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 […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2026. The long and short in Canadian federal politics is that Lori Idlout, New Democrat MP for Nunavut (a far-northern Inuit-majority constituency geographically larger than Mexico, PM Carney notes) has now crossed the floor in the House at Ottawa, to join the Carney Liberals. This gives […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2026. While tidying up the office (to escape all the snow still outside), I came across two quotations from eminent Americans, successively posted on my office magazine rack. The first is from Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore. It’s in an article dated December […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026. In the midst of all the 51st State nonsense on Twitter/X lately, Alice Hunt’s recent piece on King“James VI & I” (1566–1625) in the London Review of Books gave me a fresh (if also crazy) slant on the 250-year-old non-unification of the United States and […]

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2025. We have had an early almost sudden and surprisingly serious snowstorm in these parts. It somehow seems to fit these several days in early-mid November. Through such events as Indigenous Veterans Day (November 8) and Remembrance Day (November 11), our official public life still tries to […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2025. Up here in the Canadian northern wilderness Tuesday, November 4, 2025 was a double-edged sword. The main evening political entertainment on TV in Canada as in the United States was the first wave of US state and local elections since President Trump took office for […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2025.Back some two and a half weeks ago Canadian labour economist Jim Stanford noted a rising trend that has only moderately abated since, at best. Stanford wrote : “The new McCarthyism is spreading into Canada. And it will have a group of very happy cheerleaders here. Worse than […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2025. When the now daily tragedy of contemporary American history next door just gets too much to digest I walk to the foot of my street and sit on a bench at the edge of the boardwalk. From the bench I am about 15 yards from the […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2025. It is true enough that the Canadian people are not as divided as the American people at this point in time. And like many other Canadians I’m grateful for that. A recent article by David Beers and Jen St. Denis at The Tyee in BC, however, […]

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 […]