Category World Affairs
Memories of War
Like most Canadians, I think of war as rather a remote thing. It has been a long time since a war was fought on Canadian soil. Oh there has been the odd skirmish, rebellions in the Canadian west in 1870 and 1885 as well as in both Upper and Lower Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) […]
Twitter and Pandora’s Box
Yesterday the Ottawa Senators hockey team fired their coach – and announced his departure via Twitter. Today seems like a good time to diverge from the travel dialogue we have been having and talk technology, starting with Twitter. I’m not used to seeing it used for important announcements like that. My wife was asking about […]
Black Friday
Today, if you didn’t already know, is the day after the American Thanksgiving holiday, which for the past 50 years or so has been referred to as Black Friday. It is an orgy of consumerism, a shopping frenzy with supposedly lower prices and longer store hours and chaos in shopping malls across the USA. It […]
Do They Know It’s Christmas?
I remember going to see The Concert For Bangladesh in early 1972at the Dorval Cinema in suburban Montreal. That movie (and the triple vinyl disc album of the same name) was my introduction to pop music as a fundraiser for a good cause, though there might have been earlier efforts I was unaware of. Yesterday […]
They Ate Their Horses
Today we remember. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the guns fell silent. The bloodiest war in human history to that date was over. But not for everyone. Today, as Canada pauses for the traditional two minutes of silence, I will be remembering my mother’s father. He […]
The World Needs Leadership
I have here in the past mentioned, or more accurately lamented, that there seems to be a lack of leaders in our society. There are those we follow due to their celebrity: heroes of Hollywood or stars of the sports world. Shaping and influencing culture does not necessarily make them leaders; they may just be […]
Terror Strikes Home
I got a text from my son: “Are you on the Hill?” “Yes” I replied. After all, I’m on Parliament hill every Wednesday morning. Another text: “There were shots fired. Any idea what is going on?” Outside I heard the sirens. Sirens are as normal in downtown Ottawa as in any urban setting – fire […]
Under Attack!
I had things I wanted to do on Wednesday and decided not to write a blog post. But what you plan and what happens are frequently not the same. What I expected to be an ordinary work day wound up being extraordinary, with an apparent terrorist attack on the Parliament of Canada that left me […]
Tyne Cot Cemetery
On the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website there is a warning: SCHOOL GROUPS: TEACHERS – PLEASE CLOSELY SUPERVISE YOUR STUDENTS, PARTICULARLY AT THE TYNE COT CEMETERY CROSS OF SACRIFICE. I presume the all caps are to emphasize the importance of the message. I’m not sure what exactly is meant by “supervise closely.” When we visited […]
The Brooding Soldier
One of the highlights of the Belgian leg of our tour of Europe was the Brooding Soldier at St. Julien. After Vimy Ridge this may be the biggest, best known, Canadian war memorial in Europe. It is a poignant site, a soldier with head bowed, grieving for his lost comrades. The memorial is located at […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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