As trained as we are to be cold and calculating in the big city, sometimes it is almost impossible not to be pleased by something in the news. My pleasure over the past few days has been (what I at least take to be) the broad public reaction to Toronto City Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s proposal […]
I suppose you just can’t keep a good man down. In any case here on the northwest shore of the former Lake Iroquois we have just lived through yet another “week of Rob Ford gong shows, from alleged beating to jaywalking.” (And, as a sign of just what’s so new and almost intoxicating in all […]
Justin “Trudeau’s Senate purge” – of all appointed Liberal senators from the Liberal parliamentary caucus – has been called “a tactical masterstroke,” a “bold move,” “a smart branding strategy,” and a “ push for a non-partisan Red Chamber.” My own assessment is that even the Globe and Mail editorial’s “One cheer for Mr. Trudeau’s Senate […]
People who live in the most hated city in Canada, as I do, will apparently not have all that good a chance of seeing them tonight. But according to the QMI agency : “Weather permitting, the northern lights will be visible in Yellowknife, Calgary, Edmonton, all of Saskatchewan, Winnipeg, northern Ontario and as far south […]
Olivia Chow has left no doubt that there is no real fire in Steve Paikin’s speculation about “How Stephen Harper Can Help Rob Ford.” As she has tweeted : “It seems the rumor mill is in full force this morning. Let me be crystal clear, the reports of an LG offer are completely false.” Yet […]
In the land of the friendly giant next door, the year began with the at least somewhat hopeful inauguration of Barack Obama’s second term. (And then ended, sadly for us at any rate, with a progressive American president in more trouble than we’d like to see.) Meanwhile, much closer to our particular home and native […]
We went without electricity for about 28 hours at our house – in the east end of the old city of Toronto, down by the lake. According to the latest estimate, “69,800 customers were still without power Wednesday evening [December 25], four days after a massive ice storm struck the city, knocking down tree branches […]
Here in the new wild-and-crazy City of Toronto “left-wing kooks” is a term most memorably applied by the dean of Canadian hockey commentators, Don Cherry, at the inauguration of Mayor Rob Ford, some three years ago now. (As in : “Rob’s honest, he’s truthful…I say he’s going to be the greatest mayor this city has […]
It may be a harbinger of things to come in Canada that the last few weeks of 2013 are showing fresh signs of creative motion in la belle province. Personally I hope this proves correct. I grew up in the Greater Toronto Area (and its somewhat still wider region) in the 1950s and 1960s. And […]
You may have already noticed that we have been commemorating an unusual number of 50th anniversaries during the year that is now winding down to its inexorable conclusion, some three weeks hence. A few weeks ago a newspaper in Ocala, Florida (locally said to be “well known as a ‘horse capital of the world’”) noted […]
