I wish I could buy those cheap mangoes. I love them and my kids really love them. But I find that I cannot enjoy a mango as much as I used to because, drat it all, I can read. Here’s what I have been reading lately: Canadians pay about seven per cent of their income […]
Canada
I should be so oppressed
I try to stay in a good mood about Quebec. I really do. I try to think fond thoughts about rural Quebec and its picturesque little roads and the charming Montreal restaurants nad bakeries. And, well, Mordecai Richler was from Quebec. But really I do not like Quebec. I find that I cannot think of […]
Owe Canada! Part 2: You can’t always get what you want
Marni Ko In Part One of this series, Marnie Ko detailed the effects of increasing debt on North American households. In Part Two, she examines the role the taxman plays in creating poverty in Canada, and looks for solutions. Charles Moore, a Nova Scotia writer, argues in a recent article that skyrocketing indebtedness is a […]
The Walrus: dull, and proud of it
By Frank Moher A new issue of The Walrus is upon us, and across the nation, crickets chirp. The cover story offers this breaking news: the earth is warming. “In the last decade,” writes its author, Alanna Mitchell, “the most authoritative reports on climate change have presented increasingly pessimistic worst-case scenarios about rising temperatures.” Really? […]
Desperate housewives, and husbands, and single parents, and kids . . .
Marni Ko On January 10, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation released a damning report documenting the $18.4 billion Industry Canada handed out in the form of corporate welfare between April 1, 1982 and March 31, 2006. Of that, one-third of the money went to just 50 companies, $10 billion of which was a grant or a […]
Dingbat of darkness
Nobody wants to hear defence critic Denis Coderre holler for the referee when the Liberal record is criticized. Especially when the criticism is more than fair. It is General Rick Hillier’s duty to report the state of Canada’s armed forces, even if he uses inflammatory language like “decade of darkness” to describe the cuts that […]
Maclean’s: higher, deeper
By Frank Moher Maclean’s keeps digging itself in deeper (and the you-know-what higher) on its Regina file. (See previous post or do a Google search.) On Tuesday, it published a full page ad in the Regina Leader-Post, reprinting a letter to the editor that had run in that paper on January 20th. It begins: “My […]
Herouxville’s village idiots
Just when you think that French Canadians aren’t all that racist (even if their cousins across the Atlantic are), some creepy Quebecker does something so incredibly ignorant that you can hardly believe we let la not-always belle province stay in the country. What was Andre Drouin’s intention, exactly, when he led town council to formalize […]
Thankyou, Maclean’s Man. Thankyou.
See Jonathon Gatehouse fly. See Jonathon Gatehouse soar. Jonathon Gatehouse soars over the firmament, landing only when he or his editors at Maclean’s decide he is needed. He is — MACLEAN’S MAN. Damascus, Minneapolis, Montreal, Tel Aviv, Winnipeg. Jonathon Gatehouse circles the globe and, when duty calls, dons his parachute and jumps. Parachute journalism is […]
In nobody’s yard except the pig farmer’s
So whose problem is the surreal level of violence against Aboriginal women in Canada? I am so monumentally pissed that I am ready to fire everybody, including the organizations run by Aboriginal women. It seems like nobody — absolutely nobody — is bringing their lunch pail to work on this problem. On Monday, October 4, […]
