Archive for June 2015

Getting by in the northern North American stormy weather, with a little help from Kathleen Wynne?

Jun 28th, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

GANATSEKWYAGON, ONTARIO. SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2015. 2:30 AM ET.  The early summer storms that have lately been battering this region have returned. Right now you can literally hear the wind and the rain in the darkness outside the back office window, here at the edge of the great lake. There does seem some kind of […]



Ontario’s flag flap 2015 .. and its own burden of history from just before (and after) the War of 1812

Jun 22nd, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

Questions have been raised about the Confederate flag still flying over the South Carolina state capitol, even after the appalling terrorist prayer-meeting murders in Charleston this past Wednesday night. They may remind some of us north of the Great Lakes that a few much milder questions were raised about the current Ontario provincial flag last […]



Ontario following George Soros on China not Stephen Harper (for one thing he has a lot more money)

Jun 18th, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

Up here in the land of the Canadian Sunset a George Soros article in the July 9, 2015 issue of the New York Review of Books offers evidence that the Harper government’s ongoing harassment of Ontario’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and International Trade, Michael Chan, is not just “a flourish of 1950s-era McCarthyism – call […]



The new northern British America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries

Jun 17th, 2015 | By | Category: Heritage Now

On the world wide web in the summer of 2015 the Wikipedia entry for “United Empire Loyalist” declared that “Loyalists settled in what was initially Quebec … and modern-day Ontario … and in Nova Scotia (including modern-day New Brunswick). Their arrival marked the beginning of a predominantly English-speaking population in the future Canada west and […]



Ornette Coleman grass roots jazz anarchist RIP ..

Jun 14th, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

Sadly, Ornette Coleman – “American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer … one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s” – died in Manhattan of a heart attack this past Thursday, June 11, at the ripe old age of 85. He came on stream in the late 1950s and early […]



Streetcar fun in big city .. is this what’s happened to Rob Ford’s Toronto?

Jun 5th, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

Until recently Toronto’s new mayor, John Tory, was widely loved in opinion polls.  As in “Tory’s approval rating remains strong” (April 13), and “Still in the honeymoon stage … Mayor John Tory continues to enjoy a soaring approval rate” (May 8). Yet it seems that the worm has now started to turn, as it inevitably […]



Parizeau and Truth and Reconciliation Commission : where are “Canada’s French and Indian peoples” today?

Jun 3rd, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

It seems only somewhat odd that the two big Canadian news events of yesterday – Tuesday, June 2, 2015 – should at least vaguely recall the earliest origins of the modern country of Canada, back in the 16th, 17th, and (first half of the) 18th centuries. In any case, in the old pays d’en haut […]



Will Mike Duffy trial +2 +10 just add momentum to new orange wave in Canadian federal politics ?

Jun 1st, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

GANATSEKWYAGON, ONTARIO. MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2015. 1:20 AM ET. The trial of suspended Canadian Senator Mike Duffy resumes today in Ottawa, some four and a half months before the much anticipated Canadian federal election of 2015. Mr. Duffy faces 28 charges involving fraud and breach of trust in various claimed expenses as a Senator, and […]