Consultation is extremely important in planning our future: witness the way that the Harperites have just undermined environmental reviews by changing the rules. But one thing I didn’t expect to…
Joyce Carol Oates is the grand winnter of this year’s Blue Met prize for a lifetime of literary creation. The Blue Met festival is gearing up at the moment, with…
This is a story that I haven’t seen in the English-language press: researchers at the University of Sherbrooke report that for every $100 Quebec has invested in inexpensive childcare, it…
Google informs us today that it’s the 100th anniversary of photographer Robert Doisneau. His emblematic photos of France, particularly of Paris, have been favourites of mine. Not that I’d ever…
This was book group week, and an engagaing tale by Quebec writer Denis Thériault was the subject in the original French (Kirkland library) and in English translation (Atwater Library. Le…
We’re almost to the point when the trees will leaf out, two weeks or more ahead of usual. The importance of trees has been unlined this week in two stories…
What a waste of time, all this stuff about the 10th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Is it because it seems so gratuitous? Three years later another big…
Countering the bad news: Introducing Tom Mulcair in English and in French
Frank Bruni has an intersting appreciation of Craig Claiborne, his legacy and his life today. Claiborne was one of the big three inmid-20h century American cooking, the others being James…
Mrs. Ikvilds’ eggs are the best. I couldn’t believe how lovely the mottled red colour was. She says she sometimes puts celery leaves on hers, so the dye doesn’t enter…
One of the pleasant memories of my childhood is dying Easter eggs. When the kids were small, we did it too, frequently with friends who’d share an Easter dinner with…
Sometimes things improve, believe it or not. One of them is the way that people here, at least, pick up their dog poo now. It used to be that when…
As some of you may know, I’ve been involved in the New Democratic Party for years. The Outremont riding association has been around for almost as long, but until the…
Not much of a post today as I have to go to court in the Electronic Rights Defence Committee’s 15 year old (almost to the day: we filed April 7,…
And what constitutes beauty? Maybe it’s the slightly warmer weather, which means that girls and women aren’t so muffled up, but I’ve lately been struck by the care that nearly…
When I was in Brazil a few years ago, I was told that the bougainvillea was called “primavera”, or spring. Haven’t been able to track that down–most of the translation…
The Globe and Mail’s television guy John Doyle, as noted earlier, claims that cable series (he particularly mentions Mad Men, have surpassed novels in story telling excellence and in fidelity…
Because I was in Toronto a week ago I missed the amazing demonstration against tuition fee hikes. Elin, Lukas, Sophie and various friends were there, though. So was Jeanne who…
Now that the NDP convention is over and the manuscript for River Music has been delivered, I’m back working on the collection of short stories I got a grant to…
