As usual, I have been assigned the thankless task of suddenly announcing that the entire counterweights Toronto editorial office is shutting down to attend another seminar series with the technical support group, currently headquartered in Kailua, Hawaii, where various fresh innovations have now been successfully launched. We leave for Honolulu tomorrow, August 28. And we […]

Steve Benen, who writes for Rachel Maddow’s blog, has finally clued us in on what it is about hotelier Donald Trump’s sudden surge to prominence in the US Republican primary pre-season that is seriously interesting. Benen’s August 24, 2015 piece on “Are the rules of politics being rewritten?” declares : “Political science, based largely on […]

The establishment of several regional political cultures of united empire loyalism was one thing going on in the second British North America during the first half of the 19th century. Something of this old imperial and monarchist ideology still has traction in some parts of Canada today. Yet it is no longer at any centre […]

There was a time when we felt it was inappropriate to use the ancient English expletive “fuck” in published writing. (It does not appear, eg, in our office copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in two volumes,  1972 printing.) But the Internet and various new political and broader cultural vibrations since the 1980s (?) […]

[UPDATED AUG 18TH]. The second week in the long official campaign for the Canadian federal election of 2015 is over. And the congenital regional diversity of it all is what sticks in my mind right now. I’m watching from the old East Toronto, close to the most easterly of the Great Lakes. Reading “Liberal leader […]

1. ONE WEEK DOWN, TEN TO GO. [Well … with this August 13 polling update, it’s more like 1½ weeks down, 9½ weeks to go!]. The move to fixed election dates itself lengthens the unofficial campaign. And now in 2015, in yet another of Stephen Harper’s schemes, the official campaign is longer than in any other Canadian […]

The official 2015 “long form” Canadian federal election campaign has only just begun. And already I can understand what Rosemary Barton means when she says : “In this election campaign, the only constant is ‘change’ .” I know it’s finally just because I am so much older and more tired than Ms Barton. But it […]

Now that Stephen Harper has “called” a “long federal election” –  for October 19, as already prescribed in his own 2007 fixed election date legislation –  here are three quick notes to celebrate the start of the official campaign (as opposed to the unofficial one underway for almost too long already) : (1) Fixing elections? […]