Life

After I kick the bucket, I want Tom Hawthorn to write my obituary. He's the master. He brings the dead to life. Hawthorn is to the obit what Harvey Lowe was to the yoyo. Or Babe Ruth to baseball.

MONDAY VIEWING It's the side story of the dirty thirties, one told in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and retold tonight in documentarian Ken Burns's stirring account of the dust bowl.

Driving into Courtenay in the late 1990s, I would see a sign on the highway saying "Ginger Goodwin Way." Goodwin, I knew, had been a labour leader in the early 20th century and a strong socialist. During the First World War, he had preached pacifism.

Renewed conflict sparked by Arab Spring, deep hatred - and the Israeli election

Recently, I read about a group of Italian scientists who have been incarcerated for misreading signs of a massive earthquake.

The Spencer Mansion: A House, a Home, and an Art Gallery By Robert Ratcliffe Taylor Touchwood, 204 pp., $19.95 For starters, let's be clear about what Spencer Mansion really is.

Jim Hume >D4

Jian Ghomeshi takes his book on the road >C9

Residents forced to watch helplessly as migrants drowned

Chatting with a fellow octogenarian the other day, lamenting, as ancients tend to lament, the difference between the youth of our day and the young today.