Saskatoon-bound: Newcomers leading westward shift

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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When Bangladeshi-born Sayful Ahmed decided to come to Canada for a fresh start, he didn’t head to Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.

He chose Saskatoon.

The city of 234,000 people, which has garnered a reputation for seeking newcomers and having plenty of work, was just too appealing to pass up.

“My friends live here, they said it’s a good place – for living, for job opportunities. …That’s why I chose Saskatoon,” said Mr. Ahmed, who arrived three weeks ago. “So far, so good.”

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The Higgs boson: Closing in on the Sasquatch of particle physics

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Tuesday, December 13, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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In a centuries-old Swedish castle near the Arctic Circle, in the fading light of a summer midnight, two of the most brilliant particle physicists in the world made a bet over chocolate.

Does the Higgs boson exist?

It’s no idle query: The underpinnings of particle physics, and our assumptions of how all matter interacts, rely on the particle’s not-quite-proven existence. The 47-year search for that proof now costs a billion dollars a year. And esoteric as their goal seems, scientists argue it’s well worth the effort.

On Tuesday, says Robert Garisto, the physicist and editor judging the castle bet, the public finds out “who’s got to save up money to buy chocolate.”

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Pay attention: At Ontario nuclear plant, this gadget’s measuring your brainwaves

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Ron Drody, First Line Manager Operator Training with Ontario Power Generation, demonstrate how the the BodyWave machine works at the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant in Pickering, Ontario Canada.
(Photo by Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail)

Saturday, November 19, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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PICKERING, ONT. — Ontario nuclear plants are the first in their industry worldwide to test-drive a futuristic gizmo that measures employees’ concentration by reading brain waves.

The premise is deceptively simple: Use the electric current released by neurons firing in the brain to test, in real time, a person’s concentration level. And the device is strikingly svelte – this is no Medusa-like helmet of coloured cords strapped to your skull.

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Ontario election 2011: For Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, it’s all about connecting

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Photo by Anna Mehler Paperny/The Globe and Mail

Saturday, September 24, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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Friday night in North Bay, Ont. The blonde behind the bar is talking up patrons on tax policy.

They aren’t sure who she is or why she’s here; 15 minutes ago, they’d never heard her name. But they are riveted and, for that matter, so is she: Her politely agitated handlers need to pry her away to scrum outside the pub.

“Can you get her to come back?” schoolteacher and pub-goer Val Spivey asks. “We want to ask about her education policy.”

This is what Andrea Horwath does.

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Politics not in the cards for Andrea Horwath’s son. But his mom? “She’d be stoked” to be premier

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Photo by Anna Mehler Paperny/Globe and Mail

Friday, September 23, 2011 – Globe and Mail

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Hamilton — Julian Leonetti has a habit of acing his civics exams. But you could argue he has an unfair advantage.

Mr. Leonetti, 18, was raised immersed in a political milieu – tagging along to meetings and putting up signs for his mom, Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

He remembers going from day care to Ms. Horwath’s office in Hamilton city hall, where she was a councillor.

“I would hang with her secretaries and meet all the politicians. … It was actually a really, really, really good environment to grow up in,” he says.

Mind you, he wasn’t so sure about that at the time.

“When I was there, I was bored as hell. But when I look back on it, every other kid was sitting at home, watching Arthur on TV. Those kids weren’t learning what I was learning.”

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9/11 in focus: For five men, tragedy remains over photo of 9/11’s first casualty

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Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Friday, September 2, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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NEW YORK — John Maguire still has the shirt.

Its blue fabric is laced with pale 10-year-old dust, and torn in the back where he was peppered with debris as he struggled to help carry the dead weight of a stranger he felt driven to assist.

“When the picture was out there, I figured maybe I’d hang on to this just as a memento. … It’s hard to throw something away that has that much history attached to it.

“It probably isn’t safe,” to keep that dust around, he acknowledges. “But one day, I’ll show my son.”

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9/11 in focus: NYPD officer recalls choking cloud of dust when twin towers fell

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Photo by Ruth Fremson/New York Times

Thursday, September 1, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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As Richard Adamiak sought refuge, the choking cloud of dust came in with him.

“It was coating everything. It was getting everywhere,” he recalls. “But it was better than being out on the street, breathing it.”

Even within the sanctuary of the deli, it was almost impossible to draw a breath.

“Your mouth felt like someone took a bag of powdered concrete and threw it in.”

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World Trade Center survivor escaped from wrecked tower, but never left it behind

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Photo by Phil Penman

August 31, 2011 – Globe and Mail

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Before making his way down the burning, crumbling North Tower, Srinath Jinadasa stopped to water his begonias.

It was the sort of calculation an engineer would make, an attempt to maintain rational thought in an irrational circumstance.

For the Port Authority engineer, the emergency had a sense of déja vu: He’d been working in that same office eight years earlier when a bomb went off in the basement of the World Trade Center.

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The 9/11 Decade: The spontaneous snapshot that has endured in a German woman’s life

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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She still isn’t sure what compelled her to do it. Why, standing in bewilderment with her colleagues by the Flatiron Building near 23rd Street, they chose to take pictures of each other as the Twin Towers smoked in the distance.

And as she turned toward the camera, she didn’t know what to do with the muscles in her face. Some of the books and blogs that reposted the photo called it a “Mona Lisa” look. Others wondered how she could appear so clueless to the gravity of the events unfolding behind her.

“I didn’t get what was happening. Definitely not then,” she says. “For me, the focus was much more personal – on me and my belly, and not on the Twin Towers.”

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The 9/11 decade: A shared moment of crisis, and the anguish that remained

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Monday, August 29, 2011 – Globe and Mail
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OLD BRIDGE, N.J. — It wasn’t until she collapsed outside the building that the pain took over.

Throughout the 78-storey trek to the bottom of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, Donna Spera was unaware of her surroundings, the passage of time or her own condition.

She remembers blood on the stairs, but didn’t think it was hers. She recalls crawling over an elevator smashed through the stairwell, but not how her legs became lacerated. She couldn’t figure out why a friend wrapped his shirt around her hand.

But once outside, she became aware of the scorched and melted skin on her arms and back; of her gashed knees, shattered hand and bloody scalp. And that’s when Dominic Guadagnoli grabbed her.

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