Category: Canada
-
How Would Every Canadian Prime Minister Fare as Hockey Goons in a Bench-Clearing Brawl?
Hello everyone! I expect most of you reading this have already heard of my most successful blog post ever, “In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why?” One afternoon’s puttering around Wikipedia almost five years ago has now gone viral twice and taken on a life…
-
A Few Thoughts on the Life and Legacy of Jack Layton
As a rule, I don’t blog about daily events. Things that seem important in the heat of the moment so often fade and blur with the healing balms of time and distance, and I want these posts to have longevity and relevance beyond the moments of creation. I doubt I’m violating that principle now: The…
-
Remembrance Day, 2010
Tomorrow is Remembrance Day. It’s the first Remembrance Day of my life that I will not be celebrating with my grandfather, Murray Anderson, a veteran of the Second World War who passed away last winter. In December, 2009, I scanned a number of pictures he took during his time in the Royal Canadian Navy with…
-
On Robert Service’s The Cremation of Sam McGee
I have a lifelong relationship with Robert Service’s The Cremation of Sam McGee. It was one of my mother’s favourite bedtime stories because it was short. I most often requested a book called The Golden Eagle: It was fascinating, beautifully illustrated, and it took about forty-five minutes to get through. When my mother didn’t want…
-
Diefenbaker’s Foreign Policy
I enjoyed reworking one of my old university essays for publication on this blog last month, and so I’ve decided to do so again. This time my subject will be the foreign policy of former Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker. Oh, I know: Canadian History, what dreary stuff. Balderdash! Canadian History is boring when it’s…
-
Documents found in my mother’s antique desk dating to just after the end of the First World War
My mother collects antiques, or at least she likes them enough to keep an eye out for them when she pursues one of her true passions in life, interior decorating. Some years ago she bought a writing desk of quarter cut oak, and within one of the drawers she was told were some documents from…