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Bill Gates and his Writing Partners
I’ve just read Bill Gates’s How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. I’ll begin by making clear my enormous admiration for Gates. He could have used his enormous wealth in the idiotic or narcissistic ways some of his fellow billionaires have (buying sports team, building the biggest toys, dabbling in personal cryonics) but he has used…
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Porque y Como Aprendo Espanol
I have been studying Spanish for several years now and want to discuss the why – porque – and the how – como. Porque Espanol In recent years before the pandemic I visited Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Cuba, in every trip enjoying myself. The Spanish-speaking world is vast and I’m optimistic that I will be…
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Podcast on My Academic Career
Alex Rascanu, one of my best public management students, is a true public sector entrepreneur. Alex recently graduated with an M.P.A. from Dalhousie, after doing a B.B.A. at the University of Toronto Scarborough, which is where I had the honour to be his instructor. We’ve also kept in touch since then. He’s had a wide…
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‘O Canada’ Op-ed: Replying to Critics
Last weekend, I published an op-ed in The Globe and Mail entitled “’O Canada’ without the cross – why it’s time to revisit the lyrics of the national anthem.” It got many comments, a considerable number of them critical. In this post, I will reply to the major arguments raised by the critics. Quite a…
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Pushing Against the Glass Ceiling
Returning to the book chapter about Canadian political narratives, I realized that I hadn’t paid sufficient attention to National Film Board of Canada documentaries. A look through the online catalogue revealed over 100 documentaries in English that deal with politics or politicians. Breaking them down thematically, one group that stood out is women in politics.…
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My Own Hundred Acre Wood
Having long ago delighted my children with the wisdom and humour of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh tales, I intended to visit the Royal Ontario Museum’s special exhibit about Winnie-the-Pooh. Through an over-abundance of Covidian caution I didn’t do it last summer; by fall the Museum closed and the exhibit was dismantled and returned to the Victoria…
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Highway 413: What Would Bill Davis Do?
The Ford Government is planning to build a fourth east-west highway in the Greater Toronto Area: the GTA West Corridor (GTAW). It would run parallel to, and north of, the existing highways 401 and 407, starting at Highway 400 to the east and linking to the 401/407 interchange in the west. (Copious details including route…
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Presentation on Innovation to Brazilians
Two months ago I gave a Zoom presentation on public sector innovation to Brazilian public servants organized by Brazil’s Escola Nacional de Administracao Publica. The presentation has now been posted on YouTube. Here is a time-line of the presentation: 0 – 9 minutes: introduction by my hosts 9 – 16 minutes: my introduction 16-18 minutes:…
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Who Would Write for Wikipedia?
My Experience In a recent post, I discussed commonalities among my five most popular blog posts in the last five years. Noting that one had been referenced in Wikipedia, I came up with the idea of adding content to the Wikipedia entries on topics I had written about, with links back to my blog posts…
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Les Rose: My Father’s Violence
I concluded a recent blog post arguing that “Canadian culture and politics need more Canadian political documentary.” An immediate example of what I am looking for is Felix Rose’s documentary Les Rose (The Rose Family). Supported by the National Film Board of Canada, it represents Rose’s attempt to come to terms with his family legacy,…
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Trump, Reelected, Targets Canada
Now that I have your attention, I’ll explain. I always included a crisis management exercise in my public management course, in which I presented the students with a challenging but plausible future scenario and asked them, assuming the role of the relevant government, to devise an action plan. The Scenario and Assignment Last spring, shortly…
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Peter Morgan’s Gloriana
There has been considerable discussion about the ways in which the fourth season of showrunner Peter Morgan’s The Crown takes liberties with the historical record, most notably Hugh Vickers’s The Crown Dissected. Any discussion of departures from the historical record is incomplete unless it explains why the creators made their narrative choices and outlines the…
- 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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