It doesn’t make sense to build a whole new stadium for half of a ball season
Montrealers are happy to welcome new neighbours with a bagel basket or a case of beer, but we’re not buying them a new hot tub. That’s how taxpayers in Montreal feel about the Tampa Bay Rays. They sure seem like a great team. We’d love to see them play some games in Montreal. But we’re…
We could see as many as five Canadians teams in the playoffs – but more likely we’ll see two or three at this pace
For fans of Canada’s seven embattled National Hockey League teams, the man from Zamboni is a suitable talisman of their frustration. As most everyone now knows, a 42-year-old Zamboni driver – a kidney-transplant Zamboni driver – stepped in for the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday night in Toronto to defeat the listless Leafs 6-3. When both…
Canadian mystery drama, from Murdoch to Doyle to 19-2, can help you escape the roller-coaster of life
Many people are consumed with current events, including the U.S. impeachment inquiry, the saga involving Canadian Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and the U.K. general election. Yet there are moments when even this enthusiastic political pundit has had enough and needs to briefly escape the roller-coaster of life. So I delve into sports, movies, art, animation…
I've been alive to observations and anecdotes of climate change for years. I now have hundreds of them stored in my memory
Imagine drilling into the accumulated layers of ice on Mount Logan, the highest peak in Canada at 5,959 metres in Yukon’s Saint Elias Mountains, to extract ice-cores for scientific study. Dr. Gerald Holdsworth, expeditionary climber and climate scientist at the University of Calgary’s Arctic Institute of North America had been doing it for years when…
And a full dose of air-conditioned museum comfort certainly doesn't hurt the appreciation of Picasso
Last week, thousands of Montrealers began to experience what I expect will gradually become a new phenomenon in global art gallery visitation – viewing art to get out of the heat. The heat wave (CBC news referred to it as “a heat event”) really descended on the city on the previous weekend, with Saturday’s temperatures…
The federal government's plan to substantially increase new arrivals requires close co-ordination with provincial and municipal officials
With a falling birth rate, an aging workforce and a shortage of skilled workers, Canada depends on immigration. Instead of talking about building walls like our U.S. neighbours, Canadians acknowledge that immigration is essential to our prosperity. So few dare question the official immigration policy, even as it becomes increasingly apparent that strong criticism is…
The Liberal's Great Supercluster Screw-up just another drain on Canadian taxpayers
Governments always want to look like they’re implementing good ideas and accomplishing important things. Take the Innovation Superclusters Initiative (ISI) for example. The federal government plans to throw almost a billion tax dollars at non-profit groups to create jobs and help Canadian companies dominate the world. As crazy as it sounds, that’s the ostensible reason…
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibit mythologizes the 1960s by ignoring the dark ugliness masked by all those drug-addled smiles
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a major institution in Canada’s only real city, which is why its summer Revolution exhibit is such a serious letdown. Devotees of the museum expect far better than Revolution’s intellectually lazy merchandising of 1960s mythology. Based around the eponymous Beatles song, Revolution purports to be a fresh exploration…
Vancouver's Robertson and Montreal's Coderre are front and centre when it comes to policy pronouncements that are dangerously delusional
Mayor Gregor Robertson wants Vancouver to be “the world’s greenest city by 2020.” That's a laudable goal, provided the path is rooted in sound science and economics, rather than a religious belief in a carbon-free heaven. The first step, narrowing already-busy streets in favour of bike lanes, is infuriating drivers while their gridlocked cars increase…