SPRING NOTES FROM THE DEMOCRATIC DESKTOP OF CITIZEN X, BUCKHORN, ON. Some of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s continuing rural, small town, exurban, and other supporters may have found it reassuring that the location from which he gave his April 30, 2021 virtual news conference did not look at all like even the suburbs of today’s […]
GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. The return to realism after Labour day is almost here. And it suddenly becomes clear that this past Thursday’s Scarborough-Rouge River byelection was a welcome splash of cold water for we rare but resolute fans of Ontario provincial politics. (See, eg : “Ontario Tories win hotly-contested Toronto-area byelection” by Allison Jones at The […]
I don’t believe in “types” of human beings. But if I did, the new Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown would remind me of a certain type of hard-working grass-roots activist, outside the established political party system. Yet it also seems that Mr. Brown has spent almost his entire life since the middle of high school […]
Time magazine named eight final candidates for its 2014 Person of the Year designation : acting Iraqi Kurdish Region president Masoud Barzani  ; first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO Tim Cook ; the Ebola caregivers ; the Ferguson protesters ; controversial National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell ; Chinese e-commerce giant founder Jack Ma ; […]
It may be hard to get a word in about anything but the Malaysian airplane disaster in east Ukraine today (or possibly the new Israeli ground offensive in Gaza) – and with good enough reason. But life in our own small corner still goes on. This week we’ve been at the receiving end of two […]
The genius of the traditional “Westminster” or British-style cabinet system is or at least was supposed to be that it is an authentically collegial or team-management approach to the increasingly complicated adventures of government by popularly elected officials. Any modern parliamentary democracy is far too complicated to be navigated by the mind of just one […]
UPDATED JULY 9: At least some Ontario Progressive Conservative members of the Legislative Assembly reacted quickly and nastily to their party’s (and their party leader’s) considerably worse-than-expected results in the June 12 provincial election. So far, the Ontario New Democrat reaction has been quieter and less noticeable. (Partly, some might say, because Andrea Horwath’s NDP […]
GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, MAY17, 2014. 2:00 AM ET. Before I lay me down to sleep this morning, I have been asked to put the counterweights’ Ontario election watch 2014 to bed for this 24th of May holiday weekend. (Which takes place on Monday, May 19 this year. Even though we are still apparently commemorating the […]
What is still only potentially the most interesting Ontario election campaign in years has not yet come to any tight focus, some 10 days after the at least unofficial start. A question raised on this site back this past January may come closest to where things almost seem to be : “Is an uber right-wing […]
The late great Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye – who came to Toronto via Sherbrooke, Quebec and then mostly Moncton, New Brunswick, “to compete in a national typing contest in 1929” (!!!!) – once called Ontario “surely one of the most inarticulate communities in human culture.” And there is something about the still very youthful […]
