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City Hall: A Valentine to Public Service
In a PBS interview with Jim Lehrer, Aaron Sorkin described The West Wing as “a kind of valentine to public service. It celebrates our institutions.” Frederick Wiseman’s latest documentary, City Hall, shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last Monday, is also a valentine to public service that celebrates city government, at least as…
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Pres. Clinton and the Quebec Referendum
It is twenty-five years ago that Canadians experienced a brief national nightmare, the campaign leading up to the October 30, 1995 Quebec Referendum on sovereignty-association. The Non (today we might call it Remain) side won by a slim margin of 1 percent, 54,000 votes out of 4.8 million cast, with an astonishing 94 percent voter…
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Canadian vs. US Political Film
Working on the chapter of Public Representations about Canadian political narratives, I’ve now come to narratives about the Canadian aspect of the 1980 Iran hostage crisis. For younger readers, the essence of the story is that when the Revolutionary Guard stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took American diplomats hostage, six escaped, were sheltered…
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Remembering Absence of Malice
Two recent passings brought to mind the 1981 movie Absence of Malice. The actor Wilford Brimley died on August 1 and screenwriter Kurt Luedtke died on August 16. Luedtke, a former reporter and executive editor of The Detroit Free Press, wrote an imaginative screenplay about investigative journalism gone wrong. Brimley portrayed a disheveled but shrewd…
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Narratives Validated or Disrupted
By now, the narratives the Trump and Biden campaigns are advancing have become clear. Trump depicts himself as a bold and strong leader who has ensured the prosperity and protection of Americans in a hostile world. His achievements include legislating the tax cut, reshaping the judiciary from the top down, withdrawing the US from international…
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My Five Most Popular Posts
Now that I’m devoting more time to my blog, I’ve decided to look for factors that have made previous posts popular, at least as measured by site visits. Google Analytics tracks site visits back to November 1, 2015, so I used it to determine my five most popular posts over the last five years (regardless…
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Just Published: “A Narrative about Teaching Narrative”
I have just published an article about my 30 years’ experience teaching a course on narrative and management in which I discuss how I kept updating and improving it. The article is in Public Voices, an open-access journal that focuses on public administration, the arts, and creativity. Here is a link to the most recent…
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Precursors without Successors
The Sixties were a decade of both self-questioning (national identity and French-English relations) and coming-of-age (Expo 67 and the Centennial, the Maple Leaf flag) for Canada. That decade saw two major political narrative texts, the CBC’s television series Quentin Durgens MP (1965-69) and Arthur Hailey’s 1962 novel In High Places. The television series was about…
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Not-so-Heroic Canadian Politicians
I’m starting to revise the chapter of Public Representations on Canadian political narratives. This will take several weeks, and I’m planning to post on sections of the chapter as I revise them. I’ll begin with the introduction. In 2004, the CBC held a competition to select “the greatest Canadian.” The winner, championed by TV personality…
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A.k.a. Ephraim Borinsky?
In Jewish services, participants are often asked for their Jewish names, which are sometimes Hebrew names and sometimes Yiddish names. The distinction came to mind recently as I was attending services to say Kaddish for my sister. My parents gave me the aspirational names Sandford and Fredrick because they hoped I would do something prestigious…
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Canada United, the US in Chaos
The two countries’ proximate national days occasion a moment of reflection, particularly about the Covid-19 pandemic. The rapid increase in cases in the US is leading to self-examination and comparison with other countries. Recently Anderson Cooper was comparing the US to Italy and Korea. His conclusion was that the US is now in as bad…
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Succeeding on the Manuscript Journey
Recently I sent a paper to an editor asking if it was suitable for her journal, and she ended her reply wishing me well on my “manuscript journey.” I cringed. Journey lately has taken on the connotation of a process with challenges, successes, and failures that ultimately may not end well. The phrase “cancer journey”…
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Corruption, Superstition, Idolatry
Participating in daily services online, as I’m now doing to say Kaddish for my sister, makes me think more deeply about prayers I have been saying all my life and often take for granted. The Aleinu is the second last prayer in Jewish services, followed by the memorial Kaddish prayer. Aleinu, to me, is 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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