June 3, 1961

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THE MISFORTUNES OF WAR

To MOST OF THE CANADIANS who can remember him for themselves, the palmy years of Colonel Sam Hughes were half heroic and half preposterous. In his more blustery and grandiose moods the man who, as minister of militia, built, championed and tyrannized over the Canadian Army of 1914, 1915 and 1916 bore an unmistakeable resemblance to W. C. Fields in the role of a Mississippi gambler. By Ralph Allen

When a retarded child is born

THE GIFT OF A DOOMED CHILD

IT SNOWED the morning our second child was born. Unusual for April. But then Karen was an unusual baby. And she brought a precious gift to us. The doctors described her later as hopelessly retarded, spastic and epileptic. We know she was a blessing in disguise and brought more good into this world in two years than some people may bring in forty times that long.

OUTCAST IN THE HORN OF AFRICA

I LEFT MOMBASA during Ramadan, which began that year in March. Ramadan is the month when Moslems fast, as the Koran says, “each day from the time when a white thread can be distinguished from a black one, and until nightfall.” I was heading up to Somaliland and Ethiopia from Kenya. By PETER STOLLERY

THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT THE UNDEFENDED BORDER

I WISH THAT Statesmen and Public Speakers (American and Canadian) would not keep on referring to the thousands of miles of unprotected border stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I was born and now live just north of it. This smooth statement is quite false.

THE GREAT COLUMBIA RIVER FOUL-UP

THE GOVERNMENTS of Canada and British Columbia were expected to start damming the Columbia River next autumn. Instead, they have been damning each other with so much enthusiasm that North America’s greatest international hydro-power scheme is stalled indefinitely. By Bruce Hutchison

FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT

EDITORS, JOURNALISTS, and professors suffering from a sudden attack of “articulosis” ought to love the church. There it is, perpetually in the woodshed, waiting to be walloped. It matters not the time or season, they can always find some reason to berate it. By GRACE LANE SAYS

DAN PETRIE, the “underground railway” from Canada to Broadway

CANADIAN ACTORS have lately seemed to have two main chances of reaching the big money in the U. S. — high talent or Dan Petrie (or both). An amiable former radio announcer from Nova Scotia, Petrie is today a director of U. S. television, stage and movie drama who persistently hires Canadian actors despite a U. S. union ban on foreigners who are not stars. By Jacqueline Moore

COMMENT

MAILBAG

If there is a case against socialized medicine, Dr. Harold Challis (A doctor’s case for private medicine, April 22) certainly fails to state it. . . . The greater part of Dr. Challis’s argument has to do with the shortcomings of the National Health Service in Great Britain.

REPORT FROM AFRICA

The question: How much more tyranny for whites?

Johannesburg—For a stranger in South Africa watching the approach of Republic Day and this continent’s next great crisis it is impossible to forget the title of Alan Paton’s haunting novel Cry, the Beloved Country. It is a country to be loved and it is a country to cry for. By Ralph Allen IN JOHANNESBURG

Burglary by license

OF THE MILLION CANADIANS who signed close to a billion dollars' worth of time-payment contracts last year, an uncertain but large number probably made the mistake of thinking they owned the goods they'd undertaken to pay for. It was an easy mistake to make, since the clause that says the finance company owns the goods until the last payment is made almost always appears in very fine print indeed. By DERM DUNWOODY

May 201961