Canada
My problem with the American election
In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have chosen an election year for my American book tour. It’s not that I…
A chillingly seductive glimpse of assisted dying
A few weeks ago, I was present when my aunt, a Canadian citizen born in the UK, chose to die…
Whoever imagined that geology was a lifeless subject?
The shifting rocks of Earth’s crust are part of the planet’s ecology just as much as plants and animals, says Marcia Bjornerud – applying to geology the principle of universal connectivity
Why Joni Mitchell sounded different from the start
Polio in childhood weakened her left hand, leaving her to devise alternative tuning, surprising phrasing and ‘chords of inquiry’ that hang like question marks in the air
Even Orwell’s Thought Police didn’t go as far as Trudeau
You’d assume the reaction to the SNP’s new hate crime laws would make other authoritarian governments hesitate before introducing similar…
Adrift on the Canadian frontier: The Voyageur, by Paul Carlucci, reviewed
Based on the 19th-century ‘voyageur’ Alexis de Martin, Carlucci’s young protagonist is befriended by kindly strangers. But what are their true motives?
Longing for oblivion: The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden, reviewed
Arden’s novel spares us no details of trench warfare on the Western Front and the severely traumatised men dreaming of escape into amnesia
Something the Tories can learn from Canada’s conservatives
When contemplating the scale of the Tories’ expected drubbing in the coming general election, some commentators reach for the example…
Canada’s parents are taking to the streets
In the biggest demonstration since the Freedom Convoy, large numbers of Canadian families and supporters took to the streets across…
The rise of conspiracy history
Canada’s determination to believe the worst about its past
Canada’s assisted dying horror story
My favourite Martin Amis novel was his 1991 book Time’s Arrow. It is a pyrotechnically brilliant work in which all…
Must we now despise colonial architecture too?
Here’s a thing. A disturbing book about disturbing cities. And it’s full of loaded questions. Like Hezbollah, the publisher uses…
Travels in time and space: Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel, reviewed
It’s a bold writer who confronts a major historical moment such as a pandemic before it’s over, but Emily St.…
Fabulously boring: Weather Station's How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars reviewed
Grade: C– Anyone remember that TV advert for Canada from the 1980s – a succession of colourful images, including a…
Where's the outrage over Trudeau's trip to Britain?
As Justin Trudeau waltzed through the UK, visiting Boris Johnson and the Queen, did anyone spare a thought for Canadians…
Portrait of the week: Storms rage, Covid curbs end and Russia’s ‘renewed invasion’
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced, in the House of Commons, sanctions against Russia after its ‘renewed invasion’ of…
The tyranny of Trudeau
Early in the corona era the historian David Starkey gave some thoughts on Covid. ‘We’ve got a Chinese virus,’ he…
Trudeau vs truckers: a head-on collision
Canada’s Covid protestors have a point
Portrait of the week: Sue Gray speaks, Boris goes to Ukraine and 477-mile bolt of lightning strikes
Home Sue Gray, the second permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office, in a 12-page ‘update’ on her investigation into 16…
Canada should be proud of the truckers’ convoy
The first wave of truckers in the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa on Friday, having travelled across Canada to protest…
No, America couldn’t have been Canada
What if William Howe, the dithering British commander, hadn’t let the American army escape in the Battle of Long Island…
Another stupid, redundant, dismal Canadian election
Canada has just surpassed even its own previous records for absurd and boring elections yielding predictable and dreary results. Almost…
Justin Trudeau’s election gamble is backfiring
In 1966, a year before Pierre Elliott Trudeau first blazed to power, the bard-poet Leonard Cohen published his second and final…
The problem with trying to resuscitate dying languages
Samantha Ellis 9 March 2024 9:00 am
Ross Perlin is determined to support the ‘last speakers’ of endangered tongues, such as Seke. But if these speakers really are the last, they are not, in any real sense, speaking