As the poignant year 2015 draws to a close. Justin Trudeau has only been Prime Minister of Canada for, oh say a month and a half or so – since this past November 4. But we seem to have seen and heard a lot from him already. Craig Oliver at CTV News recently suggested Prime […]
A few days ago on Canadian TV the always interesting Susan Riley in Ottawa was expressing her delight at the first few weeks of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. For a moment many of us shared her feelings. But then the otherwise excellent Ms Riley could think of no higher way of concluding her praise than […]
Not too long before the November 4 swearing-in ceremony finally began at Rideau Hall, the CBC TV cameras came to rest briefly on Justin Trudeau’s younger brother Alexandre (aka Sacha), and his wife Zoe and their three children. They were quietly slipping into their seats, in the row just behind the row where the new […]
You have to do something … to unwind mentally and readjust to ordinary life, after all the raw excitement of a historic democratic campaign (well … that’s what we think up here in this now all-red city [aka blue in the USA]  …  still trying in vain to emulate Manhattan …) So …  to  recover […]
The appearance of Justin Trudeau at the Beacher Café in Toronto this morning – just around the corner from our counterweights editorial offices (aka world headquarters)  – was a reminder that Canadian federal election day 2015 is now less than a week away. As another sign of something a little out of the ordinary, the […]
[UPDATED OCTOBER 5, 7]. With just two weeks to go to the Monday, October 19 election day, it’s beginning to look like the front lines of the 2015 Canadian federal election ground war we were lucky to hear from at this site last week absolutely did and do have a point. The Mulcair New Democrats […]
Right now, I have no serious idea about just what impact the French language debate in Montreal last night might have on the Canadian federal election campaign that will end with some hopefully more or less decisive popular vote on Monday, October 19. I can, however, testify with confidence that it has been the one […]
Has Stephen Harper’s use of the term “old-stock Canadians” in this past Thursday’s TV debate (just on cpac – how weird is that?) harmed or helped his cause? Mr. Harper himself  has subsequently declared that all he meant by the term was “Canadians who have been the descendants of immigrants for one or more generations” […]
Barack Obama’s undoubted status as the first African American president of Democracy in America can obscure his greater depths as one of the most distinctive occupants of the office ever, “without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” Such were my thoughts, at any rate, […]
The establishment of several regional political cultures of united empire loyalism was one thing going on in the second British North America during the first half of the 19th century. Something of this old imperial and monarchist ideology still has traction in some parts of Canada today. Yet it is no longer at any centre […]
