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embracing schawinsky and the bauhaus
On my Christmas holiday in December 1969, I had the great privilege of seeing the landmark 50 years bauhaus exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It also traveled to Stuttgart, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Chicago, and Pasadena. I kept the monumental catalogue, which I’m looking at now. It was printed sans serif with not one…
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Shostak’s Town and My Statistical Settlers
Peter Shostak is a Canadian artist renowned for depicting the lives of people in rural Alberta, especially Ukrainian-Canadians. I happened to see one of his silkscreen prints, entitled What is the Name of this Town? at the Ukrainian cultural centre in Toronto in 1980. Shostak tells me this was a demo of 45 copies he…
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Duke Ketye’s Resistance
Duke Ellington Sipho Ketye. That’s a name to reckon with. We must assume his parents hoped he would assert his black identity through the arts. Duke Ketye (1943 – 2002) grew up in Soweto, first studied art in South Africa, then took Norman Rockwell’s famous correspondence course while working in a ceramics factory. In his…
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Charles Pachter’s Lese-Majeste
Charles Pachter’s 1972 painting Noblesse Oblige, depicting the queen in regalia taking a salute mounted on a moose, deeply offended not only monarchists, but respectable Canadian opinion. Hence the title of my post. But it has since become an iconic Canadian image. If you don’t know it, you can see it as the thumbnail for…
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Philippe Delord’s Japan
The French watercolourist Philippe Delord has titled his excellent book about the seaside route from Tokyo to Kyoto Hiroshige’s Japan, as an homage to the great woodblock printmaker. The title of this post is my homage to Delord. Six years ago, Delord visited each location Hisoshige depicted in his 1832 print series The Fifty-Three Stations…
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“Your Majesty, I’m Also Very Smart!”
When King Juan Carlos of Spain visited the town of Ponferrada, he was introduced to Nevenka Fernandez, a young municipal councilor, and complimented her on her attractiveness. Her response (“Majestad, soy tambien muy inteligente!”) forms the title of this post. That exchange epitomizes the issues at stake. Even at the highest levels, Spanish men diminish…
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My Covid Chronicles, Volume 3
Volume 1 of my Covid chronicles (2020) dealt with two anxiety-provoking instances of being tagged by the federal government’s (now defunct) Covid app and then taking PCR tests that turned out negative, as well as invigorating spring walks on golf courses that were closed to golfers. Volume 2 (2021) recounts my experience as a participant…
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“Professor Borins, You’re a Legend!”
Yup, in his own mind. Just like all the others. The title is an exact quote, including punctuation, from one of the student evaluations for the seminar course I taught last semester. The course’s rubric was “The Art and Literature of Leadership” and I delivered it to 24 first-year students at The University of Toronto’s…
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Shrinking our Carbon Footprint
As a senior citizen, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the threat climate change poses for future generations, and I’ve decided to learn and act. Last fall, I joined a weekly Zoom discussion and action group for members of my undergraduate class (Harvard-Radcliffe 1971). Our class has a passion for collective quantitative introspection in the form…
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Escarmouche a Restigouche: A Defiant Song
Last semester I taught a narrative and management course as a first-year seminar at Victoria College at U. of T. – a subject for a future blog. In one class I showed two movies about First Nations, one of which was Alanis Obomsawin’s 1984 NFB documentary Incident at Restigouche. The film deals with 1981 raids…
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Would More Strategic Voting Have Mattered?
I’m trying to come to terms with the disappointing results of the Ontario election by crunching numbers, which is better than drinking. The first thing I noticed is that, after three weeks of stasis, in the last week of the campaign the PC Party’s predicted share of the vote was increasing towards 40 percent, the…
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After the Election, Then What?
Because there has been so little change in the public opinion polls since the Ontario election campaign officially began early this month, I think it is possible to speculate about various outcomes. The Conservatives have consistently polled around 35 percent of the popular vote, the Liberals 27 percent, NDP 23 percent, Greens 6 percent, and…
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Will Strategic Voting Make a Difference?
With the Ontario Conservatives holding steady in the polls with around 35 percent of the popular vote, and the Liberals, NDP, and Greens at around 55 percent of the popular vote, several groups are urging strategic voting to deny the Conservatives the legislative majority that opinion poll aggregators (The Toronto Star, The CBC) are predicting.…
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Understanding the Debaters
The question pundits always ask about political debates is “who won?” Who had the best lines, especially the best put-downs? I don’t watch debates for this purpose, but rather to understand how the candidates construct their arguments, which might provide some insight into how their minds work, their character, and how they will govern. With…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- My latest book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, co-authored with Beth Herst, was published in April 2026 by University of Toronto Press (open access).
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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