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Monthly Archives: June 2010

Quotes on Canada

    
We present some of our favourite quotes on Canada and Canucks - so you might spice up your toasts on Canada Day!  Cheers!

A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe. — Pierre Burton

We Canadians live in a blind spot about our identity. We have very strong feelings about [...]

Quotes on America

      
Here are some of our favourite quotes to honour America’s Independence Day.

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. — George W. Bush

America’s greatest strength, and [...]

Facts about Canada Day

   
Here is a compilation of some interesting facts about Canada Day, our country’s national celebration.

A proclamation signed by the Governor General on June 20, 1868, asked all Canadians to join in the celebration of the anniversary of the uniting of Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as the dominion of [...]

July 1: Welcome to the Harmonized Sales Tax

 
 
Brace yourself (again) taxpayers.  Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty wants to sell the HST as “strong medicine” for an economy that needs fixing.  Well, it appears he’s traded in his snake oil and fancies himself a medicine man now….
 
This new tax is designed to take even more money from Ontarians’ pockets to help pay for our government’s grand designs [...]

A nightmarish future

 
Thomas Homer-Dixon has a pessimistic view of how our world’s future will evolve. He surmises:
 
Think of a stretch limo in the potholed streets of New York City, where homeless beggars live. Inside the limo are the air-conditioned postindustrial regions of North America, Europe, the emerging Pacific Rim, and a few other isolated places, with [...]

Reflections on our future world

 
As the G-8 and G-20 summits run their course in Canada this weekend – inside a walled encampment with $1 Billion worth of security holding Canadians back, I am reminded of a very insight book by American reporter-turn-author Robert Kaplan.  I re-read “The Coming Anarchy” and it is putting a great deal into perspective.
 
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Our lost politicians

  
As our politicians break for the summer without having accomplished a whole lot in Parliament, I am reminded of this gem: 
 
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me. Can you help me? I promised a [...]

On the future of Canadian politics?

    
Frank Graves, EKOS pollster and part-time Liberal advisor, talks of the new political reality in Canada. He muses that Canadians may be on the verge of a Parliament of coalition governments – maybe even resulting from the next election. Here’s the grave assessment as report in the G&M this morning:
 
     “Oscillating Conservative and Liberal [...]

More political musings from “The Chief”

I don’t campaign. I just visit with the people.

Nothing I ever do is political.

I never say anything provocative.

I do not say that everything I did was right, but what I do say, Mr. Speaker, is that what I did was honest.

I was criticized for being too much concerned with the average Canadians. I can’t [...]

John George Diefenbaker on politics and Parliament

I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.

Freedom is the [...]