I have found two things in the news especially annoying this week. And I have come up with the idea that it will provide some relief if I can somehow link them together. To start with, like millions of other TV addicts in North America (and around the world?), I was appalled this past Tuesday […]
Toward the end of the first full week of October 2010 (or 10/10: and apparently marriages at the local city hall for this coming Sunday 10/10/10 are way over-booked), Canada seems to be doing somewhat better in the Commonwealth Games. As we write (“Friday, October 08, 2010″ in New Delhi, but still just Thursday, October […]
As the Edmonton Journal aptly explained this past Wednesday: “Whether or not this country remains a monarchy, Canadians appreciate the need for an official, largely ceremonial national figure – the sort Americans lack – who serves as an embodiment of the nation’s best qualities and aspirations, untainted by the daily dross of partisan politics.” In […]
“So all we’re saying,” Treasury Board President Stockwell Day has urged in defence of the current plan to abandon the long-form census, “is this should not be mandatory.” Canadians, Mr. Day believes, should not be compelled by the long arm of the law to “tell some unknown bureaucrat” about their home life, work, and ethnic […]
According to CTV, “late Wednesday night,” July 7, David Johnston, the 69-year-old president of the University of Waterloo, who earlier served Stephen Harper by (rather deftly) writing “the terms of reference for the Oliphant inquiry, which examined former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s business dealings with German-Canadian arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber,” will be announced as the […]
TORONTO. TUESDAY 6 JULY 2010. 4:00 PM ET. If you have any feeling at all for the way Old Ontariario used to be, even just back in the dark ages of the 1950s, say, you may have found it difficult to resist some nostalgia over Queen Elizabeth II’s farewell perambulation around Queen’s Park in this […]
It is a tribute to the respect Queen Elizabeth II still enjoys in Canadian public life that even those Canadians who believe the British monarchy has no long-term future in Canada tend to think the institution will await the end of her reign before it fades into the sunset on which the old empire never […]
[UPDATED JANUARY 31, 2011, JULY 24, 2012]. I have been asked by the editors to jot down a few quick words of au revoir to the Canadian House of Commons, which is “preparing to rise today for its summer break”: (1) THE LATEST EKOS POLL also unveiled today shows, for cross-Canada popular vote (rounded to […]
I am not sure just what to think about Victoria Day – or May Two-Four or the May-long, etc – in the year 2010. It does remain officially, I suppose, a celebration of the birthday of the so-called Queen of Canada (at least outside predominantly French-speaking Quebec). And in this respect it still reminds me […]
One hundred years ago today, more or less, was apparently also a historic time in the United Kingdom. On May 6, 1910 (100 years from the date of the British election last week) George V had become King on the death of his father, Edward VII. Meanwhile an election that took place from 15 January […]
