The View from Conestogo

Over the last few days I’ve been reading the book called “A Fair Nation” by John Ralston Saul. The main argument put forward by Saul is that Canada’s development for at least 250 years after “contact” – the early 1500s when Europeans first started coming to what is now Canada – the territory that eventually

Tarandowah Golfers Club is located just outside of Avon, Ontario, a little more than 5 minutes off the 401 highway between London and Woodstock. It is your classic “out in the middle of nowhere” course, seemingly built in a farmer’s field. But this is not just any golf course. It is an example of what

One of the most celebrated encounters in the late 1800s between the U.S. Cavalry and a band of Indians was also the last. So typical of the “Indian Wars” of the late 1800s, this one was between the army of the U.S. authorities charged with managing the settlement of the west, and a band of

E/0 E/0 E/9 E/9 B/10 B/12 B/10 B/12 G/11 G/11 G/11 G/11 D/0 D/0 D/0 D/0 X/x X/x X/x X/x X/x X/x X/x X/x You probably wont be able to get the strummin right unless you listen to the cd. The arpeggio is simple. E/-12——/ B/—12—-/ G/—–12–/ D/——-12/ A/———/ E/———/ Here are the chords and

I was investigating the Kindle the other day. In case you don’t know, the Kindle is a digital tablet designed for reading books in digital form and is sold (exclusively I think) by Amazon.com This technology has been in development for quite a few years, and the Kindle is already in its 2nd version (Kindle2),

In case you haven’t noticed, I like buying (and reading) books. Usually history or “ideas” books like Blink by Malcolm Gladwell or Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt, or 1491 by Charles C. Mann (a really awesome book if you are interested in the history of the Americas). Often I buy books when I’m travelling somewhere. Some

My primary objective in the first few posts in this series is to explore how Canadian natives changed from being autonomous self-governing people to becoming subjects of the British crown? This change in status is extremely important. By the time of Confederation (1867) natives – at least in Eastern Canada – were no longer free

In this series of posts I consider some of the historical, political, anthropological and philosophical background to Canadian “native” issues. Along the way I touch on some interesting things I have recently (and not so recently) discovered about the native Indian presence in Canada. (Note: I use the term “native” to cover those people normally

One of the books I have been reading most recently is called “Traffic” by Tom Vanderbilt. The subtitle is “Why We Drive The Way We Do (and what it says about us)”. This is not the kind of book you would normally think of as an entertaining read. But like most people who drive a