Farm Credit Canada CEO Justine Hendricks booked a $44,000 out-of-town cocktail party for directors of the Crown bank after cabinet ordered cuts in federal travel expenses, Access To Information records show. “If you’re asking me, ‘Justine, is there a plan to cut travel?’ No,” Hendricks told a staff meeting. READ MORE
Liberal appointee Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) says he is personally embarrassed by Canadians’ refusal to publicly criticize Israel. “This is not the Canada I am proud of,” Woo told reporters. “This is not the Canada I believe in.” READ MORE
Federally-regulated banks must promote deposit insurance in all marketing including newspaper and TV ads and company websites, regulators said in a legal notice Saturday. Mandatory mention of the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation takes effect December 1: "Depositors who are confident their money is protected are less likely to run in times of stress." READ MORE
A fifth of Atlantic Canadians in federal research say a family member had to leave the region to find work in the past five years. Surveys by a cabinet-appointed business panel found residents divided on whether their home province could become “about as prosperous as the rest of Canada.” READ MORE
Another cable TV channel, French-language TV5 Québec, is petitioning MPs for a bailout due to falling revenues. It follows federal research showing few Canadians under 34 watch conventional television: "The audience was an average 62 years old." READ MORE
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "On the way to work, an ant with a broken leg. Limping. Vigorously. Drawing a circle in the sandy pavement. Antennae slapping in the air..." READ MORE
When Pierre Trudeau died the Calgary Herald published a commentary calling him a Communist. As late as 1989 an Alberta Liberal running for a Senate seat drew protest after describing Trudeau as “a great Canadian.” The provincial party has not won an election in more than a century. If voters send a handful of Liberals to Ottawa from time to time, statistically a Canadian has a better chance of visiting outer space than earning an MP's pension as an Alberta Liberal. The last to serve three terms left office 19 years ago. READ MORE
Robert Peary’s wife had given him a handmade flag to carry on his last expedition in 1906 when he claimed to discover the North Pole. Peary died in 1920 but left a written account of the map’s location in a cairn at Cape Columbia overlooking the Arctic Ocean. Hidden in the cairn was a rusted tin with a perfectly preserved remnant of the flag the size of a handkerchief. Later we gave it to Peary’s widow. We made other finds that year: tins of fruitcake from an 1875 British expedition, and letters addressed to Amundsen left behind by a Danish team in 1920. And we began the work of mapping the Canadian Arctic.
