Historians make lousy prophets. In fact, we find it hard enough to predict the past, much less tell the public what is going to happen in the future. Nonetheless, in the spirit of “modelling” which has provided so much accurate information about our current viral...
Gerry Bowler
A less Naïve Canada on Foreign Policy?
Pope Francis gave a speech recently in which he praised attachment to one’s own culture and place, criticizing global capitalism with its “consumerist vision of human beings” for its “levelling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the heritage...
The Coming war on the Elderly
The Great Plague of 2020 has revealed some interesting things about Western societies’ attitudes toward old people. In Italy, the shortage of medical equipment to treat patients suffering from the coronavirus has led to hospitals ruling that anyone over the age of 60...
Politics and the 2020 Plague
The Great Plague of 2020, like other disasters before it, has brought forth moves by governments to implement emergency powers that would not have been allowed to the ruler in normal times. Across the United States, governors have triggered clauses that grant them...
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Timeless Wisdom – The Politics of Successful Structural Reform
It’s a well-known pattern in public policy – profligate politicians damaging their economies with out-of-control spending, massive borrowing and higher taxes – inevitably leading to fiscal crisis, sharp declines in growth and ultimately rapidly falling currency value...
Canada’s National Hysteria in the 21st Century
Mass hysteria is the spontaneous manifestation of a particular behaviour by many people. There are numerous historical examples: Middle Age nuns at a convent in France spontaneously began to meow like cats; at another convent, nuns began biting one another. In...
Justice Pricing: Is it really justice or just plain hate?
The attempt by a Victoria BC promoter to institute “justice pricing” for a movie series has attracted considerable attention, most of it hostile. The “Made You Look Media” company had decreed that to view their latest offering at the Roxy Theatre the “general...
Mark Kingwell and the Degradation of Intellectual Discourse
Mark Kingwell is what is commonly called an intellectual, a social critic. He has an impressive list of advanced degrees and has published books on difficult topics such as baseball, cocktails, and democracy. He is paid by the taxpayers of Ontario to teach philosophy...
Statues Tell a Story That People Need To Hear
You could fill volumes with the uncomfortable statements uttered in the past by people whom we now revere, from Abraham Lincoln to Mahatma Gandhi. Frantic officials in the American south are joining with the Taliban and Islamic State as the latest group to destroy...
Cornwallis and Ryerson: Heroes or Villains?
How much of a hero do you have to be to warrant a statue? How much of a villain do you have to be to have your name stripped from streets, bridges, or schools? The brouhaha surrounding the memory of Edward Cornwallis and Egerton Ryerson means that Canadians and their...
So Long Hector-Louis Langevin: Wiping Away A Nation’s History
For the crime of being a man of his times, Canadians are being asked to wipe the memory of a Father of Confederation clean. "We do not allow the dead to rise up against us. ... You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. Nothing will remain of you, not a...