I’m told that for a few weeks now the statistics for this site have been showing fresh interest in a post of mine from exactly five years ago, on “Splendor at the Hollywood theatre : remembering the Natalie Wood who would be 73 years old.” The occasion back then was the 30th anniversary of the […]
As much as we want to escape the long arm of Donald Trump in the US (and other) mainstream media during the last lame-duck weeks of 2016, we keep bumping into it all, like it or not. Up here in the true north strong and free the main media obsession of this past weekend has […]
The usually agreeable X keeps telling me that he is working on some major tone poem called “Toronto notes : Donald Trump as Rob Ford, Part Deux .. and that really did end tragically.” He wants to take the time to get it right. It will be ready soon …etc. Meanwhile the managing editor says […]
You’ve of course already heard of “Brexit” – Britain leaves (exits) the European Union. (And this is something that’s already happening, in one degree or another. See, eg, the excellent Scottish journalist and writer Neal Ascherson on “England prepares to leave the world.”) If you live north of the “unfortified” northern US border, you may […]
A review of past counterweights postings on or near November 11 – since our humble beginnings in 2004 – suggests that it took the increasingly extended Canadian involvement in Afghanistan to finally spark our interest in Remembrance Day commemorations. As best we can tell on some quick forays through the bulging accumulated material in “Browse […]
[UPDATED NOVEMBER 10, 12]. What happened on November 8, 2016 in the United States of America? A few personal impressions from the accumulating vast collection out there, based mostly on US TV, various online resources in the miraculous Age of the Internet, and a few intermittent conversations with actual voters in various parts of the […]
TORONTO, CANADA. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8. 1:30 PM ET. I too have been called by the doctor with an almost final assignment in the most troubling US election in my memory. (Well that’s the way it seems right now. I’m so old  I can’t really remember all that much. Except that I haven’t liked the results […]
GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2 AM. The phone rang. It was the doctor. “You’re supposed to be the humour guy,” he said. “Do something humourous about this US election. It’s killing us.” He went on : “I watched Bill Maher Friday night. President Obama – just on tape but of course impressive. Then a […]
Back in 1969, the year Richard Nixon first assumed office as President of the USA, the old-style Canadian conservative George Grant offered “perspectives on what it is to live in the Great Lakes region of North America,” in his short book Technology and Empire. Without in any way pretending to equal or follow George Grant’s […]
The Ontario Provincial Police have now actually charged two Ontario Liberal Party workers – Patricia Sorbara in Toronto and Gerry Lougheed in Sudbury – with “bribery” under the provincial Elections Act, in connection with a political controversy surrounding a by-election in Sudbury almost two years ago. My own reaction when I first heard the news […]
