Showing posts with label Walrus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walrus. Show all posts

08 February 2017

Ezra Levant's Great White Hope



Available as of this morning, my Walrus review of Ezra Levant's spanking new ebook
Trumping Trudeau: How Donald Trump Will Change Canada Even If Justin Trudeau Doesn't Know It Yet.

You can read it – gratis – through this link.

Related posts:

19 August 2016

Wishing the Prime Minister Dead: The Tory Joke That Wasn't as Funny the Third Time Around



Last week the Conservative Party of Canada used taxpayer dollars to create and post a meme to its Facebook page. There's nothing at all remarkable in this – they do it several times a week – but a couple of things made this particular meme noteworthy. The first is that a variation appeared the very next day.


The second is that the original meme was reposted two days later.


Noteworthy, but not remarkable; just further evidence that the party is bereft of ideas. It does little more than attack, and when pressed for something new, repeats itself. This is the very strategy that cost last year's election.

No, what made these posts truly remarkable weren't the memes themselves, but the reactions from the party's Facebook followers.

Some expressed relief:


Others told us not to be concerned:


Several suggested looking in Mecca, mosques, gay bars and bathhouses:


While others remembered the prime minister's brother Michel, who in 1998 was killed when an avalanche swept him into Kokanee Lake.


Ryan Horvath and Tyrone Newton's comments were anything but unique. Nearly one hundred people took the time to express their hopes that the prime minister would die. Most wished a violent end:


And then there's this:


That all comments remain on the Facebook page of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition raises many questions, the most important being:

How is it that Conservative MPs and party brass are not reading their own page?

I mean, we must assume they're not. The alternative is too disturbing to contemplate.

Update: An expanded, somewhat altered version of this post was published here on 25 August at the Walrus

26 February 2012

Freedom to Read Week: Noir Canada


Noir Canada : Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique
Alain Deneault, Delphine Abade and William Sacher
Montreal: Éditions Écosociété, 2008

Freedom to Read Week begins and the Lord's Day is darkening. We live now in a Canada governed by a party that equates 'opposition' with 'enemy'. When presenting legislation, our Minister of Public Safety accuses those who find fault of being in league with child pornographers.

A few days pass and the minister trips up, revealing that he has not read the bill. He is surprised by its contents.

A few more days pass and we learn that the government called upon the Department of National Defence to help wage war on those who sit across the aisle in the House of Commons. An hour passes and an even bigger scandal breaks.

The message is clear: Do not question the government.

While scientists are muzzled, for the most part we writers have had it pretty easy. True, the theatre critics in the Prime Minister's Office described an unread yet to be performed play as "glorifying terrorism", but that's as bad as it's got... so far. As Michael Healey might tell you, the chill is in.

Noir Canada is not our prime minister's hockey book, but it's entirely appropriate that he struts his stuff on the cover. For nearly four years, Barrick Gold pursued publisher les Éditions Écosociété, Alain Deneault, Delphine Abadie, and William Sacher, seeking to add six million Canadian dollars to its US$10.9 billion (2010) in annual revenues.

Here, I'll mention – and just mention – something known as a SLAPP, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. The reason I'm saying no more on the subject will become clear through reading Candice Valentine's 'Code of Silence', published in the November 2011 edition of The Walrus.

Late last year, Noir Canada was withdrawn from sale. The small Montreal press paid an undisclosed sum to the world's largest gold mining producer and the media looked the other way; Justin Bieber had signed a Hyundai for charity.

I imagine Barrick Gold's Board of Directors were satisfied.

Better to bury a book than to burn it. Flames attract attention.