Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day up here in the northern woods, but still cold. Â And like others I’m getting a little tired of waiting for the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign to seriously begin. All the professionals (including those on this website) are saying the campaign has already begun. But if you know anyone […]
If you have been in any way distressed by this past Thursday’s Global News headline on the Canadian federal election this year, Â “Conservatives pull ahead of Liberals, could be on cusp of majority: poll,” take heart. There is at least some countervailing good/bad news. To start with, the poll in question – which reports Conservatives […]
Modern Canada begins with contact between North American Indigenous peoples and seaborne Europeans in the 16th century. (There was earlier contact of this sort, more than a half century before the 1066 Norman Conquest in England — as described by Plate 16 in the 1987 first volume of the Historical Atlas of Canada, on “Norse […]
This past Sunday evening I and my regular TV watching partner, along with millions of other viewers in North America, took in the fifth season premiere of “‘Downton Abbey’ … the PBS hit about dressing for dinner” (Melinda Henneberger). At the end of the episode my TV partner and I exchanged some casual repartee on […]
The recent murders of two New York City policeman by an emotionally challenged young man, who claimed to be making a political protest, are without any shred of doubt altogether appalling and unacceptable. Such acts are nothing more or less than high crimes, with no redeeming or any other kind of political content in a […]
For Canadian federal politics 2015 is bound to be a crucial year. And two recent comment pieces by Andrew Coyne and Chantal Hébert make for rather ominous reading, as the start of the year comes into clear view. Both Mr Coyne and Ms Hébert are worrying about just what may or may not happen if […]
Wherever they landed in northern North America in 1497, on behalf of the English monarch, Henry VII, John Cabot and the small crew of the Matthew met no other human beings. In 1501 a Spanish expedition visited Labrador, and “claimed to have acquired from the natives with whom they came into contact a fragment of […]
Whatever else, Stephen Harper has become the kind of opponent you worry about. He has now been prime minister of Canada since early in 2006. He is up for re-election this coming 2015. He has  obvious major flaws. He lacks constructive wisdom about the country. But you fear he may have other, lower talents that […]
This is Part I, Chapter 1 of Randall White’s work in progress, tentatively entitled Children of the Global Village : Democracy in Canada Since 1497. For more on the project see The Long Journey to a Canadian Republic, which also includes drafts of all remaining chapters in this initial prepublication format. The entire book in draft […]
Robert G. Kaiser clearly wrote his current piece in the November 6, 2014 issue of the New York Review of Books – on “Our Conservative, Criminal Politicians” – before the November 4 US midterm elections. But I read it just after. And it helped me do something with my private thoughts about the future of […]
