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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. MONDAY, MAY 26, 2025. This is the last day of the Memorial Day long weekend in the USA. Our version of something similar in Canada was last weekend. (We like to keep things a little different in Canada.) It is now celebrated as Victoria Day — “a federal statutory […]

RANDALL WHITE, “CANADA’S CAPITAL REGION FROM FOUR HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES WEST”. FRIDAY, MAY 16, 2025. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new Canadian federal cabinet held its first meeting the day before yesterday. One of its “first orders of business” was a “tax cut for the middle class. Starting July 1, hard-working Canadians will keep more […]

GREG BARNS SC. HOBART, MELBOURNE, BRISBANE, PERTH, AUSTRALIA. MONDAY, MAY 5, 2025. Newly minted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberals have something in common with the winner of Australia’s national election on Saturday, Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Both brought their governments back from the brink of defeat partly because […]

RANDALL WHITE, “CANADA’S CAPITAL REGION FROM FOUR HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES WEST”. SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2025. I should make two (or maybe three) things clear up front. First, I am a (somewhat cranky?) 80- year-old man who was born in Canada. I have lived here all my life, with brief exceptions for travel abroad. I […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025. The more or less final results of the 2025 Canadian federal election were still not fully known with certainty, even as we approached dinner on the day after election day. It has nonetheless been clear since late on election day (Monday, April 28) that Liberal leader […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. , MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2025. UPDATED. SATURDAY 26 APRIL/SUNDAY 27 APRIL 2025. SCROLL BELOW FOR UPDATE TEXT. The 2025 Canadian federal election, which may or may not be “the most important election of our lives, ” will take place exactly one week from today. It says a lot about how short, […]