TORONTO BEACHES, JANUARY 26, 2018, 2:30 AM ET. [UPDATED 1:40, 5:20, 7:00 PM, JAN 27, 12:30PM]. What are we mere voters in Ontario provincial elections to make of such headlines as : “Two women accuse Patrick Brown of sexual misconduct” ; and “Tories looking for new leader after Patrick Brown sex scandal”? For starters, following […]
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA. JANUARY 7, 2018. 1:30 AM. Sometimes it is hard to resist the pure soap opera that American politics has become in the age of Donald Trump, even if you live far away in the northern woods. Two contributions to the latest bout of near-serious madness induced by the publication of Michael Wolff’s […]
In part at any rate the good guy Doug Jones won in the Alabama special Senate election on December 12, 2017 by leaning on at least something somewhat like the “rigged-electoral-system” luck that almost accidentally gave Donald Trump the US presidency in November 2016. To take just the clearest case in point : “1.7 per […]
Bruce Hutchison’s The Incredible Canadian — A candid portrait of Mackenzie King : his works, his times, and his nation was first published in 1952, only two years after the death of the man who is still Canada’s longest-serving prime minister (1921–1926, 1926–1930, 1935–1948). The first few sentences of the book’s first chapter nonetheless remain […]
Toronto residents, some would say, have two particular reasons to thank the Golden State of California in late November 2017 : (1) Ricky Ray from Happy Camp, CA: To start with, Ricky Ray, the quarterback who has just led the fabled Toronto Argonauts to their 17th Grey Cup (venerable prize of the Canadian Football League), […]
There seems at least some significant agreement within the Canadian federal punditocracy (which I admire a great deal) that our new former-astronaut Governor General Julie Payette badly blotted her copy book, when she gave spirited opening remarks at the recent 9th annual Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa. I nonetheless feel driven to confess that […]
Yesterday down at the beach it almost seemed that the great storms down south were making  some of their way to the northern woods. I had in any case already started this past Friday before Labour Day 2017 with brief notices from the east and west coasts of the impressive “too much geography” that is […]
In his Oxford History of the American People the controversial New England historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that “the ‘King and Country’ argument was freely employed” in the 1911 Canadian federal election campaign. And “one of Rudyard Kipling’s worst poems, ‘Our Lady of the Snows,’ was widely circulated to rebuke the impudent Yankees.” Ironically enough, […]
[UPDATED JULY 21]. “This may be the hottest day we’ve had this summer,” someone said in the parking lot. I don’t know myself. In any case that’s just up here – north of the lakes. Contemplating the more southerly climate of la démocratie en Amérique, I’m still thinking about two world-wide web reports from this […]
[UPDATED JUNE 20, 22]. Without a doubt the most interesting thing in Canadian politics right now is the continuing fallout from the May 9, 2017 provincial election in beautiful British Columbia on Canada’s Pacific coast. To start with, make a strong mental note that 44 seats constitute the barest of majorities in BC’s 87-seat elected […]
