Columnist
Written on 8 Dec, 2010 at 13:43 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell
Take care if you aspire to be a criminal. A life of crime can be bleak and unrewarding, unless you go to jail. As long as you’re on the run, you have few options. Once you’re incarcerated, you have more than you can pursue. Like most criminals, however, you may never make it to jail.
If you do, opportunities abound. Among other pursuits, you can earn a university degree, learn a ... (Continue reading)
Written on 8 Dec, 2010 at 12:09 in
Columnist, Frank Kennedy | Author:
Frank Kennedy I was invited to Rob Ford’s victory party in Toronto in a live 10-second phone invitation and he implied everybody was welcome. Ford said that people were already starting to arrive early. Ford’s people were expecting over 2000 but they came in with around 1500. That is still an amazing figure. I guess the Ford sign on my front lawn got me the invitation, but I am afraid I couldn’t make it to ... (Continue reading)
Written on 6 Dec, 2010 at 11:47 in
Columnist, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis There are no accidents in popular culture. Trends and fads might crest with seeming randomness, but do not be fooled – every hit movie, TV show or book and the copycats in its wake are meant to scratch some cultural itch. The motivations might be obscure at the time, but hindsight reveals all, so I cannot help but anticipate just what led to the recent ubiquity of the zombie.
A quick scan ... (Continue reading)
Written on 21 Nov, 2010 at 11:58 in
Columnist, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis “Welcome to Earth – population zero,” goes the ominous tagline at the start of every episode of Life After People, the History Channel-produced documentary series that aired its second season just recently in Canada on History Television. It’s our cue to get cozy and enjoy an hour’s worth of empty cities falling to pieces, if they’re not inundated by rivers and seas, while the pride of mankind’s achievements collapse spectacularly into ... (Continue reading)
Written on 21 Nov, 2010 at 8:01 in
Columnist, Frank Kennedy | Author:
Frank Kennedy We appear to be living in the darkest of Dark Ages.
We have a convicted bombmaker, Inderjit Singh Reyat, as per the Toronto Star (Sept. 10), who repeatedly told the Air India trial, “I don’t know,” “I can’t remember,” “I can’t recall” and lied 19 times during his testimony, according to Crown lawyer Len Doust.
Reyat already pleaded guilty to supplying bomb parts in the June 23, 1985 twin Air India bombings that ... (Continue reading)
Written on 17 Nov, 2010 at 12:57 in
Columnist, Michael Coren | Author:
Michael Coren
In early October in Ottawa the police arrested five students from Carleton and Queens universities for displaying a pro-life exhibition at Carleton. They were peaceful, merely expressing an opinion and showing people the realities of abortion. Some of the pictures were graphic in nature but then abortion is graphic in nature and death and killing are bloody and nasty. In an age where violence is shown in gory detail on television and in ... (Continue reading)
Written on 16 Nov, 2010 at 7:39 in
Columnist, Rory Leishman | Author:
Rory Leishman
In unilaterally striking down three key provisions of the Criminal Code, that prohibit the operation of houses of prostitution in Canada, on Sept. 28, Madam Justice Susan Himel of the Ontario Superior Court indulged in an illegitimate exercise of raw judicial power. Her ruling overturned the law, distorts the Constitution of Canada and violates the fundamental separation of legislative and judicial powers essential to freedom and democracy.
Of course, Himel sees matters differently. In ... (Continue reading)
Written on 22 Oct, 2010 at 5:30 in
Columnist, Donald DeMarco | Author:
Commentary Donald DeMarco I usually do not put much stock in the message that falls to the table when I crack open my Chinese Fortune Cookie. I fully expect it to be positive, reassuring, and designed not to interfere with my digestion. Nonetheless, my most recent experience with this confectionary was a deviation from the norm and much more philosophical than usual. It read: “To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.”
This was not only ... (Continue reading)
Written on 22 Oct, 2010 at 5:23 in
Columnist, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis There’s a scene early on in The September Issue, a recent documentary about Vogue magazine’s doorstopper-sized fall edition, which must have made the filmmakers gasp when they knew they had it captured. At Paris fashion week, an unnamed but very chic-looking woman stage-whispers in French into the ear of a highly improbable man named Andre Leon Talley that “Anna is the most powerful woman in the United States.” The Anna in ... (Continue reading)
Written on 20 Sep, 2010 at 18:25 in
Columnist, Donald DeMarco, Issues | Author:
A writer who practices his art at home does not want to turn his place of residence into a library warehouse. And so, every so often, in order to maintain a dynamic equilibrium between acquisitions and dispersals, he must sift through his material and separate the transitory from the enduring. It is a practice akin to gardening in which one separates the weeds from the perennials. Some material remains attached to ... (Continue reading)
Written on 13 Sep, 2010 at 18:42 in
Columnist, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis I envy people who’ve maintained a constant connection to their faith, but not just for the bedrock of moral certainty that’s been beneath their feet their entire life. If you haven’t walked a meandering path all over the political and spiritual landscape, you probably won’t have experienced the panic that overwhelms you the morning after you’ve returned from that tacitly secular, hyperbolically ambivalent place generally accepted today as the mainstream. You ... (Continue reading)
Written on 13 Sep, 2010 at 18:31 in
Columnist, Michael Coren | Author:
Michael Coren
I’m about to make my annual visit to Britain, the land of my birth and where I spent the first 27 years of my life. Also, the country of John Wesley, who was born a little over 300 years ago. Wesley was, of course, the founder of Methodism, an evangelical grouping that began within the Church of England but eventually found life more comfortable as a separate denomination. Today, sadly, it is ... (Continue reading)
Written on 10 Sep, 2010 at 9:43 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell If I had a second chance at life, I think I’d come back as a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, whether private or public, seldom die. I could live with that.
Consider the March of Dimes. It was set up to raise money for the fight against polio. Well, in the 1950s, Dr. Jonas Salk figured out how to get rid of polio, and it’s virtually extinct. But no one has figured out how to get rid of the March of Dimes, and it’s ... (Continue reading)
Written on 28 Aug, 2010 at 6:29 in
Columnist, Frank Kennedy | Author:
Frank Kennedy “Where are you going, Frank, in such a big hurry?” my wife, Ileen, asked me recently.
“Dear, I just got a call from the Toronto Police Services Board asking me if I would come down and help them out in an emergency situation.”
“I never knew you to be that crazy about the police.” Ileen said.
“Oh I am, dear,” I said.
“Yeah, right. Watch what you say, Frank. Remember these guys are armed.”
“I’ll be ... (Continue reading)
Written on 28 Aug, 2010 at 6:21 in
Columnist, Michael Coren | Author:
Michael Coren Today people have a tendency to hold their ha
nds up and make pretend quotations marks when they use the phrase “family values” as though they’re embarrassed about it and want to qualify or justify what they’re saying. There’s no need. Family values are obvious – as natural as family itself. We can argue the politics, but for once let’s explain it in the personal. A true story about my daughter.
She falls down ... (Continue reading)
