Monthly Archive: July 2016

What is fame? Is it honourable, something of heft, reputation, renown or is it just possessed by someone who drives fans to acts of dizzy demonstration? It’s hard to think well of the definition as applied by Canada’s Walk of Fame to its current inductees. You’ve probably stepped on those stars in the sidewalk along King and Simcoe Streets in Toronto’s entertainment district. There are a few truly deserving winners such as Alexander Graham Bell, Mordecai Richler and Team Canada 1972. Some, like Rush, were wise before their time; the rock group was inducted into the Walk well before the Rock and Roll Hall of...

I like Tim Kaine, Hilary Clinton’s pick for vice-president. I like him so much that I prefer him for president. He’s vibrant, vital, and has a great narrative. There are only 20 Americans who have ever done what he’s done: been a mayor, a governor and a senator. As a Harvard law student, he didn’t work summers at some white-shoe law firm, he volunteered with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras. While he was teaching carpentry to teenagers in that country, they taught him Spanish. Odd, wasn’t it, that when he addressed the crowd in Florida on Saturday, that CNN – who must...

Now that the regular baseball season has begun again, let’s go back to Tuesday’s All-Star Game when Remigio Pereira, one of The Tenors singing Oh Canada, altered two lines. Everybody from Don Cherry on up denounced his lack of pride, passion and patriotism. Pereira’s fellow tenors said he was a “lone wolf” and promptly dumped him from the group. I say, hold on here. Exactly what’s the matter with his substitute wording, “We’re all brothers and sisters, all lives matter to the great.” Nobody can argue with that. Was it the wrong venue? In fact, no American viewer of the pre-game show even saw or...

Jason Kenney, who was the frontrunner for leader of the Conservative Party, has decided he’ll seek the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta instead. Meaning that he believes Justin Trudeau will be a two-term prime minister. Kenney did not want to languish as leader of the opposition for eight years. One of the might-runs is Brad Wall, premier of Saskatchewan. But premiers don’t do well when they become federal leaders. Of the twenty-two men and one woman who have been PMs, only two had previously been premiers. Both were from Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century: Sir John Thompson and Sir Charles Tupper....

Engaged at the Shaw Festival is the perfect light and frothy play. The farcical comedy was written by W. F. Gilbert, one half of Gilbert and Sullivan, the team who wrote operettas such as H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado. I grew up listening to my parents play G&S, on what was then called a hi-fi, but this was my first experience with the Gilbert play that premiered in 1877. The plot, if you can call it that, is launched when Belvawney (played by Jeff Meadows) proposes to Belinda Treherne (Nicole Underhay). They may or may not be married because at the time...