Author: Phil Gurski

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 21, 2018 It would be hard to forget the G8/G20 riots in Toronto in 2010. Or similar mass violence at the WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999.  Commercial properties smashed and vandalised.  Police cars destroyed.  The arrests of hundreds.  People kept in cages by the authorities.  […]

OK, so what were YOU doing at 545 Friday morning?  Sleeping soundly I sincerely hope.  As for me, I was getting ready to go on a Toronto talk radio programme to weigh in on an incident at an Indian restaurant in Mississauga  Thursday evening when two men wearing disguises left a bomb that exploded, wounding […]

This piece was published in The Hill Times on May 14, 2018. I must confess that I hesitated quite a bit before putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) on this topic.  I was sitting in a Maple Leaf lounge at LaGuardia Airport in New York when CNN broadcast its ‘breaking news’ coverage of US […]

For many people the solution to terrorism is quite simple.  Those who are fighting with groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State and others can be killed in airstrikes, drone strikes or armed combat.  Those who are captured alive can be turned over to local officials or brought home for trial where they can be […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 7, 2018 Pop quiz!  What is Canada’s ‘national game’?  Duh it’s hockey of course (or ‘ice hockey’ as the rest of the world knows it as if it needed to be distinguished from ‘field hockey’).  What with the NHL playoffs on and one Canadian team still […]

As more and more of the New York Times podcasts created by journalist Rukmini Callimachi and her team are released we are learning more and more of the adventures of a Canadian member of Islamic State (IS) codenamed Abu Huzayfah.  The Pakistani-Canadian left of his own accord to join IS, admits to killing at least […]

There is an old saying ‘the law is an ass’. It refers to those times when the application of the law is asinine, obstinate and counter to common sense (the phrase dates back, apparently, to the mid-17th century).  I submit that some of Canada’ laws, the ones that pertain to terrorism, are not just an […]

We have just celebrated Mother’s Day in Canada, a chance for children to recognise and give thanks for their mothers.  Mothers are, after all, often the bedrock of families. It is they who give birth to the next generation, nurture their sons and daughters through the early years of life and usually act as confidantes […]

When I was at Public Saftey Canada I had the opportunity to work in outreach with some outstanding civil servants.  They would organise sessions across the country with a variety of communities to engage on a wide range of topics all related in some way to public safety.  I was invited on some of them […]

This piece was published in The Hill Times on April 30, 2018 I consider myself a fairly reasonable and rational person.  I also have had a hankering for science since I was a kid and do everything possible to keep up with developments in a variety of fields. Among those is environmental science and of […]