From even just a short distance beyond the actual borders of the USA, the big trouble with the Zimmerman acquittal announced last night is how can an armed (white/hispanic) man possibly shoot an unarmed (black) teenager to death in self defence? In a country where black men are still incarcerated at almost seven times the […]
An alas now vanished great friend of the counterweights editors, from a vanished era in the life of the city, used to say that he seldom agreed with the newspaper columnist Alex Barris. But he almost always read his columns because he found them stimulating. We sometimes have similar feelings about the present-day Toronto Star […]
QUEEN’S PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2013. 4:45 PM. [UPDATED JUNE 12]. So (as Premier Wynne might say) the 2013 Ontario Budget bill has now passed third reading, 64—36. This may have surprised you, if you were paying serious attention to such Toronto Sun headlines as : “PCs call for former Liberal staffers to turn […]
[UPDATED MAY 25]. As this strange week in Canada’s most populous metropolis (also most domestically hated and now “internationally” laughed-at) draws to a close, Mayor Rob Ford has at last broken his silence about the “Allegedly Seen Smoking Crack” video of which he is said to be the Toronto star. Following our earlier report in […]
We have begun to renovate the bar at the top of the counterweights home page over the past few days. Much remains to be done. Among the starters we have retired our ”Streetcar Named Rob Ford” page. We were getting too jaded about the circus act the current mayor of Toronto, Canada has been offering […]
WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2013. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. So … here back east (well at least on the north shore of the most easterly of the North American Great Lakes, in anglophone Central Canada), we have only recently passed from May 14 to May 15. But already it seems that the current Western Canada Provincial Politics Syndrome […]
[UPDATED MAY 3]. Some say the alleged Oakville gas-plant “revelations” of Ontario Power Authority chief executive Colin Andersen before a Queen’s Park legislative committee today bring an Ontario spring election close enough for jazz. And who knows? They may be right. (Although listening to Andrea Horwath’s jousting with scandal-mongering media just before noon made us […]
One thing about life in the global village nowadays is that the subtleties of political debate keep getting lost in the demands of 140-characters-or-less, and similar rules elsewhere. (And if you think things were always that way, try reading a 19th century newspaper.) A case in point glows brightly in this past Wednesday’s Washington Post […]
This coming Friday, April 12 will mark the 175th anniversary of a significant event in the history of Toronto (and even Ontario and Canada writ large), that hardly anyone remembers now. On the morning of April 12, 1838, close to the present-day intersection of King and Toronto streets downtown, Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were […]
With some three weeks to go before the Liberal Party of Canada chooses its next leader, there seems little doubt that Justin Trudeau will be the man (or woman, of course, as the case may in theory be : “Joyce Murray and Martha Hall Findlay are fighting over who’ll finish second.”). Even those who are […]
