All entries by this author

We’re back .. having survived still mysterious malevolent attacks – just in time for Alberta election!

Apr 16th, 2019 | By | Category: In Brief

Our apologies to all and any who may have visited us over the past week or so, and found we had temporarily vanished from the world wide web. The long and short is that the site just suddenly crashed, not long after our April 3, 2019 post on “Time for a change : our latest […]



Time for a change : our latest Canadian madness is really starting to make us look dumb in the global village

Apr 3rd, 2019 | By | Category: In Brief

We have two main objectives in this short note on the latest episodes in what the Montreal Gazette has nicely called “Canada’s SNC melodrama.” The first is to offer gratitude and praise to the rafters for Andrew Cohen’s recent opinion piece : “Canada’s SNC melodrama baffles a world facing real crisis … ‘To our allies, […]



L’Affaire SNC-Lavalin : “I do not believe I have anything further to offer” + another great night for jazz at the Bluebird

Mar 30th, 2019 | By | Category: In Brief

On this rainy, second-last day of March, 2019 (a Saturday – here at the start of at least one great Northwest canoe passage from the Great Lakes to the Canadian Prairies, the Rocky Mountains, and Canada’s beautiful Pacific coast), we have two short notes to offer from frequent contributors to this site. First, Randall White […]



Is Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party still inevitable winner of Alberta vote April 16, like Doug Ford PCs in Ontario?

Mar 20th, 2019 | By | Category: Canadian Provinces

Yesterday Premier Rachel Notley finally announced that Alberta’s long-anticipated provincial election will be held some four weeks hence, on Tuesday, April 16! Opinion polls have long been showing that former Stephen Harper federal cabinet minister Jason Kenney’s new United Conservative Party is well ahead of Premier Notley’s New Democrats. And a “new poll from Ipsos,” […]



Our top 10 counterweights articles for that strange year 2018 (and happy new year to an even stranger 2019 ??)

Dec 31st, 2018 | By | Category: In Brief

At the end of this annual exercise for this (even unusually?) strange year we suddenly realize that our deepest recent preoccupations have been quite local – north of the North American Great Lakes, on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario. We may have been seeking refuge (albeit in vain) from the larger wild and crazy […]



Can Justin Trudeau be defeated Oct 21, 2019 (& what do Lester Pearson and early Pierre Trudeau say) ??

Dec 27th, 2018 | By | Category: Ottawa Scene

One counterweights item from the year now ending that has seen fresh visits in the most recent past is Randall White’s “Can Justin Trudeau be defeated in the next Canadian federal election?,” first posted back on May 8, 2018. In the new age of fixed-date elections (sort of) the campaign for the 43rd Canadian federal […]



Trump & Russian mafia .. Japan/China & Canada/United States

Dec 11th, 2018 | By | Category: In Brief

Ordinarily as the year ends we post a few lists of our own favourite or at least most-visited articles from the time on its way out. And we will be doing this again before December 31, 2018 (New Year’s Eve), at least once – and possibly twice. (Or more? Who can really say anything in […]



November 6, 2018 in USA .. not exactly a night to remember for the rest of our lives?

Nov 7th, 2018 | By | Category: In Brief

6:20 PM ET : Nothing too striking in the earliest 2018 US Midterms vote, as best as we can tell, on Twitter and/or TV. But it’s a relief that the evening has finally begun, as Rachel Maddow has recently observed. 12:15 AM : We agreed to wait somewhat longer before making any brief comments. Until […]



O Cannabis .. and the looming midterm elections in the USA today ..

Oct 17th, 2018 | By | Category: In Brief

First, the bad news. Our text here is Neil Macdonald’s October 16 piece on the CBC News site :  “Lose your illusions. It’s an ugly, dystopian world … People my age grew up believing the world, led by the West, was becoming more progressive. It wasn’t and isn’t.” Macdonald offers a “few thoughts on the […]



August for the people 2018 : Canada/Saudi Arabia, Emancipation Day, global languages, Auden’s Brexit poem?

Aug 9th, 2018 | By | Category: In Brief

CANADA/SAUDI ARABIA : To us what the Canadian federal government has done in its recent complaints about the fate of Samar Badawi, and other human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, is altogether what should be done. We have stood up on the side of the angels, and we should just have the balls to stay […]