All entries by this author

Just how desperate is Toronto the desperate city? (with a footnote on “the truth is discoverable only through the clash of different opinions”)

Jan 20th, 2023 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. JANUARY 20, 2023. We’re still digesting a January 7, 2023 tweet from an admittedly very progressive voice : “Toronto is a desperate city. More police funds won’t fix it … Star https etc.” The recommended link here leads to an equally arresting (and longer) Shawn Micallef piece in the Saturday Toronto […]



Looking back at 3Q 2022 (as Jeff Pelletier remembers GG Mary Simon’s Nunavik homecoming back in May)

Dec 26th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 26, 2022. Before rushing into the Top 4 counterweights stories in the third quarter of 2022, we just want to note an intriguing piece posted today on the Nunatsiaq News site, called “Reflection: Mary Simon tour a rewarding reporting experience … Jeff Pelletier looks back on covering Governor General’s Nunavik […]



Looking back at 2Q 2022 (and 338Canada’s December 18 polling right now + new Ontario Chief Justice Michael Tulloch)

Dec 20th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 20, 2022. According to Philippe J. Fournier’s latest 338Canada polling update on December 18, the federal Conservatives are still somewhat ahead of the Liberals in cross-Canada popular vote — 34% to 32%. Yet the Conservative vote is still heavily concentrated in the two most westerly Prairie provinces. The Liberals would […]



Looking back at 1Q 2022 (while Pierre Poilievre advises standing “on the side of the common people” right now .. and we are watching India and China)

Dec 16th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 16, 2022. The main course here is just a list of what this morning’s cw editors meeting picked as the top four counterweights articles from the first quarter of 2022. As a preliminary soup course, however (so to speak), here are some very quik introductory notes on : (1) the […]



Farewell 2022 : Doug Ford, Jagmeet Singh, “ethnocultural diversity”, big muskie, lonely Vancouver, Vaughan theatre, no oath to King in Quebec Assembly

Dec 12th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 12, 2022. After this eclectic piece, the rest of this year’s contributions will just be notes on counterweights’ news and views of 2022. Meanwhile, here are four concluding preliminary notes on : (1) Doug Ford’s increasingly inept assaults on the traditional culture of Canada’s most populous province ; (2) Jagmeet […]



Kudos to Bloc Québécois from hardy believers in “free and democratic” Canadian republic outside Quebec

Oct 27th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. OCTOBER 27, 2022. “History has many cunning passages” (T.S. Eliot). And in one of them, in the Canadian House of Commons, yesterday’s very clear defeat of a Bloc Québécois motion to sever ties with the “British monarchy” could somewhat ironically prove the effective first step on a long inevitable journey to […]



October 2022 Quebec election like June 2022 provincial election in Ontario (in some ways at least)

Oct 6th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. OCTOBER 6, 2022. We at least ought to be living in an era that is growing increasingly more aware of its own history. (In any case, we seem to be increasingly faced by key current issues with deep roots in a past we understand imperfectly at best.) Here in the Ganatsekwyagon […]



The long journey to ending the British monarchy in Canada actually began just after the Second World War

Sep 18th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SEPTEMBER 18, 2022. The extravaganza following the death of Queen Elizabeth II has been especially concentrated in the old imperial metropolis across the seas. And there as well the Queen’s state funeral tomorrow will begin at 11 AM BST (or 6 AM EDT here in North America). Whatever else, all this […]



As summer winds down there’s a Quebec election in the air (and Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey on YouTube!)

Aug 23rd, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. AUGUST 23, 2022. According to the Angus Reid Institute, 56% of Canadians across the country agree that “I can’t keep up with the cost of living,” and 39% disagree. At the provincial level, Quebec has the smallest proportion agreeing with the statement (41%), and Saskatchewan the largest (71%). Quebec election Oct […]



Pope’s visit should also remind us that Indigenous peoples “were fundamental to the growth of Canadian institutions”

Jul 28th, 2022 | By | Category: In Brief

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. JULY 28, 2022. Paul Elie, a senior fellow at Georgetown University with a special interest in religion, has written in The New Yorker about Pope Francis’s current Canadian visit, to confront the role of the Catholic Church in the historic appalling and now quite discredited Indian Residential Schools in Canada : […]