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MOST READ

MOST TRUSTED
APRIL 2014

THE LION
WHISPERER
An RD ORIGINAL ... 64

MANAGING TEcH
AND TODDlERS

12 HOURS
OVERBOARD

From TODAYS
PARENT
82

From THE NEW YORK


TIMES MAGAZINE
96

TRaNSPLaNT daISy
cHaIN: a SONS STORy
An RD ORIGINAL ... 90

MaRgaRET aTWOOdS
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.


*TM Regd/M.D.

Germs that cause plaque & gingivitis when used after brushing.
Fights cavities. Always read and follow the label.

Contents
/>@7: "

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$"

THE LION WHISPERER

Kevin Richardson uses his bond with Africas 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/
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&

SCREEN CAPTURED
Do tablets inhibit childrens creativity?
/B 6 3 < /  BA/D : 7 @ 7 A  4 @ = ;  B=2/GA>/@3<B

6SOZbV

'

CHAIN REACTIONS
One kidney donation can change many lives
including your fathers. 8/A=</<23@A=<
2`O[OW\@SOZ:WTS

'$

12 HOURS OVERBOARD
A lobster fishermans fight to survive.
>/C :  B= C 5 6  4 @ = ;  B63<3EG=@9B7;3A;/5/H7<3

<ObW]\OZ/TTOW`a



P.

QUITTING TIME?
E-cigarettes doubtful effectiveness as a cessation
tool. / : 3 F/ < 2 @ /  9 7 ; 0 / : :  4 @ = ;  3::31/</2/

82

1]dS`Ab]`g
>  $ "

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$

TO PARIS, WITH TOT


A young familys first trip abroad dredges up
parental insecurities. 6 / < < / 6  A C < 5  4 @ = ;  3<@=CB3
3RWb]`a1V]WQS

PAST LIVES

After the death of her mother, a daughter attempts


to make sense of family history. > :C ;  8 = 6 < A = <
4 @ = ;  B63G:34BCA3D3@GB67<5(/;3;=7@
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Vol. 184

| No. 1,104

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 $ 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 AntiTiger 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

P.

23

Proxy parenting has its


privileges. ; 7 9 3  A > @G

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&& .E]`Y

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 ' 14 Ways to Green

Your Home

Turn your household into an


eco-oasisand save money
with simple modifications.
< 7 9 9 7  4 =B 6 3 @ 7 < 5 6 / ;

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 !# Marrying With Children

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Blending families involves


careful financial planning.

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 !% The Devils in the Eggs

Strange Symptoms

$

Charting the rise of lupus in


Canada. A/ ; / < B 6 /  @ 7 2 3 = C B

A fresh look at how to make the


iconic appetizer. B 6 3  3 2 7 B= @ A
= 4  5 / @ 2 3 <    5 C <   4 @ = ;  B 6 3
A=CB63@<3@A6/<20==9

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4]]R

" Eating Right for Your Gut


What to enjoy and avoid.

!# 13 Things You

Should Know About


Customer Service

8 C : 7 3  2/ < 7 :C 9

0]]Ya

"! The Mourning After

Miriam Toewss All My Puny


Sorrows. 3 ; 7 :G  : / < 2/C

>/C :  5 / : : / < B

!& Rd.ca
April highlights from our
website, including workout tips
from a celebrity trainer.

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"" World Rhythms


Shakira shimmies back into
the spotlight. A/ @ / 6  : 7 A A
P.
;]dWSaBD

"$ Copy That

37

Orphan Blacks clone crew


returns for Season 2.
8=6<A3;:3G

Ac[]T/ZZ>O`ba

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Are wheat-free diets really a
cure-all? E 3 < 2G  5 : /C A 3 @
7\B`SOb[S\b

9/<597;

 #% Beating Runners Knee


A doctor, fitness instructor
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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Editors Letter
Animal Instincts

Dominique Ritter, Managing Editor


AS\RO\S[OWZb]
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AT MY GRANDMOTHERS 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 Ritters penetrating look of
worry followed by a Whats wrong? The lesson was clear: dodging a serving of dumplings was tantamount to rejecting a hug.
This food-as-love ethos has crossed generationsand species. I was not the
only creature subjected to heartfelt feedings. My grandparents lived in Quebecs 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 harmful to them, but I understand what motivated my
grandparents: a desire to nurture nature.
Grandma Ritter would have loved this months
profile of Kevin Richardson (The Lion Whisperer, page 64), who is working to protect Africas big cats. Richardsons relationship with
these animals is uniquethey accept him as
part of the pride. He is on a remarkable mission.
Our own Robert Goyette is on a different mission, exploring Australia and its outback. He
returns next month.

INTERACT
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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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Steves home cooked meal came with


a side dish he wasnt expecting.

SAFETY
TI
OD
P
O

Thaw food in the fridge,


especially raw meat,
poultry, sh 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 ght 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

;793A>@G

(Te Lion Whisperer,


page 64)

(Te Uncle Michael


Show, page 23)

6][SPOaS(

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

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]^ZSVSa 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 theres a proverb there:
If you think one small thing cant
make a difference, youve never
spent a night with a mosquito.
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my parents. The pressures off. Next


was: Christmas is going to cost more.
EVS\7ZObS`[Sb[g\S^VSe7
eOa overwhelmed with an emotion

I cant explainpart pride, part joy


and part affection for birth control.

;/@1=170=:/

(Past Lives, page 122)


6][SPOaS(

Dundas, Ont. >`SdW


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W\ Time and The New York Times.
4]`>Oab:WdSa I combined earth
tones and a palette of warm, saturated colours on a dark background
to represent the parental history being uncovered. EVS\[gROR`ab
QO[Sb]1O\ORO my mom stayed
in Italy. Maybe Ill find letters they
exchanged one day, but Im doubtful.
They tend to get rid of old things.

> =>:/9:/C@/ 8/<3> 3B3:9=

Johannesburg, South

Letters
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REDESIGN REACTIONS

The February edition of Readers


Digest was a great improvement.
I was impressed by the interesting
articles and appreciated the new paper stock for its lack of glare. Keep
up the good work.

I enjoyed the February issue for its


good mix of stories and the nicer paper stock, which feels more like book
paper than the glossy magazine paper 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

D7=:/30G C a rd s t o n , A l t a .

Wow! What a necessary change to


your reputable magazine. Now
theres some fire to it. Congratulations.
D/:E7::7A O t t a w a

I hate the new format. The paper


feels dry, rough and gross to flip
through. Plus, the number of cartoons, my favourite feature, has
been reduced. 07::=@@=<4/130==9
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Hopeful

Sweet

B6303AB 
:743AB=@G3D3@

Splendid

BEAUTIFUL

/E3A=;3
A Must-Read
7\a^W`W\U

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

A LOVING POSTSCRIPT
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
j"  "j`RQO

asked if he could sit at my table. At


first sight, I thought he was American 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,

@3/23@A2753AB

so we exchanged email addresses,


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
together forever. Ive been living in
Canada since April 2009, married to
my best friend.
8/<3;/@/03@</@27B6323

Port Elgin, Ont.

VALUABLE INFORMATION

I grew up with Readers Digest in my


home as a child and feel its the best
little magazine out there. Ill 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
Februarys 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 courses long, circular turn (the Kreisel). During the
2010 Winter Olympics, Nodar
Kumaritashvili was the 21-year-old
luge athlete from Georgia who was

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HERBAL MEDICINE
FOR DIGESTION

Roasted and coffee-like, our


caffeine-free Roasted Dandelion
Root tea is traditionally used in
herbal medicine to help treat
digestive disturbances and
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we source only the highest
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ca.traditionalmedicinals.com

Drink your plants.

This product 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 140106

@3/23@A2753AB

killed during a training run after losing control of his sled. How you
could use the name Nodar in this example is beyond meits completely
inappropriate.

NATURAL SOURCED
MEDICINES YOU
CAN TRUST.

>/;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
doesnt want a nanny. Your kid
wants you. Your kid needs you, is
one I agree with. I thoroughly enjoyed being a stay-at-home mom
and could not imagine raising a
family any other way. How refreshing to read that some women may
be the bigger breadwinners and that
some men may have more suitable
temperaments for child rearing.

aids digestion

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 volunteers her time helping shelter pets
find a home, I can tell you that this
isnt usually the case and could deter people from adopting. Purebred
rescue dogs are often taken from
shelters and brought to private rescue groups specialized in particular

ca.traditionalmedicinals.com
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 reputable rescues in your area to find a
specific type of dog, or even cat,
to adopt.
:=@71/;>03:: To r o n t o

much worse. Keep up the great publishingI love Readers Digest from
cover to cover.

ANOTHER LIFE SAVED

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.

Thank you for publishing Elechia


Barry-Sproules 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, Id been experiencing calf pain
for about two weeks, to the point
where I couldnt walk on my leg. I
wasnt 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 Im also grateful because it could have turned out so

B/<7/513@;/9 C a l g a r y

YOUTH AT RISK

<7B/4/7@ C h a r l i e L a k e , B . C .

ERRATUM

During the editing of Februarys


issue, an error was introduced into
reader Kim Ellsworths letter, when
Calgary was incorrectly identified
as Albertas 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
a lifetime of happiness
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I can
help keep
my city,
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I want to
help slow
global
warming
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Im tired of seeing corporations


leave devastation in their wake.
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it feels good.
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It also benefits
us right now.

GD=<<3>@3AB=<B=@=<B=

Visit the Readers 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
!

ON THE SECOND day of his


hunger strike, Yeb Sao realized he
needed to ratchet up the pressure. As
the climate negotiator for the Philippines, Sao blamed global warming
for Typhoon Haiyan, which had ravaged his country days earlier. On November 11, 2013, he had announced he
would fast until the delegates at the
UN Climate Change Conference in
Warsaw, Poland, reached a meaningful outcome about carbon emissions.
Sao had a plan but lacked a platform. So he posted a petition with
Avaaz, an online activism organization that allows its over 33 million
members to register support for an
issue by doing nothing more than
$j"  "j`RQO

entering an email address and hitting


send. Almost immediately, hundreds
took up Saos 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, Avaazs 36-year-old
founder. It can make any process
faster and more efficient. The planets 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

@=07< ;/@16/<B53BBG

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

Avaaz has helped


prove that we are
citizens of the
world first, and of
our countries
second.

2=B63@756BB67<5

reading a history book a week. That


land rights in Tanzania. It has raised
upbringing bred an idealistic curiosover $55 millionfunding democity about the world that eventually
racy groups in Zimbabwe as well as
triggered his decision, at 28, to spend
anti-homophobia initiatives in Costa
Ricaand helped marshal more than four years as a conflict analyst in war
zones like Sierra Leone and Liberia.
10,000 rallies, flash mobs and vigils.
Non-profit think tanks sent him to
Imagine a mom whos just gotten
meet cabinet ministers and warlords.
in from work and has a few minutes
Then, from the conversations, he
to check her inbox before making
would draft proposals on how the indinner, says Patel. Shes heard
ternational community could better
about an issue on the radioSyria,
serve that country.
saythat upsets her. Our petitions
It was challenging
offer an effective stratworkI came up
egy for taking action.
against the open sores
Having done that, she
For Avaaz,
of our planetbut it
might start donating to
led to an insight that,
that cause or talk to
small acts
when Patel returned to
friends and family
lead to
New York in 2005, proabout it.
bigger ones.
vided the seed for the
Its called an engagecompany that today
ment ladderwhere
employs 100 people
small acts lead to bigger
across 18 countries. What I had witonesand, according to Sidneyeve
nessed were failures of collective acMatrix, a media professor at Queens
tion, he says. Governments knew
University in Kingston, Ont., Patel is
the right thing to do. They didnt do
one of the few to have perfected it.
it because citizens didnt demand it.
He has made it easy to give, easy to
In Saos case, Avaaz helped sway
get involved, Matrix says. Storybook
delegates to commit to modestly reendings are rare in activism, so
ducing fossil emissions targets. With
Avaazs victories are a matter of imclimate change a priority for 2014,
proving upon a desperate situation.
preparations have begun for a masIt was the first NGO, within days of
sive march to coincide with the UNs
Burmas 2008 cyclone, to bring relief
Climate Summit in New York this
funds$2 millioninto the country.
September. I used to think saving
Raised on a farm outside of Edthe world was all about having pasmonton, Patel remembers his older
sion, he says. Motivating others is
brother drilling political ideas into
just as important, if not as sexy.
him as a toddler. By Grade 2, he was
&j"  "j`RQO

Laughter

WATCH A VIDEO OF
DEE TELLING HIS
JOKE WITH LAYAR

B6303AB;32717<3

A</@9G@3>:73A are never

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more than a few keystrokes away


when Facebook users share typoladen updates:
>=AB( Cant wknds be longer?
@3A>=<A3( Yes, weekends.
>=AB( I swear 2012, if you bring
me a year of happiness and no
stress, I wont take it for granite.
@3A>=<A3( Yes, I want 2012 to
bring something beautiful. Something 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 cant stand people that
dont know the difference between
your and youre. There so dumb.
@3A>=<A3( Their, their, calm down.
4`][abcRS\bPSO\aQ][

Todays date is xi.xii.xiii, which is


significant because it looks like a
child doing jumping jacks so well
that a crowd starts to form.
/2/;63AA./2/;63AA

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`RQOj" "j'

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AVW[W99O\U]\VS`P]]YBVS2]Z^VW\EOg
O\ReVgPOZO\QSRYWRaO`SPSab

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 Chuas 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 scientific evidence behind it.
How did you land on your books
dolphin metaphor?
Im the youngest of five children,
j" "j`RQO

so I grew up with a pod mentality.


Ive 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 importance on play. Whats an easy way
to integrate more of it into our lives?
The simplest thing is to free up time
from scheduled activities. If you unplug the TV and open the door, kids
will playeven if they complain at
first. Playing is in our nature.
What is one of the most common
challenges facing kids today?
Again, its time. We dont realize the
importance of sleep or the difference
between social bonding and socializing. Even siblings arent bonding anymore; the house has become a pit
stop on the way to activities. Dinner
together is increasingly difficult, despite there being overwhelming evidence that eating as a family is vital.
Whats the biggest change in parenting in the 21st century?
Fear. Hows 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.

Chuas book prompted a dialogue


about our fixation with Ivy League
schools. You went to Harvard, but
your parents werent Tigers.
So many innovatorsand I met
many of them at Harvardwill tell
you stories of having free childhoods.
There are two ways to become exceptional in a discipline: you can do
it through balance or imbalance.
A Tiger Parent might argue that a
Dolphin Parent has lower expectations for their children. How would
you respond?
At the risk of using more animals, Id
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 everchanging world. A Dolphin Parents
expectations are far greater than
academics or sports or leadership.
Whats important is a sense of joy,
health of body and mind, and making a clear contribution to the world.
Finish this thought: Parenting is
A privilege.

BVS2]Z^VW\EOg(/>O`S\ba5cWRSb]
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9WRaEWbV]cbBc`\W\U7\b]OBWUS`Wa
`SZSOaSR/^`WZ#
`RQOj" "j 

ENJOY

a classic
with less added sugar

Carrot Cake

Makes: 12 servings
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups (375 mL) shredded carrots
1/2 cup (125 mL) plain yogurt
1/2 cup (125 mL) unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup (125 mL) vegetable oil
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract
3/4 cup (180 mL) all-purpose our
3/4 cup (180 mL) whole wheat our

3/4 cup (180 mL) SPLENDA


No Calorie Sweetener, Granulated
1 1/2 tsp (7 mL) cinnamon
1 tsp (5 mL) baking powder
1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking soda
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
1/4 tsp (1 mL) nutmeg
1/4 tsp (1 mL) ginger
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 325F (160C) 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 DONT LIKE KIDS. I find


them irrational, inconsiderate, irresponsible and far from self-sufficient. Their taste in music is
derivative, clap-heavy. Urine often
ends up where it shouldnt. Dont
get me wrong: I respect the propagation of the species. And I enjoy the
act of reproduction, if not the result.
But I dont want kids, which has
been an issue both in romantic relationships and with my parents. I do,
however, have children in my life.
Children I love.
That last sentence would contradict 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 theyre 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 knowledge that my sister, brother-in-law
and parents wont: 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. Im in their lives
to explain the tangible result of mistakes. The curse of regret. The intricacies of the broken heart. You
`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 especially. Her intuition is beyond her
years, and at times frightening. One
day, she asked me why I didnt have
any children, and I launched into
a diatribe about love; about error;
about a girl who was there and then
wasnt. Piper took a moment to consider this and replied, Uncle Michael, you have no children because
you are alone.
That kind of honesty is refreshing,
born of innocence and limited vocabulary. It reduces life to its essence. When once asked what Uncle

"j"  "j`RQO

Michaels job was, Piper responded,


Hmm. Watching baseball? Close
enough. After I made Finn a soup he
really liked, he asked, Uncle Michael, have you ever considered
working in a restaurant? Unbeknownst to him, I did, for 15 years,
before leaving for the riches of Canadian literature. For a second, he
made me wistful for that time.
But my favourite responses are
triggered when I warn them that
Uncle Michaels remarkable run of
less-than-moderate success means
Im going to live with them when
were all older. I share these visions
of dependency, of asking them for
money, of having these children
who have yet to discover the wonders of caffeine, unexpected victory
or happy hourbail me out. To
these playful notions rooted in adult
truths, they laugh, Uncle Michael,
youre silly, as if the reality of my
fears is humour itself.
My parents think Ill eventually
have kidswhen 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 Ill ever get,
and I worry about them growing up,
listening to One Direction, morphing
into Yankees fans, becoming experimental poets. But for the time being,
I will treat them to banana smoothies, scatological humour and too
much TV. Whats not to love?

Claras
Big Ride

Going the distance


for mental health.
As the spokesperson for Bell
Lets 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. Shell
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

0G 1 6 @7AB7</ >/:/AA 7=

Food and music, for me, theyre all


the creative process. Its artistic expression. They start with a seed of
an idea, development of an idea, refinement 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

I suppose I could say that I am looking for a different kind of inner


quiet, and I have a few ways to get
there. Own less stuff, try to meditate
and maybe even find a non-nurturing 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).
  53=@53AB@=C;0=C:=>=C:=A
]\VWa "`Sa]ZcbW]\aW\BVS5`WR

Mental health is the weakest link


in our health-care system, but more
important, it is still the issue that
hides away from much conversation. 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.
  0=0@/3 W\bVS
5Z]PSO\R;OWZ

All the government scientists I know


tell me that its never been worse.
Its like an Iron Curtain has been
drawn across the communication
of science in this country. And I
think theres reason for all of us
to be worried about that.
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Points to Ponder

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I figured if you were hired to work


for the PMO, you didnt need a psychotherapy 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
Ob]cUVP]aaW\bVS5Z]PSO\R;OWZ

There are 68 countries in the world


where straight people and gay people in a group would all be arrested
simply for being together. In 10 of
those countries, I would be executed
simply for being gay. So theres a lot
of work still to be done.
  @SdS`S\R0@3<B
6/E93A W\BVS5`WR

In todays fragmented digital world,


where everyone is constantly sharing
bits of themselves with the public,
including celebrities who perform
roles for a living, the line between
true and fabricated has disintegrated, and whats really interesting
is the space in between. Right?
  :3/6;1:/@3< W\bVS5Z]PSO\R;OWZ

We all have our bumps and bruises,


the things that were hiding. Im
here to tell you that asking for help,
being more open with your experiences, 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

Maybe the trivial is just a failed


version of the everyday. The everyday, or the commonplace, is the
most basic and the richest artistic
category.
  8344E/:: ^V]b]U`O^VS`
W\/`b4]`c[

If it means my death at the end, so


be it. Im going to die anyway, and
itll be a more interesting way to
gothats for sure.
  ;O`a=\SV]^STcZAB3>63<43<316
W\bVS<ObW]\OZ>]ab

`RQOj"  "j %

ART of LIVING
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14 Ways
to Green
Your
Home
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Curate Your Kitchen

Change #1: Toss those chemical


cleaners (responsiblytake them to
your local hazardous-waste drop-off
centre) and make your own generalpurpose cleaner. Mix cup white
vinegar, cup baking soda and
2 litres water. Pour into a spray
bottle and tackle household grime.

Change #2: Animal agriculture


accounts for up to 18 per cent of
global warming. Adding a single
meatless meal to your weekly planner will help you save moneyand
the planet.
Change #3: Grow your own sprouts
in a Mason jar. Pop a few holes
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in the lid, rinse 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 youll
have healthy salad fixings in
a couple of days.

Add Life to the


Living Room

Change #1: Did you know your appliances 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, computers, coffee makers and stereos,
or use power bars with built-in timers to turn off electronics you dont
mind being reset.
Change #2: That new carpet
smell is actually an airborne cocktail of nasty chemicals. Talk to your
installer about how to properly vent
your home in the first 72 hours after installation and give the carpet
a good vacuuming. To be seriously
green, consider fire-resistant, biodegradable and non-toxic naturalfibre carpets like wool, sisal, coir
and seagrass.

Green Your Garage

Change #1: Your daily car commute contributes to climate


change, so get the family walking
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or biking at least once a week. If


self-powered travel isnt possible,
use public transit (it can save a
Canadian family a monthly average
of $586, according to the David Suzuki 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 without having to inhale noxious paint
fumes. Combine a handful of moss,
2 cups yogourt, 2 cups water and
teaspoon sugar in a blender, and
mix until smooth. Dip a paintbrush
in the mixture and paint words
onto any rough surface (a garages
outdoor wall is ideal). Spray with
water regularly, and youll soon
have inspirational moss graffiti.

Garden Smart

Change #1: Every year your old


gas mower produces as many

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greenhouse gas emissions as a car


driven 3,300 kilometres. Unless
youre the proud owner of a family
of sheep, theres no need for all that
grass. For a complete revamp, consider lawn alternatives like microclover, verbena, sweet woodruff,
cotoneaster, thyme and camomile;
perennial ground covers take work
to install but dont require much
water, and you wont 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 1 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.

Love Your Look

Change #1: Ditch your mercury-,


formaldehyde- and lead-laden
cosmetics for homemade mascara
and eyeliner. Mix 1 teaspoon coconut oil, 1 teaspoon shea butter, 1
teaspoons beeswax, 4 teaspoons
aloe vera gel and 2 capsules activated charcoal (available at healthfood stores). Use a brush to apply
as eyeliner or a comb for mascara.
Change #2: Concerned about
harmful substances in your toothpaste? Pop 2 tablespoons dried
lemon rind, cup baking soda and
2 teaspoons sea salt in your
blender, and mix until it forms a
fine powder. Dip your wet toothbrush in and brush as usual.

Beautify the Bedroom

Change #1: Textiles and clothing


account for four per cent of materials in Canadian landfills. Repair
old clothes, organize a clothing
swap with friends or donate to a
local charity.
Change #2: Make a calming lavender air freshener to encourage relaxation and restfulness. Mix 8 drops
lavender oil, 4 drops clove oil, cup
vodka (a natural deodorizer) and
cup water, and place in a spray
bottle. The vodka will kill germs,
while the soothing lavender sends
you to sleep soundly.

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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 youre
entitled to.
YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR TAX CREDITS
Medical and disability tax credits arent
only for those with a medical condition.
You may be eligible if you care for a family
member who requires prolonged medical
care, like a child, spouse, parent, grandparent, sibling, or grandchild. Perhaps
you contribute toward clothing, food,
housing, or medical supplies. You could
qualify for immediate or retroactive tax
creditsand a tax refund.

MANY MEDICAL CONDITIONS QUALIFY


Many physical and mental conditions
qualify for tax credits, such as (but not
limited to):

Arthritis
Diabetes
Heart condition
Stroke
Back or knee injury
Cancer
Lupus

Parkinsons
Alzheimers
Autism
Depression
Learning/
intellectual
disabilities

TAXWISE CAN HELP YOU


TaxWise is Canadas most established and trusted medical and disability tax
professionals. For more than 23 years, theyve helped thousands of Canadians
with medical conditions and their caregivers to get their maximum tax refunds.

Learn more and get a FREE tax consultation by calling us


toll free at 1 866 448 2188 or by visiting us at www.taxwise.ca

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Marrying With Children


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EVERYONE KNOWS divorce


can wreak fnancial havoc. But entering a new marriage can be just as
dicey, particularly when two familiescomplete with kids, assets,
debts and expectationscome together. When I became a single dad
after 10 years of marriage, I was at a
lossemotionally, socially and fnancially. Besides learning how to
navigate the legal pitfalls, the reactions 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-

sions, among other sensitive fnancial matters. I swore Id never get


entangled again.
Years later, Im back at itIm getting married this summer. Stepfamilies 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

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relatively separate, we havent


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.
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Disclose all assets and debts in a


frank conversation. The people entering blended families tend to be
older and have more, says Christine Van Cauwenberghe, vicepresident of advanced financial
planning with Investors Group
in Winnipeg. Lay everything on the table so you
can create a realistic budget for your new family.
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When one person has more


than the other, in terms of investments and RESPs, says
Van Cauwenberghe, it can lead to
animosity if one set of kids is headed
off to Harvard, while the others cant
go to school at all. Take into consideration whether and how to help the
financially strapped partner catch up
on debts, savings and investments.
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A pre-nuptial agreement for marrying couples is worth the trouble. Van


Cauwenberghe recommends a clear
conversation about wills and power
of attorney. Who will manage your
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affairs if you become sick? The new


spouse or the children?
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Deborah Dilworth, a tax professional at Artbooks in Toronto, says


there are many benefits and transfers you may be eligible for and others youll loselike 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 gainssuch as
combining medical expenses, donations, as well as amounts for
public transit and childrens
fitness and artsDilworth
says blended couples
should see the same accountant to prepare their
returns going forward.
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Dilworth says, If youre 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 property between them as their principal
residence. And selling a home while
its still your primary residence will
let you avoid paying capital gains
taxes on the sale.

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The Devils
in the Eggs
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IF THERES ONE DISH youll


fnd doubled or tripled up on in a
Southern-style party spread, its
devilled eggs. And even then, the
folks who brought them arent likely
to go home with leftovers. Te
devil part? Its not because theyre
a source of temptation (though they
are); it refers to the spices that add
a piquant kick.
Southern cooks have lately taken
to dressing up their eggs with various accoutrementscountry ham,
chilled shrimp, poached tomatoes.
But connoisseurs will rightly tell you
that what matters most is the springiness of the white and the tang of the
yolk. To please the fussiest of guests,
start with eggs a few days removed
from the nest, since fresher eggs are
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 30seconds before peeling. Slice the
eggs lengthwise,
and remove the
yolks.
If the boiling process
is a science,
doctoring the
yolks is an art.
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But not to worry if youre short a


yellowed recipe card with handwritten instructions for the absolute best
proportion of mustard to mayonnaise. Just combine a dozen yolks
with a cup of mayo (250 mL) and a
quarter cup (50 mL) of your favourite mustard, then add salt, pepper
and paprika to tasteyoull have a
preparation worth handing down.
For creamier eggs, stir in a bit of
butter. For spicier eggs, a few dashes
of Tabasco or grated horseradish
will do the trick. And there are those
who wont declare a devilled-egg
filling ready until theyve added a
teaspoon (5 mL) of lemon juice and
a tablespoon (15 mL) of pickle relish. But by then, youre just tinkering with perfection.

The Hilborn Family Farm,


New Dundee, Ontario

Gay Lea Butter is made by farmers who bring everything to their craft. Because they dont just own the
farm, they own the dairy. GAY LEA. BORN ON THE FARM.

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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


1998, her father stepped in front
of a train in Steinbach, Man.
Twelve years later, her older sister
committed suicide the same way.
Toews has always been a cathartic
writerA Complicated Kindness
and Irma Voth plumb her knotty
relationship with her Mennonite
upbringingand her latest is no
exception. It orbits around two sisters: Yolanda, a divorcee seeking
true love, and Elfrieda, a pianist
with a death wish, whose latest suicide attempt coincides with an important concert tour. Cutting and
compassionate,
the novel is
tinged with
poignantly
comic
insights
into love,
grief and
mental
illness.
April 15.

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An examination of the
busyness epidemic besieging North American
women that offers solutions to mitigate the
madness. March 11.
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The modern-day Louella Parsons


behind laineygossip.com has devoted
a book to the teachings of her mother,
an old-world mah-jong addict known
as the Chinese Squawking Chicken.
April 1.
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This captivating debut takes place in


an Arabian country where flying carpets, a despot who can hear citizens
private thoughts and reality TV that
makes the Hunger Games seem tame
are the norm. March 11.
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WATCH THE VIDEO FOR


FOSTER THE PEOPLES
COMING OF AGE WITH LAYAR

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World Rhythms
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The Man in Black may


have died in 2003, but
he was so prolific that
music from his golden
years, long buried in
the vaults, is just
now seeing the light
of day. These
early-80s
tracks are essential listening for Cash
completists.
March 25.

Torontos Taylor Kirk


has a creepy, cobwebby
voice, which he uses to
fantastic effect in his
haunting tunes. On his
fifth full-length album
as Timber Timbre, he
adds a technicolour jolt
to his atmospheric
soundscapes, which
feature murky string arrangements and hypnotic baritone sax riffs.
April 1.

In the spring of 2011,


Pumped Up Kicks, a
deceptively mellow pop
jam about fancy sneakers and school violence, was everywhere.
Three years later, Los
Angeles trio Foster the
People returns with a
guitar-heavy collection
inspired by a deepseated disillusionment
with consumer culture.
March 18.

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


Colombian superstars song Hips Dont Lie surpassed all
21st-century smashes (sorry, Psy) to become the international 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 reliable hitmakers like R&B singer Akon. March 25.

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 o
my healthy smile.

1 FLOSS

MY

2 BRUSH

3 RINSE

ROUTINE

Crest Pro-Health Multi Protection rinse helps prevent and reduce plaque and gingivitis.Crest Pro-Health toothpaste ghts
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

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Copy That
Like all good sci-fi, Orphan Black grapples
with serious stuff like bioethics and the nature 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 pearshaped. The taut first season landed the show at the top of critics lists; Season
2 promises even more twists, wigs and accents. Premieres April 19 on Space.
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Johnny Depp stars as an artificialintelligence researcher who becomes obsessed with his program to
develop sentient computers. This
thriller is a nightmare come true for
anyone who believes in the
technological
singularity
and its corresponding
doomsday
scenarios.
In theatres
April 17.
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Footage of early explorers, stories by


present-day settlers and voice-overs
from the likes of Cate Blanchett are
intertwined in this inventive truecrime doc about a 1930s Galapagos
murder mystery. In theatres April 4.
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This early effort by Hollywood legend


Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) explores the
inner workings of a prison overtaken
by inmates protesting brutal living
conditions. On DVD and Blu-ray
April 22.

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SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

HEALTHY
SMILES

The Link Between Oral Health & Overall Health

A healthy smile can make you feel condent about yourself and your
appearance. But did you know that oral health is also linked to overall health?

SPECIAL FEATURE

DENTAL
CARE FOR
CHILDREN
A lifetime of good oral health begins
by preventing cavities in childhood.
Children need their parents' help to
keep their teeth healthy and clean
and to establish good eating habits.
Before Teeth
You should clean your child's mouth even
before they have teeth. Use a soft baby
brush or wrap your nger in a clean,
damp washcloth. Brush or wipe all parts
of the gums and teeth. Don't use toothpaste until your child has teeth.

Baby's 1st
Dentist Visit

Under 3 Years
For children under 3 years old, an
adult should brush and oss their
teeth. Talk to your dentist about whether
to use uoridated toothpaste. If your
child is at risk of tooth decay and you
decide to use uoridated toothpaste,
use only a grain of rice-sized amount
(making sure your child spits out the
toothpaste). Otherwise use a toothbrush
moistened only with water.

From 3 to 6 Years
For children between 3 and 6 years
old, an adult should help them brush
and oss. Use a pea-sized amount
of uoridated toothpaste.

The Canadian Dental Association recommends


infants see a dentist within 6 months of the
eruption of the rst tooth or by 1 year old.

Dental Care
for Seniors
Your oral health and dental needs
change as you age. You may have
dentures or dental implants. You may
take a medication that causes dry
mouth or makes gums grow. A dentist
will assess your unique situation and
help you maintain healthy teeth and gums.

SPECIAL FEATURE

The Dental Exam


First, the dentist will review your
medical history to nd out about
any health conditions that may
affect dental treatments or
procedures or that may be associated
with oral health problems. Tell
your dentist if anything has
changed since your last visit.

Dentures

Your dentist will inspect your mouth for:

Dentures (articial or false teeth) should


be tended to as carefully as natural teeth
to keep germs and infections away.

Q Damaged, missing or decayed teeth

Dental Implants

Q Signs of mouth or throat cancer,


and suspicious growths or cysts

Dental implants act as tooth root substitutes,


providing a foundation for articial teeth.
A metal anchor is surgically inserted into
the jawbone and gradually bonds with the
bone. An articial tooth is then attached
to the implant. To support implants, you
must have healthy gums and bone under
the teeth.

Q Signs of cavities or gum disease


Q The condition of previous dental work

Q Teeth positioning
Q Signs of clenching or grinding
Q Signs of bleeding or inammation
Your exam may also include dental X-rays
and an examination of the neck.

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

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

SPECIAL FEATURE

ORAL
HEALTH
Good
for Life

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 uoride toothpaste.
Wait at least 2030 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 oss
Bad breath that wont go away

Look for signs of oral cancer:


Bleeding or open sores that dont heal
White or red patches
Numbness or tingling
Small lumps and thickening on the
sides or bottom of your tongue, the
oor or roof of your mouth, the inside
of your cheeks, or on your gums

3. Dont 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 havent 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.

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Gluten
Be Gone
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JUST A DECADE ago, the word


gluten was foreign to many Canadians. Now its become nearly as
ubiquitous as low fat on food labels, and eliminating the substancea mix of two proteins,
gliadin and glutenin, found in
wheat, barley and ryefrom daily
diets is a runaway trend. But is going
gluten-free really the healthiest
course for everyone?

Before gluten-free diets became


the rage, it was mostly people diagnosed with celiac disease, a dietary
sensitivity first linked to gluten in
the 1950s, who were advised to stay
away from wheat. Celiac disease affects 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
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damage to the small intestine. In the 1980s,


doctors began to notice
that some of their patients who didnt meet
the criteria for celiac
disease nonetheless
thrived without wheat.
In 2011, doctors with
expertise in celiac disease from
seven countries met in Oslo, Norway, to define standards for diagnosing and treating gluten-related
disorders, and formalized the term
non-celiac gluten sensitivity. That
same year, a small, randomized
study by Monash University in Australia of 34 patients with irritable
bowel syndrome (IBS) found those
who ate bread that contained
gluten were more likely to report

digestive pain, bloating,


constipation, diarrhea
and fatigue. And the
trend began to grow.
With so few studies
investigating how gluten
affects us, we still dont
have enough information to determine
whether its truly a digestive irritant
in people who dont have celiac disease. However, last August, the same
Monash University researchers published 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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# j" "j`RQO

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oligo-, di- and monosaccharides and polyols, all of which are


short-chain sugars that
are poorly absorbed by
the body, including
fructose, lactose, fructans, 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 lowFODMAP diet, participants didnt
have a problem. The study hypothesized that fructan, a short-chain
sugar found in wheat, could be the
culprit, not gluten. And its 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 suggests, books like Wheat Belly have
captured the publics imagination
and encouraged an overwhelming
perception that gluten consumption leads to a slew of health problems. With societys fascination
with food fads, especially quick
fixes, the gluten-free industry is
booming. A 2013 report by market
research firm Packaged Facts estimates 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 theres a
danger to seeing gluten as the culprit for
all of ones health
woes. I think people
far too quickly ascribe
their medical problems 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 digestive 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 doctor or nutritionist.

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7<B@3/B;3<B

Ive been training for my first half-marathon,


and my right knee is killing me. Turns out I
have runners knee. What can I do to ensure
a safe and speedy recovery?
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Runners knee, sometimes referred


to as patellofemoral pain syndrome,
is a loose term associated with pain
behind and around the knee, particularly where the thigh bone and the
kneecap meet. It can be caused by
overuse, trauma, weak thigh muscles, 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, compress it with elastic bandages, ele3/16;3271/:
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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 runners knee, but these can
cause serious and sometimes fatal
damage to the stomach over the
long term. A safe and effective alternative is to use such supplements as
curcumin, Boswellia and methylsulfonylmethane. Omega-3 from fish
oil and vitamin D supplements will
calm the inflammation. Physiotherapy and massage can also help.
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First off, ensure youre not eating


foods youre 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, antiinflammatory foods and can help
speed up recovery.
Tart cherries may reduce joint
pain, thanks to pigments called anthocyanins, which have been shown
to lessen pain by reducing inflammatory markers in the blood. Kale
and Swiss chard are natural antiinflammatory foods containing
vitamin K, which has, in studies on
mice, lowered the chemicals the
body releases when its inflamed.
Ginger root can beat pain by inhibiting the effects of arachidonic acid,
which is the fatty acid thats responsible for triggering the inflammation
youre experiencing.
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Runners knee can occur for a number 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 irritation on its underside. Avoid ramping 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

typestaff at a running store can


help. Do strengthening exercises for
your quads on both legs, like ball
squatsplace a stability ball
between your lower back and a wall
as you squator step-ups on a low,
sturdy bench. Loosen up leg muscles
with stretching and a foam roller.
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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 Its not lupus. A go-to response for the

cranky Dr. House, it was trotted out


every time another diagnostician
posited that the chronic autoimmune disease was behind a patients bafing symptoms. Tere was
good reason for constantly suggesting 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 immune system targets.
Making a lupus diagnosis even
trickier is the fact that theres no single test for it. Doctors must look at a
battery of lab results, plus a patients
current symptoms and medical history, before coming to a conclusion.
Those eventually diagnosed with lupus 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 actually more sufferers or that were
just getting better at identifying
them is unclear. Lupus can be triggered by certain medications used
to treat seizures, high blood pressure or rheumatoid arthritis, so
one might think that increased prescriptions are contributing to its
rise. However, the ratio of lupus
cases induced by drugs is around
five per centtoo low to have a
noticeable impact on the conditions
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 Lahita, Lupus Internationals 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 foundations website. Its therefore a sensible
idea to maintain control of a disease
that tomorrow may be curable.
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WATCH THE
LION WHISPERER IN
ACTION WITH LAYAR

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THE

LION
WHISPERER
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HEN KEVIN RICHARDSON

steps through the gate


onto a stretch of pristine
South African grassland, time appears to ripple. The disturbance
causes a momentary abatement
in the roar of the cicadas; the only
sound is the crunch of dry grass under 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 planets most fearsome predators. Just as viewers brace
themselves for a bloodbath, a love-in
ensues. No number of YouTube clips,
however, can rival a live performance. 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 elements of their nature.
We have seen the likes of this before, and we know how it ends. Crocodile Hunter, Grizzly Man, Siegfried
$$j"  "j`RQO

and Royall killed or injured by animals they claimed kinship with. Richardson, who has known these lions
since they were babies, insists hes
different, but is aware of the risks.
If I told you there are no issues associated with what I do, Id either be
a liar or mentally unstable, he says,
as Bobcat nuzzles his neck.
No animal behaviourist has ever
endorsed Richardsons activities
the prevailing theory is that lions
are too unpredictable to be trusted,
no matter how docile they may appear. 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 Transfrontier Park, a preserve bordering
Botswana, barely survived an attack
where he was dragged off an open
truck by a lion that grabbed his leg
between its teeth. Its the kind of
threat 27-year-old Mosa Masupe
faces every day. Masupe is a ranger in
Botswanas Mashatu Game Reserve,
home to several prides. He has followed Richardsons career ever since
he first surfaced in the media in 2000
as the Lion Whisperer, and like
many rangers who hear about Richardson, Masupe believes a gruesome
mauling is inevitable. Those lions
will kill him, he says.
In 2001, a lion called Tsavo busted
Richardsons nose with a blow from
its massive paw. His arms and legs are

> 6=B=A 0GB63/AA=17/B32> @3AA23<7 A4/ @@3::1>

B63:7=<E67A>3@3@

Richardson sprawls with adult brothers Tau and Napoleon in their enclosure.

mapped with scars. Even a gentle love


bite could nick a jugular, leaving Richardson to bleed out in the grass, alone.
Im not really worried, because its all I
know, says Richardsons wife, Mandy,
who has been with him for over 13
years and helps raise their two young
kids. Its what hes done since I met
him. Hes so passionate about his work
that its contagious. So contagious that
for years Mandy also worked as Richardsons public relations point guard,
helping build his rough-and-tumble
reputation. Have you seen any untoward movements from these lions? he
asks. Theres no reason for me to hit
them or subdue them. Theyre lovable,
social cats, man.
Perhaps. But does a word like lovable 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, Richardson believes that such empathy,
at least when it comes to lions, knows
no bounds.

ICHARDSON HAS DESCRIBED

himself as a self-taught zoologist, but he is something


deepera 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 cattle; wildlife clashes, where farmers
kill hundreds of lions a year in retaliation for attacks on livestock; and
endemic poaching by locals, who can
make the equivalent of their annual
incomesabout $6,000by shooting 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 exploding Chinese middle class, a case
of the potion can fetch as much as
US$25,000 at auction.)

apex predator, Pimm describes the


loss of lions as an ethical defeat. Its
a measure of the fact that we arent
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 countrys wild lion population averaging 3,000, that means
the majority of South Africas lions
are in cages.) Most captive lions
begin their careers as cubs on

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 being decimated. In 1950, over 200,000
roamed Africas 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

breeding farms, enjoying the attention of countless visitors. The cats


will keep generating money until
theyre 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 become fodder for tourists in a practice 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, Richardsons roughhousing showcases these natural
resources as warm-blooded creatures 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 shrinking wild population. Wrestling lions,
however, is the easy part. Saving
them is the real challenge.

HILE RICHARDSONS ruggedness suggests he was


born in the bush, his clan
hails from the lower-middle-class Johannesburg suburb of Orange Grove,
where citrus orchards long ago gave
way to family homes with postagestampsize 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, Richardson began to nurse other birds, until, by the age of seven, he acquired
his first moniker: The Bird Boy of
Orange Grove. Weavers, pigeons,
mourning dovesbroken birds by
the dozen were brought by neigh%j"  "j`RQO

Captive-bred kin to these lions are sold


to hunting clubs for as much as $12,000.

bours to the familys 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 sisters vehicle in a crash. He began to lose interest in his birds and
one day set the flock free. While he
once hoped to study veterinary science, he was lucky to make it into
university at all, and even luckier to
escape with two years of zoology and
a bachelors degree in physiology
and anatomy. His work as a physical
trainer eventually landed him a job
at a Johannesburg facility called Lion

Park. But Richardson was barely interested in his duties. He had fallen
in love with two lion cubs named Tau
and Napoleon.
He doesnt properly understand
why, on his first visit, he stepped
inside the pen with the youngsters.
Richardson had ridden superbikes,
flown planesso 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 teeththe 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 discoveredas everyone else
at the park soon didthat 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 welcomed into the pride, he wasnt just
safe, but loved.
And so a brand was born. At 22,
Richardson became a star wrangler
at Lion Parka glorified zoo where
his antics wowed guests eager to get
a taste of the bush in a contained
setting. But he realized that, by emphasizing Tau and Napoleons cuteness, 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.
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ICHARDSON PILOTS a four-byfour 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 Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary was established here, on a privately owned plot
comprising 1,200 hectares of rolling
grassland. The sanctuary, which also
includes hyenas and black leopards,
is Richardsons first opportunity to
run a park entirely how he sees fit.
Thirteen electrified enclosures,

@3/23@A2753AB

Lion Park, they were sold to a breeder


and joined a pride that was too large.
Scared they were headed to a hunting 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 experience also inspired him to redouble

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each about a hectare in size, shelter Richardsons 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 hes on the ground in seconds. 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 Africas big cats.

his efforts at curtailing the canned


huntjoining conservation groups
in directly lobbying the South African government; raising awareness
through fundraising and social media
campaigns; giving seminars across
the country and abroad about the
more repugnant aspects of the killings; and working with wildlife NGOs,
most notably Protecting African Wildlife Conservation Trust, that have outreach programs with landowners.
The fear is that the industry is
simply too profitable to stop locally.
Richardsons hopesand the hopes
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Richardson poses with Thor days before the premiere of the 2010 movie White Lion.

of environmentalists around the


worldrest with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Services recent decision to
look into whether the African lion
requires protection under its Endangered Species Act, which would prevent hunters without permits from
bringing lion trophies into the country. The one-year review of the classification would also likely influence
whether the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) decides to lift African lions to a CITES
1 categorizationalso under review.
Lions are currently CITES 2, explains Richardson, which means
its totally legal with permits to
hunt them and export the trophies.
CITES 1 categorization would ban
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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
hunts largest customer base, it
would stop the industry in an instant, says Richardson.
The last thing Richardson wants,
however, is to end up with more lions 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
breedingsomething advocated by
many conservation groups, including
Four Paws, an international animalwelfare organization that runs a lion
sanctuary in South Africa.

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,
hes going to get slaughtered? Would
you be happy?

WEEK OR SO BEFORE Christmas in 2013, during one of the


violent storms that announce
the arrival of South Africas rainy season, a lion called Thor was felled by a
lightning strike. Thor was a white lion
in Richardsons 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 circumstances of his death seemed like a
resounding tribute from above.
Richardsons relationship with
Thor was not without its troubles.
On a film set five years ago, feeling
the pressure of all that money spooling through the camera, Richardson
prompted Thor to attack an animatronic lion one time too many. With
staggering speed, the 300-kilogram
animal lunged and grabbed Richardsons forearm in his jaws, employing
just enough pressure to make his intentions plain.
In the only way he was able, Thor
reminded Richardson that lions are
not circus performers and that the

@3/23@A2753AB

intersection between friendship and


exploitation had been crossed. Richardson was ashamed. It took three
years for Thor to forgive him and invite the Lion Whisperer back into his
social circle with a guttural grumble.
When he died, I dont think Ive
ever cried more, says Richardson.
The essential aspects of Thors characterhis solitariness, but also his
independence and prideare why
Richardsons mission is to run Welgedacht 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 happens, then I know were doing something right.

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My family was in the car on a


return trip from Nova Scotia, where
we had gone to visit our many relatives. 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 theman
important one, my maternal grandfatherhad 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 caterpillars if you didnt put enough holes
in their jar lids. Death was sad, and
also smelly, but it wasnt 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 childhood diseases at that time.)
It was the summer ofI
think1948, 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 dont mean what
everyone now pictures: an eightlane throughway, with few exits and
no crossroads, along which trucks
and cars hurtle at 110 kilometres an

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hour. I mean two lanes, an intersection at every county line and many
level crossings for trains. Eighty kilometres an hour was considered fast.

My fathers 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 conditioning. The front seat extended all the
way acrossno bucket seatsand
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 mothers to drive if fathers were in the car.
My father was a man of many projects 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
fathers 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 parties, rider of horses, speed skater
and, in her youth, daredevil walker
of barn ridgepoles. A year or so earlier, I had witnessed her chasing a
bear away from our outdoor cooking

area with a broom. She did not readily 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 afternoon. 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
wed run out of steam on the serial
story we took turns narrating, we
would fall back on the mischievous.
We might even do something deliberately annoying, such as imitating
bagpipes or singing songs we knew
my father despised. Ora new thing,
since bananas had just reappeared,
having been unobtainable during the
warcausing chewed-up banana to
extrude from our mouths while saying 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.

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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 mothers hand,
which was massaging the back of my
fathers 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 happening? I dont think so. But I must have
realized something, because whatever my brother and I were doing 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 mothers
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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WATCH A VIDEO OF A
TWO-YEAR-OLD USING
AN IPAD WITH LAYAR

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A1@33<1/>BC@32

Three years on, weve had a second child, purchased two iPads, gone
through five iPhones (children love
lobbing things) and accumulated
enough battery-operated junk to fill a
toy shop. Its not that Ive abandoned
fresh air for free apps, or that my children, now two and four, get Netflix
over paintbrushes, but reality sometimes calls for the iNanny. Its how a
lot of parents use the iPad. Just in from
the daycare dash, Dad is cooking dinner while Mom is sorting socks and

grapples with, but the debate is beginning at younger and younger ages.
Many toddlers are whats called digital
nativesthey have never known a
world without gadgets. The Canadian Paediatric Societys most recent
guidelines, updated in 2013, essentially
discourage all screen-based activities (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.

A childs 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. Everything in moderation, right?
Any time there is a massive shift in
the tools of life, we dont know what
impact it will have, says Michaela
Wooldridge, a psychology PhD candidate 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 changing so fast, we havent had time to
evaluate long-term outcomes.
A3BB7<5A1@33<B7;3 limits, whether
its on a TV or tablet, is something almost every parent of a school-age child
&"j" "j`RQO

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 daughters fixation
on it. Shes totally unresponsive when
shes on the iPad. Its as if she leaves us
for another planet, Chiaramonte says.
According to Wooldridge, experts
dont yet know whether children
born three years ago, lets say, are
destined to be more tech-obsessed
than an eight-year-old whose early
years did not include multiple portable devices. Infants and toddlers
have been completely unrepresented
in the research because it wasnt

7 AB=19> 6=B=A6CBB3@AB=19

until recently that they were even


considered to be consumers, she
says. A childs character and interests
will play a part in how drawn they
are to media, as will parental habits.
A 2013 study from Common Sense
Media, an American non-profit that
examines the effects of media and
technology on young users, found
that 38 per cent of U.S. kids younger
than two are using tablets or smartphonespossibly even before they
can string a sentence together. (This
is up from 10 per cent in 2011.) By the
age of eight, 72 per cent of children
have used a smartphone, tablet or
similar mobile device.
Based on reports from families,
Wooldridge hypothesizes
that parents and caregivers 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
tablet use to 20 minutes
while stuck in the supermarket cart or during a car
trip, while others employ
them as in-house babysitters for hours at a time. But
plonking an iPad in a threeyear-olds lapwithout a

@3/23@A2753AB

person there to give the experience


instructional valueprobably wont
offer much thats positive, she says. We
can praise the latest and greatest apps,
but kids still need to be guided.
The way infants and toddlers develop and learn is through social interaction, and the device itself cant
provide that, Wooldridge says.
:7A/5C3@<A3GAB@C55:32 with
the topic of technology and what
was appropriate for her two daughters, now 11 and 10, so much that she
wrote a book about it, titled Screen
Time. Guernsey, who works as a journalist and directs an early-education
policy program in Washington, D.C.,

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A1@33<1/>BC@32

tells parents to look at the three Cs


content, context and childwhen
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 childs
own personal needs, she says.
With the three Cs in mind, media can
be a springboard for conversation, discovery and open-ended play. Guernsey

But, as with any other tool, there


is a time and place for it to be introduced, based on a childs developmental 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 childrens creativity
being sapped by video games and virtual worlds?

We need to model to our kids that its 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 engage with it together. This could simply
mean asking your child questions about
the animals in the virtual zoo hes creating 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 theres
no reason a tablet cannot be an occupier at one point in the day and a
conversation starter at another, says
Guernsey. As long as were maintaining a healthy ratio between moments
of non-interaction and interaction,
then I think were doing just fine.

7BA<=B/<either-or situation, says

Jason Krogh, CEO of Sago Sago, a


Canadian company that designs apps
for kids. Its as if the point of comparison is that youre 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 thats not always possible.
Krogh curates apps for his daughter in the same way he might vet the
shows she watches and the books she
reads. A childrens book can be good
or bad, a childrens toy can be good
or bad, and the same applies for any
technology-based experience. He advises parents to be wary of apps with
grand educational claims, and to focus
more on whats fun and imaginative.

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Im very much of the belief that what


kids need more of is play. Krogh cites
one of his daughters favourite games,
Toca Tea Party (from Swedish app developer Toca Boca), as a good example
of the app as a toy. Its not trying to
control the whole experience, but instead acts as a prop for creative play.
Guernsey agrees with Kroghs 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 parenting expert, deprives kids of any
chance of boredom, and boredom is
what inspires and enables creativity.
We need to model to our kids that
its 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 restaurant, handing over the iPad is a quick
way to pacify them before other patrons start judging us for their whin-

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 cant be the only mother who often 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 daughters to use the tools of our culture
mindfully, and that begins with knowing when to switch them off ourselves.
How can I expect my kids to focus on
one thing at a time if I rarely do? Technology is part of childrens daily lives,
but the way that its 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 periods 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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@ Work

Saunders, Ill thank you to take that attitude elsewhere.

thoughts both embarrassing and insightful. Chatter captured on Twitters


#OverheardInTheOffice includes:
What was yesterday, the 17th?
(Pause) Whats today, the 19th?
>75>3<.>75M>3<

Out of curiosity, is this Halloween


candy? Its January, but it doesnt
matter. Ill still eat it.
3;7:GB.>3<B/>=2

I just need a bucket of coffee to


dip my mug into once in a while.

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, Were going to need
a new sign out front.
A colleague responded, At this
point, I think were going to need a
blackboard.
5/@GA16<3723@

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I like health. Not so keen on


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.

PepsiCo Canada ULC, 2014

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

at least I wasnt 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.

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16/7<@3/1B7=<A

I wanted to give my dad a healthier


AS I PREPPED for surgery at an Ontario
hospital, my fatherthousands of kilo- life, without harming my own. My
metres away in western Canadawas parents also had a complex set of
awaiting his turn in the operating suite emotions about what Id set out to do.
the next day. Over the next 24 hours or I love my children and wouldnt want
so, many more operations would take to see any of you go through the proplace, all part of a synchronized chain cess, my father told me. But I know
of transplants across Canada. For con- thats my best chance of getting a kidfidentiality reasons, I couldnt 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 shed been a viable donor.
Unlike Mom, I had
was all done, my father
made the cutand was
would have the kidney
waiting to be cut open.
he desperately needed,
and I would be one shy Recovering from Id mostly quelled the
worries that clouded
of a pair. As for the fate
a radical
the merry-go-round of
of my organ, it would be
nephrectomy
blood workups, ultraflown to a hospital out
would be like
sounds, chest X-rays,
west and given to someone I didnt know and
recovering from urine analyses and renal scans. In 2012, wed
may never meet. Im
a stab wound. been part of a chain
not used to this kind of
that collapsed, as some
intimacy with strangers.
do because of tissue
THE DECISION ID MADE three years incompatibilities, unrelated medical
earlier to volunteer as a donor didnt issues, life changes and other factors.
impact just my life and my fathers; it My dad felt disappointed. I felt guilty.
connected us to other people queued Small though it was, there was an unfor operations. When I wasnt worry- mistakable sensation: relief. While I
ing about my own predicament (rare), was committed to seeing the operaI spent time imagining families a lot tion through, I wasnt necessarily in a
like ours: concerned, fearful, hope- hurry to go under the knife. I still had
ful. Wed all seen the effects of kidney so many questionsthen and now.
Was becoming a living donor the
disease. For my brothers, mother and
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
wanted? How long before I could lift
an array of medical problems.
' j"  "j`RQO

my toddler? Why would I volunteer


for pain by climbing onto an operating table, like the blue one a nurse
was now ushering me onto?
Pain. Id shattered an elbow in a
bike accident in 2006, and it was excruciating. A doctor friend said that
recovering from a radical nephrectomya kidney removalwouldnt
be as bad. The only sensitive zone
would be the incision site on my abdomen. 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 guyeven
if I did find it a bit chilly in the operating 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 organized 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 exchanges has been around since the
1980s, it was only in the late 2000s
that health-care systems and hospital

@3/23@A2753AB

networks worldwide began widely instituting 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 kidney 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 doesnt 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 diabetes and high blood pressure. Now
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16/7<@3/1B7=<A

66, my father had been coping with


kidney problems since he was diagnosed in his early 20s with glomerulonephritis, a disease that affects
the kidneys ability to filter blood of
waste and excess fluid and salt. Hed
contracted it as a result of streptococcal infections that hadnt been properly treated while he was growing up
on a farm in southern Saskatchewan.
As a kid, I didnt really notice my
dads 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 worldwide (and more than 23,000 in Canada), that meant being hooked up,
multiple times a week, to a machine
that filters the bloodthough 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 undergoing a first transplant with a kidney
from a deceased donor. Equal parts
optimist and pragmatist, he believes
hes lucky to have been ill at a time
when dialysis and transplants were
becoming widespread. Had I been
of a previous generation, I wouldnt
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 medication 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 function 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
Nickersona transplant nephrologist at the University of Manitoba
who serves as the medical director
of organ transplantation for Canadian Blood Servicesjust because a
patient has only one kidney doesnt
mean theyll max out at 50 per cent.
Weve had patients whove had 70 or
80 per cent on one kidney, he says.
It would seem life with one kidney
isnt necessarily different from life

@3/23@A2753AB

with two. So when all the tests confirmed I was a prime candidate, my
father and I entered the database of
possible matches. My journey to the
operating table had begun.

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.

I THOUGHT I MIGHT be sad about my


parting with Left Kidneynewly educated, Id 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. Id seen its euphoric effect
on my wife after 23 hours of labour; I
now understand the appeal.
The recuperation process wouldnt
always feel so fantastic. The incision
took time to heal, as did the abdominal wall underneath, but by the sixweek mark, I was moving without
discomfort. As for my dad, his doctors
were thrilled: unlike his first transplant, there were no rejection episodes. I could hear the excitement in
his voice every time we talked on the
phone to trade post-op health details and plan get-togethers. It would
just be visits to each others homes at
first, but now that he wasnt tethered
to a dialysis machine, maybe the trips
could be more ambitious, like the

ODD AS IT may seem, I dont often


wonder whos walking around with
my kidney. When Nickerson asks me
about my experience, I tell him Im
surprised by my lack of curiosity. To
me, its as if theres no stranger between me and my dadhes the one
who received my kidney. This isnt
uncommon, apparently. Nickerson
says many donors feel that way because they can see the direct impact
the chain had for their loved ones. In
our case, its not just the health benefits. Theres a new closeness between
my father and me, born out of shared
experiences (distance be damned).
Im only beginning to understand
the importance of my role in my
dads story and in the stories of those
nameless recipients. On my end, Im
happy it didnt take me long to fulfill
a major post-surgery desire: being
able to wrestle my daughter into her
snowsuit. I cant wait until shes old
enough to hear the story about how
Dad got his cool scar.

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12
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LOOKING BACK, John Aldridge knew


it was a stupid move. When youre
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
dont take chances. But he needed to
start pumping water into the Anna
Marys 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 coolers 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 pullhard.
Then the handle snapped.
Suddenly Aldridge was flying backward, tumbling across the deck toward 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, hoping 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

youre supposed to do, if youre a


fisherman and you fall in the ocean,
is to kick off your bootstheyre
dead weight. But as Aldridge treaded
water, he realized that, in fact, his
boots were elevating his feet and tipping him backward. Aldridges green
monstrosities were an oddity among
the members of Montauks commercial 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 chilly22


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 nothing 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 missing, 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 Channel 16, the distress channel, and at
6:22 a.m., he called for help: Coast
Guard, this is the Anna Mary. Weve
got a man overboard.
The Coast Guards headquarters
for Long Island and coastal Connecticut is in New Haven. Sean Davis is
a petty officer there, and that morning he stood watch at the stations
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 radioed Air Station Cape Cod


to tell them to get airborne
as soon as possible.
Winters was busy manning Sarops. At its heart is
a simulator that can generate, in minutes, as many
as 10,000 points to represent how far and in what
direction a search object might have drifted.
The challenge in Aldridges case was that the
search team had no clear
idea when (and therefore where) he had fallen
overboard. That created
a potential search area
larger than Rhode Island,
a sweep of ocean 48 kiloA few weeks after his sons rescue, John Aldridge Sr.
metres wide and extendgot a tattoo on his arm of big green fishing boots.
ing 97 kilometres southa
stander, who was working the Coast search area almost impossible to cover.
The team in New Haven based
Guards search-and-rescue computer
their initial calculations on Sosinprogram, known as Sarops.
By 6:28, the command centre had skis report that Aldridge was supnotified 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 Alordinator 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 highestcontacted the Coast Guard station in probability locations clustered about
Montauk with instructions to launch 24 kilometres offshore.
j"  "j`RQO

The next step for Sarops was to develop 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 lieutenants Mike Deal and Ray Jamros,
who were joined by a rescue swimmer 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 carefully 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 initial conversation with Davis, he inspected 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 oceans 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

@3/23@A2753AB

Anna Marys first trawl. Then Sosinski 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 somewhere between the 40-fathom curve
and the Anna Marys first trawl. At
8:30 a.m., Winters passed this information to Jason Rodocker, a petty officer and expert in Sarops. Rodocker
punched in the new variables, and
the program spit out a second set of
search patterns.

A=A7<A974=1CA32
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The news about Aldridge was also
spreading through Montauks fishing
community, and 21 boats volunteered
to help. Davis couldnt communicate
with all 21 at once on top of the Coast
Guard craft he was directing, so Winters hit on an idea: put Sosinski in
charge of sending out the search patterns 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


drivers licence on the Anna Mary,
and every once in a while, Sosinski
would pick it up. Hed 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 assignment: 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 spotted a buoytethered 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.

7463E/A7<B63
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63E=C:2B73
67;A3:4B=B630C=G
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.

Aldridge could see aircraft overhead running search patterns. Even if


theyd figured out more or less where
he had fallen in, they hadnt 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 lobster boat called the Brooke C. He untied 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 couldnt survive another
swim. If he was still in the water at
sundown, he would tie himself to the
Brooke Cs buoy. That way, his parents 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
dont do a lot of rescuingalmost every time a person goes overboard in
the North Atlantic, he drowns.

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 j"  "j`RQO

The helicopter crew finished


their search patternthe third
of the dayand requested a
new one. From the command
centre, Davis radioed coordinates, and at 2:46 p.m., the helicopter started moving again.
Twelve minutes later, Jamros 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 rescue, I talked to local fishermen 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 hadnt 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. Theres 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 youre 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]cUVa[]ab`SQS\bP]]YWa6]e
talk about their work that day, and 1VWZR`S\AcQQSSR

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Lifes Like That


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6=E1/< you tell if someones


from New York?
Dont worry, theyll 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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>OaaW]\T]`4]`SWU\/TTOW`a
PWUab]`gO^]`U

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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.
Im married.
8=6<1/<CB3A=<
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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 difcult 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 benet 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

QUIT SMOKING

GO MEATLESS

CHOOSE
NATURAL
ALTERNATIVES

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 benets 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.

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.

Its obvious that giving up cigarettes is


good for your health but did you know
that it is also very benecial for the
environment? According to the City of
Ottawas 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.

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

Getting enough water


maintains vital balance
in our bodies; it also
helps us concentrate,
supports the immune
system, removes toxins,
improves the appearance
of our skin, and can even
assist with weight loss
when you substitute it for
higher-calorie beverages.
Other good reasons to
choose water over soda or juice? Producing, storing,
and shipping drinks uses up resources and energy,
and creates packaging waste, much of which ends
up in the landll.

SPEND MORE
TIME OUTSIDE

According to a report by the David Suzuki


Foundation based on the results of its 30x30
Nature Challenge, those who spent even as little as
30 minutes outside each day reported signicant
increases in their sense of well-being, feeling
more vitality and energy, while feelings of stress,
negativity, and sleep disturbances were all reduced.

A NIGHT
OUT

Want to support a
healthier environment
while treating yourself
to a night out? Join Mill
Street Brewery for Earth
Hour on Saturday, March
29, 2014. Candlelit parties
will bring the community
together in a symbolic
environmental effort, and
50 cents from every pint
sold that day and evening
will be donated to Earth
Day Canada! The Lights Out
campaign will continue
during Earth Month: for
every six-pack of beer sold
in stores from March 30
to April 26, Mill Street will
make a 50 cent donation
to Earth Day Canada.
For more information
about the event, visit
www.earthday.ca.

EARTH DAY CANADAS 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. Thats
why we created a brand new mobile app to make it easy and fun! Starting in
April, be one of the rst 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.
Lets embrace our environmental responsibility!

DONT
DISCARD

Donate, reuse, and


recycle items before
throwing them in
the trash.

FOOD
CHOICES

Choose local and organic


foods that are in season,
and when possible try to
eat less meat.

Wash full loads of clothes


in cold water and hang
to air dry.

SMART
SHOPPING

Buy what you


need, not what
you want. Also,
consider renting
and borrowing
things you dont
often use.

BATHROOM
BASICS

Take short showers


instead of baths and
close water taps while
brushing your teeth.

HEATING
& COOLING

For summer air


conditioning, set
your thermostat to
24C or 25C and
for winter heating,
19C or 20C.
Install ceiling fans
and programmable
thermostats.

10

CLOSE
TO HOME

Vacation, travel,
and work as close
to home as possible.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIII

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIII

WASHING
& DRYING

TRANSPORTATION
ALTERNATIVES

Walk, cycle, car pool, and


use public transportation,
or consider car sharing
programs or renting.

CAREFUL
CLEANING

Choose natural,
non-toxic cleaning
products and make
simple, natural
cleaners using
vinegar, baking
soda, and water.

Replace incandescent
light bulbs with
LEDs, and use
aerators on faucets
and shower heads.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIII

MAIN STREET

SIMPLE
SAVERS

25C

e a r t h d a y. c a

As Kids See It

Its worse than a sugar highI let them play with


my high-vibration cosmic energy crystals.
=>3<7<5/>@3A3<B from Santa

this past Christmas, my four-yearold granddaughter, Savannah,


was having trouble getting past
the tied ribbon. Finally succeeding,
she flipped over a second gift and
eyed the ribbon tied around it,
which is when she asked, exasperated, Why did Santa put all these
traps on my presents?

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A/<2730@=E< C a l g a r y

BE=>=:713=44713@A recently

visited my four-year-old granddaughter Marrins daycare to give a


talk about the importance of telling
the truth. After, when the presenter

asked if there were any questions,


Marrin raised her hand. I peed the
bed last night, she confessed.
D/:/@73/:23@A=< S p r i n g h i l l , N. S .

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Quitting
Time?

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The same scene today would look


a little different. Instead of a Players
Light, a teenage girl might be vaping 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 percentage of American middle and high
school students who have tried ecigarettes 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 students who had tried e-cigarettes had
never smoked traditional cigarettes.
Today its also a lot easier to purchase e-cigarettes than analogs, a
term used for old-school cigarettes.
While Health Canada hasnt authorized the sale or advertising of any ecigarettes, 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.) Theres 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 enter the e-cig market, the gateway
risk rises, says David Hammond, an
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associate professor at the School of


Public Health and Health Systems at
the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
If Im a CEO, theres an incentive to grow the nicotine market, not
shrink it by having people transition
from cigarettes to e-cigarettes to abstinence, Hammond says. They
want people to use both. Even the
marketing of e-cigarettes is similar.
They use superattractive models
images that say its fashionable. It
doesnt look like a health message,
as in Heres a way to quit smoking.
What it does look like is, Wouldnt
you like to try these?
/11=@27<5B=B63 first consumer

data by research group GfK, of American 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 pinkand-purple packaging and curlicue
fonts. Womens only e-cigarettes are
sleeker and more elegant, says Maria Verven, CEO of Vaping Ventures,
the company behind Vaping Vamps.
Vaping is a hip, healthy alternative to
smoking, she tells me. I dont 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

campaigns. NJOY premiered a web


ad starring Courtney Love, and tabloids 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 centa significant new revenue source
for media. But the financial windfall
may be short-lived
because the attorneys general from 40
states are urging the Food
and Drug
Administration (FDA) to
restrict the advertising and sale
of e-cigarettes so
that it doesnt directly
target youth (for example,
by playing up e-cigs fruit and
candy flavours).
In Canada, almost all advertising
of tobacco products is banned, although there are exceptionsits permitted in publications with an adult
readership of 85 per cent or more. In
addition to advertising, seeding influential cultural events has become
a popular strategy in both the U.S.
and Canada. At the spring/summer

@3/23@A2753AB

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 University 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 cigarettes in the
mid-20th century. The socalled light
cigarettes in
the womens
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-cigarettes, then, yes, explains Peter Selby,
chief of the Addictions Program at
the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. The solution
inhaled during vaping is typically a
mix of vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol and polyethylene glycol
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chemicals similar to common food


additivescombined with varying
amounts of nicotine, depending on
the brand. It produces no carcinogenic tar or smoke and delivers nicotine 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 manufacturing poses a risk. A study by the FDA,
carried out in 2009, found cancercausing chemicals and toxins used
in antifreeze in several brands of ecigarettes. 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
theyve been tested and regulated,
adds Selby. Theyre not ready for
prime time, in part because theyve
fallen into a regulatory abyss.

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 packa-day habit.
Elaine Lui, who runs the popular 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.

>@7;3 B7;3 =@ <=B Susan Willis

E-cigarettes may turn out to be a


healthier option, but what is their potential for helping smokers kick the
habit completely? In the U.S., theyre
currently the second most popular
method, after cold turkey, followed
by the nicotine patch and gum.
While long-term data isnt available, a recent study from New
Zealand researchers shows that e-cigarettes are roughly as effective as the
patch. The World Health Organization

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 feeling sick and tired, says Willis. Since
I started vaping, my headaches and
fatigue are completely gone, and I
have more money in my pocket.

IN THE U.S., E-CIGS


ARE THE SECOND MOST
POPULAR METHOD
OF QUITTING SMOKING,
FOLLOWED BY THE
PATCH AND GUM.


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sees it differently. In July 2013, it released a statement saying that theres


little proof e-cigarettes are an effective
method of quitting.
Health Canada hasnt approved the
use of e-cigarettes as a cessation tool,
warning they have not been fully evaluated for safety, quality and efficacy.
And while the FDA has yet to weigh in
on the issue, several U.S. studies published last year hint at their potential
to help people make the switch from
cigarettes. For its part, the American
Association of Public Health Physicians has recommended e-cigarettes
for smokers struggling to quit.
E63B63@>@=2C1BA:793 Vaping
Vamps offer women a way out of addiction or seduce them further into
it is an open question. Regardless,
their popularity indicates women are
a distinct subset of smokers. The gender gap is closing, in part, because
women may have more difficulty
quitting and staying smoke-free.
According to Selby, the difference is both biological and social.
Female brain structure, hormones
and body composition may make us
more sensitive to nicotine addiction
and increase our cravings. Womens

smoking tends to be embedded in


their relationshipswith partners or
friends, he says. Smoking comes to
mean socializing with others, so quitting 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 patterns: 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 taxation and fewer places where smoking is legal. But, according to Selby,
women dont seem to respond as
well as men to nicotine-replacement
therapy, such as patches and gum.
If one takes a look at how cessation occurs, the process is about setting 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 specific reasons women smokehow
our relationship with smoking is as
addictive as the cigarettes themselvesthe cessation industry has
left female smokers behind.

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With Tot
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AS WE ARRIVE in Paris, the skyline


is cloaked in grey that matches the
citys cool temperament. My familys
look is less refineddominated by a
red stroller festooned with toys.
Our plastic caravan arrives at
LEcritoire, a bistro on the Place de
la Sorbonne. Theres not another
child in sight. I unravel my son Tokkis travel high chair and unpack rice
cakes and organic vegetable pure. I
consider myself always prepared, but
according to Karen Le Billons rules,
Ive already racked up two strikes.
In 2012, there was a mini-boom in
momoirs exalting a no-nonsense

French style of parenting: French


Kids Eat Everything, by Vancouver
academic Le Billon, and Bringing
Up Bb: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, 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 thats between Mariah Careys
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.
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Lesson 1: Nobody Puts


Baby in the Corner

French focus on pleasure. Watching


Tokki fill his chubby fists with my
meal, I have to admit Ive never seen
him devour pure with such passion.

Tokki is not used to being on a terrace at the decidedly adult hour of


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 chiloblivious to the Parisian rive gauche. dren riding ponies along the Jardin
Laying out baby spoons in triplicate, du Luxembourgs gravel paths. We
I feel a twinge of self-consciousness. park Tokkis stroller and step into
Never mind looking like tourists the Thtre des Marionnettes to wait
looking like nervous
for the puppet show to
parents is worse.
begin. Theres a rusWhen our plates
tling behind us, and
When I was
arrive, I crack open
my son turns to stare
Tokkis pure tube, but
growing up, my as a grandmother unhe shakes his head. He
wraps cookies for her
parents let me granddaughters snack.
only has eyes for the
steak. Since theres no
know who was Offering one to me, I
way Im feeding him
shake my head
in charge, and politely
my husbands mediumno, but the little girl
it definitely
rare meat, I break my
protests. Non. II na
burger open to expas le droit, the grandwasnt me.
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, Tokkis fingers are droitthe rightto do something or
already in my food. I fashion a mor- they dont.
sel of hamburger meat running with
Evidence of this strictness is evjus and offer it up. Still saucer-eyed, erywhere, including Annecy, in the
he chomps furiously as I cool off a countrys southeast. One rainy aftersmall 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 pure 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

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B=  >/ @ 7 A   E 7 B 6  B=B  

We spend the next day sprawled


on a lawn overlooking Lac dAnnecy.
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. Im 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 caf with
no wait. As Tokkis fussing turns to
shrieking, I become so stressed that
I tersely part ways with my husband
and return to our hotelforgetting
he was about to find out whether he
had won a festival prize. (He does.)
That night Im filled with pride
and then remorse. Why couldnt I
have finished eating and given my
husband a kiss for good luck? Looking back on my own childhood in
Toronto, I wonder if my Korean immigrant parents were secretly French.
When I was growing up, they let me
know who was in charge, and it definitely wasnt me.

Lesson 3: Twos
Company, Threes Loud
The French dont understand the way
North American children can eclipse
the very thing that brought them into
existence: the couple. The night I forgot to wish my husband good luck,
I learned of his big prize alone. As
Tokki slept spread-eagled on our hotel bed, my husband was partying in
a ballroom at LImprial Palace.
In the crowd of filmmakers was
a European duo who had decided
their children werent going to keep
them from enjoying the festivities.
The French father pushed a snoring 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 were home, I still prioritize Tokki ahead of ourselves. Does
this mean he will become a child
king, as the French say with disdain? Is the idea of a well-mannered
toddler a fantasy I should file alongside 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 doesnt need to be
French, and I dont think he minds
that Im not, either. Although I may
keep trying.

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EDT. Prizes may not be exactly as shown. Approximate prize value.

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Christmas party, I
remember watching other mothers
being dropped off by car. It was snowing 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 sidewalk, 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 shed tied a long piece of
yellow rope, and my brothers clung
to the ends like little farmers attached to a clothesline, trying not
to lose sight of a barn in the blizzard. On her head, Mum was wearing a brown leather Second World
War pilots helmet, earflaps down,
chinstrap dangling in the wind.
She had dressed for what she considered was the main occasionthe
cold. But why couldnt she be normal? I could see she was popular
others were captivated by her sense
of autonomybut I felt shy and
hated being sucked into her orbit,
the centre of attention, where she invariably stood. If I complained, shed
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 breathable, 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 insinuated herself. She crossed every
boundary. Our relationship slid from
admiration to resentment until, as
she battled old age, I used to pray Id
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.

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Yet, only four weeks after her
deathDad had died three years
earlierIve moved temporarily back
into their home in Oakville, Ont., to
sift through a half century of stuff,
looking for evidence of her searching for answers.
Friends warned me of this. They
said, When your mother dies, youll
wish youd asked her some questions. I had more than 60 years to
ask, but now there are questions
I didnt even know I had.

;G B6@33 0@=B63@A Robin,


Chris and Victorand I are at our
childhood home, sitting on the steps
overlooking Lake Ontario, at the end
of an exhausting morning.
Were about to tackle the space Ive
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. Its going to be a lengthy dig.
The room is stacked with steamer
trunks and wooden crates. Scattered
around them is the usual debris of
a familylayered in circles, like the
growth rings of a tree. The top layer
reveals our most recent chapter:
Dads old metal walker and rubbertipped walking canes, bags of Mums
oxygen tubing, a metal bedpan.
But underneath, there are Halloween masks, Christmas lights, old
paintings, plastic flowers, broken
chairs, unsorted toys, sets of luggage
anddeep 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 motoring through tasks in such a casual


manner while Im drowning in detail,
I shake one of the envelopes. Out falls
a letter on Buckingham Palace stationery written by Princess Elizabeth
to Grandmother in 1947. Shes saying
thank you for a contribution to one of
her charities.
I wave it victoriously. See? You almost threw it away! Then I listen to
myselfit doesnt 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 hes unearthed.
For decades, sitting on top of Dads
filing cabinet in his library, theres
been the old tin trunk. A black
metal sailors box, it has our greatgrandfathers 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 Tomdjoeng Sederhana Sasak 50.82 KM.
17.93T.
What is it? I dont 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 amazement. The first few are recorded in an
unknown hand of the ships original
native crew, documenting trips along

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the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, picking up cargo. Its all in Dutch, each
page signed by a port master and officially stamped. But 10 or so pages in,
I recognize Dads handwriting.
On March 5, 1942, Dadan officer
in the Malayan Royal Naval Volunteer
Reservecommandeers 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 ones duties and what
his intentions are (to avoid capture
by Japanese; to proceed up coast using 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 knowing what a harrowing 37 days at sea
 &j"  "j`RQO

he was about to enduresurviving


Japanese strafing, high seas, limited
rations and little waternor 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 Grantbut
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 continues 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 otherhundreds of them!
The plastic bags are in the final
stages of decomposition; they fragment 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.

E/7B/;7<CB3
D71B=@A/GA;C;
/<22/2=<:G9<3E
3/16=B63@4=@=<3
E339034=@3B63G
2317232B=;/@@G-
Robin flips open a letter postmarked New York City, 1942. Heres
one that Mother wrote to Grandmother, telling how she met Father
when the war started.
Dearest Mum, I know you probably
think Ive lost my mind, but its only
my heart!
She writes that shed 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


Lieutenants 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='"$
;C;/<22/2E@=B3
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5=B=C@:/>A4C::=4
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@3/2/<2:7AB3</B
B63A/;3B7;3
We all burst out laughingit
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
Thats a good thing, I say, wondering 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. Weve each got our laps full of


paper, trying to read and listen at the
same time, interrupting each other.
Chris says, Heres one when Mum
was stationed in Devon at Knightshayes Court, in the converted manor
house of Lord and Lady Amory. Shes
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.
Its 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
theyre wheeled off unconscious to
bed by their butlers. Theyre known
as 1, 2, or 3-bottle men depending
on their capacity

Hold that sentence! says Robin.


I need more bourbon. He heads
indoors with his empty glass.
Ill be the two-bottle man! I say,
and follow him into the pantry.
When we return, Chris has flipped
his page over. Heres a loving ending.
It is now late eveningpeaceful
& stillwith only the singing of the
birds & bleating of sheep to break the
silenceand 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 didnt really know
each other.

@3/23@A2753AB

Earlier, Id resolved to clear out my


own mess so my children wouldnt
have to face it, but now Im having a
change of heart. Maybe its 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, Ive finally finished sorting
Mums letters. They fill 23 bulging
binders. Her life is literally laid out
in front of mebut I cant start reading yet. Theres too much else to do.
Robin has found, among Dads
letters, a collection of small pocket
diaries. In one of them, 1946, I see

>/ A B  : 7 D 3 A  

re m e m b e re d re c e i vDad has scrawled across


ing a postcard, and one
my birthdate, Received
thought hed seen his
cableeldest daughfathers handwritingon
ter born! I thought he
a cheque. Whats going to
wanted only sons, but
happen to our histories if
here is my first hint that
computers crash? These
he expected more daughdays I take more photers. When he recorded
tos than ever before, but
my birth, he was on a ship
theyre stored on my hard
in the South Pacific. Mum
drive. Who sees them? Im
was in the United States,
certain my great-grandpreparing to join him in
children wont. With comHong Kong. I later turned
puters, the more we think
out to be his only daughweve preserved, the more
ter, but he called me First
327B=@A
we may have lost.
Daughter for the rest of
16=713
I decide to make a
his life. In the Far East,
photo album of the interior of the
this is a sign of respect.
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 wallpaside Mums 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.
Who were our parents? Theyre in
and wanted my parents to sponsor
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 betwould be almost 90, probably dead. ter by sifting through what they left
behind, like forensic archaeologists?
But Im thrilled to find this.
Thank goodness people wrote let- What does it all mean? It feels like
ters. When I recently taught a uni- were 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.
B63G:34BCA3D3@GB67<5(/;3;=7@ "0G>:C;8=6<A=<@3>@7<B32E7B6>3@;7AA7=<=4>3<5C7<1/</2/0==9A7<1
@3>@=2C1320G/@@/<53;3<BE7B6B63>C0:7A63@/::@756BA@3A3@D32>3<5C7<1/

!"j"  "j`RQO

GET

SMART

13 Things
You Should
Know About

Customer
Service
0G >/C: 5 / : : / < B

A 6CBB3@AB=19

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.

Know your contract. Most people overlook the terms of service


and get angry when companies refuse to waive rules.

`RQOj"  "j!#

!B67<5A

If the problem can be solved


right away, vocalize your complaint in the moment. Its better to
have a free meal sitting in a restaurant than leave fuming after a substandard dinner with a voucher you
might never use.

If time isnt a concern, put your


complaint in writing. A letter
creates a paper trail and saves you
from repeating the story, says consumer advocate Christopher Elliott.

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.

Dont be a toxic customer.


Threatening to smear a companys reputation if it doesnt acquiesce is unethical and rarely works.

Politely let the company know


how loyal youve been. Frontline workers often cant tell a longtime customer from a crank. A free
nights stay is a small gesture for 20
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Trapped in a phone-menu
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a shortcut to a real person, some
companies have made their shortcuts more complicated. The website
!$j"  "j`RQO

gethuman.com lets consumers


share extensions and wait times. On
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having too many phone-menu steps.

For the shortest hold time, contact customer service between


9 and 11 a.m. Representatives will have
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10

If youve tried official channels to no avail, it might be


time to move up. Often, a web
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11

Try a different route. The Canadian Transportation Agency


can deal with unresolved complaints about flight disruptions,
unexpected charges and lost baggage, but it doesnt want to hear
about rude service or bad food.

12

Facebook and Twitter can be


effective ways to jump the
queue. Airlines have been known to
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13

Use one medium at a time.


Multiple channels are more
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Thats 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 forgetting a homemade
explosive
in his bag,
Alberta resident
Skylar Murphy,
18, found airport security in
Edmonton to
be surprisingly forgiving: 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 confirmation that the confiscated
item was indeed a bomb. He was
sentenced to a years probation
and $600 in penalties.

> 73@@3:=@/ <53@

</;3/<2A6/;3

Calgary writer Chris Turner took


to the court of public opinion in
December after Air Canada denied
a voucher transfer, pre-flight, to
his wife because she didnt share
his last name. Unimpressed by the

airlines 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 200vacationers 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 information morphed into anger as
the airports potable water, food
and toilet paper supplies were all
exhausted. Expressions of regret
from the company were slow in
comingwhen the passengers
arrived at Pearson International
Airport, nearly 20hours late, no
one there apologized.
`RQOj" "j!%

;=@35@3/B@3/2AB67A;=<B6

1=<B3AB

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Read Up,
Canada!

Homemade
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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 Scotlands declaration of independence in 1320.
Ready to fire up the bagpipes?
0G 8=/< >/53  ; 1 9 3 <</

POePSSA: raucous laughter.

'eORaSbA: term of endearment

B: ornate costume jewellery. C: copper coin of little value.

for a clumsy friend. B: person who


binds sheaves in the harvest field.
C: mortgage.

VgbSA: completely unhinged.


B: neat and well-organized. C: festive outing.
!YS\A: herd sheep using a dog.

B: catch in the act. C: have knowledge of.


"POW`\A: unit of measurement

for weight. B: infant. C: state of


drunkenness.
#P`OeA: impressive. B: lopsided
football victory. C: working-class
residential area.
$\c[^bgA: cold-storage room.
B: absent-minded person. C: harebrained scheme.
%abOaVWSA: commotion. B: sleep-

ing berth on a train. C: velvettrimmed dinner jacket.


&aZSSYWbA: mountainous landscape. B: penny-pinching businessman. C: cunning.

PSddgA: alcoholic beverage.

B: flock of geese flying in a V-formation. C: root vegetable.


YW`YA: elder statesman of the

community. B: church. C: large


meadow left unattended.
 aQc\\S`A: irrational dislike.
B: aggressive fishmonger. C: unwelcome surprise.
!U`OWbVA: grazing plot for
calves. B: raging summertime thunderstorm. C: implements for work,
travel or war.
"TOW\A: single-edged knife worn
with a kilt. B: eager. C: caretakers
cottage.
#P]UUW\A: filthy. B: bump or

swelling after a blow. C: flat-bottomed 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 children a few bawbees for chocolates
and candy.
VgbS[A] completely unhinged;

as, Fiona was a little unsteady leaving the bar. Dont drive in this fog,
missy! Thats 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

couldnt take her eyes off the bairn


in her sisters arms. He really looks
like Dad, she said.
#P`Oe[A] impressive; as,
Alistair, thats a braw house youve
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

Moynaghs 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, Lets 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 newlyweds were fain to stroll the beach
hand in hand after dinner.
#P]UUW\[A] filthy; as,

Hugh complained the rug in his


flatmates room was absolutely
boggin and stank.
D=1/0C:/@G@/B7<5A

%(TOW`
 (U]]R
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Quotes
0G 1 6 @7AB7</ >/:/AA 7=

A UNICORN
IS JUST A
HORSE WITH
A POINT
OF VIEW.

I dont think that one is


impressed with ones
own work. I cant
imagine such a thing.
Its a question of getting
it right; its not a
question of admiring it.

@= <A 3 FA ; 7B6

; /D 7 A5/ : : / < B

Chop your own path. Get off the car track.


Overnight success
just doesnt happen.
Youve got to put
your time in. Youre
up and downall
of a sudden, it just
clicks.
/ < B 6 = < G1 / :D 7 : :=

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B63GE3@34C::A7H32
167:2@3<E=C:2
6/D3B=03:=1932
C>7<1/53A 

I will never forget


my actions. They
will haunt me for
the rest of my life.
None of it will
happen again.

2/D 34= :3 G

5/ @ B62 @ / 0 7 < A 9 G

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