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Category: Uncategorized

HOMECOMING.

British historian Peter Frankopan said in Kardamyli last week that every rise in global temperature brings a rise in antisemitism. His confidence in connecting surprising things like this set my mind wandering about the connection between the sexual assaults at Cornell and the drunken homecoming weekend at the University of Guelph last month and in previous years at Queen’s University in Kingston.

Frankopan’s claim is, at best, true-ish. But it makes sense that large groups of college students getting drunk on weekends are a factor, if not the factor, in increased rapes on-campus. (While women victims often get blamed for getting drunk and causing their own rape, the actual blame rests entirely on men.)

Read on…

October 9, 2026 No Comments

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO WHOM?

Since maps aren’t reality, but merely imitate reality, they are prone to all the slings and arrows of human error, ambition, greed and folly.

Recently, Donald Trump not only posted a map that showed the U.S. flag covering large parts of Canada, Greenland and Mexico, he renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America.” Apple was the first to tug its forelock, saying “only Americans” would see Lake America; all others would see Lake Ontario.

You can call this craven, bullying and even unhinged. I prefer to call it “high school.” But the real Pinocchio Award for map-making goes to Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), the Flemish cosmographer and cartographer who created the world map in 1569 based on a new projection that made it more useful to sailors. But any three-dimensional object portrayed in two dimensions is bound to contain some biases and distortions. For example, Mercator’s exaggerates the size of countries near the poles and downplays those near the equator.

Read on…

October 2, 2026 No Comments

A STREETCAR NAMED EXPIRE.

Last week at Bloor and Bay I saw a bedraggled man pick himself up off the sidewalk and nonchalantly jab a needle into his toes. I had to assume this was because the veins in his arms were so shot up that they didn’t work any more.

The sheer normalcy of this reminded me that Toronto is now a world-class city in something our child-like view of ourselves has a hard-time computing. All summer, I saw men sleeping across three seats in a subway car and women with everything they own in two plastic bags. They’re not only in the ravine behind the tennis club, and on the sidewalk outside Tim Hortons, their needles change hands as unselfconsciously as a Presto tap.

Read on…

September 18, 2026 No Comments

WHERE WERE YOU…?

On November 22, 1963, when JFK was shot? (Me: at prep school in Port Hope. A student ran into the dining hall yelling: “Kennedy was shot! Kennedy was shot!” We thought it was a fellow student named “Kennedy”)…

On July 2, 1969, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon? (Me: In Edmonton in a friend’s basement rumpus room.)

On October 16, 1970, when Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act saying “just watch me” during the FLQ Crisis? (Me: at university in the States, where it wasn’t so momentous.)

Read on…

September 11, 2026 No Comments

WTF.

Last month I met a friend for a drink at the Writers Room atop the Park Hyatt.

It was 4 o’clock, early for a drink, and the bar was empty except for my friend who was sitting inside at a table. Beyond her and outside was the open-air rooftop terrace. It was a gorgeous day so I said: “Why don’t we sit outside?” She paused, and said a bit awkwardly, “No, let’s not.”

She then explained that when she came in five minutes earlier she had the same idea, until the maitre’d told her that sitting outside comes with a $50-per-person “commitment.” Or rather, a minimum spend of $50 each. In other words, our drink would cost us $100. Plus tax and tip, so $125. And I only drink Diet Coke.

That seemed a lot.

Read on…

September 4, 2026 No Comments

SOMETIMES YOU’RE JUST WRONG.

And when you’re wrong with 6,000 people reading why you’re wrong, well, I’m gulping the gulp you gulp when all you can say is: “My arguments may have been wrong, but at least they were well put.”

I was wrong about expanding Billy Bishop Airport and letting jets take off and land there. I said it was a good idea. Lots of readers disagreed. The longer runway would have all kinds of knock-on effects that would change what’s wonderful about the waterfront. One of these readers, the indefatigable and relentless Anne Golden, threatened me with an invitation for coffee, which I attended and was well finger-wagged.

Anne was actually in despair. For her, the prospect of taking on Doug Ford’s government was Everestian. Everybody knows that the dice were loaded. Everybody knows that the fight was fixed. Everybody knows the good guys lost.

Until of course, they won.

Last Friday, after the polls showed Doug Ford sitting in the mid-20s in public opinion brought on by his fumbled effort to buy and sell a private jet, and his fumbled effort to rationalize his government’s efforts in fighting the forest fires raging in the North, Ottawa announced that it would not allow Billy Bishop to be expanded to accommodate jets.

Read on…

July 31, 2026 No Comments

A PRECEDENT AS LOVELY AS A TREE.

This week, the Quebec town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil became the first government in Canada to recognize trees as living things with rights.

It is part of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Trees, a global movement begun in Paris in 2018 to treat trees like people, with rights including “the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration.”

The town’s gesture of recognition is largely symbolic, but it sets the stage for tests in various courts in Canada around its legal validity. All to say, what used to be thought an absurd proposition by many will soon be treated seriously by the law.

Read on…

June 26, 2026 No Comments

WHY WE TRAVEL.

In my earliest memory of traveling, I was 5 and my mom and dad drove us from Edmonton, where we lived, all the way south in our 1956 Chevy station wagon to Calgary. The station wagon’s main job was to deliver flowers for Walter Ramsay Florist, my dad’s flower shop.

Then we drove west to Banff on what’s now the Old Banff Highway. Along the way, we pulled over at an ‘Indian’ souvenir shop. I proudly wore my iconic Davy Crockett ‘coonskin cap’ with leather chaps.

It was thrilling. I’d never seen a mountain before, and the connection between Davy Crockett and the ‘Indians’ and me, between doing a thing and being a thing, turned me into an intrepid lifelong traveller.

Read on…

June 12, 2026 No Comments

I AM NOT A ROBOT.

Joanna Stern writes about tech for The Wall Street Journal. She decided to spend a year using AI to do almost everything, and the result is a book, *I Am Not a Robot,*

We may vaguely recall a decade or more ago reading about a journalist who decided to live like a hermit for a week and order everything they needed online – food, toilet paper, clothes, banking, books, the works.

Back then, ordering stuff online was for early adopters. Hence, the news value of a story about someone who actually lived online. Now, of course, nearly all of us do our banking online, check in for our flight, order dinner in and, of course, drive from A to B.

Read on…

June 5, 2026 No Comments

YALE OR JAIL.

This week the City of Toronto unveiled its new Drug Toxicity Crisis Acknowledgement, an addition to its existing Land Acknowledgement and African Ancestral Acknowledgement.

It didn’t actually unveil what City Hall staffers are expected to read or display at the start of certain formal events or meetings. The drug acknowledgement was leaked to an Instagrammer who sent it to the world, including my Instagram feed.

Here’s part of what it says: “We acknowledge that this crisis is rooted in systemic discrimination. People who use drugs often experience stigma, and multiple intersecting forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism and colonialism.”

Read on…

May 29, 2026 No Comments

LEAVING HOME.

The last time a province tried to leave the country was on October 30, 1995, when a referendum was held in Quebec.

The “Yes” or “Leave” side won 2,308,360 votes, or 49.42% of the vote, and the “No” or “Stay” side won 2,362,648 votes, or 50.58% of the vote. A record 93.52% of eligible voters cast their ballot.

Whew.

I remember in the months leading up to the vote that our view in English Canada shifted from “Quebec will never leave” and “They’re just a small group of rabble-rousers”, to “Once Quebeckers realize what’s at stake, they’ll come around”, to “OMG, they’re going to destroy the country!”

Read on…

May 22, 2026 No Comments

MY TREMOR.

Three years ago I was having lunch with an old friend. The soup sounded good, so I ordered it. I dipped my spoon into the bowl, and as I was bringing it to my lips, I felt the tiniest tremor. Not so anyone would notice. But I did. I took another sip. The same slight shake of my left hand, my soup hand. Hmmmm. I waited five minutes.

“You don’t like your soup?”

“Yes, yes, I do.” My spoon quickly consumed the rest of the bowl.

As we left the lunch, I thought this was very odd. I certainly did not think: “Do I have Parkinson’s?” or “Am I going to die a dreadful death?”

Category: Uncategorized

HOMECOMING.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO WHOM?

A STREETCAR NAMED EXPIRE.

WHERE WERE YOU…?

WTF.

SOMETIMES YOU’RE JUST WRONG.

A PRECEDENT AS LOVELY AS A TREE.

WHY WE TRAVEL.

I AM NOT A ROBOT.

YALE OR JAIL.

LEAVING HOME.

MY TREMOR.

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