Barlow, Maude (Victoria) 1947-

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BARLOW, Maude (Victoria) 1947-

PERSONAL: Born May 24, 1947, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; daughter of William Thomas (a criminologist) and Flora (a homemaker; maiden name, Wilkie) McGrath; married Andrew Davis (a lawyer), July 29, 1983; children: Charles Barlow, William Barlow. Education: Carleton University, B.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES: Home—525 C Bay St., Ottawa, Ontario K1R 6B4, Canada. Office—Council of Canadians, 251 Laurier Ave. W, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5J6, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Women Associates Consulting Inc., vice president, 1975-80; City of Ottawa, Ontario, director of equal opportunities, 1980-83; senior adviser to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Ottawa, 1983-84; Council of Canadians, Ottawa, chairperson, 1988—. Visiting scholar, University of Ottawa, 1991. Member of council of advisers, Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament; consultant on equality and social justice issues; Canadian Action Network, cofounder.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ontario Teachers' Federation fellow; honorary Doctorate of Laws, Memorial University; awards from British Columbia Teachers' Federation, Ontario Teachers' Federation, Women Teachers' Association of Ontario, and Ontario Public Teachers' Association.

WRITINGS:

Parcel of Rogues: How Free Trade Is Failing Canada, Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1990.

(With Bruce Campbell) Take Back the Nation, Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

(With others) Meeting the Global Challenge: Competitive Position and Strategic Response, Captus Press (North York, Ontario, Canada), 1992.

(With Bruce Campbell) Take Back the Nation 2: Meeting the Threat of NAFTA, Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1993.

(With Heather Jane-Robertson) Class Warfare: The Assault on Canada's Schools, Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

(With Bruce Campbell) Straight through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Just Society, HarperCollins (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1995.

(With James Winter) The Big, Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black, General Distribution Services (Buffalo, NY), 1997.

(With Tony Clarke) MAI: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the Threat to Canadian Sovereignty, Stoddart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1997, Stoddart (New York, NY), 1998.

The Fight of My Life: Confessions of an Unrepentant Canadian (autobiography), Harper Collins (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

(With Elizabeth May) Frederick Street: Life and Death on Canada's Love Canal, HarperCollins (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(With Tony Clarke) Global Showdown: How the New Activists Are Fighting Global Corporate Rule, Stoddart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

(With Tony Clarke) Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water, Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

Profit Is Not the Cure: A Citizen's Guide to Saving Medicare, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Maude Barlow is a Canadian writer, political activist, and policy critic. She has written or coauthored a number of books that reflect her advocacy of issues involving the environment, social programs, and public education. In 1995's Straight through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Just Society, Barlow and coauthor Bruce Campbell create a picture of a poverty-stricken Canada which has been bulldozed by the federal liberal party and the business elite. The authors contend that present-day liberals have compromised their ideals to please the business sector. A contributor to Maclean's noted that the authors put forth a convincing and "stridently" presented case against Canadian liberals.

Barlow takes up an environmental cause in her 2000 book Frederick Street: Life and Death on Canada's Love Canal. Together with coauthor Elizabeth May, the author tells the story of a steel-making plant in Sydney, Nova Scotia, that has devastated the local environment and wreaked havoc on the health of area residents. Barlow argues that the toxic plant has been in operation for a century and that the Canadian government has looked the other way. Parker Barss Donham in Canadian Geographic commented that "Barlow and May delineate the intricacies of steelmaking and the insidious impact of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with admirable clarity." However, he also noted that the efforts of officials to attempt to clean up the plant are largely ignored in this book.

Another environmental book by Barlow is 2002's Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water. "This well-researched book provides a sobering, in-depth look at the growing scarcity of fresh water and the increasing privatization and corporate control of this nonrenewable resource," explained Margaret Aycock in her review for Library Journal. Barlow and coauthor Tony Clarke argue that since water is a basic human necessity, it is unlike other commodities and should not be given over to private parties. A critic in Publishers Weekly noted that "the authors marshal an impressive amount of evidence that corporate profits are increasingly drinking up precious water resources."

Barlow once told CA: "I do not view myself as a professional writer. I am an activist for social justice issues who became very involved against the free trade agreement and the corporate agenda it represents. The books I wrote were a response to the need to preserve my country, its heritage and distinct values."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Dimension, July-August, 1996, Kathleen O'Hara, "Building for the Long Term: Maude Barlow and the Council of Canadians," p. 17; September, 2001, David Orton, "Globalization from Below; or, Ending Industrial Civilization," p. 42.

Canadian Geographic, May, 2000, Parker Barss Donham, "Grappling with Sydney's Tarred Legacy," p. 89.

Library Journal, April 15, 2002, Margaret Aycock, review of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water, p. 121.

Maclean's, December 4, 1995, Anthony Wilson-Smith, review of Straight through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Just Society, p. 82.

Multinational Monitor, April, 1999, interview with Maude Barlow, p. 19.

Northern Ontario Business, January, 2001, Graham Clayton, "Economic Literacy," p. 6.

Publishers Weekly, April 1, 2002, review of Blue Gold, p. 72.