I did not weep, I turned to stone inside…Dante, Inferno   I rarely cry, but on the evening of 8 December 1987, glued to radio coverage of the signing of a nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Soviet Union, I wept with a relief I had neverRead More

On numerous occasions in recent decades, Canadian governments have apologized for a host of egregious wrongdoings. While such words of contrition are too often unaccompanied by adequate actions, they can help make visible, as Trudeau argued in his 2017 apology, the “hard truths” Canadian society needs to confront. Yet theRead More

Editor’s Note: The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, five years to the day after an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo sparked a global conflict claiming over 20 million lives. Sean Howard reflects on a momentous centenary receiving remarkably little political or media attention.    Mischief and MadnessRead More

For he is our peace…and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility… And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near… Ephesians 2 …and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shallRead More

Dear Spectator Readers, Mayday! Mayday! I send up this distress call from the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey (a Celtic-knot of history, myth, magic and legend; a place of long-lost glory) in a ‘United’ Kingdom rapidly losing structural and social integrity. In much of the world, today — May Day —Read More

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison’d… Richard II, Act 3 Scene 2 (‘A Castle in View’)   Dear SpectatorRead More

In 2003, Peace Quest Cape Breton launched a modest campaign for a ‘Pentagon Vacation’: a two-week (336-hour) reduction in the US Defense Department’s annual budget of $379 million (all figures in US dollars)– a saving, calculating 14 days at a Pentagon Hour (PH) rate of $42 million/hour, of around $14Read More

  Editor’s Note: Spectator contributor Sean Howard begins the New Year with a two-part consideration of the actual legacy — both domestic and global — of the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. This month, in Part 2, Howard considers Bush’s foreign policy failures. (Read Part I)  Read More

Editor’s Note: Spectator contributor Sean Howard begins the New Year with a two-part consideration of the actual legacy — both domestic and global — of the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. This month, in Part I, Howard considers Bush’s domestic missteps.   The death ofRead More

The Spectator, Tree!Umphant I found Albert Barbusci! He’s in Kissimmee, Florida where “the Lemieux and Barbusci families” own and operate the Tree Trek Adventure Park! Okay, he may not actually be there right now (although why not be in Florida in December?) but he could be. When I stepped backRead More