The public policy proposals discussed below reflect just one ordinary voter’s opinions, many of which may never see any practical light of day in the darker real world of Canadian politics. The proposals try to pay some attention to what has gone before — in the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s “Only a person who knows the past […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2024. [UPDATED SEP 26]. The October 2024 just waiting in the wings could be called provincial election month in Canada. Voters in three provinces will choose new (or re-elect old) provincial governments : BC (5.6 million people) on Saturday, October 19 ; New Brunswick (846,000) […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK,TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2024. You can read about Ben Rhodes as one of three “young hotshots” appointed “as assistant deputies” at the Obama administration’s National Security Council (NSC), on page 218 of Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (2020). There are as well more than a dozen additional references to Mr. Rhodes’s […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK,TORONTO. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2024. I first met David Alexandre Montgomery at a late 1960s gathering of young employees in what was then called the Department of Municipal Affairs, in the Ontario public service. He memorably (and with some humour) introduced himself to the group as “an existentialist.” I still do not […]

RANDALL WHITE, ONTARIO TONITE, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2024. The impressively independent Ottawa journalist Dale Smith has argued for “resisting the sense of fatalism that [Conservative leader Pierre] Poilievre has already won the next election when it’s a year away and there is plenty of time for progressive voters to fight.” In at least […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, AUGUST 11, 2024. It’s cooler up here on the northwest shore of the most easterly North American Great Lake. In some similar spirit the final strand of the new Democratic party ticket for the 2024 US election is now in place. Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2024. Still in the middle of the summer of 2024. The heat is starting to feel oppressive. In the US : “The National Weather Service predicts hotter-than-normal conditions almost everywhere. And … last year was the hottest … on record.” I live in Canada. I should […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . MONDAY, JULY 29, 2024. In the middle of the summer of 2024 the old-school conservative T.S. Eliot’s “History has many cunning passages” has suddenly come home to roost in the USA. It would of course be rash to try to say this early just where the cunning will […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . MONDAY, JULY 22, 2024. What a day yesterday was! And any current guesses about just what will happen in the (maybe) fateful US election this coming November 5, 2024 are strictly guesses (of course). Then there is the still apparently relevant view of the Will Rogers who died […]

RANDALL WHITE, GLOBAL VILLAGE NOTES, TORONTO . WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2024. John Rentoul at The Independent nicely summarized this past Thursday’s general election in the United Kingdom with the headline “The strangest landslide.” As widely expected (and foretold in polls) Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a strong majority of seats in the Mother of Parliaments […]