Daniel Francis

Reading the National Narrative

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April 14, 2016

I was working myself up to write something about the NDP and the Leapers and the incredibly smug, head-in-the-sand reaction of all the mainstream pundits to the notion that perhaps we should actually do something about climate change instead of just talking about it when Crawford Kilian over at The Tyee website beat me to it, and much more eruditely.

So, go read him here.

April 6, 2016

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Today is the 130th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Vancouver in 1886.

To mark the occasion, Jesse Donaldson has this piece at The Tyee reflecting on the influence that the Canadian Pacific Railway wielded in early Vancouver.

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March 20, 2016

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Many years ago when my father retired from his private medical practice he removed from the walls of his office a set of photographic prints depicting the early days of Vancouver. He dispersed the prints among his four children and I displayed mine on the walls of different homes as I moved about the country until I either grew tired of...

March 14, 2016

Douglas Todd had a thoughtful piece in the Vancouver Sun this weekend about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's musings on national identity.

In an article in The New York Times Magazine last December, Mr. Trudeau opined that Canadians share certain values but not...

March 5, 2016

I note that yesterday, March 4, was Margaret Trudeau's wedding anniversary. It was 45 years ago that she and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau tied the knot at a quiet ceremony at a church in North Vancouver.

Does this qualify as a "remember where you were" moment for Canadians? I know it does for me. On the evening of March 4, 1971, I was in the press box of the hockey arena in Medicine Hat, Alberta. One of the perks of working at the local newspaper, for which I was writing editorials...

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