Canadian Film Research Articles

Refiguring Identitites: Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction, and: Where Are the Voices Coming From?: Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History (review)

Reviewed by: Refiguring Identitites: Contemporary Canadian Women’s Fiction, and: Where Are the Voices Coming From?: Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History Christl Verduyn Coral Ann Howells. Refiguring Identitites: Contemporary Canadian Women’s Fiction. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003. 230 pp. $59.95 cloth. Coral Ann Howells, ed. Where Are the Voices Coming From?: Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2004. 266 pp. $81.00 cloth. Two new books by Coral Ann Howells make welcome additions to the international scholarship on Canadian literature that has grown in leaps and bounds alongside the burgeoning international readership of Canada's writers. A well-known and respected literary critic, Howells has written extensively on Canadian literature, in particular on women writers and most notably on Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro. In Refiguring Identities: Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction, Howells turns her critical eye to the work of a younger generation of writers, while in Where Are the Voices Coming From?: Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History, she extends her editorial interests to Canadian film as well as Canadian literature. In both books, Howells draws on the theoretical frameworks of feminism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism with the dexterity, insight, and nuance of an experienced and well-read critic. Readers and students of Canadian literature everywhere will find these two publications useful. In her Introduction to Refiguring Identities, Howells recognizes the significant change in Canada's literary profile since the early 1990s, forged by the increased number of Canadian writers of diverse, non-European ethnic and racial backgrounds. Her interest lies in how this has changed the concept of Canadianness and refigures the perennial Canadian question of national identity. Taking up her position as "a reader and critic working outside Canada" (1), Howells sets out to explore the complexities of identity construction in recent Canadian literature through the analysis of "a representative range" (1) of texts by Canadian women. These include a short story collection by Alice Munro—Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage—and nine novels—Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood; The Stone Diaries and Larry's Party by Carol Shields; Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald; The Electrical Field by Kerri Sakamoto; Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo; The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz; and Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson. Each of these writers, Howells asserts, raises the question of "how much of anyone's identity is authentic and dependent on inheritance, and how [End Page 232] much is performative, subject to circumstances, and so redefinable in different contexts" (2). Her aim is to investigate continuities and differences of emphasis from one text to another and in this way to chart the changes that have taken place in Canadian literature in recent years. Acknowledging that her study focuses on Anglophone perspectives and writers most widely read outside of Canada, Howells proposes to make the case for the place of Canadian women's writing in the broader picture of contemporary political and cultural realities in Canada. These realities, she argues, together with a host of Canadian critics such as Barbara Godard, Smaro Kamboureli, Arun Mukherjee, and Charles Taylor among others, may best be thumbnailed today by the question of what constitutes Canadianness. Howells wishes to assess and establish the contribution of women's literary texts and cultural criticism to the "process of reimagining Canadianness" (10). Assessment of this contribution involves the key concepts of multiculturalism, feminism, and nationalism, each within the postcolonial context. Though these are given "different inflections" in the different texts Howells has chosen, she finds and demonstrates that each work contributes to re-imagining Canadian identity, often by revisiting Canadian history. Thus for example, historical fictions by Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin) and Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees) revise the image of earlier-day Canada as being a more homogenous and unified society than today. These writers, Howells writes, open up possibilities for "a revised rhetoric of Canadianness" (52), possibilities taken up in compelling ways by the other authors in her study. That the project to re-imagine Canadian identity is not limited to work by writers from Canada's...

One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema

One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema

Toronto 2004

CANADIAN FEATURES AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2004 Again I looked for interesting Canadian productions at Toronto's International Film Festival 2004. This year, sad to relate, I found only few that warranted even faint praise. At the top of my list was the Festival's gala opener, Being Julia, produced by Robert Lantos - his second venture with Hungarian director István Szabó and like the first, Sunshine, Being Julia is set outside Canada. It's an adaptation of an almost forgotten Somerset Maugham novel, the story of Julia Lambert, an ageing but not yet fading diva of the London stage in the 1930s. I found Being Julia absorbing, amusing and with an extraordinary sense of location and period. Clean, directed by France's Olivier Assayas, is a Canadian film in the sense that the character of Albrecht as played by Nick Nolte typifies the kind of Canadian who would support peacekeeping,...

The Secret of the Hardy Boys, Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate (review)

Reviewed by: The Secret of the Hardy Boys, Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate William J. Vande Kopple (bio) Marilyn S. Greenwald . The Secret of the Hardy Boys, Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Ohio UP, 2004. Much of the material for my boyhood reading was supplied by a bookmobile, a bulky, top-heavy vehicle that stopped regularly in my neighborhood back in the 1950s. I don't remember many details about that bookmobile's interior. But I do remember a shelf that I regarded as special—the shelf displaying all the Hardy Boys books. Back when I was nine or ten, it never occurred to me as I sped through these mysteries that the name Franklin W. Dixon corresponded to no actual person in the real world. I had a mental image of Franklin W. Dixon, and to me it was both comforting and intriguing. I even had a notion of how his voice would sound, if he ever could find the time to leave his writing desk and visit my school. Perhaps, then, it was all for the best that it was not until I was in my forties that I first learned some of the details of how the Hardy Boys books were written and produced. These details left me with a swarm of questions, many of which I can now answer because of Marilyn S. Greenwald's recent work. In this book, Greenwald uses extensive archival resources––including thousands of pages of diary entries and personal letters—to examine the [End Page 283] life, especially the literary life, of Charles Leslie McFarlane (known throughout his life as Les), the author of around twenty of the first twenty-four Hardy Boys books. As a part of her examination, Greenwald describes the relationship that McFarlane had with the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which produced several series of books so familiar to young readers throughout the twentieth century: books featuring the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Dave Fearless, and others. Furthermore, she explores questions about the quality of the Hardy Boys books and the role they have played in the lives of young readers. From Greenwald's book, it is clear that for Les McFarlane, to live, in large measure, was to write. As she puts it, "throughout his life, nothing compared to the exhilaration of a good day of writing" (214). And Les clearly had many such days, as evidenced by the quantity, quality, and variety of pieces he produced. He began his formal writing career composing for newspapers, first in his beloved boyhood town of Haliebury, northern Ontario, and later in such cities as Sudbury and Cobalt, Ontario, and Springfield, Massachusetts. After he stopped working for newspapers, his writing ranged remarkably widely, from detective thrillers, mystery novellas, and sports stories, through speeches for officials of the Canadian Department of Munitions and Supply, to scripts for radio shows, for films produced by the Canadian Film Board, and for television dramas aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Company. However, the writing that Greenwald is most interested in is that which McFarlane did after responding to an advertisement seeking someone who could write fiction following plot outlines supplied by others. This ad had been placed by Edward Stratemeyer, who gave McFarlane what amounted to a writer's try-out and then invited him to be one of several writers laboring for him in what is sometimes called a "fiction factory." McFarlane was to work in this factory on and off from 1927 to 1947, producing most of the early Hardy Boys books. It is difficult to imagine anyone today agreeing to abide by the rules and procedures that Stratemeyer set for his writers. In beginning a new book, writers would receive from Stratemeyer (and, after his death, from one or the other of his two daughters) about two pages of single-spaced text detailing the important incidents in the plot. If writers followed the outlines correctly, they would produce books that were between 204 and 218 pages in length and that included many chapters which ended with some sort of cliffhanger. In most books, the second chapter was special since in it the narrator would pause in order to...

Stage-Bound: Feature Film Adaptations of Canadian and Québécois Drama

In this informative study, André Loiselle traces a history of the relationship between Canadian stage drama and Canadian cinema, through an examination of cinematic adaptations from 1942 on. (This was the date of the limited release of Hilda Hooke Smith’s Here Will I Nest in London, Ontario [play written 1938; film dir. Melburn E.Turner].) After a thorough review of the past and present debate over the differences between the two media and their complex relationship, he offers a variety of case studies of works that will be known to students of Canadian theatre – no doubt better than to students of Canadian cinema, since the stage versions were for the most part far better received (critically and/or commercially) than their cinematic progeny. Among the play titles included in this study are

Where is Here? Local Visions in Three Canadian Films

La représentation du « local » est cruciale pour assurer la subsistance d’un cinéma national canadien menacé par la mondialisation. Trois longs métrages présentés en première au festival du film du Toronto en 2000—Parsley Days, red deer et La Moitié gauche du frigo—illustrent diverses réactions face à la dialectique local-mondial qui caractérise notre situation contemporaine. Ces trois films ne mettent pas seulement l’emphase sur des personnages qui définissent leur identité en rapport à un lieu spécifique, mais traduisent aussi une esthétique locale adaptée à des projets personnels qui se distinguent des productions à grand déploiement visant un marché international.

The Aesthetics of Menace: Stan Brakhage, Tom Thomson, and the Group of Seven

Dans son essai « Space as Menace in Canadian Aesthetics : Film and Painting », publié en 1998, Stan Brakhage postule une esthétique de la menace qu’il partage avec Tom Thomson et le Groupe des Sept. Selon lui, une aversion profonde contre l’énormité terrifiante de leur pays poussa ces artistes canadiens à représenter le vide menaçant du paysage immense en utilisant des modes d’expression qui mettent l’emphase sur la surface du canevas par l’intermédiaire d’un style de peinture graphique ou en filet. On retrouve des équivalents cinématographiques de ces techniques dans certains films de Brakhage comme The Wold Shadow, Rage Net et Visions in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde. L’intention centrale de cette esthétique de la menace est de permettre aux individus de réaffirmer leur humanité face au mouvement totalisant de l’idéologie du progrès technologique.

The Best Picture ever made in Canada? Thunder Bay Films Limited and the Devil Bear

Cet article trace la brève mais tumultueuse histoire de la Thunder Bay Film Limited, une compagnie de production cinématographique professionnelle établie en 1927 dans la ville qui est aujourd’hui Thunder Bay, en Ontario. On pourrait interpréter la création de cette compagnie soit comme une manigance pour circonvenir au “British Cinematograph Act”, soit comme tentative vaillante mais futile de donner naissance à une industrie locale. Mais ces hypothèses ne rendent pas compte de la ferveur des gens de la région. Les productions de la Thunder Bay Film témoignent en fait d’une croyance régionale dans la modernité.

Canada's Best Features: Critical Essays on 15 Canadian Films (review)

Canada's Best Features: Critical Essays on 15 Canadian Films (review)

Coup at amnesty international: Venezuelan human rights, Canadian film festivals, and censorship

(2004). Coup at amnesty international: Venezuelan human rights, Canadian film festivals, and censorship. Socialism and Democracy: Vol. 18, Hip Hop, Race, and Cultural Politics, pp. 305-319.

Donne/Women: Canadian Film and Video Makers of Italian Heritage

Donne/Women: Canadian Film and Video Makers of Italian Heritage

Toronto 2003

CANADIAN FILMS AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2003 This year's TIFF left me more opti­mistic than previously about the future of Canadian films. So many of the Canadian productions I saw have escaped the bondage of former years when I've often felt that too many Canadian filmmakers have been trying too hard to be Hollywood rather than to make movies that are distinctly Canadian, yet accessible to audiences. To me "way out" conception and execution of a film is no substitute for true cinematic communication. The indigenous films I liked at this year's festival show Canadian backgrounds from Winnipeg in the Depression to the seedy Hochelaga quarter in Montreal, to suburban Toronto, to the Arctic barrens. I recall being at a luncheon, in 1982 at Rome's Cinecittà, following the awards of the Circolo Stampa Estera. The buzz was all about Australian films and their surprising vitality. What of...

Counter-Narratives, Class Politics and Metropolitan Dystopias: Representations of Globalization in Maelström, waydowntown and La Moitié gauche du frigo

En portant une attention particulière à Maelström, l'auteure considère trois films canadiens qui abordent la problématique de l'expérience métropolitaine de la mondialisation pour ré-imagîner la ville en termes de traditions architecturales et du libre mouvement des capitaux. Dans ces oeuvres, la ville devient une dystopie de fonctionnalisme redondant et anonyme. Ses habitants appartiennent à une ethnie uniforme, homogène, blanche, tous des col-blancs prolétarisés dans la vingtaine ou début de la trentaine. Sa texture émotive est une mélancolie généralisée explicitement issue de l'impacte du capital sur la vie de tous les jours.

Animated Sound and Beyond

During the 1930s a holistic audiovisual approach to film animation was developed that is unlike any other technique used in the production of motion pictures. Labeled by Canadian Film Board animator Norman McLaren, this unique but little known method of conjugating sound and image has been explored and developed throughout most of the early and mid-twentieth century. In recent years, with the arrival of new technologies, animated sound has been expanded upon by a new breed of artists who are using digitally based forms of dynamic media. These new works, like those produced earlier on film, have a Fine Arts lineage and are not, strictly speaking, a product of the motion picture or television industries. Rather, they are independent productions that project a highly personal sense of vision. Indeed, the unified audiovisual structures that are currently driving these works are not only devoid of big studio formulas and cliches, but are providing fresh technical and artistic alternatives that could very well broaden the way we think about art, entertainment, and the communication environment that lies ahead.

Ghostbusted! Popular Perceptions of English-Canadian Cinema

L'étude du cinéma canadien s'attarde souvent à la question de la marginalité: la marginalité découle-t-elle des circonstances du cinéma canadien anglais ou notre cinéma est-il prédisposé à la marginalité en réaction contre le cinéma hollywoodien? La marginalité devient ainsi le facteur déterminant de ce qui est véritablement « canadien ». L'analyse comparative de la promotion et de la critique de Ghostbusters et Videodrome suggère que la perception et la caractérisation du cinéma canadien anglais sont profondément enracinées dans un cadre idéologique qui réifie cette marginalisation.

You Should Know Something—Anything—About Moviethis Movie. You Paid for it

Les nouvelles politiques du gouvernement canadien à la fin des années 70 ont mené â une remarquable croissance de production cinématographique souvent appelée le « Boom des abris fiscaux ». Selon le mythe populaire, les films réalisés pendant cette période sont tous des navets á l'américaine. L’auteur de cet article remet en question cette perspective en suggérant que le nationalisme culturel des critiques et historiens a oblitéré un bon nombre de films qui méritaient notre attention. Dénonçant les ramifications limitatives de la position critique établie, l'auteur analyse trois films de l'époque—Suzanne, Yesterday et Hot Dogs—qoi, loin d'être des dones hollywoodiens, traitent allégoriquement des rapports Québec-Canada.

Revisions: A Special Issue In Honour of Pater Morris

If history can be said not to exist before it has been written, then Canadian cinema may have had a past, but English-language history of it hardly existed before Peter Morris. Certainly such journalists and chroniclers as Hye Bossin and Gerald Pratley reminded interested readers and listeners of how Canada had made movies, but they were writing first drafts, or maybe first revised drafts. In 1960s and 1970s, when Canada was vividly realizing that actually having a contemporary cinema might be possible, Peter Morris was also introducing notion that past might be worth excavating for scrutiny, and something from which present might learn. The small-but-vital magazine introduced in centennial year, Take One, featured in its first issue not only secretary of State judy LaMarsh on Canadian Film Development Corporation and an interview with Alfred Hitchcock, but also, between these two forces of cinema, Morris's initial revelations about career of Canada's First Movie Mogul, Ernest Shipman. As curator of newly-established Canadian Film Archives, Morris supervised collection of primary resources that made research and writing of Canadian film history possible. From 1970s, he produced reference tools and further recoveries of cinematic heritage, culminating in twin achievements of feature-length documentary, Dreamland: A History of Canadian Cinema 1895-1939, for which Morris directed research, and his own book, landmark Embattled Shadows. The history he outlined had predictable contours, but it also had distinctive shapes. From beginnings foreign interests, rather than Canadians themselves, produced images of Canada. State-sponsored organizations took lead in producing movies for Canadians by Canadians. Feature films were a big-time, high-risk enterprise, and no one had capital to sustain a stable operation. (Just ask Ten Percent Ernie Shipman.) Yet movies from United States and all over were circulated and shown in Canada, sometimes by Canadians and sometimes not, and this too forms part of profile of Canadian cinema. As Peter Steven and Paul Moore both indicate in their contributions to this issue, this is part of what made Morris's history of Canadian cinema-one that included not only production and films themselves, but also other components of integrated motion-picture industries, distribution and exhibition-distinctive and rewarding, and rewarding of subsequent revision. Throughout his career as a historian, critical analyst, archivist, editor, writer, and instructor, Peter Morris has significantly influenced discussion of Canadian cinema. he has incisively outlined ways we might understand or reinterpret movies and media in Canada, frequently concentrating on key moments, whether to establish a new understanding or challenge an orthodoxy. Embattled Shadows stands as, in one literal sense, a starting point, but Morris also was among first to look deeply and critically into thought of John Grierson, whose policy recommendations of 1930s and 1940s had a profound impact on Canadian film for years to come. From fundamental questions about shared technical standards in North America, he provocatively investigated Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's innovation of television in Canada. And if 1964 was, in Peter Harcourt's phrase, the of a beginning for a more sustained featurelength, narrative cinema in Canada, Morris's examinations of Canadian film culture in 1960s have revealed priorities that persist to this day. From 1970s, too, Morris has influenced direction of Canadian film studies in his academic appointments, notably at University of Ottawa, Queen's University, and, from 1988, York University. Some of best minds of Canadian cinema studies have studied with him. One other way in which he marked out a path of influence was establishment of this journal, for which he lobbied vigorously, and which he edited during its fledgling years. …

Nathan L. Nathanson Introduces Canadian Odeon: Producing National Competition in Elim Exhibition

À partir de documents publiés dans les journaux locaux ainsi que dans tes revues professionnelles comme le Canadian Moving Picture Digest et le Canadian Film Weekly, l'auteur examine la carrière de Nathan L. Nathanson et son rôle crucial dans la création du Canadian Odeon en 1941, Les affiliations et l'identité même du Canadian Odeon changeaient selon le lieu géographique des sous-chaînes implantées â Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal et ailleurs au pays. En s'attardant plus à la construction des salles de cinéma qu'aux questions de distribution, cette étude dépasse les simples paramétres du control qu'a toujours exercé Hollywood sur le cinéma canadien pour offrir un cadre de recherche permettant de comprendre la spécificité locale de l’enthousiasme des foules pour te cinéma.

WILDERNESS AND THE CANADIAN MIND

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES TRADITIONALLY TAKE one of several forms.1 Some review the activities and achievements of the Association or Society over the period of office. This approach would not be difficult here, given the outstanding contributions which our great Association continues to make to the field in Canadian Studies. On the other hand, Presidents of Societies involved with Science or Technology may take the opportunity to present the results of their own latest researches within the discipline. Alternatively Presidential addresses might take a more philosophical and reflective view of the development of their particular subject over the President's career in it. There is clearly no single prescription, and indeed Presidents of bacs have often been Presidents of other Associations and Societies in their own specialist disciplines, and have usually adopted different styles when addressing different bodies. The present Address builds on some elements from each of these diverse approaches. The central concern is with Wilderness, which is a tangible natural entity, existing out there in the real world. It can be visited, and evokes in visitors a range of feelings from awe to fear. Yet wilderness is much more than this; it is also a perception, a concept, and an inspiration. Or rather, it forms a complex of perceptions, concepts and inspirations, and leads Warecki (2000) to note: 'Wilderness ideas are a tangle of unresolved contradictions.' The author's long-standing commitment to Canada has been through the discipline of geography, specifically in the sub-disciplines of physical geography (qua environmental studies/sciences) and natural resource studies. It is a journey which has visited the forests of Vancouver Island, the alpine meadows of Kananaskis, the prairie farms of Saskatchewan, the Northern tundras of Rankin Inlet, the Mackenzie Valley and Devon Island, and the farms of southern Ontario and Quebec. However, engagement over the years with annual conferences, colloquia, forums and visiting lectures on Canada, continue to reinforce the conviction that the strength of Canadian Studies lies in its multidisciplinary format. This is the attraction for both faculty and for students. The two academic institutions with which the writer is associated in Yorkshire, namely the University of Leeds and York St John College, both offer multidisciplinary courses on Canada which recruit very well. A major part of their appeal lies in the multidisciplinarity of the courses. Although both are convened by geographers and registered as geography courses, each covers material from history, literature and culture, as one would expect from their subtitle - Environment, People, Culture. Perceptions of Canada among non-Canadians have been polled recently among both faculty and students, including those who have completed the Canadian Studies course in the University of Leeds, and some who have not. The results are revealing of the major 'strengths' or positive values by which Canada is viewed by outsiders, and are shown in Figure 1. The three major images point to multiculturalism and the way in which Canadian society deals with it, to the environment and its beauty and conservation, and to Canada's role in the world. Thus environment and wilderness rank among the 'big issues'. Some readers will be disappointed that their own personal love ranks lower in the list, or not at all; the writer's predilection for Oscar Peterson and Angela Hewitt will be mirrored in many hearts and minds, but not unfortunately in the 'league tables'! What is wilderness? The cultural identity of Canada owes much to 'the wilderness.' It is a central theme in Canadian cinema, conservation, history, literature, livelihoods, music, painting and recreation. Popular images of wilderness abound on television screens, in newspaper supplements, and in travel brochures. Words to express such images might be: 'cold', 'forbidding', 'home of wild animals', 'magnificent sights', 'mysterious', and 'unknown'. …

The Prospects of a North American Project

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, the governments of Canada and the United States were into the final weeks of fevered negotiations on the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Proponents claimed the dawning of a new age of economic prosperity; detractors bemoaned the end of Canadian sovereignty. Five years later, the three governments of North America, including Mexico, placed the last touches on what was to become the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In August of this year, the Couchiching Institute decided it was time to bring together some of the founders, detractors and commentators of the day, as well as current leaders in government, academia and the private sector, to assess the impact of those agreements on the North American community. More importantly, participants in the conference Continentalism: What's in it for us? examined the likelihood of closer and greater continental integration and the impact that it would bring to North American life.The Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs has hosted an annual conference on domestic and international public policy issues for 72 years. Born in the social and economic flux of the early 1930s, Couchiching brings together decision-makers from the public and private sectors, representatives of the academic, cultural and not-for-profit sectors, students, and interested Canadians from every walk of life to engage in spirited debate, constructive dialogue, and no-holds-barred argument over the direction and focus of public policy. Unlike some other prestigious conferences, Couchiching's doors are open to anyone who wishes to register. Couchiching's objective is to create in Canada a force for greater citizen engagement in public discourse. Couchiching reaches out to Canadians through its annual conference, its televised proceedings, year-round events in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and its Web site, encouraging Canadians to become engaged in issues of critical importance to their lives, to the social and political fabric of the country and of the wider international community. Each summer, more than 250 delegates spend four days at a YMCA conference centre just outside of Orillia, on the shores of Lake Couchiching, to listen, engage and debate. Canada is a richer place for it.The summer of 2003 brought together speakers and delegates from Canada, the United States and Mexico to look at the issue of North American continental integration. Canadian perspectives were given by David Dodge, Governor of the Bank of Canada; well-known author and nationalist Mel Hurtig; Hassan Yussuff of the Canadian Labour Congress; Chief Economist Renee St-Jacques of Industry Canada; the Honourable Michael Wilson; Judith Maxwell of the Canadian Policy Research Networks; writer and retired journalist Anthony Westell; the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy; Elizabeth McDonald of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association; Ron Atkey Senior Partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP; Alan Nymark, former deputy minister of Environment Canada; and the Honourable Bill Graham. American speakers included Robert Fauver, former G7/G8 sherpa; Stephen Kelly, Deputy Head of Mission at the US Embassy in Ottawa; Anthony DePalma of the New York Times; Stephen Handelman of Time magazine; Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr.; Edward Asner (who was most entertaining and needed little introduction); and former Undersecretary of State Frank Loy. Finally, we heard insight and perspective on Mexico from Ambassador Andres Rozental, President of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations; Undersecretary for Economic Relations and International Cooperation Dr. …