On Canada Day 2012 a recent welcome comment from the unsung great historian of French and Indian Toronto’s great granddaughter has drawn our attention back to an earlier posting on “Canada Day 2009 : Percy Robinson and the reluctant Canadian republic.” Three years ago we urged that Percy James Robinson (1873—1953 and, among many other […]

This morning’s announcement of the US Supreme Court decision, more or less upholding the constitutionality of so-called “Obamacare,” was a historic moment in the global village that begs some kind of comment. Even or perhaps especially up in the wild northern attic, where we already have a health care system that actually makes sense. There […]

Current Argentine president Cristina Kirchner, widow of former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, is viewed by many observers of such things as one of the “Hottest Female World Leaders” extant. So you might think that when she and UK Prime Minister David Cameron bumped into each other at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, earlier […]

[UPDATED JUNE 17, 18, 19, 20]. If you are among those in the small crowd of Ontario government and politics watchers  who thought the current McGuinty minority government’s budget was more or less secure, and are a bit surprised to suddenly discover that we may actually be having a fresh election on the issue this […]

In the strange spring of 2012 there is more and more evidence that the old Canadian confederation of 1867 is entering some kind of do-or-die moment in what many still see as its improbable history. My own sense is that this moment will last for quite a while (years, certainly, even a decade or more?). […]

Two articles I stumbled across this morning, ostensibly on the Spanish banking bailout, have brought two other articles from the somewhat more distant past into mind. The first (in the first group) is “Europe’s Fail-Out: 4 Reasons Why Spain’s Bailout Is Doomed Already,” from the Business section of the Atlantic website. The second is “Fitch […]

Ernest Hemingway was one subsidiary subject that crossed my mind during the Spanish sections of our recent counterweights Western Europe conference circuit. That no doubt had something to do with the editors’ message of this past May 9 : “We go to Europe for inside story (back for Hemingway and Gellhorn on May 28).”Â  [And […]

A week or so after our Toronto head office re-opened, almost all the individual notes on our two-weeks-plus   Western Europe conference circuit, in a poignant time of change, have been handed in.  We now ought to be able to synthesize some broad overview of our collective findings. For better or worse,  “random impressions” is  almost […]