This fall, Britain's Prospect and America's Foreign Policy magazines asked readers to pick their favourite "public intellectual" from a list of 100 world-renowned thinkers....
If you've indulged in banned substances while in high office, or stolen the pocketable equivalent of a fully loaded Lexus RX 300, how do you restore Canadians' faith in your credibil...
My husband enjoys telling people how he "proposed" marriage to me. Ronny was from Montreal but working in Toronto at the time. It was 1964. I was in my last undergrad year of university. After we'd da...
To earn their keep, all I ever ask of royals or their Canadian surrogates is to make me feel honoured in their presence. I do not take a G-G's measure from the stirring kitsch of an installation speec...
There's a convention in column-writing that makes us shrink from mentioning the accomplishments of our op-ed page confreres. None of us wants to come across as a groupie in print. Instead, we send eac...
Have you seen March of the Penguins?The film chronicles Antarctica's Emperor penguins on their multiple annual 70-mile treks from feeding to breeding grounds. They suffer astonishing privations in ord...
The older I get, the more I feel that whatever I read should educate, edify or elucidate. Only on vacation do I feel justified indulging myself in the "mere" entertainment of detective fiction.I looke...
At his recent trial, Mohammed Bouyeri, 27, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent, who last year ghoulishly assassinated film-maker Theo Van Gogh, coldly addressed the victim's tormented mother: "I don't...
Lo, how the mighty hath fallen. Can it really be true? I have just read that the Atkins Diet empire has crumbled. They've declared bankruptcy. I imagine all the sugar industry executives in America ar...
International competitions like the Tour de France, or the World Aquatic Championships now in progress in Montreal, motivate kids to take up sport. That's good. But over-ambitious parents of talented ...
MONTREAL - I was startled -- not in a good way -- to learn from political scientist Jean-Sebastien Rioux in a Post op ed last week that a majority of (francophone) callers to a Radio-Canada talk show ...
The International AIDS Society will meet in Rio de Janeiro later this month. There, senior researcher Bertran Auvert, representing the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, will an...
This column, approximately my 100th, marks my second anniversary of weekly contribution to the National Post. Happy contemplation of this milestone was cut short, though, by distressing parallel news ...
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - As Canada Day approaches -- with American Independence Day close on its heels -- I feel distant from Prime Minister Paul Martin and very close to President George Bush. It isn't...
MONTREAL - Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,Yet with my nobler reason, 'gainst my furyDo I take part: the rarer action isIn virtue than in vengeance..." (The Tempest, Prospero to...
Father's Day is meant to celebrate dads. This year, instead of buying them ties or barbecue tools, let's pledge to roll back the ideological campaign aimed at belittling their virtues and achievements...
Summer reading lists are sprouting in the weekend newspapers. Everything sounds beguiling, so how does one choose? I'm sometimes lucky judging books by their cover. For example, my latest purchase, ir...
MONTREAL - The French have just voted non to the EU constitution. Current EU president Jean-Claude Juncker says countries voting No need a second referendum to obtain "the right answer." That ploy can...
'Blonde Bombshell"! "Whore"! "Dipstick"! "Barbie!" The media Belindatron has whirled for days with outrage over sexism against poor Ms. Stronach. Never mind Belinda's opportunistic betrayal of her par...
Two years ago, David Ahenakew, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was charged with promoting hatred in a 2002 rant against Jews. His unprovoked denunciations, captured by a report...