Musings on Montaigne’s Cannibals
Montaigne’s essay On Cannibals contributed at least some of the content and ideas in Shakespeare’s late play, The Tempest. A speech by the recently-shipwrecked counsellor Gonzalo in Act 2, Sc.1…
Ian Chadwick
Musings on Shakespeare’s Anachronisms
When the clock struck three in Julius Caesar, you probably scratched your head, knowing that striking clocks didn’t exist two millennia ago in the play’s setting. In Caesar’s time, people…
A Conspiracy So Immense
It’s a common theme in today’s political analysis to argue that Donald Trump broke America. Looking at the ongoing dumpster fire that is the Repugnican Party, the rise of white…
Musings on Art and Taste
Many years ago, I had a lengthy correspondence with a friend in another part of Canada about what constitutes art. His basic argument was that art was not neutral or…
Musings on Shakespeare’s Goodbye
Prospero’s words in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, have long been thought to have been Shakespeare’s own goodbye to the theatrical world, assuming, of course, you are reading the play or…
Musings on Cats and Philosophers
British philosopher John Gray thinks cats can “often teach us much more about living the good life than philosophy ever could.” As a lifetime cat owner, I can vouch for…
More Musings on Shakespeare
The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (edited by Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, Penguin Books, 2002) has a short but insightful essay on the texts of Shakespeare that illustrates the choices…
Musing on the Authorship Question Again
The “authorship question” — who wrote Shakespeare’s works, aside that is, from Shakespeare himself — is a conspiracy that seems a metaphor for modern society. It contains the seeds of…
Water Crisis? What Crisis?
You’d think that a town with a supposed water crisis so acute it had to pass a job-killing, revenue-depleting bylaw to stop all new construction for the next two (or…
$17,297.48 For One SVJI Meeting!
John Megarry filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting the town provide the costs of having the two lawyers from the town’s inquiry legal team speak online to council for…
Saunderson’s Petty Vindictiveness on Display
If you ever doubted our mayor, Brian Saunderson, was engaged in a petty, personal vendetta against people who thwarted him in 2012, you only need to read a recent article…
The Cancer Diaries, Part 28
This month marks a year since my biopsy that indicated I had an aggressive form of prostate cancer. It’s been quite a year for me, easily the most stressful and…
Musings on Downsizing Shakespeare
While downsizing my library earlier this spring (25-30 boxes of books already removed from the shelves and some titles still left to cull), I had to think about what books…
Saunderson Follows Stalin’s Lead
In the 1930s, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin removed his political rivals and enemies from history. Literally: he had their images brushed out of photographs, their names removed from books.…
We Need New Names for Stupid
I was reading a story in CollingwoodToday about another anti-mask/anti-lockdown protest recently — this one in Barrie, Sat. April 24 — and thought to myself that our language does not…
ICBL: Another Reason Saunderson Should Resign
Mayor Saunderson continues his job-hunting campaign to get out of his mayoral responsibilities and become our riding’s next MPP. Yet this week he also set himself up for more accusations…
Saunderson’s Job-Killing ICBL Continued
James Madison, one of the US’s Founding Fathers said that a government “…without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a tragedy or a…
ICBL Sinks Development and Saunderson’s MPP Dream
I wonder if our mayor, Brian Saunderson, gave any thought to what last night’s vote to kill construction in Collingwood might do to his dream of becoming our riding’s next…
Saunderson’s Epic Blunder
A blunder of epic proportions? A sobering display of supreme incompetence and ineptitude? A total failure of communications, direction, and leadership? An underhanded excuse to hand our municipal water services…
Musings on Viruses and Evolution
One has to wonder how creationists can maintain their beliefs during a pandemic where the virus is clearly evolving to improve its ability to infect people and avoid immune system…