Good old Canada!
Sir: Taki, in his usual inconsequential fashion, chooses this week (9 May) to sneer at Canada, in a piece purporting to expose the character defects of J. K. Galbraith. The connection is, to say the least, tenuous: about the only thing properly Canadian about Galbraith is the fact that he was born on a farm in south-western Ontario.
Disappeared from the headlines? Taki has either forgotten, or never knew, that the country was quite recently and very prominently in the headlines in the United States, when the Canadian Ambassador in Teheran and members of his staff, at colossal personal risk, smuggled six American diplomats out ot that beleaguered city at one of the peaks of the hostage crisis — an event described by Cyrus Vance as 'an act of incredible valour and friendship which shall never forget'. As for Trudeau, just about every accusation in the book has been flung at him, many of them with complete justification; but, as anyone with even the In her letter on teaching methods, published on 9 May, Miss Mary Lynch wrote: 'Some years ago primary school teachers were advised not to teach the alphabet because pupils can learn to read without knowing the order of the letters. As you observe, without the alphabet they cannot consult the dictionary . 2 We regret that, due to a printer's error, the words in italics were omitted. thinnest knowledge of Canada and its politics will confirm, one thing Trudeau is not,. and that is tori ng'.
Patrick Marston 40 Walmer Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Sir: Taki is right in thinking that J.K. Galbraith originally came from Canada (9 i May). Indeed he s an alumnus of the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. However, it seems a little hard to blame him on Canada since he has been a US citizen since 1937.
And what has your correspondent got against Canada apart from the fact that he knows nothing about it? It's actually rather an agreeable place: food excellent, politics highly diverting, architecture first-rate.
Tim Heald 305 Sheen Road, Richmond, Surrey
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