RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2025. This past Saturday I came across a social media thread on the country of Poland today. The thread master is called “Culture Explorer.”

Mr. Explorer begins his own message up front with two sentences : “Poland just became a $1 trillion economy without open borders, without giving up religion, and without tearing down its traditions … What did Poland do that the West won’t?”

(1) The Polish conservative miracle since the end of communism in 1989 and 1990

The message has a strong right-wing tilt. It also embraces what some would see as such current progressive values as “You can build prosperity without destroying beauty.”

But Culture Explorer’s unmistakable right-wing roots show clearly in pronouncements like : “While others erase their roots, Poland crowns its faith … Literally … In 2016, Poland officially named Jesus Christ as its King.”

In fact this last proposition about King Jesus turns out to be not exactly correct.

In the most illuminating “replies” part of the thread — following the up-front message on the Polish miracle since the end of the communist regime in 1989 and 1990 — a widely followed native of the country called rzep explains : “No, Poland DID NOT do this … The polish catholic church did it … Poland is a secular country, as stated in its constitution.”

Yet even without Jesus as a secular King, Poland probably can stand as a current economic success that preserves a conservative society, controlled borders, high ethnic homogeneity, and strong traditional culture (including the Christian religion).

As one sympathetic observer urges in the replies to Culture Explorer : “Globalists are constantly trying to destroy Poland with multiculturalism and open borders, but people still resist.”

Others note that Poland is a member of today’s European Union. And it has received the largest subsidies in the EU variation on what we call equalization in Canada — payments from a central governing body, designed to give all members of the larger political organization more or less the same standards of public goods and services.

Others again call Poland “The Texas of Europe” and/or “The Japan of Europe.”

(2) Multiculturalism on the first westbound Sunday subway train in Toronto 2025

Whatever else, I found all this intriguing. And it was still on my mind the next morning, as I traveled on the first westbound Sunday subway train from my east-end neighbourhood all the way to the (mid-distance) west end — in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This is where I live myself. And it was long ago conquered by globalist apostles of multiculturalism.

More than half Toronto metropolitan area residents today were born outside Canada, in what often does seem like every corner of the global village.

(And “global village” was invented in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan — born in Alberta, Canada but later living in an old midtown Toronto neighbourhood, where he suddenly realized “the medium is the message.” Which may still be of some slight interest in our age of social media?)

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, contemporary Toronto multiculturalism is on display almost brilliantly on the first westbound subway train Sunday morning (around 8AM).

Some of the surprisingly many riders are off to church of some sort no doubt. But, this early and judging by dress and states-of-not-being-quite-awake, most are going to work — of various kinds that might be expected on a Sunday morning?

At the same time, the stop at which the largest numbers left the train this past Sunday was St. George, at the edge of the downtown campus of the University of Toronto. (Which does have Sunday morning classes nowadays : I have just checked.)

Whatever their exact destinations, the people on the train are from a wide variety of African, Asian, and (vastly less prominently than earlier on) European backgrounds. They are hardworking, as their appearance on the first subway train on Sunday suggests..

Life for many involved is almost certainly a struggle. Canada has taken in somewhat too many upwardly mobile global migrants in the most recent past — more than the Canadian economy has been able to provide with decent jobs.

Too much immigration has now stopped abruptly. And ideally (with some realism?) this will improve the lot of born-outside-Canada migrants already here, as well as reassure some old-school born-in-Canada citizens (including some children of immigrants)..

Meanwhile the new multicultural universe on display on the first westbound subway train Sunday morning, in Toronto today, does not appear desperately unhappy. Sleepy yes. But no one looks close to any serious state of poverty. (And as just one such example, a drop-dead-gorgeous young black princess with a bare midriff got off at St. George this past Sunday, on her way to class.)

So … how does this Canadian globalism and multiculturalism on the ground today compare to the nationalism and ethnic homogeneity of the Polish miracle? I can only turn for a final time to a reply to the Culture Explorer this past Saturday : “So their economy is 40% the size of Canada’s with the same number of people?”

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2025. When the now daily tragedy of contemporary American history next door just gets too much to digest I walk to the foot of my street and sit on a bench at the edge of the boardwalk.

From the bench I am about 15 yards from the northwest shore of the smallest North American Great Lake. (In surface area at least. Cold Lake Ontario is much deeper than adjacent Lake Erie and even Lake Huron.)

For years now I have found that the lake and its infinitely changing beach, birds, boats, breezes, clouds, skies, sunshine, temperatures, and related human and animal activity quietly lifts my spirits, regardless of all current troubles of politics, economics, culture (religion), and sports — public life at large.

And these troubles seem increasingly worrisome in late September 2025 — south of the border at any rate. (Meanwhile PM Carney has been traveling abroad, drumming up new business for Canada as best he can. Who could ask for anything more in our adjacent vast geography with not-that- many people, up in the wilderness of “northern North America”?)

(1) Robert Reich on awakening the slumbering giant of Democracy in America

There are a number of increasingly troubling issues in the air at the moment — starting with the USA but then moving to various European (and Asian) old colonial mother countries.

There is arguably at least the beginnings of a silver lining to all the Trumpian troubles in the USA. As Robert Reich’s Sunday thought from Berkeley, CA explains : “It was an extraordinary week. The slumbering giant of America is awakening.”

The details Mr Reich offers are, as usual, illuminating : “Americans forced Disney to put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air … assailing Trump’s attempt to censor him.

“Trump’s dictatorial narcissism revealed itself nearly as dramatically in the criminal indictment of former FBI director James Comey, coming immediately after Trump fired the U.S. attorney who refused to indict him.

“As did Trump’s demand that prosecutors go after philanthropist George Soros, Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and other perceived enemies …

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RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2025. It is true enough that the Canadian people are not as divided as the American people at this point in time. And like many other Canadians I’m grateful for that.

A recent article by David Beers and Jen St. Denis at The Tyee in BC, however, has shown that living right next door to the USA does continue to have an impact. It’s headlined “The Dangerous Targeting of a Canadian Journalist … After the murder of Charlie Kirk, conservatives piled on Rachel Gilmore for expressing a well-founded fear. Then came violent threats.”

A short quotation from the Beers-St. Denis piece captures the main thrust of Ms Gilmore’s current troubles : “Kirk’s assassination was an alarming development … Rachel Gilmore took to social media to share insights based on years of reporting, writing that she was concerned some fans of Kirk on the far right who are ‘aching for more violence, could turn this into an even more radicalizing moment.

“‘Will they now believe their fears have been proven right and they have a right to “retaliate,” no matter who was behind the actual shooting?’

“Conservative MP Andrew Scheer swiftly reposted Gilmore’s comments, saying she was ‘twisted’ and had ‘so much hate in her.’ Other Canadian Conservatives also weighed in or reposted Scheer’s comment while … another post Gilmore made was circulated by right-wing influencers …

“Hours later, Gilmore’s name was the first to appear on a website called ‘Expose Charlie’s Murderers’ … Gilmore then received death and rape threats, including threats that say, ‘We know where you live.’”

(1) “Half of Canadian conservatives love the guy who is threatening to crush our economy and annex us”

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RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025. I’m personally embarrassed when local TV reports on the Toronto International Film Festival ask visiting foreign (albeit usually just US) celebrities : “What is your favourite thing about Canada?”

(I should quickly note that the countervailing logic has been voiced by my wife : “I like it when they ask that question.” And the media pay much more attention to her.)

My embarrassment, however, was recently redeemed by the answer of the actress from Connecticut, Glenn Close, at TIFF 2025 : “My favourite thing about Canada … [said with a friendly smile] … They stood up to you know who. I shouldn’t say that but I will anyway.”

And I think to myself that if Glenn Close thinks Canada has stood up to the insanity of Donald Trump’s still oh-so-young second federal administration in the USA today, others outside Canada must have some similar thoughts. And for we Canadians that is of course a good thing!

On some similar wave of current popular thought the Oscar-winning director from Mexico, Guillermo del Toro, “known for his love of … our city and country,” has offered an even stronger Canadian assessment during a speech at the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which will end this coming Sunday, September 14, 2025.

“Canadians,” Mr. del Toro has pronounced, “are modest and shy except on traffic and hockey …So it takes a Mexican to tell you that Canada is a bastion of hope in the world right now.”

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RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 (LABOUR DAY) 2025. Canadian pundit Andrew Coyne’s recent column in the Toronto Globe and Mail — “Donald Trump is on the brink of becoming a dictator. Can he be stopped?” — has its alarming moments.

The “defenders” of “democracy in America,” it urges, “are running out of options, and out of time.”

Inside the USA some of the defenders themselves have lately been sounding at least somewhat more optimistic.

In the midst of the often bizarre instincts of Trumpian health policy czar RFK Jr (strange son of the original “right-wing-new-left liberal” RFK), health officials from the eight Northeastern states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont recently “met … to consider coordinating their own vaccine recommendations, separate from the federal government.”

[UPDATE: On Sep 3 it was further reported that on the Pacific coast “California, Oregon, and Washington just announced they are forming an alliance to coordinate vaccine recommendations in direct defiance of RFK Jr.”

Or as officially reported by the Golden State: “As Trump & RFK Jr. destroy the CDC’s credibility,@CAGovernor Gavin Newsom just announced California is teaming up with Oregon & Washington to launch a new ‘West Coast Health Alliance’ to uphold scientific integrity in public health” …

And on Sep 4 Bob Ferguson, Governor of Washington, announced : “Welcome, Hawaii, to the West Coast Health Alliance.”]

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2025. I have a lot of time these days for Gentleman Joe Walsh — “Former GOP Congressman. Ex Tea Partier turned relentless anti Trump truth teller.”

A few days ago Mr. Walsh posted on Twitter/X : “Donald Trump: ‘How do I know the 2020 election was rigged and that I really won it? Because Vladimir Putin said it was rigged, that’s how’ … Every day, the entire world — friend & foe — laughs at us for electing such a very stupid person. Every single day. They all laugh at us.”

Like many others outside America (though just across the lake in my own case) I agree with this sentiment, and I do my fair share of laughing. As with many others again, however, my laughter is of a particular sort. It’s captured by a haunting phrase from the depths of the American experience : “Laughing to Keep from Crying,”

This phrase clearly enough grows out of the inevitably troubling, always inspiring, and ultimately mainstream African American experience in the American republic — as illustrated by two uniquely American cultural creations of the 1950s :

(1) Laughing to Keep from Crying — a book first published in 1952, reprinted in 1976. A “collection of short stories” by the great African American writer from Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes, where “each story exemplifies a different aspect of race relations” in the USA of the first half of the 20th century (and no doubt beyond).

(2) Laughin’ To Keep From Cryin’ — a 1958 LP recording featuring the African American President of the tenor saxophone Lester Young, with trumpet giants Roy Eldrige and Harry “Sweets” Edison. Not the best of the prematurely aging President’s path-breaking work in modern jazz. (The presidential title was bestowed by the incomparable singer Billie Holiday, on some of whose best recordings Young also appears.) He would die all too early at 49 in the middle of March 1959. This Laughin’ To Keep From Cryin’ LP nonetheless captures a few notable moments from the buoyant 1950s jazz scene in cities across North America.

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SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, GRAND BEND, ON. AUGUST 10, 2025. It is now more than a year since my last contribution to this august space — “Democracy in America holds Donald Trump to account at last in New York, New York (if not in more rural red states),” May 31st, 2024.

As I contemplate the long hot summer here in early August 2025 (28C “feels 36”/82F “feels 98”), I am pondering an email from the counterweights editors, asking how I feel about the state of the Trump II presidency now.

My first thought as I relax on the southeastern shore of Lake Huron, in Southwestern Ontario in central Canada, is that I feel somewhat happily disconnected from Trump USA Part Deux.

I disagree with Canadian PM Mark Carney on various issues (the future of the British monarchy in Canada eg). And his style is somewhat too deeply rooted in the honourable Canadian political tradition of compromise and good manners for my personal taste.

Like many others, however, I continue to have confidence in PM Carney’s ability to navigate the utter unpredictable craziness of President Trump’s approach to Canada-US trade (and much else) as successfully as is humanly possible.

And I continue to feel that in some ways the 51st state apostle Trump II has done Canada a great favour, by forcing it to stand up for itself at last.

I continue to believe as well that Donald Trump II’s first six months have largely been a disaster for the USA domestically — as yet not fully appreciated by the American body politic but bound to become clearer as time rolls on.

My sense is also that the broad democratic majority in the USA today still believes in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

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RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2025. Some say the present president of the USA’s “swagger is GONE.” At the same time, he retains a “degree of feral cunning about things that can endanger him personally, politically, legally.”

Still others urge : “The president is trying to concoct a fantasy world in which prices are ‘all down’ … and his opponents are liars for correctly pointing out that federal data shows prices continue to rise.”

Still others again argue that Trump’s recent unmitigated lying on how “Obama and a group of thugs cheated on the elections” is just the latest evidence that “he’s mentally disturbed.”

And then, to ice the cake as it were, FactPost@factpostnews has noted “Pollster: Trump’s net approval rating has dropped nearly 20 points since the beginning of his presidency.”

From our particular vantage point just north of the North American Great Lakes (and in our own case just across the lake from upstate New York), all this yet again raises the question of how Donald Trump actually managed to get elected as president of the USA a second time (or a first time for that matter).

Two different answers to this increasingly fascinating if not exactly urgent question have lately come across my desk, at the edge of the beach in the middle of the summer of 2025.

(1) Too many ignorant voters ????

The first was an Xpost by a gentleman called Tim Russ, who has been “working as an actor, director, musician, and voice-over artist for the past 39 years here in Los Angeles.” It commented on a poll which asked “Should American schools teach Arabic Numerals as part of their curriculum?”

This is of course a trick question. The term “Arabic Numerals” is just what those in the know (as most of us should be?) call 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 — the“decimal numeral system”commonly used around the world today.

In deepest fact these Arabic Numerals should (as Wikipedia explains eg) most properly be called “Hindu–Arabic” or “Indo-Arabic.” The system is much more mathematically sophisticated than the “Roman Numerals” which prevailed in the old Roman Empire and its early European Christian successor states. It was “invented between the 1st and 4th centuries [CE or AD] by Indian mathematicians.”

By the 9th century this mathematically sophisticated decimal numeral system “was adopted by Arabic mathematicians,” and then “gradually adopted in Europe starting around the 10th century, probably transmitted by Arab merchants.” As a result 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth “came to be generally known as ‘Arabic numerals’ in Europe.”

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RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025. The high heat in the city these deep summer days could make watching the “Hallmark movie Jingle Bell Princess” — allegedly about a chilly Christmas in Maine, with deep snow on the ground — seem almost reasonable in the middle of July.

Add the wildfire smoke — as in “Toronto air quality drops to second-worst in world as city chokes on wildfire smoke” — and staying inside watching TV is allegedly more healthful than walking through the smoke to the local library, at the edge of the city park..

Add again that while Jingle Bell Princess (“released in 2021”) is allegedly about the US State of Maine on the Canadian border, it was shot in North Bay, Ontario (Canada), a three and three-quarter hour drive more or less due north of Toronto (and also in Sturgeon Falls, about a half-hour drive due west of North Bay).

Then add yet again that the female lead in Jingle Bell Princess is Merritt Patterson, who was born and raised in Whistler, BC in Canada, and began her career when at16 she won the “Canadian Herbal Essences’ Teen Model Search” in 2006.

And then still further again add that the male lead in Jingle Bell Princess is Trevor Donovan, who is interesting on at least two different grounds …

First, he was born in Bishop, California and raised in Mammoth Lakes some 42 miles northwest — an intriguing small urban centre (about 7200 people in 2020) “immediately to the east of Mammoth Mountain, at an elevation of 7,880 feet (2,400 m)” in the most easterly Republican regions of the Golden State.

Second, Trevor Donovan has the same initials as and otherwise resembles Troy Donahue (1936–2001), “an American film and television actor … a popular sex symbol in the 1950s and 1960s … best known for his role as Johnny Hunter in the film A Summer Place.”

Finally, all these things (and no doubt more) are what make Jingle Bell Princess if not exactly altogether worth watching, at least only a serious embarrassment if you confess your wasted time to others.

Note as well that Merritt Patterson and Trevor Donovan also star in the rom-com Twas the Text Before Christmas, shot here in Toronto (like many other movies of the past several decades) from May 15 to June 1, 2023. (These kinds of Christmas movies do not take a long time or a lot of money to make.)

Merritt Patterson has starred in at least a dozen “Hallmark Channel and Great American Family movies,” and has “won Best Supporting Actress at the Canadian International Faith & Family Film Festival.”

I have some suspicion that watchers of these and other rom-com movies often vote for Donald Trump in the USA. At least one source I’ve stumbled across alludes to “Christian actor Trevor Donovan.” And along with Trevor Donovan Wikipedia’s “notable people” from Mammoth Lakes includes “Trace Gallagher, Fox News anchor and reporter.”

On the other hand, in Canada my wife and I know at least one quite liberal community activist who seriously likes watching Christmas rom-coms in the middle of the summer! And then there’s me, myself, and I, who does not really like watching these TV movies but sometimes does it anyway!

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, JULY 6, 2025. As this summer weekend began (with a somewhat boisterous outdoor wedding party, on the lot immediately behind us, next street over), I suddenly stumbled across four quick notes on key current events in Canada and the wider global village today :

(1) “The world will adapt and improve itself by being less dependent on the Unstable States.” At 8:30 yesterday morning “Peter Ratcliffe, forever Canadian@PeterHRatcliffe” posted what strikes me as a wise and too-often-underplayed (if also perhaps somewhat radical?) position on Canadian international trade policy in the second Trump interlude : “Trump will ‘set his own tariff deals’. There was, now seemingly, never a point in negotiating with an authoritarian bully. He wanted all negotiations to fail, so he kept moving the targets … The world will adapt and improve itself by being less dependent on the Unstable States.”

(2) “Most of what our economy produces—close to 80%—never crosses a national border …it is produced in Canada, by Canadians, for Canadians.” The Ratcliffe position here reminded me of a provocative Toronto Star piece by the labour economist Jim Stanford, first published late this past March. Trump “has claimed Canada is ‘not viable’ as a country without exporting to the U.S. … This is false. Canada is the 10th largest economy in the world, with enormous human and natural resources … most of what our economy produces—close to 80%— … is produced in Canada, by Canadians, for Canadians … Trump’s trade war will cause enormous disruption.” But we can be “confident in our country’s ability to … ultimately thrive, even as we shift our orientation away from reliance on exports to the U.S. market.”

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