TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA ETC, Mid-to-late February 2017. RE : Steinmeier in Germany, Rosenbaum on Trump, Carlos Fraenkel on a mosque in Quebec City, and a footnote on changing the name of the Langevin Block in Ottawa to the Pontiac (or Louis Riel) Block. I first started pondering this quartet of obscure but deep political thoughts […]

I woke up yesterday morning to a brief but provocative text statement, at the bottom of the screen on Toronto’s cp24 cable TV channel. It read something like  : “UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, born in New York City, renounces US citizenship.” Like perhaps millions of others around the world, I wondered. Is even the […]

What can be said on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States of America? Our view is not much at all. If we had to pick a quick quotation, we’d go with the passionate cultural conservative T.S. Eliot, who was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and went on […]

Up here in the northern woods the imminent departure of Barack Obama and accession of Donald Trump in Washington has focused attention on our own Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – summarized by Mark Bonokoski of the Postmedia Network several days ago as the “eldest son of Canada’s Philosopher King.” This time last year Justin Trudeau’s […]

In the United Kingdom and the United States 2017 will be the year we start to find out just how crazy Brexit and Donald Trump are really going to be. We make no predictions. But we are trying to pretend we’re mentally (and financially) prepared for almost anything. L’histoire a beaucoup de passages astucieux. Meanwhile, […]

As noted in our review of the first quarter of this fateful year, back some two weeks ago : “The short story about 2016 in the English-speaking global village is just Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the USA.” Brexit was the big surprise of the second quarter. The electoral college victory of […]

The third quarter of any year is mostly the summer, with a week and a half of autumn at the end. In any case, 2016 is almost over and without further adieu here are the top 10 counterweights articles for the third quarter of this fateful year, as selected by our own central committee : […]

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2016. TORONTO, CANADA. The legendary arrival of Santa Claus is now a very few days away. Our esteemed colleague Dominic Berry took a trip downtown yesterday on the Queen streetcar for some last minute shopping – at HMV on Yonge Street and the Indigo bookstore in the Eaton Centre. The trip takes […]

Almost a month ago the editor in chief reported on how the “usually agreeable X keeps telling me that he is working on some major tone poem called ‘Toronto notes : Donald Trump as Rob Ford, Part Deux .. and that really did end tragically.’ He wants to take the time to get it right. […]

The short story about 2016 in the English-speaking global village is just Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the USA. And, perhaps more presciently than we in North America typically allow, this all happened on the heels of the right-wing victory of Narendra Modi and the  Bharatiya Janata Party (or Indian People’s Party), […]