August, according to the English poet W.H. Auden in 1935, was supposed to be “for the people and their favourite islands.” Apparently times have changed. In the strange summer of 2011, August is for “UK riots: Sharing of police between cities ‘reviewed hourly’ … Theresa May orders police chiefs to cancel all police leave as […]
The Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet, may have come up with the wittiest pronouncement on Standard and Poor’s downgrade of the US credit rating from AAA to AA+. It “doesn’t make sense,” he has said: “The US, to my knowledge, owes no money in currency other than the US dollar, which it can print at […]
It used to be the Canadian English language newspaper of record. It may be somewhat less than that now? But the current online version is still where a person like me looks first, laid back on the waterfront in a much-hated big city. And here’s what I seem to be getting, at the end of […]
If Canada already were the country of the future it could be – and should eventually become – the news that federal NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel was until recently also a member of the Bloc Québécois (and is apparently still on the books of the vaguely sovereigntist provincial party, Québec Solidaire) would not be […]
Last year the civic holiday held on the first Monday of August – in various Canadian provinces and territories – fell on Monday, August 2. On the same day the Toronto Star published an article arguing that: “Today is Simcoe Day in Toronto, a holiday named in honour of the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, […]
To start with, it may seem ironic that the Vancouver Sun (no doubt like other Postmedia News outlets in Canada) has chosen one of “Britain’s leading business and economics commentators” (Jeremy Warner at the right-wing Daily Telegraph) to explain why “America cannot lead the world if it abandons principles.” On closer inspection it is quite […]
TORONTO. MONDAY, JULY 25, 2011. 3:40 PM ET. The photo that appeared on the Toronto Star website less than an hour ago says a great deal, if not quite everything. As federal New Democrat leader Jack Layton has explained to his fellow New Democrats (in a statement subsequently made public in Toronto this afternoon): “In […]
Beyond their shared humanity, Elwy Yost, the Canadian former host of the TV Ontario show Saturday Night at the Movies, and Amy Winehouse, the English “singer-songwriter, known for her powerful contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres,” had almost nothing in common – except that they both died during the third full week […]
TORONTO, CANADA. JULY 21, 2011. My first reaction when the latest and apparently most serious phase of the UK “phone hacking scandal” hit the local press a few weeks ago was: when will the new international management at the Globe and Mail discover that Canada is no longer the first self-governing dominion of the British […]
“Tell me why this coming Ontario election isn’t going to bore me to death,” a friend who pays only a respectable citizen’s dutiful attention to politics asked a few weeks ago. And I’ve been trying to come up with a suitable response ever since. Right now, with the headline “Northern Ontario battles 92 wildfires as […]
