Dred Tory

Stephen Harper's Canada: Not Texas North; Alabama North

2011-12-30T04:37:00.001-05:00

I hope you are enjoying as much as I am the civility dividends of Stephen Harper's glorious "law-and-order" crusade. Canada is so much the better for it. Sure. Cranks may decry Canada's...

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Season's Creepings

2011-12-26T05:14:00.001-05:00

In describing the pagan desecration of holy places, early medieval accounts such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle observe a euphemistic fastidiousness that, while acknowledging the Viking zeal to denude...

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A Fiasco Brought to You by Harper’s Cabinet of Callow Cretins: One Down, Thousands More to Go!

2011-06-03T02:58:00.002-04:00

I find it odd that our media have neglected to mention, if only in passing, that Canada has just undergone the most mortifying foreign affairs debacle of its diplomatic history, courtesy of a cabinet...

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Relax, People--Everything Is Under Control: Part Two (Independence Day Edition)

2010-07-04T22:50:00.006-04:00

This may come as a surprise, but it truly pains me that a few of my casual readers appear to perceive a faint tinge of anti-Americanism in my writings. I find that odd, since the nation I love was...

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Relax, People--Everything Is Under Control: Part One (Canada Day Edition)

2010-07-01T19:05:00.004-04:00

Well, here we are, celebrating Canada Day, the fifth of the Harper era, a day that has miraculously avoided federal "Conservative" Party proscription for being anti-American; I can only surmise that...

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We, Her Majesty's Petitioners...

2010-02-10T03:22:00.004-05:00

At the urging of one of my most civically-conscientious partners in blogging, I have decided to go a-petitioning. I'm rather excited, actually: serving a petition upon the House is about to be only...

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Afghanistan Descending

2010-02-06T04:26:00.001-05:00

Mere days after the Allies had rained nuclear catastrophe upon two of his cities, Emperor Hirohito announced to his subjects his decision to surrender not by saying that Japan had lost the war but...

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The Sad Ghosts of Hispaniola, Part Two: The Haunting of Eros

2010-01-26T05:18:00.001-05:00

Tory philosopher George Grant knew that there was only one way for the human heart to lift itself into the heights of Platonic Eros—that pure, disinterested, universal love. Grant insisted that,...

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The Sad Ghosts of Hispaniola

2010-01-22T03:28:00.003-05:00

To be fed, clothed, and bandaged by the same hands that flog you to your soul-reaving labours: that's what it is to be a slave. Haiti's new ghosts, wafting out of freshly-dug mass graves, are...

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In Memoriam: P.K. Page

2010-01-15T01:11:00.002-05:00

In Grade Ten, I once had an essay due on a Wednesday afternoon. I waited until the Wednesday morning, until around three a.m., before starting it--before even thinking about it. Those who know...

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Constitutional Pedantry Justified*

2010-01-13T20:54:00.003-05:00

* Now with "What He Said" and "Support Our Troops" updates! Anyone who wondered how badly we need to restore dignity, authority and competence to the office of Governor General and beg of it...

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And Now, Some Constitutional Pedantry...

2010-01-12T01:46:00.001-05:00

The action is really over at Catelli's, where I am set to be engaged in a genteel constitutional mud-wrestling match with the author of MaderBlog over the question of how best to reform the way our...

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And Now, Some Solipsism...

2010-01-09T15:57:00.000-05:00

On this day forty-one years ago, at exactly 6:18 p.m., in the now quasi-defunct Catherine Booth Hospital of Montréal's Notre-Dame-De-Grâce neighbourhood, the author was born. Neither the world, nor...

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And Now, The Bigger Picture...

2010-01-07T12:59:00.000-05:00

As much as I despair over our current constitutional quandaries, I must never forget how small we all are. The sheer fact of our human minuteness is frightening to us, but it's also beautiful to...

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Springtime For Harper...

2010-01-04T14:12:00.006-05:00

...with apologies to Mel Brooks. The title is not meant to suggest an analogy between Stephen Harper's decision to once again crawl away from Opposition scrutiny and any feature of Adolph Hitler's...

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Thanking Outside the Box

2009-12-27T03:46:00.004-05:00

And so, after crawling blindly back into the light of consciousness through the dark, dank alleyways of Kahlua-induced hangovers, we scan the news to see what of interest happened during the...

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Let It Come Down

2009-12-24T06:37:00.002-05:00

Among the many responsibilities attendant upon being a member in good standing of the Fraternal Order of the World's Worst Catholics is the duty to mock those Christian dullards who insist on...

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Copping Out In Copenhagen

2009-12-20T01:08:00.000-05:00

Oh, how the symmetry of the thing is admirable. The cloying sugar-water substancelessness of the Copenhagen summit fits Harper's "Conservatives" perfectly: it was a pseudo-event that produced a...

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Stephen Harper: Doing Fuck-All, on Your Dime

2009-12-18T05:40:00.004-05:00

Until the first years of the last century, all peoples of all times named their epochs according to the names and deeds of the great among them. We moderns are the first people for whom this...

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Ave Senatus Populusque Americanus

2009-12-09T05:38:00.002-05:00

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was honoured by a shockingly muted sixty-eighth anniversary by our southern cousins (insufficiently removed) on Monday. America's deepest, most painfully...

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Umbralogy

2009-11-30T03:54:00.007-05:00

The yearly crawl into the shadows of the winter solstice should be a sort of annual homecoming for me, for I am a winter child. I've always believed that those of us thrust into the world in the...

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Mélange Adultère: Part Five

2009-11-25T02:29:00.004-05:00

File It Under "Disingenuous": While we wait for Fidel Castro to preside over the opening ceremonies of San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade, let us enjoy the ironic splendour of Stephen Harper's recent...

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When Hacks Attack, Part Two: Sheer Hack Attack!

2009-10-06T00:05:00.004-04:00

As a public service, I hereby append below an internal memorandum allegedly sent by "Conservative" Party brass to "Conservative" riding presidents. I prefer not to divulge how it came into my...

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"When Hacks Attack!": Part One

2009-06-17T12:03:00.005-04:00

I think it is now safe to say that the CPC's "Just Visiting" anti-Ignatieff ad campaign has become the most obsessively scrutinised shitzkrieg* ever mounted by a Dominion party in our history....

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"Out of the Depths, Have I Sought Even Deeper Depths, O Lord!": Stephen Harper's De Profundis, Part Two

2009-06-10T14:13:00.011-04:00

No "Conservative" activist has provided higher multi-fuck-up value for dollar than Ottawa mayor and former temp-agency CEO Larry O'Brien. This man's plunge from the twin Everests of his massive ego...

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