Good morning, and welcome to the weekend.
Grab your cup of coffee or tea, and sit down with a selection of this week’s great reads from The Globe and Mail. In this issue, James Griffiths examines the life and leadership of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. From an outside glance, Modi has branded himself a strong leader with a growing authoritarian streak and a charming facade, popular in India. But who was he before he entered the political arena? Griffiths starts from the beginning in the humble city of Vadnagar, where Modi grew up poor.
Shannon Proudfoot analyzes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to Parliamentarians during his visit to Canada. And Lindsay Jones writes about Newfoundland and Labrador’s largest ongoing mystery: the gigantic squids that live there.
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The rise of Narendra Modi, the shrewd leader shaping India in his own strongman image
Narendra Modi delivers his speech during a mass rally in Kolkata on Feb. 5, 2014.DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images
Shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected, he promised his military would “barge into the homes of terrorists and kill them,” vowing to hunt down those who threatened Indians’ safety “even if they hide in the bowels of the earth.” Years later, Modi has long cultivated an image as a Hindu strongman, reasserting India’s global role after centuries of dominance by first Muslim rulers and then the British. James Griffiths chronicles his ascension to power, and why his party remains the firm favourite to win next year’s general election.
In appeal to House of Commons, Zelensky invokes Canada’s Ukrainian diaspora
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers a speech in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Sept. 22, 2023.SEAN KILPATRICK/AFP/Getty Images
Volodymyr Zelensky “is a remarkable communicator, assisted by incredibly skilled speechwriters,” writes Shannon Proudfoot after the Ukrainian President’s address to the House of Commons in Ottawa during his first official visit to Canada since the war began. “His big set-piece international speeches over the past 18 months have been finely calibrated, always designed to make his audience – the British Parliament, United Nations, U.S. Congress, the House of Commons, among others – feel directly and implacably entangled in Ukraine’s fight.”
A life-sized replica of the 55-foot long giant squid, designed by Canadian artist Don Foulds that took five months to complete, is now a permanent fixture at the Giant Squid Interpretation Site at GLover's Harbor, Newfoundland on August 14, 2023.Johnny C.Y. Lam/The Globe and Mail
Giant squid have gone from myth to history in outport Newfoundland, springing onto the world stage in October of 1873. The creature, immortalized in legend, made the leap from feared Kraken to Architeuthis dux in the rugged seas of the province in the 1870s. Even today, little is known about the biology, migration and reproduction of the elusive giant squid, which has since shaped the lore of the local people and the island’s collective mythology. Lindsay Jones reports on the mysterious mollusk taking the province by storm and speaks to Derwin Roberts, a fisherman who found the last giant squid in 2004.
Ian Leslie Edwards, CEO of SNC Lavalin, in Castel Rigone, Umbria, Italy, on Sept., 30, 2023.Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail
Ian Edwards has a vision for AtkinsRéalis’s future. And he believes the revival of the nuclear industry could turn the Canadian engineering company, which also owns Candu nuclear technology, into a global energy force. Will that mean AtkinsRéalis will endeavour to become a nuclear-focused company? Possibly. But AtkinsRéalis is so much more than nukes. It is roads, bridges, rail, airports, renewable energy, ports, hospitals, water- and waste-treatment plants, even museum space and keeping pilot-training gliders airborne for the UK Ministry of Defence. As Eric Reguly reports, it just no longer wants to be all things to all clients in all countries.
Opinion: Out of service: How do we solve a problem like Canada’s creaking bureaucratic systems?
Illustration by Brandon CeliThe Globe and Mail
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated already overstretched systems, leading to long wait times, overcrowded emergency rooms, staffing issues, strikes, physician burnout and thousands of backlogged appointments that are causing our health care systems to crack under the strain. Like other governments, Canada has tried to bridge system and service gaps with ministerial task forces, senior-level restructuring and the pumping of additional funding to apply a Band-Aid to the problem. Chris Clearfield asks: if the institutions that govern how we function as a society are showing signs of wear and tear – with many of them no longer fit for purpose – how vulnerable are we? And what can be done?
Despite decades of adversity, Muslims have become an integral part of the West
Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, is shown during an event in Ottawa, on Sept. 28, 2022.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Post-9/11, Muslims became defensive: “I am a Muslim but not a bin Laden Muslim,” “ … not a fundamentalist Muslim,” “ … not a Wahhabi Muslim,” but rather, “a moderate Muslim,” or “a Sufi Muslim.” But as Islamophobia intensified, many Muslims gravitated to their faith. Their ethnic, linguistic, racial, cultural, nationalist and doctrinal affiliations began to take a back seat to their pan-Islamic identity. Or, pan-Muslim identity, in the case of the nonobservant. Years later, Haroon Siddiqui writes that post-9/11 sentiments are still alive and well for Muslims in the West, who are emerging as a strong and integral part of the mainstream as a result.
As Laurent Duvernay-Tardif prepares to retire, he shows us what the ideal athlete looks like
Kansas City Chiefs' Laurent Duvernay-Tardif is introduced before the NFL AFC Championship football game against the Tennessee Titans on Jan. 19, 2020, in Kansas City, Mo.Jeff Roberson/The Associated Press
This week marked the retirement of Canadian football player and Super Bowl champion Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. It also signals the end of what Cathal Kelly calls the greatest athletic career ever in Duvernay-Tardif, who famously became an orderly in a Quebec care home during the worst of the pandemic, leveraging the possibilities of sport to their absolute maximum. According to Kelly, Duvernay-Tardiff should be a mission statement for what sports should be in countries that are lucky enough to have money to spend on its hobbies – fewer millionaires, and more doctors.
In Mirvish’s new pop-musical Six, Henry VIII’s wives tell their side of history
The cast of the Toronto production of Six, left to right, Maggie Lacasse, Elysia Cruz, Jaz Robinson, Julia Pulo, Krystal Hernández, Lauren Mariasoosay.Joan Marcus/Handout
Henry VIII’s wives have been known for centuries by how they died, their inability to bear sons, their alleged unattractiveness or their rumoured unfaithfulness. But Six, a pop-concert-style musical, will offer them the chance to tell their sides of the story in a retelling of their lives – and fates. From Catherine of Aragon through to Henry’s final wife and sole survivor, Catherine Parr, Six threads the women’s stories together through their mutually difficult experiences with their shared husband, and portrays them as the heroes of their own stories – not victims in Henry’s. Mira Miller reports on the anticipated production, which will open at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto on Sept. 23.
Bonus: Which Canadian artist was awarded the 2023 Polaris Music Prize?
a. Feist
b. Debby Friday
c. Alvvays
d. Dan Mangan
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