Caribbean Toronto

The first Monday in August is a holiday of sorts in eight Canadian provinces and two territories. If your idea of the best way to spend holiday weekends is relaxing with your computer, read on:

* More than one million are expected for the annual Caribana madness in Toronto this holiday weekend. The Iroquois who started modern Toronto about 350 years ago would be pleased.

* Check out these (of course made-up) minutes of this past week’s White House beer bash with Biden, Crowley, Gates and Obama, passed along by the lovely Ana Marie Cox on twitter.

* The appalling trial of the Bandidos charged with the largest mass murder in Ontario history carries on in London, Ontario. This week “Jury hears of Hells Angels link.”

* Bill Maher outdid himself on TV a few nights ago with “New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit.” The text is now available at the Huffington Post.

* David Bebee and Mathew McCarthy at the Waterloo Region Record have compiled “A Year on the Grand … A photographic celebration of four seasons on the Grand River” – one of many unsung geographic wonders of Southern Ontario.

Vancouver has heat this summer, but still no Caribana

* If you’ve been complaining about the too cool and wet summer in Eastern Canada (or anywhere else), at least it’s been too hot in Vancouver. See, e.g.: “It’s our heat wave, and we’ll whine if we want to.”

* The current online edition of Business Week has two vaguely interesting pieces on the still excellent President of the USA – “Obama: What Business Thinks” and “Obama Tells BW He’s Not Antibusiness … ‘to return to some semblance of balance is hardly radical’.”

* Some say Stephen Harper`s Canadian Arctic policy is the one good thing he`s done. Now “Defence Minister Peter MacKay has issued a decidedly cool response to the Russian military’s planned paratrooper drop at the North Pole next spring, suggesting Canadian fighter jets would scramble to ‘meet’ any Russian aircraft ‘approaching’ Canada’s airspace.” (Yes Virginia, believe it or not, Canada actually does have fighter jets!)