There is little doubt that the bloom of the Justin Trudeau rose has lost some of its lustre. The advent of the young mop-haired, baby-balancing, stripey-sock wearing son of a former Prime Minister onto the national political scene had many Canadians excited, much as they had swooned decades ago for his dad, Pierre Elliot Trudeau […]
Category: Perspectives
I have known a lot of people who left Canada to teach English abroad (usually known as ESL – English as a Second Language). It is a great opportunity to make a little cash, see the world, immerse yourself in a different culture and pass on a skill that can make a difference in another […]
I am the grandson of eastern European migrants and am very open to further, if not increased, immigration. We Canadians rightfully see ourselves as a nation generally tolerant of immigration. Yes, there are exceptions as we are seeing now with a certain percentage of us expressing concerns over the links between immigration and terrorism (which […]
It is no exaggeration to say that we have ‘terrorism on the brain’. Our newspapers, magazines and Web sites are full of stories about terrorist attacks here and terrorist attacks there. Our leaders – well, some of them anyway – see terrorists lurking behind every tree (or every irregular migrant) and want to build walls […]
I am pretty sure that each and every one of us were taught as kids the following phrase/advice by our parents/teachers/elders: “If you can’t find anything nice to say best say nothing at all”. This is a good adage in that it should make us think twice before we open our pie holes, especially if […]
We live in a win-lose world. Whether we are referring to sports, politics, game shows or whatever, there is usually a winner and one or more losers. We may simply be wired for dividing things into two categories, at least after initial analysis: good-bad, black-white, winner-loser. As I know I have read somewhere, way back […]
Every end of year we are inundated with two phenomena in our newspapers, TV broadcasts and Web sites. These two are: the year that was and the year that will be. The former recaps the important events of the 12 months drawing to an end and always includes, and I am not sure why, a […]
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true, how much is a video worth? A million? We are inundated with images, both still and moving, wherever we go. We watch videos on our cellphones all the time, even if most of them are crazy cat ones. And given that anyone […]
I recently wrote a blog in which I stated that doing stupid shit in the ill-named ‘war on terror’ is a bad idea that will result in worse problems down the road. The examples I provided on that occasion included the Iraqi Shia-dominant regime campaign of revenge against the Sunni population accused of helping Islamic […]
It is somewhat – no very – disconcerting that we are still dealing with the myth that is the connection between immigration and terrorism. In several Western countries there are movements that are in part or in whole anti-immigrant and one of the primary reasons for their opposition to newcomers is the belief that immigrants […]