Word: martine
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...Martin, one of life's rumpled figures with the sort of hair that no amount of grooming will ever make right, hasn't got Bono's charisma. His speech accepting the leadership of the party took a while to get going, and his biggest applause line--hey, this is Canada--came when he said, "I will keep the promise of universal and high-quality health care." At 65, he has become a quintessential figure of the Canadian establishment, a millionaire shipping magnate whose father, a stalwart of the Liberal Party, very nearly became Prime Minister himself in the 1960s...
...expectations that surround Martin are not simply a function of the fact that he is not Chretien. They have more to do with his challenging Canadians to do something they are not always comfortable doing--to think big. In a recent interview with TIME, he kept coming back to a determination to "set ambitious goals" for his country, and it needs them. For a place that is rich and comfortable, Canada punches well below its weight on the international stage. Its armed forces--once among the finest in the world--are now a bit of a joke, with equipment that...
...Martin told TIME that his government will conduct a quick review of foreign and military policy. He insists that Canadians, after a long period of introspection during which they were obsessed with interminable debates over their constitutional structures, are ready to look outward once more. "The old sense of insecurities about the Canadian identity," he says, "have been replaced by increasing confidence, pride and ambition." A top priority, he told TIME, will be to improve relations with the U.S. But given Canada's present sense of itself, that does not mean that the Bush Administration will get everything it wants...
Significantly, the two nations have reacted in different ways to Sept. 11, 2001. After the attacks, says Martin, many in the U.S. came to think that "security trumps trade." Not so in Canada. Many of the "security first" policies that have been adopted in the U.S.--such as much tighter border and immigration controls, restrictions on civil liberties and pre-emptive war--won't fly in Canada. Canadians recognize that their nation faces the threat from international terrorism, just as their neighbor does. But Canada isn't a frigid version of the U.S., and it wants to handle that threat...
...happens, I don't much care for Stephen King's books. Maybe I'm out of touch with my dark side, but I'd swap his oeuvre for J.K. Rowling's in a magic moment, or George R.R. Martin's for that matter. But I applaud the National Book Foundation's choice, and I hope it encourages the small but determined school of writers who are carefully, lovingly grafting the prose craft of the literary heap onto the sinewy, satisfying plots of the trashy one to produce hybrid novels that offer the pleasures of both. Writers like Donna Tartt...