Star and Globe Love Their Country

Here's the deal: For Canada Day round up a group of writers and have them say what part of the country appeals to them most. So far, so utterly predictable. The Sunday Star found what it called "11 of Canada's top fiction writers" to answer that question. The Globe and Mail, in the weekend Travel section, no less, asked four writers, all born abroad, "which corner of the country speaks loudest to their hearts." 

I'm sure all 15 writers were sincere, but what confounds me was that only three of the places they chose were urban. Writing in the Star, Heather O'Neil said St.Louis Square in Montreal was her favourite place, and Vincent Lam, in the same paper, said his favourite spot was Withrow Park in Hogtown's Riverdale district. In the Globe, Rabindranath Maharaj chose Toronto's Union Station.

I know mountains and lakes and the wide open prairie (cue the violins) can be seductive - Ontario's Victoria County and the Margaree Valley in Nova Scotia are two of my favourite places on the planet - but Canadians are urban folk and I'd have thought editors at both papers would have considered this rather obvious fact before they went to print. So next time let's give writers who have favoured places in our cities at least half the ink.        

Sunday Star's disappearing books

Back in March I was moaning that the Globe and Mail had canned its weekend books section and rolled it into a so-far unsuccessful hybrid called Focus & Books. Well, here's another moan. For the last two weeks the the Sunday Star has dropped its books coverage - never extensive to begin with - for something called The Summit, a section on, yes, G-8 and G-20. No doubt a good idea for policy wonks and political reporters, but largely a waste of time for everyone else. (It may have been moved to the Saturday Star, but I don't know since I don't buy it. Why bother? I throw out three-quarters of it immediately.) Surely there was something else the Sunday Star could have dumped instead. How about, oh, Malene Arpe's truly cretinous Stargazing - today she gets two full pages - or how about, oh, Malene Arpe's truly cretinous Stargazing, or how about, oh, Malene Arpe's...