before I go...

[electricland]

I got Chester Brown's Riel biography out of the library this week, and just finished reading it today. It's excellent. By a strange coincidence (considering what else I've been doing today), in the endnotes pertaining to Riel's stay in a mental institution Brown mentions that he doesn't believe mental illness is organically based or, indeed, an illness at all; apparently he's explored this theme in more detail elsewhere. I've heard some discussion of this from other sources -- must look into it more thoroughly. If "mental illness doesn't exist" is all there is to the theory, I don't buy it, but I assume there are subtleties I'm not aware of. (On the same theme, there was a good article in the latest Walrus on a researcher who's using PET to look at brain changes in depression.)

(Slaps to Time for calling Riel "Quebecois", by the way -- I suppose they thought "Metis" would be too obscure, but did they have to follow the path of complete inaccuracy?)