Don’t sell fathers short: They are as crucial to a child’s well being as a motherTuesday October 6th, 2015
For a recent web edition of The Walrus magazine, editor-in-chief Jonathan Kay wrote a sympathetic (but not sycophantic) reflection on Justin Trudeau, with whom he spent considerable time in his role as editorial assistant for Trudeau’s 2014 memoir, Common Ground.
“The Trudeau I Know,” reproduced in Monday’s National Post print edition, dwells on the trials o...
Ten reasons to ban the niqab — in the public serviceWednesday September 30th, 2015
Libertarians are committed to the principle that every individual has the right to live his life as he pleases, as long as he does no harm to others. But the meaning of “harm” isn’t always as identifiable as a physical assault or “fire” shouted in a crowded theatre. Nor is the phrase “to others.” Add up enough “others” and you have a ...
AP offers a victory to us ‘doubters’ of climate changeMonday September 28th, 2015
The AP Stylebook editors are updating their nomenclature on climate change. Henceforth, people who have been described as climate change “skeptics” and “deniers” will now be referred to as “doubters” or “those who reject mainstream climate science.”
This is welcome news, for it releases people like me from implicit mental alignment wi...
Attention paid to male issues doesn’t diminish from feminism: it’s not a zero sum gameThursday September 24th, 2015
Cathy Young is a widely admired libertarian “equity feminist” American journalist, whose considerable critical skills often deployed in dismantling the “rape culture” narrative, continually ruffle ideologues’ feathers.
Young was scheduled to speak at the University of Toronto tonight, Thursday, September 24th, on “The Politics of Gender and Victi...
Seeing Islamophobia everywhereWednesday September 23rd, 2015
Racial profiling happens. It’s a serious business and when it’s clear that a visible minority has been arrested or charged or held up for public humiliation because of his race or ethnicity, opinion writers should leap on it with all the requisite indignation, dudgeon and umbrage they can muster. The trick is in knowing whether any racial profiling actually took place, becaus...
There’s honour, and history, in being old stockTuesday September 22nd, 2015
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I’m not understanding the fuss about Harper’s “old stock” remarks. I get that Jacques Parizeau once used it in a nasty context (drunk post-referendum loss bitterness, implying the “real” Québécois descended from the original 14 French families who came over in the year dot, ...
HPV rule is more evidence that boys don’t matterFriday September 18th, 2015
Some years ago, a medical researcher at a Canadian university told me, in confidence, that he and his team had been following a most promising hypothesis, which, if tested successfully, might bear extremely fruitful results in combatting a major disease. But the test had to be be done with a certain kind of incubation methodology only practicable with male subjects. It would mean that an...
Niqab – Federal Government not going far enoughThursday September 17th, 2015
On Sept 15 the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the federal government’s appeal of an earlier Federal Court ruling declaring the ban on face coverings during citizenship ceremonies unlawful. In response, the Conservatives have declared they will take the matter to the Supreme Court, meanwhile vowing to re-introduce the niqab ban within 100 days of re-election.
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The man behind the monarch is a remarkable soul in his own rightWednesday September 16th, 2015
Last week, Queen Elizabeth II became Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. The media gushed with commentary on her extraordinary life trajectory, but Prince Philip also set a record: he’s the longest serving consort in British history. Yet coverage of his milestone has been scant. Not that he would care. As Elizabeth said on their Golden Wedding anniversary, “(Philip) is ...
Canada’s quiet, reassuring electionTuesday September 8th, 2015
Normally a federal election would claim the undivided portion of the attention I allot to politics. But this time, with more fascinating political campaigns in progress abroad, I find myself distracted from our own, which seems dull by comparison. I hasten to add that by “dull” I mean normal and orderly, while by “fascinating” I mean weird, threatening and an omin...
Sometimes a shower is just a shower. Even at AuschwitzFriday September 4th, 2015
The refugee crisis in Europe is having the effect of peeling back the thin veneer of politeness that oils the wheels of civic reciprocity. Fear is making everyone jumpy: There are so many of “them”; where will they all go? How will this affect “us”? And then there is the very real, and daunting problem of actually keeping track of people as individuals, as the wav...
Quebec wants to uncover faces while it covers mouthsTuesday September 1st, 2015
Over the years I’ve written many columns about honour killings in Canada’s South Asian communities. Under the terms of Quebec’s proposed Bill 59, my frequent allusion to the demonstrable fact that most victims of honour crimes are Muslim girls and women might, posted on the Internet as all my published writing is, lead to prosecution for Islamophobia with a possible fin...
Pit bulls are disproportionally dangerous. Why is Calgary importing more of them?Tuesday August 11th, 2015
Only two countries allow the importation of pit bull type dogs: Canada and the U.S.
In mid-June, 32 rescue dogs were saved from “death’s row” in a Bakersfield, California kill shelter and sent to Calgary for rehoming. The operation was jointly arranged by Wings of Rescue, an American charity, and BARC, a Calgary rescue organization. Of the 32 dogs, 17 are pit bull...
The decision to die is a private matter; its execution should be, tooFriday August 7th, 2015
On the surface, Gill Pharoah was an English woman much like myself – a healthy septuagenarian with grey hair, living with a partner she loved, also in good health, a mother of two like me, a grandmother, mentally fit, not subject to depression or other mood disorders. Pharoah did have some physical aches and pains, as do I, but none that actually needed more than over-the-counter m...
Feminists won’t like the ending of Amy Schumer’s latest flickWednesday August 5th, 2015
Rom-com ditzy dames are a time-honoured Hollywood tradition. Comedians like Judy Holliday, Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball were adorable. And, however kooky, “nice” girls all.
But in order to satisfy feminist dogmas in our era, postmodern rom-com writers have had to premise their plots on the assumption that loveable ditz, wanton promiscuity and landi...
To understand Bill Cosby, start with Alfred C. KinseyWednesday July 29th, 2015
In a letter to the editor in the July 25 National Post regarding Bill Cosby’s alleged sex crimes, Jerry Pryde, of Stoney Creek, Ont., wrote: “It should be noted one of Cosby’s accusers claims the deed occurred at the Playboy mansion when she was 15. This raises the question: who allowed a 15-year old girl inside what amounts to little more than a high-end brothel?&rdquo...
Of course Justin Trudeau wants bilingual judges: he’s the product of bilingual privilegeTuesday July 28th, 2015
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s seventh appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada is Justice Russell Brown, of the Alberta Court of Appeal, who will replace Justice Marshall Rothstein upon his Aug 31 retirement. Holding a doctorate in juridical science from the University of Toronto, and a member of the bars of both B.C. and Alberta, the 50-something Brown is domiciled in Edmonton...
A defence of the classic virtuesTuesday July 21st, 2015
After last month’s massacre of nine black worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., Americans braced for more racial upheaval. Instead, wonderment dawned at the calm, as dignified words of forgiveness and the commitment to racial harmony was displayed by survivors and Charleston citizens alike.
Reporting on the phenomenon from Charlest...
In the history books, this will go down as the Battle of Burl’s CreekFriday July 17th, 2015
In my formative years, summer meant Lake Simcoe and long, halcyon summers. But today, if nobody stops them, the usual suspects are going to — as the song warns — pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
Oro-Medonte Township is a rural Ontario enclave of about 20,000 souls between Barrie and Orillia. Blessed by lush prime farmland and Lake Simcoe’s gleamin...
Atticus Finch would have had his pick of men falsely accused of rape and denied due process todayWednesday July 15th, 2015
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, much in the news with the release of Lee’s practice-run novel for Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman, is America’s favourite book, its extraordinary popularity undiminished more than 50 years after it was published.
Strangely, though taught in high schools everywhere, it comes with no “trigger warnings” for female ...
Don’t sell fathers short: They are as crucial to a child’s well being as a mother
Tuesday October 6th, 2015
