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Trust me: I'm surprised by it all, too. But it's true. And here's the deets from my documentary partner in crime, Kari Hollend: Please share and help us reach Academy voters!! Our feature documentary, The Campaign, is now up for consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category at the 99th Academy Awards. I am asking my filmmaking community, doc film makers, please share and tag potential Academy voters. We set out to make a film about one of the most consequential issue

“Back at work.” So said a source close to veteran CBC reporter Neil Herland - and it was true. Early this morning, Herland was back on the air, reporting on the results of Alberta’s referendum on independence. Herland’s voice was heard for just five minutes or so, around 5 in the morning, but it was unmistakably him. “And that is your world this hour,” Herland said. “For CBC news, I’m Neil Herland.” May not have sounded like much, that sign-off. But it was big, big victory f

This is what is called an October Surprise.

Along with several more-worthy folks today, I was honoured to be honoured at Song Shul in Toronto. It was a joyful and uplifting service - and I saw the fearless Neil Herland there! Highlight for me, was the main speaker, Fatima Al-Harbi, from Bahrain. She was remarkable. (I was going to speak but wanted to hear her instead. This is what I would've said.)

In the Spring of 1975, my family moved to Alberta. We took the train from Montreal. My brothers and I would look out the windows as the country sped by in the dark, wondering what lay ahead for us. All of us were Montreal-born Irish Catholics. We had lived outside Quebec before - a couple years in Dallas, a few more years in Kingston - but Montreal lured us back. Montreal had it all: great culture, great restaurants, great schools. People came from all over the world to live

Aviva Klompas is a Canadian-born Zionist and my sister of another mister. Here, I appear on her popular podcast, Boundless Insights, to talk about the very real antisemitism problem in Canada. Here's what she has written about it: Canada has long presented itself as a model of multiculturalism, tolerance, and minority inclusion. But for many Canadian Jews, that image is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with their lived reality. Jews make up roughly one percent of

Want to stop hate propaganda on a global scale? Take out a Russian data center. That’s what Ukraine did. Yandex is Russia’s biggest technology company. It’s often called Russia’s Google. It runs a search engine, and offers web browsers, cloud storage, maps and navigation. It’s even involved in online food delivery and Uber-style taxis. It has facilities across Russia, and is very, very pro-Kremlin. In the past few days, Ukraine struck a Yandex data center containing two super

I'm not in Africa (obviously), so I can more easily pay attention to Brad's mayoral campaign. (At least until I leave for Australia and points beyond.) Progress Toronto are awful, miserable, crummy people, and are Olivia Chow's smear squad. They live under a rock, basically, conducting drive-by smears while wearing masks. Chow is apparently okay with that. Anyway. They went after Brad because of - wait for it - his name. So he, without fancy graphics or anything like that, di

It always starts small. Corruption, that is. Someone takes a pen or a notepad from work. “I’m entitled to it,” they tell themselves. Next time, it’s something bigger. A stapler. A tool. “I’m entitled to it,” again. Then, later, maybe something even bigger - a laptop, say. “It’s an old model. They won’t miss it,” they say to themselves. And on and on it goes. Before you know it, they’re expensing fancy meals with family members and sole-sourcing contracts to cronies. Corruptio

Everyone else is doing it, so what the Hell.

Damn. With much (much, much) regret, I have concluded I can't go to Kenya. I'm not the least bit worried about catching something (I never get sick, with anything). My worry is getting there and then the Canadian government imposing travel restrictions. Which seems likelier in light of the above. A three-week quarantine would be a bit of a disaster. During that three-week quarantine period, I've got screenings and speaking engagements in Australia, Vancouver, Calgary, Montrea

A child's bedroom in kibbutz Be'eri. October 7, 2023: what happened on this day, three years ago? A commission of the British House of Lords conducted a year-long investigation into the events of October 7. It was led by the historian and life peer, Andrew Roberts, who is an Anglican. Here is how they started their 311-page report: “The Hamas-led attack on Southern Israel on 7 October 2023 was one of the largest terror attacks in history, resulting in 1,182 fatalities and ove

Woke up to this news bulletin: "Kenya has recorded its first case of Ebola after the virus was diagnosed in a man who had arrived from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the government announced on Tuesday. Congo has suffered a severe outbreak of Ebola, the second-largest on record, after cases began spreading, as early as January. More than 4,000 people have died of Ebola in the country since May, according to official figures. The case in Kenya, found in a man who died on Mo

This week, it was the biggest story in the world. A Flydubai passenger jet was hijacked on its way to Israel early on Wednesday morning. One of the pilots had attacked the other pilot with a knife - and was trying to crash the plane. More than 170 people were aboard. The Boeing 737 plunged toward Earth - dropping more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds. People started screaming and praying. Luggage flew out of bins. And, at the rear of the plane, parts of the rudder bro

It ain't working in B.C. or Quebec!

Hard to believe, but I’ve been doing this web site thing - not a blog! - for about 25 years, now. I’m a dinosaur, pretty much. But, prior to their extinction-level end, even dinosaurs evolved. So, I’m evolving. Twenty-five years ago, this web site seriously looked like a 14th Century wood cut (it often read like one, too). My brother said it needed to change. He was the one who conceived the one-eye Warren branding thing at top right, which I’ve kept. It stayed like that for