OTTAWA VIEWED FROM A (COMPARATIVELY SHORT) DISTANCE WEST. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2023. A few recent items in the news raise a few fresh questions about just what is going on in the Trudeau-Liberal-reformed Senate of Canada in the second quarter of 2023? See, eg, “P.E.I. Senate replacements taking too long, […]
COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MAY 10, 2022. Just as the Ontario provincial election campaign finally starts showing some (half?) life (maybe?), we’ve at long last just received the last narrative chapter in Randall White’s work in progress, Children of the Global Village : Democracy in Canada Since 1497. It is called “‘An object lesson to […]
SPECIAL FROM RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, JANUARY 30, 2021. The main reaction to the unusual resignation of Governor General Julie Payette so far has focused on how she was vetted, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau chose her to fill the office in the summer of 2017. The Democracy Watch advocacy group has already spoken […]
FROM RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, WED 18 NOV 2020 : Sophia A. Nelson (who might qualify as one seasoned guide to the new political middle ground many Americans apparently now yearn for) published an interesting piece on the Daily Beast site this past Sunday. Her article is called “The Authoritarian Threat in This Country […]
SPECIAL FROM GREG BARNS. HOBART, MELBOURNE, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, 14 JULY 2020. The 11th of November 1975 is a date etched into the collective mind of the Australian body politic. It was the day that the Queen’s representative, Governor General John Kerr, dismissed the elected Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, and commissioned Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser to […]
My current favourite view of COVID-19 America from inside the USA itself came from a white-haired but otherwise quite young-looking Jay Leno, speaking on HBO TV from Bill Maher’s Los Angeles backyard this past Friday night. The retired talk-show host noted how Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has […]
Meghan Markle and Harry Wales have now shown the world that the British monarchy does have some kind of modern future. (Though, somewhat intriguingly, what was once the website of “The British Monarchy” nowadays just calls itself “The home of the Royal Family.”) Meanwhile, back in the most northerly North American UN member state, Canada […]
The thing to remember about the United States of America when it intermittently seems on the verge of civil war (metaphorically at least?) is that it is in the end a very complex place, full of many different real-world human beings. For every “Ugly American” there are at least a few and often enough many […]
Football means one thing in North America, and another in the rest of the world. (And even just North America north of the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande. There’s also Australian Rules Football, I guess, but that’s … well … something completely different.) In the late fall of 2017, as it happens, Toronto, ON, Canada has won […]
A cogent column by Edward Keenan in this past Saturday’s Toronto Star has prompted me to get something down on paper that has been bothering me for a while now. (Just ask my wife.) The extended headline reads “Ford’s costly streetcar study will just reveal the obvious : Keenan … TTC CEO Andy Byford calls […]
