Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice director Paul Mazursky dies

Paul Mazursky, the innovative and versatile director who showed the absurdity of modern life in such movies as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and An Unmarried Woman, has died. He was 84.

The filmmaker died of pulmonary cardiac arrest Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Nancy Willen, Mazursky's spokeswoman.

As a talented writer, actor and producer as well as director, Mazursky racked up five Oscar nominations, mostly for writing such films as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Enemies, A Love Story. He also created memorable roles for the likes of Art Carney, Jill Clayburgh and Natalie Wood. Later in life, Mazursky acted in in such TV series as The Sopranos, 'Curb Your Enthusiasm and Once and Again.

Wanted to be an actor

He was born Irwin Mazursky in 1930, in Brooklyn. During the Depression, the family lived on the small wages his father earned as a laborer for the federal Works Progress Administration. When Mazursky graduated from high school, he changed his name from Irwin, which he hated, to Paul.

'For me absurdity is just around the corner. I see it all the time'- director Paul Mazursky

Mazursky had always dreamed of becoming an actor, and he appeared in student plays at Brooklyn College. With the school's permission, he flew to California to act in Fear and Desire, director Stanley Kubrick's first film. When he received bad reviews, Mazursky buckled down to studying acting with a variety of teachers, including Lee Strasberg. But he found the most success behind the camera.

Mazursky and his writing partner Larry Tucker first triumphed with the script for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a clever takeoff on the emerging sexual freedom of the late 1960s. Warner Bros. turned it down for fear of its racy subject, but Columbia scooped it up and accepted Mazursky's proviso that he would direct the film.

Donald Sutherland stars

Natalie Wood and Robert Culp portrayed Carol and Bob, a well-off couple who seek open lives. Dyan Cannon and Elliott Gould played Alice and Ted, who hesitate but acquiesce in Carol and Bob's invitation to wife-swapping. In the end, the quartet bow to the old morality and the wife-swapping remains unconsummated.

Paul Mazursky is shown as a cast member on the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of several acting gigs he had recently. (HBO/Associated Press)

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was a success at the box office and set up Mazursky as rising director of the new school. His next film was Alex in Wonderland, which was also co-written by Tucker, starring Donald Sutherland as a young director who, like Mazursky, had a hit first movie and mulled about what to make for his second. It was scorned by critics.

​Mazursky ended his relationship with Tucker and spent six months with his family in Rome and London, recovering from his failure. He later returned to filmmaking, continuing with his socially adept films, many of which he wrote, produced, directed and acted in, including the autobiographical Next Stop, Greenwich Village, An Unmarried Woman, Tempest, Moscow on the Hudson and Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

"I know there are some wonderful filmmakers with really tragic views of life," Mazursky told The Atlantic magazine. "But for me absurdity is just around the corner. I see it all the time."

4 Oscar nominations

Over the years, he was nominated four times for screenplay Oscars: 1969's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1974's Harry and Tonto, 1978's An Unmarried Woman and 1989's Enemies, A Love Story. As a co-producer, he also shared in the best picture nomination for An Unmarried Woman.

Mazursky returned to semi-autobiography in his poorly received 1993 film The Pickle, about an aging movie director grappling with professional and personal stumbles. In an Associated Press interview, he objected to the notion someone had expressed to him that the film's hero, played by Danny Aiello, was despicable.

"Every director I've met who was involved with a movie is self-centred," he said. "Directors are not walking around like Mahatma Gandhi saying, `Oh, don't worry about the movie.' They're worried about their movie! They're crazed!"

He is survived by his wife, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchild.

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Rick Mercer says Order of Canada a 'tremendous honour'

Rick Mercer said today it's a "tremendous honour" to be named to the Order of Canada, and the popular comedian at first didn't believe it when Gov. Gen. David Johnston rang his cellphone to tell him the news. 

"'He just said it's 'David Johnson here,'" said Mercer in an interview Wednesday with CBC Radio's Metro Morning. "I'm not used to getting calls from the Governor General, so I thought it was [actor] C. David Johnson who played Chuck Tchobanian on Street Legal and was doing a show somewhere and decided to chat.

"I think I said, 'Thank you very much.' I'm humbled. I was so taken aback, it's not something I had anticipated. I just stumbled and said thank you. A lot. Over and over again."

Mercer is known for his wildly popular rants on his CBC show Rick Mercer Report. He was named to the Order for his charity work and "his ability to inspire and challenge Canadians through humour."

Many of political rants have become YouTube sensations.

"I'm very happy with the work that I get to do," said Mercer. "Travelling around the country and showing off the country to different parts of the country. The fact that something like this could happen was just a tremendous honour. I was deeply flattered. I was very moved."

Galloway also asked Mercer his take on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who returned to work this week after two months in rehab.

"I've kind of ignored Rob Ford," he said. "We never talked about Rob Ford much on the show because he was a municipal politician and you know, it's kind of like do the people in Toronto care what the mayor of Vancouver is up to and vice versa?

"But then overnight he became a global phenomenon and I personally didn't talk about him very much because I was embarrassed for my city. So I just avoided the subject honestly. I let the late-night comedians in the United States take care of that."

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Robin Williams continues 12-step sobriety program

Actor to "focus on his continued commitment" after 2006 relapse

The Associated Press Posted: Jul 02, 2014 10:47 AM ET Last Updated: Jul 02, 2014 10:47 AM ET

Robin Williams is reconnecting with the 12-step program during a brief stay at a Minnesota facility.

A spokeswoman for the 62-year-old actor-comedian says Williams planned the visit as a respite to recharge after more than 18 straight months of work.

Publicist Mara Buxbaum said Williams is "taking the opportunity to fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment, of which he remains extremely proud."

Williams has been open about the challenges of maintaining sobriety. He sought treatment in 2006 when he relapsed and returned to drinking after 20 years.

Williams stars in the CBS series The Crazy Ones and the film The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, which was released in May. He has several other projects in the works, including another installment of Night at the Museum.

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Amanda Bynes bong-tossing case dismissed

Actress was to stay out of trouble for 6 months and meet court demands

Thomson Reuters Posted: Jul 02, 2014 10:54 AM ET Last Updated: Jul 02, 2014 10:54 AM ET

A case against American actress Amanda Bynes for possessing marijuana and throwing a bong out an apartment window last year was dismissed on Monday by a New York judge.

The prosecution and her lawyer Gerald Shargel agreed earlier this year that the case should be resolved by an adjournment and possible dismissal if she stayed out of trouble for six months and met court demands.

"We demonstrated today that she was in compliance and as we expected the case was dismissed and sealed," Shargel said. The 28-year-old actress did not appear at the hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court.

Bynes was arrested last May after an employee of the New York City building in which she has an apartment reported to police that someone had been smoking marijuana in the building.

She was taken into custody after she threw a bong, which is used for smoking marijuana, out a window of the 36th floor apartment.

Bynes gained fame as the 13-year-old star of The Amanda Show on the Nickelodeon TV network and in the 2010 film "Easy A.

Earlier this year she pleaded no contest to a 2012 misdemeanour charge of reckless driving with an alcohol component in Los Angeles. She was given three years' probation and told to enter an alcohol education programs for three months.

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Cree film hopes to attract tourists to remote destination

Cree in the James Bay region of Quebec are hoping a long-forgotten story of an Inuit settlement in their midst will bring eco-tourists to the region.

The Cree Outfitting and Tourism Association (COTA) has produced a documentary with filmmaker Louise Abbott, called Nunnaluk: The Forgotten Story.

In the late 1920's, a small group of Inuit settled in Nunnaluk, a community on the Twin and Cape Hope Islands in James Bay.  

In 1960, the federal government told the community they had to leave Nunnaluk and move north to Great Whale River. Stewart says it was part of the government's policy to "centralize" aboriginal people into permanent communities.

Abandoned in the 1960's, one of the only two people believed to still remember living on the islands is Minnie Aodla Freeman.

Freeman was born on the Cape Hope Islands in 1937 and grew up immersed in the traditional Inuit culture. She is now living in Edmonton and is featured in the documentary. "You know where you were born. Where you grow up ...where you're footprints are...you don't forget it. It's down there. Cape Hope will always be there, " she said

The islands are part of Nunavut, but are geographically closer to Eeyou Istchee.   

The Inuit likely moved there long ago because they wanted to get closer to the Old Factory trading post near Wemindji. The move made it the most southerly Inuit community in Canada.

"It's a story that has not been told and that should be told, it should be seen by many," said Dorothy Stewart, product development officer with COTA. "It's a history that we can not forget. It also shows...the coast is so beautiful."

In the late 1920's, a small group of Inuit settled in Nunnaluk, a community on the Twin and Cape Hope Islands in James Bay. (Niels Jensen)

The area was rich in marine life, such as beluga whales, allowing the community to continue their typical hunting.

They hope that Nunnaluk: The Forgotten Story will be part of a much larger eco-tourism development endeavor called the Coastal Route Project. A large focal point of the plan revolves around cultural tourism, aimed at emphasizing the special character of local people. 

Stewart says the documentary also talks of the cultural exchange between the Inuit of Nunnaluk and their closest neighbours, the Cree of James Bay.

"It needs to be seen, what the coast was like, what attracted to them and also the sharing (with) the of the many of the Cree people that frequented the islands and  knew of their presence. So we need to see this and many people need to see this story."

The area was rich in marine life, such as beluga whales, allowing the community to continue their typical hunting. (Louise Abbott)

According to Stewart, the Inuit presence in James Bay is largely associated with the name of one man, George Weetaltuk. He was a respected Inuit leader and a Hudson's Bay Company pilot, boat builder and artist.  Weetaltuk moved himself and his extended family to the island in the early 1930's.

"[The documentary] also shows where their comfort was, the Weetaltuk family and all those generations that lived on those islands and where their livelihood  was...it was so abundant with wildlife and you can see that," said Stewart.

It was on this island that Weetaltuk built the renowned Cape Hope Island canoes, which are still being made by his relatives today in Great Whale, Quebec.

Nunnaluk: The Forgotten Story is currently touring the communities of James Bay.

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Monty Python's farewell show has plenty of antics

The members of Monty Python are aiming to move like Mick Jagger in their live farewell shows.

The five surviving Pythons have reunited for 10 dates at London's 15,000-seat O2 Arena starting tomorrow. It's a fast-paced comic revue that requires the septuagenarian comedians to act, sing, dance and pull off rapid-fire costume changes.

Michael Palin says the group drew inspiration from the Rolling Stones frontman, still gyrating at 70.

"A kind of madness takes over," Palin told a news conference on Monday. "You just leap about at a certain point."

From left, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones still yuk it up when they are together. (Getty Images)

Fellow comedian Terry Gilliam added: "Our version of Brown Sugar is far better."

It turns out the Stones singer is one of Monty Python's many famous fans. Jagger has filmed a promo clip for the show, in which he asks wryly why audiences would want to watch a "bunch of wrinkly old men trying to relive their youth."

It has been 40 years since Monty Python's Flying Circus was on television, but the anarchic troupe remains a phenomenon.

Physicist Stephen Hawking — another Python aficionado — is due to make a guest appearance in the show. Journalists at Monday's news conference came from Britain, Canada, the U.S., Australia and beyond. A Spaniard asked about the Spanish Inquisition sketch; a Finn wanted to know "How do you feel about Finland?"

(Answer: Monty Python wrote a song about the Nordic nation. It's in the show).

Lumberjacks and dead parrot

Eric Idle, who has done much of the work assembling the evening, said fans can expect old favourites, back-catalogue gems and a few new twists.

"Our motto has been: Leave them wanting less," he said.

As well as Idle, Palin, Gilliam, John Cleese and Terry Jones, the show features a dance troupe, singing lumberjacks, Spam-loving Vikings, a dead parrot and much more. It is, unsurprisingly, a bit naughty.

"I'm happy and proud to say it's actually rather filthy," Idle said.

The troupe last performed together at the Hollywood Bowl in 1980. Times, and the Pythons, have changed since then.

"All the audience was smoking marijuana," Jones said. "When John and I went into the audience we came out pretty high."

Now, Palin said, "we've got some Viagra in our dressing room."

Active solo careers

Each member of the group has adopted his own style of preparation for the 10-night stand, which ends July 20 with a show beamed to 1,800 movie theatres around the world.

"I've not been drinking for a week," said Jones. Idle has been hiking and running. Cleese has opted for "sleeping more," while Palin is enduring "a punishing schedule of lying down and watching television."

This may be the end of the road for Monty Python, but none of its members plans to retire. Upcoming projects include a memoir from Cleese and a movie by Jones based on composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.

"I think of it as a pre-posthumous memorial service," Gilliam said of the last bow.

"Preposterous?" Palin chipped in. The Pythons still slip seamlessly into affectionate banter when they are together.

Mortality is just another thing to be laughed at. The show is titled One Down, Five to Go in honour of the sixth Python, Graham Chapman. He died of cancer in 1989 but will appear onscreen.

"We'll just carry on working till we drop," Palin said. "If one of us has died, the rest of us will bring in more money."

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Peter Doig’s Toronto rainbow tunnel painting sells for $15.5M

A Peter Doig painting of Toronto's landmark rainbow tunnel has sold at auction in London for almost $15.5 million, the most anyone has ever paid for one of the Scottish painter's work.  

Sotheby's did not say who bought the painting, Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror), which captures the colourful underpass near the Don Valley Parkway as seen through an open car window.

The oil painting's price tag — officially $15,489,277.26 when converted into Canadian dollars — makes Doig, who was raised in Canada, one of the world's most expensive living artists.

Peter Doig's 1999 painting Country-rock (wing-mirror) fetched $15.5 million at auction on Monday, the most anyone has ever paid for a work by the Scottish-born, Canadian-raised artist. (Sotheby's)

Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror) was part of a series of three paintings of Toronto's rainbow tunnel, which together make up the most desirable pieces of Doig's work, Sotheby's said in a news release. The 195 by 270 centimetre landscape had been in the same American collection since it was painted in London in 1999.

"For lovers of Doig, this work enjoys a supreme status," said Cheyenne Westphal, co-global head of contemporary art at Sotheby's.

"We were thrilled to see it set a new benchmark price for the artist this evening, affirming yet again the market's huge appreciation for his work."

Doig, whom the National Gallery of Canada lauds for his "organic and often spontaneous" style that's "somewhere between reality and imagination," has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at the Tate Britain and other galleries.  

His first major exhibition in Canada was in 2001. He now lives and works in Trinidad.

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The Who to mark 50-year anniversary with 'long goodbye'

Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are taking The Who on the road for a series of shows in the U.K. celebrating the band's 50th anniversary and bidding farewell to long-time fans.

Daltrey referred to the tour as the start of the Who's "long goodbye" during a news conference Monday at Ronnie Scott's jazz bar in London.

'We can't go on touring forever, but we don't know how long we will go on touring. It's an open-ended kind of thing. But it will have a finality to it'- Roger Daltrey

"Well, it just has to be really," the 70-year-old Daltrey said. "We can't go on touring forever, but we don't know how long we will go on touring. It's an open-ended kind of thing. But it will have a finality to it. We'll stop touring, I'm sure, before we stop playing as a band. It's just like Eric Clapton's just said: It's the grind of the road, it's incredibly tough on the body this age. The singing is free; you pay us for the bloody travelling. "

The Who Hits 50 tour will be a retrospective of the band's career, including best-known hits such as Who Are You, Pinball Wizard and Baba O'Riley. It is set to begin Nov. 30 in Glasgow, Scotland, and wind up in London on Dec. 17. Tickets go on sale Friday in the U.K.

Monday's news doesn't necessarily mean Townshend and Daltrey are backing away from the band. Townshend said he's written three new songs and hopes to record them with Daltrey.

"I thought I must send them to Rog. ... Happily he likes them," the 69-year-old Townshend said.

The Who hasn't issued new music since 2006's Endless Wire, its first release in 24 years.

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Canadian superhero Johnny Canuck is back in reprint of 1940s comic

A Canadian comic book hero used as a morale booster during the Second World War could soon return to print – if he gets a boost of his own.

Johnny Canuck, a Second World War Canadian comic book hero who in one issue fought Adolf Hitler in hand-to-hand combat, has been silent for decades. But now Toronto archivist and publisher Rachel Richey has obtained the rights to reprint the collection of classic comics for the first time.

Richey is launching a crowdfunding campaign in the hopes of resurrecting Johnny Canuck.

The character appeared in 28 issues of Dime Comics written by Leo Bachle and published from 1941 to 1946. He's a "hero" but not a "superhero" – he doesn't have superpowers. Instead, Johnny Canuck fights using his strength, quick wit and patriotism.

As a teenager, Leo Bachle lied about his age to enlist in the Canadian army, said Robert Pincombe, a Canadian comics historian.

After his age was discovered, Bachle returned to high school in Toronto. The Johnny Canuck character is physically modelled after Bachle, and his teachers and friends were often written into the comics, said Pincombe.

Canadian version of 'Uncle Sam'

"Leo was a kid himself, so he knew what kids wanted to see," Pincombe said. "He wanted to see action, wanted to see clear villains. So he brought all that to the page."

Johnny Canuck was a glorified personification of the Second World War effort, Richey said.

A page from a Johnny Canuck comic book is shown in a handout photo. (Handout - Corus Entertainment/Canadian Press)

"He's a two-fisted, aviator-type character," Pincombe said. "Comics in general rely on caricature in order to make the 'good versus evil' more clear."

As part of the "war at home," the Canadian government restricted American imports of non-essential goods, including comics and pulp novels. This gave Bachle's homegrown hero a market in which to flourish, Pincombe said. The comics cost 10 cents and were a popular source of children's entertainment.

The original Johnny Canuck was a symbolic character from 19th-century political cartoons, a Canadian version of Uncle Sam.

His name has been used and adapted over time, including as the namesake of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team. In the comics and elsewhere, the Johnny Canuck character appears in various ways, said Richey. He might show up as a lumberjack in one story and a soldier in the next. Reintroducing him to the public imagination, she said, creates opportunities for artists to recast him further.

"He's a really adaptable character," Richey said. "And yes, maybe (war) was the situation for him in the forties, and now he can be supplanted into something else that Canadians believe in, or something that is threatening the Canadian way."

Richey has reprinted other comics from the early 1940s. Her latest book, a collaboration with fellow comics publisher Hope Nicholson, is a collection of reprinted comics starring Nelvana of the Northern Lights, a part-Inuit demigoddess who rides into battle on the back of a polar bear.

Wartime propaganda

There's plenty of blatant Canadiana there too, Richey said.

"CBC Radio is featured in one panel," she said. "You just look at (the comic) and you see wolves and trees and landscape."

These black-and-white comic books are entertainment, but they are also historical documents that contain elements of wartime propaganda, she said. In the Johnny Canuck series, modern audiences will find jarringly racist depictions of Japanese characters.

If Johnny Canuck had continued his adventures into the mid-20th century, Richey said, he would have changed with Canadian society.

"Maybe if he was around for those 70 years that he was kind of lost to the depths of the Canadian comics, then he could potentially have changed," she said. "For now we have this image of Johnny Canuck as he was."

Richey raised $50,000 as part of the crowdfunding campaign to reprint Nelvana, and hopes to fund this venture the same way. The Kickstarter campaign for Johnny Canuck will begin Sept. 1.

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Shadeism: Filmmaker looks at discrimination among people of colour

Nayani Thiyagarajah comes from a family taught to flee from the sun.

"For centuries we have hidden from it. It makes us darker. And in my culture, dark ain't lovely," says the Tamil filmmaker in her documentary Shadeism, which is currently finishing production and scheduled to be released in the fall.

Also on The Sunday Edition this week (with guest host Rick MacInnes-Rae):

Eye on ISIS: Paul Rogers, professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University in England, shares his insights on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Documentary - Brand New World: Ira Basen takes us inside the world of brand culture, where corporations want to be your favourite friend as well as your favourite brand.

Women and Drink: The most abused drug in Canada is alcohol, and we tend to think of alcoholism as a male disease. Award-winning journalist Ann Dowsett Johnston lived in the high-stress, pressure-sealed world of the modern woman who wanted to do it all. She turned her life around, then examined the phenomenon of women battling the bottle.

Documentary - Olga the Magnificent: When she was in her 70s, Olga Kotelko decided to take up track and field. In the following two decades, she accumulated countless medals and awards and, along the way, taught us a great deal about the science of aging.

Her film is about a form of discrimination, not by one race against another, but by people of colour against each other.

Back in the 1980s, social scientists identified the tendency as colourism, describing a lower social status due to skin tone. And now, shadeism. The term may be more recent, but the practice continues to afflict the cultures of many people of colour.

In the '80s, I attended a memorial for the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tenn., when a slight mulatto pastor stepped to the microphone.

"Who is this little yellow preacher?" he asked the crowd, implying his skin tone somehow made him inadequate to speak to the legacy of Dr. King. The racial implication didn't seem to shock anyone in the mostly-black audience that night, except me.

In 1926, when blues artist Bessie Smith sang, "I'm as good as any woman in your town / I ain't no high yeller, I'm a deep color of brown," she was reflecting the bitter hierarchy of skin tone imposed by slavery, known as pigmentocracy.

As Ruth Fisher of the Understanding Slavery Initiative told the Guardian newspaper in 2011, "Generally speaking, on plantations, you had what you would call the house slaves and the field slaves. The delineation of shade in that regard would be those who were darker would be in the fields, while those who were fairer or of mixed heritage would be the house slaves.

"Part of it was because of the fear factor; those who were more closely associated with being African, or those who were new to the plantation, would be darker and more resistant than those who were born on the plantation, and therefore considered to be less aggressive, less rowdy."

Raised as a 'light-skinned wonder child'

The 26-year-old Thiyagarajah is from a Sri Lankan family unburdened by the legacy of American slavery, and yet it's arrived at a very similar place.

She was raised from birth as a "light-skinned wonder child," she said during an interview on The Sunday Edition airing this weekend.

"To this day, my family still reminisces about how light I was. But growing up, as I grew darker, I began questioning the notion of light skin being better. What did my family's constant commentary on my skin colour really mean? I began to wonder. If I wasn't light anymore, did that mean I was no longer beautiful?

"This is an issue of beauty, of old ideas that determine what is still beautiful. Of how the colour of our skin has and continues to affect how we view ourselves. This is shadeism."

Her documentary touches on the multi-billion dollar industry that's cropped up around skin-lightening cosmetics, fuelled in part by recent revelations the Cameroon pop singer Dencia is an enthusiastic client of one marketed as "Whitenicious."

It reportedly costs as much as $150 US for 60 ml. But in Asia, where the demand is enormous and such prices are beyond reach, some settle instead for more toxic and harmful chemical bleaches in the quest for a damaging beauty ideal.

Thiyagarajah says she was spurred to make the film after watching shadeism seize a new generation in the form of her four-year-old niece. You see the pair of them on screen as the child expresses her desire to be whiter, like the models in glossy magazines.

Those very magazines periodically inflame and inadvertently illuminate the business of shadeism.   

One of them was said to have lightened the skin of the singer Beyonce for a L'Oreal ad. Actor Gabourey Sidibe got the same treatment from Elle magazine.

In 1994, Time Magazine admitted to darkening the skin of accused murderer O.J. Simpson, supposedly in the name of art, provoking immediate cries of racism.

'You're really lucky to be this black'

But now, there's a public debate about shadeism. At the February gala of Black Women in Hollywood, Lupita N'yongo, the Oscar-winning breakout star of 12 Years a Slave, read a fan letter she'd received from a young girl.

"I think you're really lucky to be this black but yet this successful in Hollywood overnight. I was just about to buy Dencia's Whitenicious cream to lighten my skin when you appeared on the world map and saved me."

"My heart bled a little when I read those words," N'yongo told the audience. "I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw pale skin. I got teased and taunted about my nightshaded skin.

"What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion. For yourself. And for those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart, and enchants the soul."

It may sound fanciful to a four-year-old taught from birth that her own society places a higher value on skin lighter than her own. But that is the barrier Nayani Thiyagarajah is also attempting to tear down.

(Listen to The Sunday Edition's conversation with Nayani Thiyagarajah when Rick MacInnes-Rae guest hosts on CBC Radio 1 on June 29 starting at 9 a.m. Eastern.)

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