Football means one thing in North America, and another in the rest of the world. (And even just North America north of the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande. There’s also Australian Rules Football, I guess, but that’s … well … something completely different.) In the late fall of 2017, as it happens, Toronto, ON, Canada has won […]

Bruce Hutchison’s The Incredible Canadian — A candid portrait of Mackenzie King : his works, his times, and his nation was first published in 1952, only two years after the death of the man who is still Canada’s longest-serving prime minister (1921–1926, 1926–1930, 1935–1948). The first few sentences of the book’s first chapter nonetheless remain […]

[UPDATED AUGUST 1]. The final “Streetfest” phase of the 29th annual Beaches International Jazz Festival is now over, and we’ve asked our wayward staff  to submit their favourite key current late news extras for post-festival tabulation. Without further ado : (1) “Bill Shorten renews push for Australian republic, vows to hold referendum within first term […]

A review of past counterweights postings on or near November 11 – since our humble beginnings in 2004 – suggests that it took the increasingly extended Canadian involvement in Afghanistan to finally spark our interest in Remembrance Day commemorations. As best we can tell on some quick forays through the bulging accumulated material in “Browse […]

Back in 1969, the year Richard Nixon first assumed office as President of the USA, the old-style Canadian conservative George Grant offered “perspectives on what it is to live in the Great Lakes region of North America,” in his short book Technology and Empire. Without in any way pretending to equal or follow George Grant’s […]

You have to do something … to unwind mentally and readjust to ordinary life, after all the raw excitement of a historic democratic campaign (well … that’s what we think up here in this now all-red city [aka blue in the USA]  …  still trying in vain to emulate Manhattan …) So …  to  recover […]

It seems only somewhat odd that the two big Canadian news events of yesterday – Tuesday, June 2, 2015 – should at least vaguely recall the earliest origins of the modern country of Canada, back in the 16th, 17th, and (first half of the) 18th centuries. In any case, in the old pays d’en haut […]

Some time ago now I was assigned the task of congratulating the new mayor of Victoria, BC,  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, […]

Tonight at 9 PM ET (6 PM PT) the CN Tower in Toronto will be lit in the colours of the traditional Medicine Wheel, to help celebrate National Aboriginal Day in Canada, June 21, 2011.  The first National Aboriginal Day was celebrated 15 years ago in 1996, when Governor General Romeo LeBlanc declared in Ottawa: […]

Once upon a time, the near-great economic historian Harold Innis began his 1947 “Minerva’s Owl” Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Canada with: “I have taken the title from that striking sentence of Hegel ‘Minerva’s owl begins its flight only in the gathering dusk…’” As much more recently explained by Lauren O’Nizzle, “a 20-something […]