MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. REPORT FROM GREG BARNS AND ANNA TALBOT. This past Tuesday Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, stood in front of world leaders and claimed his government’s refugee policy was the best in the world. But many people in Australia will tell you that Mr Turnbull’s boasting was misplaced. Australia’s policy is based on deterrence, […]

Back in the middle of this past March 2016 my esteemed colleague Citizen X was telling us : “The wisest thing I’ve come across on the American presidential primaries lately urges that 2016 so far is ‘democracy as depicted by Hieronymus Bosch’” (from the Huffington Post’s “Top 12 Reasons This Is The Most Depressing Election […]

For those who may be interested, Prince William and Kate and their children from the UK will begin a visit to British Columbia and the Yukon a week this Saturday. As if in anticipation, the National Post – Conrad Black’s old last gasp of the colonized mind in Canada – has published some remarks by […]

In the early 21st century it is not easy to think constructively about the now largely vanished first self-governing British dominion of Canada. The northern North American universe from the late 1860s to the early 1960s is both too remote yet still too close at hand. Then there is the late historian Ramsay Cook’s quip […]

CTV News anchor Marcia MacMillan, in an especially compelling dress yesterday morning, brought us the vaguely alarming news that “New poll shows Trump taking slight lead over Hillary Clinton.”  (This is now well hidden in the CTV September 6 archive.  Try “Poll: Nine weeks out, a near even race” for key numbers.) Among the experts […]

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. The return to realism after Labour day is almost here. And it suddenly becomes clear that this past Thursday’s Scarborough-Rouge River byelection was a welcome splash of cold water for we rare but resolute fans of Ontario provincial politics. (See, eg : “Ontario Tories win hotly-contested Toronto-area byelection” by Allison Jones at The […]