This coming Saturday morning the entire staff here (except for Dominic Berry, who has a big date with his current squeeze at a local sporting event) will be boarding an airplane at YYZ, bound for our regular seminar with technical support staff currently residing in the land of the Golden State Warriors. (They are now, […]

Those of us who regularly have breakfast while watching cp24 in Canada’s most disliked city region will already have seen the reassuring video of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, resigning today as Member of Parliament for Calgary Heritage. I never voted for Mr. Harper’s party, and I remain opposed to most of its declared  policies. […]

The recent Radio Canada report “Noted nationalist and author Mel Hurtig dead at 84” has coincided with several bursts of fresh interest in old Justin Trudeau articles on this site. See, eg : * “The quiet evolution of ‘La femme de Justin Trudeau’ carries on” ( 5 Mar 2012) ; * “The unbearable lightness of […]

TORONTO, CANADA. JUNE 30, 2016. Our local and regional stock markets are back,  and it is starting to seem that the Brexit crisis in the United Kingdom is not going to precipitate a global depression after all. It does nonetheless remain something of a bigger-than-expected political (and no doubt economic) disturbance in the UK itself. […]

In the early 21st century the loyal Canadian Pamela Anderson told a querulous talk show host on US TV that Canada is “more European” than the United States. In the middle of the 19th century you could see variations on this theme in the British North American triumph of responsible government (or early parliamentary democracy) […]

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. The sky over the lake at sunset last night was almost like a Lawren Harris painting. It had something to do with the lighting and the clouds. As if the sky had heard that since Steve Martin these northern paintings were making a lot of money … (Well … Martin Short no doubt […]

A few days ago on Canadian TV the always interesting Susan Riley in Ottawa was expressing her delight at the first few weeks of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. For a moment many of us shared her feelings. But then the otherwise excellent Ms Riley could think of no higher way of concluding her praise than […]

We watched the TV coverage of various 2015 Remembrance Day ceremonies in the office lounge this past Wednesday. And there was general agreement that they were unusually crowded and poignant this year. Some attributed this to a greater sense of fragility about the struggles of the global village, that seems to be in the air […]

Up here in the northern woods, watching the Canadian sunset over the lake in July, I am starting to think that Andrew Coyne was on to something last month. He told us  there “has never been an election campaign like the one on which we are now embarked. There’s a weird fin-de-siècle glow in the […]

On the world wide web in the summer of 2015 the Wikipedia entry for “United Empire Loyalist” declared that “Loyalists settled in what was initially Quebec … and modern-day Ontario … and in Nova Scotia (including modern-day New Brunswick). Their arrival marked the beginning of a predominantly English-speaking population in the future Canada west and […]