RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, JULY 24, 2026. Among many other things, the 180 forest fires currently burning in (mostly Northern) Ontario — see eg “Ontario firefighters battling record wildfires … Ford government says it has increased resources” — bring a largely still evaded big difference between “Near Northern” and “Far Northern” Ontario into […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. FEBRUARY 15, 2023. [UPDATED FEBRUARY 16]. To start with belated Happy Valentine’s Day 2023, wherever you may be and whatever your circumstances in real life. Here in Toronto it was something of a twisted Valentine’s Day, in the wake of the sudden and altogether unexpected resignation of Mayor John Tory […]

I.  LIVING NEXT DOOR TO INCREASINGLY JUST PLAIN CRAZY ELEPHANT [UPDATED JAN 23]. Is anyone surprised that there is a US federal government “shutdown” on the anniversary of Donald Trump’s first year in office? If you actually are interested, try : “On Trump’s First Anniversary, a Government Shutdown” by John Cassidy in The New Yorker […]

TORONTO. AUGUST 22, 2017. It has been a strange-weather summer in the city this year. Right now we’re waiting for yet more rain. (I spoke too soon. It has just come. And now the question is : when will it come again? Can we go for coffee later, across from the park?) Meanwhile, it is […]

One thing I’ve done today (well … yesterday really) is finish reading Jeff Madrick’s review of two recent books on poverty in the USA,  in the June 22, 2017 issue of The New York Review of Books. (The two books are :  The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty, by […]

Late last spring Kathleen Wynne got into some trouble in some parts of her most populous province for such headlines as “Ontario’s Wynne wants to see Senate reformed” and/or “Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne wants to reform Senate, not abolish it.” At least on some accounts of the mind of Ontario, this does seem like what […]