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From the archives (almost): Queen or Monkey Ruler?

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Queen Elizabeth II

The Queen

VS. 

Monkey king

A monkey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in October of 2002 I wrote one of my first op-eds for the Toronto Star after a typically embarrassing royal visit by Her Highness. To set the stage: John Manley, then one of Chretien’s star ministers, mused about dumping the monarchy, and poor John was piled on fast for the crime of speaking common sense honestly, and I believe did some back-pedalling. I picked up his baton, picking on the defense-of-monarchy from the Monarchist League of Canada’s website. The League soon took down those arguments.

Now, the version the Toronto Star ran with was not my preferred version. It was the no-monkey argument. So, instead of the published article, I will print here, for the first time ever, my preferred version. The Monkey Argument: [Read more…]

Last Month’s Outdoor Adventures: Chelsea, Gatineau Park, Whistler, Puerto Rico (photo gallery)

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Some more travel and home to finish an exceptional winter.

Sunday

A family hike in the neighbourhood trails. Yes, that is a dress.

Chelsea trailsChelsea trails  [Read more…]

Pauline Marois has left the building

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Sorry Pauline, wish you could have reached the grand results of Boisclair! Maybe next time, mix in a Brokeback Mountain skit. People loved that. Whatever happened to Boisclair anyways? Ahh, we’ll be saying that about you soon enough. Anyway, if you’re embarrassed going out, just put on a hijab. You don’t have a government job anyway.

Here is the more dignified former PQ leader as we remember him best:

 

 

Who will be my next (i.e. new) prime minister? (results may vary by region)

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Justin Trudeau

Current Liberal leader, le dauphin, Justin Trudeau

Jason Kenney

“Insider” favourite for next Conservative party leader, Minister (for Curry in a Hurry) Jason Kenney

Brad Wall

“Outsider” favourite for next leader of the Conservative party, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall

Pierre Karl Peladeau

New PQ heavyweight, media and news mogul, sovereigntist-out-of-the-closet, and billionaire everyman, Pierre Karl Peladeau

Note: I live in Quebec, my next prime minister may not be the same as yours.

What’s the difference between an invisible wall and a force field?

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Watching Free Birds, a cartoon about turkeys with a time machine, with my boy, he asked me what the invisible spaceship/ time machine was made with. He’d never seen an invisible spaceship before!

What could I say? What would you say? I said it was a force field, but in my head, I wondered, is it? Or is it an invisible wall? And for the first time, I questioned, is there a difference? Or has it always been just a word game?

(Now, you may well say a wall is composed of matter, and a force field is energy. But then you should talk to Einstein. Since he’s dead, I’ll say this: what is a wall, but an array of pinpoint masses floating in mostly empty space, holding each other in place, and keeping us out, with an electromagnetic field?)

 

 

 

From the archives: Ottawa’s medical missionaries in Africa

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Kilema Hospital

The CACHA supported hospital in the shadows of Kilimanjarao

This article was written about an inspirational Ottawa doctor and the dynamic NGO he had founded, for which I had volunteered in Tanzania. Seven years later, I’m honoured to be working with the Canada Africa Community Health Alliance (CACHA) again, which makes it a nice time to reprint this.

Here is a slice of the CACHA story:

Into Africa: An Ottawa Doctor’s Quest to Help, Ottawa Citizen (December, 2007)

The full article is at the link above, an excerpt is below: [Read more…]

Picking a Fight With a General: Smart?

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Lt. Gen. Andrew LeslieStephen Harper’s close circle of communications advisers has had a lot of success doing things I don’t understand, and this is the latest in the oeuvre. Comes out (through documents obtained by a news agency, still not clear what that means) that a retiring general billed $72,000 for a cross town move. [Read more…]

Game of Thrones vs. Caesar

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Julius Caesar               vs.              iron-throne-teaser-game-of-thrones-18537495-1280-720

Coincidentally, I started reading Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil War about the same time I started watching Game of Thrones. In that context, Game of Thrones comes across as a PBS dramatic re-enactment of history, except for the dragons and boobs. All the most ridiculous aspects of Game of Thrones are there in Caesar’s memoirs: the daily backstabbing and plotting, the wars fought between clans at the drop of a hat, the shifting alliances, the exotically contrasting cultures. Add in the later legends of the sexual politics of Cleopatra, and betrayal by Brutus and his cohorts, and there’s not much missing. It makes the characters, the evil, of Game of Thrones that much more real: we did behave that way once.

[Read more…]