There seems at least some significant agreement within the Canadian federal punditocracy (which I admire a great deal) that our new former-astronaut Governor General Julie Payette badly blotted her copy book, when she gave spirited opening remarks at the recent 9th annual Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa. I nonetheless feel driven to confess that […]

Just last week, on October 5, 2009, the Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, gave a speech to a United Nations cultural group in Paris, in which she called herself – and not just once but twice – the Canadian “head of state.” This soon enough brought a surge of protest from the diminishing forces […]