Jack Layton Oh Good Lord, I suppose it just had to be. Yes, the time of waiting has come to an end, and like a child embracing the dawn on Christmas Day I feel my heart bursting with a fulfilled anticipation. Because, joy oh joy, as I write this column the filming on the Jack Layton biopic is almost complete. [...]
Tim Hudak, provincial leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservate Party, made a generally favourable impression at the press conference at Queen’s Park I attended recently. There’s a core there that feel that he’s an apple that needs some polishing. (But so did former Premier Mike Harris.) I found that Hudak was forceful, articulate, and exhibited strong leadership talents. Hudak reminded me of [...]
I’m writing this column at the end of what has to be one of the least interesting summers in movie history. To make matters worse – if you work for a Hollywood studio – it’s also been one of the least profitable, but that doesn’t mean that movies aren’t important. As the Middle East erupted into bloody riots that took the life [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman United States President Barack Obama is an astute political tactician. Unlike his secular advisors, he was quick to recognize that the deletion of any reference to God in the initial draft of the Democratic Party Platform was a political blunder. The great majority of Americans still regard themselves as Christians and expect their leaders to believe [...]
A convention for liberal activists was held in Providence, R.I. in mid-June, 2012. The opening speaker, who will remain nameless out of respect to her ancestry, is a Democratic congressional candidate. She called the attendees to exercise “culture power” and urged women who had had abortions, as well as those who supported these women, to stand. She then said to [...]
In a shameful display of peevishness, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty recently tightened the Access to Information of public information on Ontario abortion statistics making it very difficult for the public to investigate these figures. This has made a strong case for accusations of taxpayer abuse, by hiding the hard facts as to what is going on. It is hard to tell what [...]
Following the reunion, we reminisced about former classmates who hadn’t attended. “Charlie’s not doing so well,” he said, when I asked about one of them. “He’s living with angina.” “He’s left Gaylene?” “Of course not,” he said. “Charlie and Gaylene are happily married.” As he seemed annoyed, I tried to re-start the conversation. I told him that our old [...]
For most families, college is the acid test of their parenting, the point when independence is finally granted and the long years of helicopter parenting (hopefully) cease. In the aftermath of three generations that have embraced youthful rebellion as an inevitable stage of life – an idea almost unheard of a century ago – we send our children off to university (or [...]
I suppose I’m old-fashioned. I thought teachers were supposed to teach, to make sure young people could read and write, do math, know some history and geography, perhaps some economics, and certainly some science. I don’t think media studies is a real subject, and sociology should only be a graduate level course. But this is nothing compared to what is [...]
This June I interviewed Jessie Sansone on my Sun News TV show – the name of the man may not resister with most readers, but how about The Crayon Dad? This is the 26-year-old man who, earlier this year in Kitchener, Ont., was handcuffed, arrested, and strip-searched by the police, and whose three children were removed by the Children’s Aid [...]
I prefer waves to wires. It doesn’t matter. Wires prevailed. For more than half a century, I received my television programs over the air, free of charge, via radio waves. Now I get them on the ground, for a price, via telephone wires. This, I realize, is a step backward, technologically and financially. Wireless is on the cutting edge [...]
Growing up during the Cold War, I saw the Earth end many times over. Mushroom clouds bloomed in films and TV shows such as The Day After, Testament, Threads, The War Game, By Dawn’s Early Light, On the Beach, The Bedford Incident, Fail Safe and Miracle Mile. Looking back from today, they might vary in quality but they share a [...]
Was I naïve? In the early 1980s, I mounted an argument against abortion that I thought no one could refute. In a brief to government, I asked: if the unborn do not have rights from the first moment of their existence, on the grounds of their being human, how can we be sure that they acquire rights later on, and [...]
It appears that Gay-Straight Clubs in Ontario may be in their death throes having met strong intellectual opposition to their very existence in Great Britain recently from a Dr. Julia Gasper. Gaspar was selected by the UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) to run for Parliament. UKIP advocates withdrawal from the European Union and is currently tied with the larger Liberal Democrats in [...]
Culture matters. I would carve these words on stone slabs and hand deliver them to every conservative and pro-life organization in the English-speaking world if I thought that it would make a difference, but I’m no longer sure it will. We may, I fear, have absented ourselves from culture and the arts for so long that everything we do now is a [...]