The elevator door slides open to a ninth-floor corridor tiled in black-and-white marble in a downtown Toronto office building. A sign on the receptionist’s desk announces that this is Varity Corporation, until two years ago known as Massey Ferguson. Behind the woman, on a cabinet, a miniature fleet of Massey-Ferguson tractors looks ready to harvest… Continue reading Harvesting Hope
Category: Spring 1988
Ms. Taken
There hasn’t been another political movement like it. Of all the grass-roots revolutions born of the idealism and outrage of the sixties, the women’s movement is the only one that came and actually stayed. Who even remembers the youth movement, when students organized, demonstrated and hitchhiked across the country, so alarming their elders with their… Continue reading Ms. Taken
Monkey Business in Bestseller Land
On March 2, 1987, Carsten Stroud’s newly released book Close Pursuit: A Week in the Life of an NYPD Homicide Cop was glowingly reviewed in Maclean’s magazine. It was, said the magazine, a “compelling portrait of New York City homicide detective Eddie Kennedy.” Two weeks later, Close Pursuit was tenth on the magazine’s nonfiction bestseller… Continue reading Monkey Business in Bestseller Land
Upwardly Immobile
It is becoming increasingly apparent that if employers want to avoid legislation requiring them to institute affirmative action programs, they are going to have to do much better on a voluntary basis at hiring and promoting women into higher-paying jobs and employers should stop assuming that women can’t do nontraditional jobs: if they have the… Continue reading Upwardly Immobile
Lost in gloss
If only this were printed on scratch’n’sniff stock, there would be so much less explanation required. A smell, slightly sickly, a bit cloying, an odor caused by clothes too warm and yesterday’s cut flowers and the suffocating sorrow of the viewing room, yes-for this is how one who once worshiped Canadian magazines feels when invited… Continue reading Lost in gloss