Without actually wanting to add to my colleague Frank Bunting’s recent over-effusive references to the work of Thomas Walkom at the Toronto Star, I have been drawn in spite of myself to yesterday’s further ruminations by the same authority,”Do Canada’s, or Ontario’s, Liberals matter any more: Thomas Walkom.” At least on the surface of things, […]

It is now less than  10 days until the Ontario Liberal leadership convention opens at the old/new Maple Leaf Gardens in the provincial capital city. According to one observer : “Unfortunately, the race has been incredibly dull in terms of candidates and substance, and the party is unlikely to see any spike in the polls […]

I have just compiled a list of more than two dozen news articles from the past several days – all meant to enlighten me (as I see things, at any rate) about just what may or may not happen in the year 2013 that lies ahead. My particular perspective, I should confess, is that of […]

A recent poll on the pride Canadians place in more than a dozen symbols and achievements found that the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 this year came in near the bottom – even though the federal government has budgeted more than $28 million to mark the occasion. The 175th anniversary of the so-called […]

According to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC this past Tuesday, such Republican luminaries as John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and  Kelly Ayotte “are so virulently attacking Susan Rice [mostly over her already well-explained first reaction to the  Benghazi attack on US diplomats in Libya] … to give the GOP a shot at picking up John Kerry’s senate […]

[UPDATED NOVEMBER 24]. With only a week left before the deadline for entering the Ontario Liberal leadership race (don’t forget your 250 party-member signatures and $50,000 entry fee), the slate of candidates on offer has become much clearer than it was a month ago. And so has the process involved. As Robert Benzie and Rob […]

TORONTO, CANADA. NOVEMBER 7, 2012. 2 AM ET. I woke this morning to cp24 TV (well, strictly speaking, now it’s yesterday morning I guess). And I heard that nothing we think up here in the Canadian attic about the US election will make it through the bubble of the American consciousness. (Which is no doubt […]

[UPDATED OCTOBER 30]. A sentence in  one of Martin Regg Cohn’s recent Toronto Star columns (Saturday, October 27, 2012) has revived some of my enthusiasm for what strikes some among us as a benign potential Ontario political development, that has lately seemed to have slid too far beyond the pale of realization in the real […]

TORONTO. OCTOBER 15, 2012. 11:00 PM ET. Like everyone else (except Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, apparently), I was altogether surprised by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s announcement early this evening (“just before 6:30 pm ET”), that he was proroguing  the Legislative Assembly at Queens’s Park, and stepping down as leader of the provincial Liberal Party. As […]

[UPDATED OCTOBER 14, 15]. People have been asking me, “do you still think President Barack Obama is the biggest thing that’s happened in American history in your lifetime (as I wrote back on September 9), now that the results of the first presidential debate are in?” I have just read my September 9 meanderings over […]