on the passage of time, a more province-friendly attitude and the allure of a booming economy to tamp down sovereigntist sentiment.

At the same time, the winning conditions that arguably prevailed in 1995 are no longer readily apparent.

Quebec has switched to a federalist-friendly Liberal government. Its residents are starting to acknowledge the existence of deep societal problems surrounding its debt and expensive social programs. And the Conservatives, once a federalist option, now poll in single digits in the province. The Parti Québécois, meanwhile, is in the middle of a divisive leadership campaign and its own redefinition.

Finally, there are no efforts to reopen the constitutional package, to discuss a new deal for Quebec or even to articulate a manifesto for the province along the lines of Lucien Bouchard's controversial efforts this week.

“We need to be vigilant, but I don't think we need to overreact,” a source close to the Prime Minister said. “The future for ensuring that Quebec continues to stay as part of Canada does in fact lie in us making Canada a very attractive place to be a citizen of.”

That includes making sure Canada continues to enjoy economic prosperity and solidifying its role in the world, he said, and developing province-friendly programs, such as last year's health accord, that give provinces greater leeway in how they spend federally transferred dollars.

But some critics say the government's agenda — or its lack of one — is making things worse.

Gilles Paquet, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa, said Quebeckers aren't terribly interested in another referendum and would rather spend time working out their own problems. What rankles them, he said, is the federal government's centralized mindset.

“There's a fatigue in Quebec about sovereignty, and yet an almost constant feeding of annoyance on the part of the federal government that rekindles it even in people who are not bold about this.”

For example, Prof. Paquet said, federal officials who argue that there is no such thing as a fiscal disequilibrium (the notion that the Ottawa has the ability to raise a disproportionate share of tax revenue) are fooling themselves. And federal decisions to use extra budgetary money to get involved in areas such as daycare, education and infrastructure rub Quebeckers the wrong way.

“People that I talk to, at least — even those who are not sovereigntist — have a degree of irritability as a result of this that would lead them, maybe in a referendum, to vote Yes just to say ‘Screw you.' ”

Some Liberals say Mr. Martin's strategy is simply tinkering at the margins.

They argue, for example, that the Prime Minister has been badly spooked by the sponsorship scandal and doesn't show up in Quebec nearly enough to lay out a greater vision. With an unpopular Liberal administration at the provincial helm, the federal government risks leaving a vacuum the PQ could fill.

“I don't think that we can afford not to offer a compelling alternative in any compelling political way,” one senior Liberal said, adding that he is worried about a lack of action on the file. “We need a strong contingent of communicators who can articulate a vision for the country inside Quebec. I worry it's atrophying. I don't think there's hostility. But what I feel is just kind of drift.”

Asked what the prescription might be, the Liberal pointed to the manifesto laid out this week by Mr. Bouchard that calls for new commitments to bring down the province's debt, raise hydro rates, increase university tuition and reform the tax system.

Liberals were giddy when the Bouchard manifesto was unveiled. Although the former premier professes to be neither separatist nor sovereigntist, Mr. Martin was said to have been thrilled.

Others say they would like to see an increased federalist presence in the province.

“We have to be there,” said Martin Cauchon, a justice minister in Mr. Chrétien's cabinet who now practises law in Montreal. “And to make people in the province of Quebec feel that the Canadian government can be meaningful for the government on a daily basis.”

While Mr. Cauchon is not necessarily suggesting more flag-waving, he does say a mission needs to be developed to ensure “in Quebec that we feel more involved in building Canada as a project.”

John Parisella, who was an aide to the late Liberal premier Robert Bourassa, said that while he believes Mr. Martin is starting to find his feet as Prime Minister, the reduced likelihood of another referendum soon is due more to Quebec's societal problems than the federal Liberals' performance.

He said the province's woes are so great it needs the rest of the country's help. Simply changing government, or making Quebec independent, will not fix its structural problems.

“I'm talking about the demography of Quebec, which is in decline. I'm talking about the highest rate of taxation and I'm talking about the highest rate of debt per capita in Canada,” Mr. Parisella said. “These are major issues, which I should say do not create the context and the atmosphere for a call to a referendum.”

He also said the Prime Minister must tread carefully in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

“The problem he has, of course, is that the federal government has made commitments regarding spending in areas of provincial jurisdiction and if there are no deals that can be concluded with the provinces, then it becomes a potentially dangerous battle that could help the sovereigntists.”

While all is relatively calm now, that could change after the next federal election. If the Conservatives win but have no MPs from Quebec, Ottawa would have no representation in the province to make the federal case during a referendum campaign.

“As a national party, we have an obligation to be there and to contribute to the fight,” said Rona Ambrose, the Tory critic for intergovernmental affairs.

“We should be the natural ally and the natural choice. But it takes time.”

The Tories see themselves as the real ideological soul mates of Quebeckers because of their belief in the expansion of provincial rights. A Conservative government under Stephen Harper would likely set more flexible rules for how provinces spend federal transfers. It would also be open to giving the provinces more room to raise their own revenues through the transfer of tax points.

But the Tories have been hampered in Quebec by coming down on the wrong side of issues such as same-sex marriage and the Kyoto accord on climate change.

Were a referendum called in the near future, perhaps the best card the federal government could play is the Clarity Act. It gives the House of Commons the power to decide whether the referendum question is a clear one and whether a clear majority is required for the vote to be binding.

“A lot of things can happen, but I take some comfort in the Clarity Act in the sense that I do think it gives the federal government a lot more capacity to insist on a clear question,” a senior Liberal said. “When and if that happens and, if there's a clear question, I see no evidence even in the evidence post-Gomery that the majority of Quebeckers would vote to separate.”

However, once the government uses the act, it has set the rules of engagement that it, too, must respect. Once it approves the question, it can't back away from acknowledging the result.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051022.wquebec1022/BNStory/Front

UMFK board hears about Acadian Archives

UMFK board hears about Acadian Archives
Saturday, October 22, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

FORT KENT - The 15-year-old Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent has been more than a repository of cultural artifacts and historical renderings. It has been an outlet for teacher training, a catalyst for historical outreach programs, and Web site developer.

The UMFK Board of Visitors heard about all the programs Friday from Lisa Ornstein, who has been the center's only director since 1990. Last year, the Acadian Archives moved from a minuscule place to a larger facility attached to the Waneta T. Blake Library on campus.

"The archives is truly an anchor of the university," UMFK President Richard Cost said at the end of Orntein's presentation. "It is a jewel in the anchor.

"It is important to us to have this on our campus," he said.

While the archives has been a center to collect, disseminate and protect documents, and to assist in the celebration of Acadian and French culture, it has been instrumental in bringing programs to the area about culture, some of it unknown to residents of the area.

The most recent effort is an ongoing exhibit, "Acadian Beginnings: Samuel de Champlain and St. Croix Island, 1604" which is a historical view of French settlement of North America, several years before more well-known settlements of North America by the British at Jamestown, Va., and Plymouth, Mass.

The exhibit, in the archives gallery, is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday until Nov. 18.

Several elementary schools have made plans to see the exhibit that shows the early travails of French explorers in North America.

It isn't the first, and won't be the last for the center that now has much more capability and room to show the French influence, not only in Maine but throughout the continent.

Using a PowerPoint presentation, Ornstein showed the capabilities of the center in developing curriculum support programs, teacher training workshops and other exhibits.

They also have an equipment loan program and a program to train educators who ask for the equipment to use in classrooms throughout Aroostook County.

Ornstein showed her audience how the archives fits into the broader context of the university, and discussed several areas where the archives works with faculty and staff to enhance the institution's academic curriculum.

One of the programs assisted by the Acadian Archives has been a French immersion program in which young people of the St. John Valley are assisted in developing their native tongue.

Over the years, the center has earned regional, state and national recognition for its work.

http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=122393

Maine reaches out to France

Maine reaches out to France

By SUSAN M. COVER
Staff Writer

2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
from the Kennebec Journal
Saturday, October 22, 2005

AUGUSTA -- Calling international trade a "bright spot in the Maine economy," Gov. John Baldacci and a delegation of Mainers are heading to France.

The trip, organized and paid for by the Maine International Trade Center, will send Baldacci and 30 others to Lyon and Paris for five days. Most of the delegation is scheduled to leave today. Baldacci is set to leave on Sunday.

"You want to build on the economic, the education and the cultural," Baldacci said Friday. "A large source of the Franco-American population in Maine immigrated from the region that we're going to be traveling to in France. On many different fronts, it will be a very strong mission."

Baldacci said Maine ranks ninth in the country in export growth and leads the Northeast in the same category.

In 2004, Maine exports to France totaled $18.6 million, a 57 percent increase from previous years, he said. The leading exports are pulp, industrial machinery, fish and lobster.

Officials also will talk about tourism and energy, he said. Baldacci is scheduled to tour a solar panel factory and meet with officials in the wood products industry, among other duties while abroad.

Last year, Baldacci traveled to Germany and Italy for a trade mission, and the year before, he went to Ireland and England.

Richard Coyle, president of the Maine International Trade Center -- an arm of state government that promotes trade with other countries -- said one of the highlights of the trip will be state receptions held in Lyon and Paris. The state will be unveiling a video that shows Maine as a good place for business investment, he said.

Cheryl Wixson, a restaurant consultant from the Bangor area, is going on the trip at the invitation of first lady Karen Baldacci.

"I'm very interested in ways in which we can expand our markets," she said. "What I'm always on the lookout for is where can we find a niche."

Susan Cover -- 623-1056
scover@centralmaine.com
http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/2074408.shtml

...international human rights organization

Organization seeking answers
By Josh Krysak, Herald-Standard, Uniontown, PA
10/22/2005

An international human rights organization that has been following the suspicious deaths of two Americans in Canada, including Uniontown war veteran Mark Kraynak, is taking ts fight for further investigation into the deaths and the permits allowing the men to

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled to visit the Canadian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew in Ottawa Oct. 24 and 25, Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition (IATC) Director Gregory Carlin is hoping the trip is an opportunity for the U.S. government to get involved in the case.

Advertisement

Carlin, whose organization is based in Dublin, faxed Rice a request to investigate circumstances surrounding the case Wednesday, calling for further examination of the permits obtained by the men to work in Canada.

"The two victims were awarded exotic dancer permits through an application by a male model agency called French Connection Francaise (FCF). Can your officials ask for a report on this tragedy?" Carlin requested of Rice.

"The visa scheme has come under fire by human rights groups, citing repeated instances of forced prostitution and other forms of exploitation and slavery. I would be grateful if you could ask Canadian officials to explain why the police of Laval have chosen to denigrate the characters of the two dead men with allegations of fare evasion.

"The petty crime speculation does not seem to be evidence based and it has caused particular distress to the family of Mr. Mark Kraynak. I would be grateful if you could be so good as to review this matter on my behalf," Carlin stated.

Kraynak's body was found Sept. 1 at the bottom of the rock quarry, along with the body of Steven Wright, 20, of Guernville, Calif., behind a local nighttime hotspot, the Red Lite, outside of Montreal in the city of Laval.

An extensive, 10-day search ensued following Kraynak's disappearance in late August, led by Montreal police.

Kraynak, 23, and Wright were missing for 10 days before investigators were able to trace a cell phone transmitter from Kraynak's phone to near the Red Lite, where the bodies were found by search teams and police helicopters at the bottom of the cliff.

Laval authorities have been unable to track down a taxicab driver that transported the men to the Red Lite, which they never entered, and have concluded that the men were likely running from their $40 cab fare when they fell to their deaths in the quarry.

Kraynak and Wright were supposed to return to the United States the day they went missing, after spending a few months working for French Connection Francaise (FCF), a modeling agency owned by Stephan Sirard, which also functions as a pornography-recruiting agency based in California.

Sirard, the owner of the California-based scouting company, was accompanying both men in Montreal at the time of the incident and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to their discovery.

According to Janice Kraynak, her son and Wright, along with Sirard and another model, Deric Manzi, toured Montreal during the day prior to his disappearance.

Kraynak has questioned the testimony of Sirard to Canadian police regarding the incident, but the owner has denied any involvement in the deaths.

The men were two of six Americans who obtained 90-day permits to work as exotic dancers at a Toronto male strip club called Remington's, according to Carlin, who alleges the permits were part of a larger government scheme.

"Given the probable history associated with this scheme, the Canadian government would want this to just go away," Carlin said of the suspicious deaths in a recent phone interview.

"This is not the first time people have been tricked. These boys were basically recruited and there is no way that Mr. Kraynak had any idea what he would be getting involved in. He had no idea what Remington's would be like. He thought he was getting involved in a legitimate modeling agency."

And Carlin, along with Kraynak's mother, said he does not support the theories about the deaths coming from Laval police.

"We have particular problems with the police account in this case," Carlin added concerning the Laval assumption. "We have people on the ground investigating and we will have further details soon. Speculation and guess work is all this family has gotten."

The U.S. Government updated their Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act in 2003 and noted "Corruption among foreign law enforcement authorities continues to undermine the efforts by governments to investigate, prosecute and convict traffickers."

And according to the Trafficking in Persons Report for 2005, Canada continues to battle to bring illegal permitting under control.

The government revised its immigration policy to discontinue a blanket employment waiver (begun in 1998) that had permitted adult entertainment establishments to hire foreign women as exotic dancers - a type of program that has been abused and exploited by traffickers in many other countries. Officials acknowledge that some women may have been forced into prostitution.

The visa program has not been entirely suspended.

According to the Government of Canada's official tally, 46 "exotic dancer" visas were issued in 2004," the report states.

Attempts to contact the Canadian government, including Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew, who signed the permit legislation in 1998, have gone unanswered.

Following the suspicious deaths, dozens of Internet sites and chat rooms have been created where people from around the country are discussing the case and the theories being floated by Canadian authorities regarding the men's deaths.

One of the most discussed topics is the taxi itself, with surveillance photos suggesting a possible fourth person in the vehicle with the driver and the two men, something that has not been recognized by Canadian investigators but alleged by Kraynak's family.

Carlin said he is also reviewing the captured images of the vehicle.

"I hope U.S. officials can get involved in this investigation," Janice Kraynak said Wednesday.

Carlin agreed: "I do expect U.S. officials attached to the secretary of state to advise the Canadian government to do a proper investigation and to stop calling the victims fare cheats."

The Herald Standard 2005

http://www.heraldstandard.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15434007&BRD=2280&PAG=461&dept_id=480247&rfi=6

Visor debate intensifies in NHL

Visor debate intensifies in NHL
Protective shields aren't mandated by league

BY BRIAN MURPHY
Pioneer Press
Posted on Sat, Oct. 22, 2005

ST. LOUIS — The scars around Andrei Zyuzin's nose and right eye offer fresh reminders of the violence and risks that accompany a career in the NHL.

The Wild defenseman is wearing a visor to protect his wounds for now. But he will not commit to making it a permanent piece of his equipment.

Zyuzin's reluctance to wear a half shield reflects the independence players desire in determining how they protect themselves at a time when more use visors and scary facial injuries continue.

"I know I'm playing with fire," said Zyuzin, whose face was rearranged by his own stick and the elbow of Calgary's Rhett Warrener in an Oct. 5 open-ice collision. "It's your face. It's your eyes. You have to be careful.

"At the same, it's a personal opinion. If everybody has to wear it, then I'll put it on. Right now, I don't want to wear it."

Calls for mandatory visors have been heard since the NHL required helmets for players entering the league in 1979-80. But the debate has intensified this season after Toronto captain Mats Sundin and Detroit winger Kris Draper were struck in the face by deflected pucks and suffered serious injuries.

This week, Commissioner Gary Bettman reiterated the league's position that players should wear visors, although any mandatory rule must be collectively bargained with the NHL Players' Association.

The union is gradually surveying its membership on the subject, while the Hockey News recently released a study indicating 38 percent of the league's 640 skaters wear protective shields. That is a 14 percent increase from when the magazine conducted its first survey in 2000-01.

The argument is as much about ideology and ego as it is safety and rationality. Everyone agrees that playing with a visor is safer in a faster-paced game of flying pucks and flashing sticks.

"From the league standpoint, we've been on the record consistently saying we believe visors should be worn," Bettman said during a news conference in Toronto this week. "I don't view this as an economic issue. I view it in human terms. Injuries to the face are serious; injuries to the eyes don't always heal completely."

Yet some players who suffered facial injuries that prompted them to snap on visors remain pro-choice on the issue.

Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Bryan Berard has become the unofficial players spokesman since an errant high stick gashed his right eye when he played for Toronto in March 2000. Berard was able to come back and wears a half shield to protect the 20/400 vision in his eye.

But he had a difficult time adjusting to the visor and does not support mandatory usage.

"We're professional athletes, and we need to have that choice," Berard told the Columbus Dispatch this month. "We all know that as soon as we step on the ice, there's a chance we can get hurt. It's something we accept as professional athletes.

"It's part of our job, our life. It's easier to play without a shield, and a lot of guys will want to play without one."

Players wearing shields are stigmatized as being softer than their more rugged brethren who choose to wear only helmets. L.A. Kings motor mouth Sean Avery played into the stereotype when he ripped visor-wearing French Canadian players during one of his tirades earlier this season.

Hard-nosed players are not limited to those with open-face scars. Anyone doubting the toughness of Jarome Iginla or Peter Forsberg, superstar skill players who wear visors, need only watch videotape of their playoff performances to reason otherwise.

Still, Wild defenseman Nick Schultz, who put on a shield two seasons ago after being struck in the face with a puck, acknowledges the machismo is a factor.

"It shouldn't be, but it is," he said. "The scary part is it takes something to happen for a lot of guys to start wearing them."

The NHL and its minor professional leagues are the visor holdouts. All major Canadian junior and U.S. colleges divisions require varying degrees of facial protection. The International Ice Hockey Federation, which governs all European professional leagues, requires players under 30 to wear half shields.

Brian Murphy covers the Wild and the NHL. Contact him at brianmurphy@pioneerpress.com.

St. Paul Pioneer Press
http://www.duluthsuperior.com
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/sports/hockey/12970025.htm

Montreal Halloween mood

Be afraid, very afraid
 
STEVEN HOWELL
Freelance
October 22, 2005
montrealgazette.com

I experienced my first drive-by trick-or-treater last year. My ground-floor apartment, decorated with skeletons, spider webs and jack-o'-lanterns is on busy de Lorimier Ave.

I watched as a car stopped, double-parked, as the occupants noticed the decorations. The door flew open, and a costumed youngster ran down my walk, rang the doorbell, and exclaimed "Halloween!" With his treat, he ran back to the car, and was gone. That is true Halloween spirit.

Here are a few other ways to get into a spooky Montreal Halloween mood:

The Biodome dispels some myths about a creature with a bad reputation. Giant Bats at the Biodome introduces you to Pteropus vampyrus from Asia, one of the world's largest bats. The weekend workshop Life Upside Down gives you a close-up look at some real live bats. At 4777 Pierre de Coubertin Ave. Workshops are at 2:30 p.m. in English, 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. in French until Oct. 30. Cost is $11.75 for adults, $9 students and seniors, $6 youths 5 to 17. Call (514) 868-3000 or go to www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/biodome

Meet the Cucurbitaceae family - all 875 of them. Montreal Botanical Garden celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Great Pumpkin Ball. The event features hundreds of wildly decorated pumpkins, as well as a few gourds - both members of the plant family Cucurbitaceae. This year there's also a larger version of the Halloween maze, for children 4 to 10, a Creepy Crawlies tour at the Insectarium, and the Magic of Lanterns fall classic light show in the Chinese Garden. At 4101 Sherbrooke St. E. Until Oct. 31. Cost is $11.75 for adults, $9 students and seniors, $6 children 5 to 17. Call (514) 872-1400 or go to www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/jardin

It's the last weekend to catch La Ronde's Halloween Fright Fest featuring 90 costumed zombies, vampires, monsters and pirates. And you can still ride the rides. Go to the website www.halloween.laronde.com/en/ to print an $8 rebate coupon off admission price.

Hunt for spirits on Trails by Night, a lantern-lit evening of ghost hunting on Ile Ste. Helene. Beware - people could disappear along the way. It's a 1.3-kilometre hike, so dress warmly and wear comfortable shoes. Starts at the Stewart Museum at the Fort on the evening of Oct. 28. Cost is $17 for adults, $13 youths 10 to 16. Usually in French, but English can be arranged. Reservations required. Call (514) 861-6701 or go to www.stewart-museum.org

Exporail, the Canadian Railway Museum, offers Railway Ghosts, mysterious ghostly railway apparitions appearing today and tomorrow. It's $12 for adults, $9.50 seniors, $7 students, $6 children age 4 to 12; in St. Constant on the South Shore. Call (450) 632-2410 or go to www.exporail.org

More costumed characters can be found at this final weekend of Beggar's Week. In days gone by, beggars travelled from farm to farm asking for charity and hospitality in exchange for recounting adventures and providing news. Storytellers and costumed guides tell the beggars' tales at Maison St. Gabriel today and tomorrow. Guided tours every hour from 1 to 4 p.m., 2146 Place Dublin, in Pointe St. Charles. Cost is $8 for adults, $5 seniors, $4 students, $2 children age 6 to 12. Call (514) 935-8136 or visit www.maisonsaint-gabriel.qc.ca
----------
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/news/weekendlife/story.html?id=f1e92829-4f18-4a37-b28c-0732c841e145

Translations open window to local Huguenot history

Translations open window to local Huguenot history

   By Deborah Medenbach
   Times Herald-Record
   dmedenbach@th-record.com
   October 21, 2005

   New Paltz, NY – Could a single hymn in Dutch be a provocative symbol of 18th-century religious rebellion? Could the 1730 ethnic snubbing by the French of incoming Dutch be shown in the fate of a schoolteacher's Bible? Is there insight into the care of the mad and penniless in a Huguenot church deacon's account book?
   The answer to all these questions is yes, thanks to the recent translation of 75 pages of Dutch and French manuscripts at the Huguenot Historical Society. The results have the society's methodical archivist, Eric Roth, in a state of "researcher glee," and he's looking at the promise held in 1,300 pages of untranslated account books, school ciphers and church documents.
   Until now, life before 1750 in New Paltz was walled off from research because of the lack of available Dutch or French translators. English did not become commonplace in the Huguenot community until 1790.
   Translation work was already under way when Roth joined the historical society in 1997. Within two years, he advocated hiring professional translators, relying initially on French professors at SUNY New Paltz.
   Though a number of the the historical society's 1,500 foreign language documents were partially translated within the last century, the 75 pages worked on by Kees Jan Waterman of Leiden, Netherlands, and Dr. David Wilkin of Wooster, Ohio, assisted by Aurélie Charbonnel of France, allow never-before-seen glimpses into Colonial life.
   A more accurate translation of the 1677 "Indian Deed" and minutes and declarations of early Town Council meetings in 1712 were among the first items to be translated.
   A second phase includes the translation of several late 18th-century account books of the Roggen and DuBois families, including an account book kept by seamstress Jannetie DuBois. The books provide important information on the tailoring and cobbling professions, as well as general economic activities during the Revolutionary War era.
   
   A SURPRISE THAT TURNED UP in the translation work was a list of the town's paupers in a deacon's account book from 1700-30 that gave insight into how Huguenot refugees and mentally unstable residents were cared for. This is the first historical reference to organized care of the poor of the community. Bushels of wheat were divided among hungry families. Tailors were hired to make clothes for indigent refugees as winter approached. Deacons were hired to provide continuous care for one Jean Dupré over a 20-year period.
   "It adds to our greater understanding. Every now and then, it changes what we think we know. Sometimes you get a surprise, like the information about the poor populations," Roth said.
   A line in the translated will of schoolteacher Jean Tebanin in 1730 gave Roth cause for two years' worth of research.
   Tebanin wrote that when he died, his Bible would go to the local church, but that if the church should ever offer its service in the Dutch language, the Bible should be sold, and the proceeds go to help poor French residents of New Paltz.
   "By looking at these documents, we can see feuds and attachments to ethnicity and culture," Roth said.
   Returning to the pauper's list, most of the names were of French origin. If the poor French couldn't even worship in their own language, the Holy Word could at least do them some worldly good.
   Between 1730 and 1750, Tebanin's fears were realized and the service was said in Dutch. By 1790, that language gave way to English.
   "In these newly translated documents we can pull out the personal stories more deeply than ever before. We can pinpoint tensions in the community that made it tick," Roth said.
   For example, the local fervor of the international Coetus Conferentie religious dispute of the 1750s came to light in a single handwritten sheet of music.
   "So few music manuscripts exist. Why was this 18th-century song here?" Roth wondered.
   His curiosity paid off when the song by Peter Vanderlyn was translated, revealing the Colonial clergyman's desire to be self-regulating in the face of Dutch rule.
   "He was out to buck the establishment. Reform the church. He was rebellious. Seeing this song helps us to understand the 18th-century mindset," Roth said.
   The $40,000 cost of the translation project has been partially offset by grants from the Huguenot Society of America and private donations. Some donors have earmarked their funds for the translation of specific documents, such as family Bibles and records. Information about specific families will be put on CDs available for purchase by genealogists.
   The translation project dovetails with three other historical society projects that will be launched on the society's Web site in June 2006. The project will give a well-rounded picture of life in New Paltz before 1750 and include 150 searchable documents.
   "We always look at people's choices and their motivations. Why give land to one son and not the other? Why did people move from one town to the other?" Roth said. "These previously inaccessible documents open a door into a whole different world."
Orange County Publications, a division of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., all rights reserved.

http://www.recordonline.com/cgi-bin/printstory/printstory.cgi

Dancing Indian nun puts Estonians through their paces

Dancing Indian nun puts Estonians through their paces

Girls study the art of bodily expression with a dancing nun in a convent in Tallinn — AFP
AFP
Saturday, October 22, 2005  01:35 IST

TALLINN: As another long, dark winter enshrouds the northernmost of the Baltic states, a band of girls gathers in a convent in Tallinn, not to share the warmth of communal prayer but to study the art of bodily expression with a dancing nun from India.

Sister Creszenzia, 37, originally from Kozhikode in Kerala, has been giving Indian dance lessons at the convent since her arrival in Estonia four years ago. "When I see Estonians performing these dances with such grace, my heart fills with pride," she said after a recent class.    

"People here are said to be reserved and unwilling to show emotions, but I have the opposite impression," she added. Most of Sister Creszenzia's pupils are young, between seven and 17. "The dancing is very hard - like a fitness program - and afterwards I am very tired," said Ingrid Aavola, 17, who has attended classes since they began four years ago. 

"But I like it a lot, partly because Sister Crescenzia is a very joyful nun," she added. In September, the Sister's youthful dance troupe gave a performance to mark the ordination of French-born Philippe Jourdan as the first Catholic bishop since World War II in this overwhelmingly Lutheran country.   

"Indian dances tell a story with the body," Sister Crescenzia explained. The saga performed for Jourdan's ordination was "about unhappy love - the battle of a young couple whose feelings were denounced by their families, resulting in the death of the boy," she said. And how did the good bishop feel about this rather spicy dance drama?

"I think it is very positive that the convent offers these girls the possibility to learn Indian dance," he said. "I liked their dancing, it was rather exotic." "True feelings are nothing to be ashamed about," said Sister Crescenzia, whose given name was Mary. "I was in love myself when I was a young girl in India but now my soul is dedicated to God." 

A convent has stood on the site where the dance classes are held since 1419. But only in 2001 -- after a break of several centuries - did nuns once again take up residence in the renovated complex, which includes a church and hostel, built by the Sisters of the Order of St. Birgitta. "A nun's life has changed a lot in recent decades, for the better. The dance course is proof of that," Sister Creszenzia said.

http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=6677

Honoring "the Great Lady from Maine"

By Senator Susan M. Collins
Oct 21, 2005, 20:33
From Magic City Morning Star



Susan Collins repesents the State of Maine in the United States Senate.

I had the honor recently to participate in a special Senate ceremony honoring former Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith - one of my role models and an inspiration in my public service. She was also an outstanding Senator who will forever be remembered as a strong, independent voice for Maine. The purpose of the ceremony was to unveil an official portrait of Senator Smith, "the Great Lady from Maine," in the U.S. Capitol. The elegant portrait, painted by Maine artist Ronald Frontin, now graces a wall in the U.S. Capitol.

The portrait unveiling was particularly special, because we were joined by members of Senator Smith's family, her good friend and close adviser Mert Henry, and members of the board of the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, and, of course, my colleague Senator Olympia Snowe, as well as Maine's two Congressmen, former Governor John Reed, and former Senator Bill Hathaway.

Ronald Frontin, a Camden native, was selected by the Senate Commission on Art to paint this powerful depiction of the Senator at the height of her career. In order to best capture the Senator's personality, Ronald interviewed her friends, family, and colleagues. It is appropriate that the portrait shows Senator Smith in the Senate chamber, a place where she spent 24 years representing the people of Maine. A smaller detail representative of Senator Smith is the red rose that she is wearing.

What follows are the remarks I made on this proud day for all Mainers:

"There is nothing that brings me greater pleasure, or that comes so easily, as talking about Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith. This great day, so long awaited, gives us all the opportunity to recall her courage, her character, and her commitment to our nation's highest ideals. For every woman serving in the Senate, Margaret Chase Smith blazed the path, but she was a special inspiration to me.

"I had the good fortune to meet Senator Smith at that time of life when young people are just figuring out who they are and what they want to become. I was a senior at Caribou High School, and was participating in the Senate Youth Program in Washington. She was in her 30th year in Congress - the first woman elected to both the House and Senate, the first woman to serve on the Armed Services Committee, the first woman to have her name put into nomination for president by a major party. She was the woman who gave other women the right to careers in the military. Due to her early and energetic support for the space program, she was the woman who, according to long-time NASA Administrator James Webb, put a man on the moon. So many firsts. So many achievements.

"She was a legend, and I was so excited about meeting her. I certainly did not expect our meeting to be much more than a quick handshake and a photograph, but we talked for nearly two hours.

"We discussed many important issues, she answered my many questions, but what I remember most was her telling me always to stand tall for what I believed, citing her Declaration of Conscience delivered at the height of McCarthyism as an example. Common-sense advice means so much more when it comes from an uncommon person.

"So much of what she said and wrote stays with us today because it was so eloquent and so right. Her "Declaration of Conscience" is a template for standing tall. Her "Creed of Public Service" belongs on the wall of everyone who serves the public - it's on mine.

"And now this wonderful portrait of this amazing American is where it belongs. I congratulate the great Maine artist, Ronald Frontin, for an outstanding work that truly reveals the spirit of the Great Lady from Maine, Senator Margaret Chase Smith. I know that all who look upon this portrait in the years, decades, even centuries to come will admire the artist's craft, and that they will be inspired by the subject's character."


Senator Collins, Senator Margaret Chase Smith's niece, Anne St. Ledger Herrin and nephew, John Bernier with the portrait of Senator Smith.

Magic City Morning Star
http://magic-city-news.com/article_4797.shtml

Heed beauty of obscure birches

LIFESTYLE & ARTS

Heed beauty of obscure birches
Saturday, October 22, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

Say the word "birches" and bring to mind Robert Frost's poem that immortalized the white-barked tree of New England woods. Known by several common names, including paperbark birch and canoe birch, Betula papyrifera is a favorite landscape tree, particularly the trees with multiple trunks. It is the peeling white bark that we love to see silhouetted against the darker green of winter conifers.

In the past, several forms of European white-barked birches were also extensively planted in New England landscapes. These trees proved to be highly susceptible to the bronze birch borer, an insect pest that destroys birches by tunneling throughout the trunk, reducing the tree to firewood. While our paperbark birch proved to be resistant to this pest, few strong and healthy specimens of these European imports remain.

Our love affair with white-barked birches, both native and non-native, has blinded us to the beauty of another native birch, sweet birch (Betula alleghaniensis). Long before the French botanist Michaux described and named this tree in 1803, early pioneers admired it as the tallest deciduous tree of the North Woods, reaching heights of 100 feet or more and surpassed only by the towering white pines. While trees of this stature, both birch and pine, are gone, impressive specimens still can be seen. The current National Champion yellow birch, growing on Deer Isle, is 76 feet high.

Yellow birch long has been a part of New England industry and commerce. Shipbuilders of Nova Scotia and Maine valued the light, strong wood of yellow birch for all parts of the ship that were constantly exposed to the water, while lumbermen used the wood for ox yokes, sled frames and the walls of bunkhouses. The wood is still used for high quality furniture and veneer.

Seldom considered for landscape use in the past, current interest in native trees with both ornamental aspect and wildlife value has created greater interest in this tree for urban parks, college campuses and other large areas. In addition to outstanding yellow fall color, yellow birch has attractive exfoliating young bark, golden to yellow-orange in color and peeling horizontally into thin, papery curls, the inner bark marked with conspicuous lenticels. This bark character is responsible for an old common name, curly birch.

An interesting trait of sweet birch is a strong wintergreen smell and taste to the twigs. My students always find this to be the most critical diagnostic feature and I wonder what people think as they walk by during one of our field exams and see a group of students either gnawing on twigs or sticking them up their noses.

Drooping male catkins of yellow birch develop in autumn and persist through the winter, while the upright female catkins, about 1 inch in length, develop in early spring, before the leaves appear. The stout, conelike fruits mature through the summer, eventually releasing small winged nutlets that are either devoured by songbirds and small mammals or dispersed over long distances by autumn winds.

Yellow birch is the most shade tolerant of the native birches. Relatively speaking, it is also the most insect tolerant, less susceptible than paperbark birch to bronze birch borer and not bothered by birch leaf miner. Yellow birch prefers a moist to average soil and does not tolerate standing water, heat, drought and soil compaction. It is definitely a tree for shady woodland landscapes.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to reesermanley

@shead.org. Include name, address and telephone number.
http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=122427

KEEP EYES PEELED FOR MAINE'S COLD RIVER VODKA

KEEP EYES PEELED FOR MAINE'S COLD RIVER VODKA

2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
from the Morning Sentinel
Saturday, October 22, 2005

You don't have to be a brain surgeon to make vodka in Maine.

But it apparently doesn't hurt.

Two brothers from Freeport -- one a potato farmer; the other, yes, a brain surgeon -- are teaming up to transform Maine's quality spuds into premium vodka.

Donnie and Lee Thibodeau, sons of an Aroostook County potato farmer, are realizing a dream as they begin shipping Cold River Vodka, which, at $31.99 a bottle, is intended to compete with the world's best -- including Cîroc, Türi, Absolut, Belvedere, Stolichnaya, Grey Goose and Ketel One.

The brothers Thibodeau set out three years ago to "add value" to the potatoes that Donnie grows at his 1,200-acre Green Thumb Farm in Fryeburg, near the Cold River. Lee is the neurosurgeon.

The entrepreneurs brought in two partners -- a former ski resort executive to run the business and a brewery consultant to build Maine's first commercial distillery. They are now off and running on what they hope will become Maine's first success story involving spirits.

Cold River Vodka should be on store shelves in Maine and New Hampshire in a couple of weeks. By Dec. 1, it is expected to be in Massachusetts, too.

Displaying good business sense, or at least good timing, the Thibodeaus are entering the biggest segment of the liquor industry. Vodka remains the nation's most popular spirit, accounting for 26.7 percent of U.S. liquor consumption in 2004. (Rum is a distant second.)

The super-premium segment for vodka is white hot, having grown 38 percent last year.

Mainers who enjoy vodka now and then should keep their eyes peeled for Cold River's arrival. It is a chance to support another of the state's small businesses.

If you do "support" Cold River Vodka, however, please do so responsibly.

Know when to say when.

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/view/columns/2074171.shtml

Nouvelle-France

Nouvelle-France

Version originale en français
v.o.f.s.-t.a. : Nouvelle-France
Classement
Visa général / Déconseillé aux jeunes enfants
Genre
Drame d'époque
Pays d'origine
Canada, France, Grande-Bretagne
Durée
2h25
Date de sortie au Québec
19 novembre 2004
Réalisateur
Jean Beaudin
Acteurs
Noemie Godin-Vigneau, David La Haye, Gérard Depardieu, Vincent Perez, Irène Jacob, Tim Roth, Philippe Dormoy, Bianca Gervais, Juliette Gosselin, Sébastien Huberdeau, Jason Isaacs, Pierre Lebeau, Victor Loukianenko, Colm Meaney, Monique Mercure, Isabel Richer
Scénaristes/Écrivains
Pierre Billon, Gilles Carle
Producteur
Richard Goudreau
Studio de production
Melenny Productions, Davis-Films, Bespoke Films
Distribution au Québec
Christal Films
Synopsis
Inspiré de faits réels, Nouvelle-France relate les amours tragiques d’une jeune paysanne du Bas Saint-Laurent, Marie-Loup, et d’un audacieux coureur des bois, François Le Gardeur. En filigrane se déroule une autre histoire, déjà écrite celle-là : celle de l’abandon du Canada par la France.

De retour au Canada après des études de droit à La Sorbonne, François Le Gardeur refuse de réintégrer le giron d’une famille trop bourgeoise et choisit plutôt de partager la vie des Amérindiens. À la suite des exhortations de son ami Owashak, Le Gardeur rentre précipitamment à Québec. Trop tard : son père est décédé trois jours plus tôt, laissant un héritage qui va lui causer plus de mal que de bien. Le Gardeur découvre en effet que son père était en cheville avec l’intendant Bigot pour des magouilles financières d’envergure qui, en fin de parcours, contribueront à la perte de la Nouvelle-France. Mais ce retour lui permettra de rencontrer Marie-Loup, une jeune femme dont la liberté d’esprit ne fait ni l’affaire du curé, ni celle des gens du coin... d’autant plus que des rumeurs courent sur ses pouvoirs de sorcière...
http://www.cinemamontreal.com/aw/crva.aw/p.cm/r.que/m.Montreal/j.f/i.7349/f.Nouvelle_France.html
--------------
Ajouter:
https://www.cinemaclock.com/aw/csca.aw
Critiques:
http://www.cinemamontreal.com/aw/crva.aw/p.cm/r.que/m.Montreal/j.f/i.7349/s.0/f.Nouvelle_France.html

Nouvelle France: A flimsy frock opera

film
A flimsy frock opera
By DAVID GILMOUR
Friday, October 21, 2005 Page R18
Special to The Globe and Mail

Nouvelle France

Reviewed by
David Gilmour

*½

Directed by Jean Beaudin
Written by Pierre Billon
Starring David La Haye, Gérard Depardieu
Classification: PG

Nouvelle France isn't so much a bad film as a costume drama for young girls. It's going to get some dreadful reviews -- this is the kind of movie critics like to make fun of -- but the fact is it's full of good actors and gorgeous scenery. The problem is it has the simple-mindedness of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers or any of those improving novels by George Sand. In fact, Nouvelle France feels like a French Romantic novel shot without a trace of irony.

The story is set in Quebec during the turbulent years around 1759 when the French were bickering with England about the destiny of the colony, New France, a contest that would be resolved on the Plains of Abraham in a battle that lasted less than 20 minutes and turned Quebec over to the British.

That's the backdrop for a story that begins when a shaggy young man (David La Haye) emerges from the bush -- he fled there to escape the horrors of bourgeois life -- to visit his dying father in Quebec City. But it's too late, the old man has already left this vale of tears.

After a shave and a hair wash, the young man -- he has the suspiciously indicative name of François le Gardeur -- meets a shapely local, Marie-Loup (Noéme Godin-Vigneau). He also uncovers documents that involve his late father in criminal, even murderous, dealings with the local power figure, a lecher named (ahem) Bigot.

Who's the real enemy here, the young man wonders, the British or the rotting French colonialists? He confides his findings to a friend, who betrays him. With soldiers in hot pursuit, Le Gardeur disappears from sight, but not before proposing to Marie-Loup. They make a rendezvous; she never turns up.

Is there an actor with a more beautiful voice than Gérard Depardieu? Watch his 1990 Cyrano de Bergerac. When he reads those love letters to Roxanne -- such sadness, such longing -- he can really break your heart. Depardieu is also an extremely good sport, which is to say that he turns up in all kinds of movies, good and wretched, often for not much money and often as a favour to a young or friendly director.

Here, he plays a meddling, confused priest who wants to keep Marie-Loup for himself. Depardieu, looking rather unwell, like a candidate for an early heart attack, gives the role the same effortless authority that the late Marlon Brando brought to even the silliest projects.

But, my goodness, that wig he's wearing! Like he's touring with the Grateful Dead.

Le Gardeur doesn't stay long in France, although he gets a terrific new haircut -- haircuts pass here for that old movie trick of fluttering calendar pages. Be warned though: When he encounters Marie-Loup deep in the forest, she falls to her knees at the sight of him; it takes an act of will not to get swooped up in the operatic kerfuffle.

It's considered bad form for a critic to leave a screening before the end. You eat it, no matter how tough the going gets, that's the rule. But in the case of Nouvelle France, it was this reviewer's almost unprecedented experience to hear seats snapping up and to spot silhouettes stealing toward the exit signs.

There was still so much more to come: Marie-Loup's unhappy marriage, the death of a villain, the prosecution of an innocent soul.

There were, alas, other kinds of moments as well where humans behave in a fashion you might not recognize, ending conversations where no one ends a conversation, walking out of rooms at unlikely times, unlikely acts of self-sacrifice.

It's easy to poke fun at a film like Nouvelle France. Ironically, it probably took more time, more effort, certainly more money to make than something really excellent like David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. Still, it has to be said: Nouvelle France is not a film for adults. If you're 13 years old and you need a good weep, yes. If you're taking French at high school, yes again.

Who knows when you might want to echo the words of Marie-Loup: "I am not much, but who I am is all I have."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051021/FRANCE21/TPEntertainment/Film

Nouvelle-Farce (oups, faute de frappe)

Nouvelle-Farce (oups, faute de frappe)
Par Karl Filion
http://www.cinoche.com/
Mélodrame sans grand intérêt, Nouvelle-France souffre d’un académisme primaire, d’une prétention dangereuse et d’un sentimentalisme mal-placé. Franchement, ce film gaspille de l’argent sans vergogne, d’autant qu’il se prétend une reconstitution historique. À en pleurer, mais pour les mauvaises raisons.

Nouvelle-France serait un brillant exercice de style s’il suffisait pour justifier un budget de 33 millions $ d’émouvoir un public conquis d’avance en usant de raccourcis flagrants et en sabotant la présence d’acteurs de renom au profit d’une histoire de famille. Une sorte de syndrome du Québec que celui que de toujours tout limiter à petit, comme si beaucoup d’argent rendait mal à l’aise les producteurs au point de ne plus savoir quoi faire. Le réalisateur, Jean Beaudin, restreint, ou compare - de toute façon c’est maladroit - l’histoire de la Nouvelle-France à Marie Carignan, une paysanne classique très proche de la Corriveau, et à son amour avec François Le Gardeur, un coureur des bois.

Le réalisateur faillit à son travail parce qu’il ne met que très peu en contexte – nul besoin de préciser que, dans une fresque historique, c’est plus qu’essentiel – qu’il néglige la bataille des Plaines d’Abraham, alors que son travail de l’image s’entête à ré-usiner des plans de caméra, à suivre l’action banalement, d’un œil distant et désintéressé. Cette mauvaise manie donne au film une allure préfinie parfois agaçante. Il hésite aussi à se servir adéquatement de la lumière, en fait, il n’y parvient que lorsqu’il utilise la lumière du jour, là, il concentre l’énergie de l’image et lui donne un certain caractère, trop rare cependant pour véritablement impressionner, laissant du même coup un goût terriblement fade dans la bouche d’un spectateur de bonne foi.

Mention honorable aux acteurs, qui sont en majorité très bons, à la limite du stéréotype, mais vibrants d’émotion et d’une honnêteté irréprochable. Depardieu n’est pas aussi colossal qu’à l’habitude, mais son rôle est plus effacé. Noémie Godin-Vigneault surpasse tout le monde grâce à sa frugalité. La petite Juliette Gosselin apporte une naïveté toute particulière aux moments austères du film. David La Haye démontre encore une fois son immense talent grâce à une assurance et une polyvalence uniques. Leur complicité est également exemplaire, pour ne pas dire essentielle à ce récit trop sentimental, qui mérite aussi le reproche de rester complètement étranger aux spectateurs les plus lucides, c’est-à-dire ceux pour qui des méthodes archaïques de manipulation du public ne font plus d’effet. Néanmoins, les acteurs sont efficaces et permettent au film de conserver un quelconque intérêt, ou un intérêt quelconque, jusqu’à sa finale sobre, prévisible mais agréable, dans le sens technique du terme.

La plus grosse production, monétairement parlant, de notre histoire, s’attaque à une partie de ce passé national et vise complètement à côté, préférant la simplicité d’un romantisme déplacée à l’acuité historique souhaitable pour une prétention de cette envergure – pardonnez le lapsus, je voulais dire « production ». Reste qu’il semble, à la sortie de Nouvelle-France, que le film s’est concentré à plaire au grand public, possiblement pour faire le plus d’argent possible. Pardon, je voulais dire « certainement ».

http://www.cinoche.com/critiques/856/57

France's protectionist stance

Intl. Intelligence
France's protectionist stance

By ELIZABETH BRYANT

PARIS, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- France savored a victory in Paris this week as the world community adopted the cultural diversity convention in a vote that isolated the charter's only two opponents: The United States and Israel.

"This is a moment of great emotion -- the fruit of major work, the coming together of the international community," France's Cultural Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres told reporters after the vote in Paris Thursday evening. "Culture is not a good, like any other."

After a bitter split over Iraq, the European budget and the bloc's constitution, the European Union offered a rare moment of unity in voting in favor of the French- and Canadian-sponsored diversity convention.

Yet memories of the Paris vote may fade rapidly in the face of another protectionist vs. free-trade issue: agricultural subsidies, which this time pit France against a sizable chunk of the international community, including the many European nations and the United States.

On Friday, World Trade Organization head Pascal Lamy called on both Washington and the EU to make key concessions on agriculture to break the deadlock in the current Doha round of trade talks.

"Both need to make efforts, and that is the issue that will alleviate the concerns of many developing countries that want freer trade," Lamy said on France's LCI television channel.

While Lamy was speaking as the head of an international body, the fact he is French only serves to reinforce the perception that France's pro-subsidy argument is an increasingly lonely one.

The French government claims otherwise, maintaining that 14 out of the EU's 25 members support its position to keep price and other forms of agricultural support systems in place in Europe. The European Commission, however, says only five or six countries are in lockstep with Paris.

"The French arrived with a preconceived notion, and have not looked to change their view," a source close to European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told Le Monde newspaper.

The issue of agricultural subsidies most obviously places the French government at odds with Britain, which holds the current rotating presidency of the EU.

The two countries have clashed not only over the Iraq war, but more recently over the EU budget: France wants Britain's special EU rebate to end, Britain wants an overhaul of the very EU farm subsidies that now threaten to foil the WTO talks.

Mandelson has offered to cut those subsidies in response to a similar offer floated by Washington. It many not help Mandelson's cause that he is close to British Prime Minister Tony Blair whose relationship with French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac is abrasive at best.

But much of Chirac's opposition to the agricultural subsidies is aimed at a domestic audience: the very French who opposed the EU constitution in a May vote aimed also to sanction the president's center-right government.

Indeed, the matter of farm subsidies has served to unite Chirac's fractious government in a way few other issues have. Even France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has clashed openly and frequently with the French President and with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, has closed ranks on the question of agriculture.

"French and European farmers can count on my commitment on their behalf to save what is left of one of the first and principal common policies," Sarkozy wrote in a commentary in Les Echos newspaper Thursday.

But instead of bolstering its support in Europe, France's pro-subsidies position may end up undermining its place in the 25-nation block.

Not only does France find itself "once again, isolated, or almost" in the EU, Le Monde wrote in an editorial, but "the continual attacks by Paris against the European Commission have diminished its force of persuasion."

"It's not in obstinately adopting a defensive tactic...that France will rediscover its role as an engine of Europe," the newspaper wrote.

Nor has France's stance on agricultural subsides burnished its image in the developing world. Just a day ago, Paris was defending the UNESCO cultural heritage convention for protecting not only its own embattled film industry, but also the cultural diversity of poorer countries.

"The adoption of the UNESCO text is one of the essential conditions to create a globalization that is better controlled and more human," French minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres wrote in an argument favoring the convention, published this week in Le Monde.

Today, France is defending EU agricultural subsidies that experts believe price these same poor countries out of international markets.

It is hardly the first time political self-interest has dominated a nation's agenda. But this week, France's contradictory arguments favoring protectionism seem particularly ironic.

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051021-093835-7655r

Franco-American Jurists and Lawyers in Maine History

Franco-American Jurists and Lawyers in Maine History

By Juliana L’Heureux
Portland Press Herald, York Edition

Celebrating a Red Mass to honor Maine’s judiciary is an annual religious custom. This year’s religious tradition honored Maine’s legal community with particular emphasis on Franco-American jurists and lawyers. Bishop of Portland Richard Malone celebrated the Red Mass at Lewiston’s historic Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul on Friday, September 30th followed by a luncheon reception. A keepsake historical memento created for the occasion was a booklet of collected biographies titled, “Celebrating Franco-American Jurists and Lawyers in Maine History”, edited by Michael R. Poulin, Esq., of Lewiston. Bowdoin College professor Christian Potholm, Ph.D., was the keynote luncheon speaker. Potholm spoke about ethnicity and the law with specific focus on Maine’s Franco-Americans. “Franco-Americans are an important balance in Maine politics and in the judiciary,” he said. Potholm is not Franco-American. “Some writers call me a Franco-American ‘wanna-be’, because I respect their ethnic influence on Maine’s politics,” Potholm explained to about 100 members of Maine's legal profession attending the lunch. He described Franco-Americans’ political influence as “Rising to the Stars Through Difficulty”, due to the economic struggles Canadian immigrants endured because they largely spoke French and practiced Roman Catholicism while living in largely Protestant and English speaking New England textile cities. “Franco-Americans rise to political prominence was not easy or quick”, explained Potholm. Potholm credits Franco-American voters as essential to swing winning referenda ballot measures. “Give me a lever, and the Franco-American community and I can move the world,” claimed Potholm. Maine’s first Franco-American Judge was Albert Beliveau, born in 1887 in Lewiston’s “little Canada”. He became a lawyer in 1911, after scoring 99.5 on the bar exam. Judge Beliveau was the first Franco-American to serve on Maine’s Superior Court, appointed by Governor Louis Brann (1876-1948), who had been the Democratic mayor of Lewiston
Judge Conrad Keefe Cyr, from Aroostook County, is one of six Franco-Americans whose biography is included the commemorative booklet. Moreover, Cyr is the first Maine resident of Franco-American ancestry to serve in the US federal judiciary. Judge Cyr’s family genealogy dates back to 1668, when Pierre Cyr departed the Parish of St Germain in Bourgueil, France, and emigrated to Port Royale, in Acadia (Nova Scotia). Cyr’s family history subsequently followed a valiant fight against deportation from Nova Scotia. His Acadian ancestor Jean Baptiste Cyr, fought the British who attempted to rout his family out of Nova Scotia along with thousands of other French Acadians who were the victims of “le Grand Dérangement”, (the deportation). Instead, Cyr’s ancestors eventually found their way in about 1780 to Northern Maine’s Madawaska Territory. In 1959, Cyr was appointed Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Maine with the help of Senator Margaret Chase Smith. In 1981, President Ronald Regan nominated Cyr for United States District Judge for the District of Maine. Today, Judge Cyr is a Senior Circuit Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Franco-American Elmer H. Violette (1921-2000), a Van Buren native, was a politician, a State Senator, superior court judge in Maine, 1973-81 and justice of Maine’s state supreme court, 1981-86. He’s described as, “marked by unyielding commitment to public service, devotion to his Roman Catholic faith, deep love of his cherished family and his Franco-American roots.” Violette supported legislation allowing bilingual education in Maine’s public schools where at one time it was illegal for children to speak their native French or any foreign language other than English.
For information about the commemorative jurists biographies booklet, contact Michael R. Poulin, Esq., 76 Sherbrooke Ave Lewiston, ME 04240-3618

---------------

The Red Mass
Celebrating Franco-American Jurists and Lawyers in Maine History
Friday, September 30, 2005; Mass 11:00 a.m. at Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul, Lewiston.
Luncheon featuring French-Canadian cuisine at 12:30 p.m. at the Ramada Inn, Lewiston
Featured Luncheon Speaker: Dr. Christian Potholm, Professor of Government at Bowdoin College.
The church was designated a basilica by Pope John Paul II in 2004. Of the more than 19,000 Catholic churches in the U.S, only 55 have been so honored. The basilica is the second largest church of any denomination in New England, and the only basilica in Northern New England. It was build between 1908 and 1933, with thousands of small donations from Franco-American mill workers. Its recent restoration was completed in 2002.
FMI, call Connie Poulin at 784-3200 or email cpoulin@3200.com 

http://www.mainelawyersreview.com/calendar.htm

-----------------

Franco-American Jurists and Lawyers in Maine History

Cyr, Conrad Keefe
Born 1931 in Limestone, ME

Federal Judicial Service:
U. S. District Court, District of Maine
Nominated by Ronald Reagan on August 11, 1981, to a seat vacated by George J. Mitchell; Confirmed by the Senate on September 25, 1981, and received commission on September 28, 1981. Served as chief judge, 1983-1989. Service terminated on November 20, 1989, due to appointment to another judicial position.

U. S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Nominated by George H.W. Bush on August 4, 1989, to a seat vacated by Frank Morey Coffin; Confirmed by the Senate on October 24, 1989, and received commission on November 20, 1989. Assumed senior status on January 31, 1997.

Education:
Holy Cross College, B.S., 1953

Yale Law School, J.D., 1956

Professional Career:
Private practice, Limestone, Maine, 1956-1959
Assistant U.S. attorney, Bangor, Maine, 1959-1961
Private practice, Bangor, Maine, 1961-1962
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge, District of Maine, 1961-1981
Standing special master, U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, 1974-1976
Chief judge, Bankruptcy Appellate Panel, District of Massachusetts, 1980-1981

Race or Ethnicity: White

Gender: Male

http://air.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=552

An Alouette-Inspired Comic Book

An Alouette-Inspired Comic Book: Joufou Will Teach the Basics of Football to Six-to-12-Year-Olds

OCTOBER 21, 2005 - 15:30 ET

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(CCNMatthews - Oct. 21, 2005) - Always looking for new and innovative ways to reach out to the community, the Montreal Alouettes' latest project is a comic book featuring the fan-favourite team mascot, Touche.

Publications Presses Aventure and the Montreal Alouettes are proud to present Joufou joue au football, the latest story in Guy Dyotte's series featuring the loveable Joufou character. In this adventure into the world of football, Joufou makes a new friend - none other than the Alouettes' mascot himself, Touche.

Born of the ambition to promote football to youth, this full-colour comic book stars Joufou the fox and his gridiron squadron, the Joufoot, a fantastic menagerie of animals from the four corners of the earth. In this book designed for an audience of six-to-12-year-old boys and girls, Joufou explains the basics of football from the different positions on the field to the key rules of the sport. The book teaches kids not only about the sport, but about fair play, about the importance of staying active, and the joys of reading.

Distributed by Les Messageries ADP, Quebec's largest distributor (Renault-Bray, Archambeault, Zellers, Costco, Wal-Mart, Jean Coutu, Pharmaprix, Provigo, Loblaws as well as several independent retailers), the comic contains 32 pages and will be sold almost everywhere at $6.95. Author Guy Dyotte will join Joufou himself for a personal appearance at the 2005 Salon du livre de Montreal this November.

http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releasesfr/show.jsp?action=showRelease&actionFor=563937

Sunken cheddar defeats divers

Sunken cheddar defeats divers
Baie des Ha! Ha! won't give up its cargo -- even to state-of-the-art sonar device

By INGRID PERITZ
Monday, October 10, 2005 Page A6
Globeandmail.com


MONTREAL -- Luc Boivin's lost cheddar is passing into local legend as the Titanic of the cheese world.

The Quebec cheese maker dropped a 2,000-pound cargo of cheese to the bottom of the Saguenay fjord last year in a ripening experiment. Then he spent this summer searching for it. And now, after deploying a team of divers and an arsenal of high-tech tracking equipment, Mr. Boivin has given up the quest.

The sunken treasure of cheddar is nowhere to be found.

"It got too expensive to continue. At some point, you can't be crazy," he said recently from his factory in La Baie, Que.

No one can accuse Mr. Boivin, a fourth-generation cheese maker, of giving up easily. Searchers used state-of-the-art sonar equipment and underwater cameras to look for the bounty. Divers returned to the waters of the Baie des Ha! Ha! eight times. And the Development Centre in Ocean Mapping sailed to his aid with a $1-million, multi-beam sonar device, one of the most sophisticated marine mapping systems in Canada.

No luck.

"It's a mystery. All we know is that the cheese is no longer where it was left," said Pierre Dufour, a master diver who assisted La Fromagerie Boivin in the hunt. Whether it was eaten by cheddar-loving fish or stolen by cheese smugglers is anyone's guess.

"Where is it? We don't know," Mr. Dufour said.

According to a company estimate, $50,000 was spent to look for the cheese. The most popular theory is that its anchoring cables got caught up in the winter ice and that the cheese was carried downriver. Still, Mr. Dufour is not discouraged.

"The Titanic sank in 1912, but it was only found in 1985," he said.

The story has captured the public's imagination. The Saguenay cheese hunt made headlines around the globe. Mr. Boivin received random reports of sightings of the errant cheese barrels miles from where they were placed.

Last month, a commander of the HMCS Chicoutimi, on a local visit, said perhaps the Canadian Forces submarine could locate the cheese. "He said he had systems that could help," Mr. Boivin said.

"It's become like a treasure hunt. It has intrigued a lot of people," Mr. Boivin said, adamantly refuting suggestions the sunken cheese story was a fish tale, although he can't deny its priceless marketing value.

Mr. Boivin dropped 10 barrels of cheese into the Saguenay last fall after a fisherman reported reeling in a piece of Boivin cheese from a lake bottom and trying it. It was pronounced the best cheese he'd ever tasted.

Undeterred by the apparent failure of this year's underwater cheese experiment, Mr. Boivin is trying again. He still believes that underwater pressure will enhance the taste of an aged cheddar. So within the next few weeks, he will drop another charge of cheese in a stainless steel, submarine-type vessel into the Baie des Ha! Ha! But this time, he's taking no chances. The cheddar will be outfitted with a tracking device.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051010/CHEESE10/TPNational/TopStories

Divers can't find sunken $50,000 cheese stash

Divers can't find sunken $50,000 cheese stash

Powered by CDNN - CYBER DIVER News Network

QUEBEC, Canada (10 Oct 2005) -- A Quebec cheese company has lost its sunken cheese. La Fromagerie Boivin was attempting to make its cheese taste better by submerging it underwater.

Last year the company dropped 800 kg of cheese into the Saguenay fjord, north of Quebec City.

Being 50 metres underwater was supposed to produce a cheese that would taste unique. But the company is having trouble finding its sunken cheese.

Divers and high-tech tracking equipment were used to locate the lost fromage.

"It's a mystery," said master diver Pierre Dufour, who assisted in the hunt. "All we know is that the cheese is no longer where it was left."

But the company has given up even though the cheese is worth more than $50,000.

"It got too expensive," said cheesemaker Luc Boivin. "At some point, you can't be crazy."

In July, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency raised concerns about the sunken cheese. It said Boivin was breaking food safety laws because the cheese hadn't been analyzed at various stages of the aging process.

That meant it couldn't be sold in retail.

http://www.cdnn.info/news/industry/i051010.html

Scene & Heard: Saratoga Reads! should consider Jack Kerouac books

Scene & Heard: Saratoga Reads! should consider Jack Kerouac books

THOMAS DIMOPOULOS, The Saratogian
10/21/2005
'Jack Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis,' author William S. Burroughs once said about his friend Jack Kerouac. 'Woodstock rises from his pages.'

Today, on the anniversary of his death 36 years ago, you can walk down the street today and see Kerouac's influence everywhere, from cafes to clothing stores, billboards advertising poetry readings to bookshops with entire sections dedicated to his works. A ton of shelf space is filled with authors and musicians of the past half-century who were inspired by Kerouac's writings.

So, when the folks at Saratoga Reads! ask the question -- 'What novel shall we celebrate this year?' -- Kerouac's work is the first that comes to my mind.

If you don't know, Saratoga Reads! launched its program in 2005 and selected one book for the entire community to read and discuss, with public readings and events inspired by the title that was selected. With a Nov. 1 deadline approaching, Saratoga Reads! is looking for suggestions for a title for 2006.

You can go to their site (www.saratogareads.org) and see the 100 titles already nominated. Some you might expect, like Dan Brown's 'DaVinci Code' and J.K. Rowling's latest Harry Potter title. Others, like Anthony Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange,' and 'The Soft Machine' by William S. Burroughs, are a little more surprising. Regardless of their brilliance in prose, it would be difficult to imagine the content to easily fit into the organization's criteria of being adaptable to community programming.

Ten books will be selected from the list, then a public vote will determine the book that is the winner.

Looking at the list of titles nominated makes you want to ask, what about Jack Kerouac? A young aspiring writer in the 1940s, prolific in the '50s, he later published a flurry of works -- 12 titles in 10 years that told the story of his life in stages, from the shadowy ghosts of doom hanging over childhood in 'Dr. Sax,' to the teenage love and bittersweet heartache of 'Maggie Cassidy.'

There were the wild kicks of jazz in the 'Subterraneans' and his study of Buddhism poured into his work 'Dharma Bums' in 1958.

Posthumously, Kerouac has been hailed as everything from the King of the Beats, to Father of the Hippies, and his life's work the inspiration for a generation of musicians, writers and artists. You could make the argument, that had Kerouac not lived as he had, the 1960s would just not have been The 60s, and American culture of the past 50 years would be a more barren place.

His most popular book, 'On the Road,' blew the locked door of a repressed society off its hinges and paved a path leading to the dream of America.

With his words, Kerouac shook awake the dormant soul of a generation and lit it with the spirit of freedom and the wisdom of a life with infinite possibilities.

So, when I hear the question that asked -- 'What novel shall we celebrate this year?' -- I think of Sal Paradise and I think of Dean Moriarty, two characters on the freedom road, traveling in search of America.

'The only people for me are the mad ones,' wrote Kerouac in 'On The Road' -- 'the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say commonplace things, but burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars,' wrote Kerouac who passed away on this day 36 years ago.

Thomas Dimopoulos is a feature writer at The Saratogian. Scene & Heard is published every Friday in the Life ssection. Contact him at tdimopoulos@saratogian.com.

The Saratogian 2005
http://www.saratogian.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1169&dept_id=17776&newsid=15428141&PAG=461&rfi=9

What is your greatest source of pride in being a Nova Scotian and Canadian?

Theme for 2006 Lieutenant Governor Award announced

HALIFAX, Oct. 21 /CNW/ - The second annual Lieutenant Governor's Award: Ready to Write! Prêt à écrire! in partnership with Canadian Parents for French - Nova Scotia is now underway. This award celebrates the ability of young Nova Scotians to communicate in both official languages by promoting the use of the French language. The theme for 2006 is: What is your greatest source of pride in being a Nova Scotian and Canadian?
"As Lieutenant Governor, and as a Canadian, I am proud to call Nova Scotia and Canada home and I am pleased to give Nova Scotian youth an opportunity for dialogue in French as they reflect on their Canadian identity," explained Her Honour Myra A. Freeman.
Students in grades 7-9 enrolled in any French second language program within Nova Scotia are invited to take part in this program. Eligible students can enter submissions and one will be selected for the award based on originality, creativity, writing style, organization of ideas, content and written language proficiency. Rules and registration forms are available at www.cpfns.ednet.ns.ca or by calling (902) 453-2048.
The deadline for submissions is February 10, 2006. The recipient will be presented with the award at a ceremony to be held at Government House, an event hosted by Canadian Parents for French - Nova Scotia or another suitable function in the recipient's area before the end of the school year. This program is sponsored by Université Sainte-Anne which has a longstanding relationship with Canadian Parents for French and a history of supporting French education initiatives in Nova Scotia.
Canadian Parents for French is a national network of volunteers that values French as an integral part of Canada and is dedicated to the promotion and creation of French learning opportunities for young Canadians. For further information: Gail Keeping, Branch Coordinator at (902) 453-2048 or email at cpf@ns.sympatico.ca; Anne Peters, President at (902) 248-2724 or email at annepeters@ns.sympatico.ca

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/October2005/21/c3899.html

Canada: McCain cuts potato-plant jobs

Canada: McCain cuts potato-plant jobs

McCain Foods is cutting back its french-fry manufacturing operations in Portage la Prairie. Company officials say 90 jobs will be cut, blaming a bad potato crop and the high value of the Canadian dollar for the change.

Portage Mayor Ian Mackenzie says the cuts will hurt the city, but the company has indicated it will fill the positions again if things turn around.

"Tough times never last. Tough people do," he said. "When we think of our friends out in the rural municipality – agricultural people – what they've gone through over the last three or four years … but they're coming back. We'll bounce back from this, too."

Heavy rain damaged potato crops in two-thirds of the province's potato-growing areas this year. Growers further west, around Carberry, had better luck than those around Portage la Prairie.

http://winnipeg.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=mb_mccain-20051020

Authors Organize to Support School Challenged for Gay Story

Authors Organize to Support School Challenged for Gay Story

ProudParenting.com
A private school in Texas recently returned a three million dollar donation rather than submit to the donor's request that a controversial book be removed from the school's reading list.

A group of teen book authors was so impressed by the school's actions that they gave themselves a name, Authors Supporting Intellectual Freedom (or AS IF!), and are now all donating signed copies of their books, which the school will display in a planned 'Freedom Library'.

The school, St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Austin, Texas, had been promised the donation by the family of Cary McNair, who later objected to the presence of the Annie Proulx short story "Brokeback Mountain", on the school's list of optional reading for twelfth graders.

"St. Andrew's has a policy not to accept conditional gifts," school spokesman Bill Miller told the Austin American Statesman. "When the McNair family looked at their gift in a conditional manner, then the school could not accept it."

According to AS IF! member Brent Hartinger, author of the gay teen book Geography Club, he and his author friends were overwhelmed by the depth of St. Andrew's conviction. "They gave up three million dollars rather than compromise the principles of academic independence and intellectual freedom," Hartinger says. "We authors wanted to show our thanks, so we formed our group, and are now all sending signed copies of our books."

So far, Hartinger says, over sixty books have been sent, including many by bestselling and award-winning authors.

"I sent a signed first printing," says Newbery winner Cynthia Kadohata. "I saw a copy on E-bay go for eight hundred dollars. It's not $3 million, but it's a start."

The point of the book drive, says another AS IF! member, Lisa Yee, is to make a positive statement, not just add more acrimony to the ongoing debate over controversial books. "Rather than tear down those who make negative or uninformed judgments about literature," Yee says, "we want to support those who stand up for freedom of choice, and thank them for their efforts."

Other gay AS IF! members include Jeanne DuPrau, David Levithan, Bennett Madison, and Chris Tebbetts.

"We're not going away," says AS IF! member Jordan Sonnenblick. "AS IF! definitely plans to continue doing whatever it can to support all those who fight efforts of censorship and intellectual suppression, especially of books for and about teenagers."

http://www.proudparenting.com/page.cfm?typeofsite=snippetdetail&ID=2048&snippetset=yes

Penn State Fayette plans film festival

Penn State Fayette plans film festival

"Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film" is the title of the 2005 Fall Film Festival planned at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, Route 119, between Connellsville and Uniontown. The series will explore the movies' depictions and misrepresentations of Native American culture, history and issues.

Showtime for each film is 7 p.m. in Swimmer Hall, Williams Building. The schedule includes:

Oct. 24: "Black Robe." The 1991 R-rated film depicts the encounters between French missionaries and the Iroquois during the Canadian colonial period.

Oct. 27: "The Searchers." John Wayne stars as a Western settler tracking a white girl taken and raised by Indians. The 1956 John Ford film is not rated.

Nov. 7: "Incident at Oglala." The 1992 documentary concerns Leonard Peltier, an American Indian Movement activist convicted of killing a federal agent at the Pine Ridge, S.D., reservation in 1975. It is rated R.

Nov. 10: "Smoke Signals." Based on stories by Sherman Alexie, this 1998 PG-rated movie is the first major film to be completely written, acted and directed by Native Americans.

Admission is free and those attending may bring their own refreshments.

Information: 724-430-4211 or 724-430-4153.

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/entertainment/events/s_386601.html

Food and history in Mendota, MN

Saturday, Oct 22, 2005
TwinCities, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, MN
Food and history in Mendota: Visitors can see, taste, touch and smell a bit of history during tours of the Sibley House Historic Site that focus on 1840s eating habits. The tour includes stops in cellars, pantries and dining rooms. Guests will learn about the Faribault Hotel and visit the spacious basement kitchen where food was prepared for guests. Plus, participants can sample food from the era's French Canadian, Dakota and European residents. The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Oct. 29 at the historic site on 1357 Sibley Memorial Highway in Mendota. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and students, $3 for children ages 6 to 17 or free for historical society members and kids younger than 5. Call 651-452-1596 for reservations or more information.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/12966492.htm

Social intercourse

Arts
Social intercourse
By Beverly Ingle
www.zwire.com/, 10/20/2005

Mrs. San Antonio steps into the white (hot) shoe debate
I had to pinch myself: The center of Saks Fifth Avenue had morphed into a quasi-nightclub complete with thumping music, free-flowing Grey Goose and a dancing general manager. It was the closing scene of the venerable store's 20th-anniversary gala last Friday. General Manager Bobby Dees had to grab the microphone and bid everyone a good evening, a suave alternative to "Go home!" The chic, redesigned store provided the perfect backdrop for a traveling collection of beaded and bejeweled clutches from Judith Leiber, Moo Roo bags, and $45,000 chinchilla coats.

With so many drinks, delectable tapas, and chocolate-covered strawberries swirling through the store - often amid racks of clothing with price tags that eclipse my monthly mortgage payment - my husband and I wondered when the post-party, "as-is" sale would ensue. At one point I stood, mouth agape, as a gentleman used a pristine white leather bench as a cutting table for a piece of beef.

The main attraction for the event, which benefitted the Children's Cancer Research Institute, was the dynamic designing duo of Mark Badgley and James Mischka, with whom I had the good fortune of enjoying a private audience. A few minutes of chit-chatting about their stay at Hotel Valencia, their favorites pieces from their spring line, and the changes they've seen in the San Antonio fashion scene led me to a burning question: "What do you think of white shoes?" With a sly grin, Mischka suggested that white tennis shoes are fine. And while Badgley mentioned that they occasionally will design a strappy white sandal, he said white pumps are just horrible. I whooped "Yes!" as he validated a belief I've held for decades.

Circulating among the well-heeled crowd was Saks' President and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Jennings, who held the party line well - and quite charmingly - when asked about San Antonio's ability to support two high-end retailers. Also spotted enjoying themselves were Senator Jeff Wentworth, twin political stars Julián and Joaquin Castro, University of Texas Health Science Center faculty member Dr. Richard Brzyski, fashion maven Jeannette Longoria, and San Antonio Express-News fashion reporters Michael Quintanilla and Jeanie Tavitas-Williams.

Admittedly, this party will be quite memorable for me - not only for how well it went, and many kudos to Christen Godwin, Saks' PR director, for a flawless event - but also because it was my first official appearance as Mrs. San Antonio 2006. (Yep, I was the one in the tiara.)

Gemini Ink recently presented its Autograph Series Luncheon, with novelist Mary Gordon as the honoree. The estrogen-dominant event offered wonderful dramatic readings of Gordon's work as selected by Rosemary Catacalos, executive director of the literary organization, as well as readings by Gordon herself. Most interesting were my table mates, several students from Gemini Ink's University Without Walls who were treated to the event by a generous benefactor who - much to my chagrin - insisted on remaining anonymous. The students pursue various literary genres in their studies, and I was impressed in particular with Weaver Sjolander, whose long-term research and planning made me sure that I suffer from adult ADHD.

Also of note was last weekend's International Accordion Festival in La Villita. With children in tow, my husband and I headed to the squeezebox event, fully anticipating the sounds of Conjunto with which we are familiar. Accompanying the familiar strains we heard something unexpected ... the sounds of French Canadian and Zydeco music. We stayed for a bit, our ears loving the distinctive chords and our eyes feasting on our children's joy while they danced. We were a bit bummed that the performers - members of Le Vent du Nord and Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys - spoke about the roots of the music as much as they played. Our children's attention spans soon waned, and we headed off for home having had a great time actually seeing a hurdy gurdy in action.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15426793&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=484045&rfi=6

The Polite Revolution

The Polite Revolution

By JOHN IBBITSON
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Posted at 2:00 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Everyone knows that ours is a deeply troubled land.

Just ask any nationalist from Quebec or pseudo-separatist from Newfoundland. You can waste an entire morning listening to an aggrieved Albertan recite a litany of complaints about the Perfidious Centre. And Ontario? Don't get them started on horizontal transfers and the fiscal imbalance.

Canada doesn't work because it is too much like the United States. Or maybe it's because it is not enough like the United States. The federal government is powerful, domineering and distant. No, the federal government is so weak it can't hold the country together. Taxes are too high; taxes are too low. Social programs cripple initiative; social programs have been gutted. We're falling apart; we're falling behind; we're failing.

This is all so much rot. How can you live in this country, visit its cities, drive across its spaces, talk to its people — how can you be here and conclude such things?
Advertisements

I can't. Which is why I opened my new book, The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream, by asserting, "Some time, not too long ago, while no one was watching, Canada became the world's most successful country."

Canada works. In fact, it works better than any place else. Partly by intent, mostly by luck, we find ourselves at the forefront of a social revolution.

While hand-wringing commentators have been lamenting our lack of a national identity — and trying to construct one, as if such a thing were possible — millions of new arrivals have landed at our docks and our airports, transforming us.

We are fashioning the world's first truly cosmopolitan society. After laying a solid foundation of liberal democracy — based on the best of the British and French traditions in governance and law — we have imported millions of new arrivals, first from eastern and southern Europe, then from eastern and southern Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

The result is nothing less than a miracle. Certain cities in Canada have reached escape velocity. They are becoming the first places where no one race is dominant, where women can live in real equality with men, where it's okay to be gay, where people pick up after their dogs. This has never happened anywhere before. Not like this.

In the process, we have inculcated a myth, even a joke, of being fanatically polite. But as I've written, "Politeness is not some accidental quality of being Canadian. It is at the core of what we are. It is the means by which we accommodate each other. It is the secret recipe for a nation of different cultures, languages and customs, whose citizens all get along.

"Canadians have used politeness to foment a social revolution. And from that revolution our Canada has emerged — young, creative, polyglot, open-minded, forward-looking, fabulous."

However, there is another, darker truth as well: Governments at all levels have failed to keep pace with what's happening on the street. As each year passes, the disparity between the political superstructure and the social base increases. If we don't fix this problem, government could really start to mess things up.

We see this disparity in our political party system. Liberals have been in power for so long that the lines between party, government and public service have blurred dangerously, leaving the party tired, factionalized and casually corrupt.

The Liberal hegemony in federal politics constitutes perhaps the greatest political threat to the continued health of this country.

Talk to some Liberals, especially after the second drink, and many of them will quietly agree. They know their party needs renewal. But what are they supposed to do? It's their job to win elections.

The Conservatives have a better grasp than the Liberals of the separate evolutions of Canada's various regions; their fiscal policies are, in the main, sounder; they have long understood the foreign-policy consequences of letting the military deteriorate to the point of collapse. Look at any of the Liberal government's throne speeches or budgets over the past 10 years, and you will find that virtually every major initiative was first conceived by the Reform, Alliance or Progressive Conservative parties.

But the recently reunited Conservatives have one enormous, fatal flaw: They don't like cities.

Cities are the very heart of the Canada that's becoming. But the Conservative Party remains wedded to the white, rural hinterlands that form its political base. This is why some, though not all, Conservatives chafe against the end of European-based immigration, the steady expansion of the rights of homosexuals, the indifference (or even support) of city dwellers toward the hated gun registry, and the dilution of Protestant Christianity as the moral bedrock on which laws and customs are based.

The swirl of such sentiments within the Conservative Party leaves it trapped as a rural anachronism. If the House of Commons weren't skewed in favour of rural ridings, the party would fare even more poorly than it does now.

With the two major federal political parties deeply dysfunctional, and with the smaller parties mirroring regional and class protests, the federal government reflects the worst, rather than the best, that Canada has to offer. It leads to bad policy.

Ottawa obsesses over transferring wealth, vertically (through taxes) and horizontally (through transfers), robbing the provinces of the fiscal resources they need to do their job. Cities decay while billions are frittered away trying to reverse, or at least retard, the great migration from rural to urban. The health-care and education systems struggle to cope with the needs of clients in the face of underfunding and godawful decision-making by politicians and bureaucrats.

(Question: Why are the analysts, deputy ministers and ministers who recommended in the early 1990s that the intake of medical students be sharply reduced not flipping hamburgers somewhere, instead of sitting behind even-cozier desks?)

Canada's aboriginal population, although racking up many unreported successes, continues to face severe challenges with housing, health, education and its future identity, harmed more than helped by a federal protector that, from the first day of Confederation, has botched the job.
Advertisements

Foreign policy is a mess; our defences are dangerously weak; the vital Canada-U.S. relationship is strained. Finally, the political institutions of the state itself are outmoded, leaving voters frustrated and increasingly inclined not to vote at all.

The good news is, these problems are all fixable. The solutions involve a fundamental reordering of the roles and responsibilities to the federal and provincial governments, a realignment of priorities in health care and education, some pretty tough reforms in aboriginal policy, major new initiatives in the North American relationship, a far more aggressive global posture and a renewal of the democratic institutions of the country.

Some of the proposals I put forth in the book will resonate with people on the left of the political spectrum; some will resonate with people on the right. The goal is to get past sterile debates rooted in ideology, to look at the situation with fresh eyes.

More than anything else, we must shatter the moulds of context in which we frame our political debates. This new country needs new thinking.

Instead of seeing ourselves through the lenses of the Family Compact, the Durham Report, the hanging of Riel, the Conscription crisis, the Quiet Revolution, the national energy program and Meech Lake, we must see it through the eyes of a young woman arriving here from Manila. Her perspective differs utterly from one steeped in myths of political oppression, alienation and insult. And her perspective is the one that matters.

Adopting it requires a certain ahistoricism. This will be a difficult notion to embrace, for those of us who love and admire the subtle tapestry of this country's history.

But history is mostly misery; the remembrance of things past often evokes resentment toward the state of the present. More important, our history is being swamped, flooded out by immigrants from a plethora of cultures. You can mourn the loss, or celebrate the renewal, but you can't stop what is happening.

There is an internal tension to this argument. A man who is ashamed of where he comes from cannot be happy in life. If this country's destiny and identity are truly cosmopolitan, then what heritage will our children embrace? What will culture mean, if it means being part Jew, part Cree, part Estonian, part Thai?

If, as the book argues, the most potent social force shaping Canada (and indeed the world) is the admixture of cultures that will have a Korean-Lebanese girl marrying an Irish-Jamaican boy, whose offspring will be who-knows-what, then what will anchor those children?

There's a risk that Canada will become nothing more than a culture mall, and its future one of featureless, suburban identity-banality in which all memory is lost and all food is fusion cuisine. But it is a risk worth taking — it is worth losing at least some of our historical memory, if it means that we can also sever its chains.

Let the tired nationalists pick at their ancient wounds. Let the cultural chauvinists lament the loss of what they, in their marrow, know to be A Way of Life Superior to All Others. The Canada we are becoming is moving past all that.

The emerging Canada is nothing less than the engine of the social revolution that, if the world is lucky, will one day overtake the world. You don't think it's possible? Think of where we were a century ago. Think of what we have been through since then, what we have endured, what we have learned.

Think of what Canada could be in a century, if we don't screw up.

The Polite Revolution is published by McClelland & Stewart.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051021.wibbitpol1022/BNStory/National/
--------

Bio of John Ibbitson:
John Ibbitson, political affairs columnist for the Globe and Mail, has lived numerous writing lives, including those of playwright, novelist and journalist.

Born in the small Ontario town of Gravenhurst, he wrote his first published play, Catalyst (Simon and Pierre, 1975), for the local high school drama club, before leaving for Trinity College, University of Toronto, where he graduated in 1979 with an Honours B.A. in English. The remainder of his twenties was profitably spent-in creative, if not monetary, terms-shuttling between Canada and England, writing plays and working as a box office clerk, office worker and bartender. The most successful work from that period was a play called Mayonnaise (Simon and Pierre, 1982), which premiered at Toronto's Phoenix Theatre in 1981 and was subsequently produced across Canada and adapted for television by the CBC.

In his thirties, Ibbitson turned to writing young-adult novels, the best known of which is 1812: Jeremy's War (Maxwell MacMillan, 1991, republished by KidsCan Press, 2001), which was nominated for the 1992 Governor General's Award for Children's Literature. The book has been read by many thousands of students in Ontario and other schools, and is still in print.

In 1988, Ibbitson graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a Masters degree in Journalism, and joined the Ottawa Citizen as a rather aged cub reporter. He worked as a reporter, columnist and Queen's Park correspondent for Southam papers until 1999, when he joined the Globe and Mail as Queen's Park columnist, subsequently serving as the paper's Washington Bureau Chief and, since August 2002, as political affairs columnist, based in Ottawa. Outside journalism, his recent writing has focused on political analysis, with Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution (Prentice Hall, 1997) and Loyal No More: Ontario's Struggle for a Separate Destiny (HarperCollins, 2001).

Apart from writing, John Ibbitson's interests include reading (mostly history and biography) music (mostly classical), fishing, going for long runs, and playing poker with reporters.

He can be reached at: John Ibbitson, the Globe and Mail, 100 Queen St., Suite 1400, Ottawa, Ont., K1P 1J9, or jibbitson@globeandmail.ca

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051021.wibbitpol1022/BNStory/National/

A love letter to Canada, and a get-well card

SOCIAL STUDIES
A love letter to Canada, and a get-well card

By DAVID CAMERON
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Page D13

Globeandmail.com

The Polite Revolution:
Perfecting the Canadian Dream
By John Ibbitson
McClelland & Stewart,
270 pages, $34.99

Foreigners, rather to the surprise of many Canadians, often display a high admiration for Canada. Impressed with the country's prosperity and its exemplary fiscal management, with its peaceful handling of Quebec nationalism and with its generous immigration policy and the remarkably successful multicultural society that is its result, they think of Canada as an international success story. Not so, many Canadians say: My bookshelves are littered with the laments and complaints of Canadian authors. Happily, this may be changing, and if it is, The Polite Revolution falls into the new, more celebratory category.

The book -- a cheeky, opinionated, well-informed review of contemporary Canada -- makes this clear in its first sentence: "Sometime, not too long ago, while no one was watching, Canada became the world's most successful country." We've moved from whining insecurity to braggadocio in one bound. Still, it makes a nice change.

John Ibbitson, a political affairs columnist for The Globe and Mail and the author of two previous books on Canadian politics, sees Canada equalling or surpassing most other countries in business success, standard of living, culture, scientific discovery -- you name it. Much of this he attributes to Canada's extraordinary capacity to accommodate -- indeed, to celebrate -- diversity. Generation after generation, Canada has received strangers into its midst and made them citizens. It is this process, more than anything else, he argues, that has created among Canadians a remarkable tolerance for diversity of all kinds, and has generated the central national characteristic of politeness, which gives Ibbitson's Canadian revolution its name.

A few years ago, my daughter, living in New York City and continually being told how nice she and other Canadians were, finally exclaimed in irritation: "What you don't realize is that in New York, 'nice' is a strategy." So it is in Canada, according to Ibbitson. Occasionally, he can be downright soupy about the place: "Canada, as the country that embodies the world, is the country that can make the world finally understand itself."

Not that all is well in the peaceable kingdom. Ibbitson identifies lots of problems with the way the country works and lots of places where we can do better. Our national-party system is a shambles; our excessive commitment to regional equity stunts wealth creation in our more productive provinces, just as our insistence on propping up the countryside undermines our capacity to support the nation's cities, which is where innovation and creativity reside; our obsession with maintaining a voraciously expensive public health-care system cripples our ability to support post-secondary education properly; and Ottawa's insistent meddling in areas of provincial jurisdiction makes for bad public policy in these fields and distracts the federal government from properly performing its own tasks, such as security and defence, aid, international trade and Canada-U.S. relations.

Ibbitson is not shy about offering solutions, usually of the urban-oriented, populist, right-of-centre, decentralizing sort. He freely acknowledges that some of his suggestions are . . . well, really out there. Immigration should be substantially increased, and much more of it should go to Atlantic Canada, whose residents "continue to cling to their Celtic past." Asian immigrants in Atlantic Canada won't want their tax dollars propping up rural communities that have lost their purpose. The immigrants, he says, will be all "for keeping the pretty buildings, but not the mindset that accompanies them."

Transfers of wealth from the richest parts of the country to the poorest should be reduced, as should transfers from the wealthier individuals to the impoverished. Many of the social-policy ills that beset the country (such as over-expenditure in health and under-investment in post-secondary education) would be improved if some of the federal government's taxation capacity was shifted to the provinces and Ottawa got out of their way. Native reserves too remote to permit access to proper education should be shut down.

The federal government should sharply increase its defence capability, and should buttress its "soft power" strategy with a larger, better-equipped military. With respect to aid, Ottawa should put its money where its mouth was when Lester Pearson led the developed world to accept 0.7 per cent of GDP as its aid expenditure target. Our parliamentary democracy needs to be reformed, perhaps by using citizens' assemblies, as in British Columbia, and by experimenting with proportional representation.

Not all of the author's proposals will be everybody's cup of tea. But there are lots of them, so if you don't like one, you might very well find another that appeals to you. That's the nature of this kind of book; it is a survey of a country at a particular historical moment, with diagnosis and prescription. Representing the character of an entire country is never easy; so extensive are the areas of reform in the book that one hardly knows what to do with them. Yet there is a structure of argument lying behind the array of information and ideas.

The two great social forces shaping modern Canada are immigration and the migration from countryside to city. Cities are the future. The country would do even better than it is currently doing if the provinces and the federal government stuck to their knitting and tried assiduously to do their own jobs better. Empowering citizens would improve Canadian democracy. It would be good to have increased competition and greater freedom of choice. There are significant benefits to leaving individuals, regions and communities to fend for themselves more than they are currently asked to do.

And, oh, Canada is a damn fine place to live. Who could disagree with that?

David Cameron, a former federal and provincial civil servant, is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051022/BKIBBI22/TPEntertainment/Books

The Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Half Dollar

The Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Half Dollar

Coin Collecting
BellaOnline
Raymond F. Hanisco BellaOnline's Coin Collecting Editor

If we look back upon the history of many United States coins, one will find a variety of controversies which evolved over their creation or production . Either one group of people or another were offended, felt left out or just felt the need to criticize because a coin didn't fulfill a need within the social fabric of society. One of the most controversial of any of the United States coins produced was the Commemorative Half Dollar celebrating the Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary, issued in 1924. In other words, it is the commemorative coin issued to mark the 300th anniversary of the settling of New Netherlands (New York) by the Dutch protestants, who followed the teachings of John Calvin, under the sponsorship of the Dutch West India Company, in 1624. Was the coin nothing more then religious propaganda? Did the coin violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guaranteeing the separation of church and state? Was the coin fraudulently pushed through Congress just to help finance the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America? These are questions that will be debated for years to come, and the reason this commemorative coin will be cherished by collectors.
The Huguenots were French Protestants who followed the teachings of John Calvin. The Walloons were the same group of people who immigrated to the south of Belgium to escape persecution from the French Catholics, and the persecution of the Spanish Catholics who ruled Holland at that time. These Calvinists sought the freedom to practice there religion in the New World, as did many groups did throughout Europe. The newly formed Dutch West India Company saw this as an opportunity to establish colonies in the region called New Netherlands, and convinced 30 families (110 people) to sail to the New World on the ship, Nieuw Nederlandt, and inhabit two settlements. The first was in New Amsterdam (New York City), and the second at Fort Orange (Albany, NY). This is the group of settlers, as the story tells us, who bought Manhattan Island from the Native American Indians for a chest full of trinkets worth about 24 Lyon Dollars.
The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America saw the 300th anniversary of the landing of the Huguenots-Walloons in America as an opportunity have a fundraiser. The celebration would be hosted in New York City. They created an organization to plan and oversee this fundraiser, and called it the Huguenot-Walloon New Netherland Commission. The Reverend Dr. John Bear Stoudt was appointed Chairman. Reverend Dr. Stoudt was a coin collector and an amateur artist as well. He saw this Chairmanship as an opportunity to have a commemorative coin made to add creditability and increase the revenue of the fundraiser. Congress was lobbied, House Representative Albert H. Vestal, of the House Coinage Committee, approved the coin, and on February 26, 1923, the Huguenot-Walloon bill was passed. Congressman Vestal advised the commission and Rev. Dr. Stoudt that an outside artist was not available to design their commemorative coin, and it was agreed that the Mint's Chief Engraver, George T. Morgan would be entrusted with the coin's creation. The model of the coin was created by Morgan based on the ideas and drawings of Rev. Dr. Stoudt.
The obverse of the coins is very interesting in that it portrays two men who had absolutely nothing to do with the landing of the Calvinist in the New World. The coin portrays the images of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and Willem I (William the Silent), Prince of Orange. Both were said to be Huguenot martyrs, and both died decades before 1624. Admiral de Coligny was killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in 1572. It has been said he is no more or less a martyr then those many nameless souls who died at the hand of the Romans in the early days of Christianity. Willem I became ruler of the Dutch with a vow to rid his people of Spanish rule and Spanish taxes. He joined the Calvinist Church in 1573, and was assassinated in 1584. Historians seem to agree that the assassination was to further Spanish rule in the Netherlands, and not because of religious beliefs. It seems the only real connection between these to men (other then religious beliefs) was that the daughter of Willem I, Louise, was the wife of Admiral de Coligny.
The reverse of the commemorative coin depicts a three-masted ship. The ship is a representation of the Nieuw Nederlandt who carried the 30 families to the settlements in New Netherlands.
The Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Half Dollar was to be the last coin created by George T. Morgan (known for his silver dollars 1878-1921) before his death. When the models were submitted to the Federal Commission of Fine Arts for their approval prior to production, they found the workmanship to be well below the standards expected by the commission. James Earle Fraser (of the Buffalo Nickel fame) was enlisted to work with Morgan to revise the models. One would have expected this type of action to have caused a huge feud between the two artists with sharp words exchanged and bruised egos, but that was not the case. The two men worked quite well together until the job was completed.
The Federal Commissions of Fine Arts finally approved the models for production by the U.S. Mint. Congress had approved 300,000 of these commemorative half dollars for production. By the end of April in 1924, 142,080 Huguenot-Walloon Half Dollars were produced. The first coin struck was presented to President Calvin Coolidge. The U.S. Mint kept 80 of the coins for assay and released the balance for sale through various banks and organizations. These coins were initially offered to the public for $1.00 each. Oddly, 55,000 coins were ultimately returned to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia as unsold and slated for destruction, but it has been reported that these coins were released into circulation. The balance of the authorized mintage was never produced. There seems to be some reported evidence that there was one matte proof struck, but to this day that coin has not surfaced onto the coin market.
Whether this coin violated every standard of U.S. governmental policy, or didn't; and, whether its production was perpetrated through a fraud, or wasn't, the Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Half Dollar is a part of our history and provides collectors with a colorful story to accompany a desirable collectible. To me, that is what makes collecting coins fun.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art36459.asp

Pinnacles are possible, advertising women say

Pinnacles are possible, advertising women say
[see article below on Mr. French...]
By KEITH MCARTHUR
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Posted at 3:07 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Nancy Vonk is one of the most successful women in Canadian advertising. She also considers herself a pretty good mother.

So when her 12-year-old daughter was struggling with transition into Grade 7, Ms. Vonk asked her boss for a two-month sabbatical to spend more time at home. Her boss agreed.

“People ask for sabbaticals for all kinds of reasons and I thought this was as good a reason as I'd ever heard of,” the creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in Toronto said.

She and other leading women in Canadian advertising say that while it may not be easy, it's not impossible to balance motherhood with a successful career in advertising.

The issue has become a hot topic at agencies around the world after Neil French resigned from one of the top jobs in advertising because of a Toronto talk in which he said women don't usually succeed in the industry because motherly duties get in the way.

The legendary but controversial ad man was worldwide creative director for London-based WPP Group PLC, where he oversaw many of the world's best known ad agency networks, including Ms. Vonk's Ogilvy & Mather.

Ms. Vonk, in her 40s, said she's never found gender to be an issue. But she did initially put off having children out of insecurity over whether it would jeopardize her status at the agency.

When she became creative director, she worked out a way to accommodate both of her roles.

While she doesn't typically stay late at the office, she is always available for phone calls and e-mails when she's at home.

And she said she has a very supportive ex-husband who covers for her when she's out of town.

“At my level, it's a hard job for either gender and not that many people are really cut out for it. And if you're going to take it on, you have to have a strategy of how you're going to make your life work,” she said.

For Judy John, creative director at Leo Burnett in Toronto, the strategy sometimes involves bringing her four-year-old daughter into work on nights when she and her husband both have to work late.

She's also tries to spend her work hours much more efficiently, eating lunch at her desk instead of wasting time at business lunches.

“It's definitely difficult to be really great at both. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't,” said Ms. John, 38.

Jane Murray, 33, was recently promoted to the job of group creative director at Taxi Advertising & Design in Toronto, but confesses her maternal clock is ticking.

“I'm just at the point now where I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do. You don't want to be looked at like you are going to drop out and have kids . . .” she said.

Mr. French, known for his trademark cigar and brutal honesty in skewering bad ads, got into hot water this month at a Toronto event sponsored by ad industry website ihaveanidea.org.

“The woman asked why there are so few women creative directors. I said because you can't commit yourself to the job. And everyone who doesn't commit themselves fully to the job is crap at it . . . ,” Mr. French told The Globe and Mail.

“You can't be a great creative director and have a baby and keep spending time off every time your kids are ill.

“You can't do the job. Somebody has to do it and the guy has to do it the same way that I've had to spend months and months flying around the world and not seeing my kid.

“You think that's not a sacrifice? Of course it's a sacrifice. I hate it. But that's the job and that's what I do in order to keep my family fed.”

Mr. French is known for his politically incorrect views and for his varied résumé. In addition to working in advertising, he has managed a pornography company, trained as a novillero matador (fighting bulls under four years of age), and worked as a debt collector. He once managed the heavy metal band Judas Priest.

Ms. Murray said she wasn't surprised by Mr. French's comments.

“You expect this kind of crap from these old-school guys. Anyone who's shocked by that is probably not a woman . . .” Ms. Murray said. “There's definitely sexism in the business. It's just well hidden.”

Christina Yu, 29, had job offers from several ad agencies before accepting one this year at Lowe Roche. The question of gender — and whether she wants a family — was never an issue for the firms that were courting her, she said.

But, she added, when she's ready to have children, she'll need to make sure she has a support network in place, like enlisting her husband to pitch in more on busy days, for example.

“I want to do both and I don't feel like I can't do both,” Ms. Yu said, “at least right now.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051022.wxwomen1022/BNStory/National/

Politically incorrect? Just plain inappropriate

CAREER COACH
Politically incorrect? Just plain inappropriate
Views fuelled by stereotypes are best kept to yourself at the office, experts tell VIRGINIA GALT

By VIRGINIA GALT
Saturday, October 22, 2005 Page B14
WORKPLACE REPORTER
Globeandmail.com

Men who think motherhood makes women unsuitable for top jobs would be well-advised to zip it, legal experts and career advisers say.

This week's resignation of world-renowned advertising executive Neil French, after controversial remarks he made earlier this month in Toronto, underline the importance of keeping some views to yourself, says Gerry Smith, Toronto-based vice-president of organizational health at the employee assistance firm WarrenShepell.

Mr. French, a legendary adman who apparently prides himself on being outrageous, bowed to public outrage and resigned from his position as worldwide creative director of London-based WPP Group PLC.

But he went out firing, and expanded on earlier remarks in which he characterized women as unwilling to commit to the long hours their male colleagues put in to get to the top.

"You can't be a great creative director and have a baby and keep spending time off every time your kids are ill. You can't do the job."

Mr. French said out loud what many business leaders still privately believe, says Susan Black, president of Toronto-based Catalyst Canada, a research and advisory organization working to advance women in business.

"He expressed publicly one of the most common stereotypes that we see, the stereotype that if you have a family, if you have children, you are not committed to the workplace," Ms. Black says.

However, men such as Mr. French are gradually being replaced by more "progressive managers," and it is no longer acceptable in most work environments to express such views, she says.

"The key is not to act on these stereotypes. The key is to be very aware of your own stereotypes, your own biases and to check them," Ms. Black advises. "Before you make a decision or engage in any behaviour that affects another person, ask yourself if your beliefs are grounded in fact."

Mr. Smith says Mr. French's comments could be interpreted as harassment under Canadian law. "We cannot discriminate in terms of race or gender or marital status or family status," he notes.

Ms. Black says discrimination is generally more subtle than overt, which, in many respects, makes it tougher to tackle. But when employees do hear such comments, they should not let them go unchallenged.

"You have to find a way to constructively, maybe even humorously, call them on it. You don't have to make a big deal, but you shouldn't really let it go by."

Everyone has an obligation to make his or her workplace less discriminatory, and women, in particular, have to advocate for themselves if they want to dispel old stereotypes, Ms. Black says.

"Make sure you are always your own advocate and let people in the organization know what you are willing to do, what you are able to do and what you want to do."

Those women with families who want to climb the corporate ladder should make it very clear that, yes, they have children -- but they also have a solid record of performance and accomplishment.

Globe and Mail readers who posted on-line responses to yesterday's story about Mr. French's resignation were mixed, with some saying he had been the victim of "political correctness" and others noting that it's a reality of working life today that women --and men -- who want to get ahead often have to make sacrifices at the expense of their families.

Mr. French said few women have made it to the top of the advertising world as creative directors because they can't commit themselves to the job "and everyone who doesn't commit themselves fully to the job is crap at it."

Ms. Black says both men and women struggle with work and family responsibilities. The discrimination occurs when managers automatically assume that women with children will not be interested or willing to take on the added responsibilities that come with promotion.

There are other stereotypes as well that hold women back -- "that women can't be tough enough to do the business, that women can't be rainmakers, that's women can't relocate," she says.

A report issued last week by Catalyst in New York found that business leaders in the United States still perceive that men make better leaders because of a pervasive belief that "women take care and men take charge."

Colleen Moorehead, co-founder of the Judy Project, a leadership forum for executive women at the Rotman School of Management, says organizations that want to tap the talents of all potential leaders are now taking steps to ensure that their managers are trained to recognize and eradicate bias.

Mr. French's resignation this week clearly demonstrated the career-limiting implications of making public comments that perpetuate old stereotypes, Ms. Moorehead says.

Ms. Black says some organizations are now tackling the more subtle forms of systemic discrimination as well by holding managers accountable "around diversity and gender issues."

"They are managing the performance of their managers, they are looking at things such as who is getting promoted, who is getting recruited," she says.

"It is not the mark of a progressive leader to make sweeping generalizations about a person's potential" -- or lack of potential -- on the basis of age, race, family status or gender, she says.

Employment lawyer Janice Rubin of Toronto-based Rubin Manning and Thomlinson, says it is "obviously untrue" that women with children cannot take on leadership responsibilities.

However, old stereotypes die hard and many organizations are struggling to make their cultures more inclusive.

Ms. Rubin reports high demand for her firm's "respect-at-work workshops."

Most managers know better than to say what Mr. French said; most do not even think that way, she says.

"But we do find that one of the hot spots is joking and humour . . . you have to be very careful with joking."

As for Mr. French, who lost one of the world's most coveted jobs in advertising, Ms. Rubin says: "It's unfortunate for him, undoubtedly a man of talent and ability, that he felt compelled to speak in such an unfiltered way in such a public fashion."

The stereotypes

Women's traits

Affectionate

Appreciative

Emotional

Friendly

Sympathetic

Mild

Pleasant

Sensitive

Sentimental

Warm

Whiny

Dominant

Men's traits

Dominant

Achievement oriented

Active

Ambitious

Coarse

Forceful

Aggressive

Self-confident

Rational

Tough

Unemotional

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051022/RCACOACH22/TPBusiness/General

Exploring an Inhabited Country

Exploring an Inhabited Country

By David Taylor
Humanities

To wrap up the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Newberry Library in Chicago has delved into its collections to find a fresh perspective for understanding this episode in history.

"What often gets lost in the story is that Lewis and Clark did not explore a wilderness; they traveled through an inhabited homeland," says Frederick Hoxie, lead curator of "Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country," a new exhibit at the Newberry that runs from September 28 to January 14.

Many Americans have a basic knowledge of the 1804-1806 expedition: the epic journey involved 33 explorers, four thousand miles of unmapped territory, and a presidential mandate from Thomas Jefferson to find a northwest trade route. What will be fresh terrain are the perspectives on the Mandans, the Nez Perce, the Blackfeet, and others.

The Mandans, for example, lived in villages along the Missouri River and traded widely with different groups. The Sioux were expanding their reach westward, challenging the Mandans' dominance in some places. The Nez Perce, in alliance with the Crow, had already begun trading across the inhospitable mountains of the Continental Divide, essentially creating the path that Lewis and Clark followed.

"When Lewis and Clark come to the Mandans and spend the winter there," says Hoxie, "they find French Canadian traders; they find people trading under the British flag. They get nervous." So the explorers hired Toussaint Charbonneau, one of the French Canadian fur traders, and his wife Sacagawea to help navigate not just the landscape, but also the interrelationships that would be invisible to outsiders.

Little-known elements of the expedition's history come from diaries kept by the recruits, whose opinions were notably more candid than those of Lewis and Clark. From the start, Lewis had viewed his own journal as a public history, following the model of Captain James Cook, whose journal of the Pacific was a bestseller of the time. Conscious of his role, Lewis chose his words carefully.

Private Joseph Whitehouse was less inhibited. He describes their joy at finding Mandan allies in the forbidding upper reaches of the Missouri and the misery of the explorers' passage through the Bitterroot Mountains in late 1805."Our mockersons froze hard," Whitehouse wrote.

"In moments of stress," Hoxie says, "the difference between the very self-conscious commanders' views and the enlisted men's view is illuminating for historians."

Being in unfamiliar diplomatic waters could explain how violence erupted from what might have been a misunderstanding. At Two Medicine River, two Blackfeet youth were killed by Lewis and his party after what appeared to be a friendly beginning in which the visitors presented the Indians with a small flag and a peace medal. The next morning, the Blackfeet, possibly alarmed when Lewis mentioned alliances with the Nez Perce and Shoshones, grabbed some of the explorers' guns and horses, and fled, Lewis and his men in pursuit.

In addition to covering the expedition's encounters, the exhibit addresses current tribal concerns. A segment on Blackfeet language, for instance, explores its importance to the tribe's survival. Every educational program on the Blackfeet reservation in the 1800s set out to replace their language with English. Missionaries, officials, and schoolteachers said the tribe would be left behind if it did not abandon its ancient language. Opposition to English-only education crystallized in 1995, when the Nizipuhwahsin Center in northern Montana first offered courses to revive the Blackfeet language.

The language "made us healthy and allowed us to survive for thousands of years," says the school's director Darrell Kipp, who is quoted in the exhibition. "It is not something to be overcome; it is an integral part of who we are."

Hoxie hopes the exhibit gives Americans a chance to appreciate the different perspectives our histories offer us. "We see this as an exhibition that looks forward as much as it looks back," he says.

David Taylor is a freelance writer in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois, has received $275,000 in NEH funding for the "Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country" exhibit.

Humanities, September/October 2005, Volume 26/Number 5
http://www.neh.fed.us/news/humanities/2005-09/exploring.html