No doubt it is just the summer heat. But the news that Fidel Castro has just appointed his brother Raul as temporary custodian of Cuba, while Fidel recovers from surgery, has set off its own brand of crazed speculation in the true north. TV reports from across the border say that CNN has been interviewing […]
Some will ask why? During the second full week of July 2006 both Trudeau brothers were in the Canadian news. Justin is about to start a new acting career. And Alexandre is going to become a father (having first met the mother in question through his new sister-in-law, Sophie Gregoire). Others will say that paid […]
Summer in anglophone central Canada starts very seriously on Canada Day, July 1. It is so highly valued because it lasts only two months and a few more days at best. Labour Day, which falls on Monday, September 4 this year, is the very serious end of it all. Soon almost everyone in the region […]
What can you say about Mother’s Day 2006 that hasn’t been said already? You can review some key dates from James Trager’s intriguing mid-1990s publication, The Women’s Chronology, showing the progressive rise of the better half of humanity, from ancient times to the present. 2640 BCE. Silk manufacture is pioneered by the wife of the […]
The world is changing. And IÂ am starting to get a bit too confused about local piped services, the Six Nations in Ontario, the right-wing coup in Canada, Stephen Colbert in Washington, and Brent Scowcroft on Iran in the global village. * * * * * * EAST TORONTO. SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 2006. There’s a cool […]
The other day a friend from Australia who is seriously into cricket told me that a few decades ago the West Indies had some of the best cricket players in the world. But times have changed, and everyone in the West Indies plays baseball today. I thought of this again when I bumped into the […]
If you have been around since the late 1940s, you just might be prompted to reflect about the differences between what very definitely just used to be called Christmas, now and then. And this year the gap seems almost so wide that someone in some proper position of authority probably ought to call the whole […]
A University of Saskatchewan research team, led by associate professor Xia Zhang, has now raised the prospect that “marijuana stimulates cell growth in regions of the brain associated with anxiety and depression, pointing the way for new treatments for these diseases.” This can only be good news for anyone struggling to make sense of contemporary politics […]
So up in the true north, and various parts of the deep south, the National Hockey League (which nation is that, remind me?) is back after only a years’ absence. And the land is strong again. By this time next week the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will be back again too. And John Ibbitson has come […]
“August,” some poet has said, is “for the people and their favourite islands.” It is also a time when journalists complain about how nothing ever happens in “the dog days of summer.” This year may be an exception. I have been trying to watch only baseball on TV, but the bigger world keeps intruding. As therapy […]
