Some time ago now I was assigned the task of congratulating the new mayor of Victoria, BC,  Lisa Helps – for declining to swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II during Mayor Helps’s inauguration the week before last. Maybe just because I’m getting older and slower, in the midst of the very rapidly gathering holiday season, […]

Wherever they landed in northern North America in 1497, on behalf of the English monarch, Henry VII, John Cabot and the small crew of the Matthew met no other human beings. In 1501 a Spanish expedition visited Labrador, and “claimed to have acquired from the natives with whom they came into contact a fragment of […]

Lawrence Martin’s quite remarkable Globe and Mail column this past Tuesday (November 18, 2014)  – “A pro-active PM seizes the agenda” – deserves more attention, and debate. The essential argument is nicely (or otherwise) summarized in Mr. Martin’s first paragraph : “If victory goes to the guy who wants it most, Stephen Harper is making […]

This is Part I, Chapter 1 of Randall White’s work in progress, tentatively entitled Children of the Global Village : Democracy in Canada Since 1497. For more on the project see The Long Journey to a Canadian Republic, which also includes drafts of all remaining chapters in this initial prepublication format. The entire book in draft […]

At the end of the 1864 Quebec conference that forged the constitutional beginnings of the  confederation of 1867 George Brown, founder of the old Toronto Globe and early Canadian Grit/Liberal/Reform political leader, wrote a hasty letter to his wife. He reported : “You will say our constitution is dreadfully Tory –  and it is – […]

“The Long Journey to a Canadian Republic, 1963—20??” is the title of Part IV in Randall White’s current book project, tentatively and still too lengthily called Children of the Global Village – Canada in the 21st Century : Tales about the history that matters. (One inspiration for the title and larger project has apparently been […]

Last month’s abdication of King Juan Carlos I of Spain in favour of his son triggered a fierce debate on the future of monarchy in Spain. It also brought out tens of thousands of republicans to rallies in Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities. The rally in the capital drew 20,000 and solidarity rallies took place […]

The grandfather of one of we (various and intermittent) counterweights editors used to say that it was “A Great Day for Canada” on his own birthday. And it has long seemed to us that there is something quite admirably as well as agonizingly Canadian about this kind of practice. In any case, with July 1, […]

Olivia Chow has left no doubt that there is no real fire in Steve Paikin’s speculation about “How Stephen Harper Can Help Rob Ford.”Â  As she has tweeted : “It seems the rumor mill is in full force this morning. Let me be crystal clear, the reports of an LG offer are completely false.” Yet […]

Remembrance Day 2013 – the day before yesterday – is still somewhat on my mind. And I am remembering that the fall of France in June 1940 had a brief dramatic impact across the sea in Canada. As the historian Arthur Lower explained in his old textbook Colony to Nation : “When the fall of […]