Archive for February 2015

Walking winter wonderland with black holes, Alaska pot, Douglas Coupland, and Michael Seward’s Aeschylus

Feb 27th, 2015 | By | Category: Key Current Issues

If you live in the North American northeast and are fed up with winter, join the club. My ultimate goal is just to transcend the moment. So I have decided I like the almost-waist-high snow walls between the sidewalk and the road, glistening in the sunlight. “As we face unafraid / The plans that we’ve […]



Anti-petroleum, Justin Trudeau, Louis Riel, and First Quest for the Northwest

Feb 20th, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

You know you are living in strange times when you read headlines like “‘Anti-petroleum’ movement a growing security threat to Canada, RCMP say.” Really? Our lives and property are at risk from an “anti-petroleum” movement? Is Franz Kafka working for the RCMP now? Will we soon have crimes like anti-petroleum activities? Will purchasing a Tesla […]



First Quest for the Northwest in Canada, 1615—1760

Feb 19th, 2015 | By | Category: Heritage Now

If you place a large map of North America on a table, and then turn it so that the Gulf of St. Lawrence is your central point of vision, your eye can easily move south and west, traveling the St. Lawrence River to the lower Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, all the way down […]



Can the security card give Harper Conservatives new life in Quebec?

Feb 14th, 2015 | By | Category: Canadian Provinces

According to legend, in the late 1960s a brilliant young political theory professor at the University of Toronto used to tell his students that “an independent Quebec could never be more than a pale imitation of Franco’s Spain.” Much later and a little wiser, I  myself came to believe that this makes sense only for […]



Is Dimitri Soudas who the Liberals really want?

Feb 10th, 2015 | By | Category: In Brief

What are we mere mortals to make of the news that “Eve Adams, former Conservative MP, joins Liberal Party … ‘She wanted to be her community’s voice in Ottawa, not the prime minister’s voice in her community’: Trudeau” ???? Or even more intriguingly : “Former Conservative advisor Dimitri Soudas to join Liberals with Eve Adams” […]