Aesthetic and brilliant jazz saxplayer Richard Underhill was brilliantly holding forth, musically, at the Rex Hotel this past Thursday night, with the Leyland Gordon Band. (An often inspiring concoction of some of the city’s finest players, intermittently assembled by financial guru, guitarist, and songwriter Gordon, to perform the works of such talents as  Pat Metheny, […]

[UPDATED JULY 27, 28]. Maybe it’s just the summer heat going to my head (tho it hasn’t been all that hot where I am). But lately I’ve been thinking about how we are now just over a week away from the 100th birthday of The Guns of August that started the First World War. On […]

It may be hard to get a word in about anything but the Malaysian airplane disaster in east Ukraine today (or possibly the new Israeli ground offensive in Gaza) – and with good enough reason. But life in our own small corner still goes on. This week we’ve been at the receiving end of two […]

Last month’s abdication of King Juan Carlos I of Spain in favour of his son triggered a fierce debate on the future of monarchy in Spain. It also brought out tens of thousands of republicans to rallies in Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities. The rally in the capital drew 20,000 and solidarity rallies took place […]

The counterweights editors have presented me with two pieces of evidence as the Summer of 2014 descends on the city with the heart of a loan shark. (And its wider environs – from the depths of downtown just north of the Great Lake waterfront, to the refreshing and reviving, much less industrially spolied smaller lake, […]

As best as we can make out, there is something … well, tacky at best …  about the way Moody’s rating agency changed   “Ont. outlook to negative from stable …  as it reaffirmed Ontario’s Aa2 ratings”, just before a new throne speech kicked off the 41st Parliament at Queen’s Park. According to Moody’s vice president […]