The 1938 edition of Inside Europe — just like the one in the counterweights office library.

The American journalist John Gunther “grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago” and then served from 1924 to 1936 with the London bureau of the Chicago Daily News.  In the 1930s he published Inside Europe — the first of the “‘Inside’ series of continental surveys” that made him famous.

Some sources on the world wide web today claim that the first edition of this book appeared in 1936. But the first date in the (October) 1938 revised edition which we happen to have in the counterweights office library, through some now long forgotten accident, is 1933. And other sources on the net concur that the book was “first published 1933” — the year that Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

A woman begs for money in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, May 8, 2012.

The 1938 edition of Gunther’s Inside Europe also “begins with Hitler.”  And, as explained in 2007 by the Australian writer Roger Sandall: “In the words of historian John Lukacs ‘1938 [even more than 1933] was Hitler’s year’. It saw the annexation of Austria, Neville Chamberlain’s capitulation at Munich, and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Readers of Inside Europe’s October 1938 edition were able to follow these developments almost as they happened.”

In a note at the beginning of the 1938 edition John Gunther explained as well that his book “is written from a definite point of view … that the accidents of personality play a great role in history.” And he was alluding to Mussolini and Stalin along with Hitler, when he urged that: “The fact may be an outrage to reason, but it cannot be denied : unresolved personal conflicts in the lives of various European politicians may contribute to the collapse of our civilization.”

L’Oceanografic, Valencia Spain.

In the spring of 2012 events in Europe are once again at the centre of many thoughts in the English-speaking world — especially in the wake of the recent Greek and French elections. See, eg : “Those Revolting Europeans” ; “Happy Europe Day! Well, Not in Greece” (and today, btw, actually is “officially Europe Day, honoring a proposal by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman on May 9, 1950, that led eventually to the formation of the European Union. Break out the deflated balloons!”) ; “Europe’s Post-Merkozy Gridlock” ; and “European Voters Have Rejected Austerity—So What Happens Next?”

It is a happy enough measure of some kind of progress since the 1930s that the European mood we confront in 2012 is not as deadly as the mood Gunther wrote about in Hitler’s year of 1938. As he explained then: “The controlling, the dominant factor … was fear, fear of war, fear of air raids in great cities, fear that London and Paris might meet the fate of Guernica and Barcelona, destroyed by German bombs [in the Spanish Civil War’s sad prelude to World War II]. Fear, funk, fear paralyzed what the New Statesman calls the ‘demo-plutocracies.’”

Philip Kaufman's "Hemingway & Gellhorn" will premiere out of competition in Cannes before its Monday, May 28 debut on HBO. It stars Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen as the titular pair.

It is arguably all too true that such things as “demo-plutocracies” are still too much with us — in Europe and North America and other parts of today’s much broader global village. Yet it is not German bombs but the German “obsession” with “austerity” (and German and other “fantasies of prosperity through pain,” in the words of the American liberal economist Paul Krugman) that seem to cast dark shadows across the once mighty continent now. And this adds up to a rather different European mood than the one John Gunther wrote about in the 1930s.

It is our duty here to announce that, in an effort to explore this rather different European mood in the spring of 2012 (at least a little), we will be closing the counterweights office down for the next two weeks, so that the full-time staff can attend an assortment of strategic conferences in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. The first reports on this intensive field work will be posted on counterweights during the week of May 28, 2012. No other fresh material will appear between now and then. (Oh and btw May 28 is also the date of the premiere of the HBO movie, Hemingway and Gelhorn, 9:00–11:40 pm ET/PT. And this will cover some of the same historical ground as John Gunther’s Inside Europe too!)

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[UPDATED MAY 8]. In this past Saturday’s Toronto Star Queen’s Park columnist  Martin Regg Cohn predicted that the current “feel-good political chemistry between [Liberal minority Premier] Dalton [McGuinty] and [NDP leader] Andrea [Horwath] will prove short-lived.” A week is a long time in politics, etc. And despite the recent Dalton-Andrea budget deal: “Their parties are on an unavoidable collision course on labour issues.”

Regg Cohn goes on: “As labour tensions dominate the agenda, Liberals and New Democrats will grow apart — and the Tories will be in closer alignment with McGuinty’s stated goal of a two-year wage freeze for teachers’ unions and other public sector workers … Can McGuinty and [Conservative leader Tim] Hudak recast their strained relationship? … Détente may come sooner than anyone expects.”

Similarly: “Negotiations with the province’s 128,000 teachers are going poorly, increasing the likelihood that McGuinty will legislate a wage freeze … [Conservative leader Tim] Hudak says it’s long overdue, and he’s willing to co-operate — if McGuinty reaches out ahead of time … McGuinty muses that in a minority, he draws inspiration from imperial Britain: ‘She had no permanent enemies and no permanent allies — only permanent interests.’”

This kind of Liberal-Conservative détente in Ontario doesn’t seem altogether inevitable. It wasn’t that long ago, eg, that Regg Cohn’s fellow Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom was arguing : “‘Turncoat’ Rae a trailblazer for Horwath’s non-labour NDP … Under Horwath, the Ontario NDP has become more business friendly … More to the point, the party that was founded in partnership with organized labour no longer makes any pretense of being a labour party.”

At the same time, still influential factions inside the Ontario New Democrats are uncomfortable with “Horwath’s non-labour NDP.”  Ontario Federation of Labour president (and NDP activist) Sid Ryan led a big rally against the Ontario budget at Queen’s Park just over two weeks ago.

Premier McGuinty’s appointment of Conservative MPP Elizabeth Witmer to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (paving the way for a Kitchener-Waterloo by-election that just might give the Liberals the narrowest of majority governments at last) has been criticized by Ms Horwath herself (to say nothing of Mr. Hudak). And the premier’s allusion to his “inspiration from imperial Britain” which “had no permanent enemies and no permanent allies — only permanent interests” is certainly provocative.

Yet a recent report on the stormy domestic politics in today’s non-imperial Britain raises some poignant questions about how wise  Liberal-Conservative détente in Ontario might be — just from the standpoint of the Ontario Liberal Party’s narrowest self-interest beyond the shortest of short runs?

In “ Call that a coalition? … Ross McKibbin on the hopelessness of the Lib Dems,” in the April 5 issue of the London Review of Books, one of the UK’s leading political analysts explains in some painful detail why the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition governing Britain right now is just not working out at all for the Liberal Democrats (the closest thing the UK has to the Liberals in Canada).  “It is possible,” McKibbin writes, “that in three years’ time the electorate will look more kindly on” the Liberal Democrats.  But “as things stand” if an election were held today they would “be lucky to win a seat.”

Things are different of course in Canada, and perhaps especially in Canada’s most populous province, in many different ways. And it is certainly true that Bill Davis navigated his Ontario Conservative minority governments of the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s by leaning sometimes on the opposition Liberals and sometimes on the New Democrats.

But things in Ontario have changed a lot since the golden age of Bill Davis from Brampton. There are more than a few reasons for thinking that the fate of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats in the old Mother of Parliaments across the ocean could be the more apt precedent for Ontario in 2012. Hopefully, for their own good, Premier McGuinty’s advisors will be pondering these reasons carefully, before he rushes too precipitously into the arms of Mr. Hudak — and hands a few too many keys to the regional tradition of progress over to Andrea Horwath, all by herself.

UPDATE MAY 8: Premier McGuinty’s rush may or may not be too precipitous, but he is rushing. See “Dalton McGuinty reaches out to Tim Hudak for support on public sector wage freeze” in today’s Toronto Star.

It has now become clear beyond any reasonable doubt that, in the language of the first people who called themselves Canadians: “Le Globe and Mail écrivait hier que le ministère de l’Immigration et de la Citoyenneté avait accordé un permis de résidence temporaire d’un an au  magnat de la presse déchu,” Conrad Black.

Moreover: “M. Black doit sortir de prison en Floride vendredi … Né à Montréal, Conrad Black a renoncé à sa citoyenneté canadienne en 2001 après que la Chambre des lords britanniques lui eut offert de le faire pair, une proposition que le premier ministre de l’époque, Jean Chrétien, lui a interdit d’accepter tant qu’il détiendrait un passeport canadien.”

My own first reaction to all this is that the convicted US/UK felon Conrad Black’s return to Canada (on a “one-year temporary resident permit … valid from early May, 2012, until early May, 2013”) is already getting far more attention than it deserves. But then I remember that, as the estimable Steven LeDrew almost passionately urged on TV torontois this morning, M. Black is what my father used to call “good copy.”

And this is exactly what the counterweights editors have asked me to provide, no later than midnight, May 2, 2012  — the first anniversary of the May 2, 2011 Canadian federal election, in which the Harper Conservatives at last won a majority of seats in the Canadian House of Commons. (With less than 40% of the cross-Canada popular vote. And see also: “A recap of the Harper government’s first year scandals,” and “Mulcair rallies NDP, declares ‘beginning of the end’ of Tory rule.”)

Speaking of good copy, over the past few days I have also noticed that : “Paulina Gretzky spotted out in LA wearing lingerie … Wayne Gretzky’s daughter has clothing-optional dinner”; “Paulina Gretzky Instagram Photos Cause Stir” ; “Paulina Gretzky brings the sexy back … again … Shocking bikini shots creep up on Instagram” ; and “Paulina Gretzky posts new provocative photos on Instagram, then deletes them.”  (Again!)

Putting both pieces of good copy together has led me to contemplate the concept entertained in the title to this posting above. And, with the risk of a costly lawsuit in mind (well … at least a bit Walter Mittyishly, no doubt), I hasten to underline that as far as anything I’ve ever read goes, M. Black is still deeply in love with his current wife and would never think of casting her aside for a 23-year-old daughter of probably the greatest hockey player of all time.

Yet, with a major hockey fan and author as prime minister right now, it is vaguely possible, in principle at any rate (strictly as a concept etc), that marriage to “hockey’s First Daughter” could help M. Black in his ongoing efforts to regain the Canadian citizenship he gave up to become a British lord, once his current one-year resident permit expires.

(On the other hand, the fact that Paulina Gretzky was born in Los Angeles, to an American mother and a Canadian father, might not help the Black case all that much. Even so, what 67-year-old-man, with enough money to purchase regular doses of Cialis for Daily Use, would not want to be married to a cute 23-year-old girl from Los Angeles who wears lingerie in restaurants — in principle, and not as something that would ever actually happen, of course, etc, etc.)

Barack Obama, 22, and his first serious girlfriend, Genevieve Cook, 25.

At the same time again, all this does pale in significance when set beside the possibly intriguing ways in which US President Barack Obama has just been pulling various brands of wool over various eyes (including his own?), on the future of the US military in Afghanistan.

(Although, as good copy no doubt, even this pales beside yesterday’s revelation that : “When Barack Obama met Genevieve Cook in 1983 at a Christmas party in New York’s East Village, it was the start of his most serious romance yet. But as the 22-year-old Columbia grad began to shape his future, he was also struggling with his identity: American or international? Black or white? Drawing on conversations with both Cook and the president, David Maraniss, in an adaptation from his new Obama biography, has the untold story of the couple’s time together.”)

This past Friday Canada’s self-confessed national newspaper revealed that “Britain’s Prince William and his wife Catherine will be celebrating their first wedding anniversary on Sunday … Intolerable media intrusion was cited by many sources as the reason the couple broke up in 2007, but they soon got back together and married in a global ceremony on April 29, 2011.”

The anniversary has now come and gone. And we want to take this opportunity to just reflect briefly on what it means for the so-called “Commonwealth Realm” of Canada. (While of course wishing the happy couple in their privacy our very best.)

There are those who would say the anniversary means quite a lot up here in the northern wilderness, especially since the couple’s Canadian visit early last summer. And one of them — somewhat surprisingly to us — is the usually more iconoclastic and socially critical  Heather Mallick, at the Toronto Star.

This version of the “See-Through Thing That Made Prince William Hot for Kate Middleton” can now be purchased online for less than £60.

So Ms. Mallick wrote in her column this past Saturday: “Even those who do not love the royals, as is their right, would perhaps agree that the young couple — touring Canada to a roaring welcome, touching down in Hollywood, living quietly in Wales, building a private life and working hard — have done their duty … Their Canadian tour proved that this country, modern and perhaps cynical, will turn out for two great royals … many people quietly wish a long life for Queen Elizabeth II, that the current heir to the throne might wish for a quiet one, and that this Duke and Duchess might show up on the Canadian currency.”

We of course are among those who “do not love the royals, as is their right.” And just in case Ms. Mallick really doesn’t understand, we do not agree with any of her assertions about the young couple. (Although we do agree that she too has every right to make them. Canada today is above all a “free and democratic society,” as in the Constitution Act, 1982. And everyone has a right to believe whatever they like about the British royal family.)

We are also among the great majority of Canadians who did not in fact “turn out for two great royals” last summer. And we cannot for the life of us understand why people who do “love the royals” think it is somehow “cynical” not to — like saying it is cynical not to believe in Santa Claus, especially after you’ve had too much to drink on Christmas Eve.

Kate Middleton and Prince William with California Governor Jerry Brown and wife Anne Gust Brown at the British Consul-General’s residence in LA, July 8, 2011.

We believe that democracy is what’s best in our Canadian society today — and that this is what should be celebrated in the higher symbolism of the Canadian state. Continuing to pretend that the British monarch (who also happens to live in another country) is somehow our official head of state — and hoping that one day “this Duke and Duchess might show up on the Canadian currency” — just contradicts our beliefs in “democracy not monarchy” as the ultimate value.

We also think, we probably should  confess, that, on a more practical plane of being, continuing to pretend that the British monarch (who also happens to live in another country) is somehow our official head of state in the independent, free and democratic, officially bilingual country of Canada today is delusional at best. (And perhaps it is this perception that finally makes those who love the royals as much as Heather Mallick see people who think as we do “cynical”?)

We do agree with yesterday’s Reuter’s report: “Even if, as naysayers argue, the duke and duchess are merely celebrities whose wealth and style are out of reach of all but a few, their popularity reaches far beyond Britain … Media outlets in Britain, the United States, Canada and beyond remain enamored with Catherine and second-in-line-to-the-throne Prince William.”

Rock Hill, Aaron Copland House, in northern Westchester County, New York.

We remain, however, “naysayers” ourselves. And we don’t think that “Media outlets” have quite the same democratic force as the late great Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare For The Common Man” [and nowadays Woman too of course].

As a sign that we still value our British political culture and “Westminster parliamentary democracy” in Canada (which does not require any kind of monarch to function, as such places as India and Ireland today show quite nicely), we also agree with what the great Ricky Gervais said in Hollywood earlier this year: “The Golden Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton … A bit louder. A bit trashier. A bit drunker and more easily bought — allegedly!”

And, as undeniably cute and charming as both ladies are, we democratically look forward to a day when neither Kim Kardashian nor Kate Middleton (nor her husband, nor any other member of the British royal family) appears on our Canadian currency!

I had just waded through an even two dozen articles on Michael Ignatieff and his latest thoughts about what Pierre Trudeau’s book of 1968 called Federalism and the French Canadians.

(Well … that’s not exactly true : the first of the two dozen was actually an article by Michael Ignatieff himself — a review of David Scheffer’s new book,  All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals, from the April 5, 2012 issue of the New York Review of Books. But the remaining 23 are all about Ignatieff’s recent interview with BBC Scotland, on parallels that may or may not exist between the Québécois and Scottish independence movements. I have listed all 24 articles in an Appendix, for those almost as crazy as I am.)

What I was trying to do here was summarize just what I have taken away from this exercise — apart from an immediate impulse to collapse into a heap of laughing to keep from crying on my second-storey back office floor.

At this point in my composition, however, I was called away to a meeting of the counterweights focus group, at Pauper’s Pub on the semi-fashionable part of Bloor Street in Toronto, west of Spadina and east of Bathurst. Inevitably the subject of Iggy’s return arose. And I joined in on the enthusiastic abuse of his latest pronouncements on his home and native land.

A reference to a particular newspaper article launched the focus group discussion: Chantal Hébert’s April 25 column in the Toronto Star, “Michael Ignatieff’s BBC comments on shaky ground.”  I absolutely agree that this is an excellent piece, on several key reasons why “former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff” was off the mark in “his depiction of Canada as a federation whose solitudes [between Quebec and the rest of Canada] had grown so far apart as to have little incentive to continue living together.”  (And Ms. Hébert is herself, after all, a francophone resident of Quebec.)

In a broadly similar vein, I had also been impressed myself by David Olive’s April 24 column in the same publication, “Ignatieff never has and never will understand Canada.”  Mr. Olive began with: “Michael Ignatieff, forgotten but not gone, told the BBC in a documentary on Scottish nationalism broadcast Tuesday that Canada is a ‘very strange’ country whose French-English linguistic divisions will eventually destroy the Great White North.” And Mr. Olive’s last sentence advised: “Canadians in their wisdom last year hugely rejected an Ignatieff government. For Internet readers looking in from London to Jakarta, Michael Ignatieff’s thoughts on Canada should [be] given as much weight as the Dalai Lama’s assessment of Velveeta.”

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TORONTO. APRIL 24, 2:00 PM. So … as if the Alberta election weren’t enough of a surprise, the final act of the Liberal-NDP dance of the dialectic on Ontario Budget 2012 managed to bring us something a bit different too. For the details I just quote directly from Karen Howlett’s concise summary in the self-confessed national newspaper, as updated about an hour ago:

“The Ontario minority Liberal government has dodged a snap election, after a crucial vote on its budget … The budget passed with all 52 Liberal MPPs voting in favour of it on Tuesday and all 37 Progressive Conservatives voting against it, as widely expected … But much to the surprise of the Liberals, the party that came third in the last election abstained from voting, despite winning major concessions.

“New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath said her 17-member caucus did not cast a vote because the budget does not do enough to help those out of work … With the NDP holding the balance of power in the minority legislature, the Liberals agreed to many of Ms. Horwath’s demands, including a new 2 per cent surtax for those who earn more than $500,000 a year and more funding for day-care and those living on disability … ‘She wants to have her cake and eat it, too,’ a visibly surprised Finance Minister Dwight Duncan told reporters.”

There will be some who say all this is just a bit too clever by half. After what had seemed to be a strong finish on the high ground, Lady Hamilton suddenly plunged to the depths — and blotted her copy book in the eyes of the voters (less than half of whom actually voted in this past October’s Ontario provincial election).

Others will admire the sauciness with which Ms. Horwath has climaxed this first big episode of the when-will-the-next-Ontario election-be soap opera. And abstaining from confidence votes in the legislature could be a genuinely clever way for the New Democrats to try to manipulate the life of the province’s 40th Parliament since 1867, from here on in. This is arguably exactly what the Liberals should have done in Ottawa during the two Harper minority governments. (And did not, to their ultimate peril.)

I think myself that only time will tell which of these two arguments is correct — in the sense of just how Andrea’s cute trick will finally affect the public’s estimate of both her and her party. But for the moment, my first reaction is that it doesn’t really bother me. It isn’t exactly playing by Marquis of Queensbury rules, perhaps. But then how often do such rules actually prevail in politics — even in Premier Dad’s Ontario? If crucial votes in the legislature are now going to be between the Liberals and the Conservatives alone, that is an effective Liberal majority government, and arguably an effective way of governing Ontario for some reasonable period of time ahead. (Until of course the Andrea NDP , with 23% of the vote and 16% of the seats in the last election, decides that it’s in its interest to pull the plug.) Now, will such scheming cleverness make the New Democrats more popular than the Liberals in the next election? That, it seems to me, again, is something that only time can tell us — whenever the next election does take place.

MONDAY, APRIL 23, 11:45 PM ET/9:45 PM MT. So … Every now and then voters decide to ignore what one Alberta commentator has called “the media narrative,” and the opinion polls,  and even the obscure hasty opinions of aging bloggers from another planet such as myself. They vote against what all the chattering classes and alleged experts are saying — and restore our collective faith in a democracy that really can deliver surprises at election time.

The headline on the Canadian Press report from an hour or so ago sums up what happened in the Alberta provincial election today : “Tories re-elected with majority in Alberta … Alberta not going wild: Tories defy polls and win majority.”

Just yesterday, at 10:00 AM the Globe and Mail in Toronto was reporting: “Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party is poised for a sweeping majority in Monday’s Alberta election, the latest poll says … The poll, conducted by Forum Research Inc., shows Wildrose maintaining a wide lead over the Progressive Conservatives, with 41 per cent of voters backing the party compared to the PC’s 32 per cent. It’s a wider gap than what was found by another major poll earlier this week.”

In fact, a very last poll by the same firm, did begin to catch the last-minute shift in voter intentions. It found Wildrose going down to 38% and Ms. Redford’s PC s rising to 36%. But it was still reporting that “Wildrose is set to secure a slim majority, picking up 44 of 87 seats in the house.” There was another burst of movement to election day.

The final results are still not entirely clear. But, tentatively and in round numbers, the PCs have taken about 44% of the vote, compared to a mere 35% for the Wildrose Alliance (and 10% for the NDP,  9% for the Liberals, and 2% for everyone else. The PCs will have in the neighbourhood of 60 seats in the Alberta legislature, the Wildrose less than 20, and the New Democrats and Liberals three or four each. [UPDATE APRIL 24, 11 AM ET / 9 AM MT: The final results are: Progressive Conservatives: 61 seats (43.9%) ;  Wildrose Party: 17 seats (34.3%) ; Liberals: 5 seats (9.9%) ;  NDP: 4 seats (9.8%).]

This result certainly makes a great deal of what I had to say yesterday in “Danielle Smith if necessary in Alberta on April 23 .. but not necessarily Canada’s Sarah Palin (or worse)” off the mark. My wife says I should console myself with the thought that (almost?) everyone else  — and even the general “media narrative” — got things wrong as well. And I intend to do just that!  Meanwhile, what the big surprise shows, I think, is that Alberta really has changed. A lot of new people have moved to Canada’s oil-boom province over the past several years. Apparently a lot of people who have lived there all their lives have also been changing their minds. The Wildrose Alliance was appealing to an older Alberta. It can still command somewhat more than a third of the province-wide popular vote. But that is not enough to win a provincial election. People in the part of the country I live in, I am also told, ought to be happy about all this. And secretly, I suppose I am!

To start with, happy earth day, of course. Meanwhile, on a vaguely related front (or more?), there are a full half-dozen texts for this Sunday’s “Sermonette,” on the almost religious prospect that Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance just might win the Alberta provincial election tomorrow, Monday, April 23, 2012 :

(1) “Wildrose Party to win majority in Alberta election: latest poll results” …  There is still a theoretical chance that Ms. Redford’s PCs could pull off some very big surprise. But usually when the polls are this consistent so close to the election date, they are right. See also the nicely summarized recent polling history at the Wikipedia site on “Alberta general election, 2012,” and this item from today in Canada’s self-confessed national newspaper: “Wildrose Party set for sweeping majority, latest poll shows.”

(2) “PEO Presents: Alberta Oil Sands, An Expert Panel on its Future” …  Almost by accident I attended this event at the University of Toronto by way of field work on tomorrow’s election. It was free and the complimentary food was so good that I have finally decided it must have been funded by the Alberta oil industry, one way or another. The industry also seems to be behind Ms. Smith and her Alliance?

(3) “An Alberta shakeup would be felt across the country” …  Veteran Ottawa pundit Jeffrey Simpson has assorted wise things to say in this piece. Eg: “Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith has mused about looking east for a potential market for Alberta oil, which might mean talking to central Canadian provinces about taking (and refining?) oil. A delegation from Sarnia, Ont., recently visited Alberta to discuss such possibilities.” Who knows? Wildrose Alberta may be a bit more interesting than …? Maybe?  On the other hand, see “Alberta election 2012: Tim Harper: Wildrose leader Danielle Smith – scary or shrewd?” for a more scary assessment?

(4) “Left-of-centre Alberta parties wasted their big chance” … Paula Simons at the Edmonton Journal explains why the left-of-centre cause in this part of the home and native land remains hopeless. Even if the Liberals and NDP merged, they still wouldn’t be anywhere close here.

(5) “Senate race struggles to get voter attention … PM promises to appoint top three finishers” … Alberta voters will also get a chance to chose federal Senators for their province tomorrow. And: “Within 18 months, the top two finishers in Alberta’s Senate nominee race will be sitting in the Upper House in Ottawa.”  Even so, as one candidate has complained : “I can firmly say that 95 per cent of Albertans don’t know what’s going to happen on Monday —  that they’re going to be given this extra ballot … It is disappointing … and I expect, as was the case in 2004, that a lot of people will refuse to vote.” At the same time, in Ontario we just yawn about all this, but Stephen Harper’s step by step Senate reform is winning at least some favourable comment in other provinces. See, eg: “Senate reform: Nova Scotia’s opportunity.”

(6) “For Quebec, Canada’s westward shift translates into ‘de facto separation‘” …  A young lady from Quebec on CTV this morning somewhat wistfully wondered whether a new Wildrose Alberta might  press harder for the kind of still more decentralized Canadian federation that would be welcome in Quebec? But according to Tim Harper [see (3) above], Ms. Smith herself has said: “I think we need to have a tough conversation with Quebec.” Personally, I like trying to blend the Quebec and Senate reform constitutional issues, as in “What if Canadian Senate reform also became a way of recognizing Québécois nation in a united Canada?” But this seems a long-term proposal at best. In the more immediate future, if and when the Wildrose Alliance triumphs tomorrow, I think we in Ontario should start warming up our traditional friendship with what former Premier Bill Davis used to wisely call our “sister province” of Quebec.

(Oh and I guess I should finally quickly comment on the Danielle Smith as “Canada’s Sarah Palin” question — for those, eg, who can still remember when Ontario Premier Mitch Hepburn used to be called “Canada’s Huey Long.”  For one thing, I hope I won’t be accused of lacking Canadian patriotism if I quietly observe that while Ms. Smith is not unattractive, she is not quite as cute as Ms. Palin. (Or as hot: just ask the US Secret Service.) I would then defer to Colby Cosh at Macleans’, who way back in January 2010 was telling us that “Danielle Smith is no Sarah Palin. For one thing, she might win.” Again, unless the polls turn out to be shockingly and awesomely wrong, she will win tomorrow. And, say whatever else you like, Alberta these days is certainly a considerably more potent and populous place than Alaska.)

Thanks to Mike Graston, Windsor Star.

[UPDATED APRIL 22, 23]. Contrary to many prognostications, the dance of Larry Zolf’s Winnipeg dialectic between Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals and Andrea Horwath’s Ontario New Democrats, over the current Liberal major-minority government’s Budget 2012, has not yet shown decisive signs of coming to some stable point of rest. (Well … that too has now changed, at 4 PM on the afternoon of Monday, April 23. See final UPDATE below.)

(And the prognostications here include my own obscure mumbling just a week ago now. As they say, a week is a long time in politics, etc.)

There have been two big — and almost contradictory? — changes over the past seven days. First, there now seem more smart voices saying: you know what, as absolutely crazy as it clearly is, there just may be yet another Ontario provincial election in this strange spring of 2012. No one really wants it (well … ), but in Ontario today we live in bizarre times. We will not finally be certain about what’s going on until the actual budget vote in the Legislative Assembly, this coming Tuesday, April 24.

Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat (left) sitting next to Quebec Premier Honore Mercier (right), Interprovincial Conference, Quebec City, 1887. Dalton McGuinty has been compared to Mowat. And the new federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is the great grandson of Mercier!

The second big change (in theory at any rate?) is that at least two recent opinion polls seem to suggest that if the budget is finally defeated in the legislature this coming Tuesday, and a fresh election becomes necessary, it may very well produce an even less stable minority government than the one we have now:

(1) A week ago yesterday the estimable Graham Murray’s Inside Queen’s Park newsletter announced that it had “ obtained the results of a poll conducted for the Canadian Union of Public Employees – Ontario Division – by Angus Reid Public Opinion.”  The poll was “in the field April 2 & 3” and “surveyed 1,500 adults.”

In terms of province-wide popular vote the poll “showed 34 per cent intended to vote PC, 31 per cent NDP and 29 per cent Liberal.” A seat projection based on these numbers indicated that: “The Liberals’ 53-seat minority government would be replaced by a PC one led by Tim Hudak, with the identical number of seats — one seat short of a majority.  The NDP would become the Official Opposition with 28 seats, with the Liberals slipping into third place with 26.”

(2) Just yesterday the excellent Susanna Kelley reported that “New poll results obtained exclusively by OntarioNewsWatch.com show provincial voters favour Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives to win power should the Liberal minority government fail in its negotiations to get New Democratic Party support for its budget … the the Environics Research Group poll …  pegs the Tories at 37 percent support of decided voters, the NDP at 30 percent, and the Liberals at 27 percent. Six percent of Ontarians would support the Green Party … The telephone poll of 500 Ontario adults was conducted April 10-13.”

This latest Environics poll also suggests a striking geographic cleavage: “In the riding-rich Greater Toronto Area … the Liberals are still fairly strong. They have the support of 37 percent of those polled, while the PC’s are at 34 percent. The NDP are the favourite of 24 percent. (The GTA definition used by Environics Group includes both the so-called ‘416′ area and some of the ‘905′ belt outside of Toronto …) … But in the rest of Ontario, 39 percent of those asked would vote Tory if an election were held today, 34 percent would vote NDP, and just 20 percent would mark their ballot for the McGuinty Liberals.”  (And click on “Read the rest of this page” below and/or scroll down for April 22/23 update.)

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“And Barbara it’s starting to rain, very gently.” So a youthful Peter Mansbridge told David Frum’s mother — and TV viewers across Canada —  as Elizabeth II approached  the table to sign the proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982, 30 years ago, on Saturday, April 17, 1982.

The ceremony was held outdoors on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. After the signing of the proclamation the gentle rain grew stronger. When the Queen  began some concluding remarks (sheltered under a covered dais), the watching crowd on the Hill was covered by umbrellas. The Constitution of Canada was being “patriated” from the Parliament of the United Kingdom at last. It may have been appropriate that this was happening in a respectful local burst of the weather for which the old imperial metropolis was famous.

The original main part of Canada’s so-called written constitution was the British North America Act, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1867, and given royal assent by Queen Victoria. For many years it could only be amended by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. For matters dealing with both federal and provincial governments this remained the case until the Constitution Act, 1982 — which at last provided a complete method of constitutional amendment inside Canada , and thus “patriated” the Constitution from the United Kingdom.

There are two main ingredients in the Constitution Act, 1982. The first is a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” The second is a complex or at least demanding “procedure for amending Constitution of Canada.”

There are some who say that, except for matters dealing with the federal government alone, this procedure has proved so demanding as to make the present Constitution of Canada engraved in stone. But the Charter has won great popular support. And among its smaller achievements the Constitution Act, 1982 changed the name of the old British North America Act to the Constitution Act, 1867. (If you think this means we more or less have two main written constitutions in Canada now — an old one and a new one — you are not entirely wrong.)

Pierre Trudeau played such a leading role in the achievement of the Constitution Act, 1982 — in the wake of the first failed Quebec sovereignty referendum, of 1980 — that the present Harper government in Ottawa has been reluctant to do much by way of celebrating its 30th anniversary. When you think of Mr. Harper’s recent neo-colonial enthusiasms for reviving the Royal Canadian Navy and whatnot, something deeper than Trudeau-envy may be at work as well.

“The Constitution Act, 1982,” the political scientist Frederick Vaughan has written, “was the instrument that, with one stroke, severed Canadians from their ancestral monarchical foundations. With the Charter Canada began a new life as a nation. The Charter is based upon republican principles. It is the closest Canadians have ever come to a document that affirms the rights of the people.”

In his remarks on April 17, 1982, from underneath the covered dais, Pierre Trudeau declared “no Constitution, no Charter of Rights and Freedoms … can be a substitute for the willingness to share the risks and grandeur of the Canadian adventure … Let us celebrate the renewal and patriation of our Constitution; but let us put our faith, first and foremost, in the people of Canada who will breathe life into it.” And, he concluded, it was in the name of “Canadians everywhere” that he invited Queen Elizabeth II “to give solemn proclamation to our new Constitution.”

Inevitably, the constitutional achievement of Pierre Trudeau and the federal and provincial politicians of the early 1980s elected by the people of Canada was far from perfect. The risks and grandeur of the Canadian adventure continue. Both the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Constitution Act, 1982 need to be extended on several different fronts. (Not the least of which, of course, is Quebec’s continuing official refusal to “sign on” to what happened on April 17, 1982!) To believe in the long-term future of the Canadian adventure is to believe that, at some point soon enough, at least some of the most important things that still need to be done will get done.

Meanwhile, here are a half dozen recent newspaper articles and commentaries on the 30th anniversary: “Canada’s cherished Charter could not have happened without ‘kitchen accord’” ; “If the War of 1812 warrants commemoration, so does the patriation of the Constitution: Chretien” ; “Constitutional rift between Quebec, rest of Canada left a ‘deep scar’” ; “Why this year could prove to be the Charter’s most controversial” ; “Thatcher cabinet looked at rejecting Canadian Charter of Rights plan” ; and (as just one reminder of what still needs to be done) “Trudeau, c’est Wolfe!” As usual, this is Canada, and there are many points of view. But I’ve been around for more than six decades now. And the Constitution Act, 1982 is still the biggest thing that has happened to Canada in my lifetime. Before April 17, 2012 is over, I’m going to drink as much as I can from a very large bottle of champagne.