TORONTO, CANADA. NOVEMBER 30, 2009. In this city once known as “the citadel of British sentiment in America,” our current resident Ontario historian Randall White has prepared a short but sweet report on this past weekend’s Commonwealth summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. CLICK HERE for the full sweep of his commentary, “Commonwealth’s […]

[UPDATED DECEMBER 2, 2009]. How many sovereign people of Canada today are even aware that there was a 60th anniversary summit of the Commonwealth of Nations this past weekend in Trinidad and Tobago? A poll commissioned by something called the Royal Commonwealth Society this past  summer asked a representative sample of Canadians: “Which one of […]

The prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently wrote: “Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet.” Earlier this year he also wrote about his “Financial Policy Despair.” One of the arguably good things about Canada has been that nothing quite important enough to despair over ever quite happens here. But […]

TORONTO. NOVEMBER 11, 2009. It was inevitable that the quiet journey of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall through four Canadian provinces during the first few weeks of  November this year would finally bump into some noisy protest when it reached la belle province du Quebec. (See “Flying eggs, riot police, pro-Quebec […]

[UPDATED OCTOBER 22]. Charles and Camilla will arrive in Canada just two weeks this coming Monday. Even if you don’t think the British monarchy has any long future in 21st century Canada (and I share this opinion myself with what recent opinion polls report as a growing majority of Canadians), the visit of the Prince […]

Just last week, on October 5, 2009, the Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, gave a speech to a United Nations cultural group in Paris, in which she called herself – and not just once but twice – the Canadian “head of state.” This soon enough brought a surge of protest from the diminishing forces […]

In today’s Globe and Mail Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia reviews Branding Canada: Projecting Canada’s Soft Power Through Public Diplomacy, by Evan H. Potter, a former civil servant with Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, who now teaches at Carleton University. The review is headlined “Who do they think we are?” And it starts […]

TORONTO. SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2009. The Canada Day that looms ahead this year is looking a bit gloomy in Canada’s most populous metropolis. As just one of many cases in point, an Ontario cabinet minister from faraway Windsor has called Torontonians “babies” for complaining about a garbage strike right when the weather gets hot. Premier […]

Pierre Trudeau’s essay “Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec” was first published in the old Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science in August 1958 – when Premier Maurice Duplessis was still shouting orders to the Speaker of the Quebec legislative assembly. French Canadians, Trudeau wrote at the time, “must begin to learn democracy from […]

The current quixotic and apparently only half-serious quest for Senate reform in Canada shows both the best and worst sides of the Stephen Harper Conservative minority government in Ottawa. There is a high-minded sense in which this relic of the 19th century desperately ought to be brought up to date, in the interests of a […]