RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2026. While tidying up the office (to escape all the snow still outside), I came across two quotations from eminent Americans, successively posted on my office magazine rack. The first is from Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore. It’s in an article dated December […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2026. On the happily less than altogether crazy North American politics in my own backyard, Canadian federal New Democrat MPs have criticized Ontario NDP deputy leader Doly Begum for “announcing she will run federally as a Liberal for the seat vacated by former MP Bill Blair.” […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026. In the midst of all the 51st State nonsense on Twitter/X lately, Alice Hunt’s recent piece on King“James VI & I” (1566–1625) in the London Review of Books gave me a fresh (if also crazy) slant on the 250-year-old non-unification of the United States and […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026. To start with this is the fifth anniversary of the wild and crazy attempt to overturn the 2020 US presidential election in Washington, DC — at and in which President Donald Trump was both present and an involved observer (or much more?). I may not […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2025. Robert Reich’s “Sunday thought” yesterday set the stage for my current further reflections on the USA next door, some 17 days before Christmas 2025. (And I am using my father’s understanding of the universe as I mention this particular holiday in Toronto today. When asked […]

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2025. Some recent seasonal advice from the estimable www.independent.co.uk started me thinking. It came in a “Health Check” from Emilie Lavinia, Fitness and Wellbeing Editor, on “The true cost of drinking alcohol” — as you spread your glad tidings of good cheer over the next 30 days. […]

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2025. This past Monday Carleton Place, Ontario journalist David Krayden posted a Twitter/X piece on “Why was Mark Carney Booed at Canada’s Grey Cup?” I have not myself delved into any TV or other footage that shows this booing taking place. I take the word of Mr […]

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2025. We have had an early almost sudden and surprisingly serious snowstorm in these parts. It somehow seems to fit these several days in early-mid November. Through such events as Indigenous Veterans Day (November 8) and Remembrance Day (November 11), our official public life still tries to […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2025. Up here in the Canadian northern wilderness Tuesday, November 4, 2025 was a double-edged sword. The main evening political entertainment on TV in Canada as in the United States was the first wave of US state and local elections since President Trump took office for […]

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025. To start with on this particular date, best wishes to all those next door, standing up for the Democracy in America that Alexis de Tocqueville brought to the wider world’s attention in the 1830s — the ultimate brilliant blossom of the American Declaration of Independence in […]