Whenever the Canadian dollar gets close to parity with the American dollar (like it has over the past few weeks) or actually does (as it did briefly today) the national media loses their collective mind. It's up! It's up! Tell everyone! Buy! Sell! Buy and sell! The last time the dollar hit parity was in the summer of 2008 and there weren't any riots on Bay Street, no make-work program to pave the streets with gold, and the prime ...More »

On Saturday 3 April, Canadians learned from the Toronto Star that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was looking to replace current Governor General Michaëlle Jean. This news was met with some surprise as Jean has only served a single five-year term out of a possible two. It was widely expected that she’d be asked to continue in her capacity as governor general, as is the established practice, but also considering her unprecedented leniency in granting ...More »

Well, it's Tuesday and that can only mean another instalment of my new favourite web-series, Suitemates has been released. It is both well produced and written and the cast is superb. And yes; it has famous people in it but I don't care. I don't buy the argument that a "Hollywood" invasion of the web cuts out the honest ma-and-pa lesser-knowns. There are some things you just can't put on network television -- or would want to, ...More »

Our friends over in the United Kingdom are having a federal election and I’m jealous. We’re told that Canadians don’t want elections. That Canadians are tired of elections. That Canadians don’t like elections. As though parliamentary democracy could produce something other than a series of debates and power-struggles that result in either governance or dissolution -- intended or otherwise. We have a populist prime minister sitting in a non-populist representative body, who thinks he’s head of state, and governs as ...More »

Since one of the recurrent subjects on this site will be books, I though I’d share a brief list of new books I’ll be picking up over the next three months -- some of which I will review in a more formal capacity later on. APRIL + Andrew Potter, The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves One of the most loaded words you can drop in seminar is authenticity. Everyone nods reflexively whenever it's used but ...More »

MY NARRATIVE PRETENSE I thought I’d frame my inaugural post with an homage to Bill Lawrence’s superb sitcom Scrubs. If you haven’t seen the show, the plot is focused through a reflective first-person narrative and each episode title employes “my” as prefix to match. It’s a useful means of introducing myself and a narrative style I’m going to adopt on occasion. MY THIRD REVOLUTION I’ve had this site up and running for a few years now. This ...More »