“The Long Journey to a Canadian Republic, 1963—20??” is the title of Part IV in Randall White’s current book project, tentatively and still too lengthily called Children of the Global Village – Canada in the 21st Century : Tales about the history that matters.

(One inspiration for the title and larger project has apparently been the late Bruce Trigger’s Ontario history classic of the mid 1970s –  The Children of Aataentsic : A History of the Huron People to 1660. And Randall White, we should probably also say, is the author or co-author of 11 previous books on Canadian history and politics, including : Too Good to be True : Toronto in the 1920s ; Ontario 1610-1985 ; Voice of Region : The Long Journey to Senate Reform in Canada ; Global Spin : Probing the Globalization Debate ; and Ontario Since 1985. )

“Dr. White” tells us that Children of the Global Village is still a work in progress, but now almost half-finished. And in a move that probably does not make a lot of business sense, he has further confessed he at least hopes to have a complete draft text before the 2015 Canadian federal election. Meanwhile, he has consented to a counterweights program of early digital publishing for parts of the book that are now largely complete.

This early digital publishing program has become the main purpose in life for the Long Journey to a Canadian Republic section on the bar at the top of the counterweights home page. And to kick things off in a logical enough way, this Long Journey section now includes the opening chapter in Randall White’s Children of the Global Village , “Prologue : too much geography.”

The author asks us to quietly note that he is open to comments on any part of Children of the Global Village pre-published on this site. (And CLICK HERE for further information on this subject.) He says he can’t promise he will actually read irrationally negative comments. But he will try. (And CLICK HERE for further information here.)

Randall White has also asked us to say that Children of the Global Village – Canada in the 21st Century : Tales about the history that matters is dedicated to Joe (1971—2014). And to Tatum (2013 — ) and River (2014 — ). And he and Jeanne want to just say how much they enjoyed seeing everyone at Hemingway’s in Toronto for Joe’s birthday this past Saturday, August 23.

The images illustrating this piece are by the late great Alex Colville, an exhibition of whose work is currently showing at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.