NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK – RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. JULY 4, 2021. [UPDATED JULY 6]. Susan B. Glasser’s credentials are impressive : “… currently a staff writer at The New Yorker … Prior to her joining The New Yorker … she founded the award-winning Politico Magazine … previously served as the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy […]

SPECIAL FROM DOMINIC BERRY, MAN ABOUT MAIN STREET, GRAND BEND, ON. JUNE 29, 2021. It’s been hot enough here lately. But not quite like : “Extreme heat warnings remain in place over much of Western Canada as a historic heat wave that has shattered 103 all-time heat records across BC, Alberta, Yukon and NWT moves […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. JUNE 20, 2021. We (well most of us anyway) like Justin Trudeau’s current Liberal government of Canada more than some we know. It is not even close to half-perfect, but to us it’s still head and shoulders above any available alternative. One thing we do not at all admire from the […]

SPECIAL FROM THE DEMOCRATIC DESKTOP OF CITIZEN X, BUCKHORN, ON. MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2021. A great many individuals and organizations down in The Smoke (also capital city of Canada’s most populous province) are up in arms today. Using the so-called “notwithstanding clause” in section 33 of the Constitution Act, 1982, the Ford government is going […]

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK – RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. JUNE 7, 2021. The troubling big news in Canada right now appears in reports like : “How radar technology is used to discover unmarked graves at former residential schools” ; and “Papal apology for church’s role in residential schools may not be ‘way forward’: archbishop.” In […]

MORE NOTES FROM THE DEMOCRATIC DESKTOP OF CITIZEN X, BUCKHORN, ON. THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2021. In some ways the Doug Ford who spoke to the people of Ontario via TV on Thursday, May 20, 2021 was different from the Doug Ford who had addressed the same democratic audience on Friday, April 30. Back last month […]

SPRING NOTES FROM THE DEMOCRATIC DESKTOP OF CITIZEN X, BUCKHORN, ON. Some of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s continuing rural, small town, exurban, and other supporters may have found it reassuring that the location from which he gave his April 30, 2021 virtual news conference did not look at all like even the suburbs of today’s […]

SPECIAL FROM RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, APRIL 25, 2021. Pierre Berton published his two-volume history of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early 1970s – The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 (1970) and The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 (1971). I think there are good and bad things to […]

FROM THE DESKTOP OF CITIZEN X, BUCKHORN, ON. Evan Dyer on the CBC News site had an interesting column this past Saturday, called “Is the pandemic killing the idea of the Commonwealth? … It was COVID-19 – not Harry and Meghan – that revealed the lack of any real connection between former colonies.” According to […]

FROM THE COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SAT 20 MAR 2021 : Our most immediate news is that our colleague and friend (and intermittent self-declared editor-in-chief), Randall White (PhD), has finally handed in the almost next-to-last chapter of his long-meditated current work in progress, tentatively entitled Children of the Global Village : Democracy in Canada Since […]