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 [...]

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2018. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. We came back from coffee Saturday just as our local TV news station was tweeting : “BREAKING: US Senate votes to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.” Sometimes, C. Wright Mills from Waco, Texas is alleged to have said, just describing what’s happening can be a radical [...]

The managing editor has suggested I apologize for taking so long to report back on our Toronto editorial group’s latest round of consultations with the technical staff, now in Mill Valley, California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. But as the sophisticated lady asks, who really cares? In any case we had a terrific [...]

I’ve just returned from the beach, as I start to write at least. It’s Labour Day 2018, up here in the true north. It was cloudy and grey at the beach, and still hot but relieved by a strong, steady breeze from the west. There were quite a few people, enjoying the last day of [...]

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. REPORT FROM GREG BARNS. Australians used to laugh at Latin American nations like Argentina and Ecuador, which in recent decades turned over their leaders with astonishing regularity. But now the boot is well and truly on the other foot. Today saw the demise of Australia’s fifth Prime Minister in 11 years. The Liberal [...]

I have no deep familiarity with the writing of V.S. Naipaul, who “died at his home in London” Saturday, August 11, 2018, just a few days short of his 86th birthday. But he is at least one of only a few great literary talents I for a while found fascinating after my mid-30s. I feel [...]

CANADA/SAUDI ARABIA : To us what the Canadian federal government has done in its recent complaints about the fate of Samar Badawi, and other human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, is altogether what should be done. We have stood up on the side of the angels, and we should just have the balls to stay [...]