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Canada’s New Government Turns 8
Today marks the 8th anniversary of Stephen Harper’s election as Prime Minister. At the time, a lot of Liberals figured they could turn him into Joe Clark after a quick leadership change. Yet, by this time next year, Harper will have passed Louis St. Laurent, Robert Borden, and Brian Mulroney, to become the 6th longest […]
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Canada has always been at war with Eurasia
We found out last week that the Harper Conservatives will be leading a review of the way Canadian history is taught in schools. We don’t yet have word on whether this review will include teaching students that education is a provincial responsibility under the constitution, but I have been able to procure a leaked curriculum […]
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Liberal Leadership Races Through History (Part 3): King Chooses His Heir
Previously: Prologue, The 19th Century, An Elected King The last blog post in this series took place at the 1919 Liberal leadership convention, during the aftermath of the Great War. All of a sudden we have – cue the music – Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio. […]
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Liberal Leadership Races Through History (Part 2): An Elected King
Previously: Prologue, The 19th Century In 2009, delegates at the Liberal Party convention in Vancouver voted overwhelmingly to choose the party’s next leader using a one-member-one-vote system. This effectively killed the grand old leadership convention, a system the party had used to select its leaders for 90 years – except, of course, in exceptional circumstances […]
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Liberal Leadership Races Through History (Part 1): The 19th Century
Previously: Prologue In the 19th Century, political parties still followed the British tradition of having caucus select their leader. At least, they followed this tradition when they felt the need to have a leader. In both the 1867 and 1872 elections, the Liberals ran sans chef. That may seem unfathomable today, but all politics was […]
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Liberal Leadership Races Through History: Prologue
Between now and the Liberal leadership convention next spring, my intent is to draft a series of blog posts recapping Liberal leadership races throughout history. Some of these will be more thorough and more interesting than others – after all, there’s only so much one can say about Lester B. Pearson’s first ballot victory with […]