A reader -- M_____ -- wrote to express his vexation over a recent column. No problem; it's a free(ish) country. What distinguished this particular e-mail was its opening line: "Jesus, ...
Everyone wants to know: Would I display grace under pressure, courage under fire? But few of us willingly seek out jobs or situations to test our mettle. If you choose soldiering or fi...
The series Sex and the City is winding down, and that's fine with me. I got the gist quickly, and dislike almost everything about it: the fusion of soap opera, group therapy and soft...
Recently I crossed paths with an old friend from university days, who as a law student assisted in the defence for Ron Turpin, the last Canadian to be executed before the abolition o...
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. (Say nothing about the dead unless it is good.) This dictum was law in newspapers until 1986, when England’s Daily Telegraph set out to riva...
Happy Valentine’s Day. Seen or read any good love stories lately? No, I mean where no one was naked, and where your heart swelled and you got goose bumps because you were...
When you love a friend, however imperfect she is, it’s a shock to overhear, “She’s a loser. Almost everyone hates her.” You’re angry on her behalf, but you only s...
Canadians will laugh at themselves, and then go all sensitive when others laugh at them. But truth-based mockery is a salutary ego check. Last year I applied that theory to practice ...
Blame it on Queen Victoria. When she availed herself of the new miracle of anesthesia for the delivery of one of her many children, the monarch conferred legitimacy on the hitherto f...
Martha Stewart is guilty. She may go to jail. It isn't quite the kick in the stomach it was when I watched the O.J. Simpson verdict come in, but that was murder. The mechanics of he...
  MONTREAL - Retired Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, veteran of the Rwanda genocide of 1994, during which Hutu teens hacked Tutsis to death with machetes, recently spoke to high school ...
What do women want? I know I am not the first or last to ask -- Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (makers of Viagra) are frantically seeking the answer, for example -- but even Freud never got ...
Dr. Jean Marmoreo's patients, mature women brimming over with midlife woes and joys, provide the subject matter for her weekly Globe and Mail column. On Feb. 28, using two of her pat...
You may not recognize the name Adbusters, but it is the biggest-selling Canadian magazine in the United States with 70,000 American subscribers. Its current issue poses the curious q...
This week marks pivotal religious holidays celebrated even by otherwise secular Christians and Jews. Mel Gibson's film, The Passion, will doubtless be discussed at length over the br...
As a postmodern Jane Austen might observe: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a middle-aged parent in possession of married children must be in need of a grandchild. I am e...
There are so many things wrong with hate speech laws in general that it hardly matters whether Bill C-250 is passed now or later. Nevertheless, C-250, which adds "sexual orientation"...
Until a week ago I hadn't heard of clinical psychologist Dr. Marty McKay, but she became my favourite Canadian when she finally provided a legal and ethical way to wipe the smirk off...
This Sunday mothers around the world will be honoured with long distance calls, flowers, chocolates, hotel brunches and gifts chosen with greater (or lesser) than normal care by thei...
The graphic evidence of the horror show at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has dealt a savage blow to American morale. And to mine. I fully approved of the war in Iraq. Saddam was the Middl...