dooneyscafe.com

The response to this crisis is a long standing Canadian version of dithering-while-Rome-burns, except that it is our forests dissolving from airborne sulfuric acid, and our lakes dying because the water is too acidic to support biological systems more complex than the ones involved in making pulp and paper products. Acid rain is a currently…

In the early 1980s, Canada had four functioning Canadian-owned airlines, one publicly owned, and a raft of independent charter and regional carriers. Then the industry was deregulated, supposedly to foster competition, cheapen fares, and open up the marketplace. Result? We’re down to a single major air carrier, and it is a virtual subsidiary of a…

Recent vintage passenger jets purchased by Air Canada from a Euro consortium, supposedly to the giveaway of other Canadian aerospace assets to Boeing. Their planes tend to rattle while in flight because their parts are fabricated in six different countries and therefore don’t quite fit together, and have been known to run out of fuel…

Disgraced Canadian Armed Forces regiment that lurched so far out of control during a brief assignment in Somalia in 1991 that the government was forced to disband it. Mulroney’s Conservative government didn’t have the courage to cashier its members, and they’ve been dispersed to infect the rest of the armed forces with the same sort…

A group of generally well-heeled, expensively educated but physically inept males who work in or close to the mass media, sometimes having been placed there by wealthy parents or mentors. They are often characterized by facial fat and the belief that they are victims of a conspiracy of black and Asian women, homosexuals, communists and…

Most Canadian cities have streets and business firms named Adanac. Bet you won’t find a Setats Detinu Drive in the U.S. or a Rue de Ecnarf in France. Is a country that resorts to spelling its name backwards in order to provide sufficient appellations for thoroughfares and corporations suffering from terminal poverty of imagination or…

Gravel-voiced androgynous Vancouver musician distinguished by his ability to discover and cover the musical equivalent of absolute neutral. Adams illustrates what Canadian culture will be like if it becomes wholly defined by the marketplace: Joe Cocker without drugs, alcohol or demons, management by middle-aged guys who think lunch with Tina Turner is a religious experience,…

Something that no longer exists in Canada’s post-accountable financial sector and has become as rare as hen’s teeth in the Federal government. If it finally comes time for a public adding up of two plus two, don’t be surprised if all those Lexus and Mercedes-Benz owning accountants and accountability boosters get panicky and seek protection…

R v. Morgentaler (1988) — one of the more intelligent Canadian Supreme Court decisions — decided that Canada is better off without abortion laws, on the constitutional ground that there is a class of important personal decisions in which the state ought not to interfere. Despite predictions that the country would collapse into social chaos…

While youthful, ballerinas tend to be anorexic women with long, elegant necks and bleeding feet. After age thirty-five, they transform into aging neurotics, fading beauties, fronts for Arts lobbies or walking cocktail circuit prizes (these categories are not exclusive of one another). See Karen Kain, Kimberley Glasco, Veronica Tennant