NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, 28 DEC 2021. Shortly before the arrival of Santa Claus (as tracked for the 66th year by NORAD — aka North American Aerospace Defense Command), blogTO ran a piece called “People are wondering where Ontario Premier Doug Ford is right now.” Written by Karen Longwell, the piece […]
COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS/SEASONS GREETINGS, TORONTO, DECEMBER 18, 2021. We’re back from the Northern California exurbs. (Possibly just in the nick of time?). And more on that later. For now we’ll just note that everything was excellent without exception. Meanwhile, in some strange brew of celebration and commemoration here are 21 counterweights blogazine articles from the year […]
FROM THE COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, 1 DEC 2021. It may seem a bit academic at this late stage of this particular blogazine history (when there is more time between fresh postings in any case). But we just want to note anyway that most of us are off tomorrow, to our first in-person colloquium in two years […]
NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, ON, 26 NOVEMBER 2021.This coming Tuesday, November 30 Dame Sandra Mason will be sworn in as the first President of the island nation of Barbados (“the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands,” current population c 288,000). With this act Barbados will officially change from a “Commonwealth Realm” […]
NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK : L. FRANK BUNTING, VISITING COLUMNIST FROM PANCAKE BAY. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16/WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2021. I am just down from the new north on a visit, communing with the head office staff, reintegrating into the mind of the herd, and enjoying unusually brilliant autumn colours here on the northwest shore […]
We just want to very simply commemorate Remembrance Day in Canada, November 11, 2021, with three performances of the haunting memorial hymn from World War I, “O Valiant Hearts” (on YouTube). First is “A Tribute and Remembrance Video for the Canadians fighting in Afghanistan,” posted in 2009 — and with “O Valiant Hearts” as the […]
FROM THE COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. NOVEMBER 9, 2021. Liberal-NDP co-operation in Canadian federal politics — albeit mostly informal — has a history that goes back to the beginnings of the modern New Democratic Party in the 1960s. But it looks like rumoured prospects of some 2021 formal agreement, broadly on the model of the […]
NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK — RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. OCTOBER 27, 2021. Regional representation was at least once said to be a key feature of political cabinet making in Canada’s particular version of parliamentary democracy, coast to coast to coast. From this angle the Justin Trudeau Liberal cabinet sworn into office on October 26, 2021 […]
SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY, ONTARIO. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021. The deep northern autumn is setting in. Forecasts here call for a low of 0° C this coming Friday night (and early Saturday morning). I’m in one of my recurrent anti-political moods. I agree with the UK emeritus professor Malcolm Gaskill, who writes […]
COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, EAST TORONTO OFFICE. TUESDAY 12 OCTOBER 2021. Maybe it’s just interim domestic political exhaustion in the wake of the September 20 Canadian federal election. But we are coming to share a sense that the politics (and economics and even “culture”) of the world at large are, for a time at least, growing more […]
