NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2024. Am I the only human being to notice that PM Rishi Sunak has just called a UK general election for the time-honoured 4th of July US federal holiday — celebrating the Declaration of Independence from the UK on July 4, 1776? The […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024. Bill Maher’s latest misunderstanding of the Canadian real world (see eg “Canadians react as Bill Maher takes a swipe at Canada” on blogTO) reminded me that Mr Maher once admired Rob Ford’s ability to be both a frequent recreational drug user and Mayor of Toronto. […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024. Last night I heard an eminent CTV host urge that many (mostly Conservative) provincial premiers want the Liberal federal government to change its carbon tax policy. Doesn’t this mean (the implication seemed to be) that the federal government should do just that? This reminded me […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2024. Individual polls vary on exact numbers. But by almost the middle of March 2024 all polls have been saying for some time that it is very hard to see how the Justin Trudeau Liberals could “win” a fourth Canadian federal election in a row, in […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2024. The day before yesterday polling guru Philippe J. Fournier @338Canada urged that in the world of Canadian federal politics : “For those counting, this is the 6th consecutive month the Conservatives have been leading the Liberals by double-digits … That’s a stretch longer than Sheer’s lead […]

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2023. Two stories in the news the day before yesterday seemed to summarize the current somewhat crazed state of Canadian politics — at a time when much worse is going on elsewhere in Marshall McLuhan’s global village. Sticking with the CBC News site (strictly for convenience), the […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 16, 2022. The main course here is just a list of what this morning’s cw editors meeting picked as the top four counterweights articles from the first quarter of 2022. As a preliminary soup course, however (so to speak), here are some very quik introductory notes on : (1) the […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 12, 2022. After this eclectic piece, the rest of this year’s contributions will just be notes on counterweights’ news and views of 2022. Meanwhile, here are four concluding preliminary notes on : (1) Doug Ford’s increasingly inept assaults on the traditional culture of Canada’s most populous province ; (2) Jagmeet […]

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, FRIDAY 21 OCTOBER 2022. Like a few others (as best I can tell) I think I am finally ready to express my ultimate personal disappointment in PM Justin Trudeau. I say this while remembering that just over a year ago I wrote about “Why is so much […]

FROM THE COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. NOVEMBER 9, 2021. Liberal-NDP co-operation in Canadian federal politics — albeit mostly informal — has a history that goes back to the beginnings of the modern New Democratic Party in the 1960s. But it looks like rumoured prospects of some 2021 formal agreement, broadly on the model of the […]