It was hardly a secret, but it became official on the weekend: Peter MacKay is running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. He seems likely to win – and I can’t think of a worse choice. It appears the party is confronted with a simple choice: integrity or elect-ability. McKay may […]
Spoiler alert; the book became a hit. But probably anyone who watches Tolkein knew that already. I remember reading about this film when it was being made, but missed it in theatres. Thank you Lufthansa for showing it when Air Canada didn’t. (I should note, Lufthansa had no Canadian movies available. Sometimes hard choices have […]
The Alsatian town of Kaysersberg was given the title “City of the Empire” in 1293, according to a mural I discovered when checking out a courtyard off one of the main streets. There I found this mural commissioned to mark the 700th anniversary of the event. The title was given by Adolf, who was King […]
I’ve been doing some “housecleaning” on my phone and found today’s post, which I had written to post around before Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, then an addendum to go with his January 2017 inauguration. It is a topic I explored in a book review last year, but I figured as Trump enters the […]
The first question I thought when visiting the Dachau concentration camp was: “How could they not have known?” Of course, many Germans did know of the concentration camps and bought the lies about what was happening there. It was easier to pretend than to confront the reality. After all, as it said on the gates, […]
Some days it seems like I have a mountain of books to read – and never enough time. It could be worse though. Back when I was working in radio, a couple of book publicists discovered that I was willing to not only interview authors coming through town but that I would actually read the […]
Fresh snow, sunshine and snowshoes – all you need for a fun winter’s day. In my younger days I had my own snowshoes, the more traditional wooden kind with rawhide webbing and lamp-wick bindings. We wore soft mukluks, not hard winter boots that would hurt the webbing. Those old snowshoes were wider than these […]
It has crept up quickly almost without my noticing – it is a presidential election year in the United States. Four years of Donald Trump has rushed by. Not that it has really been four years. With all the publicity surrounding the Trump impeachment process, it seems no-one is paying much attention to the upcoming […]
With Saturday’s post being about the upcoming American election, I thought perhaps a photo essay would be appropriate today, something to cleanse your palate, so to speak. And what could be more cleansing than a nicely flowing fountain? Rome has so many of them, with the best-known being Trevi Fountain, but today’s is pretty popular […]
Citizens of Ottawa can be forgiven for thinking their municipal government has squandered a couple of billion taxpayers dollars in exchange for some sour fruit, in this case a large lemon. The train is running in Ottawa again, or at least it was Friday when I wrote this. No guarantees that will continue. When […]
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