SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, GRAND BEND, ON. 8/9 JULY 2023. We’re supposed to be getting some light rain tonight.. But I’m not worried. I’m safe in our place here, watching TV on a Saturday night and Sunday morning. Right now I’m into a recording I made of a TCM movie from this past Friday […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, JULY 1, 2023. The dread Canadian wildfires of late spring/early summer 2023 affect Canadian as well as US cities, suburbs, exurbs, rural small towns, rural townships, district townships (in Northern Ontario) and (especially in Canada) the still quite vast North American wilderness beyond. And in some parts of the second […]

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2023, 2:00 AM EDT. UPDATED 10:30 PM EDT. The unusual Toronto mayoralty byelection is the big local political event today. It already seems almost clear enough, however, that left-wing progressive Olivia Chow will be the city’s next mayor. The biggest news will be if […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 2023. This past Thursday night we watched a cp24 debate among what cp24 regards as the “seven top candidates vying to lead Toronto” in the unusual mayoral byelection this coming Monday, June 26 — only nine days hence. The seven leaders are, in alphabetical order by surname : […]

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023. As I start writing it’s about 11:30 PM ET on June 8. I’m finishing, after a break for sleep, meals, and whatnot, about 11:30 PM ET, June 9. (Even if all this does not finally get posted till the early morning of Saturday, […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MAY 30, 31, 2023. If the question was will the May 29 election in the fourth-largest, oil-and-gas-rich Canadian province of Alberta be more like the May 14 election in Thailand (vaguely progressive, maybe), or the May 14 and 28 elections in Turkey (quite conservative), the clear answer is the still intriguing […]

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2023. For most Canadians the big political drama of May 29, 2023 will be the Alberta provincial election — a duel between two feisty middle-age women on the (almost socialist?) left and (more than almost extreme conservative?) right, which may or may not surprise […]

SPECIAL FROM CITIZEN X, BUCKHORN, ON. 19 MARCH 2023. Yesterday’s announcement by Donald Trump that he expects to be arrested shortly (this coming Tuesday, March 21?), especially as followed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s feisty reaction in vigorous support of Trump (and then something similar from former Vice President Mike Pence), has got me thinking […]

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, SUNDAY, MARCH 12, 2023. This weekend we’ve been hearing that several more days of serious rainstorms are expected in the county exurbs “approximately 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Sacramento,” capital city of the Golden State of California. (While in the heights around Lake Tahoe residents are […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MARCH 1, 2023. This morning’s editorial meeting tabled a two-page pdf file headlined “London Declaration, United Kingdom, 1949.” The suggestion was that this is a document not much remembered in the 2020s. But it is nonetheless of serious interest in the current post-Elizabeth II debate on practical alternatives to the increasingly […]