For this you should be grateful. I plan to outlive everybody who watched Cheers in the 1980s, only because I want to be able to walk into a room without every witty soul present calling out, “Hey, Norm!” as if I’ve never heard it before. If I had a nickel for every time that’s happened,…
One cannot practice law in the Ottawa Valley for nearly four decades without taking the Irish into account. They fill, disproportionately, the ranks of lawyers in Ottawa and the Valley towns, but they also punch well above their weight in the police forces, business, and the arts. In my day, I would guess, easily a…
Although there’s not much I can do about it, I’m grateful for my personal heritage, tough East London scrappers on my father’s side, proud and fierce Welsh, the indigenous people of Britain, on my mother’s side. But then I married, had children, and they married and had children. I married into a typical Canadian family,…
Just yesterday, March 29, Donald Trump made a highly important and encouraging announcement: America is going to buy up to forty icebreakers from Finland. That’s twenty times as many as Canada agreed to buy, but that’s for another piece. One should never underestimate Alexander Stubb, President of Finland. Fluent in five languages, with an earned…
As we watch poor old Uncle Sam decline into full-blown dementia, Canadians understand that things in the neighbourhood are going to get ugly. Our once trusted friend has gone weird on us. At first we may even have been a bit frightened, but now we’ve got our elbows up and are ready to take the…
Recently I gave a talk to a high school law class, and of course the inevitable question came up, “How can you defend someone who you know is guilty?” That’s actually a wonderful and important question, because it opens a window into the heart and soul of our criminal justice system. In fact, it goes…
Lawyers will tell you that there are no facts until a judge says so. Until then, all you have is evidence which, if accepted as valid, becomes the foundation for the court’s “findings of fact”. Clients often are shocked when they tell you their story and you keep pushing back, asking for support, dates, times,…
Our English language may not be the craziest in the world, but it must surely be in the running. Take, for example, the word “close”. If you mean “to shut”, as in “close the door”, the word rhymes with “those”. But if you mean “nearly”, as in “close to home”, the word rhymes with “dose”….
Just a little while ago I spent a precious afternoon with an old friend, a friend from so far back that he knows stuff about me that nobody else knows, stuff I’d just as soon he kept to himself. You understand – you were young and foolish, once. Decades ago our ways parted geographically and…
Some of us are still trying to parse exactly how Donald Trump managed to get re-elected, and still can’t come to grips with the fact that the President of the United States of America is not normal, nor are his congressional and senate supporters normal. Think these people are playing politics in the usual fashion?…