In today’s Toronto Star Angelo Persichilli alludes once again to the prospects of Bob Rae as a future leader of the still much beleaguered Liberal Party of Canada: “I’m not saying Rae wants his party to defeat the government and force an election to accelerate the departure of his friend Michael Ignatieff.” But … Mr. […]
[UPDATED FEBRUARY 26, 6:50 PM PT]: For many in many parts of the world the Oscars this Sunday are the big event this weekend. But for hard-core Canadian political junkies it’s the BC Liberal leadership contest tomorrow. An internal poll “conducted by Ontario-based Praxicus Public Strategies” gives Christy Clark, the one lady in the race, […]
One of world history’s future cunning passages might marvel at how the “fourth wave of democratization” in North Africa and the Middle East was ironically accompanied by a North American wave in the opposite direction. So you might think, at any rate, when you set the news that “Canadians fleeing strife-torn Libya …” (or more […]
Today – the third Monday in February – is President’s Day (aka Washington’s Birthday) in the USA, Family Day in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, Islanders’ Day in Prince Edward Island, and Louis Riel Day in Manitoba. (And the BC Federation of Labour has recently renewed “its call to create a statutory holiday in February for […]
Once upon a time, the near-great economic historian Harold Innis began his 1947 “Minerva’s Owl” Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Canada with: “I have taken the title from that striking sentence of Hegel ‘Minerva’s owl begins its flight only in the gathering dusk…’” As much more recently explained by Lauren O’Nizzle, “a 20-something […]
[UPDATED FEBRUARY 18, 20]. Those of us who have not been happy about Stephen Harper’s (technically minority) stewardship of the Canadian experiment over the past five years will not be happy about the three latest opinion polls on Canadian federal politics either. The Canada-wide results from EKOS, Ipsos Reid, and Harris Decima are (in that […]
The big news on Sunday, February 13, 2011 for anyone at all interested in history and the big picture is of course the remarkable triumph of power-to-the-people in Egypt. (For the time being at least; see, eg: “Egypt military vows to hand over power to elected civilians, to stick to Israel peace deal” and “Eighteen […]
In 1933 the incomparable Percy Robinson published his still too-neglected minor classic, Toronto during the French Regime, 1615—1793. In the book’s last chapter he noted how, in the 1930s, the capital city of Ontario (then still only the second-largest city in Canada, behind Montreal) was “the citadel of British sentiment in America.” Over the subsequent […]
Anyone who has perused the primary sources for the Canada-US trade agreements of the past quarter century will not be surprised to discover that the separate documents released by the “Prime Minister of Canada” and the “White House” this past Friday, February 4, 2011 are identical, with one recurrent exception. The Canadian version of “Beyond […]
[UPDATED FEBRUARY 7, 23]. It is of course very difficult to know just what is going on in Egypt – or the Middle East at large – right now. Some three and a half years ago, however, our resident Ontario historian, Randall White, was contemplating the question “Machiavelli .. is he the prince of darkness […]
