HOLIDAY ANNOUNCEMENT

My wife, Catharine, and I are driving to Prouts Neck in Maine this morning to spend a couple of weeks with friends. Back to blogging about August 3.
Have a good July.
Neil

WAS THE NEW YORKER COVER CARTOON A SATIRE OR A SMEAR?

It was an image made to raise hackles, and it did; a cartoon on the cover of the current New Yorker showing Barack and Michelle Obama – dressed as a Muslim and a gune-toting militant – performing what right wing commentators have called a “terrorist fist bump”, while burning the U.S flag [...]

SHOULD HARPER HELP KHADR?

What has happened to Omar Khadr in Guantanamo is unspeakable. According to documents released last week this Canadian citizen has been tortured through sleep deprivation – wakened up every few hours and moved to another cell so that he feels continually disoriented. Khadr is charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan when [...]

ARE YOU CUTTING BACK ON YOUR DRIVING?

In response to higher gas prices, half of Canadian drivers say they have cut back on daily driving, and 45 per cent say they have taken steps to increase gas mileage.
A Gallup poll in the U.S. indicates a higher percentage of Americans (84 per cent) said they have cut back on daily [...]

SHOULD HARPER ATTEND THE OLYMPIC CEREMONIES?

After saying in April that he would not attend the Bejing Olympics opening ceremonies, Prime Minister Harper is looking increasingly isolated.
Any idea of a general boycott has collapsed. President Bush has changed his mind and is now going. So is French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who only this spring seemed poised to lead a [...]

IS “NAZI” A DIRTY WORD?

Max Mosley, 68, has since 1993 been president of Formula 1 car racing’s governing body. He is also the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, the head of the British Union of Fascists, Britain’s main Nazi party in the 1930s and 40s.
Max was born to Oswald [...]

SHOULD Dr. MARGARET SOMERVILLE GET THE ORDER OF CANADA.

The fallout from Dr. Henry Morgentaler being awarded the Order of Canada is still with us.  A Catholic priest in B.C. has returned his Order,  a Catholic organization in Ontario has returned theirs, and a Catholic nun is mulling whether to give back hers.
Which brings us to the case of Dr. Margaret Somerville,  the distinguished [...]

SHOULD TRUSCOTT RECEIVE $6.5 MILLION?

Does anyone still remember the Steven Truscott murder case?
In 1959 Truscott, then 14, was convicted of raping and strangling his 12-year-old schoolmate, Lynn Harper, near Clinton, Ont., north of London. (The two were seen riding their bikes on the day she died). Truscott became the youngest person in Canada ever sentenced to [...]

WHO LIVES? WHO DIES? WHO DECIDES?

Suppose there were a medical disaster such as a flu pandemic (which doctors expect sooner or later) where medical services are stretched beyond the limit. In that situation who lives and who dies and who decides?
Now an influential group of U.S. doctors have drafted a specific list of recommendations for which patients would [...]

SHOULD DON CHERRY GET THE ORDER OF CANADA?

Even before the dust has settled on Dr. Morgentaler’s controversial nomination to the Order of Canada, the drums have started to beat for another divisive public figure. I speak of Don Cherry who is lauded for the Order by Rex Murphy in today’s Globe and Mail.
Murphy doesn’t mince [...]