[UPDATED AUGUST 1]. The final “Streetfest” phase of the 29th annual Beaches International Jazz Festival is now over, and we’ve asked our wayward staff  to submit their favourite key current late news extras for post-festival tabulation. Without further ado : (1) “Bill Shorten renews push for Australian republic, vows to hold referendum within first term […]

For those who do feel inclined to celebrate the occasion, Happy Canada Day, July 1, 2017 – also the 150th anniversary of the northern North American confederation of 1867, established just after the American Civil War (1861—65) and just before the 1868 “Meiji Restoration” in Japan. (Other notable events of  1867 include the Second Reform […]

One thing I’ve done today (well … yesterday really) is finish reading Jeff Madrick’s review of two recent books on poverty in the USA,  in the June 22, 2017 issue of The New York Review of Books. (The two books are :  The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty, by […]

[UPDATED JUNE 9]. We were just watching TV on a Saturday night,  north of the North American Great Lakes. And then CNN, MSNBC, CBC News, CTV News Channel, and most immediately and crucially BBC News only had eyes for : “6 people dead plus 3 attackers killed in London ‘terrorist incidents’ … ‘Evil, evil people’: […]

What can anyone say about the Conservative Party of Canada leadership charade this past Saturday evening (May 27), at the Toronto Congress Centre? The first  paragraph of  John Ibbitson’s report is the best short summary we’ve seen : “Conservative voters concluded, by the narrowest of margins, that Andrew Scheer’s sensible conservatism was a safer choice […]

So, as all the polls predicted again, the centre-left Emmanuel Macron (or just straight centrist, as the anglophone mainstream media seem to have decided?) has quite handily defeated the far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen (Donald Trump’s favourite?) for the presidency of the Fifth French Republic. With all the vote now counted, 66.1% has […]

This coming Saturday morning the entire staff here (except for Dominic Berry, who has a big date with his current squeeze at a local sporting event) will be boarding an airplane at YYZ, bound for our regular seminar with technical support staff currently residing in the land of the Golden State Warriors. (They are now, […]

Last week the irrepressible Preston Manning had an article in the Globe and Mail on how “Canada’s elites could use a crash course in populism.” He cited  Tom Flanagan’s Waiting for the Wave and W. L. Morton’s The Progressive Party in Canada as useful reading for any elites actually wanting to take the course he […]

“Such usually thoughtful writers as Paula Simons of the Edmonton Journal, Colby Cosh of the National Post and Paul Wells of the Toronto Star” are apparently on her side. So our Canadian Foreign Minister does not need help from the likes of me, in responding to the arguments skillfully advanced by David Climenhaga in “CHRYSTIA […]

[UPDATED MARCH 11]. Perhaps with half their minds on reported divisions among US Republicans over the new “Trumpcare” health bill in Washington, DC, our Canadian mainstream media have lately been giving we folks back home such headlines as : * “Liberals defy Trudeau, approve genetic testing bill he calls unconstitutional” (CTV NEWS) ; * “Liberal […]