Search: “Terrorists”

Photo ops by leaders of states with the military are no-brainers I suppose. The president/prime minister/king/grand poobah gets on plane, flies to Lower Slobovia to meet his/her country’s soldiers serving to maintain a war/keep the peace in a faraway land, thanks them for their service, assures them that what they are doing is right, acknowledges […]

Tis the season, as they say, and at the Walsh-Gurski household Christmas movies are a tradition, no matter how many times they have been viewed. Me, I like A Christmas Carol, the 1951 British version with Alistair Sim as Scrooge: I have viewed it every Christmas Eve for I don’t know how long. My wife […]

I am sure you have all heard the term ‘the folly of war’. There was even a book with that title written years ago by a historian named Donald E. Schmidt: The Folly of War: American Foreign Policy, 1898-2005. With this being 2018 (almost 2019) and all you would think that humans would have realised […]

When it comes to terrorism we all have a role to play.  Citizens have a responsibility to call authorities when they see suspicious behaviour (‘See it, Say it’ is one such campaign) or notice those on the possible pathway to violent extremism and get in touch with those who have CVE (countering violent extremism) programs […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 19, 2018. July 1 is, of course, our national day.  Whether you celebrate it like we do here in Ottawa with a series of events centred on Parliament Hill capped by the awesome fireworks display or in your own local way (at the cottage, in your […]

I guess it is that time of year.  No, not the holiday season – the appearance of the annual Public Safety Canada terrorist threat overview!  As the Minister of Public Safety himself – Ralph Goodale – wrote, this is “part of our commitment to being open and transparent through a balanced and frank assessment of […]

A little less than a month ago we marked (‘celebrated’ is definitely the wrong word) the centenary of the end of the First World War.  This was a solemn occasion on which we recalled the deaths, injuries and destruction in not only the ‘Great War’ but also in WWII, the Korean War and others.  It […]

If there is one story that has grabbed worldwide attention lately it has to be the American Christian missionary who died trying to bring the Gospel to a people off the coast of India who have made it quite clear that they want nothing to do with the outside world, let alone be converted to […]

For those who do not know this I am a hockey goaltender.  I am not a very good one, mind you, but I love playing ‘net’.  This is of course an absurd attitude as a goalie in hockey has to do everything in his or her power to get the body between a hard, vulcanised […]

This piece appeared  in The Ottawa Citizen (online) on November 12, 2018. I never knew my maternal grandfather.  He emigrated to Canada in the early part of the 20th century from western Ukraine (or eastern Poland, the details on that are fuzzy) and settled in Montreal where he worked at the CPR’s Angus workshops, along […]