[UPDATED APRIL 3 – DORIS DAY’S BIRTHDAY]. Someone has sent this issue to me for comment. I’m not quite sure why. I have never lived in Quebec myself. (I am, for better or worse, a born and raised Torontonian.) I do have a son who spent four years at McGill University in Montreal. And my […]
What a relief to escape, even for just one moment, from the latest crazy Trumpet playing of the “Yankee to the south of us” who “must south of us remain” – and into something allegedly more sensible, like the future of the Parti Québécois in Canada. The occasion is the election of Jean-François Lisée as […]
For a while now it has been clear enough that the wildrose province of Alberta is thirsting to leave some new mark on the evolving story of the Canadian confederation of 1867. The not-so-great debate on Senate reform since the 1980s – pushed along by an Alberta provincial government report called Strengthening Canada – Â is […]
There was a time when we felt it was inappropriate to use the ancient English expletive “fuck” in published writing. (It does not appear, eg, in our office copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in two volumes, Â 1972 printing.) But the Internet and various new political and broader cultural vibrations since the 1980s (?) […]
I can’t think of another election where what I wanted to see happen has actually happened to quite the same extent as in Alberta on May 5, 2015. (It’s almost scary.) See, eg, “Alberta Election: NDP surges to majority government” and “New Democrats crush Progressive Conservative dynasty.” As one Conservative Albertan pointed out on CBC […]
According to legend, in the late 1960s a brilliant young political theory professor at the University of Toronto used to tell his students that “an independent Quebec could never be more than a pale imitation of Franco’s Spain.” Much later and a little wiser, I Â myself came to believe that this makes sense only for […]
As best as we can make out, there is something … well, tacky at best … about the way Moody’s rating agency changed  “Ont. outlook to negative from stable … as it reaffirmed Ontario’s Aa2 ratings”, just before a new throne speech kicked off the 41st Parliament at Queen’s Park. According to Moody’s vice president […]
No partisan of the Canadian future can fail to admire the practical political judgment of the people of Quebec in their April 7, 2014 provincial election, for seats in the Assemblée nationale in Quebec City. Strictly in terms of seats the current results, just after midnight on the Globe and Mail site, are : LIBERAL […]
Last Week Susanna Kelley at ontarionewswatch.com noted that “former Liberal MP Ken Dryden” has been pointing to “a palpable anger out there amongst the citizenry.” This probably has some heightened resonance in Canada’s most populous province. And in the same context Ms Kelley has observed : “Few with any political sense are willing to make […]
Opinion pollsters can take at least some pride in yesterday’s October 8 Nova Scotia election. Their polls had been suggesting a Liberal majority government for the past three weeks. And that’s what happened. (An Abacus Data survey with a last day of polling on October 6 even predicted the province-wide popular vote at 46% Liberal, […]
