RANDALL WHITE, TORONTO. FRIDAY, MAY 29, 2026. In some ways calling Canada’s most populous province of Ontario “Central Canada” is a misnomer.

The geographic dead centre of the country is in Manitoba, just next door west of Ontario. (And the current Premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, was born in Kenora, Ontario — the real-world metropolis for which is Winnipeg, Manitoba not Anyplace, Ontario.)

Nonetheless there is a sense in which Ontario — from the Ottawa River to the Lake of the Woods and the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay — does at least see itself as a kind of cultural central Canada. It is, to start with, the most populous province (with some 38.9% of the Canada-wide total population, as of the First Quarter of 2026).

With the second-largest provincial geography (after Quebec) Ontario is anchored by Canada’s current largest metropolis at one southern end, and at the other northern end by the only somewhat icy waters of Hudson Bay and assorted inland lake-and-river systems, that still almost echo the far northern universe four centuries ago.

And finally at least to many Ontario ears, it never seems quite right to say we live in Eastern Canada. Some US friends, eg, say we’re North American Midwest. And on and on … into at least central if not quite Central Canada. (And note how the Ontario and Manitoba flags do look similar.)

Central Canada in any case, it’s fair to say, is concerned that “Canada slipped into a technical recession on an annualized basis as economic growth stalled in 1st quarter.” But this concern is, for the moment, nicely contained by “Bank of Canada says financial system is in good shape, but vulnerabilities have increased.” (Where : “High stock market valuations, corporate debt and more money borrowed by hedge funds are some vulnerabilities.”)

At the same time, beneath the good shape of the financial system — welcome only to those with money to invest — there are always troubles brewing where large numbers of people gather.

Most recently we have eg : at one end of the north-south paradigm in the great metropolis on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario : “Second teen arrested in GTA synagogue shootings … Earlier this month, police announced that they had arrested a male who was 17 at the time of the shootings and charged him with a total of nine offences”.

And then, almost as close as modern media can get to the far north, on the shores of the greatest Great Lake : “Thunder Bay … First Nations say they’re being disrespected as tension rises with Thunder Bay police over missing persons … Police chief defends force’s commitment after grand chief says Indigenous search methos are being disregarded.”

Somehow when I gaze at the moon late tonight or early tomorrow, out over the lake with hints of summer in the late May air, I will think about both these troubling issues — in southern and northern Great Lakes metropoli. They do concern me a lot, if only as examples of what seem like increasingly far too many shootings and stabbings, reported here nowadays in the local “Greater Toronto Area” (GTA) news.

I’ll finally close my eyes, however, as I remember the very last thing I read in the local news. Before an aging person’s mindless journey to finally getting to bed at night :

“Canada gets revenge over USA at World Hockey Championship … It’s not the Olympics, but Canada got some measure of revenge over the United States at the IIHF World Championship in Switzerland on Thursday … USA’s tournament is over, as Canada beat them 4-0 in the quarter-final … Canada, meanwhile, heads to the semi-final with a perfct 8-0 record.”

It’s good to see PM Carney getting down to business at last.

RANDALL WHITE, TORONTO. FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2026. Here, humbly offered, is yet another quick note on the new gathering storm over Canadian separatism.

As in : “Leaders across the political spectrum are responding today to news that Alberta’s fall referendum will now decide whether Albertans want a vote on separatism this coming October.”

I’m not an altogether faithful fan of the CBC At Issue panel on Thursday nights. But if I notice something interesting in the endless news channel flipping that so often annoys my TV watching partner, I often do stop by.

Last night I was lucky enough to catch a highly civilized but admirably clear exchange between Chantal Hebert and Andrew Coyne, over what the big Canadian separatism debate going on right now really means. And it somehow suddenly did seem to make a few things clearer to me, in a historical sense I hadn’t quite grasped before.

Ms Hebert began by suggesting that Premier Smith in Alberta (if I understand the point correctly) is now ultimately urging a view similar to that of another Conservative leader from Alberta, Joe Clark, back in ancient days. Clark had declared Canada a “community of communities,” in response to Premier Robert Bourassa’s quest for a “distinct society” in Quebec.

I had the (perhaps not altogether correct?) impression as well that Chantal Hebert was happy enough with this kind of decentralist vision of the Canadian confederation of 1867 today — within which all of Quebec, Alberta, other provinces (BC, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and so forth) and a strong (enough) federal government can somehow be accommodated.

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COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2026. Alberta is much in the Canadian news lately. One point of departure is : “New deadline for pipeline deal. Lower industrial carbon price. Carney government, Alberta strike deal to fast-track building new pipeline by 2027” (Tonda MacCharles). Or : “Carney, Smith sign carbon price deal, suggest fall 2027 pipeline approval” (The Canadian Press).

Arguably enough, for both provincial and federal governments pipeline action of this sort is at least partly addressed to whatever real forces lie behind the current Alberta separatist movement, vaguely modeled on the more ancient example in la belle province.

At the same time, this particular objective may have suddenly become redundant. Alberta courts, some now argue, have finally cut Alberta separatism off at the knees. See eg : “For Danielle Smith and Alberta separatists, no clear path left for referendum after court loss … Pressure mounting for premier to commit to the vote her UCP base wants, but First Nations have blocked” (Jason Markusoff, CBC News).

For some excellent related commentary try : “ How two Alberta judges shot separatist delusions to death … And, not for nothing, they probably just wrecked Quebec separatism, too” (Clarke Ries, in The Line, an Alberta-based “independent Canadian media outlet focused on politics, policy, and the forces shaping the country”).

Agreeing and disagreeing with Clarke Ries on Alberta separatism

We counterweights editors here happily agree with the admirable Clarke Ries that current Alberta separatism is a “movement born out of petty resentment over the fawning treatment accorded to post-referendum Quebec.” (Well maybe not entirely “petty” or “fawning” but …)

The movement has now fallen to its knees, it is said, as a result of two court cases whose bottom line is that an Alberta-wide independence referendum on (and even the whole project of) Alberta separatism is constrained by Canadian First Nations’ constitutional “right to be consulted” about (if not to altogether “veto”) future plans for Canada and its provinces.

Our disagreement here focuses on Clark Ries’s already somewhat qualified suggestion that Alberta court cases on the more recent struggles of separatism in Alberta may have “just wrecked Quebec separatism, too.”

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RANDALL WHITE, TORONTO. FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2026. As an introductory aside this past Sunday, May 3 marked the 557th anniversary of the birth of the first modern political scientist, Niccolo Machiavelli, in the old city state of Florence, Italy (aka Firenze, in Italian).

Machiavelli has an inapt reputation as “an immoral cynic.” But his writing can still reveal more about the real world of politics than the work of many present-day students of the subject.

That, however, must remain grist for another post on another day.

The subject I want to offer a few quick (if inevitably somewhat complex) notes on here is Senate reform in Canada — a country whose federal upper house was criticized as The Unreformed Senate of Canada in 1926, and still remains essentially unreformed 100 years later in 2026.

(1) Senate reform in Canada : a quick introduction

I raised Senate reform on this site myself back at the end of March this year in “No Kings in USA also brings calls for Senate reform and an end to British monarchy in Canada (and Avi Lewis as New Democrats’ new federal leader).”

This drew on a piece by Jay Goldberg, first published in the Toronto Sun as “ Prime minister must act now to reform the Senate … Just because most Canadians don’t think about the Senate a whole lot doesn’t mean that the status quo should be acceptable.”

About a month later, towards the end of April, a parallel editorial appeared in the Winnipeg Sun : “Senate stacked against Canadian voters … Pierre Poilievre raised a point this week that should not be controversial in a country that calls itself democratic. He argued the Senate should better reflect how Canadians actually vote.”

Only a day later in April the work of the current unreformed Senate of Canada was criticized by the current Canadian governing party, as in “Liberals question Senate’s handling of bail reform bill … A senior government source told iPolitics that senators are slowing down a bill supported by the Liberals and Conservatives, as well as provincial and territorial premiers, and municipal police chiefs.”

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2026. Among Canadians it has become a commonplace that the belittling attacks of President Trump in his intermittent 51st state war on Canada have finally inspired a new wave of Canadian patriotism, deeper and tougher than anyone alive today can remember.

Similar breezes may be at least starting to blow in the adjacent USA itself, as April showers give way to May flowers in the (Western Christian and now so-called Common) year of 2026.

There at last seem a few reasons to believe that President Trump may finally also inspire some much vaster 21st century new wave in his own country, in the venerable tradition of Democracy in America, first celebrated by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s and 1840s.

(And echoed several times since, including FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s and 1940s, and the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.)

To take just a few cases in point, on April 23, 2026 President Barack Obama posted on TwitterX : “Hope isn’t blind optimism — it arises in the face of uncertainty. If you look at our history, we’ve gone through some rough patches. But we tend to come out on the other side of them stronger than before.”

On April 22 FactPost@factpostnews informed TwitterX users that, as reported by no less than FOX Business News on TV : “Trump’s approval on the economy is at just 30%. His [broader or more general] approval is at 33%. Can Trump turn things around before the midterms? It’s possibly a disaster for the Senate and the House.”

A disaster, that is, for Republicans and Trump supporters. On this very upbeat scenario for we the good guys, wherever we are, the Democrats would win both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections this coming Novermber 3, 2026 — only a little more than six months away.

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RANDALL WHITE, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2026. Two key current political events — one international and the other national — have helped cheer up we progressive voters on the north shore of Lake Ontario (most easterly of the North American Great Lakes).

The international event is of course the April 12, 2026 election in Hungary. The good news is not just that “centre right” democrat Péter Magyar has finally defeated the 16 year-old authoritarian “illiberal democracy” of Viktor Orbán (endorsed by US President Donald Trump and helped or otherwise by the last-minute campaigning of Vice President J.D. Vance in Budapest).

What is most seriously impressive is the magnitude of Mr Magyar’s democratic victory. His Tisza party won 54% of the vote (and a “supermajority” of two-thirds of the seats in the Hungarian parliament), compared with a mere 38% for Orban’s Fidesz party.

Equally impressively, almost 80% of the Hungarian electorate turned out to vote. (Turnout in the most recent April 28, 2025 Canadian federal election, eg, was a mere 69% — a high for the last 10 elections!)

Hungary has not quite turned “left” in this election. (Mr. Magyar is a “centre right” democrat.) But it has turned towards a more broadly progressive political system than the “illiberal”authoritarian regime of Viktor Orbán — taken as a model by the current Trump II administration in Washington, DC.

Hopefully as well this April 12, 2026 democratic move in Hungary will prove a guide to the November 3, 2026 midterm elections in the USA.

Meanwhile, back in the home and native land, three April 13, 2026 federal byelection victories — backed by five earlier “floor crossings” : four from Conservatives and one from New Democrats — have finally given PM Carney’s Liberals a majority government of 174 seats in the federal House (where 172 seats currently constitutes a bare majority!).

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 2026. Robert Reich, Democratic President Clinton’s secretary of labor, 1993–1997 and retired UC Berkeley professor, is far from the only eminent US commentator who has been raising deeply serious questions about President Trump’s mental health in the early spring of 2026.

Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNOW, as just one example, has called Trump’s recent social media pronouncements (which among other things used the word “fuckin” for the first time in any US presidential public utterance) “ranting like an unhinged madman.” A “growing list of lawmakers, all Democrats” are “calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked against President Donald Trump.” (The amendment provides that a majority of Congress may remove a “President … unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”)

Meanwhile, in President Trump’s undeclared US war on Iran, CBC News is reporting : “Status of U.S., Iran ceasefire in limbo as Strait of Hormuz remains unopened… Dozens reported killed in airstrikes on Lebanon, as Israel, U.S. say country is not included in ceasefire plan.” Who knows just what is most likely to happen over the alleged next two weeks of ceasefire in Iran ????

Veteran progressive Canadian public figure Bob Rae has wisely urged : “We’ve got to stop normalizing the Trump administration. It’s not a normal administration. It’s corrupt.” And conservative US anti-Trumper Bill Kristol has declared : “The misconduct of Trump, in terms of his corruption and his associates, is unparalleled in our history. His abuses of power leave Nixon in the dust.” Yet unlike in Richard Nixon’s 1970s Watergate scandal Republican politicians in the USA today still feel obliged to support their conservative president — who even if he has “really, seriously, frighteningly lost his mind” does at least remain ostensibly conservative.

Meanwhile again, whatever the future may or may not bring in the USA, the geographically second largest country in the world in Canada next door has, for those of all ideologies, smaller but more attractive current prospects.

To start with, according to recent conservative media reports in Canada, President Trump himself has been backing off his earlier view of Canada as a potential “51st state of the USA” — especially since he’s learned that British monarch Charles III is also still (officially at least) the King of Canada. As a confirmed Canadian republican (much different from a Republican in the USA) I have always been skeptical of this kind of argument from the minority of Canadians who still support the mere symbolism of the British monarchy in Canada. And my scepticism endures.

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2026. According to Yahoo News : “More than 8 million people turned out at over 3,300 ‘No Kings’ protests across all 50 states on Saturday, organizers said, calling it the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. The first two rounds, in June and October 2025, drew an estimated 5 million and 7 million, respectively. Independent verification of the figures was not immediately available.”

Whatever the ultimate verification might suggest, it is clear enough from coverage online and on TV that some impressively vast (and enthusiastic) numbers of US citizens turned out to protest the second Trump administration’s increasingly bizarre blend of political comedy and tragedy in the USA today. And : “Bruce Springsteen performed ‘Streets of Minneapolis’ at the flagship rally in St. Paul, telling a crowd of at least 100,000 that ‘federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis. They picked the wrong city.’”

(1) No Tyrants in Canada … and No Kings too!

Meanwhile the US “No Kings” slogan raised some (somewhat amusing) domestic doubts in Canada. In fact we do officially still pay some vague and strictly symbolic allegiance to the current British monarch, Charles III. And this has prompted some Canadian commentators to talk about “No Tyrants” instead of No Kings. (Adding fuel to the fire, for reasons only he knows our excellent PM Carney is among the current minority of Canadians who support hanging on to the monarchy — as an institution of some at least symbolic consequence in Canadian public life.)

I have been particularly struck myself by a contribution from the remarkable Tim Bousquet at The Halifax Examiner. It’s called “No kings. Really, Canada: No kings.” And, entering via a door in some Epstein place marked “Edward Mountbatten-Windsor,” it ends with :“While the monarchy is no longer politically powerful, it maintains the trappings of the unconstrained; in fact, there’s nothing left except those trappings, and the resulting terrible behaviour … Let’s end this charade … No kings.” I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly.

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SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. MARCH 26, 2026.The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays did everything except win the last game. That is what makes them so unforgettable, and so difficult to place cleanly in the pantheon of Blue Jay franchise history. They were not quite champions, yet they were too large, too dramatic, to be tucked away with some of the other Blue Jay teams that so came before them.

They went from worst to first, from the stale disappointment of a 74-win 2024, to a 94-win division title, from “paper tigers” who perennially disappointed in crunch time, to dispatching the Yankees in the ALDS and Mariners in the ALCS to become the American League’s last survivors. Arriving in the World Series riding a momentum that took them to within two outs of the first Blue Jays World Series title since Joe Carter’s swing sent an entire country into delirium. They almost had their moment : they came that close.

A) What a Ride!!! The Thrilling Toronto Blue Jays of 2025

It is tempting, in retrospect, to say the season ended in heartbreak. “It breaks your heart”, the late MLB commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti famously wrote of baseball, “it’s designed to break your heart”. Yet that is too small for the scale of what happened. This was not a neat paperback tragedy. This was a ten-day opera in seven acts. The 2025 World Series, by any serious argument, belongs in the short list of the greatest ever played, and its seventh game may have been the most deliriously excruciating winner-take-all game the sport has ever produced. The Jays and Dodgers played 73 innings in the series, the most in World Series history and produced many unforgettable moments: the Barger first pinch-hit grand slam in series history in Game 1, Yamamoto’s complete-game masterpiece of Game 2, the 18-inning madness of Game 3, the back-to-back responding haymakers of Game 4, the rookie revelation of Trey Yesavage and his 12 strikeouts in Game 5, the ball logged in the wall controversy and sudden ending in Game 6, and then the final crescendo: an 11-inning Game 7 in which everything seemed to happen, and then happen again.

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2026. This coming weekend, in particular Saturday, March 28, 2026, will see the third No Kings protest in Donald Trump’s wild and crazy USA, part deux — one expression of the progressive impulse in the historic Democracy in America, currently under siege.

As the No Kings website explains : “When our families are under attack and costs are pushing people to the brink, silence is not an option. We will defend ourselves and our communities against this administration’s unjust and cruel acts of violence. America does not belong to strongmen, greedy billionaires, or those who rule through fear. It belongs to us, the people.”

Meanwhile, another expression of the progressive impulse north of the formerly undefended border in Canada will be taking place over the same weekend in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

On Friday, March 27, 2026 the leadership convention of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) will begin at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg, not far from the Manitoba Legislative Building. Saturday, March 28 will mark the final day of leadership voting by party members (which began electronically on March 9). Leadership election results will be announced on the last day of the convention, Sunday, March 29.

(1) Power to the people in the USA today

Personally I hope the March 28, 2026 No Kings protests in the USA achieve all the profile and success fervently wished for and hopefully projected by the likes of Robert Reich.

(Mr. Reich, former President Bill Clinton’s old friend and labor secretary, is still unofficially hanging out to good effect at UC Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco in anti-Trump Governor Gavin Newsom’s Golden State of California — fourth-largest economy in the world today, behind only the USA at large itself, China, and Germany).

At a time when many complain — with much if not quite full justice — about the decline of effective checks and balances in American government and politics, the ultimate residual power of the people in half organized/half spontaneous popular protests like No Kings has a strong real-world place in the traditional Democracy in America.

In the even wilder and crazier second coming of Donald Trump, the progressive people and the lower courts are at least doing almost their best to check and balance right now. Meanwhile, there is some serious prospect that the potentially more effective checking and balancing power of Congress will acquire some new lease on life this coming November 3, 2026.

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