SPECIAL FROM GREG BARNS. HOBART, MELBOURNE, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, 14 JULY 2020. The 11th of November 1975 is a date etched into the collective mind of the Australian body politic. It was the day that the Queen’s representative, Governor General John Kerr, dismissed the elected Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, and commissioned Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser to […]

CANADA DAY, JULY 1, 2020. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. RANDALL WHITE : As quite recently noted by the counterweights editors, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has urged that the COVID-19 pandemic has given us a “chance to reshape Canada’s future.” In the prime minister’s own words, the coronavirus “has been an unprecedented challenge.” But it “has also been […]

From a Canadian point of view, it probably does make some kind of sense that, as the Queen has recently informed us, Harry and Meghan will be going through “a period of transition in which” they “will spend time in Canada and the UK.” As suggested by Philippe Lagassé, described in the New York Times […]

God only knows just what is going to happen to planet earth in the year 2020 that is about to begin. Here in Canada we are bound to be paying a lot of attention to the US presidential election on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. (Even if the companion Democratic presidential primaries do not seem as […]

The middle of the summer of 1977 was not quite nine months after René Lévesque’s unsettling PQ victory in the November 1976 Quebec provincial election. And it was at this point that the Anglo-American economist and philosopher Kenneth Boulding told the 44th annual Couchiching Conference in Ontario : Canada is an “absurd country straight out […]

We’ve already noted our favourite counterweights articles for the first three months of this year (in “Six from the 6ix in early snow as 2019 winds down : Impeachment, Throne Speech, 1st Quarter, Birdhop at last”). We’re now ready to cover the final nine months. (And at the end of this we’ll also have a […]

Last Friday — a week ago now — the Globe and Mail published an obituary for “Character actor Sean McCann” who died in Toronto “on June 13 of heart failure at the age of 83.” The Toronto Star and Toronto Sun had earlier published their own commemorations — “Canadian actor Sean McCann dies at 83” […]

Some would characterize the Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester “Mike” Pearson’s comparatively short prime ministerial career (1963–68) as the time when Canada’s long-incubating federal welfare state achieved its ultimate modern fruition. Others would allude to one of “the most influential commissions in Canadian history, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963–69),” which “brought about […]

Meghan Markle and Harry Wales have now shown the world that the British monarchy does have some kind of modern future. (Though, somewhat intriguingly, what was once the website of “The British Monarchy” nowadays just calls itself “The home of the Royal Family.”) Meanwhile, back in the most northerly North American UN member state, Canada […]

As an altogether confirmed Canadian republican (not at all the same as an American Republican of course, especially today), I ordinarily do my best to ignore the British monarchy. But two contemporary media events have slightly increased my interest in the subject. The first is Harry Windsor’s forthcoming marriage to the mixed-race (and unquestionably hot) […]