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 […]

One of world history’s future cunning passages might marvel at how the “fourth wave of democratization” in North Africa and the Middle East was ironically accompanied by a North American wave in the opposite direction. So you might think, at any rate, when you set the news that “Canadians fleeing strife-torn Libya …” (or more […]

At least something brief should be said about the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010, now that they’re over. But just what is not altogether easy to figure out. The good news, however, is that, by and large, the news is good. (From our own Canadian point of view at any rate.) My favourite penultimate headline comes […]