It is a memory from many years ago that sticks with you. It is this time of year. After being awakened by the sweeps rowers training on the harbour, you walk to downtown Vancouver from the Bayshore Inn, along streets lined with cherry blossoms in full bloom. You drink in
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Waiting for Mr. Trump.
Is this the day Mr. Trump sends the world to war? We wait. We wonder. It might not be a good day to plan next year’s vacation. The man has his finger on the button. He makes jokes about it. Who else knows when he is just kidding? He exchanges
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The environmental crimes of Justin Trudeau.
Our prime minister might not appreciate the charges but he needs to understand what is involved. Whether he likes it or not, he needs to be reminded of the five basic environmental crimes of the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Number one: While the stock shots of bitumen
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Has anybody seen Jagmeet?
This is becoming ridiculous. The New Democratic Party of Canada has to have some leadership. Without leadership, it is going to become the forgotten party and the efforts of many fine people over the last 80 years will be wasted. The party can hardly continue as present with no leadership,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Failed Philanthropy.
It was intriguing going through David Callahan’s book The Givers: Wealth, power, and philanthropy in a new gilded age. There has rarely been that much understanding of the failures of North American society. As president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada back in the 1970s, I could never have
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Getting to know Doug Ford.
It takes time. Over the next six to eight weeks, more and more Ontario voters will start to think seriously about the June 7 provincial election. To many, it will just be a bit of a bother, a minor blip in an otherwise busy life. The actual turnout at the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trump-lite is not Trump.
Have you been reading the media pontificators who are comparing Ontario conservative leader Doug Ford with U.S. President Donald Trump? It is a sad comparison. It would annoy Donald Trump, if he cared. Doug Ford is a wannabe. He would dearly love to have as much money as Trump and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Premier Wynne’s nemesis.
If Premier Wynne really wants to keep her job in Ontario, I would suggest that she should make amends by first firing Ed Clarke as chair of the Liquor Control Board and of the Ontario Cannabis stores. Even at the price of one dollar per year, he is not worth
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A different kind of baseball.
It was as much as a surprise to me at the time as it was to those who know me. I fell in love with the Toronto Blue Jays. From opening day of the new SkyDome in Toronto in 1989, they were my Blue Jays. I think I have seen
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ceding Civility in Canada.
Writing about civility in politics the other day, we never got to the situation here in Canada. Despite our Canadian reputation for civility, things have lately gone to hell in a basket. Federal and provincial politics in Canada have become noisy arguments between spoiled children. Our politicians are not working
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Wait until they are ‘At Post.’
Ontario is in the midst of a ‘phony war.’ People are getting excited about public opinion polls that are meaningless. Babel-on-the-Bay is more than a month away from offering its Morning Line on the coming provincial election. At least wait until then to place your bets on the outcome. You
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ceding civility.
It is the same in every country. It is obvious that simple civility is missing in our politics. Whether elected or self-appointed, our politicos are turning nasty. We are even electing cretins who think the thing to do is revile rivals, turn on their own, reject diplomacy, dispatch pacts, and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ford isn’t fast with his math.
It was really very funny last Thursday when conservative leader Doug Ford got pompously to his feet to harangue the liberal government for their election budget. It seems that towards the back of the budget book there is a tax increase for the top 17 per cent of wage earners.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Wynne: Caring or Condescending?
Never having been much of a fan of Ontario Premier Wynne, I suspected that the recently revealed Ontario budget was more of a deathbed repentance than a bold plea for more time as premier. It was when listening to the objections of Doug Ford for the conservatives and Andrea Horwath
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Keep the Russians, Kick out the Yankees.
Public safety minister Ralph Goodale got some television coverage the other day. He was enjoying himself. He was being asked about the Russian spies being told to leave the country. In his usual enigmatic style Goodale was explaining that he could not say anything about what these spies were doing
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Would you buy a used Ford from Ford?
We have a good thing going in Ontario. Our economy is healthy. Unemployment is down. We have a government in place that is doing the right things about the environment, raising our standard of living without undue pressure on inflation and is looking at people’s needs in a relatively progressive
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Beatification of Bill Blair?
It took the questionable memory of Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee to relate it and the writing skills of Toronto Star writer Tim Harper to forge it. And it took them over seven years to prepare it for publication. It purports to be an explanation of what took
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The failing Facebook fiasco.
After 14 years, Facebook is still just a teenager. It was early in its existence that, out of curiosity, I test drove the program, created a page with minimal information and studied the developing interaction. What annoyed me about the program was that, when tiring of the experiment, I was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trump should not bully China.
U.S. President Donald Trump is a bully. That is how he negotiates his way through life. He bullies women for sex. As a developer, he bullied politicians for building rights. He bullies lawyers and courtiers, underlings and peers, wives and children, and lately, countries and their leaders. It is his
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Choosing champions.
One of the aspects of populism that confuses people is that they can come from the left or the right or any other part of the political spectrum. Typically, the populist rises from the environment that generated the specific populist movement. This is why Donald Trump in the United States
Continue reading