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Create AccountThis article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on December 8, 1997. Partner content is not updated.
During the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, two Canadians who had become lost on the citys streets set off in search of a ride. Rounding a corner, they spotted a parked and empty bus, the keys in the ignition.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on September 8, 1997. Partner content is not updated.
They kept trying to take her picture even after the car stopped careening off the concrete wall, even as she lay dying in the back of its tortured chassis. She was their prey.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on December 23, 1996. Partner content is not updated.
Inside his third-floor Parliament Hill office last Thursday, Prime Minister Jean CHRÉTIEN spent part of the morning signing some of the 1,000 Christmas cards that will be sent out with his personal signature.James McGill, fur trader, merchant, politician, philanthropist (born 6 October 1744 in Glasgow, Scotland; died 19 December 1813 in Montreal, Lower Canada). James McGill was one of Montreal’s most prominent citizens in the 18th and early 19th centuries. He grew a successful career as a fur trader into a business empire. McGill also held various positions in public office, including three terms in Lower Canada’s legislature. His will contained the endowment for McGill University. James McGill’s achievements cannot be separated from the fact that he enslaved Black and Indigenous people and profited from this practice.
This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on May 20, 2002. Partner content is not updated.
This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on April 8, 2002. Partner content is not updated.
This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on December 2, 1996. Partner content is not updated.
On the morning of March 16, 1946, children playing on the mountain that dominates Hamilton stumbled upon a headless and dismembered corpse partly concealed by a rocky outcropping.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on April 12, 1999. Partner content is not updated.
There is little doubt that Day, 48, enjoys the limelight. And these days, he is getting plenty of chances to bask in it.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on October 14, 1996. Partner content is not updated.
For Bourassa, the battle ended at 5:45 last Wednesday morning in a room on the eighth floor of the midtown Montreal hospital where he had been under care since August.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on November 24, 1997. Partner content is not updated.
In the late 1930s, when Jack Pickersgill was a freshly minted civil servant in Ottawa, he decided to take a motorcycle trip to the United States. When he arrived at the border, a customs official asked him to prove his Canadian citizenship by naming his place of birth.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on May 3, 1999. Partner content is not updated.
For a growing number of British Columbians unhappy with the NDP government that has ruled them since 1991, Campbell and his party are the bearers of hope for a better future.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on April 3, 1995. Partner content is not updated.
Forget, for a moment, his reputation as a throwback to the old-style, intensely partisan Ottawa wheeler-dealers. At a little past 8 a.m. on a steel-grey morning, David Dingwall is trying to lighten up. It does not come easily.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on June 24, 1996. Partner content is not updated.
This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on February 21, 2005. Partner content is not updated.
This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on August 25, 1997. Partner content is not updated.
Between the 1950s and the 1990s, the Canadian government responded to national security concerns generated by Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union by spying on, exposing and removing suspected LGBTQ individuals from the federal public service and the Canadian Armed Forces. They were cast as social and political subversives and seen as targets for blackmail by communist regimes seeking classified information. These characterizations were justified by arguments that people who engaged in same-sex relations suffered from a “character weakness” and had something to hide because their sexuality was considered a taboo and, under certain circumstances, was illegal. As a result, the RCMP investigated large numbers of people. Many of them were fired, demoted or forced to resign — even if they had no access to security information. These measures were kept out of public view to prevent scandal and to keep counter-espionage operations under wraps. In 2017, the federal government issued an official apology for its discriminatory actions and policies, along with a $145-million compensation package.
In 1982, Canada fully broke from its colonial past and “patriated” its Constitution. It transferred the country’s highest law, the British North America Act (which was renamed the Constitution Act, 1867), from the authority of the British Parliament to Canada’s federal and provincial legislatures. The Constitution was also updated with a new amending formula and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These changes occurred after a fierce, 18-month political and legal struggle that dominated headlines and the agendas of every government in the country.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is a board of the British Privy Council. It was formed in 1833. In 1844, it was given jurisdiction over all of Britain’s colonial courts. People who had been judges in high courts in Britain served on the Judicial Committee, along with a sprinkling of judges from the Commonwealth. Their decisions were often criticized for favouring provincial powers over federal authority, especially in fields such as trade and commerce. The Judicial Committee served as the court of final appeal for Canada until 1949, when that role was given to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The McIvor v. Canada case was about gender discrimination in section 6 of the 1985 Indian Act, which deals with Indian status. Sharon McIvor — a woman who regained status rights after the passing of Bill C-31 in 1985 — was not able to pass on those rights to her descendants in the same way that a man with status could. In her case against the federal government, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that section 6 did, in fact, deny McIvor’s equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In response to this case, the federal government introduced new legislation (Bill C-3) in 2011 to counter gender discrimination in the Indian Act.
The term Family Compact is an epithet, or insulting nickname; it is used to describe the network of men who dominated the legislative, bureaucratic, business, religious and judicial centres of power in Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) from the early- to mid-1800s. Members of the Family Compact held largely conservative and loyalist views. They were against democratic reform and responsible government. By the mid-19th century, immigration, the union of Upper and Lower Canada, and the work of various democratic reformers had diminished the group’s power. The equivalent to the Family Compact in Lower Canada was the Château Clique.
