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Hold on
to your hats
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by Scott Saxon
January
Yasser Arafat went to Washington to talk peace with Clinton. •
Graphic warning labels were added to cigarette packs in Canada to frighten
smokers away. • Lucien Bouchard announced his departure from the
Parti Québécois. • The Bank of Canada issued a new
$10 bill designed to thwart counterfeiters and be easier for the blind
to recognize. • A rhesus monkey was genetically modified to carry
jellyfish genes. • Sixteen-year-old Montreal hacker Mafiaboy pleaded
guilty to 56 of 66 charges of mischief stemming from last year’s
denial of service attacks. • Clinton bid America adieu. •
The U.S. paid China $28-million for accidentally bombing the Chinese
Embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999. • Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe of
Roe vs. Wade, said she no longer thinks abortion is right. • Robert
Latimer began serving a 10-year sentence for the killing of his disabled
daughter. • A team of researchers in Michigan said they made a
robot that can learn as a child does. • A 13-year-old Florida boy
was tried for first-degree murder for killing a 6-year-old girl while
re-enacting a wrestling move he’d seen on TV. • George W.
Bush was officially sworn in.
February
Security experts commissioned by the U.S. found that “a direct
attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the
next quarter century.” • Interest grew in paying reparations
to the descendants of black slaves. • Holy Land, a religious theme
park, opened in Florida to the outrage of some, who claimed the park
was a ploy to convert Jews to Christianity. • Ariel Sharon won
a landslide victory in the Israeli elections. • The UN announced
that mad cow disease had become a world-wide health threat. • The
U.S. State Department asked the Taliban to close down its New York offices.
• Bill Clinton shopped for a new office in Harlem. • The Kansas
Board of Education voted to return Darwin’s theory of evolution
to their schools’ curriculum. • San Francisco officials decided
to use tax-payer’s money to pay for sex-change operations under
the city’s health plan. • Gérald Tremblay announced
his candidacy for mega-mayor.
March
The Commission for the Protection of the French Language told Montreal
it had 30 days to remove English words from street signs. • Citing
them as contrary to Islam, the Taliban began blowing up statues in Afghanistan.
• Results of Ontario’s first province-wide literacy tests
found that 29 per cent of grade 10 students are well below par in reading
and writing. • Mayor Bourque spent $144,000 on a petition campaign
to prove municipalities actually wanted to be merged; though City Hall
claimed 50,000 signatures, alternate sources said the number was closer
to 16,000, and some were from the same guy. • Israeli troops tossed
a stun grenade into a Palestinian schoolyard, injuring six children.
• Dave Hilton was found guilty of sexually assaulting two young
girls. • The British army dug mass graves for the carcasses of
500,000 animals believed infected with foot-and-mouth disease. •
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was served an arrest warrant.
April
A U.S. military surveillance plane was forced to land in China—President
Bush told China not to peek. • Evan Wade Brown was found guilty
of assault for stuffing a pie in Jean Chrétien’s face. •
British scientists announced that smart people live longer, but they
didn’t know why. • A veteran Montreal cop and his partner
were charged for leaking confidential information to the Russian mob
and biker gangs. • Canada asked the U.S. to lift its ban on the
import of P.E.I. potatoes. • Hundreds opposed to global free trade
gathered in Quebec City for a ”People’s Summit of the Americas.”
• Joey Ramone died of lymphoma. • During a speech preceding
the Summit of the Americas, Bernard Landry promoted his separatist agenda.
• A new condo development in Gatineau was under siege by groundhogs.
• Germany set up hotlines encouraging neo-Nazis to leave their
extremist lives behind them. • Voters in Mississippi opted to keep
the Confederate emblem on their state flag. • Queen Elizabeth turned
75. • Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to walk in space.
May
Environmentalist Elizabeth May went on a hunger strike at Parliament
Hill to try and get help for people living near the highly toxic tar
ponds in Sydney, N.S. Tom Cruise filed a $100-million defamation suit
against a wrestler who claimed to have had homosexual relations with
the leading man. • Palestinians gathered for the funeral of a four-month-old
girl killed by Israeli tank fire. • Speaking to the Canadian Jewish
Congress, Stockwell Day blamed Palestine for Middle East unrest, prompting
the national Council on Canada-Arab Relations to ponder legal action.
• Forced mergers were argued in Quebec Superior Court. • Alliance
MPs called for Stockwell Day’s resignation. • The inflation
rate in Canada reached a 10-year high. • A Montreal woman and her
common-law husband were arrested for providing the Hell’s Angels
with information that assisted the bikers in the shooting of journalist
Michel Auger.
June
Scientists gathered in Quebec City to talk about the human genome project.
• Workers at a Guinness brewery in Ireland voted to accept 10 years
of free stout as part of their lay-off packages. • Nova Scotia
gave gay couples “partnership rights,” allowing for some equality
with common-law and married heteros. • Estates-General chief Gérald
Larosse released a report on the preservation of the French language
in Quebec—it suggested the province not concern itself with hospitals
providing treatment to patients in English. • Timothy McVeigh was
executed. • Nelson Mandela was made an honorary Canadian. •
The Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy issued a report
calling Canada a toxic waste dumping ground. • The Taliban told
the UN to close their offices in Kabul. • Dick Cheney got a pacemaker.
July
Duplessis orphans accepted a settlement offer from the Quebec government
that provided a flat payment of $10,000 per victim, plus $1,000 per
year of wrongful confinement; Premier Landry commented one “cannot
really compensate anything totally.” • Newly declassified
documents showed the U.S. knew about Nazi plans to eradicate European
Jews as early as 1941. • Mordecai Richler lost his battle with
cancer. • Dog tags from missing U.S. soldiers were on sale at a
marketplace in Vietnam. • Anthrax was confirmed as being the cause
of death of 19 bison in Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park. •
The Taliban speculated that they’d control all of Afghanistan by
summer’s end. • Police searched Rep. Gary Condit’s home
for clues in Chandra Levy’s disappearance. • Sheila Copps
was booed at the Francophonie Summit when she talked about English and
French living together in harmony. • Statistics showed that half
of all Canadian swimming pool drownings occurred in Quebec. • Top
Israeli rabbi Ovadia Yossef said that Arabs were “swarming like
ants” in Jerusalem, and suggested they “should go to hell.”
• The United States said it wouldn’t show at the UN World
Conference against Racism if anyone planned to talk reparations or equate
Zionism with racism.
August
The U.S. House of Representatives gave the thumbs up to drilling in
Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. • California’s
Supreme Court ruled that gun-makers aren’t accountable for how
their customers choose to use them. • A Palestinian suicide bomber
killed himself and 15 others in Jerusalem. • Colin Powell asked
for calm; Sharon ordered PLO offices seized and sent F-16’s to
take down a police station near Ramallah. • TMR Mayor Ricardo Hrstchan
began a walk to Quebec City to protest the municipal merger law. •
Commodore Eric Lehre, who was fired after admitting he used a military
computer to surf porn, was returned to his post as commander of Canada’s
Pacific Fleet. • Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner suggested
a 25 per cent increase in the $78,000 annual salary of MPPs.
September
Stephen Hawking warned humans that unless they genetically enhance themselves,
computers will take over the world. • Three hundred passengers
at the Berri-UQAM metro station were evacuated after someone set off
a canister of tear gas. • Prime Minister Chrétien played
golf with Tiger Woods at the Royal Montreal Golf Club. • Canada’s
unemployment rate went up to 7.2 per cent. • Hijackers took control
of four airplanes; two toppled the World Trade Centre towers, one hit
the Pentagon and the last crashed in a field southeast of Pittsburgh.
• President Bush vowed to hunt down and punish those responsible
and later said that the U.S. wants prime suspect Osama bin Laden “dead
or alive.” • Mr. Dressup died in a Toronto hospital after
a stroke.
October
Afghanistan’s exiled King Mohammad Zahir Shah called Osama bin
Laden “a plague” and urged an uprising against the Taliban,
who in return told him not to get involved. • Harvard researchers
said they found a mouse gene resistant to anthrax. • Canada and
the rest of the NATO gang were asked by the U.S. to prepare for military
requests. • Montreal police evicted squatters from an abandoned
school where they’d been living since last July. • A 63-year-old
Florida tabloid press worker was hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax;
he then became the U.S.’s first fatality of the pathogen in a quarter
century. • Ariel Sharon accused the U.S. of trying to “placate
Arabs at Israel’s expense.” • The Taliban called U.S.
air strikes on Afghanistan a “terrorist attack.” • A
Dutch consortium raised the sunken Kursk submarine. • Canadian
ships left from Halifax to join the U.S. and British fleets in the Arabian
Sea. • Not expected back for at least six months, the ships were
stocked with all necessary supplies, including pumpkins and Christmas
fruitcakes. • Anthrax spores were found in the New York governor’s
offices. • The Quebec Court of Appeals ruled that the merger law
is indeed legal. • A study showed that baboons have reasoning skills.
November
The Canadian Customs Revenue Agency began conducting a job hazard analysis
to decide whether or not our border guards should carry guns. •
A Pentagon spokesperson said the “noose is tightening” on
the Taliban and elusive bin Laden. • Anti-merger sentiment led
to victory for Gérald Tremblay in the municipal elections. •
Canada 3000, the nation’s second largest airline, went into bankruptcy.
• Kabul was pulled from the Taliban’s grasp. • The PQ
fêted themselves on the 25th anniversary of René Lévesque’s
election victory. • Two Saskatchewan towns motioned to ban glass
beer bottles due to their being used as weapons in violent crimes. •
The Bush administration announced they would hang onto their smallpox
supplies a little longer. • The Pope asked everybody to pray for
peace.
December
Switzerland opted to keep their army even thought they don’t use
it. • Canada and the U.S. reached an agreement on how to make the
border more secure. • Kandahar, the Taliban’s last stronghold,
fell to Alliance fighters. • The Marines and anti-Taliban troops
captured the Tora Bora range of caves believed to be bin Laden’s
hiding place, but bin Laden wasn’t there. • 14,000 people
exposed to hepatitis B from unsterilized needles in Ontario medical
clinics won $27.5-million in what is thought to be the country’s
largest malpractice settlement ever. • Transportation minister
David Collenette told Canadians that they’re going to have to accept
changes to the way they travel to the States. • Nine people were
arrested trying to sneak into the U.S. by clinging to the bottom of
a truck. • The smallest of all reptiles, birds or mammals, a 1.6
centimetre gecko, was discovered in a cave in the Dominican Republic.
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Inspired by Roger D. Hodge and his Weekly Review, www.harpers.org.
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