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INDIANAPOLIS—The crank that turns the wheel of legend is nostalgia.

During this weekend at the Indianapolis 500, one being widely hailed as a return to form after a long downturn, many are recalling the race of 50 years ago, won by Californian Parnelli Jones.

Car racing in general and old-school Indy in particular have thrived on outlaw reputations. Cheating’s never encouraged, but it’s celebrated with a wink after the fact.

Jones won the race despite a substantial oil leak through much of it. Race officials noticed the leak — a serious hazard — and prepared to black-flag Jones. When the car’s owner, J.C. Agajanian, saw the steward preparing to disqualify his man, he ran over to confront him at the start/finish. In those days, flags were displayed at ground level.

Agajanian argued that the leak was dissipating. It wasn’t. The owner of the car running in second place joined the fray. Agajanian lost the argument, but won the war. The steward tried several times to raise the black flag. In each instance, Agajanian grabbed hold of his arm and prevented him from waving it. This went on for several laps. Eventually, the oil fell below the level of the crack in the external tank and stopped spraying the track. Jones won the race. Agajanian became part of the legend.

It’s sometimes credited to him that flags are now deployed from a crow’s nest above the finish line.

This is what Indy is. It’s not a car race, per se. It’s a collection of stories. It’s Mario Andretti’s charm, A.J. Foyt’s dyspepsia and Emerson Fittipaldi choosing orange juice over milk because he was a gentleman citrus farmer.

After the disastrous split of CART into IRL and Champ Car in 1996, the traditions remained intact. But people stopped caring. NASCAR came up the middle and took hold of the American racing imagination.

The Indy remained a highlight on the calendar, but on the ground it began to fade.

Newmarket native and ESPN analyst Scott Goodyear remains a favourite at the course, in large part because tough luck cost him three victories as a driver.

The Speedway’s canvas is so large, spreading across a century of racing, it has room celebrate its failures just as loudly as its victors. One of the main draws here this weekend is Jigger Sirois, a driver who’s best known for never qualifying for this race. That’s big hearted.

Goodyear’s career straddled the height of open-wheel racing’s American popularity in the early ’90s, and its collapse later in the decade.

“I don’t think I realized at the time of the split how devastating it was to our sport,” Goodyear says. “When it happened, it didn’t cut it down the middle. It shattered it with a hammer.”

Though the warring IRL and Champ Car series reformed into IndyCar in 2008, Goodyear recalls that for years afterward, people would still ask him when the rift would be healed.

That took its toll here in Indianapolis. The race itself has always been near capacity — north of 250,000 spectators. The two best-attended sports events in the U.S. — the Indy and NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 — both take place at the Speedway. But festivities leading up to the race began to fizzle.

In the prime of his career, Goodyear travelled by helicopter to the Speedway in order to avoid the crowds. A couple of years ago, you could drive up to the gate an hour before the start of practice on the penultimate Friday and not hit any traffic. This year, that’s different.

“Now we’re back to needing police escorts,” Goodyear says. “That went away for quite a few years.”

(A helpful note to all past and future attendees: if you’ve sat in traffic on 16th St. for an hour on Carb Day — as we did Friday morning — those police escorts can be purchased. God bless America.)

Like many here, Goodyear can’t put his finger on what has changed. The popularity of the races wrapped around the Indy remains low. A series that once mounted a stiff enough challenge to Formula 1 that the global leader made moves to block it from tracks around the globe, now only competes in two other countries — Brazil and the Honda Indy in Toronto.

In America, it’s still an also-ran to NASCAR. The stock car series averages around 4 million TV viewers a race. No IndyCar event other than the 500 averages much over a million.

Outside its titular hometown, Indy is now Triple-A racing in every sense — in terms of attendance, viewership, sponsorship and the money paid to drivers.

But in the place it matters most, things are charting upward.

“The main thing that is very encouraging is that the product is here,” says Mario Andretti. “There’s depth in the field, and the cars themselves. . . . This series suffered tremendously from politics. Now I think that’s behind us.”

That’s one thing, but it obscures the fact that the competition was always there. It was the perception of quality — lessened by the split and its resultant dilution of the talent — that created a second-class aura.

Formula 1 is a more difficult discipline with a more talented field, but it can also turn into a dreary processional. Out on the track, F1 is about playing defence; Indy is nothing but offence.

But why now and what next? The closest observers are left grasping.

“I don’t know what the change is. I don’t know that we really understand what it is. Did NASCAR understand what it is they were doing, or did it just snowball?” Goodyear wonders. “Is there a big answer? I don’t think so. We don’t need to hit it out of the ballpark. (The series) just needs to be there in the public eye. It can be small, but it needs to be constant.”

That constancy is a ways off. What they have now is this weekend and this legend. What’s required is a small burst of anti-nostalgia. A track steeped in “Do you remember whens?” needs a “Did you see that?” moment. They need new heroes, new losers and above all, new stories.

That’s the point where Goodyear’s figurative snowball — already present, to judge by the surging crowds this week — begins picking up speed.

MORE:Norris McDonald’s auto racing blog

TORONTO STAR

BOSTON—Rosy Spraker was only half a mile from the finish line of her seventh Boston Marathon when the bombs went off. She received her medal later in the mail at her home in Virginia. But she couldn’t bring herself to wear it until Saturday, when she and thousands of other athletes joined victims of the blast to run and walk the last mile of the race.

“Now I feel like I’ve earned my medal,” Spraker said, beaming, after she crossed the Boylston St. finish line, encouraged by a cheering crowd. “I wanted to run for the victims, for freedom, to show the world that nothing is going to stop us.”

“Somebody that thinks that they’re going to stop a marathoner from running doesn’t understand the mentality of a marathoner,” said her husband, Lesley, after he placed the medal around Spraker’s neck.

On April 15, explosions near the finish line killed three people and wounded more than 260.

On Saturday morning, about 3,000 runners and bombing victims gathered in light rain to run the final mile of the world’s oldest annual marathon, said Kathleen McGonagle, spokeswoman for those organizing the event known as OneRun.

OneRun honours victims and emergency workers and allows runners to reclaim the final mile, McGonagle said.

“For the runner that didn’t get the chance to finish the marathon, this is the chance for them to experience the final mile that was taken away from them,” McGonagle said.

For many runners, it was also a chance to heal from the events of that harrowing day.

“It was very emotional to run down this street and see all the people cheering,” said OneRun organizer J. Alain Ferry, who was prevented from completing his ninth consecutive Boston Marathon on April 15 and ran the final mile Saturday.

“There were a lot of tears,” Ferry said, clutching his 2013 marathon bib, with the number 22084. “And I can feel in my throat that there are going to be more. This was a scab for everyone that just was not healing.”

While the event was not a fundraiser, donations from some corporate sponsors covered OneRun operating costs, McGonagle said, and any leftover funds will be sent to a charity set up to benefit bombing victims.

Before the race, the National Anthem was sung by the choir from St. Ann Parish, where 8-year-old victim Martin Richard’s family worshipped.

“It was a beautiful thing,” said an emotional Steve Poirier, of Chelmsford, Mass., who had been running his sixth Boston Marathon when he was turned back last month. “As a runner, you want the chance to finish. Better late than never.”

TORONTO STAR

J.J. Hardy and Danny Valencia each drove in two runs as the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Toronto Blue Jays 6-5 on Saturday.

It was the second win in a row for the Orioles (27-22) over the Blue Jays (20-29) and assured them of at least a split in the four-game series that ends Sunday.

Hardy hit a two-run single in the first, Valencia added a two-run homer in the third and Adam Jones hit a solo homer in the seventh against Toronto knuckleballer R.A. Dickey (4-6) who allowed nine hits and six runs in 6 2/3 innings.

Baltimore’s Freddy Garcia (1-2) allowed nine hits and two earned runs over five innings, including a home run by Emilio Bonifacio, and earned his first win in five starts this season.

Jim Johnson picked up his 15th save of the season, ending a string of three successive blown save opportunities.

Jose Bautista and Adam Lind each had three hits for the Blue Jays before an announced crowd of 35,915 at Rogers Centre.

MORE

The Star’s Blue Jays page

Six key Jays to watch: Griffin

TORONTO STAR

As I walked through the debris left by the tornado that cut through the Oklahoma city of Moore, the shattered boards squished into the dark mud.

As a meteorologist for the Weather Network in Toronto, I’ve chased storms since 2000. During that period, I’ve been through 12 hurricanes, roughly 30 tornadoes and countless thunderstorms.

Why chase storms? There’s no easy answer, but there is something awe-inspiring about standing beneath a natural phenomenon twice the height of Mount Everest slowly spinning across the sky. Some visit the Grand Canyon to experience the wonder of the natural world; I stand under supercell thunderstorms.

My chase partner Jaclyn Whittal (meteorologist and morning show host) has also experienced quite a few tornadoes. The vast majority we’ve seen did no damage, spinning themselves out over fields of newly-planted corn.

But this storm was something we’d feared for many years; a deadly tornado cutting through an urban area.

Our first indication something horrible was happening appeared on the weather radar at 3 p.m. Monday.

A huge tornado “signature” turned directly towards the city. Moments later, the screen showed a distinct “debris ball,” which forms when the radar beam bounces off airborne debris carried by the tornado as it tears apart buildings.

We drove straight to Moore.

We arrived just after dark, as rescue crews moved into the damage path. What we saw made us both go numb.

The light that poured over the shattered landscape of what was once a quiet neighbourhood came from a couple of floodlights hooked up to diesel generators.

Torn curtains and sheets flapped in the wind. Only the chug of the generators echoed across the remains of buildings that looked like they had been put through a kilometre-plus wide blender. It was difficult to tell the debris had been parts of houses without close inspection. Everything was covered in a fine spray of mud and torn grass. We could see only a few people, mostly police, as they inspected the shattered piles for survivors.

Photographs can’t do the scene justice. There’s an odour that permeates the air after a tornado — a blend of pine and mould. It’s a damp smell that you might get in an old cottage. Shattered wood sticks out of mud that was once a front yard.

We spent three days in the storm’s wake, documenting the damage. We saw scenes of bravery and tragedy. But nothing seemed truly real. It was almost as if we were looking at the damage through some sort of video screen.

Jaclyn said the wreckage looked like dollhouses or theatre sets — so fragile you could push them over. For me, the city seemed skewed from reality.

Here, a shattered car lay half-buried in the mud, debris streaming out the way a rock in a stream gathers sand behind it. There, a pristine dollhouse tucked up against a wheel that had been torn from a car. Remnants of people’s lives were strewn everywhere.

The human moments will stay with me forever.

In a strip mall at the heart of the worst damage, a father wept as he described the bravery of his daughter and her friend. The two women ran a daycare. Knowing that they couldn’t get the children out fast enough, they rushed the kids into the bathroom and threw themselves on top of them just before the tornado struck. They used their bodies as shields while the tornado ripped the mall apart.

Every single one of them survived.

On the second day, standing outside the remains of a strip mall in daylight, I heard someone shout “Dino! It’s Dino!”

I turned and saw a young girl picking something out of a pile of wood and brick. I ran to her and in her arms was a small lizard — a bearded dragon. He was barely moving, but there was not a scratch on him.

The girl tucked him into her shirt and wrapped a blanket around the little creature. He had been a medical clinic’s mascot, and while the people there had made it out, he had been left behind. Given what was left of the clinic, no one had held any hope that he might still be alive. And yet there he was: the smallest survivor.

Moore will heal and rebuild. New houses will replace the shattered homes. Cars will be replaced. Strip malls will be reconstructed. Survivors will eventually heal.

Yes, I love chasing storms. But after witnessing Moore’s overwhelming devastation, it will never be quite the same.

TORONTO STAR

In the coming days, a final few brave climbers will attempt to reach the peak of Mount Everest before monsoons blow in and end the 2013 climbing season on the world’s highest mountain.

But most commercial guiding companies are breathing a collective sigh of relief. Nearly all of the hundreds of people who successfully summited Everest during the short annual climbing window are off the mountain and heading home.

If that sigh sounds louder than normal, there’s good cause. This was the first year since 2012’s disastrous Everest season, when 10 people died, including a woman from Toronto, in circumstances that made global headlines.

“We are all very sensitive to this,” says International Mountain Guides co-owner Eric Simonson, referring to Everest’s community of commercial guides and professional climbers.

“Absolutely last year (there were) problems, and I think everyone worked hard this year to try to resolve them.”

A high-altitude brawl in April between veteran climbers and Sherpas generated negative news coverage. But otherwise, the 2013 season was filled with stories of triumph: an 80-year-old Japanese man on Thursday became the oldest person to climb Everest (a record that will fall if his 81-year-old Nepalese rival successfully ascends in the coming days); a few days earlier, a 27-year-old became the first Saudi woman to reach the summit.

According to unofficial but reliable tallies, eight people died on Everest this year. Four were local Sherpas and four were Western climbers. That is, of course, only two fewer fatalities than in 2012.

Alan Arnette, an esteemed Everest blogger, says while all deaths are tragic, the numbers this year are “within the expected range.” Most of the world’s popular mountains see similar tallies, he says.

Veterans agree that the fatality numbers were never the problem in 2012 — it was the systemic problems those deaths exposed, problems that continue today.

For all but the most advanced climbers, scaling the summit of Everest is only possible for a brief window between seasons. All winter, a jet stream blows over the 8,850-metre peak, creating 150 km/h winds. In spring, however, monsoons begin forming in the Bay of Bengal and bend the jet stream off course. After the winds die down, and before the monsoons create a new set of dangers, Everest becomes easier to scale.

That opening almost always occurs mid-May. But the length of window is variable, and in 2012, weather reports indicated it would last only two days. Hundreds of people attempted the climb on the same day, creating long, dangerous waits in low-oxygen conditions.

Some operators believe Everest is overcrowded and that the Nepalese government should limit the number of permits it issues to climb the mountain. But most believe that was not what killed those 10 people in 2012, especially because a similar number died this year, when the window opened for eight consecutive days.

“It wasn’t the weather. It was the irresponsibility of operators,” says Becky Rippel of B.C.-based Peak Freaks, which has been guiding Everest climbs for 23 years.

Veterans of Everest say low-cost, fly-by-night operators have proliferated. And inexperienced climbers sign up with them because they don’t know any better.

The Nepalese government does not regulate a commercial guides. “Anybody can build a website today and then they scarf pictures from Facebook and then they’re an expedition operator,” says Rippel.

Shriya Shah-Klorfine, the Toronto woman who died last year near Everest’s peak, had hired an operator that the most diplomatic in the Everest community describe as “not a household name.” But witnesses reported that Shah-Klorfine, who had little to no mountain-climbing experience, refused those urging her to turn back as she struggled on the ascent.

It’s too early to say how the four Western climbers who died this year perished. But long-time Everest guides, even as they celebrate a successful 2013 season, want to see better protections for climbers.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to educating the consumer,” Simonson says.

TORONTO STAR

“Countries, like people, do what they think they can get away with, with impunity.”

Conrad Black in Flight of the Eagle: A Strategic History of The United States

Conrad Moffat Black, publisher, financier, historian and ex-convict, is talking about the War of 1812 in his book, a sweeping dissertation on the rise of the United States as a dominant global superpower.

But some people might argue that Baron Black of Crossharbour may inadvertently be talking about himself.

Black spent three years in U.S. federal prison on fraud and obstruction of justice charges before being released in May of 2012.

He has publicly and stridently maintained his innocence, while remaining an immensely polarizing figure to the Canadian public and the unapologetic head prefect of the 1 per cent.

The 68-year-old Black is the embodiment of privilege and a flashpoint for those who think he vastly overstepped his reach. But what is undisputed — although Flight of the Eagle may not be his best work — is that he is a first-rate historian and that some of his finest writing has come from his time in jail.

“Prison isn’t a bad place to write. It certainly had fewer distractions,” says Black drolly, in an interview with the Star to publicize his book, which was released May 21. “It wasn’t that bad. In some ways I found it an interesting experience.”

In person, the famously pompous Black displays a disarming and unexpected sense of humour. His answers are thoughtful and considered. And there is no mention of smashing his interviewer in the face as during a BBC interview last October.

The solitude of a Florida jail cell may well have changed Black. At the very least, it gave the man time to write 699 pages of American history.

Flight of the Eagle charts the rise of the U.S. from the earliest colonists to the present-day Obama administration. And the irony isn’t lost on the former media mogul that he has written something of a love letter to the very nation that had him incarcerated.

“Talk about perspective. From the compound where I was writing you would see the spacecraft lifting off at Cape Canaveral and it was hard to believe that the people who created that had the same employer as the correctional officers who were at the prison,” says Black, sipping coffee in a private room at the members only University Club, just steps from the American Embassy in Toronto.

“But the country has had an extraordinary rise in 250 years. No matter what my own grievances might be. It’s not relevant.”

To understand where Black is now, it’s important to remember where he has been.

By the late 1990s, Black had more than 500 publications under his banner, as he headed the world’s third largest newspaper group and the largest print-only media operation.

In the U.S., the CEO of Hollinger International controlled the Chicago Sun-Times. In Israel, it was the Jerusalem Post. In Britain, it was the Daily Telegraph. In Canada, the National Post.

At one point he controlled more than half of Canadian daily circulation, the largest daily newspaper circulation of anyone in the G8.

When he was convicted it was a spectacular fall from grace. To pay mounting legal bills, he sold off homes in Florida, London and New York.

He still has a home in Toronto’s Bridle Path, situated on one of the best lots in the city. Property records obtained by the Star show he took out a million mortgage in December 2011 at 8.5 per cent interest and another million in 2012 at 10 per cent interest.

But he may comfort himself with the fact that as he writes in his book, George Washington, the first president of the United States, was broke after the revolution and had to borrow 0 at 6 per cent interest to attend his own inauguration.

Still, Black’s legal troubles are far from over.

He is the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, as well as the Canada Revenue Agency.

The CRA has investigated Black over whether he failed to pay all taxes owed. But they have been unsuccessful in any prosecution. And Black is typically defiant.

“They (the CRA) have audited me constantly for 30 years,” says Black. “But it’s not a big deal, you know. It’s just a nitpicking operation. It’s not terribly significant after the litigation I had to deal with. I know the difference between litigation you have to worry about and litigation that’s just a nuisance.”

One remaining reassessment goes back to 2002, in which the CRA alleges that Black owes taxes on more than million in income and benefits.

“We’re whittling down their potential fields of concern. And we’ll either dispose of them completely or write them a cheque, but it won’t be a back breaker of a cheque,” says Black.

Not all the news has been bad. Black confirms that the temporary residency permit that allows him to stay in Canada and work was renewed this month.

“I’ve renewed my status as a temporary resident and I believe it’s for another year,” he says.

Black loudly renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 while remaining a citizen of the U.K. and accepting a peerage. As for whether he will apply for Canadian citizenship once more, he remains mum.

“I’m not commenting on whether or not I will. It’s a private matter,” he says.

But there is still that matter of the Order of Canada, of which many Canadians believe he should be stripped.

“It’s really a sideshow. I’m not preoccupied with the Order of Canada. All sorts of people who should have it don’t. And frankly all sorts of people who do have it shouldn’t,” says Black.

Black wants a hearing at Rideau Hall over the status of his order, which is being reviewed by the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada, which has the right to revoke the award. So far he’s been denied.

“I’m asking for a hearing because the practice is that some junior official will make a recommendation before an advisory council and it’s automatically rubber stamped,” says Black. “If I can’t get a hearing I’d happily chuck it in.”

Since his release from prison, Black — innately understanding that a good offence is the best defence for an impugned character — has not exactly been a shrinking violet. He has been a regular on the society pages in Toronto and, besides his book, he has a television talk show coming out on Vision TV later this year, The Zoomer, which he’ll co-host with Denise Donlon.

And he doesn’t lack powerful friends. But getting them on the record — at least in a pinch — to comment on the media mogul’s new career path is another matter.

Oxford historian Margaret MacMillan politely declines, saying she hasn’t read Flight of the Eagle or seen his TV show. John Fraser, the master of the University of Toronto’s Massey College and an employee when Black owned Saturday Night Magazine, is unavailable for deadline. So, inexplicably, is Moses Znaimer, who you would think would want to promote a show on his own channel. Postmedia Network CEO Paul Godfrey, who now runs the National Post, has the best excuse of the bunch: the day that an interview was requested, he was dealing with the fallout of being fired as head of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there are no second acts in American lives. But it’s hard not to draw comparisons between the arc of Black’s own life and the declining economic and political trajectory of the United States.

Black notes that the U.S. was in “full decline by all normal measurements” in 2012. But he’s not betting against it in the long term.

“God, providence, fate or the muse have not withdrawn his or its blessing, and the Americans will return to the manifest destiny of being a sensibly motivated and even exemplary country again,” he writes.

And you can almost see him looking in the mirror as he pens those words.

Black on Obama and Trump

Black remains an outspoken and controversial figure for good reason. Here are some selected quotes on leadership:

On Donald Trump

Real estate mogul Trump granted Black an interview for his TV show’s pilot, and he and wife Melania are thanked in the foreword of Flight of the Eagle for being “loyal friends.” But asked whether he thinks Trump would make a good president, Black says emphatically, “No, he wouldn’t. He has some of the qualities certainly and he’s a very loyal friend. But I think he’s a bit authoritarian. While he’s not this way when you actually know him, he’s easy to represent to the public as a rather crass person. I think Donald would be a very useful adviser or possibly a useful cabinet person. But a president would require a different kind of personality I think.”

On Barack Obama

As with his earlier biographies of Roosevelt and Nixon, Black is exacting about who he thinks may have the right presidential stuff. And it’s no surprise that the current sitting Democratic president is not a favourite of the staunch conservative. Controversially, he says white guilt may have played a part in Obama’s first presidential victory.

“There wasn’t a tasteless exploitation of it, but the subliminal message was that a great many of you Americans are decent fair-minded people and you feel badly about the way my people have been treated in this country,” says Black. “He didn’t say it as explicitly as that, but that’s what it amounted to and he won.”

Conrad Black’s books

Despite his financial and legal difficulties, Conrad Black never seemed to suffer from anything as pedestrian as writer’s block. He has produced an impressive output of books on American and Canadian history, most released while he was under significant duress.

Duplessis (1977)

Black’s first book, a biography of controversial former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, published when Black was 32. Some chapters were based on Black’s thesis that had been submitted for a master’s degree at McGill University.

A Life in Progress (1993)

The memoir was published when Black was 49 and still just hitting his stride, as the title might suggest. Within a few more years he would gain control of the Southam newspaper chain, Canada’s largest.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (2003)

The same year that Black released his well-regarded book on American president FDR, Black resigned under pressure from the board of Hollinger International as CEO. Later that year he would take the Fifth Amendment rather than answer U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission questions about Hollinger’s accounting and compensation practices.

The Invincible Quest: The Life of Richard Milhous Nixon (2007)

Black wrote the book in a reported six months while facing fraud charges, or what he called “very distracting circumstances.”

A Matter of Principle (2011)

This memoir was partly written while Black was incarcerated in Cubicle 30, Unit B-1 at the Coleman Correctional Complex in Florida.

Flight of The Eagle: A Strategic History of the United States (2013)

Black finished the book in prison in Florida. “A lot of good writing has been done in prisons and in a lot more daunting conditions than mine,” he says.

TORONTO STAR

PARIS — A French soldier was stabbed in the throat in a busy commercial district outside Paris on Saturday, and France’s president said authorities are investigating any possible links with the recent slaying of a British soldier.

President François Hollande said the identity of the attacker was unknown and cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the assault on the uniformed soldier in the La Defence shopping area. The life of the 23-year-old soldier was not in danger, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The stabbing follows the slaying Wednesday of a British soldier, who was brutally stabbed on a London street in broad daylight in a suspected terrorist attack that has raised fears of potential copycat strikes.

“There could be a link, but we will look at all the elements,” Hollande said during a news conference in Ethiopia, where he was travelling.

The British soldier, 25-year-old Lee Rigby, was attacked while walking outside the Royal Artillery Barracks in the Woolwich area of south London.

The gruesome scene was recorded on witnesses’ cellphones, and a video has emerged in which one of the two suspects — his hands bloodied — boasted of their exploits and warned of more violence as the soldier lay on the ground. Holding bloody knives and a meat cleaver, the suspects waited for the arrival of police, who shot them in the legs, according to witnesses.

In the video, one of the suspects declared, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you … We must fight them as they fight us.”

Two Muslim hard-liners have identified that suspect as Michael Adebolajo, a Christian who converted to Islam and attended several London demonstrations organized by banned British radical group al-Muhajiroun.

French security forces have been on heightened alert since their country launched a military intervention in the African nation of Mali in January to regain territory seized by Islamic radicals.

TORONTO STAR

The location of Azure Lakeside Village in Grimsby is undoubtedly a drawing card — anywhere that puts buyers within shouting distance of Lake Ontario has its cache.

But builder Marz Homes incorporated architectural details into its designs that helped sell 45 per cent of the first 85 homes when the site opened last summer.

A handful of first-phase homes remain available, while the final 35 freehold townhouses in phase two went on sale in early April.

“(Our buyers) love the location first, especially given that lake-view properties are few and far between,” says Maureen Carr-Gabriele, a broker at the sales office.

“The commuting professionals love the QEW corridor close by and the proposed GO station, and the empty nesters love the Niagara region, with the wineries and the proximity to the U.S. border.

“The families love Grimsby, which is really a growing community with a new YMCA and lots of potential.”

Three decorated models demonstrate Marz finishes, in both standard and upgraded finishes.

“That way, they can see how good the standard version is, but also just how good they can be,” says Carr-Gabriele.

Marz has been in the Niagara/Hamilton region for more than four decades, and several signature properties on the south shore of Lake Ontario bear its stamp, including part Burlington’s waterfront skyline.

Marz has collected awards for best site, best designs and best interiors, plus environmental awards for incorporating natural features into its projects.

The 1,614-square-foot Cerulean Plus design featured at Azure has been in the Marz lineup for 10 years, says Carr-Gabriele. It has been tweaked and fine-tuned, and now includes balconies and columns off the rear master bedroom.

At the other end of the five-design spectrum, the 1,171-square-foot Azurean (only available in the first phase) features a double detached garage.

Architectural features include stone, brick, Citidel shingles, aluminum frieze board and decorative columns for the exterior.

Nine-foot ceilings, concrete-block separation walls between units and air-conditioning are standard inside.

Sandwiched between the lake and the QEW, the Azure community backs on to a radio tower field (a protected greenspace) that borders the lake. It’s one of several communities where nearby lakefront cottages mix with lakefront mansions.

The Fifty Point Conservation Area is five minutes away, and the Waterfront Trail that runs from Niagara-on-the-Lake around the Golden Horseshoe to Oshawa runs beside the community.

Prices range from 9,990 to 9,990 for the final handful of homes in the first phase, and the final phase starts 9,900. (A condo road fee of per month covers snow removal, lighting and garbage collection.)

Every home also offers eco options for energy efficiency, thanks to a partnership with Bullfrog Power.

See marzhomes.com for details. Hours are Monday to Thursday, 1 to 5 p.m.; weekends, noon to 5 p.m. Call 289-235-9280 or Royal Lepage at 905-662-6666.

TORONTO STAR

This is an edited excerpt of a speech by Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney on Tuesday in Montreal:

It is almost six years since the start of the global financial crisis, and its dynamics still dominate the economic outlook.

In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, the broad economic strategy in Canada has been to grow domestic demand and to encourage Canadian businesses to retool and reorient to the new global economy. Stimulative monetary and fiscal policies proved highly effective in supporting robust growth in domestic demand, particularly household expenditures, which grew to record levels.

The limits of this growth model have been clear for some time. We cannot grow indefinitely by relying on Canadian households increasing their borrowing relative to income. Nor can residential investment remain near a record share of GDP, particularly given signs of overbuilding and overvaluation in segments of the real estate market.

The challenge for Canada is to rotate the sources of growth toward net exports and business investment.

To find and compete in new markets will require a concerted, multi-year effort by workers, firms and governments. These efforts should be guided by three principles.

Openness is better than protectionism. Trade brings innovation, growth and jobs. That is why Canada is pursuing a series of bilateral trade discussions with economies such as the European Union and India, and will participate in the multilateral negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership involving a number of Asian countries.

Economic flexibility is essential. This means we must continuously invest in our workforce. With technology and trade transforming the workplace, the need to improve skills across the spectrum of work has never been greater.

Sound macroeconomic policy is the cornerstone of prosperity. Fiscal profligacy erodes economic sovereignty; price stability is paramount.

TORONTO STAR

CHARLOTTETOWN—Hockey Canada has voted to remove bodychecking from peewee hockey across the country.

Spokesman André Brin says the motion passed Saturday at a meeting in Charlottetown, with only Saskatchewan voting against banning bodychecking.

Brin says the board of directors has agreed to develop a bodychecking standard for coaching to be implemented in the 2014-15 hockey season.

Earlier this month, both Hockey Alberta and Hockey Nova Scotia voted to remove bodychecking for their peewee players, who are typically 11 and 12 years old.

Quebec had also already banned bodychecking at the peewee level.

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TORONTO STAR