WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2017. Toronto, Ontario.  This coming Monday we will celebrate locally what is known here in Ontario (and other Canadian provinces) as Victoria Day.  (In Quebec the same holiday is now more sensibly called  Journée nationale des patriotes.) The holiday is nowadays defined as “the last Monday preceding May 25.” And this entrenches […]

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA ETC, Mid-to-late February 2017. RE : Steinmeier in Germany, Rosenbaum on Trump, Carlos Fraenkel on a mosque in Quebec City, and a footnote on changing the name of the Langevin Block in Ottawa to the Pontiac (or Louis Riel) Block. I first started pondering this quartet of obscure but deep political thoughts […]

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. […]

Late in the evening of this coming Wednesday, May 11, the entire office staff here will be boarding an airplane for our semi-regular European conference. We’ll be returning on Thursday, May 26, late in the afternoon. This time we’re in the north of what a UK series on TV Ontario many years ago called The […]

In the 1930s the local historian (and private school Latin teacher) Percy Robinson – author of the still invaluable Toronto during the French Regime, 1615—1793 – called Toronto, Ontario, Canada (all North American indigenous words) “the citadel of British sentiment in America.” On a somewhat earlier and more extreme, possibly even exaggerated variation on the […]

Here are the last four Associated Press top international news images in our year-end review : (13) Narendra Modi meets former Empress of India … Technically, it is not correct to call Queen Elizabeth II even a former Empress of India. That title, invented by UK Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli for Queen Victoria in 1876, […]

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 […]