MOST READ

MOST TRUSTED
OCTOBER 2015

10
WAYS
TO BEAT
A COLD
PAGE 56

MARGARET ATWOOD ON CREATIVITY

PAGE 62

KIDNAPPED AND BURIED ALIVE

PAGE 70

THE WORLD ISN’T FALLING APART

PAGE 78

HOW TO WRITE AN AIRTIGHT WILL

PAGE 106

THE MAN WHO LEARNED TO

WALK THREE TIMES
PAGE 112

WHY SOLITUDE IS GOOD FOR YOU

PAGE 29

Q&A WITH PAUL GROSS .................................... 16

TIPS FOR BATTLING PROCRASTINATION ......... 125
FINISH THIS SENTENCE ....................................... 9
 ALL THE CRITICS SAY “YEAH!”
THE REVIEWS ARE IN...

“
SPECTACULAR CELEBRATION!” Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star

“FABULOUS, FUNNY “ONE OF THE BEST

& FANTASTIC! MUSICALS I’VE EVER SEEN.
DON’T MISS THIS ONE!”
Jennifer Valentyne, Breakfast Television
KINKY BOOTS is crazy good.”
Steve Paikin, TVO

Photos by Cylla Von Tiedemann

A NEW MUSICAL BASED ON A TRUE STORY

“A FEEL GOOD SHOW.

YOU LEAVE THE THEATRE WITH A BIG SMILE ON YOUR FACE
and a bounce in your high-heeled step!”
Carolyn MacKenzie, Global TV

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 Contents OCTOBER 2015

Cover Story
56 10 Ways to Beat a Cold
Handy tips for those times when you’re
already sick. L I SA F I E L D S

Profile
62 Lady Oracle
Margaret Atwood on creativity and
the future. L I SA B RY N R U N D L E

Drama in Real Life

70 Kidnapped and Trapped
Below Ground
Buried alive, a Texas man races against
the clock. A N D R E W J O N E S F R O M 1 9 8 4

Society
78 The Case for Optimism
Regardless of what we read in the headlines,
P. | 62
the world isn’t falling apart. ST E V E N P I N K E R
A N D A N D R E W M AC K F R O M S L A T E . C O M

Family
86 Just the Nine of Us
Making ends meet requires patience and
ingenuity. LO R R E T TA N E E B A R F R O M TO R O N TO LIFE

Heart
90 I Wish I Could Tell Her That Now
Michael Christie learns compassion for his
mother, the parent. F R O M T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
JOCELYN MICHEL/
National Affairs CONSULAT;
JAS ON GORDON

(PHOTO ASSISTANT)
96 Going for Title MARC-ANTOINE
DUBOIS; (HAIR AND
MAKEUP) BRIGITTE
In 2014, Tsilhqot’in Nation changed the way LACOSTE; (STYLIST)
MARIE-CLAUDE
Aboriginal groups claim land. But the fight GUAY; (MODEL)
SYLVIE LADOUCEUR
isn’t over. A R N O KO P E C KY F R O M T H E WA L R U S FROM FOLIO

ADDITIONAL MEDIA IN OUR TABLET VERSIONS

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 1
 Vol. 187 | No. 1,122
OCTOBER 2015

Money
P. | 16
106 Will Power
Veteran estate lawyers offer sage
advice on managing your affairs.
B A R RY M . F I S H A N D L E S KOTZ E R
F R O M T H E W I L LS L AW Y E R S

Editors’ Choice
112 Keep Moving Forward
Peter Kavanagh’s polio diagnosis
was just the beginning of a lifelong
lesson in perseverance.
FROM THE MAN WHO LEARNED
TO WA L K T H R E E T I M E S

4 Editor’s Letter
6 Contributors
7 Letters VOICES & VIEWS

10 Senior Project
READER FAVOURITES Ardra Cole helps older people
and older dogs stay connected.
9 Finish This Sentence S U SA N P E T E R S
14 Laughter, the Best Medicine
The RD Interview
20 Points to Ponder
16 In the Trenches
68 @ Work
Actor and director Paul Gross
95 As Kids See It on Canadian talent, going grey
105 Life’s Like That and his new war movie, Hyena
AI MÉE VA N DRIM MELEN

127 That’s Outrageous! Road. CO U R T N E Y S H E A

129 Brainteasers
Department of Wit
131 Trivia Quiz
18 The Waiting List
132 Sudoku How a can-do fellow gets things
133 Word Power done. A R T H U R B L AC K F R O M
136 Quotes PA I N T T H E TOW N B L AC K

2 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

ART OF LIVING
29 One Is the Loveliest
Number
Why it pays to spend time
alone. M E G A N J O N E S
Health
32 Outsmarting Breast
Cancer
How to manage the risks.
SA M A N T H A R I D E O U T
Health
38 Crisis Point
Charting the rise of suicide.
SA M A N T H A R I D E O U T
Food
42 Nutrition for Life
Tips for eating well at every
age. K R I ST I G R E E N
Pets
44 Sure Shots
A guide to pet vaccination.
VA L E R I E H OW E S

Culture
48 Past Participants
In History’s People, Margaret
MacMillan looks at the movers
and shakers who shaped our
world. SA R A H L I S S

P. | 44 GET SMART!

125 13 Things You Should

Know About
Procrastination
KAT I E U N D E RWO O D

128 Rd.ca
October website highlights.
MA STERF ILE

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 3
 Editor’s Letter
A Healthy Issue
IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, you dread the common cold. Every fall, it tries to
forge an unholy alliance with my allergies and compound the respira-
tory problems I’ve developed due to a collapsed sinus. Any-
one who similarly dreams of running away when they hear
coughs or sniffles will enjoy our cover story, “10 Ways to
Beat a Cold” (page 56).
If you’re like me, you know three people battling
cancer. One of them, my sister-in-law, has under-
gone an operation and is struggling through che-
motherapy. She now faces radiation treatments,
followed by five years of hormone injections.
She is just one reason I read “Outsmarting
Breast Cancer” (page 32) with great interest.
If you’re like me, you pay close attention
to what you consume in the hopes of staying
fit and enjoying the golden years ahead. But
even if you’re younger than I am, the advice
in “Nutrition for Life” (page 42) can set you
up for decades of healthful eating.
And if you’re really like me and appreciate
good reads, don’t miss our Editors’ Choice. “Keep
Moving Forward” is the story of Peter Kavanagh,
a Canadian man of uncommon perseverance
who was diagnosed with polio in the 1950s at two
months old and later underwent experimental
surgery that required him to relearn how to walk.
Turn to page 112 for his truly inspiring story.
ROGER A ZIZ

Send an email to
robert@rd.ca

4 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
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rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 5
 Contributors
LISA BRYN RUNDLE
(Writer, “Lady Oracle,”
page 62)
Home base:
Toronto. Previously
published in Toronto Life and
The Walrus. I was nervous to in-
terview Margaret Atwood. I looked
into her eyes and just froze. She was
like some kind of angel. But, thank-
fully, my skittishness passed and we
had a lovely chat. I’d love to inter-
view Kim Kardashian. I have a lot of
questions for her, although I’m not
sure I want to know the answers.
PETER DIAMOND
(Illustrator,
“Kidnapped and
Trapped Below
Ground,” page 70)
Home base: Vienna. Previously
published in Howler and The
Progressive. When illustrating
this sort of piece, you look for
the drama in the story. But here, I
tried my best to be empathetic and
not to sensationalize. My drawing
technique is influenced by Euro-
pean turn-of-the-century illustrators
and the comics I read as a kid.
6 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
RAINA KIRN
(Photographer, “I Wish
I Could Tell Her That
Now,” page 90)
Home base:
Toronto. Previously published in
The Globe and Mail and ESPN The
Magazine. Working on Galiano Is-
land was amazing! Wilson, my busi-
(DI AMON D) M ANUEL CARREON LOP EZ; (KIRN) WILSON BARRY; (P ETERS) CHE YE NNE RAE
ness partner with whom I normally
shoot, and I are from British Colum-
bia, so Galiano is special. I’m very
inspired by the people I photo-
graph. We recently shot Pan Am ath-
letes. Their work ethic was so moving.
SUSAN PETERS
(Writer, “Senior
Project,” page 10)
Home base:
Winnipeg. Previ-
ously published in Maclean’s and
Cottage Life. As a writer, I like stor-
ies about humans interacting with
animals—they’re fun. Animals can
bring people together across gener-
ations, from 20-something students
to 90-something retirees. I’m defin-
itely more of a dog person than
a cat person. I want to pet every
pooch I see walking on the street.
 Letters
READERS COMMENT ON OUR RECENT ISSUES

A TIME TO RECHARGE
“The Benefits of Taking
Breaks” (June 2015) put a
smile on my face. When I was
a pupil at Sir Adam Beck Col-
legiate in London, Ont., I used
to peer out the windows of
the second-floor classrooms
and daydream. I would see
views that were inaccessible
from the street—the rooftops,
the big church, the gardens,
lawns and factories. One
teacher allowed this “refuelling,” but others were always after us
to keep our eyes to the front.
Much later, when I taught at a school in Nipigon, Ont., an entire
wall of my classroom was made up of windows that overlooked the
town. Often, my students and I gathered at the windows to watch
whatever was taking place outside. I hope they benefited from our
short refuelling stops—I know I needed them!
GLENA CLEARWATER, Nipig on, O nt.

BORN TO BE WILD way. Instead of having sympathy for

I really enjoy the magazine, espe- Lauren Fagen, the young woman
PETER RYAN

cially the Drama in Real Life stories. who was attacked, I found myself
However, a recent one, “Lion Attack!” feeling much more sorry for the pair
(August 2015), rubbed me the wrong of lions involved.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 7
READER’S DIGEST

Humans have brains and are
supposed to use them. Animals
follow their instincts. In my opinion,
those beautiful creatures were by
no means at fault. Given the envi-
ronment in which they were forced
to live, it’s no wonder they were
protective of the little territory
they had.
BETH BARNES, B u r l i n g t o n , O n t .
FAMILY STORIES
“Notes From My Father” (June 2015)
was very touching. It almost made
me cry. Well worth reading!
GAYDA JACKSON, o n Fa c e b o o k
LONG-TERM COMMITMENT
I started reading Reader’s Digest as a
kid. I think it’s the best magazine out
there. It is educational, humorous,
challenging and modern. I especially
appreciate being privy to people’s
real-life anecdotes and learning new
vocabulary from the Word Power
section every month.
As I age, this magazine ages with
me. I even bought a huge magnifying
glass to make seeing the text easier.
Always an enjoyable experience—
thank you, Reader’s Digest!
DONNA THOMPSON, E d m o n t o n
MISSED DIAGNOSIS
I really enjoyed the article “See
Changes” (July 2015). Unfortunately,
you forgot a disease: myasthenia gra-
vis, a chronic autoimmune condition
that causes muscle weakness. My
first symptoms were droopy eyelids
and double vision. It took a month to
pinpoint the problem (my optomet-
rist was reluctant to send me to an
ophthalmologist), and shortly after
my diagnosis, I began to have trouble
swallowing. I lost 20 pounds, had dif-
ficulty getting up out of a chair and
was unable to move around without
a walker. I began taking medication,
and after about a year my health sta-
bilized. It is amazing how few people
have heard of this disease.
BILL KENNY, Fe r g u s , O n t .
Published letters are edited for length
and clarity.

We want to hear from you! Have something to say about an article you read in Reader’s Digest? Send your
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reproduced in all print and electronic media. Receipt of your submission cannot be acknowledged.

8 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
 FINISH THIS SENTENCE

The song that always

makes me feel
better is… …“Me
and Bobby
McGee”
…any …“Happy” by Janis Joplin.
It brings back

disco by Pharrell Williams.

My wife passed away
wonderful memo-
ries of camping

song. in 2010, at the age of

36. This song helps me
in Cape Breton,
N.S., during
Because I’m a get through the day. my youth.
disco queen. JONATHAN T. DEAN, TINA TOWNSEND,
ALENA BAJKOV, MONTREAL KITCHENER, ONT.
OSOYOOS, B.C.

…“Tomorrow”
from Annie. In winter
…“Stronger”
here it can rain an by Kelly Clarkson.
awful lot, so singing It makes me feel like
about the sun is great! I can conquer anything!
SUSAN JAMES, MICHELE LONG, KANATA, ONT.
NORTH VANCOUVER

…“What a Wonderful World.”

It always puts things into perspective for me.
LILA NORRIS DUFFY, PAKENHAM, ONT.

 Visit the Reader’s Digest Canada Facebook page for your chance to finish the next sentence.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 9
 VOICES & VIEWS

Ardra Cole helps older people and

older dogs stay connected

Senior Project
BY S USAN P ETERS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON McKENZIE FRASER

! SEVEN YEARS AGO, Ardra Cole

walked out of her late brother’s To-
ronto home, his chocolate Labrador
retriever by her side. Her sibling’s
sudden death meant the 10-year-old
dog, recently diagnosed with cancer,
had no one to care for him. “What
happens to all the Mr. Browns of the
world when they’re old and sick and
lose their human companions?”
Cole asked herself.
Then an educational psycholo-
gist and adult educator in her late
50s, Cole had studied how people
caring for family members with
Alzheimer’s viewed their dogs as
stress relievers. She had also seen
10 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
first-hand the calming effect her
own therapy dog had on patients
she visited in palliative care. Start-
ing an organization to support sen-
iors with dogs and senior dogs that
had lost their owners seemed like
the next logical step—and a fitting
memorial to her brother.
Cole founded ElderDog in 2009, as
Mr. Brown, who had been adopted
by her pack of Portuguese Water
Dogs, happily chased sticks despite
his waning strength. “Caring for him
toward the end of his life was such
a gift,” she says. “He was at his most
vulnerable, and I feel like it really
brought out the best in me.” ➸
Ardra Cole (seen here with
her Portuguese Water Dog,
Cacao) founded ElderDog
to serve aging people and
aging dogs, and to foster
the bond between the two.
READER’S DIGEST

With eight chapters in Prince has placed 80 dogs, some of which

Edward Island, Nova Scotia (where have gone to people whom tradi-
Cole has lived since 2012), Ontario tional pet shelters deemed too old
and Alberta, ElderDog strives to to adopt. One of those seniors is Joy
help seniors keep their pets at home Saunders. The 96-year-old has a life-
as long as possible. The organiza- long fondness for retrievers, but
tion’s 320 volunteers—who include when her most recent dog, a Nova
seniors recovering from the death Scotia duck tolling retriever, passed
of their own canine companions away, Saunders’s family tried to con-
and people living in apartments that vince her to get a canary. Instead,
prohibit animals—offer rides to vet Cole proposed a golden retriever
appointments, provide care (brush- named Prayer, now 12.
ing fur, administering “She is old, so am I—
medicine) and walk we suit each other,”
the dogs. says Saunders. The
Students who miss
On the trail pair strolls a kilometre
their childhood pets where 96-year- and a half through the
also give their time, old Joy Saunders woods near the town of
says Sacha Nadeau, walks her golden Lunenburg, N.S., three
one of the organiza-
tion’s volunteer
retriever, Prayer, times a day, stopping
to chat with other dog
coordinators. The she has “all sorts walkers along the way.
26-year-old gerontol- of friends.” “My social life is on the
ogy graduate regularly street,” says Saunders.
walks two Samoyeds, “At my age, my con-
which bark excitedly, jump up and temporaries are dead, and it’s very
wag their entire bodies as soon lonely. On this trail where I walk,
as Nadeau opens the gate to their I have all sorts of friends.”
house. The owner, an older man Saunders is well aware of the
worried about being toppled by the health benefits, emotional and phys-
energetic pair—which Nadeau lik- ical, of owning a dog. And as Cole
ens to mini polar bears—leaves jok- notes, it’s the kind of relationship
ing voice mails whenever the dogs that works both ways. “When you get
are “ready, willing and able to walk.” to a certain age and your family—if
If an owner must be admitted to you have family—has moved away,
hospital or passes away, ElderDog you might look at yourself and think,
will foster a pet temporarily or find I’m not needed anymore. But this
it a new home. To date, the group dog really does need you.”

12 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

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 Laughter
THE BEST MEDICINE

BIOLOGY LESSONS
Ed: My uncle and I went on safari
to Africa last year. THE BEST JOKE
John: Oh, yeah? How did it go? I EVER TOLD
Ed: We spotted a leopard. BY GRAHAM CHITTENDEN
John: Don’t be silly. They’re born
Sometimes it’s nice to
that way! gcfl.net
get off the computer
A man walks into a fish-and-chips and go reconnect
with people to talk
shop with a fish under his arm and
about what I
asks, “Do you have any fish cakes?” saw on the
“Of course,” says the shop owner. computer.
“Great,” replies the man, gesturing
Follow
at the fish he’s carrying. “It’s this Graham on
guy’s birthday.” gcfl.net
@grahamchit.

FALL FROM GRACE

A husband and wife were visiting
WE’RE PUNNY THAT WAY
the fairgrounds together one after-
noon. The wife wanted to go on the ■ I tried to catch some fog. I mist.
Ferris wheel, but her husband was
■ They told me I had Type A blood,
too afraid, so she went on the ride
but it was a Type O.
by herself.
The wheel went round and round ■ I wondered why the baseball was
until suddenly the wife was thrown getting bigger. Then it hit me.
out and landed in a heap on the
■ I’m reading a book about anti-
ground.
gravity. I can’t put it down. reddit.com
Her husband raced over and
asked, “Are you hurt?”
Think you can make us laugh? Send us an
“Of course, I’m hurt!” she replied. original joke, and it could mean a free
“Three times around, and you didn’t year’s subscription for your household.
wave once!” gcfl.net See page 8 or rd.ca/joke for details.

14 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
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THE RD INTERVIEW

Actor and director Paul Gross on Canadian talent,

going grey and his new war movie, Hyena Road

In the
Trenches
BY COUR T N E Y SH E A
ILLUSTRATION BY AIMÉE VAN DRIMMELEN

Can you explain the title of your film?

What is Hyena Road?
A few years ago, I went to Afghanistan to
meet the troops. The experience was not
at all what I had imagined. It’s a complex,
chaotic place, both beautiful and harsh.
When I was there, every road they were build-
ing had a nickname Canadians would find
easy to remember. A lot seemed to be
about beer—Route Molson Ice,
Route Sleeman. With Route
Hyena, the military
wanted to [access]
the Panjwai district
in the region con-
sidered to be the
birthplace of the
Taliban, one of
the hardest places
to control.

16 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
What surprised you most about
what you learned over there?
Just how phenomenally complicated
counter-insurgency is. To borrow a
line from the movie: there is no win-
ning—there’s just an end state laid
down by foreign policy.
Do you consider Hyena Road a
political movie?
I don’t have a position on whether
we should be engaged in these types
of conflicts, but once we were there,
our military represented us with
enormous dignity. I was interested
in the semi-blind nature with which
wars like this are conducted. I tried
to convey the idea that nobody really
knows what’s going on. Within the
military, a sniper would have little
knowledge of what an intelligence
officer is doing and [vice versa].
The film has moments of levity:
dancing, farting, Skype sex. Was it
important to show that quality?
Yes, because soldiers laugh a lot.
When death is proximate, you
need a giggle.
On to more important mat-
ters: this film heralds your
silver fox, or, in your case,
snowy fox period.
[My hair] has been like this
for almost 30 years, but I
always dyed it. Two years
ago, I visited the Sahara.
There was nobody there to dye my
hair. I liked how it looked, so I left it.
You have been referred to as a
“stubbornly Canadian” artist.
What does that mean to you?
I’ve spent a lot of time here, though
I’ve worked in the States, too. I feel
most at home in Canada, but I’ve
also been very lucky to be able to do
the things I’m interested in doing
here. A lot of people aren’t able to.
What should our film industry be
doing to keep talent from defecting?
We need projects for our great tal-
ents. William Hutt was a stalwart
of the Stratford Festival—he played
in King Lear multiple times—but
nobody ever made a movie for him.
Speaking of stalwarts: you’ve been
married to fellow actor Martha
Burns for 27 years, which is hardly
the norm in showbiz. Any tips?
First you have to find somebody who
is as patient as Martha, because with-
out that, I don’t know where we’d be.
I think respect is the most important
thing—from respect comes patience.
And when times get tough, you can
always pull out your Mountie cos-
tume from Due South.
If she gets a little bit criminal, that’s
what I have to do.
Hyena Road opens in theatres Oct. 9.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 17
DEPARTMENT OF WIT

How a can-do fellow

gets things done

The Waiting
List
BY A RTH U R B L AC K
F ROM PAIN T THE TOW N B L AC K
ILLUSTRATION BY IAN TURNER

! AS A MOSTLY RETIRED GUY,

I get to spend a lot of time on chores
and projects I never seemed to get
around to when I was nine-to-fiving
it. Naturally, I try to bring the same
level of professional efficiency to
these non-paying pastimes as I did to
my job. We’re not splitting the atom
or solving the Middle East conflict
here. The key is simple, no-nonsense
day-to-day organization. That’s why
each night, before I turn in, I sit down
and make out a to-do list. Here, for
instance, are my goals for today:
1. Do stretching exercises
2. Paint garden gate
3. Groom dog
4. Change oil in car
5. Weed flower bed
6. Pay bills
Now, I wasn’t born yesterday.
I know life is unpredictable and cir-
cumstances change. A guy needs to
be flexible and creative if he expects
to get anything accomplished. He
can’t just blindly charge down the
field if somebody moved the goal-
posts overnight.
This morning, for example, has
turned out to be grey and overcast.
You can practically smell rain in the
air. That means I can say goodbye to
my plans to weed the flower bed and

18 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
paint the garden gate. Fortunately—
here comes that flexible, adaptive
quality I mentioned—I have a
backup: an emergency list of to-do
chores to fill such gaps. So we have
a rain delay? What a magnificent op-
portunity to cross off an item from my
reserve list, like… the weekend cross-
word puzzle! That’s been weighing
on my mind since Saturday. What’s
a five-letter word for HIJKLMNO?
1. FINISH CROSSWORD PUZZLE
Well, that took a little longer than I
expected. The answer was “water”—
H to (2) O—get it? Neither did I. I
had to Google it. And since I was al-
ready at the keyboard, I decided to…
2. CHECK EMAIL
Which also took longer than I had
anticipated. (Have you seen the
video where the shark comes up
right under the tour guide’s kayak?
I never get tired of watching that.)
Anyway, no point getting up to
my elbows in used engine oil right
before lunchtime, so scratch the oil
change. And I’d be way too uncom-
fortable doing stretching exercises
on a full belly, so skip that, too. On
to alternative chore No. 3:
3. CHECK EMAIL
Oh. Already did that. Well, no harm
in seeing if anything new came in….
PAINT THE TOWN BLACK BY ARTHUR BLACK, HARBOUR PUBLISHING, 2015, HARBOURPUBLISHING.COM
Cripes, where did the time go?
It didn’t rain after all. In fact, it’s full
sun in the garden now. Baaaad time
to paint the gate; I’m pretty sure I
read that paint won’t set properly if
it’s too hot. That leaves: groom dog.
You’ve heard the saying “Let
sleeping dogs lie,” right? There’s a
lot of wisdom in those old adages.
I had the brush, comb and clippers
all ready to go when I spied my dog
snoring under the hammock.
Under the unoccupied hammock.
4. TEST OUTDOOR SLEEPING GEAR
I’m not going to lie to you. I took a
little break there. Oh, I could have
crossed the bill-paying chore off my
list, but come on—in weather like
this? You can’t appreciate a ham-
mock in January, you know. Best to
make hay while the sun shines, as
they say. Or in this case, saw logs.
Just a quick 40 winks listening to
the birds and the drone of someone
else’s lawn mower, far, far away.
Actually, a little more than 40
winks, I guess. As a matter of fact,
the sun’s going down and it’s getting
cool. I could probably get those bills
paid after supper, except the Monty
Python reunion special is on cable
tonight. According to TV Guide, it’s
three hours long.
That’ll leave me just enough time
to make my to-do list for tomorrow.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 19
 Points to Ponder
BY C H RISTINA PALASS IO

(LI NCOLN) N AT I O N A L P OST (NOV. 11, 2014); (MAU) DEC. 2007; (HUNTER) THE G LOBE AND M AIL (JUNE 19, 2015); (SNYDER) © 2015.
I think I was more nervous at that No matter what the specific nature

moment seeing him play in front of
a crowd than I was in my first big-
league game—and I was really nerv-
ous in my first game.
B l u e Ja y s c a t c h e r
RUSSELL MARTIN on watching
his father play “The Star-Spangled
Banner” on the saxophone before a Dodgers game
PHOTOS: (MARTIN) © 2015 MLBAM.LP; (SNYDER) © GROUPE TVA. QUOTES: (MARTIN) S P O RT S N E T (APRIL 2015);
of a project—whether it’s a park or
a product, a book or a business—
optimism is always central to my
work. It’s as important to what I do
as research tools, computer systems
or a sense of colour.
D e s i g n e r BRUCE MAU, in The Walrus

Over the years, I have kept myself

By the end of the war we were crack-
ing 90,000 messages a month, and
Churchill called us the geese that laid
the golden eggs and never cackled.
Edmonton resident
DOROTHY LINCOLN on her work as a code breaker
in Britain during the Second World War
out of the stories I write as much as
he wrote himself into his. I suspect
I have avoided trying to compete
with his extraordinary life. It is easier
to be ordinary.
Jo u r n a l i s t JUSTINE HUNTER
on her father, Bob Hunter, founder of Greenpeace

There is something violent in

politics that you do not expect
until you have lived it. There is
pressure from party supporters,
from opponents, from the media.
It gets inside you physically.
There is a constant discomfort.
JULIE SNYDER, p a r t n e r o f Pa r t i Q u é b é c o i s l e a d e r
Pierre Karl Péladeau, in L’actualité

20 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
 [Snoop Dogg] owes an apology to
any fans whose lives were steeped
in his misogyny, growing up mem-
orizing his casually tossed-off,
subhuman descriptors of women
and sexual relationships.
Fo r m e r Mu c h Mu s i c V J HANNAH SUNG on the rapper’s self-
proclaimed changed attitude toward women

As long as people of colour have I remember my mom saying: “I love

P HOTOS: (S UN G) COURTESY OF H AN NA H S UNG; (RI VEST) COURTESY OF VÉ RONIQU E RIVE ST

been free to form communities,
white supremacy has existed to
remind us where we stand. And
as long as white supremacy has
resulted in violence against our
bodies, white culture has existed
you and I support you, but all I look
at is a life of unhappiness, isolation,
prejudice and illness.”
DAVID FURNISH, f i l m m a k e r a n d
h u s b a n d o f E l t o n Jo h n , on coming out

to downplay the problem, instruct to his mother during the AIDS crisis

us on how to deal with it peaceably

and deny it exists at all. Everyone is paying so much
attention to what’s in our food.
Community activist and So why are we drinking
w r i t e r ANDRAY DOMISE, in Hazlitt magazine so much crap?

I’ve been a chef in the industry VÉRONIQUE RIVEST,

10 years now and I recognize that t h e w o r l d ’s t o p f e m a l e
behaviour; you see it everywhere. s o m m e l i e r, in The Globe and Mail

It’s the mentality of, you’re in the

kitchen; you’re with the bros…
you’re kind of like one of them.
Slapping on the a**, lewd com-
ments… whatever. That’s what
kitchens are like, a lot of them.
We won’t be looking at what hap-
pened today in Parliament. At times
we’ll be satirical, humour-driven,
personality-driven, and I think that’s
a thing that doesn’t exist today.

C h e f CHARLOTTE LANGLEY on the CRAIG SILVERMAN, f o u n d i n g

culture of sexual harassment in restaurant kitchens editor of the new Buzzfeed Canada

QUOTES: (SUNG) THE GLOBE AND MAIL (MAY 28, 2015); (DOMISE) JULY 3, 2015; (LANGLEY) THE GLOBE
AND MAIL (JUNE 19, 2015); (FURNISH) THE TORONTO STAR (JUNE 26, 2015); (RIVEST) MAY 23, 2015;
(SILVERMAN) THE GLOBE AND MAIL (APRIL 24, 2015)
 SPECIAL FEATURE

“Canadians should feel confident

in the products we purchase and that
we know that our safety is the most
important standard to be upheld.”
– DEBBIE, ALBERTA

Reader’s Digest conducts an annual Trusted Brand™ survey in which

we ask Canadians to vote on the brands they trust the most. In this study,
Canadians voted for brands across 40 product categories, from consumer
packaged goods to financial institutions and Canadian retailers.

Survey participants also shared their overall feedback on why trust

is so important when making a purchase decision.

READ ON
TO LEARN
MORE!

Source: Reader’s Digest Trusted Brand™ Contest submissions, January 8 to April 9, 2015. ™ Trusted Brand is a registered trademark of Reader’s Digest Association Canada ULC
 SPECIAL FEATURE

TRUST BY THE NUMBERS

of Canadians
would pay
more for the
products of Canadians are
and services word-of-mouth marketers, praising
they trust. trusted brands to family and friends.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on

why trust is so important when you are
purchasing a new product or service.
We know you have high standards Our survey covered brands across 40
for the products and services categories: everything from life insurance
you select. You’re knowledgeable to vitamins, toothpaste to sunscreen,
consumers who do the research, bottled water to hybrid cars. Whether you’re
take test drives, make comparisons, looking to make a big purchase or a small
and form educated opinions. one, these are the brands to watch.

WHEN A BRAND RETAINS THE TRUSTED BRAND™ SEAL,

IT’S A SIGN OF CONSUMER CONFIDENCE. AND THEY DELIVER
ON THEIR PROMISES. VISIT TRUSTEDBRANDS.RD.CA
TO SEE THE FULL LIST OF WINNERS!

Source: 2015 Reader’s Digest Trusted Brand™ Study. ™Trusted Brand is a registered trademark of Reader’s Digest Association Canada ULC. Commissioned by Reader’s Digest in
an independent opinion poll, Ipsos Reid conducted a nationwide online survey of over 4000 Canadian adults, including an over-sample of 1,510 Quebec residents. Quota sampling
was used and the sample was stratified by language (English n = 2,634 and French n = 1,392). The results were weighted according to census data to ensure that the overall
sample is representative of the Canadian population. The precision of online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the overall results are considered accurate
to within +/-1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what the results would be had the entire population of adults in Canada been polled.
 SPECIAL FEATURE

WHY
We asked our
readers to share
how trust influences
their purchase

TRUST
decisions and overall
shopping habits.

Here’s what Canadians

MATTERS
told us about why
trust matters when
purchasing a product.

“Trust is built by years of providing quality products, tested “Canadians should feel
by real consumers, and offered at a fair price. If there is a confident in the products we
problem immediate action is taken and the customer feels purchase and that we know
appreciated. If I have this trust with a company I will buy that our safety is the most
their product and feel at ease with my purchase.” important standard to be
– NICOLE, NOVA SCOTIA upheld.”– DEBBIE, ALBERTA

“I am very careful about “I look for consistent high quality in all products that I buy.
the brands that I purchase I am willing to pay more for a product that I know will always
and I do research on certain meet my expectations, whether it’s a disposable product or
products to make sure that one that I plan on using for a long time. I have a 10-year-old
the product is trustworthy.” car (Toyota) that has been low maintenance, reliable and safe.
– WENDY, NORTHWEST Reliability and consistency are very important to me.”
TERRITORIES – KAREN, ONTARIO

“To me, trust is extremely important when purchasing “I have greater trust in North
a product because I believe the products I invest in greatly American brands, particularly
help identify my lifestyle. I only use cruelty-free beauty Canadian brands, that I know have
and makeup products. That said, by trusting the labels gone through stringent regulatory
and companies of the products I believe in, I feel as though processes to get on the shelves.”
I am doing something good for both myself and others.” – PAMELA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
– JESSICA, QUEBEC

Source: Reader’s Digest Trusted Brand™ Contest submissions, January 8 to April 9, 2015. ™ Trusted Brand is a registered trademark of Reader’s Digest Association Canada ULC
 SPECIAL FEATURE

WHAT WILL MOST

LIKELY INFLUENCE
YOUR DECISION TO
TRY A NEW PRODUCT
OR SERVICE?

Whether it’s word of mouth, industry or consumer reviews,

a sales staff recommendation, advertising, popular trends
or coupon/incentive, please tell us what would most likely
influence your decision to try a new product or service.

VISIT TRUSTEDBRANDS.RD.CA/CONTEST TO ENTER FOR

A CHANCE TO WIN THE GRAND PRIZE OF $500! THERE ARE
ALSO TWO SECONDARY PRIZES OF $250 TO BE WON!

For full contest rules and to enter, please visit trustedbrands.rd.ca/contest or write to: Trusted Brands Contest, Reader’s Digest Prize Award Administrator’s Offi ce, 1125 Stanley
Street, Montréal, Québec H3B 5H5. The final close date for this contest is December 6, 2015 at 23:59:59 EST.
 SPECIAL FEATURE

ONE OF THE MOST TRUSTED

PASSENGER CAR MANUFACTURERS
Toyota is renowned for delivering cars and trucks that boast superior
quality, safety and affordability—while also being very fun to drive.

CAMRY XSE CAMRY SE

“Toyota has a stellar
record of offering our
customers cars and
trucks that deliver
exceptional and long-
lasting value. A great
example is the all-new
2015 Toyota Camry.
North America’s
number-one selling
car just got even
better, taking a bold
step forward with a
striking new look and
an equally enjoyable
driving experience.”
– SEIJI ICHII,
PRESIDENT AND CEO,
TOYOTA CANADA INC.
R
PA
Toyota is proud to have been named a Reader’s Digest
Most Trusted Brand™ for seven consecutive years in
the Passenger car category.
It’s a status that has now become even stronger thanks
to the bold new 2015 Toyota Camry and Camry Hybrid.
Engineers and designers rebuilt and reimagined the
bold new Camry from the ground up with an emphasis
on striking design and superior handling, all the while
maintaining Toyota’s legendary quality, dependability
and durability. As a result the exterior is more attractive
than ever, with more contoured lines, sculpted head-
lamps and a bolder stance. Visual appeal is particularly
pronounced for the all-new XSE model, through its
aggressive new front grille. The interior of all Camry
models features soft-touch materials, detailed stitch-
ing and a redesigned and highly functional centre
console. Topping it off, there’s a quieter cabin, more
responsive steering, available wireless charging, and
advanced safety technologies with a choice of three
powertrains—4-cylinder, V6 and hybrid (featuring
Toyota’s proven Hybrid Synergy Drive®) to give drivers
the performance and efficiency they desire.

RE
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SE

TU

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Trusted Brand is a registered trademark of Reader’s Digest Association Canada ULC.
GE C
R C FA
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We benefit.
Join the millions of Canadians who use natural health products (NHPs).
The Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) promotes a Canada in
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Safe & effective NHPs – look for the NPN.

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 ART of LIVING

Why it pays to spend time alone

One Is the
Loveliest Number
BY M E GAN JO NE S
ILLUSTRATION BY GRACE CHO

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 29
READER’S DIGEST
! IN 2011, RESEARCHERS at Har-
vard University and the University of
Virginia exposed study participants
to a small, painful electric shock.
They then handed over $5 and asked
each person how much of the $5
they’d be willing to forfeit to avoid the
unpleasant sensation. In the next
step of the study, the participants sat,
solo, in a room for 15 minutes. The
only available stimulation was the
option of shocking themselves by
pushing a button. Of those who had
said they’d offer money to escape the
zap, more than 60 per cent of the men
and a quarter of the women volun-
tarily shocked themselves. Physical
pain, it seemed, was preferable to
spending a few minutes alone with
their thoughts.
Solitude, clearly, isn’t our most
comfortable state. But based on
recent research, we’d be wise to
overcome anxiety around being by
ourselves. While nobody’s advocating
becoming a hermit, there are benefits
to spending at least some time alone.
We become better people
According to Eric Klinenberg, a
sociology professor at New York
University, having smartphones and
social media accounts at our finger-
tips heightens our aversion to being
on our own. Our fears of missing
out are stoked by endless photos
of friends doing exciting things. We
constantly need to be entertained,
30 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
Klinenberg says, and as a result
we’ve become alienated from what
he calls “productive solitude.”
Reflecting on our actions and
thinking about future personal
improvements are the cornerstones
of productive solitude. Carving
out time to do these things can help
make us happier, stronger and more
accountable. The process allows us
to step back, then return to the
world with more insight and energy.
“The only way we have a chance to
make sense of our choices is [through]
solo reflection,” Klinenberg says.
“Unless you’re completely content
with who you are and the way you
live, productive solitude is necessary.”
We’re kinder to strangers
In a 2012 study published in the
Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, researchers completed
a series of experiments to determine
how being socially connected affects
the way we relate to those outside of
our close social groups.
In one experiment, researchers
split participants into two groups.
Members of the first were asked to
arrive at the lab with a friend; those
in the second were instructed to
show up alone. Participants were
divided into pairs (those who came
alone were matched with strangers;
the others were teamed with their
friends), shown pictures and told
that the images were of people
responsible for a terrorist attack.
Subjects then answered a number
of questions, some of which were
intended to measure their willing-
ness to mistreat others, e.g., “How
important is it to treat these people
humanely?” Participants who’d been
accompanied by a pal were signifi-
cantly more likely to endorse harm
than those who’d shown up alone.
HAVING TROUBLE
DISCONNECTING?
Michael Harris, the Toronto-based
author of The End of Absence:
Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in
a World of Constant Connection,
says you can trick yourself into
taking breaks from socializing.
Harris suggests going for a walk
and leaving your cellphone at
home or taking a book to a res-
taurant and having dinner for
one. While you might feel frus-
trated 20 minutes in, there’s no
reneging: you’ve committed to
time by yourself.
Harris believes we should bal-
ance solitude and socializing the
same way we go about maintain-
ing a healthy diet. “Social con-
nection is not an evil thing any
more than sugars and fats are,”
Harris says. “It’s not about abstin-
ence. It’s about giving yourself
multiple modes of being.”
Researchers hypothesized that
those who spend a lot of time with
close friends may be less motivated
to associate with others. It’s counter-
intuitive, but more time spent with
acquaintances might lead us to be
less empathetic toward strangers.
We miss out on less
For many, the idea of going to a
concert or out to dinner alone sparks
dread—what if other patrons think
we’re social pariahs? But University
of Maryland professor Rebecca
Ratner believes that fear is causing
us to forgo fun. “People have activi-
ties that they want to do—see a
movie, or a show that’s coming to
town for one night only—but they
lack friends to go with them, and so
they miss out,” she says.
What’s more, her research has
shown that doing an activity alone
isn’t any less enjoyable than taking
a friend. In a study published this
year, Ratner’s team recruited partici-
pants from a student union and
asked them to spend at least five
minutes in a nearby art gallery.
Some were sent in solo, others in
pairs. Participants were surveyed
beforehand and asked how much
they anticipated enjoying the activ-
ity. Unsurprisingly, those attending
alone believed they’d have less fun.
Upon leaving the gallery, however,
the two groups reported enjoying
themselves equally.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 31
HEALTH
How to manage the risks
Outsmarting
Breast Cancer
BY SA MA N T H A R I D E O U T
! AMONG THE REMAINING
mysteries of breast cancer is a very
basic one: its causes. It’s not unusual
for women to develop this form of
cancer without having a single one
of the known risk factors.
Many of the risk factors identified
so far—particular genes, family hist-
ory, late menopause, dense breast
tissue and so on—are beyond your
control. Nevertheless, there are a
few preventive steps you can take.
The first is to drink lightly. Epide-
miologic studies around the world
have found that the more alcohol
someone imbibes on a regular basis,
the greater the increase in risk. “This
link is quite well-established now,
even though it’s not one of the cancer
facts that’s getting much attention,”
32 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
says Kevin O’Hagan, a spokesperson
for the Irish Cancer Society.
Even two drinks a day increases
the breast cancer rate compared to
abstaining, though only by seven to
16 per cent. (By contrast, a BRCA1
gene mutation like the one Angelina
Jolie carried can increase a woman’s
risk by up to 2,900 per cent.) A pos-
sible explanation: alcohol raises es-
trogen levels, which promotes some
types of breast cancer, while lower-
ing levels of essential nutrients, like
folate and vitamin A, that protect
against cell damage.
Extra estrogen and progesterone
ISTOCKPHOTO
exposure are also the reasons why
women should give careful consider-
ation to hormonal treatments—
including hormone replacement
 therapy and birth control pills. There further study, but research has
is good news for pill users, however: shown that even as little as 2.5 hours
a woman’s breast cancer risk returns of brisk walking a week could reduce
to baseline levels by the chances of devel-
the time she’s been oping the disease by
off the pill for about
10 years. For many
women, one or both
Myth around 18 per cent
compared to a seden-
tary lifestyle.
of these treatments
might be worth the Busting Remember that
prevention manage-
modest increase in Contrary to popular miscon- ment isn’t an all-or-
breast cancer risk, ceptions, bras, abortion and nothing endeavour.
given the benefits of deodorant do not contribute Nobody lives risk-
to breast cancer risk.
contraception and free, nor is that a
Source: Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation
menopausal symp- realistic goal. But
tom relief. being aware of po-
When it comes to gaining a modi- tential hazards means you can take
cum of control over your risk, staying action—getting mammograms be-
active is key. Exercise’s protective fore age 50, say—if you have several
effect against breast cancer requires risk factors.

News From clusion of a trial conducted in Barce-

lona, Spain, and published in JAMA

the World of Internal Medicine this summer. Over

ADAM VOORHES; (PROP STYLIST) ROBIN FI NLAY

six years, subjects assigned to diets

Medicine rich in produce, legumes,

whole grains and fish had
lower losses of brain
function than those
Mediterranean Diet in the control group.
Boosts Brainpower
A Mediterranean-style Looking Tired?
diet enriched with olive You’ll Be Judged
oil or nuts might help for It.
minimize the decline of We know sleep depriv-
cognitive function in older ation is bad for our
people. That’s the con- minds and bodies, but

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 33
READER’S DIGEST
new research shows it’s bad for
how others perceive us, too. In
studies from the University of
Stockholm published earlier this
year, participants examined photos
of people with varying amounts
of shut-eye and evaluated their
attractiveness, health, reliability,
leadership, employability and
trustworthiness. When the photo-
graphed subjects appeared tired,
they scored worse on these meas-
ures than when they looked well
rested. The implications are that
getting enough sleep could help
further a person’s career and inter-
personal relationships.
TEST YOUR MEDICAL IQ
A keloid is…
A. A disease that mimics multiple
sclerosis, causing misdiagnosis
B. An overgrowth of scar tissue
C. A fibre-rich food
D. An instrument that operat-
ing-room staff use to meas-
ure weight
Answer: B. A keloid is an over-
growth of scar tissue that can
form after surgery or an injury.
Although its lumpy or ridged
tumour-like appearance can be
alarming, it is usually harmless.
34 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
Seeing Calcified Coronary
Arteries Improves Health
Of 189 Danish patients diagnosed
with non-obstructive coronary artery
disease, half were given standard
information about risk and lifestyle.
The other half were given this same
advice, plus shown images of the
specks of calcium forming in their
arteries. This new research revealed
that patients who saw these images
were more likely to stop smoking
(91 per cent versus 78 per cent), eat
a healthy diet (66 per cent versus 36
per cent) and adhere to their statin
therapy, suggesting that visualizing
a health threat motivates people to
make changes to reduce their risk.
Psoriasis Sufferers Get the
All-Clear With New Drug
A new group of medications, known
as IL-17A inhibitors, block a particu-
lar protein linked to inflammation
in psoriatic skin. One such drug,
secukinumab, was approved in Eur-
ope and North America earlier this
year, and a potential competitor,
ixekizumab, is in the midst of Phase
III clinical trials. Compared to previ-
ously existing treatments, they are
giving more patients clear or near-
clear skin within three months. It’s
not all good news, though: the devel-
opment of yet another IL-17A inhib-
itor, brodalumab, stopped last May
because some patients reported sui-
cidal thoughts during clinical trials.
www.prohealthcanada.ca

life opens up with a healthy mouth

© Procter & Gamble, Inc. 2015 ORAL-19226

SHINE THE LIGHT ON BLUE LIGHT – CANADIAN AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

We all know how important it is to protect our eyes from

the sun’s harmful UV rays; but what about the harmful
effects from blue light rays?
Because of the growing popularity of computer screens and other digital devices, exposure
to blue light sources has drastically increased, leading to negative effects on our health and
eye vision. To educate parents, children, and eye care professionals on this serious and crucial
subject, a Canadian awareness campaign called Blue Light Exposed has been developed.

What is Blue Light?
Blue light is a colour in the “visible light spectrum”
that can be seen by human eyes. It has the shortest
and highest-energy wavelength in the spectrum, and
it can be found in energy sources such as the sun,
electronic devices, and fluorescent and LED lighting.
While blue light can be beneficial because it helps
regulate the body’s natural sleep and wake cycle
(circadian rhythm), boost alertness and elevate
moods; too much blue light exposure can have
serious consequences on our health, starting with
our eyes.
of people spend more
than 6 hours a day in front
of a digital device
Why has Blue Light become a hot topic?
Studies suggest that 60% of adults spend at least
6 hours a day in front of a digital device and the
number rises to more than 7 hours for children
between 8 and 18 years old. These staggering sta-
tistics correspond with the rise of digital eyestrain.
Blurry vision, difficulty focusing, dry and irritated
eyes, and headaches are becoming common health
issues observed by eye care professionals. “The Blue
Light Exposed awareness campaign is essential for
educating the population about the effects of artificial
blue light, and the solutions available to reduce its
impact”, states Nicolas Fontaine, O.D., M.Sc., F.A.A.O.,
Assistant Professor, École d’optométrie, Université de
Montréal. Dr. Fontaine is the principal researcher of
a study conducted by the university, which found
conclusive results about the efficacy of lenses with
blue-light filter coatings that demonstrated wearing
these lenses helped reduce the symptoms of eye-
strain by half during prolonged computer exposure.

Beneficial Effects & Harmful Effects

Helps activate the pupillary construction reflex, boosts memory and cognitive performance

Disruptions to the circadian rhythm, the body’s natural sleep and wake cycles

Digital Eye Strain Syndrome: blurry vision, difficulty focusing, dry and irritated eyes, headaches, neck and back pain

Increased risk of depression

 S P O N S O R E D C O N TE N T

USEFUL TIPS TO HELP

Sources of RELIEVE DIGITAL EYESTRAIN
Blue Light
“20-20-20 breaks”: every 20 minutes,
take a 20 second break and look at
something 20 feet away.

Reduce exposure to blue-light

emitting electronics in the evenings,
at least two hours before bedtime.
63% of adults do not know Supervise and limit your child’s screen
that electronics emit “Blue Light”. time, and reduce your own to set a good
The Vision Council reports on digital eye strain, 2012 & 2013 example.

How Blue Light interferes with sleep
Blue light prevents the production and release of
melatonin, the hormone that makes us sleepy. So
using electronic devices in the early evening hours
before bed makes it more difficult to fall asleep.
Children are affected even more than adults because
they are more vulnerable to blue light’s effects.
Having electronic devices in the bedroom can also
affect the quality of sleep, as these devices often
stay on all night long emitting blue light which can
disrupt sleep patterns.
75%
Have at least 1 electronic
device in their bedrooms*
51% Children
Have 2 or more
electronic devices*
Make sure your child doesn’t
hold the screen too close to their eyes,
especially for long periods of time.
Have eyes checked annually
(you and your child’s).
What can you do about Blue Light?
The use of protective lenses can play an important
role in shielding eyes against blue light. Sunglasses,
specially dark tinted or polarized to absorb blue light
rays, are ideal for outdoor activities. While for indoors,
ophthalmic lenses with a special coating designed
to protect against blue light _ such as Essilor’s Crizal®
Prevencia™, Nikon’s SeeCoat Blue UV, or Shamir
Glacier Blue Shield™ UV _ are available.

89%
Have at least 1 electronic
Adults device in their bedrooms*
Learn how to protect yourself
68% at www.bluelightexposed.com
Have 2 or more
electronic devices*
Findings by the National Sleep Foundation The Blue Light Exposed awareness campaign is an initiative
*TV, laptop, tablet, smartphone, video game, from ophthalmic lenses manufacturers Essilor Canada,
MP3 player or radio Nikon Optical Canada and Shamir Canada.
HEALTH

Charting the rise of suicide

Crisis Point
BY SA MA N T H A R I D E O U T
ILLUSTRATION BY TRACY WALKER

! COMPARED TO OTHER
public health issues, suicide gets
Compared to their female counter-
parts, members of this demographic
less than its fair share of attention. are statistically less likely to ask for
Although talking about this subject help. And when they do attempt sui-
in a frank way can help support cide, they more often choose a vio-
those who are struggling, suicide lent method that leaves little chance
is often treated as a taboo—in part of accidental survival.
because we aren’t always comfort- While the suicide rate among
able addressing the subject, but also Canadian men of all ages has gone
because glorifying self-harm has down by almost a third over the past
been shown to spark 30 years or so, total sui-
copycat behaviour. cides among girls and
In Canada, suicide young women aged 10
rates are highest
among adult males
80-90
Percentage of people
to 19 have increased by
nearly 50 per cent since
aged 40 to 59. Self- who die by suicide who 1980. A possible ex-
sufficiency and sto- had a treatable mental planation for this shift
icism are considered illness or addiction. is that girls are entering
“manly” in our culture, puberty earlier than
and we tend to en-
courage these traits in 35
Percentage of men who
ever, giving them less
time to develop coping
boys as they age, so it’s skills before taking on
die by suicide who sought
not uncommon for the pressures of adoles-
mental-health care during
men to view emotional the preceding year. cence. Other stressors
distress as weakness. that can contribute to

38 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
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READER’S DIGEST

suicidal thoughts include mental ill-

nesses, abuse, substance-use prob- AIDS TO WELLNESS
lems and intergenerational trauma.
Though suicide may appear to Based on feedback from close to 13,000
happen out of nowhere, there’s often users of CureTogether, a website where
a process leading up to the act. Indi- patients discuss health challenges,
here’s a look at the effectiveness of 10
viduals who are considering taking selected treatments against depression.
their own lives might seem with-
drawn, demonstrate unreasonably Exercise:
angry behaviour or make reckless 993
1,391
decisions. If you suspect that some-
Talking with family or friends:
one in your life is suicidal, the first 559
step in prevention is asking if he or 1,022
she is considering self-harm. If the SSRI medications:
response is yes, help him or her find 485
843
a crisis resource: a phone line, centre
Relaxation:
or professional who can offer imme- 403
836
diate support and provide guidance
in figuring out longer-term options. Avoiding intoxicants:
340
Suicide remains a relatively rare 797
phenomenon across all age groups, Journaling:
which is worth noting, since the 318
704
assumption that suicide is common
Meditation:
can be a risk factor. Still, it’s not un- 371
usual to feel suicidal—without ne– 618
cessarily acting on it—at least once Cognitive behavioural therapy:
in one’s life. A helpful approach is to 352
552
develop cognitive strategies to deal
Maintaining a daily routine:
with stressful situations. As the 252
530
Harvard Medical School’s guide to
suicide prevention explains, “The Music therapy:
128
happiest people are not those with 169
the fewest problems, but those with
the best coping skills.” Reported moderate to Tried the
major improvements treatment

It’s useful to know about treatments that work for many

A list of Canadian crisis centres and phone people, but the popularity of a treatment doesn’t auto-
matically make it the best fit for you. Always take your
lines is available at suicideprevention.ca/ family history, personal preferences and doctor’s advice
thinking-about-suicide/find-a-crisis-centre. into consideration.

40 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
Make us part of your balanced routine.

At Nature’s Bounty,® the quality of our products is at the core of

everything we do. Our ingredients are verified for purity and our formulas
are guaranteed for 100% potency, which means you can be certain that
you’re getting high quality vitamins and supplements.

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As a reminder, discuss the supplements and medicines you take with your health care provider. These products
may pose risks and may not be suitable for everyone. Always read label directions and warnings prior to use. ©2015 Nature’s Bounty, Inc. 15NB1347ra
FOOD

Tips for eating

well at every age

Nutrition
for Life
BY K RIST I G R E E N

! OUR BODIES CHANGE as we

get older: hormones see-saw, the
metabolism shifts, and muscle tone
decreases. Luckily, certain nutrients
can support our fluctuating needs,
and healthy eating habits can have a
tremendous impact.
According to Vancouver-based
registered dietitian Nicole Fetterly,
vegetables and fruits should always
Their effects can be visible (helping
to preserve skin tone, for example)
or internal (like warding off arterial
damage). For help on how to fill the
rest of your plate, here’s a primer.
In your 30s
After our 20s, we have a slower
metabolism and require fewer calo-
ries. Help regulate blood pressure
ISTOCKPHOTO

make up half of what we eat. These and conserve muscle and bone with
foods are rich in antioxidants, which magnesium-rich foods like chard,
stop disease-causing free radicals soy yogourt and wheat bran. Limit
and slow the symptoms of aging. meat intake to reduce the risk of

42 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
cancer and heart disease; instead, and lose some ability to absorb
opt for plant-based proteins (such nutrients, so we need to eat more
as nuts and lentils). For women, nutrient-dense foods.” Many adults
spinach, pumpkin seeds, beans experience a dip in vitamin B12,
and turkey can replenish iron lost which maintains healthy nerves
through menstruation. and blood cells. Boost levels with
organ meats, shellfish, nutritional
In your 40s yeast and fortified milk. Blueber-
As your body sets the stage for later ries, dark leafy greens and other
life, focus on fibre (in bran, beans, antioxidant-rich foods can address
flax, oats, produce and whole chronic conditions, including dia-
grains) to support digestion, betes, arthritis, heart disease and
lower cholesterol and high cholesterol.
control sugar levels.
Adequate fibre (35 to
Choose In your 60s
38 grams a day for and beyond
men; 25 for women) unsaturated fats “It’s important to
can prevent toxins to boost brain maintain cognitive
from building up in function, increase function because we
the colon and reduce “good” HDL can form neural path-
risk of colon cancer, ways up until our 80s,”
Fetterly says. cholesterol Fetterly says. Unsatur-
Because men in their and reduce ated fats (found in
40s are at risk of devel- inflammation. olive oil, fish, flax,
oping cardiovascular avocados, nuts, seeds,
disease, Cyndi Gilbert, and grass-fed meat
a naturopathic doctor in Toronto, and dairy products) can boost
recommends heart-healthy oils mood and brain function, increase
(such as olive and fish) to avoid heart “good” HDL cholesterol and cut
attacks and strokes. Women in their down inflammation.
late 40s can try flaxseed, soybeans Because older skin is less able to
and yams, which are full of estrogen- absorb immune-bolstering vitamin
mimicking compounds, to improve D from the sun, compensate with
perimenopausal symptoms. D-rich foods such as cow’s milk,
soy milk and salmon. And keep
In your 50s consuming calcium—especially
In middle age, says Gilbert, “We women, who experience rapid
start to produce less stomach acid bone loss in menopause.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 43
 PETS

A guide to
pet vaccination

Sure
Shots
BY VA L E R I E H OW E S

! LIKE HUMANS, cats and

dogs rely on herd immunity to pro-
tect against nasty diseases. Never-
theless, vaccination is a hot topic
among owners, some of whom
blame shots for ailments like skin
conditions and leukemia. (Some
animals do experience side effects,
Veterinary Medical Association
recommends a regime tailored to
your pet’s needs.
Canine care
“Pups can easily pick up infections
from poop in the neighbourhood
or getting up-close-and-personal
MASTERFI LE

including swelling and, in rare at the dog park,” says Dr. Margaret
cases, the development of a tumour Brown-Bury of St. John’s Veterinary
at the injection site.) The Canadian Hospital in Newfoundland. A single

44 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
shot, the DA2P-CPV, vaccinates panleukopenia, which can result in
against parvovirus, which can be gastric issues, as well as the flu-like
fatal for young animals; parainflu- rhinotracheitis and calicivirus,
enza; distemper, which can cause which cause respiratory problems
nerve damage; and infectious hep- and mouth ulcers. Brown-Bury
atitis. By four months, puppies recommends Felocell for all cats,
should have received three doses; whether they go outside or not,
boosters are administered a year because owners can transmit these
after the first set of shots, then once diseases to their own pets by sim-
every three years. Brown-Bury and ply stroking an infected animal.
her colleagues charge $78 (plus Kittens receive core shots on the
taxes) for an exam and a set of same schedule as puppies do, and
combo shots, but costs prices are comparable
vary by clinic. to those of dog vac-
Your vet can advise Like humans, cines at most clinics.
you about other vac- Unspayed outdoor
cines, based on where cats and dogs cats can catch chla-
you live and your pet’s rely on herd mydia, while kittens
age, lifestyle and immunity to and their geriatric
health. There are indi- prevent them counterparts are at
vidual shots that risk of contracting
guard against various from contracting peritonitis, an infec-
canine conditions, nasty diseases. tious virus that can
including leptospiro- lead to fatal organ fail-
sis, which “can be ure. You may want to
transmitted to humans and cause ask about vaccinating against these
kidney problems,” says Brown- diseases, as well as feline leukemia
Bury; bordetellosis, a cause of virus, which can cause tumours
kennel cough; Lyme disease; giar- and bone marrow suppression.
diasis, a gut parasite that can lead
to bloating and diarrhea; and coro- Rabies rules
navirus, which, if contracted with In some provinces, rabies shots are
parvovirus, can wreak havoc on the mandatory; Canadian pets crossing
digestive system. the U.S. border must show evi-
dence of vaccination, as well. If
Feline fundamentals you’re planning to take your furry
The core feline combo vaccine, friend on a trip, get the shots and
Felocell CVR, protects against pack the papers to prove it.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 45
 SPECIAL FEATURE

Book Club
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Secrets
and Lies
Jonathan Franzen’s
Purity spans decades and
continents in search of
one young woman’s truth

REVIEW BY MARK HAMILTON

The tangled web of Jonathan 576 pages, $35 (hardcover)

Franzen’s Purity crosses bor- Release date September 1, 2015

ders and timelines, taking us

from present-day California to the
jungles of Bolivia, then back to the
1980s and life under flailing Com-
munist rule in the German Demo-
cratic Republic. While on the surface
the novel focuses on a young woman’s
search for her father, Purity creates a
world of incredible chance and coin-
cidence, with a mad puppet master
behind the scenes pulling strings not
entirely under his control.
Denied the knowledge of her fam-
ily history by her hermitic yet loving
cabin-dwelling mother, Pip (born
Purity) Tyler has long lived in the
shadows of half-truths and lies. While
carving out a meagre existence in the
activist squats of Oakland – and car-
rying the back-breaking weight of
$130,000 in student loans – Pip
crosses paths with a close associate
of Andreas Wolf, a Julian Assange-
esque celebrity internet watchdog
who heads up The Sunlight Project.
Invited for an internship at Wolf’s
safe-haven jungle complex in Bolivia,
she agrees, in part for promised access to his team
of experts and their programs to track down her
bloodline. Wolf’s interest in her, however, comes
from a darker place.
Through the course of Pip’s search, Purity
weaves an intriguing tapestry of characters whose
tangential connection to one another often proves

Purity creates a world of incredible

chance and coincidence, with Lisbeth Salander
a mad puppet master behind and Mikael Blomkvist
return in the highly
the scenes pulling strings not anticipated follow-up
entirely under his control. to Stieg Larsson’s
Millennium Series.
monumental. As the story curls back and upon
itself, the deceits unravel to bring together a bil-
lion-dollar trust fund, the unsolved murder of a
misogynist Stasi informant, and a missing U.S.
nuclear warhead. For the cast of Purity, the pains
of unfulfilled love controlled by circumstances
both real and self-imposed are always heartbreak-
ingly present. Like a skilled carpenter of intricate
wooden trick boxes, Franzen shines in his mastery
of connecting these elements into a cohesive,
shining whole that holds its secrets tight.

Join the Club This fall’s mythic love

Get more great book recommendations story—spellbinding,
and reviews with the Reader’s Digest & entertaining: when
Penguin Random House Canada Book Club. worlds dangerously
collide, only love and
VISIT READERSDIGEST.CA/BOOKCLUB
humanity can
overcome.

SCAN WITH LAYAR TO READ AN EXCERPT

FROM OUR FEATURED BOOK!
CULTURE

In History’s People, Margaret MacMillan looks at

the movers and shakers who shaped our world

Past Participants
BY SA RA H L I SS

A former provost at the University of Toronto

and a current professor of international hist-
ory at Oxford, Margaret MacMillan doesn’t just
document the past; she brings it to life. The aca-
demic, writer and commentator has produced
bestselling accounts of the 1919 Paris Peace Con-
ference and Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. Her deft
touch is apparent in History’s People, a reflection
on the most notable figures in world history. Deliv-
ered as part of the 2015 Massey Lectures, MacMil-
lan’s words are no less lively on the page. Sept. 12.

This month’s hottest books, music, movies and TV

SUPERBETTER UNDERMAJORDOMO MINOR

Jane McGonigal
There are many books
out there that promise
to help improve your
health, but the new
SuperBetter couches
that claim in fun. Here, McGonigal
shares her game-based therapy,
which helped her recover from a
traumatic brain injury. Sept. 15.
Patrick DeWitt
DeWitt’s previous novel, 2011’s The
Sisters Brothers, was a sly modern
Western that won the Governor
General’s Literary Award for Fiction.
For his follow-up, he riffs on Dick-
ens to tell the tale of a Gothic castle,
a mysterious master and the young
swain who yearns for the affections
of a local village girl. Available now.

48 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
 THE ILLEGAL ANOTHER
Lawrence Hill COUNTRY
The terror and isolation Rod Stewart
experienced by undocu- On his new album,
mented immigrants form the masterfully coiffed
the backbone of Hill’s crooner gets experi-
latest, an intense por- mental. In place of
trait of a young mara- songbook standards,
thoner who’s compelled he infuses his pop
to live in the shadows anthems with world
after he flees a tyrannical grooves and synco-
(HILL) COURTESY OF TRIDENT ME D IA G ROU P; (COL BE RT)

regime. Available now. pated beats. Oct. 23.

© 2015 CBC; (YOUSAFZAI) © 2015 MALALA FUND

STEVE JOBS THE LATE

A more expansive SHOW WITH
portrait of the tech vi- STEPHEN COLBERT
sionary than its 2013 Beloved for the po-faced
predecessor, this biopic reactionary he embodied
boasts an A-list cast, in his Comedy Central series,
including Michael Colbert swaps satire for
Fassbender as the Ap- straight(er) talk as he
ple co-founder and becomes David Letter-
Seth Rogen as his man’s successor behind
business associate the Late Show desk.
Steve Wozniak. Oct. 9. Premieres Sept. 8.

HE NAMED ME MALALA
At 15, Malala Yousafzai was shot
in the head by Taliban forces enraged
by her efforts to promote education for
girls in Pakistan. Two years later, the
tenacious activist won the 2014 Nobel
Peace Prize. Director Davis Guggen-
heim (An Inconvenient Truth) covers
that and more in this documentary
about an unlikely icon. Oct. 2.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 49
 6
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 Overnight
Vegetable & Egg
Breakfast

Stovetop
Italian
Macaroni

Get the Slow-Cooked

Chicken Cacciatore

COOKING UP
recipe inside!

COMFORT
NUTTY
APPLE
BUTTER

AS TEMPERATURES BEGIN TO TURN, THESE DISHES WILL HELP KEEP YOU WARM

Overnight
Vegetable &
Egg Breakfast
My overnight eggs and veggies make a
hearty breakfast for those who have to
rush out the door. I use sliced potatoes,
but frozen potatoes work, too.
—KIMBERLY CLARK-THIRY,
MOORCROFT, WY
PREP: 15 MIN. COOK: 7 HOURS
MAKES: 8 SERVINGS
4 lb (2 kg) potatoes, peeled and
thinly sliced (about 8 cups or 2 L)
1 medium green pepper, finely
chopped
1 package (10 oz or 300 g) frozen
chopped spinach, thawed and
squeezed dry
1 cup (250 mL) fresh mushrooms,
sliced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
8 eggs
1 cup (250 mL) water
1 cup (250 mL) 2% milk
11/4 tsp (6 mL) salt
1/
4 tsp (1 mL) pepper
2 cups (500 mL or 16 oz) shredded
cheddar cheese
1. In greased 6-qt. (5.67 L) slow cooker,
layer the first five ingredients. In large
bowl, whisk eggs, water, milk, salt, and
pepper; pour over top. Sprinkle with
cheese.
2. Cover and cook on low for 7 to 9 hours or
until potatoes are tender and eggs are set.
NUTRITION FACTS: 1 1/2 cups equals
354 calories, 15 g fat (7 g saturated fat),
217 mg cholesterol, 668 mg sodium,
37 g carbohydrate, 4 g fibre, 19 g protein.
 Nutty Apple
Butter
I love apple-picking season.
Grab some apples and
peanut butter to make this
creamy PB & J riff. Dunk
in sliced fruit or graham crackers, or spread
it on a sandwich.
—BRANDIE CRANSHAW,
RAPID CITY, S.D.

PREP: 20 MIN. COOK: 8 HOURS

MAKES: 5 CUPS

4 lb (2 kg) apples (about 8 large),

peeled and chopped
3/
4 to 1 cup (175 to 250 mL) sugar
1/
4 cup (50 mL) water
1 tbsp (15 mL) ground cinnamon
1/
4 tsp (1 mL) ground nutmeg
1/
4 tsp (1 mL) ground cloves
1/
4 tsp (1 mL) ground allspice
1/
4 cup (50 mL) creamy peanut butter

1. In greased 5-qt. (4.73 L) slow cooker,

combine the first seven ingredients.
Cook, covered, on low 8 to 10 hours or
until apples are tender.

2. Whisk in peanut butter until apple

mixture is smooth. Cool to room tem-
perature. Store in airtight container in
refrigerator.

NUTRITION FACTS: 2 tbsp equals

43 calories, 1 g fat (trace saturated fat),
0 mg cholesterol, 7 mg sodium, 9 g
carbohydrate, 1 g fibre, trace protein.
 1/
Stovetop Italian Macaroni 2 cup (125 mL) Parmesan cheese,
grated
It's not every day that a cost-conscious
1 cup (250 mL) part-skim mozzarella
menu pleases both the eye and the
cheese, shredded
stomach, but this scrumptious stovetop
entrée does just that.
1. In Dutch oven, cook beef over medium
—LAILA ZVEJNIEKS,
heat until no longer pink; drain. Add
STONEY CREEK, ONT.
tomatoes, water, soup mix, Italian season-
ing, and, if desired, pepper flakes. Bring to
boil. Stir in macaroni. Reduce heat; cover
PREP / TOTAL TIME: 25 MIN.
and simmer for 8 to 9 minutes or until
MAKES: 5 SERVINGS
macaroni is tender.
1 lb (500 g) ground beef
2. Remove from heat; stir in Parmesan.
1 can (28 oz or 800 mL) diced
Sprinkle with mozzarella. Cover and let
tomatoes, undrained
stand for 2 minutes or until cheese is
2 cups (500 mL) water
melted.
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 tsp (5 mL) Italian seasoning
1/ NUTRITION FACTS: 1 1/3 cups equals
4 tsp (1 mL) crushed red pepper
410 calories, 17 g fat (8 g saturated fat),
flakes (optional)
76 mg cholesterol, 969 mg sodium,
2 cups (500 mL) uncooked elbow
34 g carbohydrate, 4 g fibre, 30 g protein.
macaroni

Slow-Cooked
Chicken
Cacciatore
Here's an all-time favourite Italian dish
made easy in the slow cooker! Dried herbs
and fresh garlic give it an aromatic flavour.
Green peppers, sliced mushrooms, and
diced tomatoes do a fine job of rounding
out the juicy chicken entrée.
—DENISE HOLLEBEKE,
PENHOLD, ALTA.
PREP: 20 MIN. COOK: 4 HOURS
MAKES: 6 SERVINGS
1/ cup (75 mL) all-purpose flour
3
1 broiler/fryer chicken (3 to 4 lb
or 1.5 to 2 kg), cut up
2 tbsp (25 mL) canola oil
2 medium onions, cut into wedges
1 medium green pepper, cut into
strips
1 jar (6 oz or 175 g) sliced
mushrooms, drained
1 can (141/2 oz or 425 mL) diced
tomatoes, undrained
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/
2 tsp (2 mL) salt
1/
2 tsp (2 mL) dried oregano
1/
4 tsp (1 mL) dried basil
1/
2 cup (125 mL) Parmesan cheese,
shredded
1. Place flour in large resealable plastic
bag. Add chicken, a few pieces at a time,
and shake to coat. In large skillet, brown
chicken in oil on all sides.
2. Transfer to a 5-qt. (4.73 L) slow cooker.
Top with onions, green pepper, and mush-
rooms. In small bowl, combine tomatoes,
garlic, salt, oregano, and basil; pour over
vegetables. Cover and cook on low for 4
to 5 hours or until chicken juices run clear
and vegetables are tender. Serve with
cheese.
NUTRITION FACTS: 1 serving (calculated
without skin) equals 296 calories, 12 g fat
(3 g saturated fat), 78 mg cholesterol,
582 mg sodium, 16 g carbohydrate, 3 g fibre,
29 g protein.
CALLING ALL
Send you!r HOME COOKS!
recipes Share your favourite recipes
at tasteof home.com/submit.
 COVER STORY

Handy tips for those times when you’re already sick

10
Ways
to Beat
a
Cold BY LISA FIE LDS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOCELYN MICHEL

WHEN DAYS GET SHORTER and temperatures drop, we begin

to brace ourselves for the aptly named common cold. With good
reason: adults usually contract between one and three colds each
year, while young children catch about six. And for every person
who is coughing and sneezing, there could be two or three people
asymptomatically harbouring a cold virus.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 57
READER’S DIGEST
But hacking and sniffling aren’t
foregone conclusions. You can
strengthen your body’s defences
against viruses by taking certain
simple steps, and if you’re already
sick, you can minimize your symp-
toms. Here’s how:
1. Wash your hands often
Many products and practices claim
to help prevent colds, but clean-
ing your hands remains the most
effective measure. For best results,
wash with soap for a minimum of
15 seconds.
When sick people cough or
sneeze, tiny droplets sprinkle the
surfaces surrounding them with
cold viruses. According to Chuck
Gerba, a microbiology professor at
the University of Arizona, we catch
a lot of colds from touching those
surfaces. “We bring our fingers to
our noses or rub our eyes,” he says.
“On average, adults touch their
faces about 16 times an hour.”
If you don’t have access to soap
and water, hand sanitizers are
almost as good at killing germs: they
can reduce your risk of contraction
by 30 to 50 per cent.
Don’t rely only on sanitizer be-
fore you’re about to eat; use it when
you’ve touched the copy machine
at work or a bus handrail. “Viruses
spread like lightning through office
buildings, homes and mass transit,”
Gerba says.
58 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
2. Choose meds wisely
You might be surprised to hear which
medications are most effective at
soothing colds: over-the-counter
painkillers such as Aspirin or ibu-
profen. “Most people don’t think of
those options, but they do treat sore
throat pain, sinus pain, muscle aches
and pains, chills, fever and head-
aches,” says Ron Eccles, director of
(STYLI ST) M ARI E-CLAUDE GUAY; (MODEL) SYLVIE LADOUCEUR F ROM FOL IO; ( PHOTO AG E NCY) CONSU L AT
OPENI NG PAGE: (P HOTO ASSI STANT) MARC-AN TOINE DUBOI S; (HA IR AND MAK E U P) BRIG ITTE L ACOSTE ;
the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff
University in Wales.
Also possibly effective: nasal
sprays containing decongestants
such as xylometazoline or oxy-
metazoline, which can relieve stuffy
noses for 10 to 12 hours. Don’t give
these sprays to children, though,
and don’t rely on them for more
than seven to 10 days, since overuse
can cause chronic inflammation.
Avoid antibiotics for cold symp-
toms, unless your doctor is worried
that you might actually have a bacter-
ial infection. While antibiotics can kill
bacteria, they are useless against vi-
ruses. Taking them unnecessarily con-
tributes to the evolution of bac teria
that are resistant to them—a growing
international health emergency.
3. Don’t over-rely on herbs
Many people reach for echinacea to
prevent or shorten the duration of
colds. But a recent summary of a sys-
tematic review found little evidence
that it has these effects, according
to Marlies Karsch-Völk, formerly of
the Institute of General Practice at
Technische Universität München in
Munich. “There are a lot of studies
about it, but they’re not very well per-
formed, so we cannot draw a strong
conclusion,” she says.
And although ginseng has been
heavily marketed in Canada for cold
prevention, results determining its
efficacy in fighting the common cold
remain inconclusive. “I wouldn’t sug-
gest it to patients at this point,” says
Michael Allan, a family-medicine
professor at the University of Alberta.
“And if I had limited resources to do
a study, I would pick other possible
treatments first. If you already use
it and think it works for you, then I
would say to go ahead and keep us-
ing it, since there’s not much risk of
harm. But it’s not where I would put
my research efforts.”
4. But give zinc a go
One dietary supplement that shows
some promise in treating a cold
is zinc (although further research
would be helpful in tracking its ef-
fects with more certainty). “It should
be in the form of a lozenge or a pow-
der that dissolves in liquid, allowing
you to swish and rub it around the
inside of your mouth, as it directly
binds to virus particles and inac-
tivates them,” says Richard Nahas,
medical director of Seekers Pain
Centre in Ottawa and an assistant
professor in the department of fam-
ily medicine at the University of Ot-
tawa. “A dose of 30 to 200 milligrams
a day is safe for short-term use. Many
people will likely also benefit by
improving a zinc deficiency.”
5. Keep your toes toasty
In addition to protecting your head
and neck against the chill when you
venture outside, make sure your boots
are warm and leak-free. Researchers
at the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff
University divided seemingly healthy
people into two groups, believing that
some would be harbouring cold vi-
ruses. Half had their feet dipped into
frigid water, and that group devel-
oped significantly more colds within
a three- to five-day period.
“Chilling of any part of the body
can do this, but the feet seem to be
particularly sensitive,” says Eccles.
“It’s weakening our defences and let-
ting the virus trigger symptoms.”
6. Scoop up yogourt
You may know people who consume
yogourt containing probiotics to im-
prove the regularity of their digestive
systems. Probiotics—live micro-
organisms, including specific benefi-
cial bacteria—have also been shown
to help boost immune function. A re-
cent review of 10 studies by research-
ers in South Korea found that eating
yogourt that includes probiotics for
up to three months can make it easier
to ward off colds.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 59
READER’S DIGEST
7. Lock lips without worry
You might be inclined to avoid kiss-
ing your partner when one of you
is sick, but studies conducted over
several decades have shown that
kissing doesn’t transmit cold vi-
ruses. Although they’re present in
the tiny droplets that leave the nose
and mouth during sneezes and
coughs, your mouth doesn’t har-
bour viruses when you aren’t force-
fully coughing.
When kissing a sniffly sweet-
heart, plant one firmly on his or
her mouth, rather than pecking the
cheek. As Gerba says, “You have to
kiss on the lips because the other
person may have touched their face
with cold viruses on their hands.”
8. Tempt your taste buds
When you’ve got a scratchy throat
and a cough, fight back with hot,
tasty, fruit-flavoured cordials (con-
centrated fruit juice) or a honey and
lemon drink. “They’ll provide relief
for your sore throat and cough by
promoting the production of saliva,”
says Eccles.
Honey has the added bonus of
being safe for children between one
and six years old—an age group that
should avoid cough medications,
according to a Health Canada ad-
visory. “Don’t give honey to infants
younger than one because there’s
a risk of botulism,” says Allan. “But
otherwise, a spoonful in the evening
60 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
can help kids to sleep by reducing
nighttime coughs.”
9. Go green
An amino acid in green tea has been
linked to cold prevention. In a 2007
study published in the Journal of the
American College of Nutrition, U.S.
researchers found that the com-
pound, called L-theanine, helped to
prevent the incidence of colds and
made symptoms less severe among
sufferers. “It is unusual for a dietary
supplement to reduce the incidence
of cold and flu,” says author Susan
S. Percival, professor and chair of
the food science and human nutri-
tion department at the University of
Florida. Granted, “this was a fairly
high amount, equivalent to eight to
10 cups of tea a day.”
10. Clean mildly
Don’t engage in an all-out assault
on germs during cold season, even
if a member of your household is
down for the count. When wiping
surfaces, use plain liquid soap; an-
tibacterial soaps are unnecessarily
aggressive. “Cleaning with a neutral
detergent and a cloth will be suffi-
cient to stop any spread,” says Nuala
O’Connor, lead adviser on antibiotic
resistance for the Irish College of
General Practitioners. Furthermore,
“if we use too many disinfectants,
we’re going to encourage the devel-
opment of resistant organisms.”
 PROFILE

Celebrated writer Margaret Atwood

reveals the key to her creativity and opens up
about how we can change the future

Lady
Oracle BY LISA BRYN RUND LE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON GORDON

MARGARET ATWOOD HAS a knack closed community who voluntarily

for imagining what’s to come. Over
the course of more than 60 books
and a career that stretches 50-plus
years, the Booker Prize–winning
author has eerily anticipated ev-
erything from the 2008 recession to
lab-grown meat. In her new novel,
The Heart Goes Last, she conjures
yet another sobering vision. Set
during a devastating economic col-
lapse, the book is about citizens of a
split their lives between freedom (as
residents of a well-appointed town)
and captivity (in the town’s myste-
riously money-making prison). But
Atwood isn’t a fatalist. She believes
if we take charge of even the most
terrifying scenarios now, we can set
the world on course. Here, she offers
insights into the present and some
pointers on how to deal with what
might come next.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 63
READER’S DIGEST
You write a great deal about dysto-
pian futures. In 1985’s The Hand-
maid’s Tale, you conceived a society
that treated women as reproductive
machines; more recently, there was
the post-apocalyptic world of the
MaddAddam trilogy, and now this
one. Are you stressed about what’s
around the corner?
It’s probably not going to be my
problem, but it will be yours. Mind
you, if those dystopian visions kick
in within the next 20 years, I might
well be around. With a lot of these
things, it’s not a question of whether
but when—unless we change our way
of viewing the world.
Are you hopeful that we can do that?
I see a lot of positive signs. Even Mr.
Harper has said in 100 years we’ll
be decarbonated. Well, sorry, but
100 years is not soon enough. Still,
the mere fact he’s saying it is a big
change from 2005.
Do you hope political leaders will
read this book?
People like that say, “Oh, Margaret,
you’re so far-fetched!” They don’t
like having what they’re actually
thinking of doing out there, in black
and white.
Your descriptions of life outside the
walls of the closed community are
terrifying—roving gangs poised to
commit all manner of violence.
64 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
I think I’d join the community. You
make a previously unthinkable
scheme—volunteering to be a part-
time prisoner—seem downright
appealing. Would you sign up?
Undoubtedly. Unfortunately, there
isn’t any out. O nce you’re in,
you’re in.
Residents are trapped in this deal
for life, and then things start to go
horribly wrong.
And things start to go askew. Because
this is prison as a for-profit enter-
prise, and once you have prison as
a for-profit enterprise, you have to
figure out where that profit is going to
come from. Right now [in the United
States], there are for-profit prisons
that make their money by ware-
housing prisoners from other states.
As they say themselves, in order for
a prison to be profitable, it has to
be full. So the end goal is obviously
to make more criminals.
After writing this book, have you
gained any new insights on the way
Canada is navigating freedom and
security—in our anti-terrorism
laws, for example?
Let’s make a list of all of the kinds of
things that might kill you and what
people are doing about them. No. 1:
car crashes. How hard would it be
to reduce the speed limit? It would
be a little bit harder to put [sensors]
into cars to keep people from driving
drunk, but those exist. That would
save a lot of lives and bring down the
cost of hospital bills and what you’re
paying as a taxpayer.
Whereas the likelihood of a terrorist
attack, you’re saying…
You’re actually at more risk of be-
ing hit by lightning. Helpful hint:
don’t go out on the golf course in
a thunderstorm waving a metallic
club in the air. Don’t have a shower
in a lightning storm. The electricity
goes through the water.
What a strangely optimistic thought:
we can stop worrying about terror-
ism and focus on meteorology.
Speaking of looking at the bright
side, you skewer extreme posi-
tivity—the idea that you make
reality with your thoughts—in
this book.
There’s something to it, but there’s
not everything to it. There are some
things that you cannot change with
your thoughts. Like the idea it’s your
own fault you’ve got cancer, that kind
of thing, which is so punitive.
Is there something disturbing about
the idea that we’re so often encour-
aged to smile and continue smiling
as things fall apart? In the world as
well as in our personal lives?
Well, you most likely will feel a bit
better if you smile. It does have
a chemical effect.
Most of the horrific acts in this
novel are conducted while the vil-
lain is smiling.
It’s so often true.
So should we be suspicious of
smiling people?
Not as such. I think it’s all very well
to have a positive attitude; you prob-
ably wouldn’t get out of bed in the
morning if you didn’t have one. But
it doesn’t mean everything’s okay all
the time. Smiling is actually a very
odd thing biologically, because most
animals show their teeth as a threat
mechanism, whereas we show our
teeth as a happy, friendly gesture.
Why is that?
I guess our teeth aren’t quite as
pointy as those of most animals.
Might be that. I’m showing you my
non-pointy teeth, like a handshake
is to show you that I don’t have a
sword in my hand. I would be inter-
ested to ask an evolutionary biolo-
gist about the smiling. I know that
in Renaissance portraiture, aris-
tocrats didn’t smile, to show that
they were superior and didn’t have
to please anybody, whereas peas-
ants did smile to show that they
were subservient.
Now that we’re talking about hu-
man relations, the future of sex, as
presented in The Heart Goes Last,
seems pretty racy. You illustrate
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 65
READER’S DIGEST
why sex with robots, even really
good robots, might not be satisfy-
ing. One of your characters is even
hospitalized after a robotic romp
gone wrong.
That’s just because it’s early-stage
technology. Remember your car
phone, how big it used to be? All of
these are tweaks.
Are you optimistic about the role
robots will play?
Am I optimistic? How is that even
a question? I think some people
who don’t like interacting with
humans very much will be hap-
pier. Others, who want total control
over their relationships, will be able
to program that. And [scientists]
are actually, in fact, really working
on those things.
From the online writing community
Wattpad to LongPen, a device that
allows authors to sig n b o ok s
remotely, you’ve always been an
early adopter—even an inventor—of
new technology. What makes you so
willing to experiment?
Growing up in the woods.
We have the northern woods of On-
tario and Quebec to thank for your
inventiveness? Why?
Limited range of tools. No store
where you could go and buy things.
No person you could call to come
and fix them. So you learn to fix
66 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
things with whatever happens to be
at hand. That’s why I put duct tape in
the future in Oryx and Crake. It’s so
useful. I’m a big fan of Gorilla Glue,
too. And No More Nails.
Your appreciation of handy tools
extends to social media, like Twitter,
which isn’t the only short form you
favour, apparently. You also make a
point of reading the messages on
bathroom walls.
I always read them.
Why?
It’s just interesting that people would
write things. They wrote [messages
like that] in Roman times, as well.
What do you glean from that?
People used to carve things like
“John loves Mary” on the pyramids.
It’s part of the same phenomenon—
“I was here.” And the washroom
walls, some of them are quite witty.
Little poems.
Have you ever added to a wall?
No. But I’ve quoted some of them.
“I love so-and-so, yes I do./He’s for
me and not for you.”
How do you find creative inspira-
tion—other than reading bathroom
stalls? You’re so prolific.
Deadlines. I like deadlines. I think it
comes from high school and having
to get your stuff ready for final exams.
You’re taking care of your artist’s
mind. What about your artist’s
body? I’m sure you’re aware of all
the studies that suggest sitting is the
new smoking.
And yet I spend so much of my life
doing it.
It is a job hazard for writers.
I’m gonna die!
So do you have a physical regimen?
Yes, I do a lot of walking. I have a
step counter.
You recently tweeted that, without
your vitamins, you’d shrivel into dust.
Exactly. There are two books in
which that happens. One is H. Rider
Haggard’s She, and the other one is
James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, in which
you only get to be young and beau-
tiful if you stay in Shangri-La. And
there’s the film Night at the Museum.
If you go outside the museum and
dawn rises—poof, dust.
You recently contributed the first
manuscript to the Future Library, a
public art project in which one
writer a year will provide a manu-
script that won’t be read for a cen-
tury—at which point it will be
published in hard-copy form. A
grove has been planted in Norway
that will provide the paper that the
books will be printed on. What was
it like to write for readers in 2114?
Very interesting. A lot of things had
to be taken into consideration. Will
the language have changed? Will
the technology have changed? No
doubt, but we don’t know into what.
The things that you have to research
when you’re writing a 19th-century
novel are the things that everyone
back then took for granted because
they were so ordinary that people
just didn’t write them down. [When
you’re writing for future readers,]
you’re thinking about that all the
time: what will still be there, what
will not be there. You just don’t know.
So how did you work that out?
I can’t tell you.
I know you’re not allowed to reveal
what you wrote, but—
Well, everybody went “Sniffle snif-
fle” during the handover thing in
the forest.
People cried during the ceremony
in Oslo, Norway, where you pre-
sented the library with your manu-
script? Because they weren’t going
to be able to read it?
No, because what they were thinking
about, really, was death. Let us just
say that anything that’s written down
implies a reader. There will be peo-
ple. They will be able to read. There
will be a forest in Norway. There will
be paper made. So the project is
a great big hope for the future.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 67
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 DRAMA IN REAL LIFE

As hours turned into

days, time was running
out for a Texas man buried
alive by his abductors

KIDNAPPED
AND TRAPPED

BELOW
GROUND BY AND REW JO NES
FR O M 1 9 8 4
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER DIAMOND

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 71
READER’S DIGEST
“IF YOU DON’T GIVE THEM $75,000,
they will kill me. These people mean
business.” There was a click, then the
hum of a dead line.
For Benny Baucom, that hum
prefaced an agonizing ordeal. The
co-founder and president of Bebco
Industries, an industrial company in
La Marque, Texas, Benny had been
called to the phone in his office on
Wednesday, September 22, 1982. The
voice on the other end belonged to
his 20-year-old son, Michael, and
Benny could tell it was a recording.
He could make out only a phrase or
two, then the chilling final sentence:
“These people mean business.”
His son had been kidnapped.
Fighting back panic, Benny asked
Sheri, his daughter and secretary,
about the original caller. It had been
a man, she said. In short order, Benny
informed several company officials
of the abduction. They should main-
tain an appearance of business as
usual, he said, and share the infor-
mation with no one.
Benny’s mind raced as he headed
home to tell Glendell, his wife and
Mike’s mother. His thoughts kept
returning to a former Bebco salesman
named Ronald Floyd White, who had
quit his job that spring. A gun enthu-
siast who referred to himself as a
“mercenary,” White had come across
as a sort of con man.
As he drove, Benny wondered
about the $75,000 ransom demand.
72 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
Why not three times that much?
Then it hit him : a few months
earlier, he had sold some property
for $80,000. White, who knew about
this sale, must have reasoned that his
former employer had that amount
of cash readily available. Now Benny
was certain that the ex-salesman had
kidnapped his son.
THE PREVIOUS EVENING, Mike
Baucom had been watching televi-
sion at his home in Santa Fe, Texas,
a little more than 10 kilometres from
his father’s plant. Around 9:30 p.m.,
he heard three knocks on his door.
When he opened it, Mike found him-
self looking down the barrel of a .357
Magnum wielded by a man around
his own age. Behind him stood a guy
with jet-black hair holding a shot-
gun. The pair forced Mike into the
kitchen, where they blindfolded him,
bound his hands and gagged him
with duct tape. Then they walked
him out to his own truck, pushed
him into the cab and began to back
out of the driveway.
After half an hour, the truck
reached a secluded, heavily wooded
area in an abandoned oil field north
of Houston. There, the abductors
made Mike repeat two separate
messages into a tape recorder. Benny
would hear the first one over the
phone the next morning.
The second message contained a
set of instructions: “Drive to the San
Jacinto Monument, east of Houston.
Take the Lynchburg Ferry across the
ship channel. Follow the road to the
grocery store at Interstate 10 and
wait at the parking lot phone booths
for a call.”
When they’d finished recording,
the two men walked Mike over to
a hole in the ground. It contained
a flimsy plywood box that was two
and a half metres long, 79 centime-
tres wide and nearly 68 centimetres
deep. “We’re giving you half a loaf
of bread and a plastic bottle full of
THE LID OF THE BOX, WITH ITS
BURDEN OF EARTH, BEGAN TO
COLLAPSE TOWARD MIKE’S HEAD.
water,” one said. “Be cool. If every-
thing goes right, we’ll be back in a
couple of days to get you out.”
They forced Mike to lie down in
the box, added a lid, jammed in
breathing tubes made of four plas-
tic pipes approximately two centi-
metres in diameter and shovelled
dirt into the hole. To cover their
handiwork, they scattered worn-out
tires over the burial site. Then they
drove away. As Mike huddled there,
underground, he thought about the
changes he would make to his life if
he ever got out.
ONCE BENNY HAD SPOKEN to his
wife, he called the Santa Fe police.
Chief Bryan Lamb arrived within
10 minutes to thoroughly ques-
tion Benny, who shared his suspi-
cions about White. Lamb sent the
distraught father back to work and
returned to the police station, where
he notified the FBI.
En route to the factory, Benny
swung by Mike’s house. When he
saw that the yard was empty, he con-
cluded that the kidnappers had taken
his son away in his own truck. Benny
checked in at Bebco, then drove to
a sporting goods store and bought
ammunition for the deer rifle he had
placed in his car trunk before leaving
home. He headed for Ronald White’s
trailer in Houston. “If Mike’s truck
had been there,” he said later, “I’d
have killed everybody who might’ve
been in the place.”
But the truck was not there, so
Benny settled down to wait. No one
came. Finally, around 5 p.m., he
drove to a nearby store and called
his factory. He was put through
to an FBI agent who was very firm:
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 73
READER’S DIGEST
Benny was to stay put. Agents would
be leaving immediately to escort
him home. In conjunction with local
police, the bureau had taken over.
There were to be agents at the Bau-
com home around the clock, and a
small army of lawmen had set up a
command post at the factory.
Meanwhile, 130 kilometres to the
north, Mike had managed to turn
over onto his stomach. From this
vantage, he discovered a gap be-
tween the end of the box and the
sides. The more he worked on the
BENNY CRIED, “ HEY, I WANT TO
TALK TO MY SON! WHERE IS MIKE?”
HE WAS TALKING TO A DEAD LINE.
end board, the looser it became. He
was propped on his elbows when the
end board came free, causing the lid
of the box, with its burden of earth, to
collapse toward his head. Mike had
just enough time to jam a scrap of
lumber between the lid and the floor
to avoid being crushed. Now he was
pinned in place, face down.
At 4:30 the next morning, Thurs-
day, the phone rang in the Baucom
home. Benny found himself listen-
ing to the same recording of Mike’s
voice he had heard before. At the
end of the transmission, a man’s
74 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
voice came on. “You’ve got two days
to get the money.” The conversa-
tion had lasted 25 seconds, not long
enough for the FBI to trace it. And
they still had no delivery instruc-
tions. That afternoon, Benny picked
up the ransom money with the law-
men. They made up a package of
$5,000 in $10 bills wrapped around
a wad of fake bills, with an electronic
tracker at the core.
The call finally came on Friday
evening. A man’s voice told Benny
to go back to the factory and await
instructions. The two agents who
would act as Benny’s bodyguards
fitted him with a bulletproof vest
and put a radio transmitter in his
shirt pocket; the device would allow
Benny to communicate if he ven-
tured beyond voice range.
After they arrived at the factory,
the agents quickly secured the build-
ing, then told Benny to enter. At
10:30 p.m., the phone rang. Benny
picked it up and heard Mike’s voice
on tape: “Drive to the San Jacinto
Monument, east of Houston….” At the
end of the instructions Benny cried,
“Hey, I want to talk to my son! I’ve got
your damn money. Where is Mike?”
He was talking to a dead line.
Thus began the longest night in
Benny Baucom’s life. With the agents
crouched on the floor of the car’s
back seat, covered by a sleeping bag,
he drove to the monument, took the
ferry across the channel and headed
to the market where he was to receive
the kidnappers’ call. There were four
phone booths by the parking lot. One
of the lines began ringing. Benny
picked up the receiver. “Get on I-10
and drive west to the Exxon station,”
a voice said. “Wait by the phone
booths for further instructions.”
Benny headed to the gas station
and waited. After two hours, one
of the phones finally rang. It was a
woman’s voice this time: “Drive back
to the Minute market, park under
the lights and open all the doors of
your car—all the doors, front and
back, and the trunk. Then wait for
further instructions.”
Benny would now have to go it
on his own. Shortly after 2 a.m., en
route to the market, he let the agents
out of his car. At his destination,
Benny switched off his engine and
opened the doors—and waited. Fi-
nally, at 5 a.m., he saw movement in
the shadows at the edge of the park-
ing area. An FBI agent came over to
him. “They phoned your house a few
minutes ago and said it’s been called
off for tonight.”
ON SATURDAY NIGHT, the pair
who’d stolen Mike away in his own
truck visited the burial site. When
they shone a flashlight down one
of the breathing tubes, they heard
Mike’s voice, very weak: “I’m out of
water. I need more water.” But the two
men walked away.
Despite the massive FBI effort,
hope was beginning to fade. Then,
out of the blue, came an unexpected
break. At 12:30 a.m. on Sunday,
the sheriff ’s office in Montgom-
ery County, 50 kilometres north
of Houston, received a call from a
local resident reporting a suspicious
vehicle parked at a darkened Jiffi Stop
convenience store.
Deputies Jim Hall and John Orr
responded. As they drove up, they
saw a man with black hair filling
plastic bottles from a faucet. The
man told Hall he was replenishing
the water supply for a camp back in
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 75
READER’S DIGEST
the woods. Orr had been shining his
flashlight around the interior of the
beat-up car beside him. Suddenly he
shouted, “Look out, Jim, there’s a pis-
tol on the front seat!”
The deputies frisked the man and
searched his car. They found a shot-
gun on the back seat, and in the
trunk, a semi-automatic machine
pistol, a bag of ammunition, a tape
recorder, wire, rope and a briefcase
containing a passport for Ronald
Floyd White. The name meant noth-
ing to the deputies, who had no
WITH ANTS BITING HIS HANDS,
MIKE HAD HALLUCINATIONS ABOUT
BEING CHEWED DOWN TO A SKELETON.
knowledge of the Baucom case. The
suspect in hand said he was Timothy
Connelly, and he claimed to have
been picked up by two men who
offered to pay him if he’d get some
water for their camp. While he was
talking, the deputies spotted a slip of
paper between the car seats. It con-
tained a series of driving instructions
with orders to wait for telephone
calls. One line read, “You’ll see Mike
alive again if…”
Hall and Orr called their dispatcher
and asked for a statewide check on
White. The reply came back fast :
76 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
he was wanted down south—as a
suspect in an ongoing kidnapping.
While Hall and Orr were booking
Connelly, they heard over the radio
that colleagues had spotted a camp-
fire in the woods. They raced to the
scene, arriving just as two new sus-
pects were being taken into custody:
a bearded, long-haired man named
Mark Oler and a young woman
named Debbie Williams. There was
no sign of White.
When questioned, Oler admitted
that White had been at the camp that
evening. Hall still did not know the
name of the kidnap victim—all he
had was “Mike” in the ransom note.
“Look, Oler,” he said, “we know you’ve
got Mike, and it looks like White has
left you holding the bag. So as far as
we’re concerned, you’re the kidnap-
per, and if anything happens to the
victim, you’ll face a murder rap.”
The bluff worked. Oler led the
police to the middle of an abandoned
oil field. Stepping out into the pre-
dawn cold, Hall shouted, “Mike?” He
heard a voice, muffled and faint. He
shouted again, and again the barely
audible voice replied. The police
began digging frantically, using their
bare hands. They found a hole, and
Hall reached down as far as he could.
A desperate hand grasped his wrist.
AT 7:30 ON SUNDAY morning,
Benny Baucom heard his front door
open. “We have Mike,” Chief Lamb
told him. He drove Benny and Glen-
dell to Montgomery County Court-
house, where they were briefed on
their son’s ordeal. He had lost 23
pounds but, apart from insect bites
and dehydration, seemed to be in
good shape. Minutes later, freshly
showered and wearing police cover-
alls, Mike walked in.
After a joyous family reunion, Mike
told law officers and then a crowd
of reporters of his five-day night-
mare. Speaking in a steady voice, he
described his panic when the lid on
the box began to sag; he recalled his
realization that if it rained, he would
probably drown. With ants biting his
hands and eyelids, he’d had hallu-
cinations about being chewed down
to a skeleton. Finally, he’d heard
someone calling his name, and there
had been earth falling and a hand in
a hole above his head.
When the rescuers had placed
Mike in their squad car, they asked
him what he wanted. A cold soda,
he replied—and to share his joy.
Moments later, he picked up the car’s
radio transmitter. “This is Mike Bau-
com speaking,” he said. “I want to
thank everybody! You got me out of
the hole. I’m free! I’m alive!”
ON SEPTEMBER 30, 1982, Ronald
Floyd White was captured after a
high-speed chase near Rio Hondo,
Texas. Along with Connelly, Oler and
Williams, he was later convicted of
aggravated kidnapping. The same
week he had held Baucom captive,
White was also charged with the ab-
ductions of two other men, 27-year-
old firefighter Coby Garland Hamilton
and 40-year-old oil-field worker Rob-
ert Cameron. White had trapped both
men in the trunks of separate cars,
and both had managed to escape.

SAD SUDS
How about soap that’s just soap-scented? I don’t need to get
hungry every time I wash my hands.
@KENJENNINGS

2-in-1 shampoo is so bad, it should be called 0 for 2.

@GUYENDOREKAISER

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 77
SOCIETY

Have no fear: the world isn’t falling apart,

regardless of what we read in the headlines

The CASE for

OPTIMISM BY ST E V E N P INKER AND AND REW M ACK
FR O M S LAT E .CO M

ADAM VOORHES ; (PROP STYLIST) ROBI N F IN LAY

IT’S A GOOD TIME TO BE A PESSIMIST. ISIS, Ebola, woman-beating

athletes, deadly cops and gangs—who can avoid the feeling that
things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold? But as troubling
as the headlines have been, they deserve a second look. It’s hard to
believe that we are in greater danger today than we were during the
two world wars, the nuclear confrontations of the Cold War or the
eight-year war between Iran and Iraq that threatened to choke the
flow of oil through the Persian Gulf and devastate the global economy.

78 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
READER’S DIGEST
So how can we become more op-
timistic about the state of the world?
Don’t look to daily media. News is
about things that happen, not things
that don’t happen. We never see a
reporter saying to the camera, “Here
we are, live from a country where a
war has not broken out” or a city that
has not been bombed or a school that
has not been shot up. As long as vio-
lence occurs somewhere, there will be
enough incidents to fill the news. And
since our minds estimate probability
by the ease with which we can recall
examples, we will perpetually per-
ceive that we live in dangerous times.
We also have to avoid being fooled
by randomness. Entropy, pathogens
and human folly are always pres-
ent, and it’s statistically certain that
natural disasters and complex emer-
gencies will frequently overlap with
one another rather than space them-
selves evenly in time. But to read sig-
nificance into any such clusters is to
succumb to primitive thinking and
cosmic conspiracies.
Finally, we need to be mindful of
orders of magnitude. Some types of
violence, like shooting rampages and
terrorist attacks, are dramatic and
tragic but, outside of war zones, kill
relatively small numbers of people.
As the political scientist John Mueller
points out, in most years, bee stings,
deer collisions and other mundane
accidents kill more North Americans
than terrorist attacks.
80 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
The only sound way to appraise
the state of the world is to count:
how many violent acts has the globe
seen compared with the number of
opportunities for violence, and is that
ratio increasing or decreasing? As
Bill Clinton likes to say, “Follow the
trend lines, not the headlines.” When
we do, we can see that the trend lines
are more encouraging than a news
watcher would guess.
HOMICIDE
Worldwide, more than 10 times as
many people die in police-blotter
homicides as die in wars; that said,
in most of the world, the rate of
homicide has been falling. The
American crime decline of the 1990s,
which plateaued at the start of this
century, resumed in 2006. Defying
the conventional wisdom that hard
times lead to violence, it continued
during the sub-prime mortgage cri-
sis of 2008 and through the present.
In Canada, the police-reported
crime rate has also been declining
since the ’90s; in 2013, it hit its lowest
point since 1969. Likewise, most other
industrialized countries have seen
their homicide rates fall in the past
decade. Among the 88 countries with
reliable data, 67 have shown a drop in
the past 15 years. Although numbers
for the entire world exist only for this
millennium and include estimates for
countries that do not collect data, the
trend appears to be downward, from
MUNDANE ACCIDENTS
KILL MORE NORTH
AMERICANS THAN
TERRORISTS DO.
7.1 homicides per 100,000
people in 2003 to 6.2 in 2012.
The global average, to be sure,
conceals many regions with hor-
rific rates of killing, particularly
in Latin America and sub-Saharan
Africa. But even in those hot zones,
it’s easy for the headlines to mislead.
For example, the gory, drug-fuelled
murders that began in 2006 in parts
of Mexico may create an impression
that the entire country has spiralled
into lawlessness, but two factors can
help dispel that notion. One is that
the 21st-century spike has not un-
done the massive reduction in homi-
cide (67 murders per 100,000 people
in 1940 versus 22 per 100,000 in 2012)
that Mexico has enjoyed since 1940.
The other is that what goes up often
comes down, so the rate of Mexican
homicide has declined in each of
the past two years. Other notoriously
dangerous regions, from Colombia to
South Africa, have also experienced
significant turnarounds. Many
criminologists believe that a
worldwide reduction in homicide
by 50 per cent in the next three
decades is a feasible target for the
upcoming round of goals to be set
by the United Nations.
VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN
The media coverage of ath-
letes who have assaulted their
wives or girlfriends and of rapes
on college campuses has sug-
gested to some observers that we
are witnessing a surge of violence
against women. But victimization sur-
veys from the U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics show the opposite: rates of
reported rape or sexual assault and
of violence against intimate partners
have been purportedly declining for
decades, and are now a quarter or less
of their peaks in the past. Yes, far too
many of these crimes still take place,
but we can choose to be encouraged
by the fact that a heightened concern
about violence against women has
brought about progress—and that it
can lead to greater progress.
While few other countries com-
pile comparable data, there’s reason
to believe that similar trends could
be found elsewhere. In 1993, the
UN General Assembly adopted the
Declaration on the Elimination of
Violence Against Women. Since then,
many nations have implemented laws
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 81
READER’S DIGEST
and public awareness campaigns to
reduce rape, forced marriage, genital
mutilation, honour killing, domestic
violence and wartime atrocities.
VIOLENCE AGAINST
CHILDREN
Similarly, news reports on school
shootings, abductions, cyberbully-
ing and sexual or physical abuse can
make it seem as if our children are
living in increasingly perilous times.
But the data says otherwise: kids are
safer than they were in the past. In a
review of the literature on children’s
exposure to violence in the United
States that was published in 2014,
sociologist David Finkelhor and his
colleagues reported, “Of 50 trends
in exposure examined, there were
27 significant declines and no sig-
nificant increases between 2003 and
2011. Declines were particularly large
for assault victimization, bullying and
sexual victimization.” Similar trends
can be seen in other industrialized
countries, and international declara-
tions have made the reduction of vio-
lence against children a global issue.
MASS KILLINGS
OF CIVILIANS
The recent atrocities committed by
ISIS, together with the ongoing killings
in Syria, Iraq and Central Africa, have
fed a terrifying narrative in which the
world has apparently learned noth-
ing from the Holocaust and genocides
82 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
continue unabated. But even the most
horrific events of the present must be
put into historical perspective.
By any standard, the world is no-
where near as genocidal as it was
during its peak in the 1930s and
1940s, when Nazi, Soviet and Japan-
ese mass murders, together with the
targeting of civilians by all sides in the
Second World War, resulted in a civil-
ian death rate that was astronomical.
(Holocaust, 6 million; Soviet famine
of 1932-33, 6 to 8 million; the 1937
Nanjing Massacre, 100,000 to 300,000;
Second World War, 40 to 50 million.)
Even though the ruthless actions of
Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and
Mao Zedong in China kept the global
rate high through the early 1960s, it
has been falling ever since.
At the same time, the decline has
been punctuated by periodic spikes of
mass killings: Nigeria (1966-70; more
than one million deaths), South Su-
dan (1983-2002; nearly two million),
Afghanistan (1978-92; 1.5 million),
Indonesia (1965-66; 500,000), Angola
(1975-2002; 500,000), Rwanda (1994;
800,000) and Bosnia and Herzegovina
(1992-95; 100,000). By keeping these
numbers in mind when considering
the current horrors in Iraq (2003-pres-
ent; 500,000 deaths) and Syria (2011-
present; 210,000), we can see that they
are not signs of a dark new era.
Overall, the trend lines for genocide
and other civilian killings point sharply
downward. Although comparisons to
 Rate of Deaths in Genocides and
Other Mass Killings, 1989-2013
10.0
1.0
0.1 Deaths per 100,000
people (log scale)
0.0
1988 1993 1998 2003 2008
pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_onesided_
violence_dataset/
census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/
table_population.php
previous decades are imprecise due
to the crudeness of the available sta-
tistics, the numbers suggest that the
rate of civilian killings has dropped by
about three orders of magnitude since
CHART BY BRY AN CHRISTIE DES IGN
the decade after the Second World
War and by four orders of magnitude
since the war itself. In other words, the
world’s civilians are several thousand
times less likely to be targeted today
than they were 70 years ago.
WAR
Researchers who study war and
peace distinguish, based on intent,
between “armed conflicts”
(which kill as few as 25 sol-
diers and civilians caught in
the line of fire in a year) and
“wars” (which kill more than
1,000). They also separate
“interstate” conflicts, which pit
the armed forces of two or more
2013
states against one another, from
“intrastate” or “civil” conflicts,
which pit a state against an in-
surgency or separatist force,
sometimes with the armed in-
tervention of an external state. In
a historically unprecedented de-
velopment, the number of inter-
state wars has plummeted since
1945, and the most destructive
kind of war—in which great pow-
ers or developed states fight one
another—has vanished altogether.
The last one was the Korean War.
The end of the Cold War also saw
a steep reduction in the number of
armed conflicts of all kinds, includ-
ing civil wars, and recent events have
not reversed this trend. In 2013, there
were 33 state-based armed conflicts in
the world, a number that falls within
the range of the past dozen years
and well below the high of 52 that
occurred shortly after the end of the
Cold War. The Uppsala Conflict Data
Program has also noted that 2013 saw
the signing of six peace agreements,
two more than in the previous year.
But another recent development
is less positive: the number of wars
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 83
READER’S DIGEST
jumped from four in 2010 (the low-
est total since the end of the Second
World War) to seven in 2013. These
wars were fought in Afghanistan, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Su-
dan and Syria. Data for 2014 won’t
be available until later this year, but
we already know that four new wars
have broken out since January 2014,
leading to a total of 11. This jump—
the steepest since the end of the
Cold War—will bring us to the high-
est number of wars since 2000.
The worldwide rate of battle deaths
through 2013 has also risen, mostly
because of the Syrian civil war. Even
so, this increase must be kept in per-
spective. While it has undone the
progress of the past dozen years, the
rates are still well below those of the
1990s and nowhere near the levels of
the 1940s through the 1980s.
LOOK FOR THE HOPE,
NOT THE HYPE
As we can see from the different
facts and figures, the world is not
falling apart. The kinds of violence
SLATE (DECEMBER 22, 2014). COPYRIGHT © 2014 BY SLATE.COM
ART AND LEISURE
Fiction is to grown men what play is to the child.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
84 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
to which most people are vulnera-
ble—homicide, rape, child abuse—
are in steady decline in most of the
world. Wars between states, which
are by far the most destructive of all
conflicts, are all but obsolete. Might
there be a better way to understand
the world?
We can start by ignoring the talking
heads and columnists who are maxi-
mizing the impression of mayhem,
and brushing up on our history in-
stead. Looking at events of the recent
past can enable us to put the events
of the present in an intelligible con-
text. We could also consult the analy-
ses of data on violence that are now
just a few clicks away.
By focusing on the actual evidence
rather than on the inflammatory
headlines, we’d see many benefits. It
would inform and calibrate our re-
sponses to the magnitude of the dan-
gers facing us and also limit the
influence of terrorists, school shoot-
ers and other perpetrators of vio-
lence. In doing so, we could dispel
foreboding and reawaken, again, the
hope of the world.
 FAMILY

A woman discovers that making ends meet

requires patience, ingenuity and buying a
house with the in-laws

Just the
NINE
of Us
BY LO R R E T TA N E E BAR
F R OM TORONTO LIFE
ILLUSTRATION BY KARA PYLE

IN EARLY 2003, when our daughter, Sharon, was a year old, my

husband, Neil, and I faced a major domestic challenge. My maternity
leave had just ended, and the babysitter we’d lined up was no longer
available to work for us. We both held stable administrative jobs at
the University of Toronto, but between our student loan payments
and the rent on our two-bedroom apartment in Toronto’s west end,
we couldn’t afford to pay $1,200 a month for daycare.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 87
READER’S DIGEST

That weekend, we visited Neil’s for the kids. We also drew up a legal
brother Anil, a successful contractor, agreement that broke down our in-
and his wife, Leeann, a stay-at-home dividual investments, how we’d split
mom, at their house in the nearby expenses and how we’d handle large
suburb of Brampton. We spent hours or unexpected costs. It stated that we’d
agonizing over our situation, blam- live together for four years. That would
ing ourselves for not being able to give us enough time to save some
cover the costs of child care. Anil and money, and once Sharon was school-
Leeann, meanwhile, told us about aged, we wouldn’t need full-time child
their problems. Leeann loved stay- care. We closed the deal on June 10,
ing home with their two young kids, three months after we first hatched
Adam and Anissa, and our plan. Anil and Lee-
was pregnant with their ann’s daughter, Alissa,
third child. She and Anil was born that same day.
wanted to buy a bigger NEIL AND I ARE
house and envied our CHRISTIAN, FOR THE FIRST FEW
dual incomes. At first we AND ANIL AND months, we were all on
joked that if we pooled LEEANN ARE our best behaviour. We
our resources, we’d have
the perfect family—we
HINDU, SO OUR helped out with each
other ’s chores, like
could all buy a house
HOUSEHOLD making beds and clean-
together, and Leeann CELEBRATED ing up after dinner. And
could watch Sharon. CHRISTMAS while we’d initially
But over the weekend, AND DIWALI. thought each family
we started to get serious. should have their own
We spent Sunday living room on the main
afternoon researching neighbour- floor, we quickly realized that we pre-
hoods, calculating mortgage rates and ferred to hang out together. We had
creating budget spreadsheets. A week a shared spreadsheet for expenses,
later, the bank approved our loan. If where utilities, taxes and household
we’d given ourselves more time to costs were split fifty-fifty, and we
think about the admittedly wacky ar- planned our menus as a team: each
rangement, we probably would have couple was responsible for prepar-
chickened out. We made an offer ing two dinners during the week, on
on an affordable 240-square-metre Fridays we had takeout, and the week-
house in Brampton. It had two mas- ends were used to finish up whatever
ter bedrooms with ensuites, plus two was in the fridge. Most nights, we ate
additional bedrooms and a bathroom together as a family. Neil and I are

88 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
Christian, and Anil and Leeann are
Hindu, so we celebrated both Christ-
mas and Diwali: we put up a tree, told
the nativity story, learned mantras
and lit diyas around the house.
Six months in, the novelty had worn
off. We started getting frustrated about
who should clean the common spaces
or take out the garbage. I became irra-
tionally annoyed when I’d find aban-
doned loads of wet laundry in the
washer or used tea bags in the sink.
Little things turned into big issues—I’d
spend entire evenings venting to Neil
about our roommates. It became clear
that we had to start speaking to each
other directly instead of complain-
ing behind closed doors. We needed
to actively work together to maintain
a peaceful environment. That meant
being more open and avoiding friction
by doing something as simple as park-
ing in our assigned spots in the drive-
way. We had come to realize that the
success of our agreement hinged on
our individual attitudes.
To give each other more breathing
room, we made a point of trading off
weekend getaways every few months
so each couple could get some time to
recharge. Within a year, we’d settled
into a routine, and I was expecting
child No. 2, Anita. Market value on
our first place had skyrocketed, so we
agreed to sell the house and buy an-
other one. The new home was nearby
© 2015 BY LORRETTA NEEBAR. TORONTO LIFE (JUNE 2015). TORONTOLIFE.COM
and the same size as our old place but
far less expensive, so we all made a sig-
nificant profit.
BEFORE WE KNEW IT, our agreement
was up, and we sold our second house.
Neil and I found a place in Mississauga
that would reduce our commute. Lee-
ann and Anil stayed in Brampton, and
Leeann planned to go back to school.
We were excited to buy our own
homes and reap the financial rewards
of our savvy social experiment, but we
were worried about how this change
would affect the children, who’d grown
up like siblings. We tried to emphasize
the upside of our new living arrange-
ments: the kids would all have their
own rooms, and there would be far
fewer coats to cram into the front hall
closet. Yet those first few months were
bittersweet—we missed sharing cook-
ing duties, chores and bills, as well as
the convenience of always having an
adult around to watch our kids.
Eight years later, we’re still incred-
ibly close. We consult each other
when making decisions about invest-
ments and education, and our chil-
dren still think of each other (and
fight) like siblings. We’ve developed
the kind of unbreakable bond that
only comes from living together—
and we’ve talked about doing it all
over again when we’re retired, so the
grandkids have a place to visit.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 89
 HEART

After his son is born, writer Michael Christie

finds compassion for his mother—and
learns that all parents are cowards

I Wish
I Could
Tell Her
That Now
FROM THE N EW Y O RK T I ME S
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAINA KIRN

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 91
READER’S DIGEST
I HAVE BROKEN MY WRISTS, fingers,
a tibia, a fibula, chipped a hand-
ful of teeth, cracked a vertebra and
snapped a collarbone. I have con-
cussed myself in Tallahassee, Fla.,
and Portland, Ore. I’ve skittered
across the sooty hoods of New York
cabs and bombed down many of San
Francisco’s steepest avenues.
For many years, I was a profes-
sional skateboarder. I first stepped
on a skateboard at the age of 11.
The nomenclature—switch-stance
frontside tailslide, kickflip to nose
manual—was the language of my first
friendships, with wild, strange boys
who were as ill-suited to team sports
and school as I was. They were from
broken homes. Poor homes. Group
homes. We were like little cement
mixers, keeping ourselves in constant
motion, our skateboards’ movement
the only thing preventing us from
hardening into blocks of pure rage.
IT WAS THROUGH THOSE wild and
strange friends that I first realized the
oddity of my own home life. Skate-
boarding gave my mother panic
attacks. She bought me helmets and
pads (which I never wore) and gasped
at my scars and bruises. She would
have forbidden me to skateboard
at all if she believed for a second that
I would comply.
This might sound like typical par-
ental anxiety, but with my mother, it
was something deeper.
92 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
My mother was agoraphobic,
which means she was often house-
bound, terrified of stores, cars and
crowds. Vacations were impossible,
as were jobs and simple errands.
She cut our hair, made us clothes,
prepared complex meals. Together
we painted and drew, watched mov-
ies and read. She taught me to build
a bookshelf, reattach a button and
piece together a quilt. She worried
that school stifled my creativity, so
she encouraged me to stay home
whenever I wanted, which was
often. School couldn’t compare with
the spotlight of her attention, and be-
sides, I knew she needed me close by.
I felt uneasy around other kids
until that day when I was 11 and saw a
boy outside my house perform an ollie
(that magical, clacking leap by which
skateboarders temporarily glue their
boards to their feet and vault into the
air). To my mother’s horror, I begged
him to let me try. From then on, I real-
ized I needed to be skateboarding in
the streets as much as she needed to
be safe in the house. I stopped coming
home except to shower and sleep.
AT 17, I LEFT FOR good and spent a
decade and a half on the other edge
of the continent. I seldom called my
mother. When we talked, it felt as if
she was trying to siphon something
vital from my cells, so I parried her
inquiries about my welfare with
sharp, monosyllabic replies. It was
a time of great anger and resentment,
a time I’m not proud of.
Then in 2008, when I was 32, my
mother got sick with Stage 4 lung can-
cer. I went home to care for her during
a last-ditch chemotherapy regime and
found her in the process of throwing
away everything she owned. To pre-
vent precious artifacts of our fam-
ily history from being lofted into the
trash, I presented her with boxes and
three options: keep, donate or trash.
Eventually I dragged a container
from her closet and found it was
stuffed with skateboard magazines,
bookmarks peeking out from their
pages. I leafed through one and
discovered a picture of myself, five
years younger, atop a skateboard
mid-tailslide on a wooden handrail.
“I didn’t think you could look at
these,” I said.
“I took out subscriptions,” she said,
avoiding my eyes. “You never sent
any photos over the years. These
were the only ones of you I could get.”
Then she sighed, “Keep.”
A few weeks after her chemo-
therapy ended and I returned to
Vancouver, I woke late one night
to a phone call: my mother had died.
I remember sitting at my kitchen
table, weeping, clutching my stom-
ach. I had to get outside. I grabbed
my skateboard and rolled for hours
in the orange street lights. Fresh-
faced people were power walking to
work by the time I got home.
FIVE MONTHS LATER, my first son
was born. My love for him was instant,
soul-flooding. I had trouble taking
my eyes off of him. We went on long
walks while my wife slept. Out with his
stroller in the midday traffic, I found
that I had suddenly become attuned
to the world’s menace, to the human
being’s naked vulnerability in the face
of it. The city throbbed with dangers
that I’d long been insensate to: veering
cars, potential kidnappers, toxic ex-
hausts, carelessly discarded needles. It
was as though the universe had turned
double agent and become my enemy.
IF MY SON CHOKED,
IT WOULD TAKE ME AN
HOUR TO SMOOTH OUT
MY NERVES. I WORRIED
IT WAS BECAUSE
OF MY MOTHER.
I developed a border collie–like
attentiveness when it came to my son’s
safety. When he stood at the coffee
table like a cute little drunk bellying up
to a bar, I’d be hovering there. After my
long acquaintance with the physics of
crashing, I knew exactly what whap his
forehead would make if it hit the lamp,
what thunk his cerebellum would is-
sue on the hardwood if he tipped back.
Or perhaps, I worried, it was
because of my mother—my inherited
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 93
READER’S DIGEST
brain chemistry, my angst-ridden
genes taking over.
Things got worse. I kicked a dog at
the park that looked as if it was going
to bite my son. I complained to my
wife that his daycare workers were
inattentive. If he choked on some-
thing at the table, even momentarily,
it would take me an hour and a few
drinks to smooth out my nerves.
Sleep became impossible.
IT IS A CLICHÉ
TO SAY CHILDREN
TEACH US ABOUT
OURSELVES AND
ABOUT OUR PARENTS,
BUT IT IS TRUE.
I never imagined that parenthood
meant learning to live with this unre-
lenting, impaling fear, with the ques-
tion of when to catch your children
and when to let them fall. To date,
I’ve watched my son’s body bounce
off of concrete, wood and brick.
We had another son in 2013, this
one more fearless than his brother.
Someday I may be forced to hear
their bones snap and see their blood
gush. And then, after all that growing
and falling, they might move away,
far beyond my protective reach. My
THE NEW YORK TIMES (FEBRUARY 2, 2015), COPYRIGHT ©2015 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES CO., NYTIMES.COM
94 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
mother was ill, but she was also right:
it is terrifying to be a parent.
It is a cliché to say children teach
us about ourselves and about our par-
ents, but it is true. My sons are teach-
ing me to calm down. I’ve seen pain
shape them for the better. I’ve watched
a trip to the ground leave them
incrementally stronger. I even recently
bought them both skateboards, which
have yet to interest them.
I’M LE ARNING TO FORGIVE my
mother, for her life lived inside, for
her inability to cope. She was afraid
of everything, yet she was brave. I
used to fear nothing, but parenthood
has rendered me a coward. I wish I
could tell her that now.
But when I picture my mother leaf-
ing through those skateboard maga-
zines, skipping over the interviews
and advertisements, searching for her
reckless, angry son, only to find me
falling from the sky somewhere she
couldn’t go, I’m certain she under-
stood how I felt then, how I’d feel now.
A skateboard is the most basic
ambulatory machine. It has no gears,
offers no assistance. It will protect you
from nothing. It is a tool for falling, for
failure—but also for freedom, for liv-
ing. On a skateboard, you must stay
balanced in a tempest of forces beyond
your control. The key is to be brave, get
low, stay up and keep rolling.
 As Kids See It
“My mom said I have to go to school if I want a house and a car, but quite frankly,
I don’t think I’m ready for that much financial responsibility!”
OUR THREE-YEAR-OLD grandson,
Quinn, was playing with a box of toys.
When he came over to me holding a
plastic alphabet letter in his hand, I
said to him, “That’s the letter U.”
He proudly walked away with it,
saying, “It’s the letter me!”
MARY ANNE BUCKRELL, B u r g e s s v i l l e , O n t .
AND ONE FOR THE KIDS
Q: Did you hear about that
RALPH HA GEN
new broom?
A: It’s sweeping the nation!
jokes4us.com
MY SON, KEVIN, is eight years older
than my daughter, Hayley. Because
of the age difference, Kevin often re-
ceives privileges that Hayley has to
wait years to get. It never occurred
to me and my partner that she
would notice, much less mind. That
is, until her fourth birthday, when
she received a card from her grand-
parents. Upon opening it and dis-
covering there was money inside,
Hayley loudly proclaimed, “My
allowance!”
CHRISTINE SCHENK, We y b u r n , S a s k .
Do your children make you chuckle? A
funny kid story could get you a free year’s
subscription. See page 8 for details.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 95
NATIONAL AFFAIRS

In 2014, Tsilhqot’in Nation won back almost

2,000 square kilometres of their traditional
territory in British Columbia—and drastically
changed the way Aboriginal groups claim land
in Canada. But the fight isn’t over.

GOING
for
TITLE
BY A R NO KO P ECKY FR O M THE WALRUS
BIRTHE P IONTEK

96 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
 The Nemiah Valley
is home to a host of
animals, including
wolves, cougars
and wild horses.
READER’S DIGEST
YOU MIGHT FIND IT IMPROBABLE
that a young boy playing on the east-
ern slopes of British Columbia’s Coast
Mountains once jumped on an ice-
berg, rode it down the Chilko River and
floated out to the sea. Or that when the
iceberg melted, the boy turned into a
salmon. Or that his family fished him
from the water, and he transmogrified
back into a human. You might also
find it unlikely that such a story was
considered as evidence in a modern
court of law. Most incredible of all,
would you believe that the case was
won by the people who told this tale?
THE CHILCOTIN
LEADER’S LAST
WORDS BEFORE
BEING HANGED
WERE, “WE MEANT
WAR, NOT MURDER.”
Here’s another: In spring 1864, an
Aboriginal insurgency terrorized Brit-
ish Columbia. Nearly a dozen Chilco-
tin men slaughtered 13 members of
a road-building crew and cut out the
foreman’s heart. The crew had been
trying to open a shortcut through the
Coast Mountains to the goldfields
near the upper Fraser River. Their
efforts ended in the Chilcotin War.
Several Chilcotins had been
employed as packers, and it soon
98 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
came out that the workers had been
denied food, that the women were al-
lowed to eat only in exchange for sex
and that when flour had gone mis-
sing, the ill-fated foreman had told
the labourers he would bring small-
pox into their territory.
The war carried on all summer. By
mid-August, the Chilcotins agreed to
what they thought were peace talks,
and eight warriors rode unarmed into
the settlers’ camp. Six were charged
with capital offences and five hanged.
Their leader’s last words were, “We
meant war, not murder.”
Few British Columbians remember
the war. But if you think to ask Chilco-
tin descendants—now known by their
non-anglicized name, Tsilhqot’in—
how could they forget?
“The warriors are passed down
to every child,” says Xeni Gwet’in
chief Roger William, the appellant in
Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Colum-
bia. “Without them, that road would
have come through. Who knows if we
would have existed?”
ON JUNE 26, 2014, after one of
the longest court cases in Canad-
ian history, the Supreme Court of
Canada unanimously ruled that
the Tsilhqot’in Nation held title to
approximately 1,750 square kilome-
tres of their traditional territory. It
took decades and marked the first
time that an Aboriginal group in
Canada had won a title claim.
 Most treaties have caused Aborig-
inal signatories to lose land, not gain
it. The Prairies, much of Ontario and
southern Quebec are covered by
land-extinguishment treaties, mean-
ing that most or all traditional terri-
tory was ceded to the Crown. First
Nations were given reserves and the
right to hunt and fish on the lands.
MORE THAN 80
PER CENT OF TREATIES
CURRENTLY UNDER
NEGOTIATION ARE IN
THEIR SECOND
DECADE OF TALKS.
Since 1973, 26 modern treaties
have been signed nationwide. A
further 75 are currently under ne-
gotiation. Still, more than 80 per
cent of them are in their second
decade of talks, and several of them
are in their third. A principal stick-
ing point is land: the Crown usually
offers only a small fraction of what
Aboriginal negotiating partners
claim as traditional territory.
By choosing the court system over
the treaty process, Tsilhqot’in got
more than 40 per cent and established
that land held under Aboriginal title
must be held communally; no part
can be sold or given to anyone except
the Crown, and the land can’t be
used in ways that deprive future gen-
erations of its benefit. In other words,
title falls short of absolute ownership.
The Crown retains what the Supreme
Court calls “underlying title,” seized
at the moment of sovereignty and as
yet unrelinquished.
The implications of that underlying
title are spelled out in the Tsilhqot’in
decision. The Crown may override
title if there’s a “substantial public
purpose.” For example, the develop-
ment of agriculture, forestry, mining
and hydroelectric power or the build-
ing of infrastructure, in principle, can
justify the infringement of title.
For more than a century, Canada’s
governments have assumed owner-
ship of unceded lands without a clear
legal basis for doing so. This appears
(at least to most non-Aboriginal peo-
ple) to be both natural and entirely
legal. What the Supreme Court said
last year was, no, it isn’t.
“ O U R V I S I O N ,” W I L L I A M told
me this past February, “is we, as
Tsilhqot’in people, want to make
decisions in and get revenues from
all the Tsilhqot’in territory.”
We were in the Nemiah Valley, the
eastern shore of Chilko Lake just vis-
ible through the aspens, hemmed in
by jagged white peaks.
Tsilhqot’in territor y lies 225
kilometres north of Vancouver. Part
of it is known as Xeni, and many of
the people who live there are Xeni
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 99
READER’S DIGEST
Gwet’in. Their homes are scattered
across the same valley through which
the Chilcotin warriors led the militia
151 years ago.
The band is one of six that make up
the Tsilhqot’in Nation. When William
says “all the Tsilhqot’in territory,” he
doesn’t mean just the 1,750 square
kilometres that the Xeni Gwet’in hold
title to. He means that plus the rest.
“SOME OF OUR
FAMILIES ARE TWO OR
THREE IN ONE HOME,”
WILLIAM SAID. “SOME
OF THESE HOMES
ARE CONDEMNED.”
Following the Supreme Court’s de-
cision the previous June, William had
travelled across the country to share
the story of his people’s victory with
First Nations from B.C. to Nova Sco-
tia. Recently, he focused on a circuit
between Vancouver and Tsilhqot’in
country, educating about the mara-
thon negotiations with the province.
The aim of those negotiations
is partly to work out details that
Aboriginal title has recently called
into question—Who’s in charge
of roads? What happens to non-
Tsilhqot’in businesses operating on
title land?—and partly to wring more
land from the government. But Wil-
100 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
liam and his colleagues also want the
province to bring Ottawa to the bar-
gaining table to hammer out a pack-
age of Tsilhqot’in self-government.
“Some of our families are two or
three in one home,” William said.
“Some of these homes are con-
demned. To run a band-operated
school, we get half the amount of
funding public schools get per child.”
The list went on.
William, a rodeo champ in his
youth, was raised on the land and
didn’t learn English until he went
to residential school. Now 50, he
has been the Xeni Gwet’in chief on
and off since 1991. The case I came
to discuss has consumed his entire
adult life.
It started in 1989, when the Xeni
Gwet’in band hired Jack Wood-
ward, a lawyer from Victoria, to help
them out. BC Hydro wanted to dam
the Chilko, Taseko and Tatlayoko
Lakes, which would have ruined
sockeye spawning grounds. Worse,
the Ministry of Forests had granted
several logging companies permits
in Nemiah.
The other five Tsilhqot’in bands
had seen their forests decimated by
clear-cuts during the ’80s. Without
a logging road to access its ancient
stands of spruce, pine and fir, Ne-
miah was Tsilhqot’in’s last redoubt.
ONE OF THE FEW lawyers in North
America with a perfect LSAT score,
 Chief Roger William is
one of about 430 Xeni
Gwet’in living in
Tsilhqot’in territory.
Woodward stands six foot three and
exudes a benign intelligence.
“He sacrificed a lot to get us
through this, because he never wor-
ried about being paid on time,” Wil-
liam told me. When funding for
litigation fees came up short, Wood-
BIRTHE P IONTEK
ward mortgaged his own home. Later,
he helped to found a non-profit
called Friends of the Nemiah Valley
to raise more money.
With his help, Xeni Gwet ’in
drafted what became the Nemiah
Declaration of 1989, which forbade
commercial logging, mining, road
building and dam construction in
the region.
But in 1992, forestry companies
began upgrading a small bridge at a
site called Henry’s Crossing in order
to make it strong enough for heavy-
duty trucks.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 101
READER’S DIGEST
Xeni Gwet’in mounted a blockade.
The standoff lasted two months and
became a media sensation. Then-
premier Mike Harcourt stepped in
and promised there’d be no logging
in traditional Xeni Gwet’in territory
without consent.
Following the blockade, the band
commissioned a sustainable-forestry
plan, which, according to William,
determined that the Nemiah’s ecosys-
tem could withstand the removal of
30,000 cubic metres of timber annu-
ally. The province, he said, proposed
removing 1.8 million cubic metres
over five years. The back and forth
between the two parties dragged on
through the mid-’90s.
TRIAL WITNESSES
WERE IN THEIR 80s
AND 90s, AND
ALMOST NONE SPOKE
ENGLISH AS A
FIRST LANGUAGE.
In 1997, the Ministry of Forests
resumed issuing logging permits
inside the Nemiah. “That is when we
said, we gotta go for title,” William
recalled. On November 18, 2002,
Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Colum-
bia went to trial.
Tsilhqot’in claimed rights and title
to 4,400 square kilometres in and
102 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
around the Nemiah Valley. To win,
they had to prove that their ancestors
had used all of that land on a regu-
lar basis and that their ancestors had
had exclusive control of the territory.
Proving this presented a challenge
for a society that hadn’t written any-
thing down until well after 1846. Ev-
ery land claim in the country faces
some version of this problem. In the
mid-’90s, the Supreme Court had an
extraordinary solution: it declared
that stories passed down by word of
mouth over generations should be
allowed in Aboriginal cases, rather
than dismissed as hearsay. That edict
revolutionized Aboriginal law.
Twenty-nine Tsilhqot’in witnesses
delivered testimony during the trial.
Many were in their 80s and 90s, and
almost none of them spoke English
as a first language. Some couldn’t
manage the journey to Victoria, so
Justice David Vickers, the trial judge,
relocated his court to the Nemiah
Valley in late fall of 2003, convert-
ing an elementary-school room into
a courtroom. And because some of
the elders would tell legends like
that of Salmon Boy only at night,
Vickers held special evening ses-
sions of court.
Woodward tasked a small team of
lawyers with selecting and preparing
the witnesses. The group spent the
two years preceding the trial travel-
ling to the Nemiah, attending feasts
and funerals.
 Woodward planned to inundate
Vickers with precise oral history de-
scribing how Xeni Gwet’in have used
the claim area. Memory was critical.
The witness whose testimony mat-
tered most, however, was the plaintiff
himself. “I’ve never met anyone who
has such a good memory,” Woodward
said of William’s performance on the
stand. “To be cross-examined, even
for 10 minutes, is a pretty horrific
experience.” He endured 77 days
of questioning.
The first 30 were pretrial examina-
tion led by the lawyers for B.C. and
Canada. They wanted to know how
much William understood about
rights and title, about his land, lan-
guage and history. That examination
was followed by 28 days of question-
ing led by Woodward. The defence
then had 19 days to cross-examine
and ferret out material inconsisten-
cies. They didn’t find a single one.
The trial lasted five years. On
November 20, 2007, Vickers deliv-
ered his decision. Xeni Gwet’in, he
concluded, had proved their ances-
tral use of 100 per cent of the claim
area and therefore had the right to
use the land—a victory that gave the
Tsilhqot’in people influence over
future development in the region.
But on the question of title, Vickers
decided that exclusivity had been
established in just less than half of
the claim area. Most critically, he
defeated the Crown’s central argu-
ment that if Aboriginal title existed
at all, it was only specific sites as op-
posed to the “mountaintop to moun-
taintop” understanding that many
First Nations insist on.
Canada, British Columbia and the
Tsilhqot’in all appealed. In 2012, the
B.C. Court of Appeal upheld Vickers’s
ruling on rights but unanimously
overturned the principles outlined on
title. The Tsilhqot’in appealed again,
this time on the question of title alone.
THE DEFENCE HAD
19 DAYS TO PINPOINT
INCONSISTENCIES IN
WILLIAM’S TESTIMONY.
THEY DIDN’T FIND
A SINGLE ONE.
The case reached the Supreme
Court in late 2013. Seven months
later, the court ruled unanimously in
favour of William, Xeni Gwet’in and
the Tsilhqot’in Nation, issuing them
title to the same claim area outlined
by Vickers.
E V E N I N T H E S H A D OW of the
Tsilhqot’in decision, neither the
provincial nor federal governments
appear prepared to soften their nego-
tiating stance when it comes to ced-
ing land. B.C. Premier Christy Clark,
for instance, recently alienated her
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 103
READER’S DIGEST
province’s Aboriginal population by
withdrawing support for an incoming
treaty commissioner.
“THIS PROJECT
TOOK 25 YEARS,”
SAID WOODWARD.
“IF WE HAD LOST,
WE WOULD HAVE
LOST FOREVER.”
The much-anticipated Eyford
Report, released this April, noted that
the federal government had already
spent more than $1 billion in loans
and grants to First Nations in treaty
negotiations that have yielded just
26 agreements since 1973. Douglas
Eyford, who wrote the report, urged
the Department of Aboriginal Affairs
and Northern Development Canada
to wrap up what few of the 75 negotia-
tions in play had a finish line in sight
and find other ways to resolve the rest.
One alternative that First Nations
now can pursue with greater con-
© 2015 BY ARNO KOPECKY. THE WALRUS (JULY/AUGUST 2015). THEWALRUS.CA
GOOD INITIATIVE
Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.
HENRY FORD
104 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
fidence is litigation. However, that
process can be slow. “One reason
there have been so few title cases,”
Woodward said, “is it’s very hard to
keep them going. This project took 25
years. If we had lost, we would have
lost forever.”
When my visit to the Nemiah came
to an end, I asked William what he’d
like to say to Canadians who worry
the economy will suffer if First
Nations control too much land.
Many non-Tsilhqot’in still own
land in the Nemiah, William ex-
plained; their properties were
excluded from the title claim. Almost
all had supported the Tsilhqot’in
people throughout their struggle. “If
you can improve First Nations life, it
will improve the province and Can-
ada,” he said.
For a man who’d spent so much of
his life fighting the government, Wil-
liam struck me as remarkably upbeat.
“Our elders remind us all the time,
you have to be honoured to be alive
today,” he said. “You have to look for-
ward for your new generation and
bring your history with you.”
 Life’s Like That
SO, DO YOU THINK IT’S AN EXIT?
WHAT COMMERCIALS HAVE
TAUGHT ME ABOUT LAUNDRY
■ Kids do not play outside unless
it’s been raining for a week and
the field is more of a swamp than
a field.
■ If you like to wear light clothes,
you’re required by law to eat only
tomato sauce.
■ If you have already spilled
ketchup on your shirt, you should
go ahead and rub some mustard
on it, too, so the washing doesn’t
go to waste.
■ Smelling your freshly laundered
clothes causes blue flowers to
blossom around your head.
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
WHEN NUMBERS MATTER
Recently, while my mother and I
were having lunch at a roadside res-
taurant, a child at a nearby table let
out a few loud shrieks. As one of five
daughters born within a six-year
period, I asked my mom, “How did
you ever manage with all of us?”
Without hesitation, she replied,
“I was the one doing the screaming.”
JANICE MURRIN, S t . Jo h n’s , N. L .
SLOW PROGRESS
My dog peed on the front door of
his obedience school, so it’s looking
good. @SBELLELAUREN
Do you have a quick wit? Send us an
original joke! See page 8 or visit rd.ca/
joke for details.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 105
MONEY

Veteran estate lawyers offer sage

advice on managing your affairs

WILL
POWER BY B ARRY M . FIS H AND LE S KOTZ ER
F R OM T H E W I L LS L AWY E R S : T H E I R STO R I E S O F
M O N EY, IN HE R I TAN C E , G R E E D, FAMI LY AND B E TRAYA L
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEX WESTGATE

106 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

READER’S DIGEST

A
S LAWYERS, WE WORK WITH CLIENTS as they
prepare their wills, execute the wills of others
and deal with the complications that arise when
family and money mix with grief and greed. Over
time, we’ve realized that many people want a
better understanding of wills and estates; to that
end, we’ve collected some observations from our time in the field.

Remember, when your will comes
into effect, you will not be on hand to
explain what you meant or to help fix
any problems that come up. To avoid
unexpected issues, here are some
fundamentals to consider.
UPDATE YOUR
PAPERWORK
A will should not be a “one size fits
all” document. It should reflect your
own life situation and should be
reviewed on an ongoing basis. One
client’s will had been drawn up in
1975 and named his brother as the
sole executor. (An executor is a per-
son who’s been appointed to carry
out the terms of someone’s will.) By
the time this gentleman brought in
his will for review, his brother was
97 and in poor health. No alternate
executor had been named in case
the sibling died or if he was un-
able or unwilling to serve as execu-
tor. The client, now a widower who
plans to split his estate between his
two grown children, had forgotten
he had selected only his brother for
this role and hadn’t realized he could
name beneficiaries as executors. He
promptly updated his documents.
Another client came to us with a
will that had been created a decade
earlier. The previous year, however,
this man had gotten married. In some
jurisdictions, such as Ontario, sub-
ject to certain technical exceptions,
marriage revokes a will that was
made before the date of the nuptials.
This gentleman was surprised to
learn his own was null and void.
CHOOSE YOUR EXECUTORS
CAREFULLY
When deciding on an executor, find
someone who is currently able,
interested and legally permitted
to handle the responsibilities of
that role. In one instance, a woman
named her two grandchildren, aged
10 and 13, to execute her estate.
Although she was aware that a minor
is not allowed to act as an executor,
she was adamant that, by the time
she died, each of her grandkids would
be over the age of majority.

108 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

 Be cognizant of the future chal-
lenges you may be creating through
your choices. One client had left
everything to her 10 nieces and neph-
ews and appointed them all as execu-
tors, not realizing it would take only
one of them to delay a decision if he
or she didn’t agree with the others.
As well, when considering possible
candidates, think about how a shift
in family dynamics could affect your
feelings. One couple had selected
their son-in-law as their primary
executor because, as a banker, he was
good with numbers. When asked if
they would still want him in that role
if he and their daughter divorced,
they re-evaluated their decision.
AVOID SIBLING
SQUABBLES
Conflicts between sisters and broth-
ers can arise when children are deal-
ing with their parents’ estates. One
father left all his “memorabilia” to
his son and the rest of his personal
possessions to his daughter. Unfortu-
nately, because the word “memora-
bilia” is vague, it could mean different
things to different people, and in the
case of a dispute between his chil-
dren, the word could require a court
interpretation. He responded, “My
kids will know what I mean. They’ll
never fight over that or anything else!”
Even if your kids get along now, don’t
assume that they will maintain their
composure in the moment—the mix
of heightened emotions and potential
financial gain can cause tension.
In another case, a mother had used
her will as an effort to regulate the
manner in which her three children
would deal with her personal effects
after she passed away. Her eldest
child would have the first pick, the
next eldest would choose second,
and her youngest child would go
third. But this process could be unfair:
the eldest might choose a valu-
able painting, while the next most
expensive item might be worth
many thousands of dollars less than
that. The woman realized that a
neutral method, such as picking
names from a hat, could help prevent
unnecessary tension.
BE AS SPECIFIC
AS POSSIBLE
It is always wise to choose your words
carefully. This is especially true
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 109
READER’S DIGEST
when dealing with legal documents.
One woman’s will had included the
clause, “I leave my diamond ring to
my daughter.” As it turned out, she
had a number of diamond rings,
ranging in value from about $2,000
to $20,000. In the end, this client
changed her will so that it properly
defined which one was intended for
her daughter.
Another woman wrote the follow-
ing: “I leave to my son any car that
I own.” But the previous year, she
had traded her car for a motorhome.
It’s possible that her son might be
challenged if he tries to take the
motorhome, as the interpretation of
“car” may be too narrow to include
a motorhome.
UNDERSTAND THE
FINE PRINT
The average person is likely not
familiar with the nuances of estate
law. Despite their best intentions,
if they have not been briefed on
the potential logistics surround-
ing their wills, unpleasant surprises
may be in store. One father decided
to leave his entire estate to his only
child, his daughter. If she prede-
ceased him, her children would
inherit in her place. He said that he
did not want his son-in-law to get
a “red cent” of his estate. His feel-
ings aside, if his daughter’s mar-
riage dissolved after he passed away,
there was a real possibility that his
110 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
son-in-law would be able to benefit
from any money she had inherited.
His will lacked a key section often
referred to as the “family law clause.”
In many jurisdictions, this clause
protects the income made by a mar-
ried child’s inheritance in the event
of separation or divorce. This man
amended his will accordingly.
The first sentence in one man’s
document read: “This is my last will
and power of attorney.” He was sur-
prised to learn that there is a signifi-
cant difference between a will and
a power of attorney. The latter is
effective only while the subject is liv-
ing and terminates upon his or her
death; the former takes effect only
after he or she dies. When plan-
ning your estate, many jurisdictions
re quire three key documents :
a power of attorney, which identi-
fies a trusted party to deal with your
health and personal care issues;
a financial power of attorney, which grief, human beings have a capacity
names someone you trust to deal for deep love, kindness, generosity
with your assets while you are alive; and selflessness.
and a will, which dictates what you While we hope you can take away
want done to finalize your estate after some important information from the
you are gone. lessons provided here, if you are in
the process of writing—or revising—
DEATH TENDS TO THROW emotions your own will, we suggest you consult
into sharp relief, often causing peo- a knowledgeable lawyer in your juris-
ple to behave in ways that are out diction who can speak directly to your
of character. As wills lawyers, we personal situation. Though it may be
get to see the very best and the very impossible to fully predict how your
worst of people. We have witnessed wishes will be received down the
family discord, avarice and betrayal, road, addressing any ticking time
but we have also been privy to won- bombs in your estate can help thwart
derful moments. Even in times of future family conflicts.
© 2014 BY BARRY M. FISH AND LES KOTZER. THE WILLS LAWYERS: THEIR STORIES OF MONEY, INHERITANCE, GREED, FAMILY AND
BETRAYAL IS PUBLISHED BY CONTINENTAL ATLANTIC PUBLICATIONS INC. THEWILLSLAWYERS.COM

INFORMATION PROCESSING

The New York Public Library has shared a trove of questions posed
to librarians from the 1940s to the ’80s. Some highlights:

Q Is it possible to keep an octopus in a private home?

Q Are Plato, Aristotle and Socrates the same person?

Q Why do 18th-century English paintings

have so many squirrels in them?

Q Where can I rent a guillotine?

Q In what occupation may one be barefoot?

Q Is there a law where a child can become unrelated

to their parent if they don’t like each other?

Source: New York Public Library

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 111

EDITORS’ CHOICE

Diagnosed with polio as an infant, Peter

Kavanagh endured experimental procedures
to give him “normal” mobility. It was the
beginning of a lifelong lesson in perseverance.

Keep
Moving
Forward
FR OM TH E M A N W H O L E AR N E D TO WAL K T H R E E T I MES : A MEMOIR

112 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

© DEBI GOODWI N
READER’S DIGEST

I
WAS BORN ON JUNE 12, 1953, in Deep River, Ont., the third
child and the first boy. It was, by all accounts, a truly joyous
moment. It wouldn’t be long before the joy was replaced
with intensifying degrees of anxiety and worry.

At that time, North America was
recording the highest number of
polio cases to date. In 1953—a wat-
ershed year in the polio epidemic—
Canada was seeing a 76 per cent
increase in infantile paralysis from
the previous year.
Polio was first identified in 1789
and flagged as an infectious disease
in 1840. The virus was isolated in
early 1908, but there is clear evi-
dence stretching back at least as
far as ancient Egypt of periodic
outbreaks. The disease is devastat-
ing, highly infectious, easily trans-
mitted—it’s passed on orally from
person to person through exposure
to fecal matter—and has no known
cure. Polio attacks the spinal cord
and the nervous system, and de-
pending on the severity of the infec-
tion and the location on the spinal
cord, it can paralyze muscles and
affect tendons.
When I was born, contracting po-
lio was truly a crapshoot. The disease
was almost Biblical in the sense of a
plague sent down by God and touch-
ing houses seemingly at random.
Sixty years on, it is hard to capture
the sense of panic that gripped cities
and towns in North America during
“polio season”: summer and early
fall. Parents kept children indoors,
public places were deserted, quaran-
tines were put in place, and victims
were isolated from the healthy.
Between 1910 and the early
1950s, outbreaks of polio took place
throughout North America, as well
as in Europe and in huge swaths of
Asia and Africa. The 1953 epidemic
was the peak of a new series of infec-
tions that had begun in 1949. During
those five years, 11,000 Canadians
were paralyzed by polio. The med-
ical system was overwhelmed.
The disease was big news not just
because of the outbreaks but also be-
cause of the intense race to discover
a vaccine. Connaught Laboratories in
Toronto was a major player and had
contributed breakthroughs in both
research and possible manufacturing
processes. A 38-year-old American
doctor named Jonas Salk, in collabor-
ation with Connaught Laboratories,
was attempting field trials of his most
promising vaccine.
I was infected at the height of the
polio season, in August 1953, just as
Salk was performing his trials. His
modern medical miracle arrived too
late for me. As was the norm at the

114 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

time, after I fell ill, I was isolated in
hospital. I stayed there a year.
I turned out to be one of the lucky
ones, because the permanent dam-
age could have been much worse. It
is true that my left lower leg didn’t
function as such, and this would have
serious ramifications over time. But
at two months old I was alive, and I
wasn’t so damaged that I needed to
be confined to hospital for years on
end, as was the case with other, less
fortunate children.
I HAD A SERIOUS LIMP AND A HITCH IN
MY GAIT. MY WALK WAS JUST ANOTHER
PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT LIFE WAS UNFAIR.
LEARNING TO WALK as a toddler
is the subject of much conjecture,
research and analysis. The process
begins when a baby pulls himself
upright to the point where he can
take steps on his own. The time a
child puts into learning to walk is
estimated at upwards of 1,000 hours.
Some analysts suggest that the av-
erage person spends as much time
learning to walk as an Olympic ath-
lete does preparing for the Games.
When I finally returned home from
the hospital, I was about 15 months
old but hadn’t progressed beyond
the nine- to 10-month stage. I was
just learning to get into a sitting
position and pull myself up. Appar-
ently I never mastered crawling, but
considering the circumstances, that
makes some sense: I was doing all
this catch-up while wearing a plaster
cast on my leg.
Casts were employed to help
prevent the weakened and floppy
limb from becoming twisted and
bent out of shape. They also provided
much-needed stability for a toddler
whose muscles and nerves were as
yet insufficiently developed. The cast
gave me something to stand on and a
place from which to push off.
Once I could walk, I realized that
my experience was different from
that of just about anyone I knew:
walking for me was hard, awkward
and painful. And if others didn’t at
first notice my ungainly stance and
swing, the brace and the shoes gave
it all away.
I hated that brace. I got it around
my second birthday, and it was made
of two steel bars that ran up the sides
of my left leg, from the heel to just
below the knee. The ends of the bars
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 115
The author at five months old, to all appearances a healthy baby.
were inserted into the built-up heel
of the shoe. Just below the knee, the
bars slid into slots in a leather strap
that ran around the leg and was fas-
tened with a buckle to keep every-
thing in place. I wore the brace 24
hours a day, seven days a week, even
in bed. The one exception was when
I was having a bath.
As a child, before understand-
ing the idea of a mind-body iden-
tity problem, I knew a fundamental
truth: I was the brace and the brace
was me. What perplexed and an-
gered me was that even with the
brace and the shoes, my walking
was far from normal. I had a serious
limp and a hitch in my gait, the re-
sult of one leg being shorter, frailer
116 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
and weaker than the other. My walk
was just another piece of evidence
that life was unfair.
WHEN I WAS EIGHT, we moved to
Calgary—the construction company
my father worked for had contracts
and projects under way there. My
memories of the city are fragmentary,
but I clearly recall the medical exper-
COURTESY OF PETER KA VANAGH
iment intended to make it easier for
me to walk.
Alberta was one of the areas of
Canada that had been hit hard by
the polio epidemic of 1953, and the
province’s history with the disease
had led to big changes in the practice
of medicine, the funding of medical
research and the treatment of polio
victims. Alberta’s doctors were fam-
ous throughout North America for
experimentation, especially when it
came to people suffering from polio.
My main problem, the mismatch
in the lengths of my legs, was by no
means an unusual one. Iron lungs
may be the iconic image of the era
of polio epidemics, but shrivelled,
weak, deformed or misshapen limbs
were the norm.
Finding the ways and means to
match leg length is simple in theory
THE PRIEST TOLD MY FRIGHTENED
PARENTS TO TRUST IN GOD, AND BY THAT
HE MEANT, “LISTEN TO THE DOCTORS.”
and remarkably difficult in practice.
In the early ’60s, there were two com-
mon approaches: you could stop or
impede the growth of the longer leg
and thereby allow the smaller leg to
catch up, or you could try to lengthen
the shorter leg through surgery.
My doctors wanted to open up a
third possible avenue of remedial
medicine. They were eager to see if you
could accelerate the growth rate of the
smaller limb so that in time, it would
catch up with the unaffected leg.
The doctors’ thinking, as I recon-
struct it—what with records being
remarkably scarce—goes as follows:
there are tumours that sometimes
occur in limbs that result in increased
blood flow to the affected part of the
body. One of the consequences of the
tumour and the increased blood flow
can be an accelerated growth of the
limb. So what if you could mimic the
effects of a tumour without one be-
ing present? What if the blood flow in
the shortened leg could be increased
such that the limb grew faster than
the normal-length leg? Would the re-
sult be, in time, legs of equal length?
I know from later conversations
with my mother that my parents
consulted their parish priest and
explained to him how concerned
they were. They wanted the best
for me, but they were scared. Their
priest told them to trust in God, and
by that he simply meant, “Listen to
the doctors.”
In the end, my parents agreed to
this experimental and very rare pro-
cedure, and I was admitted to hospi-
tal at age nine. During the five-hour
surgery, a long incision was made
in the upper inside portion of my
left thigh, and through the fusing of
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 117
READER’S DIGEST
some of the major arteries and veins
of the leg, everything was in essence
rewired, forcing an increased blood
flow to the limb.
I spent the next few weeks in the
hospital recovering from the surgery
and becoming reacquainted with how
to walk. Once the incision had healed,
I was discharged. The doctors in-
structed me to go about as I had been
up until then, though my parents and
I were told that in about three years’
time I’d need surgery to undo the leg
I GOT OFF THE BUS AND EXPERIENCED
NERVE-CRUSHING AGONY. I REMEMBER
THE ALARM AT NOT BEING ABLE TO WALK.
rewiring, regardless of whether or not
the experiment had succeeded.
THE STRANGEST THINGS will cause
me to flash back to when I was 12. An
acoustic ceiling tile in a hospital wait-
ing room, the feeling of plaster, find-
ing myself in an awkward position
with a leg bent oddly, being tangled
in sheets, a closed bedroom door—all
of these things can bring back deep,
searing sensations of pain, loneli-
ness, panic and helplessness.
In one memory, I see myself riding
on a school bus and the bus hitting
a pothole, which jars me heavily. I
118 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
remember getting off the bus and ex-
periencing an incredible pain in my
left leg. Not an ache or a stab, as was
common for me—a nerve-crushing
agony. Most of all, I remember the
alarm and confusion at not being
able to walk.
This moment came just a few
months after the major leg surgery
to rewire my blood circulation.
The doctors soon figured out why
I was experiencing such extreme
pain. Contracting polio had caused
doctors, nurses and my parents to
miss a very important feature of my
birth. I was about to pay the price of
a missed diagnosis.
One to two in 1,000 births involves
“hip dysplasia or developmental
dysplasia of the hip,” or congenital
dislocated hip. I had been born with
the condition, and yet no one no-
ticed. The most generous explana-
tion is that my doctors all made the
same mistake. Once I was diagnosed
with polio, everything about me was
seen through the prism of the dis-
ease. It never occurred to anyone—
or if it did, it was never raised—that
I might have something else wrong
with me.
Most literature suggests that if the
diagnosis is not made before the age
of six months, just about every op-
tion except the most extreme meas-
ures is off the table. What was made
very clear in the doctor’s office was
that “extreme measures” meant just
that. My hip needed to be replaced.
THE HUMAN SKELETON is perfectly
capable of withstanding a lot of
MY WIFE SAYS THAT FOR MOST OF THE
TIME SHE HAS KNOWN ME, I HAVE MOANED
IN MY SLEEP. NOW IT WAS CONSTANT.
hard knocks. I know. Mine has been
through a perfect storm, and for the
most part it has rebounded as best it
could. But at some deep level, I knew
that age would inevitably wear and
tear at what was already an imperfect
structure. I feared that the end result
was going to be neither pretty nor easy.
In early 2012, I experienced a
sharp, overwhelming spasm of pain,
severe enough to make me gasp. Over
the course of my life, intermittent
flashes had become the norm, but
this was something different. The
next morning I got out of bed to go
to the bathroom, and as I took a step,
a similar spasm shot up the inside of
my leg straight into my pelvis. For a
moment I could not move. I hopped
a little, and then everything was nor-
mal again; I was back to my default
reality, the usual low-grinding pain.
Over the next few weeks, the situa-
tion worsened. The sharp spasms be-
came more frequent. Hearing myself
suck in breath at the intensity of the
pain frightened me. Was my lifelong
dread of hard, inevitable degenera-
tion coming true?
About a week later, my doctor and
I met. My bone had grown over the
steel plate fixing my femur to my pel-
vis. It felt as though the plate was carv-
ing striations into the latter, and the
femur was sliding in and out of pos-
ition. In short, my hip had worn out.
Getting to see a surgeon took a tax-
ing three months. I used a cane all
the time, and the agony worsened.
Sleep, never my strong suit, became
even less restful. My wife, Debi, tells
me that for most of the time she has
known me, I have often moaned and
groaned in my sleep. During this
period it became constant.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 119
READER’S DIGEST

(Clockwise,
from top)
The Kavanagh
siblings in
Buckingham,
Que., in 1959;
the author as
a high-school

COU RTE SY OF PE TE R K AVANAG H

senior in Sydney,
N.S., in 1966;
the entire family
together in Deep
River, Ont., in
the early 1950s.

120 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

TORONTO WESTERN HOSPITAL is a
huge facility covering an entire city
block on the edge of the inner core
of the city. Though the hospital is
known for neurosurgery, it also does
much in the areas of orthopaedics,
arthritis, rheumatism and other
related bone, muscle and tendon ill-
nesses and diseases. This is where
I went in June 2012 to meet with
Dr. Khalid A. Syed, my surgeon.
Dr. Syed explained that the first
difficulty was that I didn’t really
DR. SYED SMILED. HE THOUGHT BUYING
ALL NEW SHOES WAS A SMALL PRICE TO PAY
FOR HAVING LEGS THE SAME LENGTH.
have a hip, and he would have to
build one. Because it would have
been too complicated to remove the
steel plate, he inserted a special hip
prosthesis next to the plate, and cre-
ated a cobalt chrome ball to sit atop
the femur. He mused about whether
there could be any lengthening of
the leg to diminish the discrepancy
slightly but then said it was a tricky
issue—I might suffer nerve damage
if he got it wrong.
The doctor’s reflections brought
back painful memories of the failed
procedure when I was nine. Even
today, leg lengthening is a form of
surgery that is complicated, contro-
versial and deeply enmeshed in the
history of orthopaedics. But I wanted
to be able to travel and walk without
difficulty, so a date was booked for
the operation.
My recollections of the surgery are
sketchy. I was given a spinal block
and a range of sedatives. I was very
cold; there were noises and the clink
and clank of metal instruments hit-
ting metal and porcelain trays. The
light was extreme.
I woke as I was being wheeled
to recovery. I had survived surgery
once more. When I was settled into
the orthopaedic ward on the ninth
floor, Dr. Syed told Debi, our daugh-
ter, Jane, and me that the surgery
had gone well and that he had fixed
the hip. He went on to say that he
had been able to make my legs what
they would have been like when I
was a baby.
For a moment we were con-
fused. He explained that in addi-
tion to building me a new hip, he
had lengthened my left leg such
that it was now the same length as
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 121
READER’S DIGEST
After the 2012 surgery, standing straight
and tall for the first time in his life.
my right, making my whole lower
body symmetrical.
I just stared at him, stared down
at my legs, and then looked over at
Debi and Jane. I didn’t know what
to say. I started babbling about how
none of my shoes, with their built-up
heels, would work anymore. Dr. Syed
smiled and said he thought having to
buy all new shoes was a pretty small
price to pay for having two legs that
were the same length.
THE MAN WHO LEARNED TO WALK THREE TIMES: A MEMOIR, BY PETER KAVANAGH. COPYRIGHT © PETER KAVANAGH, 2015. REPRINTED
BY PERMISSION OF KNOPF CANADA, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE CANADA LIMITED
122 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
I HAVE A LIFELONG and deeply
intimate relationship with pain. In
our medicine cabinet is a bottle of
PMS-Hydromorphone, an opioid
analgesic. A doctor at Hillcrest Cen-
tre, where I did my physical rehabili-
tation, gave me the bottle the day I
was leaving to go home. I told her
it was unlikely I’d use it; I had been
weaning myself off the drug and was
relying more often on extra-strength
Tylenol. The doctor smiled and said,
“Just take the pills home. They might
come in handy. You need to be out of
pain in order to concentrate on your
healing and your physiotherapy.”
During the first six months after
surgery, I found ways to cope with
the pain created by the exercises and
by the nerve repair process. For the
exercise pain, heat and cold and a
massage wand for muscle tightness
worked, as long as I didn’t avoid
sleep or my long-time practice of
meditating. For the nerve pains, I
adopted a plan based on distraction.
When the leg went crazy and the sig-
nals misfiring between my limb and
my brain grew intense, I would lift
weights. The weights had nothing to
do with the leg, but a physician friend
suggested it was all about releasing
endorphins in the brain, a natural
© DEBI GOODWI N
form of pain relief.
What I didn’t realize right away was
that I was undergoing a significant
change in my relationship trate more deeply, I sleep
with pain. There’s a body better, I have a sunnier
scan meditation that’s disposition, I am more
an exercise in awareness, positive and patient and
where you bring your focus less anxious, and I have
of attention individually fewer lines on my face.
to parts of your body and A few years ago, even as
check in, see how every- I watched my body dete-
thing is going. One mor- riorate, my walking grow
ning, as I started the scan, even more problematic, it
I realized what was differ- was the intensifying pain
ent: I wasn’t registering that most worried me
pain in my usual centres. about my future. All of
I was simply lying in bed. that is gone.
When I wake up in the EDITORS’ There is no straightfor-
CHOICE
morning now, I feel no ward explanation for the
pain. While falling asleep, I feel no pain vanishing. Dr. Syed, pleased by
pain. While driving in the car or sit- an outcome he would never have
ting in a movie theatre or at a restau- promised, observed that making a
rant, I feel no pain. Pain has been my body even and straight has all kinds
constant companion almost as long as of effects.
I have been alive. Going about my day In our medicine cabinet is a bottle
without it is a new experience for me. of PMS-Hydromorphone. It has
No longer hurting has been liber- never been opened. God willing, it
ating. At 62 years old, I can concen- never will be.

ON SHARING

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand;

they listen with the intent to reply.
STEPHEN R. COVEY, author

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be

called happiness. It has no taste.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË, author

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 123

What mood are you in?
What are you passionate about?
What captures your imagination?
What interests you today?

Your gateway to the world’s best stories.

Sign up and start your free trial* today at nextissue.ca

*Free service starts upon account activation. Unless cancelled earlier, a monthly fee will apply after 30 days. Visit nextissue.ca. ©2015 Rogers Communications
 GET SMART!

13 Things
You Should
Know About
Procrastination
BY KATI E U N D E RWO O D

1 Blowing deadlines left and right?

You’re not alone. Up to 20 per cent
of people qualify as chronic procras-
tinators. The tendency to put things
off is consistent between sexes and
across cultures.
Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise
Guide to Strategies for Change, attrib-
utes dilly-dallying to a battle in our
brains—not garden-variety laziness.
“When evaluating a task, typically we
react with our fight-or-flight limbic
system. When you think, ‘I don’t want

2 According to research out of the

University of Colorado Boulder,
the urge to procrastinate is inherited.
to do that,’ you’re not able to quickly
recruit impulse control.”

You can blame at least some of your

unfinished business on Mom or Dad. 4 Even so, Pychyl says that practis-
ing mindfulness for as little as 30
ISTOCKPHOTO

minutes a day helps. It can allow us

3 Timothy Pychyl, a psychology

professor at Carleton University
in Ottawa and author of Solving the
to better control impulses and sub-
due our ancient lizard brains in the
interest of getting things done. ➸
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 125
READER’S DIGEST

5 The claim some of us use to jus-

tify procrastinating—that we
work best under pressure—has
have to reach your objective in
shorter units, like days and weeks in-
stead of months and years. Research
largely been refuted. Researchers say shows it’ll add urgency to your goal.
it’s a way to rationalize bad behav-
iour. To curb this habit, try breaking
tasks into steps, accomplishing small
parts over longer periods of time.
10 Keep it simple. One study
out of Germany demonstrated
that students who thought about
tasks in concrete terms—like the

6 “Pre-crastination”—getting tasks
done as soon as possible in order
to get them off our plates—is also a
thing. Pre-crastination allows us to
free up space in our working memo-
ries, even if rushing involves more ef-
fort or risk.
how, where and when—were more
likely to tackle their to-do lists than
abstract thinkers. So try thinking
about when you’ll go grocery shop-
ping and which items you’ll buy
rather than just writing “food” on
your to-do list.

7 Procrastinators are dispropor-

tionately more likely to self-report
heart disease and hypertension,
according to a study out of Bishop’s
University in Sherbooke, Que. Lead
researcher Fuschia Sirois says the
reasons for the link are unclear, but
she suggests high levels of stress may
cause people to neglect positive hab-
its like healthy eating and exercising.
11 Leaning on loved ones can do
more harm than good. A study
from Northwestern and Duke univer-
sities showed that the physical pres-
ence of a partner lowers our goal
orientation by making us more re-
laxed and, therefore, less ambitious.
12 If you’re going to shirk work,
avoid your television. Accord-
ing to a 2014 German study, people

8 Distractions won’t help you fo-

cus, so keep your gadgets out of
reach. According to data from 150,000
users of the Android app Locket, the
average person checks their phone
upwards of 110 times daily.
who watched TV or played video
games to blow off steam reported in-
creased guilt and feelings of failure
over their choices of diversion.
13 Cat videos are okay, though—
they’re linked to elevated en-

9 When making long-term plans,

like buying a house or saving for
retirement, measure the time you
ergy levels and a bump in positive
emotions, say researchers at Indiana
University. Thanks, Grumpy Cat.

126 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

 That’s Outrageous!
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
BY S IM O N LE WS E N
A SMASHING SUCCESS
When Woodstock, Ill., native
Wally Thomas heard that
friends of his grandson
planned to demolish their
garage, the 91-year-old
rejoiced. It was his chance
to attain a lifelong dream:
smashing through a garage
door with a car. This May, after
receiving permission from the struc-
ture’s owners, the former demolition
derby driver and his 30-year-old
grandson donned helmets and got
into an impounded 1989 Isuzu Ro-
deo. Thomas says, “I hit the gas, spun
the wheels and went, bang!, through
that door like it wasn’t there.”
LONG-TERM LOAN
In January 2015, Sir James Tid-
marsh, 82, returned a copy of the
spy novel Ashenden: The British
Agent to the Taunton School library
in Somerset, England. The only prob-
PI ERRE LORANGER
lem? He’d checked it out in 1949.
The Taunton foundation accepted a
donation of £1,500 in lieu of a fine for
the overdue book. The former Lord
Lieutenant of Bristol, who discovered
the novel while moving, says,
“If it had been two years,
I would have felt terrible.
But it was 66. The longer
you live with something
like this, the less guilt
you feel.”
MAN ON THE RUN
In 1959, Frank Freshwaters,
who’d been convicted of man-
slaughter, escaped from an Ohio
prison farm. In 1975, he was picked
up in West Virginia but got released
when the state governor refused
to sign extradition papers. In 2015,
56 years after Freshwaters’s escape,
authorities came across a Florida
resident with a driver’s licence un-
der the name William Harold Cox,
the criminal’s alias at the time of
his West Virginia arrest. On May 4,
investigators apprehended “William
Harold Cox” at his trailer home.
Showing him a 1950s photograph
of Freshwaters, they asked, “Do you
know this person?” The suspect re-
portedly smiled and said he hadn’t
seen the man pictured in a long time.
He was extradited to Ohio that week.
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 127
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128 | 10 • 2015 |
 Brainteasers
Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles and mind stretchers,
then check your answers on page 132.
BY M ARCEL DANE S I

SECRET SEQUENCE (Difficult)

Among the three choices given, which square is the logical next step in
the sequence?

A B C

ARITHMERIDDLE (Difficult)
Replace the question marks with mathematical symbols (+, —, × and ÷) to
create a correct equation. You must follow the order of operations and not
add parentheses.

3 ? 5 ? 5 ? 12 ? 3 ? 9 = 0
rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 129
READER’S DIGEST

PYRAMID SCHEME (Moderately difficult)

What numeral belongs on the peak of the last triangle?

13 12

9 7

NUMBER SEARCH (Easy) ON THE DOT

Find two identical three-digit numbers, one hori- (Moderately
zontal and one vertical, that intersect each other difficult)
across the middle like a plus sign. How many dots
should go under
the last set of
2 3 5 2 7 7 5 4 digits?

3 5 2
1 0 2 9 1 0 2 3

6 3 3 0 5 6 6 3 5 9 7

3 6 2 1 4 9 5 1 5 5 2

8 7 8 8 9 5 9 2
7 8 5
3 4 5 3 4 9 5 6
12 5 8
1 2 4 5 6 3 2 1
9 9 8
8 9 0 5 4 1 1 2

130 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

 Trivia Quiz
BY PAUL PAQ UE T

1. What is the oldest continuously 8. What film, based on a board game,

operating university in Europe?
2. In 1976, a Brazilian-German be-
came Queen Silvia of which country?
3. Who gave the theory of relativity
a new spin when he married his
cousin, Elsa Lowenthal?
4. Ironically, amazon.com deleted
e-books by which author who
invented the concept of Big Brother?
5. In biology, it’s a layer of gel in
cells. In Ghostbusters, it’s ghost
residue. What is it?
6. What movie’s theme
by John Williams is easy
to play, since it’s mostly
E and F notes?
7. We’d be “moonstruck”
if “gypsies, tramps
and thieves” were to 15. Lions and tigers and bears:
camp out along what oh, my! They’re all found in
tributary to the Loire Oz, and in the wilds of which
in France?
marked pop singer Rihanna’s movie
acting debut?
9. What vehicle would you need to
win the Icarus Cup?
10. Who is the only person to have
hit a major-league baseball home
run and scored an NFL touchdown
in the same week?
11. What fictional character appeared
on the cover of Playboy in 2009?
12. What Robert Palmer song
was originally intended as a
duet with Chaka Khan?
13. According to the
Monty Python musical
Spamalot, which nation
invented the Fisch
Schlapping Dance?
14. What grizzly bear–
free U.S. state has an
NBA team called the
real country? Grizzlies?

Grizzlies). 15. India.

ISTOCKPHOTO

11. Marge Simpson. 12. “Addicted to Love.” 13. Finland. 14. Tennessee (the Memphis
7. Cher River. 8. Battleship. 9. A human-powered aircraft. 10. Deion Sanders, in 1989.
Einstein. 4. George Orwell (the deletion was due to copyright issues). 5. Ectoplasm. 6. Jaws.
ANSWERS: 1. The University of Bologna in Italy (founded in 1088 AD). 2. Sweden. 3. Albert

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 131

 Sudoku
Brainteasers:
Answers
(from page 129)

BY I A N R IENS C H E
8 5
9 2
5 9
SECRET SEQUENCE
C. The number of symbols
above each square multi-
plied by the number of
symbols below each square
produces the number of
symbols inside the square.
Also, the symbol used on
3 5 the inside of each square
is always above and below
6 the next square.

ARITHMERIDDLE
3 4 7 3 + 5 + 5 - 12 —: 3 - 9 = 0

1 9 7 6 4 PYRAMID SCHEME
11. The numerals represent
the number of distinct
3 5 2 triangles in each figure. Note
that a triangle can be made
4 8 1 up of smaller segments,
including smaller triangles.
2 5 9 8 NUMBER SEARCH

2 6 2
1
3
0
5
2
2
9
7
1
7
0
5
2
4
3
6 3 3 0 5 6 6 3
3 6 2 1 4 9 5 1
TO SOLVE THIS PUZZLE…
8 7 8 8 9 5 9 2
You have to put a number from 3 4 5 3 4 9 5 6
1 to 9 in each square so that: 1 2 4 5 6 3 2 1
(SUDOKU) SUDOKUPUZZ LER.COM

8 9 0 5 4 1 1 2
■ every horizontal row SOLUTION
5 3 6 4 1 2 9 7 8
and vertical column 4 8 7 3 9 6 5 2 1 ON THE DOT
contains all nine numerals 9 1 2 7 5 8 3 6 4 10. The number of dots is
(1-9) without repeating 2 7 5 8 3 1 6 4 9 calculated by adding the first
3 4 8 6 7 9 2 1 5 two digits in each set and
any of them;
1 6 9 2 4 5 7 8 3 then subtracting the third.
■ each of the 3 x 3 boxes 6 2 4 9 8 3 1 5 7 For example, for the first line
8 5 3 1 2 7 4 9 6 of dots, 3 + 5 – 2 = 6, and this
has all nine numerals,
7 9 1 5 6 4 8 3 2 translates into six dots.
none repeated.

132 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca

 Word Power
Canst thou hold a candle to the bards of yore?
Define these words immortalized by Shakespeare and Milton,
and you can call yourself a poetic champion.
BY GEO RGE M URRAY

1. scrannel—A: grain-based drink. 8. scrippage—A: work

B: harsh and unmelodious.
C: unscrupulous lord.
2. castigate—A: grisly
form of torture.
B: castle security feature.
C: rebuke severely.
of a scribe.
B: contents of a wallet.
C: game of chance.
9. lubber—A: castle moat.
B: moonshine.
C: big, clumsy fellow.

3. villatic—A: ugly. 10. convolve—A: coil up.

B: rural. C: evil. B: turn ship around.
C: join for dinner.
4. escot—A: silk scarf.
B: flee combat. 11. clarion—A: jutting hill.
C: cover living expenses. B: clear and loud.
C: blue water.
5. whirligig—A: object that
12. obsequious—A: sneaky.
moves in rapid circles.
B: clown nose. B: flatulent. C: servile.
C: mechanical clock. 13. effulgence—A: radiance.
B: pollution. C: lies.
6. goosery—A: book
of animal names. 14. pandemonium—
B: silliness. A: zoo for bears.
C: pinching someone’s B: utter confusion.
bottom. C: quarantined area.
7. antre—A: cavern. 15. anthropophagous—
B: piece of armour. A: cannibal. B: diplomatic.
C: ghostly house. C: academic.

rd.ca | 10 • 2015 | 133

READER’S DIGEST
Answers
1. scrannel—[B] harsh and unmelo-
dious; as, The witch’s scrannel voice
rose as she began an incantation.
2. castigate—[C] rebuke severely;
as, Jim knew his boss would casti-
gate him for missing work.
3. villatic—[B] rural; as, The
Tuscany region in Italy is known
for its villatic beauty.
4. escot—[C] cover living expenses;
as, Marijke had relied on her
wealthy parents to escot her while
she attended university.
5. whirligig—[A] object that moves
in rapid circles; as, The car hit the
black ice and spun on the highway
like a whirligig.
6. goosery—[B] silliness; as,
The children’s goosery was more
than Théo could take, so he sent
them outside.
7. antre—[A] cavern; as, The vast
antres of Lascaux in France are part
of a World Heritage Site.
8. scrippage—[B] contents of a
wallet; as, He realized his scrippage
was nothing but receipts and bills.
9. lubber—[C] big, clumsy fellow;
as, Linda knew her husband was a
134 | 10 • 2015 | rd.ca
lubber and therefore asked him
to wait outside the china shop.
10. convolve—[A] coil up; as,
It was only as I started to fall that
I realized the garden hose had
convolved around my ankles.
11. clarion—[B] clear and loud;
as, The church bell’s clarion peal
called the townspeople to a mar-
riage service.
12. obsequious—[C] servile; as,
Alban’s colleagues rolled their eyes
at his obsequious habit of bringing
coffee to the boss every morning.
13. effulgence—[A] radiance; as,
The sun’s effulgence reflected off
the lake, blinding Kondwani as he
paddled the canoe.
14. pandemonium—[B] utter con-
fusion; as, Min-ji called the kids in
from the pandemonium of the
squirt-gun battle.
15. anthropophagous—
[A] cannibal; as, The flesh-eating
scenes in the movie about the
anthropophagous doctor were too
much for me.
VOCABULARY RATINGS
7–10: fair
11–12: good
13–15: excellent
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 Quotes
BY C H RISTINA PALASS IO

Climate denial is COMEDIANS

not just about de-
nying the science;
ARE THE
it’s about denying ANTHROPOL-
the urgency of OGISTS OF
the science. OUR SOCIETY.
N AO M I K LE I N S U GA R SA M M Y

I’ve avoided the word “retirement.” Everybody uses it.

BEN HEPPNER

I’m the velvet fist: I WENT ON A DATE

even-keeled, high
tolerance for
AND THE GUY WAS
nonsense. But LIKE, “CAN YOU
when I reach my TWEET ABOUT MY
boiling point, it’s
not pretty.
NEW EP?” LIKE,
JOE MIMRAN REALLY? S H AY M ITCH E LL

I DON’T GET IT. BIG OIL We need new superlatives.

CAN POLLUTE WITH
IMPUNITY AND IT’S
JUST BUSINESS. I BURN
A FEW LEAVES IN MY
BACK YARD AND THE
SWAT TEAM SHOWS UP!
RO N JA M E S
If salads can be “amazing”
and you can be “obsessed”
with pants, what words do
we reserve for the truly
incredible?
J O N AT H A N TO R R E N S

PHOTOS: (SAMMY) © 2015 GROUPE TVA; (MITCHELL) © 2015 ABC FAMILY; (JAMES) COURTESY OF
RON JAMES. QUOTES: (KLEIN) DEMOCRACYNOW.ORG (JUNE 18, 2015); (SAMMY) THE MONTREAL
GAZETTE (DEC. 7, 2014); (HEPPNER) THE GLOBE AND MAIL (MAY 22, 2015); (MIMRAN) TO RONTO LIFE
(JUNE 30, 2015); (MITCHELL) ELLE CANADA (JUNE 4, 2013); (JAMES) TWITTER (APRIL 21, 2015);
(TORRENS) TWITTER (JUNE 24, 2015).
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