The short story about 2016 in the English-speaking global village is just Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the USA. And, perhaps more presciently than we in North America typically allow, this all happened on the heels of the right-wing victory of Narendra Modi and the  Bharatiya Janata Party (or Indian People’s Party), […]
As much as we want to escape the long arm of Donald Trump in the US (and other) mainstream media during the last lame-duck weeks of 2016, we keep bumping into it all, like it or not. Up here in the true north strong and free the main media obsession of this past weekend has […]
A review of past counterweights postings on or near November 11 – since our humble beginnings in 2004 – suggests that it took the increasingly extended Canadian involvement in Afghanistan to finally spark our interest in Remembrance Day commemorations. As best we can tell on some quick forays through the bulging accumulated material in “Browse […]
Back in 1969, the year Richard Nixon first assumed office as President of the USA, the old-style Canadian conservative George Grant offered “perspectives on what it is to live in the Great Lakes region of North America,” in his short book Technology and Empire. Without in any way pretending to equal or follow George Grant’s […]
For those who may be interested, Prince William and Kate and their children from the UK will begin a visit to British Columbia and the Yukon a week this Saturday. As if in anticipation, the National Post – Conrad Black’s old last gasp of the colonized mind in Canada – has published some remarks by […]
As crucial drugstore evidence that we are indeed on the dangerous flood of history this long hot summer of 2016, we quickly submit the following key current headline without further comment – “National Enquirer : Hillary Gains 103 Pounds … ” (Is it surprising that Donald Trump and National Enquirer chief executive David Pecker are […]
The recent Radio Canada report “Noted nationalist and author Mel Hurtig dead at 84” has coincided with several bursts of fresh interest in old Justin Trudeau articles on this site. See, eg : * “The quiet evolution of ‘La femme de Justin Trudeau’ carries on” ( 5 Mar 2012) ; * “The unbearable lightness of […]
TORONTO, CANADA. JUNE 30, 2016. Our local and regional stock markets are back, Â and it is starting to seem that the Brexit crisis in the United Kingdom is not going to precipitate a global depression after all. It does nonetheless remain something of a bigger-than-expected political (and no doubt economic) disturbance in the UK itself. […]
Late in the evening of this coming Wednesday, May 11, the entire office staff here will be boarding an airplane for our semi-regular European conference. We’ll be returning on Thursday, May 26, late in the afternoon. This time we’re in the north of what a UK series on TV Ontario many years ago called The […]
According to Susan Delacourt at the Toronto Star, the debate over the “suicide crisis” (aka “mental health crisis”) on the Attawapiskat First Nation reserve “sparked a rare outbreak of civility among rival parties this [past] week” in the Canadian House of Commons. For a while now there has seemed to be a growing consensus among […]
