Youthful Wab Kinew as an indigenous hip-hop rapper, back in the day.

This past Monday Dan Lett at the Winnipeg Free Press wrote : “The path that Wab Kinew is walking just became incredibly steep.”

Mr. Lett went on : “That’s an odd thing to say about a man who just won a landslide victory to become the new leader of the Manitoba New Democratic Party. But thanks to a flurry of recent revelations about Kinew’s troubled life before he became a politician, this is no ordinary political narrative.”

Four days ago Steve Lambert at The Canadian Press had further explained how : “‘It’s a new day for the NDP and it’s a new day for Manitoba,’ Kinew declared to cheers following the vote.”

Yet : “Within minutes of Kinew’s victory, the governing [Manitoba provincial] Progressive Conservatives had a web site up that highlighted Kinew’s decade-old criminal convictions, charges of domestic violence that were stayed, and rap lyrics with offensive terms for women, gays and lesbians and others.”

At least much of all this has been known for a while, and Mr. Kinew has even made political capital out of confessing old sins, and demonstrating more recent reforms. (“‘I am not the man I was,’ Kinew told delegates before the vote with his wife, Lisa Monkman, by his side.”)

Wab Kinew and his father, the late Tobasonakwut Kinew, who “dedicated much of the latter part of his life to reconciliation between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities across North America.”

Way back in March 2016  — before Wab Kinew had even won a Winnipeg seat in the Manitoba legislature for the New Democrats — Chinta Puxley at The Canadian Press was reporting that in his youth “Kinew had been part of a rap group called the Dead Indians.”

In more mature times  : “As he became a father and his political awareness grew, Kinew saw the contradiction in advocating for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and the misogyny and homophobia of hip-hop culture.”

There were (and still are) also many inside and outside Manitoba (including myself) who have very much wanted Wab Kinew to do well as the new leader of the Manitoba provincial New Democratic Party. He is an indigenous politician in Canada who wants to be a Canadian (and not just an indigenous) leader. And that could prove very helpful for the Canadian future, especially at this particular point in the life of the 1867 confederation, in the true north, strong and free.

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BC “Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas is escorted from the speaker's corridor to the legislative assembly after being elected speaker of the legislature in Victoria on Friday, Sept. 8, 2017. Photograph By CHAD HIPOLITO, The Canadian Press.”

You may not care much about Premier John Horgan’s government’s “first update on BC budget” — like finance minister Carole James herself.  You may also be thinking, like us, that the intriguing new NDP-Green alliance in BC provincial politics still looks too insecure to be of much broader Canadian significance.

We can only say we have ourselves at least started to think again after digesting  headlines like : “MLA Darryl Plecas shocks Liberals by taking job as Speaker” ; and “Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas becomes new Speaker … BC Liberal interim leader Rich Coleman calls Plecas’ move a ‘betrayal’.”

Rob Shaw has explained the crux of all this in the Vancouver Sun: “The ultimate impact of the move could be to lengthen the life of the minority NDP government, and give the New Democrats the necessary breathing room to pass legislation. With a Liberal in the job, the NDP can pass legislation without having to rely on the Speaker to break tie votes, a risk it faced if it had to appoint a NDP MLA as Speaker.”

Or as Mike Smyth at The Province has noted : “Plecas stunned his former Liberal colleagues on Friday by accepting the $150,000-a-year Speaker’s job, a shocking move that effectively handed the governing NDP-Green alliance an expanded, three-seat majority in the legislature.”

What some of we BC politics novices back east (well … north of the Great Lakes) are still wondering is who is former Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas (who is now Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, but also a victim [?] of “BC Liberals remove Darryl Plecas from party”)?

And what does his action mean for the thesis that Canada’s Pacific Province is moving towards the Australian model of parliamentary democratic political party development — where, after various twists and turns, the Liberals wind up as the effective conservative party on the right?

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Yesterday down at the beach it almost seemed that the great storms down south were making  some of their way to the northern woods.

I had in any case already started this past Friday before Labour Day 2017 with brief notices from the east and west coasts of the impressive “too much geography” that is Canada today.

From The Guardian in Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic Ocean : “Front-row seat to history: National news agency The Canadian Press marks 100 years.” (And for somewhat more depth see also this more central Canadian article from late 2010 : “Major publishers invest in Canada’s oldest news agency … The owners of The Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and La Presse have invested in The Canadian Press.”)

And then from the Victoria Times Colonist on Vancouver Island this past Friday : “Opinion: Call Trump’s bluff, walk away from NAFTA.” (A thought that regularly occurs to me as well lately. It could actually be good for our northern North American economy … maybe? And for another central Canadian gloss on the attractions of multicultural Canada today see also, on You Tube : “Hot Girls Dancing Gangnam Style in a Toronto Supermarket.”)

Meanwhile, the more serious issue at the back of my mind lies somewhere in the middle of these late August 2017 headlines : “Unmasking the leftist Antifa movement” (Sara Ganim and Chris Welch, CNN) ; “Masked counterprotestors violently drive out right-wing demonstrators at Berkeley rally” (Toronto Star) ; “The Democratic silence on antifa is dangerous” (Chicago Tribune) ; and “Violent demonstrators in Berkeley are thugs, not activists (Los Angeles Times)”.

You can find a more sympathetic view of the “Antifa movement” in “‘They have no allegiance to liberal democracy’: an expert on antifa explains the group … Why a loose network of militant activists is confronting fascists.” This is an interview with Mark Bray, “a historian at Dartmouth College and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”

Mr. Bray himself opines : “Will a lot of people see antifa and their methods as a poor reflection of the left? Absolutely. But I also think that these are not people who were going to vote Democrat anyway. If you read the news … you know that Nancy Pelosi has nothing to do with antifa. This group loathes the Democratic Party, and they don’t hide that … So anyone who blames the Democrats for antifa is likely already disposed to vote Republican anyway.”

“Eugene Antifa” (in Oregon).

I am finally myself left with some passages from an article on the late great American “Anti-Fascist” radical democrat and community organizer Saul Alinsky (1909–1972) by my friend Frank Bunting, that first appeared on this site back in the fateful year 2010.

As Bunting explained then : “there was in Saul Alinsky’s concept of building ‘people’s organizations’ none of the ‘glorification of violence’ as a political ‘cleansing force’ that Maurice Cranston saw as a key feature of the New Left  … At one point [in an interview with Playboy] …  Alinsky was talking about organizing tactics that demonstrated all ‘the elements of good organization — imagination, legality, excitement and, above all, effectiveness.’ The Playboy interviewer jumped in with ‘And coercion …’  But Alinsky quickly came back: ‘No, not coercion —  popular pressure in the democratic tradition.’”

Frank Bunting concluded with : “In Rules for Radicals Alinsky also stressed, as one recent friendly commentator has put it, ‘that people should not underestimate the room to manoeuvre in democratic systems.’ Alinsky’s community organizing, he urged himself, could only survive in democratic societies underpinned by a working rule of law. Adding the white middle-class mainstream in America to the black ghettoes and Latino barrios was the wave of his radical organizing future.”

Leaders from Lake County United peoples’ organization in Libertyville, Illinois, at meeting on selling 19 acres of local township property for affordable housing, July 2017.

An entire section of Marion K. Sanders’s minor classic of the mid 1960s , The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky (originally in Harper’s magazine), is entitled “The Making of an Anti-Fascist.” Alinsky wore what was once this 1930s-1940s political terminology with serious distinction.

Those who want to wear the same clothes today should take a tip from former US President Barack Obama, and study the legacies of America’s great radical democratic community organizing guru much more closely. That at least is what I think when I hear people like Mark Bray talk about “Anti-Fascism” in Donald Trump’s America of 2017. (O … and Happy Labour Day 2017 too!)

At the beach ... where we should all be in August.

TORONTO. AUGUST 22, 2017. It has been a strange-weather summer in the city this year. Right now we’re waiting for yet more rain.

(I spoke too soon. It has just come. And now the question is : when will it come again? Can we go for coffee later, across from the park?)

Meanwhile, it is another what’s-it-all-about-Alfie day here in the office. I sit at my computer, looking out the window at green-leaf trees, a fire escape, tin roofs, and the parking lot next door.

I click on the Toronto Star website, to see what is happening in the alleged great world. My own top 10 current headlines turn out to be (in alphabetical order) :

(1) Boris Spremo, former Toronto Star photographer, dies at 81 ;

(2) Cornwall councillors seek answers as hundreds of Haitian refugee claimants arrive in Ontario ;

(3) ‘Don’t look!’ yells White House staffer as Trump looks at solar eclipse without glasses ;

Looking at solar eclipse without glasses.

(4) Ford, Chinese carmaker consider joining forces for electric cars ;

(6) Incoming governor general Julie Payette drops fight to keep divorce records sealed ;

(7) Indian Muslim men can no longer instantly divorce their wives, top court rules ;

(8) Organized crime in the GTA is undergoing a power struggle, experts say ;

(9) People start hating their jobs at around age 35: survey ;

(10) Why Kathleen Wynne just won’t quit.

Then, somewhere in my internet travels, I bump into an intriguing site I am out-of-it enough not to know about already. It calls itself, in a clearly satirical mode, “the holy Islamic extremist gossip site CelebJihad.com.”

Whatever else, CelebJihad.com combines two things of great interest in the USA today (and/or  “the United States and Canada” too) :

Is this the real Kristen Stewart (or what about the rest of her supposed body, not shown here?)

(a) pornographic images of female celebrities, especially  from what CelebJihad.com calls “Zionist Hollywood” ;

(b) what some call “Islamic terrorists” and others call “jihadis” and the threats they pose to a more free and democratic (or at least peaceful) global village, or wherever else you choose to think you live.

I don’t want to go on here. And I certainly don’t want my wife and her friends thinking that I in any way endorse or recommend CelebJihad.com.

I’d just further note that : “The website started around … 2008, but it only came to the spotlight after it posted topless photos of singer Taylor Swift in 2011. Since then the site has managed to hog the attention with the help of fake photos and hoax articles.”

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Meeting of British empire’s Imperial War Cabinet, London, 1917. UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George is front row, fifth from left. Canadian PM Robert Borden is immediately to his right. Second from left, second row is the Maharaja of Bikaner, Ganga Singh, from India.

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. AUGUST 11, 2017. It is getting harder and harder for Canadians who watch US TV to know just what is going on in the American Republic led by President Donald Trump.

Rex Tillerson advises against losing sleep, with what looks like a smile. This may be the right worldly wisdom. But it is also hard not to at least sometimes wonder : Are millions of people actually going to have to die — likely including large enough numbers in and/or from North America — just to comfort the juvenile hearts and minds of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un?

Thoughts like this take wings when we learn from a Keith Olbermann tweet that, as reported in the Wall Street Journal : “Analysts are trying to work out what happens to markets in the event of an all-out nuclear war.” (Olbermann just says “All of them would die #Idiots.”)

Olbermann has also been tweeting : “This mentally unstable man must be removed … 25th Amendment … Impeachment … Any legal means to stop him … Mattis ignoring him.”

l–r : Canada PM Justin Trudeau, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, First Ministers’ Meeting, Ottawa, 2015.

This  reminds us of :“Brinkley: Trump is ‘unfit for command’ … Author and CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley [with a day job at Rice University in Houston, Texas] says the Trump White House is in ‘utter disarray’ and concludes that the president is ‘unfit for command.’ His message: ‘He thinks you can govern by chaos, and it’s not working.’”

Possibly at some other exotic extreme, in Canada our early August TV news reports that the “federal government is ordering large vessels to slow down in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as it tries to protect right whales who frequent the waters … Ten … have died in the gulf since early June … Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Transport Minister Marc Garneau were in Pointe-du-Chene, N.B., Friday to announce immediate temporary measures aimed at preventing further whale deaths.”

For political hardball, Saskatchewan’s once beloved premier Brad Wall has decided to step down. (“It has been and will always be the honour of my working life to serve as Premier of this Province that I love” ; “Stunning departure: Premier Wall announces his resignation.”)

See a Maclean’s article from this past June for deep background (Tammy Robert, “Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall problem.”) And note two helpful pieces on the CBC News site : Kendall Latimer on “Who will replace Brad Wall as Saskatchewan Party leader?” ; and  Éric Grenier on “Brad Wall’s departure highlights changing political landscape of Western Canada.”

“Justine Skye in white.” Compliments TierraAnyeaTv.

Talk about changing political landscapes also reminds us that we have just posted the latest installment of Randall White’s work-in-progress, Children of the Global Village — Canada in the 21st Century : Tales about the history that matters.

If you go to “Long Journey to a Canadian Republic” on the bar above (or just CLICK HERE), you will find a short introduction to this modern history of Canadian democracy, along with the “Prologue : too much geography.”

This is followed by links to the currently completed six chapters in Part I, four  chapters in Part II, and the first three chapters in Part III on the old Dominion of Canada. You will now find as well a link to Chapter 4 of PART III : THE DOMINION OF CANADA, 1867–1963, “Our Lady of the Snows, 1911–1921.”

Once more we caught up with Dr. White and his lovely business manager at the Tim Horton’s across from Kew Gardens in Toronto. He had a few quick thoughts on Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan, as well as Robert Borden as Canadian prime minister, in the second decade of the 20th century, which took in the First World War (in the days before nuclear weapons).

“Saskatchewan,” Dr. White remarked, “was the third most populous province in Canada, after Ontario and Quebec, from 1911 to 1941. Now it’s the sixth most populous province, after Ontario, Quebec, BC, Alberta, and Manitoba. Brad Wall was born in 1965. So you might say all this was before his time. But it was somehow still part of his political career. History can do strange things to politics, even when most people don’t know it.”

What a Trump White House could look like. Thanks to Catey Hill, MarketWatch.

I am not supposed to be doing this right now. I have allegedly more urgent work to attend to. But it is the middle of our short Canadian summer. And there is nothing quite like stealing time from more urgent work for a summer flight of fancy.

For my text see : “Did Donald Trump Call the White House ‘A Real Dump?’” ; “Trump reportedly described White House as a ‘real dump’” ; “Donald Trump Brands The White House ‘A Real Dump’” ; and “Report: Trump Tells Members Of His Golf Club The White House Is ‘A Real Dump’.”

All this was sharply brought to my attention this morning, almost as if it was somehow my fault. And there is a sense in which, if President Trump actually did call the US White House a dump or words to that effect, I think I can sort-of see what he means.

Marine Band performs on the South Lawn of the White House in 1921.

(Well … without in any way implying that there is anything on planet earth about which I agree with President Trump. Most people up here really liked President Obama. I was one of them.)

I base my own White-House-as-a-dump views largely on visits to US state legislatures back in the 1980s and 1990s — when my traveling companion and I had time for such things. And I should note we also toured Washington, DC during the same period (though I have never actually visited the White House inside, as it were).

Back from his own late 1950s and early 1960s visits, the American literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote that “Toronto [the Canadian city where I live today] also differs from the States, in spite of much Americanization, in preserving a British tradition of good order and capable handling.”

“In 1950, The White House was gutted of its interiors to undergo a massive restoration project set forth by President Truman. This painstaking process would eventually save the rapidly deteriorating building as it approached condemnation.”

My impression from my state legislature and Washington, DC tours of the 1980s and 1990s was that — perhaps in more of a “European” or even “Old World” legacy nowadays — public buildings in Canada are still typically better maintained than they are in the USA.

To me one crucial side of this just comes down to money, and especially tax dollars.

Canadians are at least somewhat more willing than Americans to spend money on government — including government buildings. (In 2015, eg, employment in general government as a percentage of total employment was 18.2% in Canada and only 15.3% in the USA.)

Moreover, as best as I can make out Donald Trump embraces the American political tradition that very aggressively demeans all forms of government activity as less worthy than virtually any form of private business enterprise — and less entitled to the economic resources that finally make the world go around.

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Brownman Ali — one of the few serious “jazz” artists this or any year at the Beaches Jazz Festival in the east end of Toronto, where most who come to watch and listen seem to have a pretty good time anyway.

[UPDATED AUGUST 1]. The final “Streetfest” phase of the 29th annual Beaches International Jazz Festival is now over, and we’ve asked our wayward staff  to submit their favourite key current late news extras for post-festival tabulation. Without further ado :

(1) “Bill Shorten renews push for Australian republic, vows to hold referendum within first term of Labor government.” By Allyson Horn & Henry Belot : “Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has promised a national vote on Australia becoming a republic during the first term of a Labor Government … ‘One question — do you support an Australian republic with an Australian head of state? Yes or No?’ … Mr Shorten said if the result of the referendum was yes, it could mean a secondary vote to decide what form of republic Australia should become … The staunch republican previously said he had no plans to push for the republic until the Queen’s reign ends.”

(2) “Make Payette head of state” in Canada. In a letter published by the Toronto Star Ashok Charles, “executive director, Republic Now, Toronto,” writes : “The naming of Julie Payette as Canada’s next Governor General raises an important and timely question: Rather than being appointed as the representative of our head of state, shouldn’t she take over the top position? … let’s compare Payette’s credentials with those of Charles Windsor, the current front-runner set to become our next head of state if we don’t do anything about it … A clear-headed assessment, unskewed by habitual deference, makes Payette the winner of this contest, hands down.”

(3) “The world according to Marshall McLuhan.” The Globe and Mail’s Mark Medley speaks with biographer Douglas Coupland “on why the culture and communications guru’s theories continue to resonate in 2017 — perhaps more than ever.”

We’d be happier hearing more about McLuhan’s “hick Baptist” inspiration Harold Innis (first Canadian president of the American Economic Association). But McLuhan can at least be a helpful entry drug.

(4) Kudos to the cw staff who tweeted “Midsummer madness has set in : ‘Conservatives say Trudeau’s Rolling Stone cover jeopardizes NAFTA talks’” this past week. For more on the August cover of Rolling Stone (whatever else, bound to win sneaking admiration or more from many we know) see : “Justin Trudeau lands on the cover of Rolling Stone” (Toronto Star — yes, again) ; and (as a kind of counterweight) “Justin Trudeau Rolling Stone Cover Is Brought To You By Desperate Times In America” (Huffington Post) —  “At a Canadian press conference, Rolling Stone witnessed Trudeau thanking reporters for the ‘essential’ role they play in a democracy … ‘Where are we? Narnia? Coachella recovery tent? 2009?’ Rodrick wrote. ‘We are in Ottawa, Ontario, a mere 560 miles from Washington, DC.’”

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American people who probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump, but might have voted for Bill Clinton back in the day..

[UPDATED JULY 21]. “This may be the hottest day we’ve had this summer,” someone said in the parking lot. I don’t know myself. In any case that’s just up here — north of the lakes.

Contemplating the more southerly climate of la démocratie en Amérique, I’m still thinking about two world-wide web reports from this past Monday : Steve Benen’s “Trump sees his historically awful public standing as ‘not bad’” from the Rachel Maddow site ; and Harry Enten’s “Six Months In, Trump Is Historically Unpopular” from  Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com.

Both reports compare presidential approval ratings after six months in office since the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1945.

Steve Benen’s work is based on “Washington Post/ABC News and Gallup Data.” Harry Enten uses “the FiveThirtyEight aggregate” (and if you are seriously wondering what this means try “How We’re Tracking Donald Trump’s Approval Ratings” by Nate Silver).

Because they use somewhat different configurations of polls, the two reports rank the “six-month-in popularity” of the 13 presidents since FDR somewhat differently. But they agree on the  key real-world results  :

* the four most popular presidents after six months in office are “Truman, Kennedy, Johnson,  Eisenhower” (Benen) or (in a slightly different order) “Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower” (Enten) ;

* the three least popular presidents at the same juncture are “Clinton, Ford, Trump” (Benen) or (in the same order) “Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Donald Trump” (Enten).

Two further propositions strike me as I ponder these reports at slightly greater length …

UPDATE JULY 21 : See also Jeffrey M. Jones at the Gallup organization on “Trump Sets New Low for Second-Quarter Job Approval.” (Which also shows President Trump not all that far away from President Clinton!)

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You can now buy Grace Lake Island in Haliburton, and “Create Your Own Private Escape” for $250,000 C — without electricity or anything else (but lots of mosquitoes in such a nicely wooded place).

At last we have summer in the city 2017 up here on the northwest shore of the most easterly great lake (well, sort of …). Back from a short communion with early July mosquitoes further north, I somehow bumped into a YouTube clip called “Paul Desmond & Gerry Mulligan — Stardust.”

As happens in the digital age this led to a slightly longer look at the “cool jazz” great Gerry Mulligan (6 Apr 1927 – 20 Jan 1996) — first encountered in my misspent youth many years ago.

I have just learned from  a quite good Wikipedia article that Mulligan died in 1996 at 68. This summer I am remembering someone very close who also played music and died at 68, in 2017.

One side of him would just raise his eyebrows and say “@#$% Gerry Mulligan : I don’t like jazz.” Another side might allow a few thoughts (no more) on the virtues of living until you’re 68 and still doing quite a lot with your life.

* * * *

Myself I like jazz. And Gerry Mulligan played a role in my discovery of the larger world beyond the near suburbs and old city north end where I lived as a teenager, from 1958 to 1964.

(I can even remember a local magazine article from the time, that claimed to examine both sides of a troubled marriage : “My wife’s an mental midget” vs. ”My husband’s an intellectual snob.” I later discovered both sides were written by the local literary survivor Hugh Garner, in an earlier tradition of fake news. One of the wife’s main complaints was that her husband listened too much to Gerry Mulligan records.)

On the view I absorbed in my teenage years Mulligan’s main talent was as an arranger (and composer). Yet as Wikipedia notes for “42 consecutive years (1953–1995)” he also won  “the Down Beat magazine reader’s poll for outstanding baritone saxophonist.”

Don Draper’s apartment, in the middle of Gerry Mulligan’s fame in the 1960s.

Mulligan was was not deft technically on the still somewhat unusual baritone (the heaviest of the big 4 saxophones to carry). But he cultivated an attractive tone, and used his arranger’s skill to craft tuneful and largely uncomplicated improvisations.

“There are some words,” he declared (later in life, I believe, after he married the Contessa) “that have been lost from modern usage that I like to bring to my music and have striven all my life to do, BEAUTY, GRACE, NOBILITY.”

(Or as the compelling user review jazz writer Don Bays has somewhat differently but still similarly explained, in his droll assessment of Mulligan’s 1963 album, Night Lights : “This is perfect bachelor pad music but actually stands up to serious examination quite well.” And if anyone ever said anything like this about something I’d done, I’d be very pleased.)

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For those who do feel inclined to celebrate the occasion, Happy Canada Day, July 1, 2017 — also the 150th anniversary of the northern North American confederation of 1867, established just after the American Civil War (1861–65) and just before the 1868 “Meiji Restoration” in Japan.

(Other notable events of  1867 include the Second Reform Act in the United Kingdom, publication of the first book-length edition of Walter Bagehot’s classic on The English Constitution, and publication of the first volume of Karl Marx’s classic Das Kapital — in German : an English edition did not appear until 1887!)

There are of course many reports on the 150th anniversary of the 1867 confederation in Canada currently extant. Our favourite is Randall White’s “Happy 150th Birthday To Ontario, Canada’s Most Populous Province,” on Susanna Kelley’s excellent Ontario News Watch site.

We also like “Canada Named ‘Most Reputable Country’ In Time For 150th Birthday” (Huffington Post Canada) and “PM Trudeau visits Parliament Hill protest teepee” (CTV News).

Meanwhile, the most interesting Canadian political action of the past week has featured the current adventures of Democracy in Canada’s Pacific Province.

This Republic Now billboard is up for a month in Toronto on Danforth Avenue east of Playter. A second is also in Toronto, on the Gardiner Expressway west of Sherbourne. A third is in Ottawa at St. Laurent Blvd. and Montreal Road.

You can follow these adventures in, eg : “Vaughn Palmer: Clark schemes, dreams NDP-Green alliance is a flop-in-waiting” ; “Judgment Day: BC Liberal tactics set up difficult decision for lieutenant-governor” ; “BC NDP asked to form government after Liberal defeat” ; and “Showdown at Government House: the meeting that ended 16 years of BC Liberal rule.”

For high commentary on the recent BC adventures in democracy we especially like Charlie Smith’s piece on The Georgia Straight website : “Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon’s unelected power should raise questions about dumping the monarchy.”

(And we’re guessing Mr. Smith would also like Republic Now’s Canada Day 2017 billboards in Ottawa and Toronto : “We don’t need a king : Our next head of state should be Canadian.”)

Former London, England town house of eminent anthropologist and archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers at 4 Grosvenor Gardens, occupied by squatters from Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians earlier this year.

Meanwhile, back in Canada’s old imperial metropolis of London, England, we’ve been struck by a report from earlier this year that we’ve just stumbled across : “Squatters ejected from oligarch’s £15m mansion move into new base yards away.”

The new base into which the squatters moved was a seven-storey town house at 4 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0DH. And it turns out that during the late 19th century this place — in posh Belgravia, not far from Buckingham Palace — belonged to the eminent anthropologist and archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt- Rivers.

(Btw during an earlier military career Fox Pitt- Rivers was briefly stationed in Canada, in 1861.)

We haven’t been able to discover online whether 4 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0DH is still being occupied by squatters (apparently from the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians). But the mere fact that such things happen in London today may have something to do with Brexit etc (well, maybe … somehow, in one way or another).

Finally, as evidence that Canada’s great geographic neighbour in the USA today is not entirely bereft of common sense right now — and that the capitalism Karl Marx criticized long ago continues to have its redeeming sides — see “WARREN BUFFETT: The Republican healthcare bill should be called the ‘Relief for the Rich Act’.”

Warren Buffet and friends break into song.

As evidence that Mr. Buffett has some appreciation for the USA’s northern neighbour as well, this article wisely concludes with :

“Buffett also reiterated his call for a single-payer system for healthcare, which he said would be ‘more effective.’” (As we have been illustrating in Canada since the late 1960s.)

So again, Happy Canada Day, July 1, 2017 — for those who do feel inclined to celebrate, with some form of inspirational refreshment, or whatever else might seem appropriate.