Salem-News.com Canada articles

A Fish Story

The problems facing our Sockeye and other fisheries are not secret.

(GOLD RIVER, B.C.) - Historically the Pacific Northwest of North America has been one of those spots in the world where food is usually always abundant. The sea along its coast has always been a good provider, and the most important gift that that sea has offered up is the Pacific salmon that once filled its rivers and streams from far west of Alaska to Central California. That is changing.

This year the return of Sockeye to the Fraser River collapsed and finally the Canadian government is ordering judicial inquiry into why this happened.

The Propaganda of War

What we should remember most of all on November 11 every year is the terrible waste of life that wars bring, and our failure to avoid them.

(GOLD RIVER, B.C.) - Last week throughout many of the Commonwealth countries, the United States, France and Belgium, the day November 11 was celebrated.

Remembrance Day in Canada, Veterans Day in the United States and Armistice Day in France, it marked the anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the major fighting in World War One officially on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

The Canadian Comparison: Part 1

There’s an old joke: The definition of a Canadian is an unarmed American with health care.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Over the past few months I have been asked about Canada—about atheism, health care and gun control in particular. None of these issues can be addressed in isolation, so a comparison benchmark is required.

Americans, as the primary readers, understand America best, so America becomes the benchmark.

The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers

John Bach McMaster (1852—1932) was an American historian, best known for his eight volume History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (1883-1913).

(CALGARY, Alberta) - American Exceptionalism is a term that has been considerably bruited about on the Salem-News site over the last couple of weeks. Some readers have been critical of my viewpoint as an outsider who can never understand what it means to believe in AE.

Not having grown up with the mythology, this is true. What no one seems to have noticed, however, is that my viewpoint is an echo of what actual Americans themselves say. My arguments have been built up on the knowledge of American thinkers.

The Fall of America

[This is an unchanged article I originally published 25 years ago in the Winter 1984 edition of the now defunct Canadian magazine Goodwin’s. I reprint it now only because it is still relevant today.]

(CALGARY, Alberta) - American society in the mid-1980s is increasingly conservative, jingoistic and paranoid about its national defence capability. Many of its institutions have been infiltrated by the New Right and its economy is in decline. Some argue it is on the inevitable road to totalitarianism.

If we compare the United States of today with the Germany of the 1930s, the sounding of such an alarm might be justified, although arguments based on analogies are always inexact.

The DST Caper

It was sometime in the 1950s that the American branch of the International Time Bank was established in a secret location somewhere in the continental United States. It’s there that the 300 million or so American hours are deposited every spring.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - November 1, 2009 So, you’ve got the hour back, the hour the government “borrowed” last spring. But, did you get any interest on that loan? Didn’t think so.

It’s the same every year.

My Eleventh Finger

I hold up my left hand and count the fingers backward: ten-nine-eight-seven-six, then I hold up my right hand and say—and five makes eleven. Little kids always laugh at that but immediately deny it even though they don’t know the illogic involved.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - They say that as you age, memory is the first thing to go. I wish I could remember what the second thing is.

One thing that fascinates me is not so much that we remember things, but what we remember.

The Immorality of the Job Hunt

The sooner more Americans come to understand that we’re all in this together the sooner the quality of life for everyone will improve.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - What’s the point of living together in a society if there are no benefits to the association? If it turns out that there’s little point, then lawlessness makes just as much sense.

Actually, America is close to that situation already in its belief that a free-market, every-man-for-himself ethic is best. It is only demonstrably best if you are one of the haves.

Cat House

A lighthearted look at frolicking feline fun for your Friday.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - “Cats are a standing rebuke to behavioral scientists wanting to know how the minds of animals work. The mind of a cat is an inscrutable mystery, beyond human reach, the least human of all creatures and at the same time, as any cat owner will attest, the most intelligent.” (Lewis Thomas)

While I’ve lived with many cats in my life—when married, we had as many as three cats in the household—Max, the tabby in the picture, is the first cat with whom I’ve had ever had an individual bond. Max was given to me on March 31, 1997 by Colleen Way, a woman I was dating at the time.

Zionist Spin in Canada may Weaken

A major Canadian broadcaster files for bankruptcy.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Canwest, Canada’s largest media company, spanning newspapers, television and radio, with investments overseas, has changed since company founder Israel (Izzy) Asper died in October, 2003 and CanWest was taken over by his son, Leonard.

In January 2007, the company bought Alliance Atlantis at a cost of $2.3-billion, acquiring its 13 specialty TV channels. But the deal was expensive and to finance it, CanWest entered into a complex partnership with investment bank Goldman Sachs.