It’s March Break and I’m catching up on my reading. Between finishing installments in the Harry Potter series, I’ve been working my way through back issues of The Walrus.

There’s a lot of interesting reading in there but one article that struck a pretty deep chord was Erna Paris’ The New Solitudes which is available online (and makes me wonder why I subscribe to the print edition at all!).

Paris hits on something I’ve been wondering and worrying about for some time now. I’ve written about it here before, and I’ll continue to lament, I’m sure, until things improve. It’s the idea that Canada’s values are eroding, or, at least, changing. It’s the notion that instead of the two solitudes in Canada being the English and the French we are quickly becoming a nation not of two different languages but of two very different sets of values or identities, and they seem at odds with one another.

Let me explain.

Read the rest of this article »

Speaking to As it Happens on CBC, Romeo Dallaire, arguably Canada’s most respected soldier says in regards to Canada’s handling of the Omar Khadr case,

[Canada] has failed beyond description.

The rest of the interesting and compelling interview can be found here (part 2 of the program).

Since, The Hurt Locker is this year’s underdog for the Best Picture at the Oscars, Maria and I thought we’d give it a try this past weekend.

First impressions, going into this film, was that it was going to be a war movie set in modern-day Iraq. I pictured a kind of tactical-based combat movie, with a mix of interesting characters and meaningful drama say, like, Saving Private Ryan. Now Saving Private Ryan is good in its own right, but it’s been done. So I didn’t have incredibly high hopes for this film. But instead, The Hurt Locker was quite different from my expectations and quite good.

Read the rest of this article »