Legislation targeting pit bull type dogs elicits the same howls of outrage wherever it is enacted. Montreal is no exception. And woe to those rare commentators like me who support such bans. Af...
After the federal election, an African-American child asked at a family dinner if he was now “going to be treated as three-fifths of a human being.” A teacher from a rura...
My grandparents, immigrants from Poland and Romania, were Orthodox Jews and deeply observant. My parents, born here, joined a Conservative shul (mixed seating), and kept a traditionally Jewish ...
LGBT rights and pro-pit-bull advocacy are niche passions for the Ontario NDP’s Cheri DiNovo. The latter cause was my introduction to the MPP. Today’s column is about the former, spe...
In a recent column, my colleague Colby Cosh took Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Leitch’s proposal that Canadians be allowed to carry chemical mace and pepper spray for sel...
Since 1982, alcohol-related fatalities in the U.S. have come down 52 per cent overall, and 79 per cent for drivers under the age of 21. What should be cause for satisfaction, how...
Crime Prevention Ottawa (CPO) was founded in 2004 to develop strategies for enhancing community safety, addressing problems like violence against women, neighbourhood gangs, abuse of the disabl...
In her post-election column, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan described the mood of Hillary supporters as one of “enraged mourning,” an excellent description for the emoti...
An old New Yorker cartoon sprang to mind in the days following the U.S. election. In it, rain pours down in sheets. Two frowning children inside a car parked roadside are peering out at their s...
Until president-elect Donald Trump named Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, as his chief of staff, there was concern that the job might go to Stephen Bannon, chief exec...
A young conservative friend of mine was surprised to discover that my preferred honorific is “Ms.” He’d assumed that as a critic of feminism, where the title originated, I&rsq...
There are presently about 350,000 pit bulls in Canada. Until the 1980s there would have been almost none, since unlike the United States, with a population of about four million pit bulls today...
The winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction will be announced in Toronto Wednesday. I would delight in seeing the award bestowed on Toronto-born Israeli journalist...
Last week, Quebec Liberal MNA Gerry Sklavounos was expelled from caucus when complaints of sexual assaults filed against him in March surfaced in the media. His accuser, Alice...
The September issue of The Montrealer featured a column by family lawyer Linda Hammerschild, provocatively entitled “Banning dog breeds – knee ‘jerk’ political decisions.&rd...
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was founded at the end of the Second World War on the understanding that economic and military treaties would not by themsel...
A new review of circumcision published in the Canadian Journal of Urology is receiving keen attention. The lead author is Dr. Brian Morris, a professor emeritus on the University of Sydney&rsqu...
Some thoughts on Sunday’s second Trump-Hillary debate as they came to me. I don’t like the town-hall format – a local, intimate concept — for what is neither ...
I envy the fact that my friends in Toronto can take a day trip to Stratford, Ont., the town that hosts a world-renowned theatre festival every summer, whenever they feel like it. I’m a la...
I am grateful to have been born in Canada, and for a multitude of reasons, not least because we control most of the world’s fresh water.  Water shortages can and do lead to war...