Two days after the Boxing Day monster tsunamis struck, 125 Russians leaped at the opportunity to purchase "disaster discount" tickets to Thailand for a beach holiday. I AM NOT MAKING...
Canadian students in the arts and social science departments of our universities are being recruited to the hyperorthodoxies of multiculturalism, feminism, Marxism, postmodernism and...
Eighteen months ago I wanted to write a column about the creeping respectability of polygamy, but my then-editor considered the topic too far-out. And lo, look what is making headlin...
Master satirist of the American Zeitgeist Tom Wolfe has previously tackled the swarming social habitats of modern New York and Atlanta, and the cultural forces that shaped them. In h...
It's little wonder that Palestinian terrorists have agreed to stop attacking Israel at the urging of newly elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. They have no choice: Isr...
Not long ago I was seated at dinner beside an Ontario family law
judge. I asked what his position was on adoption equity for gays. Would
he, once gay marriage was entrenched, and in keeping with our
g...
I used to observe, with affectionate condescension, my father
watching boxing on the little black and white TV in our
leave-it-to-Beaver '50s-era den. He got right into it: jabbing,
weaving, frowning,...
Like many contemporaries who saw their parents diminished by external forces, Arthur Miller railed bitterly against the random suffering imposed by capitalism
Broadway theatres dimmed their marquee...
A sensational news item out of Toronto this month reports a "rising
tide of parental rage." Parents are swearing at teachers in front of
children, mouthing off at the school secretary or even launchin...
I await the auspicious moment my nine-month old granddaughter
realizes her little wooden-paged starter books are for looking at
rather than gnawing on. From there, it is but a short step to
listening....
The Lawrence Summers affair just isn't going away, and its
continuing presence in the news is a sad commentary on academic freedom
in America.As everyone by now knows, on Jan. 14 Harvard
University pr...
NEW YORK - We were to go to Hollywood Beach for our annual week of
winter respite. But I had been housebound with flu for two weeks.
Instead of boring sunshine, I needed cultural liveliness, and propo...
Last Sunday, Maureen Dowd lamented the dearth of women on the opinion
pages of America's newspapers. She herself is the only female op-ed
columnist at The New York Times. The...
Too bad Scott and Laci Peterson weren't Canadian. Had they been, the
Conservatives might have felt emboldened to add a review of abortion
policy to their agenda, instead of sweeping fetal rights under...
Every spring, a true Canadian's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of next year's winter coat.In
Montreal, where I live, winter often starts in early November and
sometimes ends only in mid-May. We like ...
Last week, 28 years after the passage of Quebec's draconian language
law, Bill 101, the Supreme Court of Canada definitively ended the hopes
of francophone Quebec families seeking to educate their chi...
When our children were toddlers, my husband and I planned a vacation
by ourselves involving a transatlantic flight. Morbid images of downed
planes and orphaned children assailed us. Since there were s...
In idle moments, I write limericks about famous writers. The
challenge is to capture the broad strokes in four short lines. When
Saul Bellow died last week at the age of 89, I pulled up his:Noble Saul...
From the death-saturated month of March -- Terry Schiavo and the
pope 24/7 -- the media turned in April to the life cycle's happier
ritual of marriage. Two weeks ago it was the nuptials of Ken and
Dei...
At my age, nobody hasn't had a personal brush with cancer. If not
yourself, others in your extended family or circle of friends have it
or did: Some are now dead, some have undergone multiple surgerie...