No, not the literal “garden variety”, but tax butterflies. Tax lawyers and accountants know exactly what I’m talking about, the rest of you will take this as confirmation of your long-term suspicion that I’ve lost my mind. The word “butterfly” is not actually found in the Income Tax Act, but every practitioner knows exactly what…
Premier Leslie Frost loved to tell the story about a young Toronto lawyer who drove up to Killaloe, back in the day, to argue a case which despite being small potatoes was very important to a wealthy client. Prepared to the hilt, the young fellow strode into magistrate’s court with a trolley full of books,…
At some or other second-hand store I picked up a print of the old Ottawa Union Station. It caught my eye because this was the old Union Station where I disembarked in September, 1965 to begin training at Ottawa Teachers’ College. Given that the station in the picture appeared very much in use, and also…
All summer long we puzzled over the strange bird-call coming from somewhere around our back deck, or possibly the adjoining garden or shrubs. Kind of a raspy note, much like the sound of a rusty door hinge. Just couldn’t put a finger on it, and even Merlin the magic bird-song-identifier app couldn’t tell us what…
Let’s get one thing straight, right from the outset. Religion is not intrinsically a bad thing. It can be a powerful force for good, provided it’s done right. In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Micah gives it to us straight. “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require…
In the cut and thrust of criminal defense law, there are few more skilled than Mike Edleson. He is, frankly, legendary, and deserves to be. Mike struts. He glowers. He paces, he menaces, he terrifies. In the courtroom he is some kind of dark deity in a thundercloud. He is a force of nature. He…
Laurence Peter was a Canadian educator and hierarchiologist (whatever that may be), famous for the Peter Principle: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence… [I]n time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties… Work is accomplished by those employees…
With Christmas Day just a week out, you’ve likely got all or most of your shopping and wrapping done. I’m intensely proud to say that I’ve been mostly done for a month or more. It wasn’t always this way. I used to be the guy who was literally still trying to buy stuff late on…
There’s a legend in our family of a certain Grampa who was famous for “accidentally” knocking over the crokinole board when things started to go bad. You could see the twinkle in his eye and a tiny smile he couldn’t hide, and you knew it was only a matter of seconds before his knee would…