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Rediscovering Yousuf Karsh
“You interviewed Yousuf Karsh? Wow!” That was the response from Betty Hagopian, a fellow Harvard undergraduate student, fifty-five years ago. Betty is Armenian-American, and thus more aware than most of the fame of her ethnic confrere. I was a member of the news department of the Harvard student radio station WHRB, and I produced a…
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This Magical Season
My first memory of baseball fandom was watching Saturday afternoon television broadcasts – the only ones – in the early Sixties, with commentary by Dizzy Dean and Peewee Reese. It was obvious that they both knew a lot about baseball, but I was too young to know that they were living legends. Forty years later,…
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That Ontario Ad: So Much Hypocrisy
It’s been about a week since Trump went ballistic about the Ontario Government ad quoting Ronald Reagan’s advocacy of free trade and skepticism about tariffs. We’ve seen the reactions of the President, Prime Minister, and Premier as well as several key players (US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra) and a public…
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A Temper Tantrum or a Deadlock?
In response to the Government of Ontario’s ad quoting a Ronald Reagan speech criticizing tariffs, Donald Trump announced that “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.” Would a government really terminate trade negotiations with its second largest trading partner because its head of state doesn’t like an ad campaign run by a subnational jurisdiction?…
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What’s Wrong with a “Cash Grab”?
Doug Ford’s labelling speed cameras a “cash grab” is an example of a tactic the political right has developed to a high art in recent years: renaming issues in ways that build support for conservative positions. If renaming is effective, they may even shut off debate. Besides “cash grab” some examples that come to mind…
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Seymour Hersh in the Rear-view Mirror
Near the end of Cover-Up, a documentary by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus about the legendary investigative journalist Seymour (Sy) Hersh, we see Hersh’s face, reflected in a rear-view mirror, This scene reminds me of, and perhaps is a homage to, Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, in which we see his subject, Robert McNamara,…
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Has Doug Ford’s Car Culture War Gone Too Far?
For several years, there has been a red-light camera at Denlow Blvd., a street in my neighbourhood, and Leslie Street, a major thoroughfare. I’ve never run a red light there. A few years later, a speed camera was installed at Denlow Public School, near the intersection of Denlow and Leslie. It once caught me doing…
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Radio Silence for Page Proofs
The page proofs for Public Representations have arrived, and I’m going on radio silence to review them by the publisher’s ambitious two-week deadline. The great thing about the page proofs is that you can finally see what the book will look like in print. Public Representations will comprise 330 pages for text and footnotes, with…
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Big Brother is Watching You
Donald Trump has ramped up his war on the Federal Reserve System, in particular its Board of Governors, with his attempt to terminate Governor Lisa Cook for a very questionable cause. Trump’s objective is to appoint a chair and a majority of the seven governors who will robotically do his bidding. Put differently, Trump wants…
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Donating My Innuit Art to the AGO
This story begins with my parents, Sidney and Beverley Borins. After operating several small businesses in food and drink (which I discuss in my eulogy for my mother), they made a radical change and in 1971 opened an art boutique. Up the Wall began by selling the weavings, macrame, fibre art, and fabrics that had…
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Win-Win or Win-by-Losing?
Consider this scenario. A large firm and a small firm, the former ten times the size of the latter, are in similar lines of business. The smaller firm is seeking joint ventures or strategic alliances with the larger one. After the smaller firm rejected a merger, the larger firm is planning a hostile takeover. The…
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Radio Silence for Copyediting
Sixty years ago, I heard a presentation at a Jewish summer camp by a sculptor who was an Orthodox Jew. He observed the second commandment, which forbids the making of graven images, by creating a small defect before completing a sculpture. By design, it would not exactly represent the person or thing that was his…
- 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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