It is not easy to know just what to make of the Canadian Office of Religious Freedom, whose establishment  Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced this past Tuesday. Officially, we are just told that it is an organization “within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which will be dedicated to promoting freedom of religion [...]

TORONTO, CANADA.  TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2013.  According to mastermind Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), the official theme for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration yesterday was “faith in America’s future.” As elaborated on National Public Radio’s live blog: “Schumer says that ‘America always rises to the occasion. America prevails and America prospers,’ no matter the challenges.” No [...]

One of the many intriguing things about the year which has just ended is that it marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles (more or less due north of Santa Monica), on August 5, 1962. Adding somewhat to this intrigue, in the no-man’s-land days between [...]

As further evidence that “in some profoundly mysterious way … certain kinds of people more or less die together,” two interesting men born in Toronto in the early 1920s were sadly taken from us this past Friday, October 19, 2012. In the more widely covered case, yesterday visitors were “paying their respects … to Lincoln [...]

GANATSEKWYAGON, ONTARIO. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2012. In my advancing age, it takes longer to catch up with the latest trends, racing by your brain at what sometimes seems close to the speed of light, etc.  So my apologies for starting with a post on the Think Progress website from last Friday (September 14, 2012). It’s [...]

Ernest Hemingway was one subsidiary subject that crossed my mind during the Spanish sections of our recent counterweights Western Europe conference circuit. That no doubt had something to do with the editors’ message of this past May 9 : “We go to Europe for inside story (back for Hemingway and Gellhorn on May 28).”  [And [...]

I had just waded through an even two dozen articles on Michael Ignatieff and his latest thoughts about what Pierre Trudeau’s book of 1968 called Federalism and the French Canadians. (Well … that’s not exactly true : the first of the two dozen was actually an article by Michael Ignatieff himself — a review of [...]

“Today,” my wife remarked as we were getting up, “is the original ‘great day for Canada.’” Having acquired much familiarity with our nuclear family legends, I knew what she meant. But I asked the obvious dumb question anyway: “You mean,” I said, “that this is your grandfather’s birthday?” (My knowledge of the legends  does not [...]

As best as I can make out, this is the fourth installment in a series of pleas on this website, written on or about the third Monday in February. Like its predecessors it argues that Manitoba’s inspired moniker for this (in some provinces) newish Canadian public holiday of sorts — Louis Riel Day — should [...]

Jackson Lears “teaches history at Rutgers University, is the editor of Raritan and author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920.” In the 5 January 2012 issue of the London Review of Books, he reviews two recent biographies of US President Barack Obama’s father and mother —  The Other Barack by [...]