Now that the new Harper Conservative majority government (still elected by less than 40% of the Canadian people) has restored the pre-1968 “abject colonial” names of “Royal Canadian Navy” and “Royal Canadian Air Farce,” related new rumours are heating up in Ottawa (aka “the last lumber village before the North Pole”). Sooner than anyone may [...]
If you were among the tens (or even hundreds?) of thousands (or even millions?) who watched the strangely moving ceremony in which new Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Roberto Alomar’s Toronto Blue Jays’ number 12 was officially retired, on the sunny early afternoon of Sunday, July 31, 2011, you may share a certain puzzlement among [...]
TORONTO, CANADA. JULY 21, 2011. My first reaction when the latest and apparently most serious phase of the UK “phone hacking scandal” hit the local press a few weeks ago was: when will the new international management at the Globe and Mail discover that Canada is no longer the first self-governing dominion of the British [...]
I have vast respect for Bob Hepburn at the Toronto Star. But I was sceptical about his argument two weeks ago in “Ford honeymoon ends with Pride snub.” Yet by the time former TTC chief general manager Michael Warren reported on “Ford Nation’s grim future” — in the same newspaper just one week ago — [...]
According to Daryl Bruce, a self-confessed “avid royal watcher since the wedding of Prince Andrew to Sarah,” a “source in the Prime Minister’s Office” has “told the Canadian media” that the upcoming local tour of William and Catherine “could go a long way to cementing the monarchy in Canada for a new generation in the [...]
Late in January 2009 I posted an article headlined “Whatever happened to Merella Fernandez?” on this excellent website. It started out with “‘Who cares about local media personalities in Toronto, Canada?’ is a good question.” And it finally answered this question with: “The local Toronto media personality Merella Fernandez is so cute and multiculturally interesting, [...]
I have found two things in the news especially annoying this week. And I have come up with the idea that it will provide some relief if I can somehow link them together. To start with, like millions of other TV addicts in North America (and around the world?), I was appalled this past Tuesday [...]
Overimpressed by Malene Arpe’s vain plea in the newspaper, “I wish that just once, everyone would turn on the glam for Toronto,” we had dressed up, slightly — or at least more than we usually do. It was strange enough that when our Rastifarian neighbour walked by, while we were waiting for the streetcar, he [...]
[UPDATED AUGUST 4: SEE BELOW]. Just as we awake in Canada to such improbable headlines as “Census clamour wakes sleeping nation,” yet another Vancouver expatriate (remember Edison Chen?) has arisen in a faraway region of the global village to provide relief — conceivably comic and perhaps tragic too? Canadians are bound to think that the [...]
[UPDATED JANUARY 31, 2011, JULY 24, 2012]. “Globalization” is nothing new, in some ways. It used to be called “imperialism.” Its current incarnation began with the “Portuguese Pioneers” — when Bartolomeo Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Vasco da Gama made landfall on the coast of India 10 years later. In [...]
