The View from Conestogo

If you were expecting the arrival of the Chevy Volt to be the beginning of the electric car revolution you’re going to be disappointed. Back when GM was on the verge of collapse the Volt was put forward as GM’s answer for the future. But more than two years later the Volt has turned out

Ah yes, the Omar Khadr story. How long has it been going on now? Since July 2002? Is it really more than 8 years? And now this storey is finally coming to some kind of resolution. Early on in his stay in Guantanamo Bay Omar Khadr became something of a poster child, especially in Canada,

In an insightful article in This Magazine Graham F. Scott argues that the current concern with the loss of male masculinity is, in his words, “horseshit”. As he says, “My hackles go up when those who are obviously powerful claim they are powerless.” The kind of media coverage he’s talking about are studies that show

The name Conestogo (or “Conestoga”) of our village in southwestern Ontario derives from a location in Lancaster County Pennsylvania located in the southeastern part of that state. This name was transplanted from Pennsylvania to the Waterloo region of Ontario because many of the original settlers of the Waterloo area came from Lancaster Country. Conestoga in

This week Apple CEO Steve Jobs criticized his main competitors in the smartphone market place – RIM and Google (owners of the Android operating system). Legions of Apple lovers hang on every word from Jobs, and that includes many journalists and bloggers. So it is no wonder that this story got a lot of widely

If you’ve followed the career of comedian Steve Martin you’ll remember some of those early stints where he would fire off a mean riff on his banjo. Well SM has been touring his banjo talents over the summer. The gig mentioned below (in Montreal) is long over, but he recently appeared on the CBC Radio

The failure of Canada’s political elite to cut formal political ties to Britain is an insult to Canadian independence and should be an embarrassment to all Canadians. This once again became apparent in the installation of our new Governor-General, David Johnston. Not that I have anything against David Johnston. He seems like a very nice

The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) has been around for a long time. It was established in 1897 by the Province of Ontario as the “Ontario Railway and Municipal Board”. Its role was to oversee the finances of municipal governments and supervise and coordinate the expansion of the railway system between different municipal jurisdictions in the

In this interview author Charles C. Mann discusses some of the “myths” about North American pre-history that he exposes in his recent book, 1491: New Revelations of the Native Americans Before Columbus. Disclose.tv – 1491: Interview w/ Charles C. Mann Video Some of the more important assumptions challenged by the “revelations” in the book are

We headed over to Toronto a couple of nights ago to the Blue Jays final home game of the season against the Yankees. It was Cito Gaston’s final home game before his retirement as manager of the team at the end of this season. The crowd at the game was one of the larger ones