This is the time of year when there are entire magazines devoted to Top Ten lists. Every critic and columnist feels the need to sum up what was most noteworthy in their particular discipline. And according to Ken Levine, it's the obligation of every blogger. Mostly, making lists is a way of covering for the fact you're enjoying the holidays and the rest of your life, bloated with turkey, perpetually semi-buzzed and the last...

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It's Boxing Day in Canada, our recovery period from Christmas. A day to sleep off the hangover, work off the big meal and clean the last meat off the turkey so the once magnificent beast becomes little more than a pile of bones. Boxing Day originated in Great Britain, as the noble and the wealthy boxed up the leftovers of their Christmas celebrations and delivered them to the poor. Nowadays, that...

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The first Christmas mornings after television arrived usually featured a series of seasonal slides accompanied by a Bing Crosby or Percy Faith Christmas album. Station owners figured that if people had their TVs on at all, it was only going to be background to the more important activities taking place in living rooms across the nation. Then somebody decided to interact a little more. Early screenings of "A Christmas Carol"...

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Pay attention. Because I'm about to show you how and why Canada's broadcasters have failed their audiences. And I'm going to do it using the example of another Canadian institution -- hockey. As well as something we all know and love -- the lowly waffle. This is Toronto's Air Canada Centre, home to the symbolic of failure Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team and the never-won-nothin' Toronto Raptors basketball club. It also houses...

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One of the dead horses regularly whipped on this blog concerns the disconnect between artistic or commercial achievement in Canada and the awarding of successive government grants. For reasons that I've never been fully able to understand, there are organizations and individuals resident here who, despite repeated failure at either finding or entertaining an audience and with nothing but red ink on their balance sheets, still...

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With less than a week until Christmas, I thought I'd give Legion visitors from around the world a taste of what it's like to celebrate Christmas in Canada. In most ways, we do it the same as everybody else. But because we're where you'll find Santa's North Pole, shimmering lights in the night sky, snow, ice and let's not forget the Polar Bears on all those seasonal Cola bottles, we're pretty much the place Christmas calls...

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"Oh, the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is soooo delightful…" Although it should come as no surprise to everyone that it's Winter in Canada, for some reason the top stories on any newscast you watch in this country are all about blizzards and snow and ice and heavy rain. TV Meteorologists speaking in hushed, cautionary tones predict snowfalls most of us casually sweep off our driveways without a second thought....

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Canadian Artists who've been paying attention know that there's been an ongoing discussion in Canada over the last two years as our Federal government tries to get its act together and haul our copyright laws into the 21st Century. No matter where you stand on the issues, I think you can agree that the process is not going all that well. Copyright is hard for most people (even working writers) to understand and just when...

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  It's Monday and the Christmas season is beginning to take hold, uplifting us in spirit but also entangling us in commitments, lists and errands, work or personal deadlines and all the other issues sent to try us and weigh us down when we'd all just like to cut loose and enjoy the season. Maybe this will help. Five years ago today, a very unusual story unfolded in waters not far from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge....

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I start marking the Christmas season about two weeks before it starts. And I thought it might be worthwhile to get this in before getting caught up in all that goes along with this time of year for those of the Christian faith. I'm a Christian. Not a good one to be sure. But more often than not I stay within the ballpark of what I learned in Sunday school, Confirmation and on an irregular basis from...

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Every time I post a little snippet about how I don't get some part of the Global Warming Panic, I'm inundated with missives from the right thinking and progressive…(wait, how are they "right" thinking while using that particular descriptive -- somebody better call a meeting)…not so much arguing the points or registering disagreement as making sure either me or my source is properly Demonized. I think I'm on record somewhere (certainly...

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