TORONTO, CANADA. FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2016. 12:30 AM. Both ITV and the BBC have now called the Brexit referendum for the Leave the European Union side, with approximately 52% of interested United Kingdom citizens voting Leave and 48% voting Remain. This is a great surprise for a great many people, and I am certainly one […]
One feature of cruise ships is that (briefly but sometimes with a strange intensity) you get to know people you might not otherwise encounter in your more particular ordinary life. Late last month I met various citizens of the USA this way. And some of these encounters came back as I watched the results of […]
Inevitably, the sad death of the so-called “Diefenbaby,” George Dryden, highlights the career of his “likely” unacknowledged father, John George Diefenbaker. For those not old enough to remember, Dief the Chief was a melodramatic prairie courtroom lawyer from Wakaw (and then Prince Albert), Saskatchewan. Somehow he became supreme leader of “my fellow Canadians,” 1957—1963 – […]
Political deadlock in the United Province of Canada probably was a big enough cause of the wider confederation of British North American provinces, for the 2.5 million people who were living in the United Province by the early 1860s. It meant next to nothing, however, for the 583,000 people in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick […]
[UPDATED APRIL 13]. One thing that keeps our free and democratic Canadian politics going these days – in spite of many good reasons otherwise – is its recurrent capacity for surprise. It’s like the woman (or man if it also works in that direction) who continually fascinates you, because you can never quite figure out […]
June 15, 2016 will mark the 72nd anniversary of the triumph of Tommy Douglas’s “first socialist government in North America,” in the 10th Saskatchewan provincial election of 1944. And it is at least intriguing to bear this in mind when contemplating the strange juxtaposition of yesterday’s 28th Saskatchewan provincial election on April 4, 2016, and […]
MONDAY, 5 PM ET (Southwest Scarborough, ON) : It has just been made clear to me that Super Tuesday is actually tomorrow – not next week as I had been absent-mindedly imagining. And now my daily email from the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC has arrived, featuring a piece called “Signs emerge of the Great […]
In the early 21st century the loyal Canadian Pamela Anderson told a querulous talk show host on US TV that Canada is “more European” than the United States. In the middle of the 19th century you could see variations on this theme in the British North American triumph of responsible government (or early parliamentary democracy) […]
Back in the wake of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, in the locally troubled spring of 1838,  something called the  Mississippi Emigration Society was “founded in Toronto to start a settlement in Iowa Territory, United States for political refugees from Canada.” Less than a decade later, just after Christmas 1846, Iowa became the 29th […]
Locally at least, it is hard to know what is crazier about the excellent “JOHN TORY VIA TWITTER” photo, also posted on the Toronto Star site. It shows Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s reaction to being presented with a Maple Leafs jersey by Mayor John Tory, at Toronto City Hall yesterday. Just to recap, before flags […]
