MOST READ

MOST TRUSTED
APRIL 2014

THE LION
WHISPERER An RD ORIGINAL ... 64

MANAGING TEcH 12 HOURS

AND TODDlERS OVERBOARD
From TODAY’S From THE NEW YORK
PARENT TIMES MAGAZINE
82 96

TRaNSPLaNT daISy
cHaIN: a SON’S STORy
An RD ORIGINAL ... 90

MaRgaRET aTWOOd’S
bRuSH WITH dEaTH
From ELLE CANADA ... 76

QUOTES fROM fAMOUS cANADIANS ............ 144

14 WAyS TO GREEN yOUR HOME ...................... 29
HOW TO GET BETTER cUSTOMER SERVIcE ..... 135
JOkES: AS kIDS SEE IT ..................................... 109
 EVEN AFTER
EATING & DRINKING

†
Colgate-Palmolive Canada Inc. Germs that cause plaque & gingivitis when used after brushing.
*TM Reg’d/M.D. Fights cavities. Always read and follow the label.
 Contents />@7: "

1]dS`Ab]`g
 $" THE LION WHISPERER
Kevin Richardson uses his bond with Africa’s big
cats to help save them. @ 7 1 6 / @ 2  > = > : / 9
:WdW\U
 %$ A CLOSE SHAVE
Margaret Atwood recounts a near-death
childhood experience. 4 @ = ;  3::31/</2/
4O[WZg
 & SCREEN CAPTURED
Do tablets inhibit children’s creativity?
/B 6 3 < /  BA/D : 7 @ 7 A  4 @ = ;  B=2/G¸A>/@3<B

6SOZbV
 ' CHAIN REACTIONS
One kidney donation can change many lives—
including your father’s. 8/A=</<23@A=<
2`O[OW\@SOZ:WTS
 '$ 12 HOURS OVERBOARD
A lobster fisherman’s fight to survive.
>/C :  B= C 5 6  4 @ = ;  B63<3EG=@9B7;3A;/5/H7<3

82
<ObW]\OZ/TTOW`a
  QUITTING TIME? P. |
E-cigarettes’ doubtful effectiveness as a cessation
tool. / : 3 F/ < 2 @ /  9 7 ; 0 / : :  4 @ = ;  3::31/</2/ 1]dS`Ab]`g
>  $ "
B`OdSZ
 $ TO PARIS, WITH TOT
; /AB3@47:37AB=19>6=B=

A young family’s first trip abroad dredges up

parental insecurities. 6 / < < / 6  A C < 5  4 @ = ;  3<@=CB3
3RWb]`a¸1V]WQS
  PAST LIVES
After the death of her mother, a daughter attempts
to make sense of family history. > :C ;  8 = 6 < A = < >6=B=5@/>60G
;/<2G
4 @ = ;  B63G:34BCA3D3@GB67<5(/;3;=7@ @716/@2A=<

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 Vol. 184 | No. 1,104
/>@7: "

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D=713AD73EA
 & 1]\b`WPcb]`a
 ' :SbbS`a 2]bVS@WUVbBVW\U
 $ Change Agent
Ricken Patel has proven online
activism can have real-world
results. Next up, climate
change. 1= C @ B < 3 G  A 6 3 /
@27\bS`dWSe
  The Anti–Tiger Mom
Vancouver psychiatrist and
mother of three Shimi K. Kang
on her book The Dolphin Way
and why balanced kids are best.
AB p > 6 / < 7 3  D 3 @ 5 3

2S^O`b[S\b]TEWb
 ! The Uncle Michael Show
Proxy parenting has its
privileges. ; 7 9 3  A > @G
P. | 23
/@B=4:7D7<5

@3/23@4/D=C@7B3A  ' 14 Ways to Green

Your Home
 # 4W\WaVBVWaAS\bS\QS Turn your household into an
 ' :OcUVbS`bVS0Sab;SRWQW\S eco-oasis—and save money—
 $ >]W\bab]>]\RS` with simple modifications.
&& .E]`Y
;=<79/;3:<G16C9

 < 7 9 9 7  4 =B 6 3 @ 7 < 5 6 / ;

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;]\Sg
 ' /a9WRaASS7b  !# Marrying With Children
 !% BVOb¸a=cb`OUS]ca Blending families involves
 " E]`R>]eS` careful financial planning.
 "" ?c]bSa 5 3 = @ 5 3  ; C @ @ /G

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 4]]R BVSC^bWQY
 !% The Devil’s in the Eggs $ Strange Symptoms
A fresh look at how to make the Charting the rise of lupus in
iconic appetizer. B 6 3  3 2 7 B= @ A Canada. A/ ; / < B 6 /  @ 7 2 3 = C B
= 4  5 / @ 2 3 <    5 C <   4 @ = ;  B 6 3
A=CB63@<3@¸A6/<20==9

4]]R 53BA;/@B
" Eating Right for Your Gut
What to enjoy and avoid. !# 13 Things You
8 C : 7 3  2/ < 7 :C 9 Should Know About
0]]Ya
Customer Service
"! The Mourning After
>/C :  5 / : : / < B

Miriam Toews’s All My Puny !& Rd.ca

Sorrows. 3 ; 7 :G  : / < 2/C April highlights from our
website, including workout tips
;caWQ
from a celebrity trainer.
"" World Rhythms
Shakira shimmies back into
the spotlight. A/ @ / 6  : 7 A A
;]dWSaBD
P. | 37
"$ Copy That
Orphan Black’s clone crew
returns for Season 2.
8=6<A3;:3G

Ac[]T/ZZ>O`ba
 # Gluten Be Gone
Are wheat-free diets really a
cure-all? E 3 < 2G  5 : /C A 3 @
7\B`SOb[S\b
 #% Beating Runner’s Knee
A doctor, fitness instructor
9/<597;

and nutritionist weigh in with

advice. H= :B/ <  @ = < /   / ; / < 2/
D= 5 3 :  / < 2  8 C : 7 3  2/ < 7 :C 9

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 Editor’s Letter
Animal Instincts
AT MY GRANDMOTHER’S TABLE there was an unspoken three-serving
minimum. If you ate less than that or paused too long mid-meal
to converse, you were met by Grandma Ritter’s penetrating look of
worry followed by a “What’s wrong?” The lesson was clear: dodging a serv-
ing of dumplings was tantamount to rejecting a hug.
This food-as-love ethos has crossed generations—and species. I was not the
only creature subjected to heartfelt feedings. My grandparents lived in Que-
bec’s Eastern Townships and took it upon themselves to provide sustenance
for the local fauna. There were cardinals, blue jays and woodpeckers. There
were also raccoons, deer, skunks and the occasional fox.
Every evening, my grandparents would prepare
platters of food to set outside their picture windows.
As a girl, I delighted in watching the nightly banquet.
I now know that feeding wild animals can be harm-
ful to them, but I understand what motivated my
grandparents: a desire to nurture nature.
Grandma Ritter would have loved this month’s
profile of Kevin Richardson (“The Lion Whis-
perer,” page 64), who is working to protect Afri-
ca’s big cats. Richardson’s relationship with
these animals is unique—they accept him as
part of the pride. He is on a remarkable mission.
Our own Robert Goyette is on a different mis-
sion, exploring Australia and its outback. He
returns next month.

Dominique Ritter, Managing Editor

@=53@/ H7H

AS\RO\S[OWZb]
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 INTERACT
WITH THE PAGES
OF OUR MAGAZINE!
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page numbers) have been enriched with Layar
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PAGES IN THIS ISSUE THAT ARE ENRICHED WITH LAYAR: 19, 44, 46, 53, 65, 83, 121, 140
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 Steve’s home cooked meal came with
a side dish he wasn’t expecting.

SAFETY
OD TI
P
O
F

Thaw food in the fridge,

especially raw meat,
poultry, fish or seafood.

Food poisoning can be avoided by handling food safely. Still, many older adults go about their daily food
preparation routines, inadvertently putting themselves and others at risk. For adults 60+, food poisoning can go
beyond just that. As you age, your body is less able to fight off harmful bacteria. This puts you at greater risk of
food poisoning and developing serious health complications. A few easy changes to the way you handle your food
at home can go a long way in protecting your health.

Learn more and get your free Safe Food Handling guide at
HealthyCanadians.gc.ca/FoodSafetyGuide or call 1 800 O-Canada
 Contributors
@716/@2>=>:/9
(“Te Lion Whisperer,”
page 64)
6][SPOaS(
Johannesburg, South
Africa. >`SdW]caZg^cPZWaVSRW\
Toronto Life and The Walrus. <]bV
W\U^`S^O`Sag]cT]` the sight of
lions tackling Kevin Richardson.
Their love for him is astonishing.
EWbV^S]^ZSVS¸a very socialized
and savvy. The pride has taught him
a lot about how gregarious creatures
interact, and it seems to hold him in
good stead across the food chain.
<7997
4=B63@7<56/;
(“14 Ways to Green
Your Home,” page 29)
6][SPOaS(
Toronto. >`SdW]caZg^cPZWaVSRW\
The Huffington Post. BVSPWUUSab
[WaQ]\QS^bW]\OP]cbU]W\U
U`SS\Wa that it requires huge life-
style sacrifices. Incremental changes
can have an impact. 7U`Sec^W\
/T`WQO and there’s a proverb there:
“If you think one small thing can’t
make a difference, you’ve never
spent a night with a mosquito.”
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;793A>@G
(“Te Uncle Michael
Show,” page 23)
6][SPOaS(
Montreal. >`SdW]caZg
^cPZWaVSRW\ Maisonneuve and the
Toronto Star. EVS\7T]c\R]cb
[gaWabS`eOa^`SU\O\b[g¿`ab
bV]cUVbeOa Finally, a grandkid for
my parents. The pressure’s off. Next
was: Christmas is going to cost more.
EVS\7ZObS`[Sb[g\S^VSe7
eOa overwhelmed with an emotion
I can’t explain—part pride, part joy
and part affection for birth control.
;/@1=170=:/
(“Past Lives,” page 122)
6][SPOaS(
Dundas, Ont. >`SdW
]caZg^cPZWaVSR
W\ Time and The New York Times.
> =>:/9:/C@/ 8/<3> 3B3:9=
4]`µ>Oab:WdSa¶ I combined earth
tones and a palette of warm, satur-
ated colours on a dark background
to represent the parental history be-
ing uncovered. EVS\[gROR¿`ab
QO[Sb]1O\ORO my mom stayed
in Italy. Maybe I’ll find letters they
exchanged one day, but I’m doubtful.
They tend to get rid of old things.
 Letters
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 2/D72@</4H753@Kit c h e n e r

REDESIGN REACTIONS I enjoyed the February issue for its

The February edition of Reader’s good mix of stories and the nicer pa-
Digest was a great improvement. per stock, which feels more like book
>7 3@@3; /<< 7<5A6==BABC27=1 /

I was impressed by the interesting
articles and appreciated the new pa-
per stock for its lack of glare. Keep
up the good work.
D7=:/30G C a rd s t o n , A l t a .
Wow! What a necessary change to
your reputable magazine. Now
there’s some fire to it. Congratula-
tions. D/:E7::7A O t t a w a
paper than the glossy magazine pa-
per you were previously using. The
new finish is much easier on the eyes.
9:/CA/A16;72A@/CB3@ Ha m i l t o n
I hate the new format. The paper
feels dry, rough and gross to flip
through. Plus, the number of car-
toons, my favourite feature, has
been reduced. 07::=@@=<4/130==9

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QO[SbVS[]ab^]^cZO`^]ab]TbVS^OabgSO`8cabV]e^]^cZO`-

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$#bW[SaO\RaVO`SR '"%bW[SaW\QZcRW\U"' bW[Sa
Pg '$TO\a W\OaW\UZSROg

=dS` #4OQSP]]YO\R`RQO`SORS`aQ][[S\bSRQOZZW\UbVSTSObc`S(

“Hopeful”
µB6303AB  “Sweet”
:743AB=@G3D3@¶

“Splendid”

“BEAUTIFUL”

µ/E3A=;3¶
“A Must-Read”
µ7\a^W`W\U¶

;WaaSRbVSab]`g-@SORWbOb`RQOZ]\U[O``WOUS

A LOVING POSTSCRIPT asked if he could sit at my table. At

After reading about other couples’
romantic stories in “Love, Actually”
(Feb. 2014), I wanted to share my
own. Originally from Brazil, I was
in Italy in 2006 having dinner by
myself when a man came over and
first sight, I thought he was Ameri-
can and, just to be polite, said yes.
He told me that he was Canadian,
and I soon found myself happily
sharing stories about my life. I was
leaving very early the next morning,

j"  "j`RQO
 @3/23@¸A2753AB

so we exchanged email addresses,

My site
and when we said goodbye, I gave
him a kiss. He was a bit surprised,
but began writing, then visiting me

\
in Brazil. We dated for three years
until we decided it was time to be New Content Every Day
together forever. I’ve been living in
Canada since April 2009, married to Special Features
my best friend.
8/<3;/@/03@</@27B6323 Contests
Port Elgin, Ont.
And Much More!
VALUABLE INFORMATION
I grew up with Reader’s Digest in my
home as a child and feel it’s the best
little magazine out there. I’ll be
sending “Coming Into Focus” (Feb.
2014) to my daughter, as she has a
22-year-old son with ADHD. He is
now engaged and has a great job,
but his doctors are still trying to find
the right dosage for his medications.
The article offered many insights
into this troublesome ailment.
:=C7A363/@2 P o r t C o l b o r n e , O n t .

A REGRETTABLE CHOICE
February’s Olympic-themed Word
Power asked readers to guess the
definition of the term “Kreisel.” The
provided answer includes a sentence
about a luger named Nodar who
was well aware of the finesse needed
to negotiate the course’s long, circu-
lar turn (the Kreisel). During the
2010 Winter Olympics, Nodar
Kumaritashvili was the 21-year-old
luge athlete from Georgia who was
 NPN 80001158

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CAN TRUST.
killed during a training run after los-
ing control of his sled. How you
could use the name Nodar in this ex-
ample is beyond me—it’s completely
inappropriate.
>/;3:/83AA3< Vi c t o r i a

DIVISIONS OF LABOUR
It would be wonderful to read more
articles like “Power Moms and Their
Househusbands” (Jan. 2014), about
stay-at-home parents, whether
moms or dads. The point made by
one of the fathers, that “your kid
aids digestion
doesn’t want a nanny. Your kid
wants you. Your kid needs you,” is
one I agree with. I thoroughly en-
joyed being a stay-at-home mom
and could not imagine raising a
family any other way. How refresh-
ing to read that some women may
be the bigger breadwinners and that
some men may have more suitable
temperaments for child rearing.
0/@0/@/>C@2G Ux b r i d g e , O n t .

ANIMAL RESCUE
“The Adoption Option” (Jan. 2014)
mentions the possibility of having to
pass on a purebred when choosing a
rescue dog. As someone who volun-
teers her time helping shelter pets
find a home, I can tell you that this
isn’t usually the case and could de-
ter people from adopting. Purebred
rescue dogs are often taken from
shelters and brought to private res- ca.traditionalmedicinals.com
cue groups specialized in particular These products may not be right for you,
always read and follow the label.
Traditional Medicinals® is certified Organic by
California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF)
©2014 TraditionalMedicinals
:3BB3@A

breeds. Using a site like petfinder.
com, you can easily search reputa-
ble rescues in your area to find a
specific type of dog, or even cat,
to adopt. :=@71/;>03:: To r o n t o
ANOTHER LIFE SAVED
Thank you for publishing Elechia
Barry-Sproule’s letter, “A Life Saved”
(Nov. 2013), about how “Minutes
From Death” (Aug. 2013) alerted her
to the symptoms and dangers of
blood clots. I came across her letter
while waiting for an appointment
with my general practitioner. At the
time, I’d been experiencing calf pain
for about two weeks, to the point
where I couldn’t walk on my leg. I
wasn’t planning to discuss the issue
with my GP, but after reading the
letter, I reconsidered. An ultrasound
was scheduled for the following day,
during which a blood clot was
found. The imaging centre sent me
directly to the ER, where they also
found a clot in my lungs. I spent
over a week in the hospital and will
be on blood thinners for the rest of
my life, but I’m also grateful be-
cause it could have turned out so
much worse. Keep up the great pub-
lishing—I love Reader’s Digest from
cover to cover.
B/<7/513@;/9 C a l g a r y
YOUTH AT RISK
“The Itch Factor” (Nov. 2013), about
the rise of shingles, fails to mention
that children can also be infected.
My daughter was only nine months
old when she caught a bad case of
the chicken pox and nine years old
when she suffered through an itchy
and painful episode of the shingles.
Two other young children I know
have also had shingles. Your readers
should be aware of the possibility.
<7B/4/7@ C h a r l i e L a k e , B . C .
ERRATUM
During the editing of February’s
issue, an error was introduced into
reader Kim Ellsworth’s letter, when
Calgary was incorrectly identified
as Alberta’s provincial capital. We
apologize for the mistake.
B6332A
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 47<7A6B67AA3<B3<13

Going green matters

to me because…
…my children deserve …I want to
a lifetime of happiness help slow
global
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/:/<3:30:=<2>@7<1353=@5301 GD=<<3>@3AB=<B=@=<B=

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

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VOICES VIEWS

2=B63@756BB67<5
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QO\VOdS`SOZe]`ZR`SacZba

Change Agent
0G 1= C@B<3G A 6 3 /

! ON THE SECOND day of his

hunger strike, Yeb Saño realized he
needed to ratchet up the pressure. As
the climate negotiator for the Philip-
pines, Saño blamed global warming
for Typhoon Haiyan, which had rav-
aged his country days earlier. On Nov-
ember 11, 2013, he had announced he
would fast until the delegates at the
UN Climate Change Conference in
Warsaw, Poland, reached a “meaning-
entering an email address and hitting
send. Almost immediately, hundreds
took up Saño’s cause. They donated
money, spread the word on social
media, even joined the strike. One
week later, the petition had drawn
600,000-plus signatures.
“The Internet is a force multiplier,”
says Ricken Patel, Avaaz’s 36-year-old
founder. “It can make any process
faster and more efficient.” The plan-
@=07< ;/@16/<B53BBG

ful outcome” about carbon emissions.
Saño had a plan but lacked a plat-
form. So he posted a petition with
Avaaz, an online activism organiza-
tion that allows its over 33 million
members to register support for an
issue by doing nothing more than
$j"  "j`RQO
et’s largest activism network, with
members across 138 countries, Avaaz
can mobilize public opinion on any
international issue in any part of the
globe. Founded in 2007, it has worked
to stop sex trafficking in Hilton Hotels
& Resorts and defended Masai Ã
“Avaaz has helped
prove that we are
citizens of the
world first, and of
our countries
second.”
2=B63@756BB67<5

land rights in Tanzania. It has raised reading a history book a week. That
over $55 million—funding democ- upbringing bred an idealistic curios-
racy groups in Zimbabwe as well as ity about the world that eventually
anti-homophobia initiatives in Costa triggered his decision, at 28, to spend
Rica—and helped marshal more than four years as a conflict analyst in war
10,000 rallies, flash mobs and vigils. zones like Sierra Leone and Liberia.
“Imagine a mom who’s just gotten Non-profit think tanks sent him to
in from work and has a few minutes meet cabinet ministers and warlords.
to check her inbox before making Then, from the conversations, he
dinner,” says Patel. “She’s heard would draft proposals on how the in-
about an issue on the radio—Syria, ternational community could better
say—that upsets her. Our petitions serve that country.
offer an effective strat- It was challenging
egy for taking action. work—“I came up
Having done that, she against the open sores
might start donating to For Avaaz, of our planet”—but it
that cause or talk to small acts led to an insight that,
friends and family when Patel returned to
about it.”
lead to New York in 2005, pro-
It’s called an engage- bigger ones. vided the seed for the
ment ladder—where company that today
small acts lead to bigger employs 100 people
ones—and, according to Sidneyeve across 18 countries. “What I had wit-
Matrix, a media professor at Queen’s nessed were failures of collective ac-
University in Kingston, Ont., Patel is tion,” he says. “Governments knew
one of the few to have perfected it. the right thing to do. They didn’t do
“He has made it easy to give, easy to it because citizens didn’t demand it.”
get involved,” Matrix says. Storybook In Saño’s case, Avaaz helped sway
endings are rare in activism, so delegates to commit to modestly re-
Avaaz’s victories are a matter of im- ducing fossil emissions targets. With
proving upon a desperate situation. climate change a priority for 2014,
It was the first NGO, within days of preparations have begun for a mas-
Burma’s 2008 cyclone, to bring relief sive march to coincide with the UN’s
funds—$2 million—into the country. Climate Summit in New York this
Raised on a farm outside of Ed- September. “I used to think saving
monton, Patel remembers his older the world was all about having pas-
brother drilling political ideas into sion,” he says. “Motivating others is
him as a toddler. By Grade 2, he was just as important, if not as sexy.”

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WATCH A VIDEO OF
DEE TELLING HIS
JOKE WITH LAYAR
A</@9G@3>:73A are never
more than a few keystrokes away
when Facebook users share typo-
laden updates:
>=AB( Can’t wknds be longer?
@3A>=<A3( Yes, weekends.
>=AB( I swear 2012, if you bring
me a year of happiness and no
stress, I won’t take it for granite.
@3A>=<A3( Yes, I want 2012 to
bring something beautiful. Some-
thing I can really marble at.
>=AB( Is it just me or does
nobody have manors these days?
@3A>=<A3( I just have a
normal house.
>=AB( I can’t stand people that
don’t know the difference between
your and you’re. There so dumb.
@3A>=<A3( Their, their, calm down.
4`][abcRS\bPSO\aQ][
Today’s date is xi.xii.xiii, which is
significant because it looks like a
that a crowd starts to form.
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The Anti–
Tiger Mom
0G AB p > 6 / < 7 3  D 3 @5 3
7::CAB@/B7 =<0G/7;p3D/<2@7;;3:3<

Your book could be seen as a response

to Amy Chua’s pro-authoritarian
memoir The Battle Hymn of the Tiger
Mother. What did you think of it?
The ethnic undertones hit a nerve:
I was offended because the entire
Eastern and Western worlds were
painted with a broad brush. Fellow
psychiatrists reacted strongly to the
idea of pushing kids so hard. I saw
parents justifying their behaviour
with this book, which has no scien-
tific evidence behind it.

How did you land on your book’s

dolphin metaphor?
I’m the youngest of five children,

j" "j`RQO
so I grew up with a pod mentality.
I’ve long used the term “dolphin
parenting” in my practice when I
want to recommend things like play,
community building and altruism.
Dolphins are clear authority figures
for their young, joyful, helpful, and
they sleep eight hours a day.
You place a great deal of import-
ance on play. What’s an easy way
to integrate more of it into our lives?
The simplest thing is to free up time
from scheduled activities. If you un-
plug the TV and open the door, kids
will play—even if they complain at
first. Playing is in our nature.
What is one of the most common
challenges facing kids today?
Again, it’s time. We don’t realize the
importance of sleep or the difference
between social bonding and socializ-
ing. Even siblings aren’t bonding any-
more; the house has become a pit
stop on the way to activities. Dinner
together is increasingly difficult, de-
spite there being overwhelming evi-
dence that eating as a family is vital.
What’s the biggest change in parent-
ing in the 21st century?
Fear. How’s my kid going to get into
university? Get a job? Thrive in
this globally connected world?
These worries have caused a lot
of well-intentioned parents to
tip their families off balance.
Chua’s book prompted a dialogue
about our fixation with Ivy League
schools. You went to Harvard, but
your parents weren’t Tigers.
So many innovators—and I met
many of them at Harvard—will tell
you stories of having free childhoods.
There are two ways to become ex-
ceptional in a discipline: you can do
it through balance or imbalance.
A Tiger Parent might argue that a
Dolphin Parent has lower expecta-
tions for their children. How would
you respond?
At the risk of using more animals, I’d
bring up the fable of the tortoise and
the hare. The hare bolts out of the
gate and gets tired and falls asleep,
and the tortoise is slow and steady
and wins the race. The Tiger Parent
is misguided in thinking that the end
goal is performance. The end goal
is the ability to adapt to the ever-
changing world. A Dolphin Parent’s
expectations are far greater than
academics or sports or leadership.
What’s important is a sense of joy,
health of body and mind, and mak-
ing a clear contribution to the world.
Finish this thought: Parenting is…
A privilege.
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`RQOj" "j 
ENJOY
Carrot Cake
a classic
with less added sugar

Makes: 12 servings • 3/4 cup (180 mL) SPLENDA®

• 2 eggs No Calorie Sweetener, Granulated
• 1 1/2 cups (375 mL) shredded carrots • 1 1/2 tsp (7 mL) cinnamon
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) plain yogurt • 1 tsp (5 mL) baking powder
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) unsweetened applesauce • 1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking soda
• 1/4 cup (125 mL) vegetable oil • 1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
• 1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract • 1/4 tsp (1 mL) nutmeg
• 3/4 cup (180 mL) all-purpose flour • 1/4 tsp (1 mL) ginger
• 3/4 cup (180 mL) whole wheat flour • 1/2 cup (125 mL) raisins
icing sugar (if desired)
Directions
Lightly beat eggs; stir in carrots, yogurt, applesauce, vegetable oil and vanilla.
In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients, except icing sugar. Stir in carrot
mixture, mixing until well blended. Spread evenly in greased 9-inch (23 cm) square
baking pan.
Bake at 325°F (160°C) for 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in centre
comes out clean. Cool on rack. Dust with icing sugar if desired.
Nutritional Information: Serving Size 1 piece (1/12th of cake). Calories 153, Protein 4 g, Fat 6 g, Carbohydrates 22 g

for more recipes, join the

SPLENDA® recipe club at splenda.ca
© McNeil Consumer Healthcare, division of Johnson & Johnson Inc. 2013
 23>/@B;3<B=4E7B

>`]fg^O`S\bW\UVOa
Wba^`WdWZSUSa

The Uncle
Michael Show
0G ;79 3  A > @G
7::CAB@/B7=<A0G;=<79/;3:<G16C9

! I DON’T LIKE KIDS. I find

them irrational, inconsiderate, irre-
sponsible and far from self-suffi-
cient. Their taste in music is
derivative, clap-heavy. Urine often
ends up where it shouldn’t. Don’t
get me wrong: I respect the propaga-
tion of the species. And I enjoy the
act of reproduction, if not the result.
But I don’t want kids, which has
been an issue both in romantic rela-
tionships and with my parents. I do,
however, have children in my life.
Children I love.
That last sentence would contra-
dict my opening sentiment, if not for
the fact that being an uncle is rife
with contradiction. My sister has two
kids, Finn and Piper, seven and five
respectively. I think. I mix up their
ages. But they’re important to me,
maybe as important as anything in
my life.
I have no illusions about my role
as an uncle. I am to provide know-
ledge that my sister, brother-in-law
and parents won’t: appreciation of
David Berman and The Muppets,
how cheering for the Toronto Maple
Leafs is a sin, why a degree in fine
arts is a bad idea. I’m in their lives
to explain the tangible result of mis-
takes. The curse of regret. The intri-
cacies of the broken heart. You Ã

`RQOj"  "j !
2 3 >/ @ B ; 3 < B  = 4  E 7 B  
know, stuff a single 30-something
writer with commitment issues and
insurmountable debt is an expert in.
They, on occasion, teach me
(which is humbling). Piper espe-
cially. Her intuition is beyond her
years, and at times frightening. One
day, she asked me why I didn’t have
any children, and I launched into
a diatribe about love; about error;
about a girl who was there and then
wasn’t. Piper took a moment to con-
sider this and replied, “Uncle Mi-
chael, you have no children because
you are alone.”
That kind of honesty is refreshing,
born of innocence and limited vo-
cabulary. It reduces life to its es-
sence. When once asked what Uncle
"j"  "j`RQO
Michael’s job was, Piper responded,
“Hmm. Watching baseball?” Close
enough. After I made Finn a soup he
really liked, he asked, “Uncle Mi-
chael, have you ever considered
working in a restaurant?” Unbe-
knownst to him, I did, for 15 years,
before leaving for the riches of Can-
adian literature. For a second, he
made me wistful for that time.
But my favourite responses are
triggered when I warn them that
Uncle Michael’s remarkable run of
less-than-moderate success means
I’m going to live with them when
we’re all older. I share these visions
of dependency, of asking them for
money, of having these children—
who have yet to discover the won-
ders of caffeine, unexpected victory
or happy hour—bail me out. To
these playful notions rooted in adult
truths, they laugh, “Uncle Michael,
you’re silly,” as if the reality of my
fears is humour itself.
My parents think I’ll eventually
have kids—when I get older, when
I find success, when I meet the
woman who makes me. But I remain
steadfast in my uncledom. This is the
closest to having progeny I’ll ever get,
and I worry about them growing up,
listening to One Direction, morphing
into Yankees fans, becoming experi-
mental poets. But for the time being,
I will treat them to banana smooth-
ies, scatological humour and too
much TV. What’s not to love?
Clara’s
Big Ride

Going the distance

for mental health.
As the spokesperson for Bell
Let’s Talk, Clara Hughes will kick
off her Big Ride across Canada on
March 14 in an effort to help end the
stigma around mental illness. She’ll
be pedalling through every province
and territory in the country, stopping
in 95 communities and covering
more than 12,000 km over 110 days.

Help Clara keep the conversation

rolling. Share the ride. Join the
conversation. Raise funds.

bell.ca/clarasbigride
#ClarasBigRide
 Points to Ponder

>6=B=A(@/36=CA3=41=;;=<A)G=C<5 "@3>@7A3@31=@2A?C=B3A(;==97<58C:G" !)@/3231! !)

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Food and music, for me, they’re all
the creative process. It’s artistic ex-
pression. They start with a seed of
an idea, development of an idea, re-
finement of that developed idea and
then presenting it for the public to
consume, whether orally or aurally.
  1VSTO\R[caWQWO\@=53@;==97<5
]\101<Sea
Mental health is the weakest link
in our health-care system, but more
important, it is still the issue that
hides away from much conversa-
tion. There are still too few places
outside a health-care setting where
the issue is addressed, as if mental
health and addiction are still taboos
not to be mentioned in polite
company.

I suppose I could say that I am look-   0=0@/3 W\bVS

ing for a different kind of inner 5Z]PSO\R;OWZ

quiet, and I have a few ways to get

there. Own less stuff, try to meditate
and maybe even find a non-nurtur-
ing yoga class. But really, I just want
to say yes more often than I say no
and be open to whatever comes
with love and gratitude (and listen
to more Slayer).
All the government scientists I know
tell me that it’s never been worse.
It’s like an Iron Curtain has been
drawn across the communication
of science in this country. And I
think there’s reason for all of us
to be worried about that.

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I figured if you were hired to work
for the PMO, you didn’t need a psy-
chotherapy session every afternoon
to figure out how you were feeling.
  87;1=CBBA ORdWaS`b]^`W[S
[W\WabS`a>SO`a]\O\RB`cRSOc]\PSW\U
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There are 68 countries in the world
where straight people and gay peo-
ple in a group would all be arrested
simply for being together. In 10 of
We all have our bumps and bruises,
the things that we’re hiding. I’m
here to tell you that asking for help,
being more open with your experi-
ences, seeking support, is worth it.
The quality of my life today, the
quality of my relationships, the peace
that I have within myself, is all a
direct result of that hard work of
unravelling the past.
  =Zg[^WQ`]eS`A7:93<:/C;/<<
W\;OQZSO\¸a

those countries, I would be executed

simply for being gay. So there’s a lot Maybe the “trivial” is just a failed
of work still to be done. version of the “everyday.” The every-
day, or the commonplace, is the
  @SdS`S\R0@3<B most basic and the richest artistic
6/E93A W\BVS5`WR category.

In today’s fragmented digital world,   8344E/:: ^V]b]U`O^VS`

where everyone is constantly sharing W\/`b4]`c[

bits of themselves with the public,

including celebrities who perform
roles for a living, the line between
true and fabricated has disinte-
grated, and what’s really interesting
is the space in between. Right?
  :3/6;1:/@3< W\bVS5Z]PSO\R;OWZ
If it means my death at the end, so
be it. I’m going to die anyway, and
it’ll be a more interesting way to
go—that’s for sure.
  ;O`a=\SV]^STcZAB3>63<43<316
W\bVS<ObW]\OZ>]ab

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 ART of LIVING

Bc`\g]c`V]caSV]ZRW\b]O\SQ]]OaWa´O\RaOdS
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14 Ways
to Green
Your
Home
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Curate Your Kitchen Change #2: Animal agriculture

Change #1: Toss those chemical
cleaners (responsibly—take them to
your local hazardous-waste drop-off
centre) and make your own general-
purpose cleaner. Mix ½ cup white
vinegar, ¼ cup baking soda and
2 litres water. Pour into a spray
bottle and tackle household grime.
accounts for up to 18 per cent of
global warming. Adding a single
meatless meal to your weekly plan-
ner will help you save money—and
the planet.
Change #3: Grow your own sprouts
in a Mason jar. Pop a few holes Ã

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 "  E /G A  B =  5 @ 3 3 <  G = C @  6 = ; 3  
in the lid, rinse ¼ cup organic
lentil sprouts and soak them
overnight. Drain the water
through the holes and rinse
twice a day. Leave the jar in
a warm, sunny spot, and you’ll
have healthy salad fixings in
a couple of days.
Add Life to the
Living Room
Change #1: Did you know your ap-
pliances consume electricity even
when shut down? Five to 10 per
cent of the energy used in your
home is siphoned for standby
power. Unplug TVs, chargers, com-
puters, coffee makers and stereos,
or use power bars with built-in tim-
ers to turn off electronics you don’t
mind being reset.
Change #2: That “new carpet
smell” is actually an airborne cock-
tail of nasty chemicals. Talk to your
installer about how to properly vent
your home in the first 72 hours af-
ter installation and give the carpet
a good vacuuming. To be seriously
green, consider fire-resistant, bio-
degradable and non-toxic natural-
fibre carpets like wool, sisal, coir
and seagrass.
Green Your Garage
Change #1: Your daily car com-
mute contributes to climate
change, so get the family walking
!j" "j`RQO
or biking at least once a week. If
self-powered travel isn’t possible,
use public transit (it can save a
Canadian family a monthly average
of $586, according to the David Su-
zuki Foundation) or consider ride
sharing. High-occupancy vehicle
lanes help speed up your commute;
check online to find carpooling
sites that offer rides to your local
transit station.
Change #2: Create word art with-
out having to inhale noxious paint
fumes. Combine a handful of moss,
2 cups yogourt, 2 cups water and
½ teaspoon sugar in a blender, and
mix until smooth. Dip a paintbrush
in the mixture and paint words
onto any rough surface (a garage’s
outdoor wall is ideal). Spray with
water regularly, and you’ll soon
have inspirational moss graffiti.
Garden Smart
Change #1: Every year your old
gas mower produces as many
 "  E /G A  B =  5 @ 3 3 <  G = C @  6 = ; 3  
greenhouse gas emissions as a car
driven 3,300 kilometres. Unless
you’re the proud owner of a family
of sheep, there’s no need for all that
grass. For a complete revamp, con-
sider lawn alternatives like micro-
clover, verbena, sweet woodruff,
cotoneaster, thyme and camomile;
perennial ground covers take work
to install but don’t require much
water, and you won’t have to spend
weekends cutting the grass.
Change #2: To keep pesky pests at
bay, use natural pesticides such as
marigold flowers, coffee grounds or
an easy-to-make all-purpose spray
consisting of 1½ tablespoons liquid
soap, 1 litre water and 5 drops
lemon essential oil.
Change #3: Reduce water usage by
installing downspout extensions
from your eavestroughs to direct
rain to your flower beds.
! j" "j`RQO
Love Your Look
Change #1: Ditch your mercury-,
formaldehyde- and lead-laden
cosmetics for homemade mascara
and eyeliner. Mix 1 teaspoon coco-
nut oil, 1 teaspoon shea butter, 1½
teaspoons beeswax, 4 teaspoons
aloe vera gel and 2 capsules acti-
vated charcoal (available at health-
food stores). Use a brush to apply
as eyeliner or a comb for mascara.
Change #2: Concerned about
harmful substances in your tooth-
paste? Pop 2 tablespoons dried
lemon rind, ¼ cup baking soda and
2 teaspoons sea salt in your
blender, and mix until it forms a
fine powder. Dip your wet tooth-
brush in and brush as usual.
Beautify the Bedroom
Change #1: Textiles and clothing
account for four per cent of materi-
als in Canadian landfills. Repair
old clothes, organize a clothing
swap with friends or donate to a
local charity.
Change #2: Make a calming laven-
der air freshener to encourage relax-
ation and restfulness. Mix 8 drops
lavender oil, 4 drops clove oil, ½ cup
vodka (a natural deodorizer) and
½ cup water, and place in a spray
bottle. The vodka will kill germs,
while the soothing lavender sends
you to sleep soundly.
© 2013 P&G. *Outdoor Fresh Scent. Freshness Lasts for 3 Whole Weeks.
 ADVERTISING

Do you or a family
member have
a disability or
medical condition?
Get the maximum
tax refund you’re
entitled to.
YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR TAX CREDITS
Medical and disability tax credits aren’t
only for those with a medical condition.
You may be eligible if you care for a family
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parent, sibling, or grandchild. Perhaps
you contribute toward clothing, food,
housing, or medical supplies. You could
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credits—and a tax refund.

MANY MEDICAL CONDITIONS QUALIFY

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• Diabetes • Alzheimer’s
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• Stroke • Depression
• Back or knee injury • Learning/
• Cancer intellectual
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TAXWISE CAN HELP YOU

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Marrying With Children
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! EVERYONE KNOWS divorce
can wreak fnancial havoc. But enter-
ing a new marriage can be just as
dicey, particularly when two fami-
lies—complete with kids, assets,
debts and expectations—come to-
gether. When I became a single dad
after 10 years of marriage, I was at a
loss—emotionally, socially and f-
nancially. Besides learning how to
navigate the legal pitfalls, the reac-
tions of our friends and custody of
our boys, there was also the division
of our home equity, arrangement of
child support and concerns over pen-
;=<3G
sions, among other sensitive fnan-
cial matters. I swore I’d never get
entangled again.
Years later, I’m back at it—I’m get-
ting married this summer. Stepfami-
lies now make up 13 per cent of
Canadian households with children.
Almost half of those are blended
families, with children from the new
and former relationships, or in
which both partners bring children
from previous unions, like mine
will be. In our case, we recently
bought a house large enough for
six, and while we keep our money Ã
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;/@@G7<5E7B6167:2@3<
relatively separate, we haven’t
thought about what this blending
might mean financially. So I went
looking for help to answer how we
can best protect our relationships,
families and bank accounts.
B63075@3D3/:
Disclose all assets and debts in a
frank conversation. “The people en-
tering blended families tend to be
older and have more,” says Chris-
tine Van Cauwenberghe, vice-
president of advanced financial
planning with Investors Group
in Winnipeg. Lay every-
thing on the table so you
can create a realistic bud-
get for your new family.
034/7@
“When one person has more
than the other, in terms of in-
vestments and RESPs,” says
Van Cauwenberghe, “it can lead to
animosity if one set of kids is headed
off to Harvard, while the others can’t
go to school at all.” Take into consid-
eration whether and how to help the
financially strapped partner catch up
on debts, savings and investments.
E@7B3C>/1=<B@/1B
A pre-nuptial agreement for marry-
ing couples is worth the trouble. Van
Cauwenberghe recommends a clear
conversation about wills and power
of attorney. “Who will manage your
!$j"  "j`RQO
affairs if you become sick? The new
spouse or the children?”
>:/<4=@B/FB7;3
Deborah Dilworth, a tax profes-
sional at Artbooks in Toronto, says
there are many benefits and trans-
fers you may be eligible for and oth-
ers you’ll lose—like your amount for
an eligible dependent under 18,
only available to single parents and
worth about $11,000 in credits. To
offset this loss with gains—such as
combining medical expenses, dona-
tions, as well as amounts for
public transit and children’s
fitness and arts—Dilworth
says blended couples
should see the same ac-
countant to prepare their
returns going forward.
933>=<3>@=>3@BG
Dilworth says, “If you’re living
apart before you get married and
each of you owns a home, you
should consider selling one of the
properties before you move in
together or get married.” Under
Canadian tax law, a single taxpayer
can designate one property as their
principal residence, but a family
unit can designate only one prop-
erty between them as their principal
residence. And selling a home while
it’s still your primary residence will
let you avoid paying capital gains
taxes on the sale.
 4==2

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The Devil’s
in the Eggs
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! IF THERE’S ONE DISH you’ll

fnd doubled or tripled up on in a
But not to worry if you’re short a
yellowed recipe card with handwrit-
Southern-style party spread, it’s ten instructions for the absolute best
devilled eggs. And even then, the proportion of mustard to mayon-
folks who brought them aren’t likely naise. Just combine a dozen yolks
to go home with leftovers. Te with a cup of mayo (250 mL) and a
“devil” part? It’s not because they’re quarter cup (50 mL) of your favou-
a source of temptation (though they rite mustard, then add salt, pepper
are); it refers to the spices that add and paprika to taste—you’ll have a
a piquant kick. preparation worth handing down.
Southern cooks have lately taken For creamier eggs, stir in a bit of
to dressing up their eggs with vari- butter. For spicier eggs, a few dashes
ous accoutrements—country ham, of Tabasco or grated horseradish
chilled shrimp, poached tomatoes. will do the trick. And there are those
But connoisseurs will rightly tell you who won’t declare a devilled-egg
that what matters most is the spring- filling ready until they’ve added a
iness of the white and the tang of the teaspoon (5 mL) of lemon juice and
yolk. To please the fussiest of guests, a tablespoon (15 mL) of pickle rel-
start with eggs a few days removed ish. But by then, you’re just tinker-
from the nest, since fresher eggs are ing with perfection.
frustratingly difficult come peeling
time. Put the eggs into a pot, cover
with a few centimetres or so of cool
water, and bring to a boil. Once the
water is sputtering, reduce the heat
to a low simmer, and cook for eight
minutes. To avoid overcooking the
yolk, shock the eggs in an ice-water
bath for 30 seconds be-
fore peeling. Slice the
eggs lengthwise,
and remove the
yolks.
If the boil-
ing process
is a science,
doctoring the
yolks is an art.

!&j"  "j`RQO
 The Hilborn Family Farm,
New Dundee, Ontario

Gay Lea Butter is made by farmers who bring every-

thing to their craft. Because they don’t just own the
farm, they own the dairy. GAY LEA. BORN ON THE FARM.
 4==2

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Eating Right for Your Gut

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The Mourning After

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Miriam Toews knows tragedy. In =dS`eVSZ[SR(E]`Y:]dSO\R

1998, her father stepped in front >ZOgEVS\<]=\S6OabVSBW[S
of a train in Steinbach, Man. 0`WUWRAQVcZbS
Twelve years later, her older sister An examination of the
committed suicide the same way. busyness epidemic be-
Toews has always been a cathartic sieging North American
writer—A Complicated Kindness women that offers solu-
and Irma Voth plumb her knotty tions to mitigate the
relationship with her Mennonite madness. March 11.
B=3EA1/ @=::=3E3<

upbringing—and her latest is no

exception. It orbits around two sis- :WabS\b]bVSA_cOeYW\U1VWQYS\
ters: Yolanda, a divorcee seeking 3ZOW\S:cW
true love, and Elfrieda, a pianist The modern-day Louella Parsons
with a death wish, whose latest sui- behind laineygossip.com has devoted
cide attempt coincides with an im- a book to the teachings of her mother,
portant concert tour. Cutting and an old-world mah-jong addict known
compassionate, as the “Chinese Squawking Chicken.”
the novel is April 1.
tinged with
poignantly 4W`SW\bVSC\\O[SOPZS1]c\b`g
comic 5VOZWP7aZO[
insights This captivating debut takes place in
into love, an Arabian country where flying car-
grief and pets, a despot who can hear citizens’
mental private thoughts and reality TV that
illness. makes the Hunger Games seem tame
April 15. are the norm. March 11.

`RQOj" "j"!
 WATCH THE VIDEO FOR
;CA71 FOSTER THE PEOPLE’S
“COMING OF AGE” WITH LAYAR

AVOYW`OaVW[[WSaPOQYW\b]bVSa^]bZWUVb

World Rhythms
0G A/ @ / 6  : 7 AA

Shakira is a force of nature. How else to explain that the

Colombian superstar’s song “Hips Don’t Lie” surpassed all
21st-century smashes (sorry, Psy) to become the in-
ternational top-selling single of the millennium?
Currently one of the most powerful women in the
world according to Forbes magazine, the singer
took a break from her judging duties on The
Voice to focus on fine-tuning her self-titled 10th
album, which features contributions from reli-
able hitmakers like R&B singer Akon. March 25.

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8]V\\g1OaV BW[PS`BW[P`S 4]abS`bVS>S]^ZS
The Man in Black may Toronto’s Taylor Kirk In the spring of 2011,

A6/97@/@3F43/BC@3A1>)1/A6 "001
have died in 2003, but has a creepy, cobwebby “Pumped Up Kicks,” a
he was so prolific that voice, which he uses to deceptively mellow pop
music from his golden fantastic effect in his jam about fancy sneak-
years, long buried in haunting tunes. On his ers and school vio-
the vaults, is just fifth full-length album lence, was everywhere.
now seeing the light as Timber Timbre, he Three years later, Los
of day. These adds a technicolour jolt Angeles trio Foster the
early-’80s to his atmospheric People returns with a
tracks are es- soundscapes, which guitar-heavy collection
sential listen- feature murky string ar- inspired by a deep-
ing for Cash rangements and hyp- seated disillusionment
completists. notic baritone sax riffs. with consumer culture.
March 25. April 1. March 18.

""j" "j`RQO
 I WANT
A HEALTHY-LOOKING
SMILE
SO I LOOK AS GOOD
AS I FEEL
My smile is something I want to share
for years to come. To help keep it healthy,
I stick to my Pro-Health routine. And,
as a result, I always get to show off
my healthy smile.

1 FLOSS 2 BRUSH 3 RINSE

MY ROUTINE
Crest® Pro-Health™ Multi Protection rinse helps prevent and reduce plaque and gingivitis. Crest® Pro-Health™ toothpaste fights
cavities, plaque, tartar, gingivitis and tooth sensitivity. To ensure this product is right for you, always read and follow the label. ©2014 P&G

ORAL-16266
 7!4#(4(%
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Copy That
0G 8 =6 <  A 3 ; : 3 G

Like all good sci-fi, Orphan Black grapples

with serious stuff like bioethics and the na-
ture of human identity, but the heart of this
Toronto-shot series is Tatiana Maslany. The
Saskatchewan actor has been rightly lauded for her turn as British con artist
Sarah Manning and a half-dozen other clones (including soccer mom Alison
and Ukrainian assassin Helena) caught up in an experiment gone pear-
shaped. The taut first season landed the show at the top of critics’ lists; Season

23>>E/@<3@0@=A>71BC@3A);/A:/<G "001/;3@71/
2 promises even more twists, wigs and accents. Premieres April 19 on Space.

B`O\aQS\RS\QS BVS5OZO^OU]a/TTOW`(
Johnny Depp stars as an artificial- AObO\1O[Sb]3RS\
intelligence researcher who be- Footage of early explorers, stories by
comes obsessed with his program to present-day settlers and voice-overs
develop sentient computers. This from the likes of Cate Blanchett are
thriller is a nightmare come true for intertwined in this inventive true-
anyone who be- crime doc about a 1930s Galapagos
lieves in the murder mystery. In theatres April 4.
technological
singularity @W]bW\1SZZ0Z]QY
and its cor- This early effort by Hollywood legend
responding Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) explores the
doomsday inner workings of a prison overtaken
scenarios. by inmates protesting brutal living
In theatres conditions. On DVD and Blu-ray
April 17. April 22.

"$j" "j`RQO
 SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

HEALTHY
SMILES
The Link Between Oral Health & Overall Health
A healthy smile can make you feel confident about yourself and your
appearance. But did you know that oral health is also linked to overall health?
 SPECIAL FEATURE

DENTAL
Under 3 Years
For children under 3 years old, an

CARE FOR
adult should brush and floss their
teeth. Talk to your dentist about whether

CHILDREN
to use fluoridated toothpaste. If your
child is at risk of tooth decay and you
decide to use fluoridated toothpaste,
use only a grain of rice-sized amount
A lifetime of good oral health begins (making sure your child spits out the
by preventing cavities in childhood. toothpaste). Otherwise use a toothbrush
Children need their parents' help to moistened only with water.
keep their teeth healthy and clean
and to establish good eating habits. From 3 to 6 Years
For children between 3 and 6 years
Before Teeth
old, an adult should help them brush
You should clean your child's mouth even
and floss. Use a pea-sized amount
before they have teeth. Use a soft baby
of fluoridated toothpaste.
brush or wrap your finger in a clean,
damp washcloth. Brush or wipe all parts
of the gums and teeth. Don't use tooth-
paste until your child has teeth.

Baby's 1st The Canadian Dental Association recommends

infants see a dentist within 6 months of the
Dentist Visit eruption of the first tooth or by 1 year old.
 SPECIAL FEATURE

Dental Care The Dental Exam

for Seniors First, the dentist will review your
medical history to find out about
Your oral health and dental needs
any health conditions that may
change as you age. You may have
affect dental treatments or
dentures or dental implants. You may
procedures or that may be associated
take a medication that causes dry
with oral health problems. Tell
mouth or makes gums grow. A dentist
your dentist if anything has
will assess your unique situation and
changed since your last visit.
help you maintain healthy teeth and gums.
Your dentist will inspect your mouth for:
Dentures
Dentures (artificial or false teeth) should Q Damaged, missing or decayed teeth
be tended to as carefully as natural teeth Q Signs of cavities or gum disease
to keep germs and infections away.
Q The condition of previous dental work
Dental Implants Q Signs of mouth or throat cancer,
and suspicious growths or cysts
Dental implants act as tooth root substitutes,
Q Teeth positioning
providing a foundation for artificial teeth.
A metal anchor is surgically inserted into Q Signs of clenching or grinding
the jawbone and gradually bonds with the Q Signs of bleeding or inflammation
bone. An artificial tooth is then attached
Your exam may also include dental X-rays
to the implant. To support implants, you and an examination of the neck.
must have healthy gums and bone under
the teeth.

Natural Teeth
Great news: older adults are keeping their
teeth longer than ever before. Not-so-good
news: seniors are more likely to have cavi-
ties develop around the root of the tooth.
It’s important to take good care of your
natural teeth and gums with daily brushing
and flossing and regular dentist visits.

What do dental
X-rays show?
X-rays show cavities under existing fillings,
decay under the gum line and between the
teeth, fractures, impacted wisdom teeth,
and bone loss caused by gum disease.
They also show if children’s teeth are
erupting properly.
 SPECIAL FEATURE

ORAL Good
for Life™

HEALTH
Taking proper care of your teeth and gums is a lifelong commitment.
Follow these simple steps to keep your oral health good for life.
1. Keep your mouth clean
• Brush your teeth and tongue twice a day.
• Use a soft-bristle toothbrush and fluoride toothpaste.
• Wait at least 20–30 minutes after eating before brushing your teeth.
• Floss every day.
• Look for oral care products with the
Canadian Dental Association (CDA) Seal.
• Eat a well-balanced diet.
• Limit foods and beverages containing sugar or carbohydrates.
• Ideal snack foods: cheese, nuts, vegetables, and non-acidic fruits.

2. Check your mouth regularly

Look for signs of gum disease:
• Red, shiny, puffy, sore
or sensitive gums
• Bleeding when you brush
or floss
• Bad breath that won’t go away
Look for signs of oral cancer:
• Bleeding or open sores that don’t heal
• White or red patches
• Numbness or tingling
• Small lumps and thickening on the
sides or bottom of your tongue, the
floor or roof of your mouth, the inside
of your cheeks, or on your gums

3. Don’t smoke or chew tobacco.

Besides ruining your smile, smoking and chewing smokeless tobacco
can cause oral cancer, heart disease, and a variety of other cancers.

4. Visit your dentist regularly.

48% of Canadians who haven’t seen a dentist in the past year have
gum disease. Regular dental exams and professional cleanings are
the best way to prevent and detect problems before they get worse.

! JUST A DECADE ago, the word
“gluten” was foreign to many Canad-
ians. Now it’s become nearly as
ubiquitous as “low fat” on food la-
bels, and eliminating the sub-
stance—a mix of two proteins,
gliadin and glutenin, found in
wheat, barley and rye—from daily
diets is a runaway trend. But is going
gluten-free really the healthiest
course for everyone?
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Before gluten-free diets became
the rage, it was mostly people diag-
nosed with celiac disease, a dietary
sensitivity first linked to gluten in
the 1950s, who were advised to stay
away from wheat. Celiac disease af-
fects only one in every 100 to 200
Canadians and is diagnosed
through a combination of a blood
test that detects antibodies and an
intestinal biopsy that looks for Ã
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damage to the small in- digestive pain, bloating,

testine. In the 1980s,
doctors began to notice
that some of their pa-
tients who didn’t meet
the criteria for celiac
disease nonetheless
thrived without wheat.
In 2011, doctors with
expertise in celiac disease from
seven countries met in Oslo, Nor-
way, to define standards for diag-
nosing and treating gluten-related
disorders, and formalized the term
“non-celiac gluten sensitivity.” That
same year, a small, randomized
study by Monash University in Aus-
tralia of 34 patients with irritable
bowel syndrome (IBS) found those
who ate bread that contained
gluten were more likely to report
constipation, diarrhea
and fatigue. And the
trend began to grow.
With so few studies
investigating how gluten
affects us, we still don’t
have enough informa-
tion to determine
whether it’s truly a digestive irritant
in people who don’t have celiac dis-
ease. However, last August, the same
Monash University researchers pub-
lished a study in Gastroenterology in
which they amended their original
methodology and discovered gluten
may be the wrong target. In the
study, 37 participants with IBS who
thought they had a gluten sensitivity
thrived on a low-FODMAP diet.
FODMAP stands for “fermentable

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5:CB3<035=<3
oligo-, di- and mono-
saccharides and poly-
ols,” all of which are
short-chain sugars that
are poorly absorbed by
the body, including
fructose, lactose, fruc-
tans, galactans (found
in beans) and polyols
(found in artificial
sweeteners and pitted fruits). And
when the researchers secretly added
gluten (but not wheat) to the low-
FODMAP diet, participants didn’t
have a problem. The study hypothe-
sized that fructan, a short-chain
sugar found in wheat, could be the
culprit, not gluten. And it’s possible
those who do well without wheat
might need to eliminate other foods,
such as ones that contain polyols, or
artificial sweeteners, for example.
Regardless of what science sug-
gests, books like Wheat Belly have
captured the public’s imagination
and encouraged an overwhelming
perception that gluten consump-
tion leads to a slew of health prob-
lems. With society’s fascination
with food fads, especially quick
fixes, the gluten-free industry is
booming. A 2013 report by market
research firm Packaged Facts esti-
mates the gluten-free market in
Canada exceeds $450 million; and
the Gluten-Free Expo, where
around 100 vendors hawk their
cookies and crackers, will hit five
#"j"  "j`RQO
major Canadian cities
this year. But there’s a
danger to seeing glu-
ten as the culprit for
all of one’s health
woes. “I think people
far too quickly ascribe
their medical prob-
lems to gluten,” says
Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an
obesity expert and medical director
of the Bariatric Medical Institute in
Ottawa. Symptoms could be related
to stress, a problem with the digest-
ive tract like IBS or another food
trigger, such as lactose. Before
making the switch to a gluten-free
life, keep a food diary and record
the timing of your symptoms. Then
make an appointment with a doc-
tor or nutritionist.
B63:74316/<53
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 ING INAL T
S R
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 NOMINATE
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 7<B@3/B;3<B

I’ve been training for my first half-marathon,

and my right knee is killing me. Turns out I
have runner’s knee. What can I do to ensure
a safe and speedy recovery?
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Runner’s knee, sometimes referred
to as patellofemoral pain syndrome,
is a loose term associated with pain
behind and around the knee, partic-
ularly where the thigh bone and the
kneecap meet. It can be caused by
overuse, trauma, weak thigh mus-
cles, misalignment of the joints or
foot problems. Once the knee is
strained, kneeling, running or
squatting can trigger pain.
After getting X-rays and an MRI,
rest your knee, use ice packs, com-
press it with elastic bandages, ele-
A 6CBB3@AB=19
vate it on a pillow, do stretching and
muscle-strengthening exercises at
least once a day and consider using
foot orthotics.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs are often recommended to
treat runner’s knee, but these can
cause serious and sometimes fatal
damage to the stomach over the
long term. A safe and effective alter-
native is to use such supplements as
curcumin, Boswellia and methylsul-
fonylmethane. Omega-3 from fish
oil and vitamin D supplements will
calm the inflammation. Physiother-
apy and massage can also help.

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First off, ensure you’re not eating
foods you’re allergic or sensitive
to, as gut inflammation can cause
swelling and pain in your joints.
Allergies trigger mast cells to release
histamine, causing the redness and
swelling that accompany knee
pain. Common allergens include
wheat, dairy and peanuts. Focus
on flax, chia and hemp seeds, and
wild salmon or smaller cold-water
fish such as herring, sardines and
mackerel, as these are your best
choices for high-powered, anti-
inflammatory foods and can help
speed up recovery.
Tart cherries may reduce joint
pain, thanks to pigments called an-
thocyanins, which have been shown
to lessen pain by reducing inflam-
matory markers in the blood. Kale
and Swiss chard are natural anti-
inflammatory foods containing
vitamin K, which has, in studies on
mice, lowered the chemicals the
body releases when it’s inflamed.
Ginger root can beat pain by inhibit-
ing the effects of arachidonic acid,
which is the fatty acid that’s respon-
sible for triggering the inflammation
you’re experiencing.

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Runner’s knee can occur for a num-
ber of reasons, but one culprit might
be this double whammy: tight, weak
quadriceps (the group of muscles in
the front of your thighs) and tight
hamstrings (the opposing muscle
group to the quads, found in the
back of your thighs). This injury can
occur when your kneecap tracks out
of its normal alignment, causing irri-
tation on its underside. Avoid ramp-
ing up your running mileage or
frequency too quickly, and scale
back if you feel pain. Make sure your
shoes are the best fit for your foot


type—staff at a running store can
help. Do strengthening exercises for
your quads on both legs, like ball
squats—place a stability ball
between your lower back and a wall
as you squat—or step-ups on a low,
sturdy bench. Loosen up leg muscles
with stretching and a foam roller.
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Strange Symptoms
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! One of the most mysterious

diseases around has television to
thank for upping its visibility.
House, the popular medical drama
that ran from 2004 to 2012, featured
the long-running joke “It’s not lu-
pus.” A go-to response for the
cranky Dr. House, it was trotted out
every time another diagnostician
posited that the chronic autoim-
mune disease was behind a pa-
tient’s bafing symptoms. Tere was
good reason for constantly suggest-
ing lupus, though: known as “the

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great imitator,” it can masquerade
as a variety of other conditions.
Because lupus occurs when the body
attacks its own cells and tissues, the
swath of possible symptoms ranges
from hair loss to fatigue, from chest
pain to arthritis. It all depends on
which parts the overzealous im-
mune system targets.
Making a lupus diagnosis even
trickier is the fact that there’s no sin-
gle test for it. Doctors must look at a
battery of lab results, plus a patient’s
current symptoms and medical hist-
ory, before coming to a conclusion.
Those eventually diagnosed with lu-
pus are statistically more likely to be
female (a staggering 90 per cent),
between the ages of 15 and 45, and
of African, Asian, Hispanic or First
Nations descent.
An estimated 15,000 Canadians
are affected by lupus, and the
number of cases is increasing.
Whether this means there are actu-
ally more sufferers or that we’re
just getting better at identifying
them is unclear. Lupus can be trig-
gered by certain medications used
to treat seizures, high blood pres-
sure or rheumatoid arthritis, so
one might think that increased pre-
scriptions are contributing to its
rise. However, the ratio of lupus
cases induced by drugs is around
five per cent—too low to have a
noticeable impact on the condition’s
overall incidence.
One of the other unsolved issues of
lupus is how to make it go away. We
currently know only how to slow the
damage and control the symptoms.
But devising a cure is not out of the
question, according to Dr. Robert La-
hita, Lupus International’s chairman.
“The progress made in treatment and
diagnosis during the last decade has
been greater than that made over the
past 100 years,” he says on the founda-
tion’s website. “It’s therefore a sensible
idea to maintain control of a disease
that tomorrow may be curable.”
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1=D3@AB=@G
 WATCH THE
LION WHISPERER IN
ACTION WITH LAYAR

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9SdW\@WQVO`Ra]\WacaW\UVWaW\bW[ObS
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THE

LION
WHISPERER
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B63:7=<E67A>3@3@
W
HEN KEVIN RICHARDSON
steps through the gate
onto a stretch of pristine
South African grassland, time ap-
pears to ripple. The disturbance
causes a momentary abatement
in the roar of the cicadas; the only
sound is the crunch of dry grass un-
der his boots. Then the air shivers,
and half a metric ton of flesh and
muscle bursts from the veld: an adult
lion and lioness, their movements
so fluid they seem poured from the
bush. Before Richardson can prepare
himself, the cats paw his head and
bring him down.
“Bobcat! Gabby!” he coos. “Come
here, my babies!”
The lions flop on top of him like
kittens at play. Over the past 17
years, millions have watched similar
encounters on news segments and
nature channel shows: Richardson,
wearing shorts and a T-shirt, attacked
by several of the planet’s most fear-
some predators. Just as viewers brace
themselves for a bloodbath, a love-in
ensues. No number of YouTube clips,
however, can rival a live perform-
ance. The animals smell like dust
and death. They are not tame; they
are untameable. Somehow, because
of a skill or intuition he cannot name,
Richardson appeals to the softer ele-
ments of their nature.
We have seen the likes of this be-
fore, and we know how it ends. Croc-
odile Hunter, Grizzly Man, Siegfried
$$j"  "j`RQO
and Roy—all killed or injured by ani-
mals they claimed kinship with. Rich-
ardson, who has known these lions
since they were babies, insists he’s
different, but is aware of the risks.
“If I told you there are no issues as-
sociated with what I do, I’d either be
a liar or mentally unstable,” he says,
as Bobcat nuzzles his neck.
No animal behaviourist has ever
endorsed Richardson’s activities—
the prevailing theory is that lions
are too unpredictable to be trusted,
no matter how docile they may ap-
pear. The more persistent criticisms
come from park rangers who often
face considerable danger from large
carnivores while on patrol. Two years
ago, a ranger at Kgalagadi Trans-
frontier Park, a preserve bordering
Botswana, barely survived an attack
where he was dragged off an open
truck by a lion that grabbed his leg
> 6=B=A 0GB63/AA=17/B32> @3AA23<7 A4/ @@3::1>
between its teeth. It’s the kind of
threat 27-year-old Mosa Masupe
faces every day. Masupe is a ranger in
Botswana’s Mashatu Game Reserve,
home to several prides. He has fol-
lowed Richardson’s career ever since
he first surfaced in the media in 2000
as the “Lion Whisperer,” and like
many rangers who hear about Rich-
ardson, Masupe believes a gruesome
mauling is inevitable. “Those lions
will kill him,” he says.
In 2001, a lion called Tsavo busted
Richardson’s nose with a blow from
its massive paw. His arms and legs are
Richardson sprawls with adult brothers Tau and Napoleon in their enclosure.
mapped with scars. Even a gentle love
bite could nick a jugular, leaving Rich-
ardson to bleed out in the grass, alone.
“I’m not really worried, because it’s all I
know,” says Richardson’s wife, Mandy,
who has been with him for over 13
years and helps raise their two young
kids. “It’s what he’s done since I met
him. He’s so passionate about his work
that it’s contagious.” So contagious that
for years Mandy also worked as Rich-
ardson’s public relations point guard,
helping build his rough-and-tumble
reputation. “Have you seen any unto-
ward movements from these lions?” he
asks. “There’s no reason for me to hit
them or subdue them. They’re lovable,
social cats, man.”
Perhaps. But does a word like “lov-
able” apply to wild creatures whose
consciousnesses we cannot fathom?
Or is it a case, as the South African
writer J.M. Coetzee once put it, of
there being “no limit to the extent to
which we can think ourselves into
the being of another”? Clearly, Rich-
ardson believes that such empathy,
at least when it comes to lions, knows
no bounds.
R
ICHARDSON HAS DESCRIBED
himself as a self-taught zo-
ologist, but he is something
deeper—a medium between the
world of wild predators and those
who present a terminal threat to
their survival. In the wild, lions are
menaced from three main sectors:
the relentless spread of agricultural
land, in which 75 per cent of the
`RQOj"  "j$%
B63:7=<E67A>3@3@
animals’ natural habitat has been
converted into grazing fields for cat-
tle; wildlife clashes, where farmers
kill hundreds of lions a year in re-
taliation for attacks on livestock; and
endemic poaching by locals, who can
make the equivalent of their annual
incomes—about $6,000—by shoot-
ing a single lion and selling the meat
and bones on the black market. (Lion
bones are an acceptable substitute in
Asian tiger bone wine, said to boost
virility. A status symbol for an ex-
ploding Chinese middle class, a case
of the potion can fetch as much as
US$25,000 at auction.)
4=@93D7<@716/@2A=<E@3AB:7<5
:7=<A7AB633/AG>/@BA/D7<5B63;
7AB63@3/:16/::3<53
As a result, lion populations are be-
ing decimated. In 1950, over 200,000
roamed Africa’s vast savannahs. The
most recent estimates put the figure
at 35,000. The International Union for
the Conservation of Nature currently
classifies the species as “vulnerable.”
Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist
at Duke University in North Carolina
who has spent his career studying
present-day extinctions, calls it “a
full-fledged crisis.” In addition to the
ecological costs of knocking off an
$&j"  "j`RQO
apex predator, Pimm describes the
loss of lions as an ethical defeat. “It’s
a measure of the fact that we aren’t
being good stewards. What sort of
planet do we want to hand to our
children and grandchildren?”
But as bad as things are for wild
lions, notes Richardson, life is just
as tenuous for the 5,000-plus in
captivity in South Africa, raised to
be slaughtered like chickens. (With
the country’s wild lion popula-
tion averaging 3,000, that means
the majority of South Africa’s lions
are in cages.) Most captive lions
begin their careers as cubs on
breeding farms, enjoying the atten-
tion of countless visitors. The cats
will keep generating money until
they’re six months old, at which
point tourists will pay as much
as $800 for an experience called
“walking with,” in which a handler
and his guests stroll through a patch
of veld with a lion. Twelve months
later, no longer adorable, they be-
come fodder for tourists in a prac-
tice known as “canned hunting.” In
2007 alone, 16,394 foreign hunters
Richardson often
spends afternoons
in his sanctuary,
lying against the
cats while sending
emails from his
phone or tablet.
They like the
closeness, he says,
and it helps keep
their bond strong.
B63:7=<E67A>3@3@

arrived to kill an estimated 46,000

animals, an industry the government
considers “a sustainable utilization
of natural resources.” According to
one report, 5,892 dead lions were
exported from the country between
2001 and 2011. The majority were
slaughtered in canned hunts.
In his videos, Richardson’s rough-
housing showcases these “natural
resources” as warm-blooded crea-
tures to an international audience.
As his YouTube views rack up, so,
too, does his ability to publicize the
plight of captive lions and, more
broadly, the perils facing a shrink-
ing wild population. Wrestling lions,
however, is the easy part. Saving
them is the real challenge. Captive-bred kin to these lions are sold
to hunting clubs for as much as $12,000.

W
HILE RICHARDSON’S rug-
gedness suggests he was
born in the bush, his clan
hails from the lower-middle-class Jo-
hannesburg suburb of Orange Grove,
where citrus orchards long ago gave
way to family homes with postage-
stamp–size lawns.
When Richardson was three or
four, his dad helped him rear a baby
bird that had fallen out of its nest.
Dazzled by the experience, Richard-
son began to nurse other birds, un-
til, by the age of seven, he acquired
his first moniker: “The Bird Boy of
Orange Grove.” Weavers, pigeons,
mourning doves—broken birds by
the dozen were brought by neigh-
bours to the family’s home, and
Richardson would add them to his
growing aviary.
When Richardson was in his early
teens, his father died. He acted out,
drank heavily, stole cars, even rolled
his sister’s vehicle in a crash. He be-
gan to lose interest in his birds and
one day set the flock free. While he
once hoped to study veterinary sci-
ence, he was lucky to make it into
university at all, and even luckier to
escape with two years of zoology and
a bachelor’s degree in physiology
and anatomy. His work as a physical
trainer eventually landed him a job
at a Johannesburg facility called Lion

%j"  "j`RQO

Park. But Richardson was barely in-
terested in his duties. He had fallen
in love with two lion cubs named Tau
and Napoleon.
He doesn’t properly understand
why, on his first visit, he stepped
inside the pen with the youngsters.
Richardson had ridden superbikes,
flown planes—so youthful machismo
may have played a part. Still grieving
his father, Richardson suspects he
was driven by the need to master his
fear of death. Regardless, the impulse
was foolhardy. “At six months a lion
cub is big,” he explains. “Check out
his claws, his teeth—the thing can
make a mess of you.”
No sane, unarmed wrangler will
stay in an enclosure with a lion older
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
than two and certainly no older than
four. Richardson ignored that policy
and spent as much time with the
brood as possible, bonding as they
grew into ornery adolescents and
then matured into strapping adults.
He discovered—as everyone else
at the park soon did—that he had a
sixth sense when it came to the cats.
He could ask them to stroll alongside
him, to roll on their backs to accept a
tummy rub. He used no coercion—
no sticks, no pepper spray. Lions, he
learned, are hugely social, and if wel-
comed into the pride, he wasn’t just
safe, but loved.
And so a brand was born. At 22,
Richardson became a star wrangler
at Lion Park—a glorified zoo where
his antics wowed guests eager to get
a taste of the bush in a contained
setting. But he realized that, by em-
phasizing Tau and Napoleon’s cute-
ness, he was contributing to a trend
that meant more cubs doing “cub
duty” in competing parks, and thus
more lions disappearing when they
became too old to manage. “You
could say I was part of the problem,”
says Richardson.
If he was to do right by the animals
he loved, he needed to both stoke his
celebrity and eliminate the need for
it to exist. Richardson began thinking
about moving away from Lion Park
and acquiring a facility large enough
to let his captive lions roam free for
the rest of their lives.
`RQOj"  "j%
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 @3/23@¸A2753AB
R
ICHARDSON PILOTS a four-by-
four through the dirt tracks of
Welgedacht Game Reserve, 50
kilometres north of the South African
capital of Pretoria. A year ago, with
the help of donors, the Kevin Rich-
ardson Wildlife Sanctuary was estab-
lished here, on a privately owned plot
comprising 1,200 hectares of rolling
grassland. The sanctuary, which also
includes hyenas and black leopards,
is Richardson’s first opportunity to
run a park entirely how he sees fit.
Thirteen electrified enclosures,
@716/@2A=<¸A/7;7A4=@B631/>B7D3
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each about a hectare in size, shel-
ter Richardson’s 26 lions of various
ages, many of which previously lived
at Lion Park.
Richardson parks his four-by-four
and makes for one of the enclosures.
Two lionesses, Meg and Amy, lope
up, and he’s on the ground in sec-
onds. Richardson has known the
sisters for 11 years, but after he left
Like a reluctant superhero, Richardson
believes he needs to stay in character as
the Lion Whisperer or no one will pay
heed to threats facing Africa’s big cats.
Lion Park, they were sold to a breeder
and joined a pride that was too large.
Scared they were headed to a hunt-
ing shop, Richardson purchased the
animals back.
Retrieving Meg and Amy brought
home the importance of being in
control of his own facility. Outside
the sanctuary, the pair would likely be
pawns in a lucrative industry where
hunters pay as much as $58,000 to
gun down a full-grown male and up
to $10,000 for a female. The experi-
ence also inspired him to redouble
his efforts at curtailing the canned
hunt—joining conservation groups
in directly lobbying the South Afri-
can government; raising awareness
through fundraising and social media
campaigns; giving seminars across
the country and abroad about the
more repugnant aspects of the kill-
ings; and working with wildlife NGOs,
most notably Protecting African Wild-
life Conservation Trust, that have out-
reach programs with landowners.
The fear is that the industry is
simply too profitable to stop locally.
Richardson’s hopes—and the hopes
`RQOj"  "j%!
Richardson poses with Thor days before the premiere of the 2010 movie White Lion.
of environmentalists around the
world—rest with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service’s recent decision to
look into whether the African lion
requires protection under its Endan-
gered Species Act, which would pre-
vent hunters without permits from
bringing lion trophies into the coun-
try. The one-year review of the clas-
sification would also likely influence
whether the Convention on Interna-
tional Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) de-
cides to lift African lions to a CITES
1 categorization—also under review.
“Lions are currently CITES 2,” ex-
plains Richardson, “which means
it’s totally legal with permits to
hunt them and export the trophies.”
CITES 1 categorization would ban
%"j"  "j`RQO
the exportation of heads, pelts, meat
and bones to the United States, as
well as the other 178 countries that
implement CITES. Considering
that the U.S. is by far the canned
hunt’s largest customer base, “it
would stop the industry in an in-
stant,” says Richardson.
The last thing Richardson wants,
however, is to end up with more li-
ons in his sanctuary, a big reason his
females are on contraception. His
aim is for the captive population to
plummet, and that means placing
a nationwide moratorium on lion
breeding—something advocated by
many conservation groups, including
Four Paws, an international animal-
welfare organization that runs a lion
sanctuary in South Africa.
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
Richardson leans back against a
now supine Meg, ruffling her ears. “If
only tourists did the math and said,
‘Hey, where do all these cubs end
up?’” he says. “Would you come and
pet a cub knowing that, as an adult,
he’s going to get slaughtered? Would
you be happy?”
A
WEEK OR SO BEFORE Christ-
mas in 2013, during one of the
violent storms that announce
the arrival of South Africa’s rainy sea-
son, a lion called Thor was felled by a
lightning strike. Thor was a white lion
in Richardson’s sanctuary, named for
the Norse god of war and thunder.
The lion had starred in many videos
and documentaries, most notably
the epic White Lion, which turned
him into a matinee idol. The circum-
stances of his death seemed like a
resounding tribute from above.
Richardson’s relationship with
Thor was not without its troubles.
On a film set five years ago, feeling
the pressure of all that money spool-
ing through the camera, Richardson
prompted Thor to attack an anima-
tronic lion one time too many. With
staggering speed, the 300-kilogram
animal lunged and grabbed Richard-
son’s forearm in his jaws, employing
just enough pressure to make his in-
tentions plain.
In the only way he was able, Thor
reminded Richardson that lions are
not circus performers and that the
intersection between friendship and
exploitation had been crossed. Rich-
ardson was ashamed. It took three
years for Thor to forgive him and in-
vite the Lion Whisperer back into his
social circle with a guttural grumble.
“When he died, I don’t think I’ve
ever cried more,” says Richardson.
The essential aspects of Thor’s char-
acter—his solitariness, but also his
independence and pride—are why
Richardson’s mission is to run Wel-
gedacht as a game park without a
captive lion population once his
own brood dies off. “I want no lions
in enclosures,” he says. “If that hap-
pens, then I know we’re doing some-
thing right.”
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/  1 : = A 3  A 6 /D 3  
My family was in the car on a
return trip from Nova Scotia, where
we had gone to visit our many rela-
tives. Because of gasoline rationing,
it had been very difficult to visit these
relatives during the war, so they now
had to be visited on a yearly basis,
especially since one of them—an
important one, my maternal grand-
father—had undergone something
called a coronary. I had no clear
picture of what this was, but it had
something to do with his heart and
meant he might die at any minute. I
had no clear picture of dying either,
except that it happened to tadpoles
not properly tended to and caterpil-
lars if you didn’t put enough holes
in their jar lids. Death was sad, and
also smelly, but it wasn’t anything
that could conceivably happen to
me. (The cousins who were shortly
to die of diphtheria were still alive.
Was this the last visit on which I saw
them? There were more fatal child-
hood diseases at that time.)
It was the summer of—I
think—1948, so I was eight years
old. Or it might have been 1947, and
I was seven. It was soon after the
war, in any case, and therefore the
highways were empty.
By “highway,” I don’t mean what
everyone now pictures: an eight-
lane throughway, with few exits and
no crossroads, along which trucks
and cars hurtle at 110 kilometres an
%&j"  "j`RQO
hour. I mean two lanes, an intersec-
tion at every county line and many
level crossings for trains. Eighty kilo-
metres an hour was considered fast.
My father’s idea was to
reach Nova Scotia, get the
relative-visiting over with
and drive back again as
fast as possible.
Cars were different then. They
were bigger, they were heavier, and
they were not digitized. Our car was,
I believe, a Studebaker. The seats
were upholstered in a scratchy grey
fabric with an odd smell that was
worse in the heat, and this mattered
because there was no air condition-
ing. The front seat extended all the
way across—no bucket seats—and
there were no seat belts. There were
none in the back seat, either, and
there were no car seats for children.
No one thought anything of this.
My father was driving. Fathers
drove then: it was not usual for moth-
ers to drive if fathers were in the car.
My father was a man of many pro-
jects and was usually in a hurry. His
idea was to reach Nova Scotia, get the
relative-visiting over with and drive
back again as fast as possible, so he
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
drove quickly and for long hours. My
mother would aid this scheme by
packing sandwiches, doling out Life
Savers and massaging the back of my
father’s neck while he drove.
When it got dark, we might stop at
a motel. (Motels were clumps of tiny
cottages with Christmas-tree lights
strung along their fronts.) But there
were not many of these, so we would
simply pull over to the side of the road.
My father would cut some tent poles
with his axe, and we would set up our
heavy canvas tent in a likely spot—
which meant any place flat and not
in a swamp. We cooked on a campfire
or a pump stove, and we peed in the
bushes. Needless to say, you would not
be allowed to do any of this now. Nor
would you wish to, as you would likely
get run over or arrested.
A note on my mother. My father
was not untypical for that time:
there were still a lot of men around
who, having migrated from remote
locations to towns or cities, had
that combination of backwoods and
urban skills. But women along the
lines of my mother were less usual.
She was a self-declared tomboy:
scorner of ladies’ hats and tea par-
ties, rider of horses, speed skater
and, in her youth, daredevil walker
of barn ridgepoles. A year or so ear-
lier, I had witnessed her chasing a
bear away from our outdoor cooking
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area with a broom. She did not read-
ily lose her cool. Point being: if she
later said we almost died, then we
almost did die. She was not prone
to exaggeration.
Back to the day in question. We
were driving west. It was late after-
noon. Insects were squishing on the
windshield. My brother and I were
bouncing around in the back seat,
unbelted, on the loose. There was
no Internet, there were no iPads or
Game Boys or other forms of in-car
entertainment, and there was no
car radio. So, after cows had been
counted in passing fields, games
of “I Spy” had ground to a halt and
we’d run out of steam on the serial
story we took turns narrating, we
would fall back on the mischievous.
We might even do something delib-
erately annoying, such as imitating
bagpipes or singing songs we knew
my father despised. Or—a new thing,
since bananas had just reappeared,
having been unobtainable during the
war—causing chewed-up banana to
extrude from our mouths while say-
ing “toothpaste.” Then there would
be giggling and snorting, and when
our father had had too much of this,
he would say “Pipe down, kids.”
In the midst of silliness, we are
in death.
We were almost at the “Pipe down,
kids” stage. The sunlight was golden.

`RQOj"  "j%'
/  1 : = A 3  A 6 /D 3  

The car was descending a long, steep
hill at its usual rapid pace. At the
bottom of it, a tractor pulling a huge
load of hay drew out of a side road
and began to cross in front of us. The
car brakes failed. My mother’s hand,
which was massaging the back of my
father’s neck, froze in its motion.
Did I feel grateful then to
have been spared? I was
too young for such complex
feelings as gratitude. But
I feel grateful now.
Did I realize what was happen-
ing? I don’t think so. But I must have
realized something, because what-
ever my brother and I were do-
ing stopped short. There were no
screams, no expletives. Silently the
sun shone. Silently the hay wagon
inched across the road. Silently the
car descended the hill. Just before
the moment of impact, our lane was
cleared, and both we and the hay
wagon continued on our way.
My mother said afterwards that
she thought her last moment had
come. My father said, “That was a
close shave.” I feel obliged to note
that “a close shave” is an expression
that was used before the takeover of
safety razors and electric shavers. It
refers to the straight razor, lethal if
the hand slipped, and means that
the blade had come very close to
the jugular.
How many times have I almost died
since? Many; so have we all. But that
was the first time of which I was
aware. Did I feel grateful then to have
been spared? No. I was too young for
such complex feelings as gratitude.
But I feel grateful now. My mother’s
general comment still applies: “We
hang by a thread.” The reference is to
the sword of Damocles, and now that
there is an Internet, there is no excuse
for not looking it up.

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A1@33<1/>BC@32
Three years on, we’ve had a sec-
ond child, purchased two iPads, gone
through five iPhones (children love
lobbing things) and accumulated
enough battery-operated junk to fill a
toy shop. It’s not that I’ve abandoned
fresh air for free apps, or that my chil-
dren, now two and four, get Netflix
over paintbrushes, but reality some-
times calls for the iNanny. It’s how a
lot of parents use the iPad. Just in from
the daycare dash, Dad is cooking din-
ner while Mom is sorting socks and
A child’s character and interests play a part in how
drawn they are to media, as do parental habits.
unpacking lunches, and so the sprogs
get 20 minutes of show time. Every-
thing in moderation, right?
“Any time there is a massive shift in
the tools of life, we don’t know what
impact it will have,” says Michaela
Wooldridge, a psychology PhD can-
didate at the University of British
Columbia who is researching how
technology affects infant and toddler
development. “Because these devices
are so new and technology is chang-
ing so fast, we haven’t had time to
evaluate long-term outcomes.”
A3BB7<5A1@33<B7;3 limits, whether
it’s on a TV or tablet, is something al-
most every parent of a school-age child
&"j" "j`RQO
grapples with, but the debate is begin-
ning at younger and younger ages.
Many toddlers are what’s called “digital
natives”—they have never known a
world without gadgets. The Canad-
ian Paediatric Society’s most recent
guidelines, updated in 2013, essentially
discourage all “screen-based activi-
ties” (including playing on tablets and
smartphones) for children younger than
two, and recommend two hours or less
of “recreational” screen time a day for
school-age kids.
Prying an iPad away from a child
is familiar territory for many of us.
Toronto mom Hayley Chiaramonte
sees the creative value of a cult game
like “Minecraft” but is concerned by
her eight-year-old daughter’s fixation
on it. “She’s totally unresponsive when
she’s on the iPad. It’s as if she leaves us
for another planet,” Chiaramonte says.
According to Wooldridge, experts
don’t yet know whether children
born three years ago, let’s say, are
destined to be more tech-obsessed
than an eight-year-old whose early
years did not include multiple port-
able devices. “Infants and toddlers
have been completely unrepresented
in the research because it wasn’t
  @3/23@¸A2753AB

until recently that they were even person there to give the experience
considered to be consumers,” she instructional value—probably won’t
says. A child’s character and interests offer much that’s positive, she says. We
will play a part in how drawn they can praise the latest and greatest apps,
are to media, as will parental habits. but kids still need to be guided.
A 2013 study from Common Sense “The way infants and toddlers de-
Media, an American non-profit that velop and learn is through social in-
examines the effects of media and teraction, and the device itself can’t
technology on young users, found provide that,” Wooldridge says.
that 38 per cent of U.S. kids younger
than two are using tablets or smart- :7A/5C3@<A3GAB@C55:32 with
phones—possibly even before they the topic of technology and what
can string a sentence together. (This was appropriate for her two daugh-
is up from 10 per cent in 2011.) By the ters, now 11 and 10, so much that she
age of eight, 72 per cent of children wrote a book about it, titled Screen
have used a smartphone, tablet or Time. Guernsey, who works as a jour-
similar mobile device. nalist and directs an early-education
Based on reports from families, policy program in Washington, D.C.,
Wooldridge hypothesizes
that parents and caregiv-
ers are citing “education”
as the primary objective
when granting screen time
to babies and toddlers.
“The reality is that when
you ask parents how the
devices are being used, it is
mostly to occupy or distract
the child,” she says.
Some families may limit
7 AB=19> 6=B=A6CBB3@AB=19

tablet use to 20 minutes

while stuck in the super-
market cart or during a car
trip, while others employ
them as in-house babysit-
ters for hours at a time. But
plonking an iPad in a three-
year-old’s lap—without a

`RQOj" "j&#
A1@33<1/>BC@32
tells parents to look at the three Cs—
content, context and child—when
making choices. “Instead of simply
saying, ‘Is screen media bad or good
for our kids?’ we have to consider the
content on the screen, the context in
which media is used and your child’s
own personal needs,” she says.
With the three Cs in mind, media can
be a springboard for conversation, dis-
covery and open-ended play. Guernsey
“We need to model to our kids that it’s okay to do
nothing sometimes,” says Judy Arnall.
explains that some positive experiences
come when you open up a device with
your child, learn how it works and en-
gage with it together. This could simply
mean asking your child questions about
the animals in the virtual zoo he’s creat-
ing while you unload the dishwasher.
Then come the moments when
you want (or need) to pour yourself a
cup of tea or glass of wine and read
the newspaper. Giving your child the
iPad makes that possible. But there’s
no reason a tablet cannot be an oc-
cupier at one point in the day and a
conversation starter at another, says
Guernsey. “As long as we’re maintain-
ing a healthy ratio between moments
of non-interaction and interaction,
then I think we’re doing just fine.”
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But, as with any other tool, there
is a time and place for it to be in-
troduced, based on a child’s devel-
opmental capacity. “These devices
are not benign,” says Wooldridge.
What niggles is the idea that the iPad
is replacing a richer experience for
our children, like playing chess or
climbing a tree. Is children’s creativity
being sapped by video games and vir-
tual worlds?
7B¸A<=B/<either-or situation, says
Jason Krogh, CEO of Sago Sago, a
Canadian company that designs apps
for kids. “It’s as if the point of com-
parison is that you’re going to have
a conversation with your child as the
alternative to them playing with the
iPad,” he says. “But we live in a world
where that’s not always possible.”
Krogh curates apps for his daugh-
ter in the same way he might vet the
shows she watches and the books she
reads. “A children’s book can be good
or bad, a children’s toy can be good
or bad, and the same applies for any
technology-based experience.” He ad-
vises parents to be wary of apps with
grand educational claims, and to focus
more on what’s fun and imaginative.
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
“I’m very much of the belief that what
kids need more of is play.” Krogh cites
one of his daughter’s favourite games,
“Toca Tea Party” (from Swedish app de-
veloper Toca Boca), as a good example
of the app as a toy. “It’s not trying to
control the whole experience, but in-
stead acts as a prop for creative play.”
Guernsey agrees with Krogh’s take
but would also like to see different
types of games and innovative ways
of using our devices. “We need to
demand media that promotes social
interaction and promotes looking up,
and not being so zoomed in,” she says.
That zone of concentration is what
makes the iPad a perfect device on
long-haul flights, daunting car trips
and rainy days at home. But relying
on it, says Judy Arnall, a Calgary par-
enting expert, deprives kids of any
chance of boredom, and boredom is
what inspires and enables creativity.
“We need to model to our kids that
it’s okay to do nothing sometimes.”
7B2=3AA33; to be a double-edged
sword. When children are getting
antsy in a long lineup or at a restau-
rant, handing over the iPad is a quick
way to pacify them before other pa-
trons start judging us for their whin-
3?C/:AB/<27<5
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ing. Then again, parents also feel
like slackers for using technology to
solve an age-old parenting dilemma
instead of turning it into a teachable
moment about practising patience.
Without the iPad, says Arnall, your
kid might have invented a game for
himself or engaged in conversation
with grown-ups at the table.
I can’t be the only mother who of-
ten falls into the “do as I say, not as I
do” school of parenting, as I secretly
send a text from the breakfast table.
We need to teach our sons and daugh-
ters to use the tools of our culture
mindfully, and that begins with know-
ing when to switch them off ourselves.
How can I expect my kids to focus on
one thing at a time if I rarely do? Tech-
nology is part of children’s daily lives,
but the way that it’s embedded in their
lives is something that we, as parents,
have some control over.
“Set some ground rules with your
kids,” advises Arnall. “Block off per-
iods in the day when there is no
technology.” This applies as much to
parents as it does to children. “Setting
your own boundaries is what teaches
kids to set their boundaries.”
“The tools only have the power we
give them,” says Wooldridge.
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“Saunders, I’ll thank you to take that attitude elsewhere.”

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thoughts both embarrassing and in-
sightful. Chatter captured on Twitter’s
#OverheardInTheOffice includes:
What was yesterday, the 17th?
(Pause) What’s today, the 19th?
>75>3<.>75M>3<
Out of curiosity, is this Halloween
candy? It’s January, but it doesn’t
matter. I’ll still eat it.
“I like work; it fascinates me. I can
sit and look at it for hours.”
Hu m o r i s t 83@=;3983@=;3
B63@3E/A a period when our
company was constantly being sold,
resulting in a new business name
each time. After the latest regime
change, I said, “We’re going to need
a new sign out front.”
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I just need a bucket of coffee to
dip my mug into once in a while.
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fitness. 8=6<63<@G.8=6<63<@GM<3B
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 The best of both bowls.

NEW

Introducing NEW Quaker® Harvest Warm & Crunchy Granola.

All the satisfying warmth of oatmeal, with the delicious crunch
of granola. Simply add milk, heat, and amazingly, it stays crunchy
all breakfast long.

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WHATEVER I WAS ABOUT to go through, on this fall morning in 2013,

at least I wasn’t in it alone. From the clammy-palm moments before
the anaesthetic takes hold to the agonizing wake-up in the recovery
room, from choking down watery hospital soup to marvelling at my
new scar, I had an ally.

`RQOj"  "j'
16/7<@3/1B7=<A

AS I PREPPED for surgery at an Ontario I wanted to give my dad a healthier

hospital, my father—thousands of kilo- life, without harming my own. My
metres away in western Canada—was parents also had a complex set of
awaiting his turn in the operating suite emotions about what I’d set out to do.
the next day. Over the next 24 hours or “I love my children and wouldn’t want
so, many more operations would take to see any of you go through the pro-
place, all part of a synchronized chain cess,” my father told me. “But I know
of transplants across Canada. For con- that’s my best chance of getting a kid-
fidentiality reasons, I couldn’t be told ney.” My mother was thankful, too,
how many people were involved in the though she would have gladly taken
chain or where they lived, but once it my place if she’d been a viable donor.
was all done, my father Unlike Mom, I had
would have the kidney made the cut—and was
he desperately needed, waiting to be cut open.
and I would be one shy Recovering from I’d mostly quelled the
of a pair. As for the fate a radical worries that clouded
of my organ, it would be the merry-go-round of
flown to a hospital out
nephrectomy blood workups, ultra-
west and given to some- would be like sounds, chest X-rays,
one I didn’t know and recovering from urine analyses and re-
may never meet. I’m nal scans. In 2012, we’d
not used to this kind of a stab wound. been part of a chain
intimacy with strangers. that collapsed, as some
do because of tissue
THE DECISION I’D MADE three years incompatibilities, unrelated medical
earlier to volunteer as a donor didn’t issues, life changes and other factors.
impact just my life and my father’s; it My dad felt disappointed. I felt guilty.
connected us to other people queued Small though it was, there was an un-
for operations. When I wasn’t worry- mistakable sensation: relief. While I
ing about my own predicament (rare), was committed to seeing the opera-
I spent time imagining families a lot tion through, I wasn’t necessarily in a
like ours: concerned, fearful, hope- hurry to go under the knife. I still had
ful. We’d all seen the effects of kidney so many questions—then and now.
disease. For my brothers, mother and Was becoming a living donor the
me, it was a potential end to decades right decision, or would I need that
of uncertainty, of watching my dad spare kidney down the road? Would
deal with dropping energy levels and my dad get back to the kind of life he
an array of medical problems. wanted? How long before I could lift

' j"  "j`RQO

 @3/23@¸A2753AB
my toddler? Why would I volunteer
for pain by climbing onto an operat-
ing table, like the blue one a nurse
was now ushering me onto?
Pain. I’d shattered an elbow in a
bike accident in 2006, and it was ex-
cruciating. A doctor friend said that
recovering from a radical nephrec-
tomy—a kidney removal—wouldn’t
be as bad. The only sensitive zone
would be the incision site on my ab-
domen. As he casually informed me,
it would be like recovering from a stab
wound. Oddly, I was reassured.
Thinking of it in stabbing terms
made me feel like a tough guy—even
if I did find it a bit chilly in the oper-
ating suite. I soothed my nerves with
thoughts of a day spent with my dad,
doing what he liked best: golfing. So
what if I hated golf? A minor detail in
a much bigger picture.
I NEVER WOULD have been able to
help my father if not for the growing
popularity of “daisy chain” donations,
more often known as living-donor
paired exchanges. A kind of organ-
ized swap meet, these chains feature
donors who are incompatible with
their loved ones (as I was with my
dad due to our different blood types)
and are instead matched with people
in the same situation.
Though the idea of paired ex-
changes has been around since the
1980s, it was only in the late 2000s
that health-care systems and hospital
networks worldwide began widely in-
stituting programs to come to the aid
of hard-to-match patients. Canadian
Blood Services has been facilitating
exchanges with its partners in the
provincial health-care systems since
2009. Paired exchanges accounted for
10 per cent of the 456 living-donor kid-
ney transplants performed in Canada
in 2011. Though some chains in the
United States have included dozens of
participants, examples here typically
consist of eight to 10 people to keep
matters manageable. More often than
not, they also include an “altruistic
donor,” someone who doesn’t have a
specific recipient in mind but whose
participation can greatly improve the
odds of making a viable chain.
The Kidney Foundation of Canada
estimates that 2.6 million Canadians
either have kidney disease or are at
risk due to conditions such as dia-
betes and high blood pressure. Now
`RQOj"  "j'!
16/7<@3/1B7=<A
66, my father had been coping with
kidney problems since he was diag-
nosed in his early 20s with glomer-
ulonephritis, a disease that affects
the kidneys’ ability to filter blood of
waste and excess fluid and salt. He’d
contracted it as a result of streptococ-
cal infections that hadn’t been prop-
erly treated while he was growing up
on a farm in southern Saskatchewan.
As a kid, I didn’t really notice my
dad’s health, but I do remember how
his energy flagged through my teens:
there were fewer family trips, more
long naps. By the time he was 44—
only two years older than I am now—
his kidney function had declined to
the point he needed dialysis. As it
does for 1.5 million people world-
wide (and more than 23,000 in Can-
ada), that meant being hooked up,
multiple times a week, to a machine
that filters the blood—though not as
efficiently as a kidney can, and with
a host of side effects like hypotension
'"j"  "j`RQO
and anemia. My dad was on dialysis
for less than a year before undergo-
ing a first transplant with a kidney
from a deceased donor. Equal parts
optimist and pragmatist, he believes
he’s lucky to have been ill at a time
when dialysis and transplants were
becoming widespread. “Had I been
of a previous generation, I wouldn’t
have lived past 45,” he says. “When
they had kidney failure, they died.”
His replacement kidney lasted 15
years, very good for borrowed parts.
In 2007, it was back to dialysis and
the waiting list for a kidney. He was
stable on dialysis, but years of medi-
cation regimes and other physical
strains were causing problems (his
heart being just one area of concern).
Could the solution be as simple as
me supplying him with a fresh one?
Most of us have more renal func-
tion than we will ever need: serious
health problems occur only once
function falls below 25 per cent, and
you require only 10 per cent to stay
off dialysis. According to Dr. Peter
Nickerson—a transplant nephrolo-
gist at the University of Manitoba
who serves as the medical director
of organ transplantation for Canad-
ian Blood Services—just because a
patient has only one kidney doesn’t
mean they’ll max out at 50 per cent.
“We’ve had patients who’ve had 70 or
80 per cent on one kidney,” he says.
It would seem life with one kidney
isn’t necessarily different from life
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
with two. So when all the tests con-
firmed I was a prime candidate, my
father and I entered the database of
possible matches. My journey to the
operating table had begun.
I THOUGHT I MIGHT be sad about my
parting with Left Kidney—newly edu-
cated, I’d only begun to appreciate its
value. Instead, when I woke up in the
recovery room, my first thought was,
I want more drugs. Sensing I was not
the stoic sort, a nurse offered me an
epidural. I’d seen its euphoric effect
on my wife after 23 hours of labour; I
now understand the appeal.
The recuperation process wouldn’t
always feel so fantastic. The incision
took time to heal, as did the abdom-
inal wall underneath, but by the six-
week mark, I was moving without
discomfort. As for my dad, his doctors
were thrilled: unlike his first trans-
plant, there were no rejection epi-
sodes. I could hear the excitement in
his voice every time we talked on the
phone to trade post-op health de-
tails and plan get-togethers. It would
just be visits to each other’s homes at
first, but now that he wasn’t tethered
to a dialysis machine, maybe the trips
could be more ambitious, like the
B63C>A723=42=E<
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European holidays from my childhood.
It would be somewhere with nice golf
courses, but good beaches, too, so my
daughter could impress her grandpa
with her sandcastle-smashing skills.
ODD AS IT may seem, I don’t often
wonder who’s walking around with
my kidney. When Nickerson asks me
about my experience, I tell him I’m
surprised by my lack of curiosity. To
me, it’s as if there’s no stranger be-
tween me and my dad—he’s the one
who received my kidney. This isn’t
uncommon, apparently. Nickerson
says many donors feel that way be-
cause they can see the direct impact
the chain had for their loved ones. In
our case, it’s not just the health bene-
fits. There’s a new closeness between
my father and me, born out of shared
experiences (distance be damned).
I’m only beginning to understand
the importance of my role in my
dad’s story and in the stories of those
nameless recipients. On my end, I’m
happy it didn’t take me long to fulfill
a major post-surgery desire: being
able to wrestle my daughter into her
snowsuit. I can’t wait until she’s old
enough to hear the story about how
Dad got his cool scar.
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 6=C@A=D3@0=/@2
LOOKING BACK, John Aldridge knew
it was a stupid move. When you’re
alone on the deck of a lobster boat in
the middle of the night, 66 kilometres
off the tip of Long Island, N.Y., you
don’t take chances. But he needed to
start pumping water into the Anna
Mary’s holding tanks to chill so that
when he and his friend Anthony
Sosinski reached their first string
of traps a few kilometres away, the
water would be cold enough to keep
the lobsters alive for the return trip.
In order to get to the tanks, he had to
open a hatch on the deck. The hatch
was covered by two Coleman cool-
ers filled in Montauk Harbor seven
hours earlier. The coolers weighed
about 90 kilograms, and the only way
for Aldridge to move them alone was
to snag the handle of the bottom one
with a box hook and pull—hard.
Then the handle snapped.
Suddenly Aldridge was flying back-
ward, tumbling across the deck to-
ward the back of the boat, which was
wide open, just a slick ramp leading
straight into the black ocean. The
water hit him like a slap. He went
under, took in a mouthful of Atlantic
Ocean and then surfaced, sputtering.
He yelled as loud as he could, hop-
ing to wake Sosinski. But the diesel
engine was too loud, and the Anna
Mary, on autopilot, was already out of
reach. He was alone in the darkness.
Aldridge was 45, a fisherman for
almost two decades. The first thing
'&j"  "j`RQO
you’re supposed to do, if you’re a
fisherman and you fall in the ocean,
is to kick off your boots—they’re
dead weight. But as Aldridge treaded
water, he realized that, in fact, his
boots were elevating his feet and tip-
ping him backward. Aldridge’s green
monstrosities were an oddity among
the members of Montauk’s commer-
cial fishing fleet, but now he had an
idea of how they might save his life.
7<BE=6=C@A
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Aldridge reached down and pulled
off his left boot. Straining, he turned
it upside down, raised it up until
it cleared the waves, then plunged
it back into the water, trapping a
bubble of air inside. He tucked the
inverted boot under his left armpit.
Then he did the same thing with the
right boot. It worked; they were like
pontoons, and treading water with
his feet alone was now enough to
keep him stable and afloat.
The boots gave Aldridge a chance to
think. He was in a very bad situation.
It was about 3:30 a.m. on July 24. The
Raised in the suburbs, John Aldridge (left) chose fishing in his mid-20s. In 2006, he
bought the Anna Mary with his best friend since grade school, Anthony Sosinski.
North Atlantic water was chilly—22
degrees Celsius. Dawn was two hours
away. Aldridge set a goal: just stay
afloat till sunrise. Once the sun came
up, someone would start searching for
him. For now, though, there was noth-
ing to do but watch for predators.
IT WAS A LITTLE after 6 a.m. when
Anthony Sosinski awoke. The mate
he and Aldridge hired to work this
trip, Mike Migliaccio, got up first,
and when he saw Aldridge was mis-
sing, he yelled for Sosinski. Sosinski
tried to puzzle it out: before he went
to sleep at 9 p.m., he told Aldridge to
wake him at 11:30 p.m. Now it was
past dawn and they were more than
24 kilometres past their traps.
The Anna Mary is a 14-metre boat
without many places to search for a
missing person. Still, the men looked
everywhere before Sosinski ran to
the VHF radio. He switched to Chan-
nel 16, the distress channel, and at
6:22 a.m., he called for help: “Coast
Guard, this is the Anna Mary. We’ve
got a man overboard.”
The Coast Guard’s headquarters
for Long Island and coastal Connect-
icut is in New Haven. Sean Davis is
a petty officer there, and that mor-
ning he stood watch at the station’s
communications unit. Davis radioed
back, asking Sosinski for details.
He then turned to a member of the
team in the command centre: Pete
Winters, the Operations Unit watch
`RQOj"  "j''
 

all available boats and ra-

dioed Air Station Cape Cod
to tell them to get airborne
as soon as possible.
Winters was busy man-
ning Sarops. At its heart is
a simulator that can gen-
erate, in minutes, as many
as 10,000 points to repre-
sent how far and in what
direction a “search ob-
ject” might have drifted.
The challenge in Al-
dridge’s case was that the
search team had no clear
idea when (and there-
fore where) he had fallen
overboard. That created
a potential search area
larger than Rhode Island,
A few weeks after his son’s rescue, John Aldridge Sr. a sweep of ocean 48 kilo-
got a tattoo on his arm of big green fishing boots. metres wide and extend-
ing 97 kilometres south—a
stander, who was working the Coast search area almost impossible to cover.
Guard’s search-and-rescue computer The team in New Haven based
program, known as Sarops. their initial calculations on Sosin-
By 6:28, the command centre had ski’s report that Aldridge was sup-
notified the search mission coordina- posed to wake him up at 11:30 p.m.
tor in New Haven and the search co- That suggested to them that Al-
ordinator at the district headquarters dridge had fallen overboard between
in Boston, who approved the use of 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., which would
two helicopters and a search plane. put him somewhere between eight
At 6:30, Davis issued a universal dis- and 32 kilometres south of the Long
tress call on Channel 16, asking mar- Island coast. Winters input those
iners to keep a sharp lookout. assumptions, and Sarops came back
Davis kept working the radio. He with an “Alpha Drift,” with the highest-
contacted the Coast Guard station in probability locations clustered about
Montauk with instructions to launch 24 kilometres offshore.

j"  "j`RQO
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
The next step for Sarops was to de-
velop search patterns for each boat
and aircraft. A little before 8 a.m.,
New Haven started issuing patterns
to the first assets on the scene: the
plane, a helicopter and a patrol boat
from Montauk. The helicopter was
piloted by Air Station Cape Cod lieu-
tenants Mike Deal and Ray Jamros,
who were joined by a rescue swim-
mer named Bob Hovey and a flight
mechanic named Ethan Hill.
The Coast Guard search was off to
an excellent start. The only problem
was that everyone was looking in the
wrong place. Aldridge did not fall in
the water at 10:30 p.m.; he fell in at
3:30 a.m. Almost 50 kilometres south
of where the helicopter crew was care-
fully searching for him, Aldridge was
clinging to his boots in the cold water.
BACK ON THE Anna Mary, Sosinski
had been having second thoughts
about the search area. After his ini-
tial conversation with Davis, he in-
spected the boat more carefully. The
pumps were on, sluicing cool ocean
water through the lobster tanks. In
the summer, Aldridge and Sosinski
would start filling the tanks when
their boat reached the 40-fathom
curve, the line on maritime charts
that marks where the ocean’s depth
hits 73 metres, which is the point at
which the water temperature tends
to drop. The 40-fathom curve is only
about 24 kilometres north of the
Anna Mary’s first trawl. Then Sosin-
ski found the broken handle on the
ice chest and realized how Aldridge
had fallen overboard.
Together Sosinski and Winters in
New Haven came up with a theory:
Aldridge had gone overboard some-
where between the 40-fathom curve
and the Anna Mary’s first trawl. At
8:30 a.m., Winters passed this infor-
mation to Jason Rodocker, a petty of-
ficer and expert in Sarops. Rodocker
punched in the new variables, and
the program spit out a second set of
search patterns.
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The news about Aldridge was also
spreading through Montauk’s fishing
community, and 21 boats volunteered
to help. Davis couldn’t communicate
with all 21 at once on top of the Coast
Guard craft he was directing, so Win-
ters hit on an idea: put Sosinski in
charge of sending out the search pat-
terns for the volunteer fishing fleet.
Sosinski focused his energy on the
commercial boats, but none of it felt
`RQOj"  "j
 6=C@A=D3@0=/@2
like enough. Aldridge had left his
driver’s licence on the Anna Mary,
and every once in a while, Sosinski
would pick it up. He’d stare at it and
say out loud, “Where are you, John?”
THE SUN ROSE on John Aldridge at
about 5:30 on July 24. Now that it was
light, he gave himself a new assign-
ment: find a buoy. That way, he would
be more visible to the searchers, and it
would be easier to stay afloat.
For a couple of hours, Aldridge
drifted and looked. Finally, he spot-
ted a buoy—tethered by rope that
extended up from a string of lobster
traps at the bottom of the ocean—
and began swimming. It was painful
work, but he was eventually able to
angle himself directly into the buoy.
He grabbed the rope and held on.
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By noon, Aldridge had been in the
water for almost nine hours. He was
starting to shiver uncontrollably. Sea
shrimp and sea lice were fastening
themselves to his T-shirt and shorts,
claiming him as part of the sea.
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 j"  "j`RQO
Aldridge could see aircraft over-
head running search patterns. Even if
they’d figured out more or less where
he had fallen in, they hadn’t taken
into account the possibility that he
had stopped drifting and snagged a
buoy. He had to get himself farther
east. He pulled his buck knife out of
his pocket and cut the rope that held
the buoy in place. He tied it around
his wrist and began swimming.
He willed himself to keep kicking
until he reached another buoy. He
recognized that it belonged to his
friend Pete Spong, who owned a lob-
ster boat called the Brooke C. He un-
tied the rope from his wrist and tied
it to the anchor rope underneath the
new buoy. Now he had two buoys
connected by a few metres of rope.
He straddled the rope, repositioned
the boots under his arms and waited.
He knew he couldn’t survive another
swim. If he was still in the water at
sundown, he would tie himself to the
Brooke C’s buoy. That way, his par-
ents would have something to bury.
UP IN THE helicopter, Deal, Jamros,
Hovey and Hill had been staring at
the water since about 7 a.m. They
were growing discouraged. The truth
of working as a search-and-rescue
pilot for the Coast Guard is that you
don’t do a lot of rescuing—almost ev-
ery time a person goes overboard in
the North Atlantic, he drowns.
 

The helicopter crew finished

their search pattern—the third
of the day—and requested a
new one. From the command
centre, Davis radioed coordin-
ates, and at 2:46 p.m., the he-
licopter started moving again.
Twelve minutes later, Jam-
ros called out, “Mark! Mark!
Mark!”—protocol when an
object has been spotted. There
was Aldridge, between two
buoys, clutching his boots and
waving frantically.

IN THE WEEKS after the res-

cue, I talked to local fisher-
men about the search. Most
of them teared up as they Aldridge and Sosinski have a thriving business:
were telling me the story. 800 traps sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic.
What seems to go mostly
unspoken in their lives is the risk of when Aldridge talks about it, he
their jobs, and the improbable fact sounds the same way. “I always felt
that Aldridge hadn’t drowned under- like I was conditioning myself for that
scored that risk for them even more. situation. I mean, thank God I was
The person who seems least shaken saved, yes. There’s no better entity
by the experience is Aldridge. He has than the U.S. Coast Guard to come
no nightmares, no flashbacks, no fear save your ass when you’re on the
when he goes out on the water. The water. But I felt I did my part.”
Coast Guard pilots and the men in
New Haven express pride when they >OcZB]cUV¸a[]ab`SQS\bP]]YWa6]e
talk about their work that day, and 1VWZR`S\AcQQSSR

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 Life’s Like That
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6=E1/< you tell if someone’s
from New York?
Don’t worry, they’ll let you know.
</16=A=B=.</16=A=B==<BE7BB3@
/4B3@0CG7<5 a floral shirt, my
mom modelled it for our family,
worried that it made her look old.
At the time, we were teaching our
dog how to recognize people by
name, and it was decided that Mom
would be the test. When I asked our
dog to go find my grandmother, she
ran straight to Mom. The shirt was
quickly returned.
9/@=:7</F7<B=@=<B=
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PWUab]`gO^]`U
;G6CA0/<2/<27 couldn’t
decide which jacket to buy our
granddaughter, so we asked the
young salesman.
“If you were buying a coat for
your girlfriend,” I said, “what
would you get?”
“A bulletproof one,” he answered.
“I’m married.” 8=6<1/<CB3A=<
AS\Rg]c`Tc\\WSabZWTSO\SQR]bSab]
`RQOX]YS´g]cQ]cZR`SQSWdSOT`SS]\S
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SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

e a r t h d a y. c a

GREEN
LININGS
Seven healthy lifestyle changes
with “green linings” for
the environment
BY BREANNE ARMSTRONG,
EARTH DAY CANADA

You know all about silver linings – those hopeful or

positive aspects of otherwise difficult situations that inspire
us to persevere. But do you know about green linings?
When we take on a new lifestyle challenge for our health, the “green lining” is the
bonus benefit for the environment. Thinking about it can help you stay motivated
and optimistic, rather than overwhelmed, while pursuing a healthier lifestyle.
Following these seven easy tips will make you healthier, while creating a greener planet!
 SPECIAL FEATURE
GET ACTIVE
Health Canada recommends that adults
should accumulate at least two and a
half hours of physical activity each week,
while children and youth need at least
60 minutes per day. Getting more exercise
has countless benefits for our physical and
emotional health! Walking or biking to work
instead of driving reduces harmful pollution
and fossil fuel use in our professional lives
while allowing us to enjoy nature.
GO MEATLESS
Consider eating meat less often, and
increasing your vegetable intake! By
going meatless one or two days per
week, you can reduce water and air
pollution from animal waste, stop
rainforests from being cut down (for
grazing or feed crops), and save
thousands of litres of water and
hundreds of kilograms of grain.
QUIT SMOKING
It’s obvious that giving up cigarettes is
good for your health – but did you know
that it is also very beneficial for the
environment? According to the City of
Ottawa’s website, Canadians toss away
nearly 8,000 tonnes of cigarette butts
each year! Littered butts take 15 years to
decompose, contain toxic chemicals that
leach into the soil, and have even been
found in the stomachs of birds and animals.
CHOOSE
NATURAL
ALTERNATIVES
Cosmetics, personal care, and cleaning
products can be dangerous. By simply
using them, and without even knowing
it, many of us put toxins onto our skin,
our bodies, or throughout our homes
every day. Many products can even be
replaced by homemade recipes made
from a few basic ingredients, such
as baking soda, coconut oil, vinegar,
or lemon juice. Not only are these
inexpensive options toxin-free, they also
need less pollution-producing packaging
and transportation.
EAT LOCAL
Another healthy step is increasing the
amount of local food you consume. Fresh
produce has none of the preservatives
and additives found in canned or
processed versions, and is richer in
vitamins. The green lining? By eating
locally, you reduce the pollution created,
and energy used, from shipping and
storing food from across the globe.
 SPECIAL FEATURE

DRINK
WATER A NIGHT
Getting enough water
maintains vital balance
OUT
Want to support a
in our bodies; it also healthier environment
helps us concentrate, while treating yourself
supports the immune to a night out? Join Mill
system, removes toxins, Street Brewery for Earth
improves the appearance Hour on Saturday, March
of our skin, and can even 29, 2014. Candlelit parties
assist with weight loss will bring the community
when you substitute it for together in a symbolic
higher-calorie beverages. environmental effort, and
Other good reasons to 50 cents from every pint
choose water over soda or juice? Producing, storing, sold that day and evening
and shipping drinks uses up resources and energy, will be donated to Earth
and creates packaging waste, much of which ends Day Canada! The Lights Out
up in the landfill. campaign will continue
during Earth Month: for

SPEND MORE every six-pack of beer sold

TIME OUTSIDE
in stores from March 30
to April 26, Mill Street will
According to a report by the David Suzuki make a 50 cent donation
Foundation based on the results of its 30x30 to Earth Day Canada.
Nature Challenge, those who spent even as little as
30 minutes outside each day “reported significant For more information
increases in their sense of well-being, feeling about the event, visit
more vitality and energy, while feelings of stress, www.earthday.ca.
negativity, and sleep disturbances were all reduced.”

EARTH DAY CANADA’S MOBILE APP TRAVELS WITH YOU

There is so much we can do to create a healthier environment. At Earth Day
Canada, we wanted to help you make this a part of your daily routine. That’s
why we created a brand new mobile app to make it easy and fun! Starting in
April, be one of the first to install the app. Complete eco-friendly challenges
to accumulate points, then share your achievements with friends. You can also
redeem the points for discounts and prizes at participating green-minded
Canadian retailers. Join the fun at www.earthday.ca.
 SPECIAL FEATURE

TOP 10 ACTIONS
TO REDUCE YOUR IMPACT
ON THE ENVIRONMENT
We are all busy these days, but there are quick, easy, and affordable
ways to reduce your carbon footprint and lessen our impact on the earth.
Let’s embrace our environmental responsibility!

1 SIMPLE
SAVERS
Replace incandescent
MAIN STREET

6 CAREFUL
CLEANING
Choose natural,
7 SMART
SHOPPING
Buy what you
light bulbs with non-toxic cleaning need, not what
LEDs, and use products and make you want. Also,
aerators on faucets simple, natural consider renting
and shower heads. cleaners using and borrowing
vinegar, baking things you don’t
soda, and water. often use.

2 DON’T
DISCARD
Donate, reuse, and
3 TRANSPORTATION
ALTERNATIVES
Walk, cycle, car pool, and
8 BATHROOM
BASICS
recycle items before use public transportation, Take short showers
throwing them in or consider car sharing instead of baths and
the trash. programs or renting. close water taps while
brushing your teeth.

9 HEATING

4
& COOLING
FOOD For summer air
CHOICES conditioning, set

10
Choose local and organic your thermostat to
foods that are in season, 24°C or 25°C and CLOSE
and when possible try to for winter heating, TO HOME
eat less meat. 19°C or 20°C.
Vacation, travel,
Install ceiling fans
and work as close
and programmable
to home as possible.
thermostats.

5 WASHING
& DRYING IIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

25°C
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Wash full loads of clothes

IIIII

in cold water and hang

to air dry.
e a r t h d a y. c a
 As Kids See It

“It’s worse than a sugar highÑI let them play with

my high-vibration cosmic energy crystals.”

=>3<7<5/>@3A3<B from Santa asked if there were any questions,

this past Christmas, my four-year- Marrin raised her hand. “I peed the
old granddaughter, Savannah, bed last night,” she confessed.
was having trouble getting past D/:/@73/:23@A=< S p r i n g h i l l , N. S .
the tied ribbon. Finally succeeding,
she flipped over a second gift and
eyed the ribbon tied around it,
which is when she asked, exasper-
ated, “Why did Santa put all these /<2=<34=@B63972A
traps on my presents?”
?(EVObR]g]cQOZZOPZW\RRW\]aOc`-
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/(/\7R]\¸bbVW\YVSaOc`ca
4`][X]YSaQ][
BE=>=:713=44713@A recently
@7 </> 711=:=

visited my four-year-old grand-

daughter Marrin’s daycare to give a AS\Rg]c`Tc\\WSabYWRab]`WSab]`RQO
talk about the importance of telling X]YS´g]cQ]cZR`SQSWdSOT`SS]\SgSO`
the truth. After, when the presenter acPaQ`W^bW]\ASS^OUS"T]`RSbOWZa

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BVS`WaS]TSQWUO`SbbSaWaPSW\UTcSZZSRW\
^O`bPgbVSW`^c`^]`bSRcaSOaOQSaaObW]\
b]]ZB]]PORbVSgR]\¸baSS[b]e]`Y

Quitting
Time?
0G  / : 3 F/<2 @/ 9 7; 0/:: 4@ = ;  3 : : 3  1 / < / 2/
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b][gb]Sa´Pcb[]abZg7`S[S[PS`TSSZW\UT`SS/a7
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bVST]]bPOZZ^`OQbWQSbVSY\O^aOQYaR]bbW\UbVSTWSZR´7
TSZbT]`bVSTW`abbW[SZWYS7VOROaOg7Q]cZRPSO
U`]e\c^e][O\O\R\]bOP]`W\UYWR

`RQOj"  "j
?C7BB7<5B7;3-
The same scene today would look
a little different. Instead of a Player’s
Light, a teenage girl might be “vap-
ing” on a Blu, an NJOY or any of the
other e-cigarette brands currently
flooding the market. According to the
National Youth Tobacco Survey from
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), the percent-
age of American middle and high
school students who have tried e-
cigarettes doubled from 3.3 per cent
in 2011 to 6.8 per cent in 2012. While
research shows the majority of vapers
are either former or current smokers,
the survey found that 160,000 stu-
dents who had tried e-cigarettes had
never smoked traditional cigarettes.
Today it’s also a lot easier to pur-
chase e-cigarettes than analogs, a
term used for old-school cigarettes.
While Health Canada hasn’t author-
ized the sale or advertising of any e-
cigarettes, minors can buy them from
suppliers online, where no proof
of age is required. (Nicotine-free
brands, such as eRoll and Dune Cigs,
are sold over the counter in Canada
at convenience stores and are exempt
from age restrictions.) There’s no real
data yet, but medical authorities such
as the CDC are concerned young
non-smokers exposed to nicotine in
e-cigarettes may be enticed to take
up traditional smoking.
As more tobacco companies en-
ter the e-cig market, the “gateway”
risk rises, says David Hammond, an
 j"  "j`RQO
associate professor at the School of
Public Health and Health Systems at
the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
“If I’m a CEO, there’s an incen-
tive to grow the nicotine market, not
shrink it by having people transition
from cigarettes to e-cigarettes to ab-
stinence,” Hammond says. “They
want people to use both. Even the
marketing of e-cigarettes is similar.
They use superattractive models—
images that say it’s fashionable. It
doesn’t look like a health message,
as in ‘Here’s a way to quit smoking.’
What it does look like is, ‘Wouldn’t
you like to try these?’”
/11=@27<5B=B63 first consumer
data by research group GfK, of Amer-
ican smokers who are also e-cigarette
users, 56 per cent are male and 44
per cent female. (The majority are
millennials.) However, brands such
as Vapor Couture and Vaping Vamps
clearly target women, with their pink-
and-purple packaging and curlicue
fonts. “Women’s only” e-cigarettes are
sleeker and more elegant, says Ma-
ria Verven, CEO of Vaping Ventures,
the company behind Vaping Vamps.
“Vaping is a hip, healthy alternative to
smoking,” she tells me. “I don’t see any
problem with marketing to women.”
Last year, Blu, which holds 40
per cent of the e-cigarette market,
signed Jenny McCarthy and Stephen
Dorff as spokespeople and rolled out
unprecedented web, TV and print
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
campaigns. NJOY premiered a web
ad starring Courtney Love, and tab-
loids ran stories showing Kate Moss,
Sienna Miller and Robert Pattinson
holding e-cigarettes.
According to a report by Citibank,
from 2011 to 2012, print-ad spending
on e-cigarette marketing in the United
States rose 71.9 per cent, while spending
on TV ads rose 17.9 per cent—a sig-
nificant new revenue source
for media. But the fi-
nancial windfall
may be short-lived
because the at-
torneys gen-
eral from 40
states are urg-
ing the Food
and Drug
Administra-
tion (FDA) to
restrict the ad-
vertising and sale
of e-cigarettes so
that it doesn’t directly
target youth (for example,
by playing up e-cigs’ fruit and
candy flavours).
In Canada, almost all advertising
of tobacco products is banned, al-
though there are exceptions—it’s per-
mitted in publications with an adult
readership of 85 per cent or more. In
addition to advertising, “seeding” in-
fluential cultural events has become
a popular strategy in both the U.S.
and Canada. At the spring/summer
2014 New York Fashion Week, NJOY
distributed e-cigarettes after shows;
samples of the nicotine-free brand
Luli were handed out during the 2013
Toronto International Film Festival.
Sharon Anne Cook, a professor in
the faculty of education at the Uni-
versity of Ottawa and author of the
2012 book Sex, Lies and Cigarettes,
says the marketing strategy behind
e-cigarettes may appeal to
women for the same
reasons we flocked
to slimmer ciga-
rettes in the
mid-20th cen-
tury. “The so-
called ‘light’
cigarettes in
the women’s
market were
driven by
the belief that
they were far
safer than regular
cigarettes, and this
belief was promoted by
tobacco manufacturers.”
/@3 3175/@3BB3A A/43@- “If I
look at the ingredient list of e-ciga-
rettes, then, yes,” explains Peter Selby,
chief of the Addictions Program at
the Centre for Addiction and Men-
tal Health in Toronto. The solution
inhaled during vaping is typically a
mix of vegetable glycerine, propyl-
ene glycol and polyethylene glycol—
`RQOj"  "j!
?C7BB7<5B7;3-
chemicals similar to common food
additives—combined with varying
amounts of nicotine, depending on
the brand. It produces no carcino-
genic tar or smoke and delivers nico-
tine in less-saturated quantities than
cigarettes, which contain more than
4,000 toxic chemicals.
But the majority of e-cigarettes are
made in Chinese factories where a
lack of standardized manufactur-
ing poses a risk. A study by the FDA,
carried out in 2009, found cancer-
causing chemicals and toxins used
in antifreeze in several brands of e-
cigarettes. The study also discovered
traces of nicotine in products that
were being marketed as nicotine-free.
“E-cigarettes have great potential as
a harm-reduction tool but only after
they’ve been tested and regulated,”
adds Selby. “They’re not ready for
prime time, in part because they’ve
fallen into a ‘regulatory abyss.’”
>@7;3 B7;3 =@ <=B Susan Willis
and her partner, N. Maxwell Lander,
started vaping in January 2013 as a
way to stop smoking with minimal
agony. The couple, who are in their
20s and run a photography business
in Toronto, are former pack-a-day
smokers. “I was sick and tired of feel-
ing sick and tired,” says Willis. “Since
I started vaping, my headaches and
fatigue are completely gone, and I
have more money in my pocket.”

0G/:3F/<2@/97;0/::3::31/</2/2313;03@ !3::31/</2/1=;
"j"  "j`RQO
E-cigarette kits, which come with
an atomizer, cartridge and plastic-tip
filter, cost between $40 and $80. The
nicotine refills average $10 a week for
the equivalent of a $70 analog pack-
a-day habit.
Elaine Lui, who runs the popu-
lar celebrity site laineygossip.com,
turned to e-cigs in 2012 to help wean
herself off a 25-year cigarette habit. “I
had a real love affair with smoking,”
she explains. “But I was turning 40,
and I just really needed to quit.”
IN THE U.S., E-CIGS
ARE THE SECOND MOST
POPULAR METHOD
OF QUITTING SMOKING,
FOLLOWED BY THE
PATCH AND GUM.
E-cigarettes may turn out to be a
healthier option, but what is their po-
tential for helping smokers kick the
habit completely? In the U.S., they’re
currently the second most popular
method, after cold turkey, followed
by the nicotine patch and gum.
While long-term data isn’t avail-
able, a recent study from New
Zealand researchers shows that e-cig-
arettes are roughly as effective as the
patch. The World Health Organization
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
sees it differently. In July 2013, it re-
leased a statement saying that there’s
little proof e-cigarettes are an effective
method of quitting.
Health Canada hasn’t approved the
use of e-cigarettes as a cessation tool,
warning they “have not been fully eval-
uated for safety, quality and efficacy.”
And while the FDA has yet to weigh in
on the issue, several U.S. studies pub-
lished last year hint at their potential
to help people make the switch from
cigarettes. For its part, the American
Association of Public Health Phys-
icians has recommended e-cigarettes
for smokers struggling to quit.
E63B63@>@=2C1BA:793 Vaping
Vamps offer women a way out of ad-
diction or seduce them further into
it is an open question. Regardless,
their popularity indicates women are
a distinct subset of smokers. The gen-
der gap is closing, in part, because
women may have more difficulty
quitting and staying smoke-free.
According to Selby, the differ-
ence is both biological and social.
Female brain structure, hormones
and body composition may make us
more sensitive to nicotine addiction
and increase our cravings. “Women’s
2CBG27D3@B32
6SeV]a[WZSaW\OQ`WaWaVOaT]c\Ra][S]\Sb]PZO[S
smoking tends to be embedded in
their relationships—with partners or
friends,” he says. “Smoking comes to
mean socializing with others, so quit-
ting can lead to a disconnect, which
can be a struggle.” Unlike cold turkey
or the patch, e-cigarettes allow the
ex-smoker to maintain her social pat-
terns: joining the smokers huddling
in their designated zones.
Experts agree that the smoking rate
continues to decline overall due to
successful anti-smoking advertising,
less visibility in films, increasing tax-
ation and fewer places where smok-
ing is legal. But, according to Selby,
women don’t seem to respond as
well as men to nicotine-replacement
therapy, such as patches and gum.
“If one takes a look at how cessa-
tion occurs, the process is about set-
ting a date and getting it over with,”
says Selby. But these methods target
the physical component of addiction
instead of the psychological factors
unique to women. In other words, by
failing to take into account the spe-
cific reasons women smoke—how
our relationship with smoking is as
addictive as the cigarettes them-
selves—the cessation industry has
left female smokers behind.
/<=<G;=CA
`RQOj"  "j#

To
Paris,
With Tot
0G  6 / < < / 6 A C<5 4@ = ;  3<@=CB3
7::CAB@/B7=<0G83<6A736
AS WE ARRIVE in Paris, the skyline
is cloaked in grey that matches the
city’s cool temperament. My family’s
look is less refined—dominated by a
red stroller festooned with toys.
Our plastic caravan arrives at
L’Ecritoire, a bistro on the Place de
la Sorbonne. There’s not another
child in sight. I unravel my son Tok-
ki’s travel high chair and unpack rice
cakes and organic vegetable purée. I
consider myself always prepared, but
according to Karen Le Billon’s rules,
I’ve already racked up two strikes.
In 2012, there was a mini-boom in
“momoirs” exalting a no-nonsense
B@/D3:
/g]c\UTO[WZg¸a
TW`abb`W^OP`]OR
R`SRUSac^^O`S\bOZ
W\aSQc`WbWSa
French style of parenting: French
Kids Eat Everything, by Vancouver
academic Le Billon, and Bringing
Up Bébé: One American Mother Dis-
covers the Wisdom of French Parent-
ing, by Pamela Druckerman, focus
on how well Gallic children eat and
behave. Tokki was a serene baby at
birth, but he has since perfected a
shriek that’s between Mariah Carey’s
high C and a dog whistle. So when
my husband was invited to a film
festival in France, I decided to go full
immersion. Every first-time parent
is looking for answers. The French
seem to have them.
`RQOj" "j%
B=  >/ @ 7 A   E 7 B 6  B=B  

Lesson 1: Nobody Puts French focus on pleasure. Watching

Baby in the Corner Tokki fill his chubby fists with my
Tokki is not used to being on a ter- meal, I have to admit I’ve never seen
race at the decidedly adult hour of him devour purée with such passion.
9 p.m. From his perch, he cranes his
neck to make saucer eyes at a nearby Lesson 2: Oh, Behave!
foursome: chic adults sipping wine, The sun shines on the heads of chil-
oblivious to the Parisian rive gauche. dren riding ponies along the Jardin
Laying out baby spoons in triplicate, du Luxembourg’s gravel paths. We
I feel a twinge of self-consciousness. park Tokki’s stroller and step into
Never mind looking like tourists— the Théâtre des Marionnettes to wait
looking like nervous for the puppet show to
parents is worse. begin. There’s a rus-
When our plates tling behind us, and
arrive, I crack open When I was my son turns to stare
Tokki’s purée tube, but growing up, my as a grandmother un-
he shakes his head. He wraps cookies for her
only has eyes for the parents let me granddaughter’s snack.
steak. Since there’s no know who was Offering one to me, I
way I’m feeding him
my husband’s medium-
in charge, and politely shake my head
no, but the little girl
rare meat, I break my it definitely protests. “Non. II n’a
burger open to ex- wasn’t me. pas le droit,” the grand-
amine it for pinkness. mother says brusquely
As I rack my brain for to her charge. French
the rules about babies children either have le
and blue cheese, Tokki’s fingers are droit—the right—to do something or
already in my food. I fashion a mor- they don’t.
sel of hamburger meat running with Evidence of this strictness is ev-
jus and offer it up. Still saucer-eyed, erywhere, including Annecy, in the
he chomps furiously as I cool off a country’s southeast. One rainy after-
small pile of fries, which he scarfs as noon, Tokki and I take shelter in the
quickly as 10-month-old coordina- town library as a kindergarten class
tion allows. files past us. I watch as they neatly
At the end of the meal, the rice hang their purple pinafores on hooks.
cakes and purée sit untouched. Two guardians mix among the class,
Across the pond, we tend to con- neither shushing nor raising a voice.
centrate on nutrition, whereas the No one fights over a book.

&j" "j`RQO
 enjoy the

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B=  >/ @ 7 A   E 7 B 6  B=B  
We spend the next day sprawled
on a lawn overlooking Lac d’Annecy.
Families cluster around peacocks
in the open-air aviary, while girls
in Sunday dresses play badminton.
When a toddler starts to scream,
I observe the unflappable French
mother in action. Marching the girl
into a field in full view of everyone,
the mother takes several paces before
turning her back while her daughter
wails. After what feels like an eternity,
the child is tenderly collected and
they walk away hand in hand. I’m in
awe. Had the mother been too harsh?
Or did I want to be more like her?
French parents do not panic in
the face of meltdowns, but I am not
French. On our last night in Annecy,
in my desperation to feed the baby on
schedule, we sit down at a café with
no wait. As Tokki’s fussing turns to
shrieking, I become so stressed that
I tersely part ways with my husband
and return to our hotel—forgetting
he was about to find out whether he
had won a festival prize. (He does.)
That night I’m filled with pride
and then remorse. Why couldn’t I
have finished eating and given my
husband a kiss for good luck? Look-
ing back on my own childhood in
Toronto, I wonder if my Korean im-
migrant parents were secretly French.
When I was growing up, they let me
know who was in charge, and it def-
initely wasn’t me.
!0G6/<</6AC<53<@=CB38/<C/@G !3<@=CB3/7@1/</2/1=;
 j" "j`RQO
Lesson 3: Two’s
Company, Three’s Loud
The French don’t understand the way
North American children can eclipse
the very thing that brought them into
existence: the couple. The night I for-
got to wish my husband good luck,
I learned of his big prize alone. As
Tokki slept spread-eagled on our ho-
tel bed, my husband was partying in
a ballroom at L’Impérial Palace.
In the crowd of filmmakers was
a European duo who had decided
their children weren’t going to keep
them from enjoying the festivities.
The French father pushed a snor-
ing toddler in his stroller, while the
Dutch mother had their sleeping
nine-month-old strapped to her
back. When my husband told me
about them the next morning, I was
full of admiration and bewilderment.
Where did they get the nerve to keep
their babies out past midnight?
Now that we’re home, I still priori-
tize Tokki ahead of ourselves. Does
this mean he will become a “child
king,” as the French say with dis-
dain? Is the idea of a well-mannered
toddler a fantasy I should file along-
side my dream French wardrobe and
flawless accent? At the end of the
day, my child is perfect to me just
the way he is. He doesn’t need to be
French, and I don’t think he minds
that I’m not, either. Although I may
keep trying.
 $1
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 327B=@A¸16=713

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>/ A B  : 7 D 3 A  
/B;G5@/23 Christmas party, I
remember watching other mothers
being dropped off by car. It was snow-
ing heavily, but they stepped daintily
up the steps of the school, wearing
stylish tweed coats with mink collars,
calfskin gloves and thin rubber boots
buttoned over their pumps.
I hovered by the door, waiting for
Mum. Then, way down the side-
walk, I saw her. She was massively
pregnant, with two of my younger
brothers in tow. She had walked,
trudging through the deep snow,
wearing oversized galoshes and a
mammoth white coat that came
down to her ankles. Around her
middle she’d tied a long piece of
yellow rope, and my brothers clung
to the ends like little farmers at-
tached to a clothesline, trying not
to lose sight of a barn in the bliz-
zard. On her head, Mum was wear-
ing a brown leather Second World
War pilot’s helmet, earflaps down,
chinstrap dangling in the wind.
She had dressed for what she con-
sidered was the main occasion—the
cold. But why couldn’t she be nor-
mal? I could see she was popular—
others were captivated by her sense
of autonomy—but I felt shy and
hated being sucked into her orbit,
the centre of attention, where she in-
variably stood. If I complained, she’d
say, “You need to reach out to people!
Everyone feels shy, but shyness is a
form of selfishness!”
 "j"  "j`RQO
I like to think my relationships with
my own children are more breath-
able, more survivable. But are they?
When I was their age in the 1980s,
Mum gave me no freedom: the more
I pushed away, the more she in-
sinuated herself. She crossed every
boundary. Our relationship slid from
admiration to resentment until, as
she battled old age, I used to pray I’d
outlive her, if only for a few months,
so I could see what it felt like to not
be her daughter. So I could be me.
A1/BB3@32/@=C<2
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Yet, only four weeks after her
death—Dad had died three years
earlier—I’ve moved temporarily back
into their home in Oakville, Ont., to
sift through a half century of stuff,
looking for evidence of her… search-
ing for answers.
Friends warned me of this. They
said, “When your mother dies, you’ll
wish you’d asked her some ques-
tions.” I had more than 60 years to
ask, but now there are questions
I didn’t even know I had.
 

;G B6@33 0@=B63@A —Robin,

Chris and Victor—and I are at our
childhood home, sitting on the steps
overlooking Lake Ontario, at the end
of an exhausting morning.
We’re about to tackle the space I’ve
been dreading: the trunk room. The
cedar rafters of the steeply pitched
ceiling give it the dry aroma of a
sauna, and a small window at the
back lets in a sliver of light. We have
to crawl to reach the corners. It’s go-
ing to be a lengthy dig.
The room is stacked with steamer
trunks and wooden crates. Scattered
around them is the usual debris of
a family—layered in circles, like the
growth rings of a tree. The top layer
reveals our most recent chapter:
Dad’s old metal walker and rubber-
tipped walking canes, bags of Mum’s
oxygen tubing, a metal bedpan.
But underneath, there are Hal-
loween masks, Christmas lights, old
paintings, plastic flowers, broken
chairs, unsorted toys, sets of luggage
and—deep in the farthest corner—
dozens of white plastic bags, bulging
and knotted.
Chris drags everything out into the
light and piles it in the upstairs hall.
He finds a shoebox of papers and
brings it down onto the veranda. He
sits on the top step in the sun, scans
the pile and then hands the whole
box back to me.
“Here,” he says. “You can trash all
of this.”
>/ A B  : 7 D 3 A  

Irritated that he seems to be mo-

toring through tasks in such a casual
manner while I’m drowning in detail,
I shake one of the envelopes. Out falls
a letter on Buckingham Palace sta-
tionery written by Princess Elizabeth
to Grandmother in 1947. She’s saying
thank you for a contribution to one of
her charities.
I wave it victoriously. “See? You al-
most threw it away!” Then I listen to
myself—it doesn’t take much for me
to revert back to our youth, the bossy
older sister.

B63 <3FB /4B3@<==< I hear

Robin yell from the playroom and I
run in to see what he’s unearthed.
For decades, sitting on top of Dad’s
filing cabinet in his library, there’s
been “the old tin trunk.” A black
metal sailor’s box, it has our great-
grandfather’s name stencilled in gold
paint on the front.
Robin holds out a brown notebook
from inside the trunk. Scrawled on
the cover are the words “Kolek Tom-
djoeng Sederhana Sasak 50.82 KM.
17.93T.”
“What is it?” I don’t even recognize
the language. Dutch?
“The original logbook of the fishing
boat Dad commandeered in Padang,
when he escaped from the Japanese!”
We flip through the pages in amaze-
ment. The first few are recorded in an
unknown hand of the ship’s original
native crew, documenting trips along
 l
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the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, pick-
ing up cargo. It’s all in Dutch, each
page signed by a port master and of-
ficially stamped. But 10 or so pages in,
I recognize Dad’s handwriting.
On March 5, 1942, Dad—an officer
in the Malayan Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve—commandeers the boat and
begins to meticulously record their
escape voyage, day by day. He lists
the names of the men on board and
records each one’s duties and what
his intentions are (“to avoid capture
by Japanese; to proceed up coast us-
ing land breezes until latitude of N.E.
Monsoon, with which we could cross
Indian Ocean to Ceylon”). When Dad
wrote these words, he was only 26
years old and had no way of know-
ing what a harrowing 37 days at sea
 &j"  "j`RQO
he was about to endure—surviving
Japanese strafing, high seas, limited
rations and little water—nor that fate
was guiding him across the Atlantic
Ocean to New York City, where he
would meet Mum.
Even more miraculously, there
are photos of Dad and other officers
on board the Sederhana. Dad has a
beard and looks half-starved, more
Errol Flynn than Cary Grant—but
who thought to bring a camera, plus
film, in the rush to escape?
D71B=@ /<2 7 dig further into the
old tin trunk while Chris contin-
ues to excavate the trunk room. At
one point, he approaches us, his
arms full of white plastic bags. As
he dumps them on the wicker chair,
 @3/23@¸A2753AB

fat beige envelopes and small blue

airmail letters sift out in the fading
afternoon light.
“What are they?”
“Letters Mum and Dad wrote to
each other—hundreds of them!”
The plastic bags are in the final
stages of decomposition; they frag-
ment into filmy confetti as we grab
for their contents. The tiny white
polka dots stick to our fingertips and
cling like ash to our clothes.

µE/7B/;7<CB3¶
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2317232B=;/@@G-¶

Robin flips open a letter post-

marked New York City, 1942. “Here’s
one that Mother wrote to Grand-
mother, telling how she met Father
when the war started.”
Dearest Mum, I know you probably
think I’ve lost my mind, but it’s only
my heart!
“She writes that she’d been out
dancing every night and was already
in her nightclothes, but this British
officer needed a blind date, so she
and her roommate flipped a coin and
Mother had to go.”
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
Alec came to the door in his Navy
Lieutenant’s uniform and you know
what he did? He handed me his cap!
Can you beat that? So I threw it on
the floor and said, What do you think
I am, a hat rack?
4@=;'" B='"$
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B63A/;3B7;3 germs in your mouth to reverse the signs
We all burst out laughing—it
sounded so like Mum.
We spent the weekend together
and on Wednesday he asked me to
marry him!
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Victor says.
“Mum and Dad only knew each other
for one week before they decided to
get married?”
Chris laughs. “That explains a lot!”
Robin continues reading: These last
10 days have been worth anything
that may happen in the future…
“That’s a good thing,” I say, won-
dering if all war brides felt that way.
From 1942 to 1946, Mum and Dad
wrote to each other almost daily,
and Mum wrote to her mother every
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>/ A B  : 7 D 3 A  

week. We’ve each got our laps full of

paper, trying to read and listen at the
same time, interrupting each other.
Chris says, “Here’s one when Mum
was stationed in Devon at Knight-
shayes Court, in the converted manor
house of Lord and Lady Amory. She’s
writing to Dad in Sumatra.”
I picture Mum in a grand hall with
a marble fireplace and gilt-edged
mirrors, now converted into a rest
home for convalescing American
air forces pilots. Mum was in charge
of entertainment.
“It’s typed on American Red Cross
letterhead.”
“She took her typewriter to war?”
I say.
“Along with her fur coat, high heels
and hot water bottle,” says Robin.
“I remember she told me that.”
“I thought they were supposed to
take only what they could carry!”
“Uh-huh, those were the rules, but
since when did Mother follow rules?
She figured a troopship would be full
of men tripping over themselves to
carry her luggage, and she was right!”
My darling Lackee: Lord & Lady
Amory were over last nite & I asked
them WHY the British have such a
custom of segregating the males &
females at dinner parties? Women
leave, while the men drink Port till
they’re wheeled off unconscious to
bed by their butlers. They’re known
as “1, 2, or 3-bottle men” depending
on their capacity…
 @3/23@¸A2753AB
“Hold that sentence!” says Robin.
“I need more bourbon.” He heads
indoors with his empty glass.
“I’ll be the two-bottle man!” I say,
and follow him into the pantry.
When we return, Chris has flipped
his page over. “Here’s a loving ending.”
It is now late evening—peaceful
& still—with only the singing of the
birds & bleating of sheep to break the
silence—and of course my longing for
you which seems to reverberate from
every distant hilltop.
“They were married by then—
right?” asks Victor.
“Yep, but they didn’t really know
each other.”
Earlier, I’d resolved to clear out my
own mess so my children wouldn’t
have to face it, but now I’m having a
change of heart. Maybe it’s the only
way our children ever truly come to
know us, discovering things we never
wanted them to find.
B63 <3FB 2/G back in the dining
room, I’ve finally finished sorting
Mum’s letters. They fill 23 bulging
binders. Her life is literally laid out
in front of me—but I can’t start read-
ing yet. There’s too much else to do.
Robin has found, among Dad’s
letters, a collection of small pocket
diaries. In one of them, 1946, I see
>/ A B  : 7 D 3 A  

Dad has scrawled across re m e m b e re d re c e i v-

my birthdate, “Received ing a postcard, and one
cable—eldest daugh- thought he’d seen his
ter born!” I thought he father’s handwriting—on
wanted only sons, but a cheque. What’s going to
here is my first hint that happen to our histories if
he expected more daugh- computers crash? These
ters. When he recorded days I take more pho-
my birth, he was on a ship tos than ever before, but
in the South Pacific. Mum they’re stored on my hard
was in the United States, drive. Who sees them? I’m
preparing to join him in certain my great-grand-
Hong Kong. I later turned children won’t. With com-
out to be his only daugh- puters, the more we think
ter, but he called me “First 327B=@A¸ we’ve preserved, the more
Daughter” for the rest of 16=713 we may have lost.
his life. In the Far East, I decide to make a
this is a sign of respect. photo album of the interior of the
And then suddenly, I find evidence house. I take, among other things, a
of my first amah, Ah Kan. Tucked in- close-up of the dining room wallpa-
side Mum’s 1952 passport is a letter per, the hole in the upstairs window
and a photo from the woman who screen, the latch on the back door,
cared for me during the early years of the wicker mail basket, the crack
my life in Hong Kong. It seems Ah Kan in the chimney plaster, the drawer
was missing me after we moved away pulls in the pantry.
and wanted my parents to sponsor Who were our parents? They’re in
her to Canada. She must have been everything my brothers and I see
29 years old when I was wrenched around us, but did we really know
from her arms at dockside and by now them? Can we get to know them bet-
would be almost 90, probably dead. ter by sifting through what they left
But I’m thrilled to find this. behind, like forensic archaeologists?
Thank goodness people wrote let- What does it all mean? It feels like
ters. When I recently taught a uni- we’re wading through puzzle pieces
versity English course, I discovered with no finished picture guide on
that none of my students under the the lid of the box. I still want to
age of 25 had ever received one. Two know more.
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 GET SMART

13 Things
You Should
Know About
Customer
Service
0G >/C: 5 / : : / < B

1 Twelve per cent of Canadians

curse when frustrated by
customer service, making us one
of the most profane nationalities,
according to a 2012 Echo Research
study. Resist the urge. Elaine Allison,
a Vancouver customer service expert,
says keeping your cool, sticking to the
facts and being your most charming
self will bring better results.

2
A 6CBB3@AB=19

Know your contract. Most peo-

ple overlook the terms of service
and get angry when companies re-
fuse to waive rules. Ã
`RQOj"  "j!#
!B67<5A

3 If the problem can be solved

right away, vocalize your com-
plaint in the moment. It’s better to
have a free meal sitting in a restau-
rant than leave fuming after a sub-
standard dinner with a voucher you
might never use.
gethuman.com lets consumers
share extensions and wait times. On
the site, Bell Canada and Rogers
Cable regularly get criticized for
having too many phone-menu steps.
9 For the shortest hold time, con-
tact customer service between

4 If time isn’t a concern, put your

complaint in writing. A letter
creates a paper trail and saves you
9 and 11 a.m. Representatives will have
cleared the previous day’s backlog but
haven’t been hit by the lunch rush.
from repeating the story, says con-
sumer advocate Christopher Elliott.
10 If you’ve tried official chan-
nels to no avail, it might be

5 Tell a company what it can do

to fix things, says Jeanne Bliss,
who has led customer service teams
for Mazda and Microsoft. Many
businesses want you to be satisfied,
and appreciate clarity.
time to move up. Often, a web
search can unearth an executive’s
email address. Complain about the
system failure itself, not your efforts
to change cable bundles.

6 Don’t be a toxic customer.

Threatening to smear a com-
pany’s reputation if it doesn’t acqui-
esce is unethical and rarely works.
11 Try a different route. The Can-
adian Transportation Agency
can deal with unresolved com-
plaints about flight disruptions,
unexpected charges and lost bag-
gage, but it doesn’t want to hear

7 Politely let the company know

how loyal you’ve been. Front-
about rude service or bad food.

line workers often can’t tell a long-

time customer from a crank. A free
night’s stay is a small gesture for 20
years of business.
12 Facebook and Twitter can be
effective ways to jump the
queue. Airlines have been known to
respond to tweets within the hour,
when email queries can take days.

8 Trapped in a phone-menu
maze? While dialing zero can be
a shortcut to a real person, some
companies have made their short-
cuts more complicated. The website
13 Use one medium at a time.
Multiple channels are more
likely to create frustration for you
and the employees trying to help.

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 That’s Outrageous!
BC@0C:3<13/63/2
0G 8C:7/< 1G; 0/:7AB/ 1 :/> >
0=;0A/E/G
Sunglasses? Check. Bathing suit?
Check. Pipe bomb? Check?
Last September, after for-
getting a homemade
explosive
in his bag,
Alberta resident
Skylar Murphy,
18, found air-
port security in
Edmonton to
be surprisingly forgiv-
ing: he was allowed to board his
Mexico-bound flight. Leniency,
however, had it limits. Murphy was
arrested upon his return home a
week later, following RCMP con-
firmation that the confiscated
item was indeed a bomb. He was
sentenced to a year’s probation
and $600 in penalties.
</;3/<2A6/;3
Calgary writer Chris Turner took
> 73@@3:=@/ <53@
to the court of public opinion in
December after Air Canada denied
a voucher transfer, pre-flight, to
his wife because she didn’t share
his last name. Unimpressed by the
airline’s explanation
of the policy as a fraud
deterrent, Turner
found support
on Twitter,
where he
blasted the
rule as antiquated.
#Surnamegate and
the subsequent barrage of media
coverage led Air Canada to allow
for a one-time exception, before
abandoning the policy altogether.
<=BA=@@G/0=CB:/AB<756B
Just under 200 vacationers were at
the mercy of Sunwing Airlines and
Cuban travel officials in January
after their return flight to Toronto
was repeatedly delayed. Irritation
at the dearth of forthcoming infor-
mation morphed into anger as
the airport’s potable water, food
and toilet paper supplies were all
exhausted. Expressions of regret
from the company were slow in
coming—when the passengers
arrived at Pearson International
Airport, nearly 20 hours late, no
one there apologized.
`RQOj" "j!%
 ;=@35@3/B@3/2AB67A;=<B6

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 Word Power
April 6 is when the clans converge and the Scottish
diaspora dons its kilts. Marked by pipe-band parades
and highland dancers, Tartan Day celebrates the signing
of Scotland’s declaration of independence in 1320.
Ready to fire up the bagpipes?
0G 8=/< >/53  ; 1 9 3 <</

POePSS—A: raucous laughter. 'eORaSb—A: term of endearment

B: ornate costume jewellery. C: cop-
per coin of little value.
VgbS—A: completely unhinged.
B: neat and well-organized. C: fes-
tive outing.
!YS\—A: herd sheep using a dog.
B: catch in the act. C: have know-
ledge of.
"POW`\—A: unit of measurement
for weight. B: infant. C: state of
drunkenness.
#P`Oe—A: impressive. B: lopsided
football victory. C: working-class
residential area.
$\c[^bg—A: cold-storage room.
B: absent-minded person. C: hare-
brained scheme.
%abOaVWS—A: commotion. B: sleep-
ing berth on a train. C: velvet-
trimmed dinner jacket.
&aZSSYWb—A: mountainous land-
scape. B: penny-pinching business-
man. C: cunning.
for a clumsy friend. B: person who
binds sheaves in the harvest field.
C: mortgage.
PSddg—A: alcoholic beverage.
B: flock of geese flying in a V-forma-
tion. C: root vegetable.
YW`Y—A: elder statesman of the
community. B: church. C: large
meadow left unattended.
 aQc\\S`—A: irrational dislike.
B: aggressive fishmonger. C: unwel-
come surprise.
!U`OWbV—A: grazing plot for
calves. B: raging summertime thun-
derstorm. C: implements for work,
travel or war.
"TOW\—A: single-edged knife worn
with a kilt. B: eager. C: caretaker’s
cottage.
#P]UUW\¸—A: filthy. B: bump or
swelling after a blow. C: flat-bot-
tomed fishing vessel.

`RQOj"  "j"
E=@2>=E3@
/\aeS`a
POePSS—[C] copper coin of little
value; as, After the wedding, Gillian
stopped to toss the screaming chil-
dren a few bawbees for chocolates
and candy.
VgbS—[A] completely unhinged;
as, Fiona was a little unsteady leav-
ing the bar. “Don’t drive in this fog,
missy! That’s a downright hyte idea,”
the old bartender admonished.
!YS\—[C] have knowledge of; as,
Ainsley was having second thoughts.
“Do you ken the highland terrain
well enough to go hiking at night?”
she asked her husband.
"POW`\—[B] infant; as, Kirsteen
couldn’t take her eyes off the bairn
in her sister’s arms. “He really looks
like Dad,” she said.
#P`Oe—[A] impressive; as,
“Alistair, that’s a braw house you’ve
got there, with so many rooms and
outbuildings,” Abigail said.
$\c[^bg—[B] absent-minded
person; as, The villagers considered
Craig a real numpty for constantly
driving on the wrong side of
the road.
%abOaVWS—[A] commotion; as, The
disputed last-minute goal at the
football match caused a stashie
on the field.
&aZSSYWb—[C] cunning; as, Getting
" j"  "j`RQO
Moynagh’s endorsement was a
sleekit move to sway public opinion
and influence the vote.
'eORaSb—[C] mortgage; as, After
the stock market crashed, we put a
wadset on the old manor house.
PSddg—[A] alcoholic beverage;
as, “Let’s go round to the pub and
grab ourselves a few bevvies after
work,” James suggested.
YW`Y—[B] church; as, The vicar
took great pride in maintaining the
kirk grounds and polished pews.
 aQc\\S`—[A] irrational dislike;
as, The new boss bought doughnuts
for us on her first day, but Edna took
a scunner to her from the get-go.
!U`OWbV—[C] implements for
work, travel or war; as, The soldiers
readied their graith for the long
march to battle.
"TOW\—[B] eager; as, The newly-
weds were fain to stroll the beach
hand in hand after dinner.
#P]UUW\¸—[A] filthy; as,
Hugh complained the rug in his
flatmate’s room was absolutely
boggin’ and stank.
D=1/0C:/@G@/B7<5A
%³(TOW`
³ (U]]R
!³#(SfQSZZS\b
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 Quotes
0G 1 6 @7AB7</ >/:/AA 7=

A UNICORN I don’t think that one is

impressed with one’s
IS JUST A own work. I can’t
HORSE WITH imagine such a thing.
It’s a question of getting
A POINT it right; it’s not a
OF VIEW. question of admiring it.
@= <A 3 FA ; 7B6 ; /D 7 A5/ : : / < B

Chop your own path. Get off the car track. / G8/19 A= <

Overnight success 2=<¸B

just doesn’t happen.
You’ve got to put
B3::;3
your time in. You’re E6/B
up and down—all B=E3/@
of a sudden, it just A/G=@
clicks. 2=
/ < B 6 = < G1 / :D 7 : := < / H / < 7 </ 4 A 6 7 < 8/ ;

B635@3/BB67<5/0=CB I will never forget

167:2@3<7AB6/B
B63G¸@3B==A;/::B= my actions. They
03D3@G2/<53@=CA 74 will haunt me for
B63GE3@34C::A7H32 the rest of my life.
167:2@3<E=C:2
6/D3B=03:=1932
None of it will
C>7<1/53A  happen again.
2/D 34= :3 G 5/ @ B62 @ / 0 7 < A 9 G

>6=B=A(A3FA;7B6 @=<A3FA;7B6 # ")/4A67<8/;  "6=<=@27/@73A>@3AA

;327/@3A=C@13A)4=:3G
   "13:30@7BG7<B3@</B7=</:B/:3<B?C=B3A(A3FA;7B6
BE7BB3@1=;)5/::/<BB63>/@7A@3D73E<=#!E7<B3@''')8/19A=<5/::3@G1/)
1/:D7::=B635:=03/<2;/7:8C:G" )/4A67<8/;B635:=03/<2;/7:;/G'  )
4=:3G<=E;/5/H7<38C<3' !)2@/07<A9GB=@=<B=AB/@8/<  "
Family reunions

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