Outlaw Radio 1960

  With the signing of an agreement in principle between Carney and Danielle Smith over the Northern Gateway Pipeline, removal of the emissions cap, and the exploration of lifting the Tanker Ban along the Pacific Interior Passage. Carney’s hold on the left wing of the Liberal Party is meeting an abrupt end. Steven Guilbeault was the first to resign from the cabinet and will sit as a regular MP. Guilbeault was a Greenpeace environmental activist before coming to Ottawa, but his presence there brought votes from the left and the Greens to the Liberals. The fragile coalition of conservative, centrist, and left-wing liberals hasjust had the party’s foundations rocked. Mainly, this is because no one has ever done this so publicly in the party before. A great many people have always asked me why I never supported the Liberals, and Mark Carney has just defined that to me. The Liberals are still, traditionally, a party without principle. If the people’s consensus is leaning right, so goes l...

 After years of crazy, dangerously speculative real estate, the bubble has burst, and what, over the past three decades, was a facade of greed and tax sheltering is ending abruptly. The banks are now holding the bag on a fiscal disaster they helped to create. Now the spiral begins in earnest, and if we are not careful, the Canadian taxpayer will be on the hook for billions of dollars in another bank bailout to save the banks, when the Government should be bailing out the borrowers. Of Course, just as in the 1980s downturn, condos are taking the first hit, but looking at real estate sales nationwide, it is also hitting the regular housing market. Nowhere is this pain more visible than in Toronto’s far overpriced market, and condos which were designed first and foremost as offshore investment tax vehicles are not only not selling, no big investors are coming on board, so developments like the one at Cloverdale Mall are falling like houses of cards without the shovels even digging the...

  Don't  look for many changes in the upward trend in food prices at the grocery store anytime soon  , as the monopolization of both the retail market and the global supply chain runs deep and has not only a firm grip on basic commodity prices, but also on   retail pricing at the g rocery store level.   I n the retail level of the marketplace , especially in Canada, there are only four major retail giants: Weston's, the Empire Company,    Pattissons , and, recently, Walmart.  The illusion of more competition is just that  Weston's,   probably the  biggest of all  retail  groceries ,  owns Superstore, Loblaws, No Frills,  Independent, wholesale club pack,  Shoppers  Drug  Mart   and Bulk Barn.  The Empire  Company,  which is Sobeys, Safeway ,  Freshco , Foodland, IGA,  Farm Boy , Thrifty Foods, an d  Lawton's  Drug .  Pattison's  Grocery empire is...

 It’s not often that we see romance in a city like Toronto. Big cities tend to be impersonal isolating structures by their very existence. I’m sure this is something we all look for but fail to see the relevance of in a city that never sleeps and winds its way through 24 hours, never stopping, always looking straight forward, and never turning back. People think of Romance, the first words will usually be Paris, Florence, Rome, something far removed from those of Toronto or New York. This doesn’t come as a big surprise because we rarely see the beauty that surrounds us when we stand staring at it, When I first arrived in Toronto, I felt considerable apprehension about the experience. I had previously visited in the 1970s under challenging circumstances as a runaway. At that time, both the Eaton Centre and the tower were yet to be completed; businesses such as United Cigar and Japan Camera occupied the entrance area, with the Brown Derby Restaurant located nearby. As a fifteen-year-...

  I’m not sure I like retirement to well. Yes, I can write or program my internet radio station and YouTube channel as I wait, hopefully for some return one day. I will never see a five-ton delivery vehicle or stand at a butcher counter gleefully serving customers. Even those in the journalism profession walk a different path than the one I am taking. My life once again is shifting into a new dimension, and laughably, one I did not realize would come around so quickly. With all the debilitating injuries, including the last head injury, I mainly see people turn their heads and look the other way. With my book  about Father Joe and Our Place Community of Hope nearing completion for publication, I’m left to puzzle where to turn to next.  Karen, my partner of nearly forty years, is unable to find the appropriate words to resolve this situation. She encourages me to continue with my projects — stories, videos, and radio stations — assuring me that eventually something meaningf...