RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK,TORONTO. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2024. I first met David Alexandre Montgomery at a late 1960s gathering of young employees in what was then called the Department of Municipal Affairs, in the Ontario public service. He memorably (and with some humour) introduced himself to the group as “an existentialist.” I still do not […]

RANDALL WHITE, ONTARIO TONITE, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2024. The impressively independent Ottawa journalist Dale Smith has argued for “resisting the sense of fatalism that [Conservative leader Pierre] Poilievre has already won the next election when it’s a year away and there is plenty of time for progressive voters to fight.” In at least […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, AUGUST 11, 2024. It’s cooler up here on the northwest shore of the most easterly North American Great Lake. In some similar spirit the final strand of the new Democratic party ticket for the 2024 US election is now in place. Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2024. Still in the middle of the summer of 2024. The heat is starting to feel oppressive. In the US : “The National Weather Service predicts hotter-than-normal conditions almost everywhere. And … last year was the hottest … on record.” I live in Canada. I should […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . MONDAY, JULY 29, 2024. In the middle of the summer of 2024 the old-school conservative T.S. Eliot’s “History has many cunning passages” has suddenly come home to roost in the USA. It would of course be rash to try to say this early just where the cunning will […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . MONDAY, JULY 22, 2024. What a day yesterday was! And any current guesses about just what will happen in the (maybe) fateful US election this coming November 5, 2024 are strictly guesses (of course). Then there is the still apparently relevant view of the Will Rogers who died […]

RANDALL WHITE, GLOBAL VILLAGE NOTES, TORONTO . WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2024. John Rentoul at The Independent nicely summarized this past Thursday’s general election in the United Kingdom with the headline “The strangest landslide.” As widely expected (and foretold in polls) Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a strong majority of seats in the Mother of Parliaments […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 2024. When I first heard about the new Léger poll “Official bilingualism in Canada a ‘myth‘” on TV last night, I was suitably outraged. I was 24 years old when the concept was “enshrined into law in 1969, making English and French Canada’s official languages.” […]

RANDALL WHITE, ONTARIO TONITE, TORONTO . TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2024. The somewhat bizarre recent Ontario cabinet shuffle, “shortly after the Ontario Legislature ended for an extended summer break,” might be viewed as proof that Premier Doug Ford really is in some ways quite a lot like Donald Trump in the USA . Whatever else, the […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2024. This past Monday was “Canada’s oldest public holiday.” According to Wikipedia it is “observed on the last Monday preceding May 25 to honour Queen Victoria, who is known as the ‘Mother of Confederation’. The holiday has existed in Canada since at least 1845, originally on […]