Way back in the late 19th century Oliver Mowat, the Ontario Liberal premier who still holds the local record for longevity in office (some 24 consecutive years, 1872—1896), declared in a statement to a Knights of Labour branch in his home riding : “I am glad to believe that there is little antagonism between the […]
Sometimes two headlines in the same newspaper on the same day can seem to explain each other. I had that feeling about two headlines in yesterday’s Toronto Star: “Lack of innovation holding Canada back: report” and “Tories order diplomats to hang portraits of the Queen by week’s end.” The first article explained how: “Canada has […]
TORONTO. SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2011. This seems to have been a summer of pipe and drum bands in this city. We went to the Warriors’ Day Parade at the Exhibition last Saturday, to probe the impact of the new Harper conservatism on the city’s old militia culture. (Well … probably more as a sentimental journey […]
Back in the late 1940s, “Canada’s first and perhaps only genuine intellectual” Harold Innis reported that: “When Oliver Mowat was introduced to a prominent statesman in England with a comment on the length of time he had been Premier of Ontario he was greeted with the comment, ‘Have you no public opinion in that Province?’” […]
It used to be the Canadian English language newspaper of record. It may be somewhat less than that now? But the current online version is still where a person like me looks first, laid back on the waterfront in a much-hated big city. And here’s what I seem to be getting, at the end of […]
“Tell me why this coming Ontario election isn’t going to bore me to death,” a friend who pays only a respectable citizen’s dutiful attention to politics asked a few weeks ago. And I’ve been trying to come up with a suitable response ever since. Right now, with the headline “Northern Ontario battles 92 wildfires as […]
As the Ottawa Citizen has just noted, “opinion surveys have long uncovered a strong republican streak among Canadians.” So what are those of us who do not at all care for the British monarchy in Canada to make of the great flood of commentary on the monarchy’s Canadian future, induced by the current North American […]
According to back-of-the-envelope calculations I have just made, I cast my first democratic ballot in the Ontario provincial election of October 17, 1967. I did not know where my local polling station was, but I did know the NDP candidate’s campaign office. I went there to ask where to go to lose my electoral virginity […]
[UPDATED JUNE 9, 12]. So US progressive documentarian Michael Moore feels former unreformed Senate of Canada page Brigette DePape’s ejection from the fabled Red Chamber with her ”Stop Harper” stop sign facsimile last Friday was “an iconic moment for Canada.” He goes on: “Moore said a functioning democracy should ‘encourage you to be disrespectful, to […]
It was not that long ago that even seasoned observers of Ontario politics who did not like Dalton McGuinty were agreeing he was probably close enough for jazz to a “three peat.” He was the likely winner of three straight provincial elections – the Premier Dad who was looking more and more like the very […]
