1. ONE WEEK DOWN, TEN TO GO. [Well … with this August 13 polling update, it’s more like 1½ weeks down, 9½ weeks to go!]. The move to fixed election dates itself lengthens the unofficial campaign. And now in 2015, in yet another of Stephen Harper’s schemes, the official campaign is longer than in any other Canadian […]
Sadly, Ornette Coleman – “American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer … one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s” – died in Manhattan of a heart attack this past Thursday, June 11, at the ripe old age of 85. He came on stream in the late 1950s and early […]
GANATSEKWYAGON, ONTARIO. MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2015. 1:20 AM ET. The trial of suspended Canadian Senator Mike Duffy resumes today in Ottawa, some four and a half months before the much anticipated Canadian federal election of 2015. Mr. Duffy faces 28 charges involving fraud and breach of trust in various claimed expenses as a Senator, and […]
Six days ago under the heading “British election” I wrote “I’m waiting for John Lanchester to tell me what is finally going to happen here in the LRB blog …” I also noted that “even though the Scottish independence referendum lost last September, the UK is nonetheless changing … Â So far at least this 2015 […]
[UPDATED MAY 8.] Tonight (Sunday, May 3, 2015 at 10 PM ET) will bring what the on-air promo somewhat confusingly calls the second-last episode “before the finale” of Matthew Weiner’s still quite excellent US TV series Mad Men. In plainer language it’s the third-last episode. The last one will air on Sunday, May 17. And […]
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 Â myself came to believe that this makes sense only for […]
This past January 13, on the Waterloo Region Record site, Â Lee-Anne Goodman wrote : “With the 50th birthday of Canada’s beloved Maple Leaf flag just a month away, some are wondering why there’s been so little fanfare from the federal government.” One possible half-answer is that the Conservative Party of the mid 1960s, led by […]
So what does the Governor General of Canada actually do again? A press release from this past Monday suggests at least one thing : “His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada, is visiting Canadian Armed Forces members and civilians at Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert, Canada’s most northerly military […]
I remember the Christmas Eves on Cardigan Avenue in the 1950s – from 1950, say, when my grandfather died, to 1957, when we moved to the suburbs. Later I understood that my father’s family had big parties because they were immigrants. Friends and acquaintances recruited from similar backgrounds in the city mixed with the children […]
Like others on this site, I have been an agnostic on John Tory – who was sworn in as the new Mayor of Toronto, Canada’s current largest metropolis, this past Tuesday. (Mr. Tory succeeds the better internationally known Rob Ford, now battling a rare form of cancer. While he recovers, Rob is sitting as one […]
