offer

A generous friend of wmtc, Peregrinato, sent me some terrific reading material: "Peace, Order and Rocky Government: A Survey of Canada", from The Economist. Articles include:
* Alienating the west: Canada gets its very own Texas.
* A dream that does not fade: Quebec might yet quit Canada.
* Living with number one: Relations with the United States are fraying.
* A funny sort of government: Canada's dysfunctional politics.
* The perils of cool: Canada has everything, except perhaps ambition.
It's The Economist, so it's well researched and well written, although I think some of it leans too heavily on stereotype. I've been reading it for a while, trying to figure out how to blog about it, to no avail. There's too much of it, and no link. But I do recommend it.

So let me put it this way, if you'd like to read more, email me.

Comments

  1. orc30 December 2005 at 09:24

    The Economist is an okay magazine, but I don't know if their international coverage is to be trusted. A few years ago, they did a scathing expose' of the EVIL(tm) Oregon zoning laws which was simply a reprint of a tract that the anti-zoning developers in Oregon published (and got savagely debunked by basically everyone who wasn't on the anti-zoning coolaid boat) not more than six months earlier.

    I had been a subscriber to the Economist for over a decade, but after that stunt I didn't feel I could trust any of their expertise about anything except southern England.

    Beware.

    ReplyDelete
  2. laura k30 December 2005 at 09:37

    But no need to beware if you just want to read an article. It won't bite.

    ReplyDelete
  3. orc30 December 2005 at 13:05

    It may not bite, but it may simply be a propaganda piece pretending to be news. And, shoot, if you want that online you can get it for free :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. laura k30 December 2005 at 14:01

    Well, this particular story is neither propaganda nor news. It's a summary of the state of Canada right now, and some history of how it got that way. On the whole, it's an accurate assesment.

    And it's also available for free, by emailing me. :)

    I have no stake in this article one way or the other, but whatever caused them to do that Oregon zoning piece was not at work this time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. laura k30 December 2005 at 18:51

    a lot of Canadians will suspect that a US "summary of the state of Canada right now" could well be a propaganda piece.

    They're welcome to suspect anything they want. However, The Economist is British.

    ReplyDelete
  6. James Redekop30 December 2005 at 19:53

    They're welcome to suspect anything they want. However, The Economist is British.

    Ah, I never knew that. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. laura k31 December 2005 at 05:06

    Oh yes, British, and very sober. Nary a Canuckistan in sight. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

sharia

This morning I see that Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario, is banning the Muslim religious court known as sharia . This ends months of debate about whether sharia would be legal and binding in Ontario. I'm quoting at length from the story in today's Toronto Star because many US readers are likely not up on this. In a surprise announcement that caught both supporters and opponents of sharia law off guard, Premier Dalton McGuinty says he will move quickly to ban all religious arbitration in the province. McGuinty made the announcement in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press yesterday after months of debate and controversy surrounding use of Islamic sharia law in family arbitration. "I've come to the conclusion that the debate has gone on long enough," the premier told the news agency. "There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians." The announcement prompted t
Read more

observation

This is something I've noticed throughout my Canadian odyssey, from our earliest trips to Toronto to today. I've waited a long time to mention it, to make sure I wasn't drawing a hasty generalization. Canadians seem very careful with money. Frugal. Cheap. Of course no generalization is absolute. But on the whole, people here seem very concerned with how much things cost, and with saving money. I'm not talking about people who simply can't afford things. I've been poor. I know what it is when your basic expenses outstrip your income, how wearing that is, the stress it puts you under. So we'll leave that aside. I'm talking about an attitude. A concern with spending the least amount of money possible, about avoiding or reducing costs if at all possible. An unwillingness to part with money. Phone bills. Parking. Cable TV. The garbage tags I blogged about yesterday. In the US, charging an extra dollar for garbage tags would not create an incentive to put out
Read more

can of worms

I'm opening a sticky subject here, my need to understand causing me to throw caution to the wind. It's about Alberta. Alberta vs. the rest of the Canada. The Globe And Mail runs something about Alberta's gripes every day, and I try to follow along. If it weren't for wmtc's resident Albertan , and the ensuing arguments in comments, I would've had no warning. It's not something Americans know about. As is, observing for more than a year, I have only the smallest of clues. Here's what I know. Please pardon my ignorance and oversimplification, but I have to start somewhere. The province of Alberta is rich, because it has oil. The province of Alberta is conservative, relative to the rest of Canada. Hmm. Funny how those two go together. Because of its great oil wealth, Alberta revenue helps fund services in the rest of Canada. (These are transfer payments?) Apparently many Albertans resent this. They want to keep Alberta's money in Alberta. They don't
Read more