Outlaw Radio 1960

  As the European Union has reached a deal with the Trump administration , imposing a fifteen per cent tariff across the board, Canada's fate now hangs in the balance . Trump now has the upper hand, and he knows it.    Trump has never wanted a trade deal with Canada. He set his objective out very clearly from the outset , which was the fifty-first state solution. This was his baseline , and that has not changed. The danger here is that Trump now knows he can economically starve us out, and unless Canada moves swiftly to umbrella itself within the European Union, any notion of our sovereignty will disappear.    Some believe that Canada can continue to address its challenges, but there is an underlying economic issue that governments have not addressed since the 1980s. The country's financial foundations have eroded to the extent that creating the magical and mystical recovery both the Liberals and Conservatives want to achieve would take many years an...

  As I pass through this life, I often reflect on those who I know and those who, by some fluke of circumstance, only briefly crossed my field of vision. It is often easy to write about those whom you have known and to whom a relationship has developed over time. Their stories, for the most part are known and easily put to paper. The ones that intrigue me are those that cross into my life if not even for a few seconds, on the bus, streetcar, or subway. Everyone has these at times, and I often wonder if they often dwell on the character they met, or what their story is. As a writer, it is often difficult to put a story to the person who dashed on through your vision, but to the world around us it takes on a much larger significance. People want stories, fictional or not. If they didn't, no books would ever be published, and the timeless world of the Daily Newspaper and magazine publications would never exist. To the journalist, these chance meeting stories are the lifeblood of th...

  The concept of retail has changed so dramatically over the past four decades that it is often hard to keep up with the constant changes. As consumers, it is often hard to track where our dollars go and into whose pockets they head in a globalised financial system .   That is beginning to change with the Buy Canadian Buy Local movements that h ave begun to flourish in worldwide popularity in response to the ever-confusing world of American p olicy initiative s, and a president who continually resets the bar, creating vast amounts of global market instabili ty.   This is a positive development, as it encourages Canadians to engage in discussions about the country’s future direction locally, nationally, and internationally.   The main question is where this leaves the retail sector and what challenges it will face in the looming presence of the new GIG economy. The orderly storefronts of what used to be prime retail spaces, for the most part, have been replaced by ...