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 […]
The ongoing trial of suspended Canadian Senator Mike Duffy has reminded some of us that back in the late spring of 2013 Randall White posted a note on this site about Harold Innis’s “more or less random observations on the Senate, and the related issue of Canadian regionalism” – which, taken together, “add up to […]
You know you are living in strange times when you read headlines like “‘Anti-petroleum’ movement a growing security threat to Canada, RCMP say.” Really? Our lives and property are at risk from an “anti-petroleum” movement? Is Franz Kafka working for the RCMP now? Will we soon have crimes like anti-petroleum activities? Will purchasing a Tesla […]
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 […]
Some time ago now I was assigned the task of congratulating the new mayor of Victoria, BC, Â Lisa Helps – for declining to swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II during Mayor Helps’s inauguration the week before last. Maybe just because I’m getting older and slower, in the midst of the very rapidly gathering holiday season, […]
Wherever they landed in northern North America in 1497, on behalf of the English monarch, Henry VII, John Cabot and the small crew of the Matthew met no other human beings. In 1501 a Spanish expedition visited Labrador, and “claimed to have acquired from the natives with whom they came into contact a fragment of […]
Lawrence Martin’s quite remarkable Globe and Mail column this past Tuesday (November 18, 2014) Â – “A pro-active PM seizes the agenda” – deserves more attention, and debate. The essential argument is nicely (or otherwise) summarized in Mr. Martin’s first paragraph : “If victory goes to the guy who wants it most, Stephen Harper is making […]
This is Part I, Chapter 1 of Randall White’s work in progress, tentatively entitled Children of the Global Village : Democracy in Canada Since 1497. For more on the project see The Long Journey to a Canadian Republic, which also includes drafts of all remaining chapters in this initial prepublication format. The entire book in draft […]
At the end of the 1864 Quebec conference that forged the constitutional beginnings of the confederation of 1867 George Brown, founder of the old Toronto Globe and early Canadian Grit/Liberal/Reform political leader, wrote a hasty letter to his wife. He reported : “You will say our constitution is dreadfully Tory – and it is – […]
