Archive for March 2017

In Quebec “drinking sometimes is not an option” : Is there any good in Andrew Potter’s snowstorm malaise?

Mar 28th, 2017 | By | Category: Canadian Provinces

[UPDATED APRIL 3 – DORIS DAY’S BIRTHDAY]. Someone has sent this issue to me for comment. I’m not quite sure why. I have never lived in Quebec myself. (I am, for better or worse, a born and raised Torontonian.) I do have a son who spent four years at McGill University in Montreal. And my […]



Canada has its own populisms .. and rebellions – in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan!

Mar 23rd, 2017 | By | Category: In Brief

Last week the irrepressible Preston Manning had an article in the Globe and Mail on how “Canada’s elites could use a crash course in populism.” He cited  Tom Flanagan’s Waiting for the Wave and W. L. Morton’s The Progressive Party in Canada as useful reading for any elites actually wanting to take the course he […]



A footnote on what Citizen X thought Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said about Russia on TV

Mar 13th, 2017 | By | Category: In Brief

“Such usually thoughtful writers as Paula Simons of the Edmonton Journal, Colby Cosh of the National Post and Paul Wells of the Toronto Star” are apparently on her side. So our Canadian Foreign Minister does not need help from the likes of me, in responding to the arguments skillfully advanced by David Climenhaga in “CHRYSTIA […]



Are Liberals really “defying Trudeau” .. esp looking back to John A. Macdonald etc, etc, etc, 1873—1896?

Mar 10th, 2017 | By | Category: In Brief

[UPDATED MARCH 11]. Perhaps with half their minds on reported divisions among US Republicans over the new “Trumpcare” health bill in Washington, DC, our Canadian mainstream media have lately been giving we folks back home such headlines as : * “Liberals defy Trudeau, approve genetic testing bill he calls unconstitutional” (CTV NEWS) ; * “Liberal […]



Arduous Destiny : Canada’s alternative to the Great Barbecue, 1873-1896

Mar 8th, 2017 | By | Category: Heritage Now

The Dominion of Canada might have evolved in a somewhat less British imperial direction over the last three decades of the 19th century, if French Canada had discovered some worthy successor to George-Étienne Cartier. The closest approximation was probably Hector-Louis Langevin, after whom the Ottawa building (“Block”) that houses the 21st century Prime Minister’s Office […]