It’s fitting that Pierre Berton would leave us the day after a celebration of great Canadians. Nobody mined our country’s history as assiduously as he did, finding nuggets of national glory and, sometimes, shame.

Much of what I know about story, and teasing a narrative thread out of the confused tangle of reality, I learned from reading and listening to Berton. It wasn’t all history; I couldn’t tell… Read more...

After every election, an accepted wisdom emerges. And very often, it’s entirely wrong. The recent U.S. election is a case in point.

Take the shibboleth that young people stayed away from the polls in droves. Actually, the youth turnout rate went up nearly six per cent.

And then there’s the idea that the Democrats lost because they didn’t connect with evangelical Christians on their own terms, with a… Read more...

The as-yet-not-really-confirmed trend of post-Enlightenment Americans flocking across the Canadian border may yet translate into a real flow of traffic if the folks at CanadianAlternative.com get their way.

The site promotes the Canadian advantage in Medicare, foreign policy, environmental sanity, human rights, drug policy and more.

It’s not that they’re actually trying to provoke a mass U.S. exodus:

This site is not meant to provoke a… Read more...

Strike won’t affect delivery, Canada Post says
Cards should arrive as usual by Easter

Newborn baby discovered at Vancouver bus stop
Decades from now, he’ll lead Fraserview to the promised land

Kellogg CEO tapped as new U.S. commerce secretary
Promises harsh anti-dumping tariffs against Weetabix

One million Cdns. suffer panic attacks: report
In a related story, Ben Mulroney is slated to host another… Read more...

ACORN Canada, an offshoot of the venerable 34-year-old U.S.-based organization of low- and moderate-income families, is just getting off the ground. But they’ve already scored a direct hit on the so-called “payday loan” industry — an unregulated, unaccountable business that preys on the financial desperation of Canada’s poor.

ACORN released a study [PDF] showing the estimated 1,200 payday loan outlets regularly charge interest rates of 300… Read more...

If you’re on an obsessive quest for silver linings in the wake of November 2nd (and, for that matter, the 12-months-plus campaign that preceded it), then cast your gaze down south to Jeb Bush territory: Florida.

Thanks to the amazing work of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and the largest American community organization “of low and moderate-income families, with over 175,000 member families organized… Read more...

Back in the distant mists of time — the early 1970s — a young Garry Trudeau penned a Doonesbury strip where two legislators grumble over the difficulty of definitively nailing Richard Nixon. “If only he’d knock over a bank or something.” “By George, we’d have him then!”

It’s in that spirit that ODTAA notes the apparent continued tenure of one Gillian Cosgrove at the National Post, after Monday’s… Read more...

If you have a web site with its own domain, and you’re sick to death of spam, and you can’t make it down to Boca Raton to leave a flaming bag of dog poo on a spammer’s doorstep, you can still fight back.

Project Honey Pot is asking webmasters to install their open-source software somewhere on the web site:

Using the Project Honey Pot system… Read more...