It may well be that 2019 proves a difficult year on any number of fronts. But I was lucky enough to spend its first Thursday evening at one of the “top 21 new bars in Toronto” (blue bird or The Bluebird, 2072 Dundas St W, at Howard Park). I was listening to an excellent jazz [...]

At the end of this annual exercise for this (even unusually?) strange year we suddenly realize that our deepest recent preoccupations have been quite local — north of the North American Great Lakes, on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario. We may have been seeking refuge (albeit in vain) from the larger wild and crazy [...]

One counterweights item from the year now ending that has seen fresh visits in the most recent past is Randall White’s “Can Justin Trudeau be defeated in the next Canadian federal election?,” first posted back on May 8, 2018. In the new age of fixed-date elections (sort of) the campaign for the 43rd Canadian federal [...]

On the third-last Monday of 2018, here are four short notes on the world as it looks up close in We the North of the North American Great Lakes : 1. Is Trump getting ready to jump (what would Machiavelli think?) This past Saturday morning Maggie at “Hear Me Roar” — who specializes in “The [...]

Ordinarily as the year ends we post a few lists of our own favourite or at least most-visited articles from the time on its way out. And we will be doing this again before December 31, 2018 (New Year’s Eve), at least once — and possibly twice. (Or more? Who can really say anything in [...]

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2018. GANATSEKWYAGON,ON. Both Donald Trump in the neighbouring USA today, and his wily colleague Doug Ford right here in the new Old Ontario, have become so appalling lately that I have sought refuge in thoughts about the 2018 Grey Cup — annual championship of the Canadian Football League, held for the 106th [...]

The site administration staff have told me that I’ve already contributed at least one (as we say in Canada) Remembrance Day piece back in the past (“O valiant [Toronto] hearts who to your glory came .. your memory hallowed in the land you loved,” on November 11, 2013). They’ve pointed out as well a still [...]

6:20 PM ET : Nothing too striking in the earliest 2018 US Midterms vote, as best as we can tell, on Twitter and/or TV. But it’s a relief that the evening has finally begun, as Rachel Maddow has recently observed. 12:15 AM : We agreed to wait somewhat longer before making any brief comments. Until [...]

The day itself was an entire week ago now, but no matter … The drama of the 2018 municipal election in Canada’s current largest city was all before election day. The somewhat Trumpian Doug Ford, new premier of Canada’s most populous province of Ontario (and failed Toronto mayoral candidate in 2014), finally managed to reduce [...]

First, the bad news. Our text here is Neil Macdonald’s October 16 piece on the CBC News site :  “Lose your illusions. It’s an ugly, dystopian world … People my age grew up believing the world, led by the West, was becoming more progressive. It wasn’t and isn’t.” Macdonald offers a “few thoughts on the [...]