RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2026. While tidying up the office (to escape all the snow still outside), I came across two quotations from eminent Americans, successively posted on my office magazine rack.

The first is from Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore. It’s in an article dated December 6, 2019 and entitled “The Impeachment Hearings and the Coming Storm.”

(For those of us who may have forgotten President Donald Trump was first impeached by the US House of Representatives on December 18, 2019, after Democrats won the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans remained in control of the Senate in 2018, however, and on February 5, 2020, the Senate voted to acquit Trump.)

The December 2019 Jill Lepore quotation that caught my eye was : “A farmer walks across a field, bracing against the wind. Hardness is what’s required to get through a political winter: determination, forbearance, sacrifice, not bitterness but a certain sternness.”

At the time getting through a political winter this way seemed to me a key part of the ongoing US progressive response to the first Donald Trump presidential regime, especially after Democrats won the House in 2018. And the winter sternness seemed to draw on old New England values that may still have some 21st century democratic traction.

The second of my two eminent American quotations is from March 2025. Among other things it may suggest how much times did change between late December 2019 and mid -March 2025.

This quotation came from Washington Monthly editor Paul Glastris, in “The Hot (or Not) New Theory of ‘Abundance Liberalism’” — a wider conversation with his colleague Nate Weisberg (guided and ultimately set to text by Anne Kim).

Mr. Glastris’s most memorable words, for me less than a year ago now, were : “We need policies that create more millionaires and fewer billionaires. That’s classic American stuff—spreading opportunity, promoting competition—and we’ve moved away from it.”

I’d guess that these words are at least one reflection of the broader political theory of “abundance liberalism”. And the theory itself may signal some wider US left-wing yearning to revive such “classic American stuff”.

What seems to be fueling the current trend to repeated Democratic success in US politics down on the ground, however, is just a growing popular revulsion against a Trump Republican 2.0 regime, that is really not what many thought they were voting for back in November 2024

If I had to guess (which of course I do not) I would say “abundance liberalism” is not a crucially important cog in the Democratic machine for the imminent midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

And neither is a certain sternness required to get through a political winter.

But I still find both anti- Trump’s-America quotations of 2019 and 2025 interesting — and some kind of serious reflection of what has been and no doubt in some ways still is happening in crazy Donald Trump’s crazy Make America Great Again world of profound political illusion.

(Oh and btw Happy Valentine’s Day 2026, on a rare enough weekend scheduling for this traditional Western celebration of love among human beings!)

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2026. On the happily less than altogether crazy North American politics in my own backyard, Canadian federal New Democrat MPs have criticized Ontario NDP deputy leader Doly Begum for “announcing she will run federally as a Liberal for the seat vacated by former MP Bill Blair.”

Interim federal NDP Leader Don Davies, eg, has urged : “I’ll leave it to Ms. Begum to explain to the people of Scarborough Southwest [in the east end of today’s City of Toronto] why she’s abandoning the progressive policies she claimed to believe in to run for a party that is clearly governing like a conservative party.”

My own mere progressive voter’s sense of what Doly Begum is doing is different. To start with, the first year of Trump 2.0 next door has proved even worse than predicted — for most Canadians and many Americans (arguably now even a clear enough majority?).

For we the Canadian people President Trump, eg, unambiguously wants Canada as the 51st state, no ifs, ands, or buts. He is not willing period to back down on this front. And, unlike in Minnesota, he does not seriously have to back down even in some small degree. Even among the many US citizens friendly to the country Canada is just not something that Americans pay attention to. (Or care about, as Roger Stone has recently stressed on TwitterX.)

The rise of Mark Carney from Laurier Heights

What democracy in Canada — in its legendary circuitous, roundabout, wandering style — has happily given Canada at this crucial moment in the country’s already much longer than many recognize history is Prime Minister Mark Carney. He was born in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and then largely raised in a post Second War suburb of Edmonton, Alberta intriguingly named Laurier Heights, after the present 1867 confederation’s first French Canadian (if not quite first Liberal) prime minister.

I could go on about why I think PM Carney is what many call the right man for the times in Canada today. About how he’s so smart he managed to go straight from his Edmonton high school to Harvard in the US and then Oxford in the UK. About how he then became Governor of the Bank of Canada, then Governor of the Bank of England, and then a Brookfield Asset Management private businessman (who, imagine that, actually made a lot of money from shrewd financial investments).

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COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, JANUARY 24/SUNDAY, JANUARY25, 2026. This is a crazy weekend on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario, at the eastern beginning of the North American Great Lakes.

For one thing it’s unusually cold outside, even for late January. (As we look out on a snowy yard from our back boardroom, which we’re temporarily inhabiting on a Canadian winter Saturday — and then again on Sunday.)

From another far deeper and more important perspective the boardroom TV and other online sources have been full of (especially for us in Canada) extremely annoying and alarming news from the increasingly dementia-driven mind of President Donald Trump.

For us again two broad clusters of issues have dominated the TV and online news this weekend on the early 2026 Trumpian front.

The first cluster involves Donald Trump with special reference to our own home and native land in Canada.

Eg : (1) “Trump dominated Davos. But Canada’s Carney was the star” (Washington Post) ; (2) “Canadian prime minister fires back at Trump after Davos speeches” (Associated Press) ; (3) “Trump withdraws Carney’s invitation to Board of Peace” (Washington Post) ; (4) “Trump calls Carney ‘governor’ and threatens 100% tariffs” (CTV News) ; (5) “Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariffs if Carney ‘makes a deal with China’”(Toronto Star) ; and (6) “Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariffs over China trade deal” (BBC News).

The second cluster of this weekend’s Trumpian TV madness involves the appalling behaviour of “Trump’s Gestapo,” faced with massive public protests against the US federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Now in the midst of its own very cold Great Lakes northern winter.)

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026. In the midst of all the 51st State nonsense on Twitter/X lately, Alice Hunt’s recent piece on King“James VI & I” (1566–1625) in the London Review of Books gave me a fresh (if also crazy) slant on the 250-year-old non-unification of the United States and Canada.

Very quickly, James VI of Scotland (since he was one year old in 1567) became James I (of the new united kingdom of Scotland and England and Ireland, known officially as Great Britain) in 1603. Remaining in this office until his death in 1625, James I is the monarch who starts the now long modern history of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, (now just Northern) Ireland, and Wales (etc).

All this, it struck me while reading Alice Hunt’s piece, has at least some theoretical meaning for the United States and Canada in the 2020s. As the US comedian and talk show host Jay Leno once confessed on TV, he had some understanding of Canada because his mother was Scottish. Canada is the New World’s Scotland, due north of the New World’s England in the USA.

With one eye on the 51st state nonsense these days, after centuries of separation the old medieval kingdoms of England and Scotland did begin a long process of unification in 1603. Through chance and his own aggressive urging, the 37-year-old King of Scotland, James VI, proved to have the strongest hereditary claim to the English monarchy on the death of the childless Queen Elizabeth II.

Without going into the various other deeper fascinations of King“James VI & I” (1566–1625), for political life in North America today the implication of his career for any forthcoming union of the United States and Canada as soon as the next few years (as the 51st state apostles urge) would seem to run roughly as follows.

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026. To start with this is the fifth anniversary of the wild and crazy attempt to overturn the 2020 US presidential election in Washington, DC — at and in which President Donald Trump was both present and an involved observer (or much more?).

I may not entirely agree with Robert Reich that January 6, 2021 was the “most shameful day in American history.” But Mr Reich is altogether on the money when he declares “We will never forget, and we will not let the nation or the world forget” what happened to Democracy in America five years ago today.

Meanwhile, the second President Donald Trump’s kidnaping of President Maduro in Venezuela on January 3, 2026 has prompted a reaction from retired US Army General Barry R McCaffrey, that summarizes a lot of what I feel about the 45th and 47th president of the USA myself.

On January 3, in the immediate wake of the US Armed Forces intervention that successfully “captured” (officialese) or “kidnaped” (activist) the (much criticized) Venezuelan president, General (ret) McCaffrey posted on Twitter/X : “Brilliant military operation to seize and arrest Maduro. Good outcome. Zero authorization by Congress. Trump says we will take the oil. Take charge of Venezuela. States President Petro of Colombia ‘better watch his ass.’ Like gangsters.”

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COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2025. Santa has now come and gone, here as elsewhere. We have a few last moments to contemplate our own record for the fourth and final quarter of the very fateful year 2025.

For us here on the northwest shore of the Great Lake Ontario, one very big event for Fri, Oct 24 — Sat, Nov 1, 2025 was the Toronto Blue Jays narrowly losing baseball’s World Series in the seventh and final game on Nov 1.

At the start of the 2025 season almost no one even guessed wildly at this prospect. As early as March 26, however, our own sporting life specialist Rob Sparrow had presented at least one “best-case scenario for 2025.”

It read : “The Jays sneak into the postseason and finally win a game, breaking their nearly decade-long drought and make a run in the playoffs … That’s the dream.”

Which did come true in this case. And in tribute to its on-the-money best-case scenario we’re somewhat crazily treating the Sparrow’s piece from March as the first item in our year-end selections, for the fourth and final quarter of the fateful and crazy year now about to end!

(And this reminds us that back in the first few weeks of June 2025 the Edmonton Oilers didn’t quite manage to take the ancient top trophy of professional hockey away from the Florida Panthers either. Here again a Canadian team did not finally bring the championship hardware of professional sport in North America back to the home and native land. Yet here as well Canada was playing at the top! Bigger things can only lie ahead … )

Meanwhile our somewhat personalized list of favourite half-dozen counterweights pieces for the fourth quarter of 2025 (suitably amended to allow Rob Sparrow’s spring piece on the Jays into the autumn fold) stands as follows :

(1) Mar 26th 2025 /Oct 4, 2025. By Rob Sparrow. “Blue Jays 2025: The Final Flight of Vladdy & Bo…or Another Crash Landing”. (See above.) …

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COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2025. Santa is almost on his way, in these parts of planet earth at least. And late this afternoon of the day before Christmas Eve (which we still do commemorate in these parts, as a cultural if not exactly religious event) we counterweights editors met in the first-floor board room.

Over some seasonal good cheer we chose these half-dozen favourite postings from the third quarter of 2025 — a time when (to us at any rate) Trump’s USA seemed to be slowly falling, while Carney’s Canada was slowly rising (albeit of course with only about 11.5% of the current US population, in an only slightly larger national geography) :

(1) Jul 16th, 2025. “Watching made-in-Canada US Christmas movies to keep cool in long hot wildfire summer of 2025 is not something only Trump voters do in USA.” Starting on a light-hearted (if not entirely non-political) note — to help beat the deep summer heat. Probing the likes of Merritt Patterson from Whistler, BC and Trevor Donovan from Mammoth Lakes, CA, in such vehicles as Jingle Bell Princess (2021), “allegedly about the US State of Maine” but “shot in North Bay, Ontario (Canada).”

(2) Jul 24th, 2025. “Two current answers to “How did Donald Trump actually manage to get elected (twice) as president of the USA?” Some say the president’s “swagger is GONE.” Others urge he “is trying to concoct a fantasy world in which prices are ‘all down’.” Still others argue “he’s mentally disturbed” … all this yet again raises the question of how Donald Trump actually managed to get elected as president … Two different answers … (1) Too many ignorant voters ???? (2) Reacting against indoctrination of youth by American education systems.”

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COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2025. By the start of the second quarter of 2025 here on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in ”northern North America”, the crazy Trump tariffs had set in globally (including 10% on the Heard and Macdonald Islands near Australia, inhabited only by penguins).

Meanwhile the second incarnation of President Donald Trump south of the Canadian border had made clear that, altogether impossibly as well as ridiculously, Mr Trump ultimately wanted Canada to become the 51st state of the USA — all along the 5,525 miles (8,891 km) from the St. Croix and Saint John rivers, to four of the five North American Great Lakes, to the 49th parallel of latitude, more or less culminating with the Peace Arch between Surrey, BC and Blaine, WA.

And after much deliberation on these last days of another year, we counterweights editors have concluded that our half dozen favourite counterweights posts in the second quarter of 2025 are :

(1) Apr 14th, 2025. By Randall White. “What Donald Trump’s (almost) latest Canada talk finally means north of the old undefended border.” Wherein Dr White opined : “My biggest personal problem with Donald Trump is that in his US presidential attitude to Canada he is effectively telling me that I do not exist. Canadian as a national identity separate from that of the United States (ie American) does not exist in his MAGA philosophy.”

(2) Apr 30th, 2025. “Early examination of entrails of 2025 Canadian federal election : New Democrats reduced to mere 7 seats but that + 169 Liberals gives a 176-seat majority in parliament!” PM Mark Carney did at least win win a minority government for his updated (and non-Trudeau) Liberals. As it has happened since, the New Democrats are not supporting the Liberals quite like Jagmeet Singh, 2022-2024. But as 2025 ends the Carney government now has 171 seats (where 172 is a bare majority), thanks to two Conservative MPs’ crossing the floor.

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COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2025. For Canada in some grand existential sense — as for much else in the contemporary global village — the great shadow event of 2025 has without doubt been the arrival of the even wilder and crazier Donald J. Trump II regime in the (alas) no longer great American republic next door.

(And much Canadian thinking on the current state of this disorder has been nicely summarized by Andrew Coyne, in his December 5, 2025 Globe and Mail column. Which nas now on December 16, 2025 been reposted by the irrepressible Robert Reich in Berkeley, CA as “The True Catastrophe of Trump, as seen from north of the border … A view from our neighbor.”)

In Canadian federal politics there was just one great story in the first four months of 2025 — down to the 45th General Election on Monday, April 28. This was the surprise salvation of the Liberal government in Ottawa, wrought by new leader and former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, who grew up in the aptly named Laurier Heights suburb of Edmonton, Alberta.

(And on April 28 the new Carney Liberals won 169 seats in a House where 172 seats constitutes a bare majority. As the year is about to end right now they have 171 seats, as a result of two floor crossings from the Poilievre Conservatives. For possible further prospects of this sort see “Energy minister says he’s getting ‘lots of inquiries’ about MPs crossing the floor … Sources say Tim Hodgson was involved in bringing Michael Ma over to Liberals.”)

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2025. Robert Reich’s “Sunday thought” yesterday set the stage for my current further reflections on the USA next door, some 17 days before Christmas 2025.

(And I am using my father’s understanding of the universe as I mention this particular holiday in Toronto today. When asked by a local official what religion he was, during his later days on planet earth, he replied “Well I celebrate Christmas.” I’d note as well that he would almost certainly agree with George Orwell that the “whole point of Christmas is that it is a debauch — as it was probably long before the birth of Christ was arbitrarily fixed at that date.”)

In any case Professor (now retired) Reich’s thought for this past Sunday, December 7, 2025 — all the way from the American wonderland of Berkeley, California — was headlined “Really, truly, the end of Trump is near … MAGA is cracking up, but beware.”

Immediately following the “but beware” advice, I have particularly stumbled across the results of a recent Manhattan Institute poll of “Current GOP” (ie Republican Party) voters in the USA today. My first encounter with this poll came in a Dec 4, 2025 post on Twitter/X by a gentleman known as Heath Mayo.

I cite Mr. Mayo’s admirably concise three-sentence account of what it is about this poll that strikes him as worth some serious bewaring : “Over a third of GOP voters think the moon landing was faked and that the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or didn’t happen as historians describe … Over 40% think 9/11 was likely an inside job … And more than half still think the 2020 election was rigged.”

(Who is Heath Mayo, you may ask? His crisp social media identification suggests an almost conservative persona : “Christian | Husband | Father | M&A Lawyer | Founder @Principles_1st.” A legal firm website offers more professional detail : “Heath Mayo is a corporate partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. His practice involves a wide range of merger and acquisition-related matters, including cross-border transactions, spin-offs, divestitures, carve-out IPOs, private equity transactions and joint ventures, as well as governance advice and activism defense across a wide range of industries.” Finally his recent social media posts strike me as sensible enough, and possibly even the work of a closet Republican progressive.)

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