Canada Post has announced that it will cease door-to-door mail delivery, becoming the first postal service in the world to stop doing what it was intended to do. Once again, Canada is at the forefront of not getting things done. It’s the Canadian way. There has been much umbrage across
Continue readingAuthor: mauricetougas
In This Corner: My new approach to winter? Ignore it.
Do you know how hard it is to avoid the weather? If you walk out of your house, it’s impossible, of course. What I’m talking about is avoiding conversation or ‘news’ about weather. It’s well nigh impossible, as I have discovered. When winter came a knockin’ at Edmonton’s door (earlier,
Continue readingIn This Corner: Hello, Black Friday. Goodbye, Boxing Day.
It’s not very often that you see a full-blown change in the landscape happen right before your eyes, but I think we’ve just seen one. The future, I think, is black … as in Black Friday. You may have noticed that Black Friday shopping arrived with a vengeance in Canada
Continue readingIn This Corner: Revealed! Who killed Kennedy!
November 22, 1963. Death of a president. Birth of an industry. There have been an estimated 40,000 books (seriously — this is an actual New York Times estimate) written about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 2,000 of which deal with the assassination 50 years ago today. And in those 2,000 books, there
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Slocomb Solution: how the media can avoid the ‘P’ word.
”Today’s the day my pussy comes of age!” – Mrs. Slocomb The newsrooms of North America — which are mostly vast empty spaces littered with empty desks and a handful of harried writers and editors — were presented with a predicament this week, thanks to the Amazing Colossal Mayor, Rob
Continue readingIn This Corner: Why I feel sorry for Rob Ford.
I now officially feel sorry for Rob Ford. Oh, I’m not saying that he should stay on as mayor of Toronto. I am in no way supporting this morbidly obese, alcoholic, drug sampling, gansta-friendly mayor of North America’s fourth largest (and most image obsessed) city. Oh, no, he’s gotta go
Continue readingIn This Corner: Goodbye Rick Miller, one of the good ones.
It was a few days after the disastrous provincial election of 2008, when the entire Class of Edmonton Alberta Liberals 2004 when down to unexpected (and unwarranted) defeat at the hands of the inexplicable Ed Stelmach juggernaut. We were gathered for an ill-timed leader’s dinner, the big fundraiser for the
Continue readingIn This Corner: A quick look at the Ward 5 candidates.
I’m sure regular readers of this blog (assuming such a creature exists) are looking to me for guidance about how to cast their vote on Monday. I am far too humble to actually tell people how to vote. Besides, outside of my home territory of Ward 5, I haven’t a
Continue readingIn This Corner: Iveson vs. Leibovici a generational battle.
Polls indicate that Don Iveson will be the next mayor of Edmonton. Of course, polling has been about as on-target lately as the Edmonton Eskimo offence. Polls also said Christie Clark would not be the premier of B.C. (she is), and that Danielle Smith could be the premier of Alberta
Continue readingIn This Corner: Eskimos need new brains at front office as well as on the field.
For the first time in recent memory, the Edmonton Eskimos appear destined to not lead the league in attendance. With Mosaic Stadium in Regina on steroids in preparation for the Grey Cup, the Riders have enjoyed even larger crowds than usual. With the entire Eskimo organization giving off the fetid
Continue readingIn This Corner: Memo to council candidates: here’s how to get my vote.
The civic election campaign is now officially underway, even though, judging from the thousands of signs that are now mostly knocked down along city boulevards, it has been on unofficially since Labour Day. This will certainly be the most interesting civic election campaign in many years, with an unbeatable mayor
Continue readingIn This Corner: The further confessions of Justin Trudeau.
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau admitted this week to taking a puff of marijuana once since being elected as an MP. He said he did not enjoy it, has not taken a puff since. In response, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the Trudeau statement “speaks for itself”, and said he has
Continue readingIn This Corner: It’s TV’s golden age … except in Canada.
There is no doubt that we are living in a golden age of television. Once looked down upon as a lesser form of entertainment in relation to the lordly world of the ‘cinema’, television has now usurped the movies as the premiere mode of viewing entertainment. I defy anyone to
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Royal Whatsit: Much ado about nothing
Chances are you are at least dimly aware that William the Nearly Bald, future King of England and (sigh) Canada, successfully knocked up his wife, the comely Kate Middleton. The Royal Baby, as it is invariably referred to as, is due any day now, perhaps even today. Buckingham Palace, perhaps
Continue readingIn This Corner: Small town news in the ‘big city’
As a news junkie and former member of the Fourth Estate, I’ve always had a fascination not just with the actual news, but how it is presented. For example, as long as I can remember, rule no. 1 of the newspaper and TV game was Biggest Story Leads. Whether it
Continue readingIn This Corner: TSN NHL draft coverage preview … round 13.
“Welcome back, Canada, to TSN’s continuing coverage of the 2013 NHL entry draft. I’m Gord Miller, and after 13 rounds of this, even I’m running out of droll things to day. But, we are committed to covering every round of the draft, so we’ll be here until the custodial staff
Continue readingIn This Corner: Trudeau’s the rubber, Harper the glue.
“I’m rubber, you’re glue. Your words bounce off me and stick to you.” That juvenile little axiom popped into my head today as I contemplated the amazing Rubber Man, Justin Trudeau, and the clumsy attempts by Stephen Harper — the Darth Vader of Canadian politics — to ruin him. Harper
Continue readingIn This Corner: Pros and cons of Edmonton’s mayoralty candidates.
First off, thank you Kerry Diotte, Karen Leibovici and Don Iveson. Thank you all for giving Edmontonians the best mayoralty race in years, likely better than 2004 when Stephen Mandel upset Bill Smith, and maybe even better than the three-way fight between Bill Smith, Robert Noce and Mike Nickel in
Continue readingIn This Corner: Stephen Harper, stay just the way you are.
Brent Rathgeber … hero? I never thought that an MP once called a “carbon blob” by a blogger (that would be me) would ever be hailed as a hero, but there are strange times in Canadian politics. Wonderful times, too. For the first time since Canada became an autocracy under
Continue readingIn This Corner: Gas prices soar! Media yawns.
The price of gasoline has soared in Edmonton in the past week, beginning with the traditional holiday weekend gouging, and continuing with another outrageous 6-cent a litre hike on Wednesday. Gas in Edmonton is now at $1.29 a litre; one month ago, it was at $1.04. That means a 50-litre
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