This may be one summer where some people will welcome Labour Day, mainly those of us plagued by this year’s dog day journalism.  Ever desperate for a story of some kind, the Canadian fifth estate offered up the census flap, which was - I guess - supposed to make Canadians rise up from their lawn [...]

One aspect of our cultural amnesia is forgetting the very real, life-and-death struggle for scarce resources man has had with various animals - until very recently in the West, and still continuing in the third world. These animals - bugs, rodents and the like - were collectively called vermin, a term that has gone distinctly [...]

It’s nice to have it both ways. Have your cake and eat it too. So it is when Paul Wells doles out thick gobs of sarcasm at the Conservative government this week.
Mr. Wells is a smart man who, as the expression goes, does not seem to be plagued by self-doubt. While he has taken some [...]

Any resemblance between media coverage of government activity and reality is usually coincidental. Such was the case with MacLean’s recent story on Canada’s immigration system.
The gyst of the story was that Canada was “profiling” immigrants, favouring source countries with more skilled, better educated applicants. The “smoking gun” was an internal government document extracted by an [...]

Mao has a pretty good rep for a mass-murderer. If, heaven forbid, he was still with us, and had a cut of his international T-shirt sales, he’d be a richer man. He gets a pass from all the right-thinking people, and has, since his heyday of tyranny. But more on that in a minute.
I’ve been [...]

For those of us whose idea of “urban chicken” is either a piece of meat wedged between Styrofoam and cellophane, or a trip to KFC, we might be in for a shock.  If, some time soon, you’re awakened by what sounds like Foghorn Leghorn’s barnyard cousin just remember there’s no snooze button. It will mean [...]

One of the few benefits of getting older is gaining some perspective. Being a native Quebecker, but not a Quebecois - not pure laine - it is interesting to look back on the events of 30 years ago and think about what has changed, and what hasn’t.
It’s hard to describe the pressure-cooker atmosphere that existed [...]

The problem with elites is that they can be so well, you know, snooty. If they weren’t so superior to the rest of us, they’d have a lot easier time of it trying to be just folks. I couldn’t help thinking of that when reading this Maclean’s article about our late great Governor General, Adrienne [...]

Alert readers may recall the dark days of the 1990’s, when Prime Minister Chretien insisted that Canada had the “best health care system in the world”. It seemed he thought that, the more he repeated it, the more folks would believe it, the more it would seem true.
So it is with objectivity in our media. [...]

When will we have heard enough about the Sixties? For many of us, the answer is “about 25 or 30 years ago”, certainly by the time of the Sgt. Pepper 20th anniversary specials. The Boomers are (finally) retiring, at least those who aren’t overturning all the mandatory retirement legislation and planning to stop anyone from [...]