One late summer’s day I arrived at Depot, the RCMP training academy in Regina, the capital city of the province of Saskatchewan. It is an impressive facility and it moulds police cadets who will serve in one of the finest police forces in the world. A cadet begins the day at six in the morning, […]
Surviving Government
Richard Wagner and the Innate Inadequacy of Local Government
My consistent interest in the work of composer Richard Wagner stems not only from the music, but also from the antithesis of great art and reprehensible personality, as well as Wagner’s profound understanding of the cruelty and emptiness and threat to human existence of contemporary governments. His music is one thing, but his writings, though […]
Local Government and Property Taxes
As municipalities do not have access to income or consumption taxes, and as senior governments are reluctant to grant municipalities access to them, local governments generally are obliged to use the real property tax as their major source of revenue. The property tax is determined by multiplying the assessed value of a property by the […]
Charles Dickens on Homelessness
In essay XIII of The Uncommercial Traveller, Charles Dickens writes of the prevalence of homelessness, as it was found in the London of 1860. The essays that formed the book were drawn from essays written for his weekly periodical All the Year Round, which had a circulation as high as 300,000. London at the time […]
Libby Davies – Outside In (A Political Memoir) – 2019
Libby Davies is now 66. She was the NDP Member of Parliament for Vancouver East from 1997 to 2015, and during that time also served as House Leader of the NDP and Deputy Leader of the party. I admire her. Not only for how she has lived her life but also for what she lived […]