Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said it best in referring to the Canadian-US relationship: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt”. We Canadians do spend a […]
Category: Perspectives
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Sex, sex, sex…and terrorism
To say that we in the West live in a sex-craved society is putting things mildly. From TV shows where sexual humour is pervasive (for what it is worth, I think The Big Bang Theory would be a lot funnier without so many sex jokes and no, I am not a prude!) to advertising it […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 23, 2018 Way back when I was an analyst at CSE I recall a conversation with an workmate about who was more important to the organisation (we were both young and full of piss and vinegar). He worked on the ‘Soviet problem’: I was assigned along […]
Like most people I had a fascination with dinosaurs when I was a kid. I had plastic dinosaurs and books on these grand behemoths. I loved movies about them, even if they were really bad 1960s sci-fi ones that were as inaccurate as possible. In my 20s I began to read more recent books on […]
As a former intelligence analyst with more than three decades in national security and someone who has chosen to go public with my knowledge, perspective and experience I have attracted a lot of attention. Some of it is praiseworthy (“Thanks for your service”), some appreciative (“I like what you wrote”) and some not so good […]
We humans are a curious species (in both senses of the word ‘curious’). The foremost question on our minds is always Why? Why is the sky blue? Why do the seasons change? Why can’t a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup? Why? Why? WHY? Our insatiable need to know extends to tragic events, such as […]
It is a little past 7 PM on Monday, April 23 as I pen this op-ed in Ottawa. A little more than 5 hours ago a rented van appeared to jump a curb and run down pedestrians near the corner of Finch and Yonge streets in North Toronto. A man is in custody following an […]
This piece appeared in the April 23 edition of The Hill Times In a very funny Monty Python skit John Cleese plays a drill sergeant who is trying to teach a bunch of skinny recruits to defend themselves against foes wielding fresh fruit (oranges, apples, grapefruit, pomegranates….) with typical hilarious results. Cleese gets the underwear-clad […]
I have a confession to make. I am a huge New York Times fan. I have read it religiously for decades and even in my retirement I buy a copy that a downtown Ottawa news seller sets aside for me on a daily basis (thanks Comerford Cigar Store!). No one source is exhaustive or 100% […]
OK, OK, I know I really should lay off the Monty Python analogies. I imagine you are getting sick of them. But can anyone REALLY get tired of the greatest comic group in history? Come on, admit it, you love them as much as I do. Staying with this obsession of mine, then, I want […]