SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21. TORONTO. The Vancouver Sun this weekend ran an intriguing piece called “Any meaning in Christmas? An atheist, Christian, Sikh and ethnic Chinese respond.” It made me think a little more than I usually do about what the year-end holiday season means to me nowadays. Further exercise shoveling snow, and a headline on […]

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2008. 10:00 PM ET. The great Canadian political crisis of 2008, that started with the Conservative minority government’s financial update on November 27, is at last disappearing into the year-end holiday season. And already obituaries are being written for the alternative Liberal-New Democrat governing coalition, backed by the Bloc Quebecois – which […]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper likes to think of himself as a northern hemisphere variant of former Australian prime minister, John Howard. Harper plays his politics tough, loves nothing better than burying his opponents, and has adopted from Howard the habit of dividing Canadian society into those who are ordinary’ or mainstream’ and those who are […]