Tag: Featured
Ties that bind at home and abroad
There is more to Belgium than chocolate, beer and diamonds, the country’s new ambassador to Canada, Raoul Delcorde, reminds us. Not only do our countries have commercial links; they are both federal states with more than one official language and they share much history through two world wars. Many Canadian soldiers died on Belgian soil […]
Cuba’s cuisine: tasty and diverse
Last winter, my husband and I flew to Cuba, the Caribbean’s largest country. Located on the northern margins of the region (not far from Southern Florida), the Republic of Cuba consists of one large and several small islands. Basically, half of the large island features flat lands or rolling hills while a more hilly and […]
Poland’s resurgence
“In the resigned faces of the people of Tarnopol, I felt a tragic knowledge I could not quite understand, but which touched me deeply. They knew that the Polish state was crushed. More accurately than all the ‘intelligentsia’ of Warsaw, than my friends with connections, than my highly educated fellow officers, they knew what was […]
Canada and the birth of NATO
On April 4, 1949, Canada and 11 other countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C., to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), its mandate to “safeguard the freedom and security of member countries through political and military means.” After the Second World War, Canada had a strong economy and new confidence. It […]
Drastic decline
The Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index ranks the performance of 180 countries according to a range of criteria that include media pluralism and independence, respect for the safety and freedom of journalists, and the legislative, institutional and infrastructural environment in which the media operate. Top of the list, as so often, are three […]
From autocracy to awakening?
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has captured the world’s attention in the 21st Century. The Arab Spring of 2011 illustrated how dynamic, grass-roots political movements, ignited by discontent and fuelled by social media, can completely transform societies in the blink of an eye. These events (resulting in revolutionary political shifts in places […]
10 dangerous men
What is terrorism? James D. Kiras, an American expert on asymmetrical warfare, describes the term as a “complex phenomenon open to subjective interpretation.” His ambivalent interpretation of the word “terrorism” could be applied to an actor such as Iran and Syria-backed Hezbollah, a militia and political party representing Shia interests in Lebanon. According to the […]
Mobile phones propelling Africa’s renaissance
Africa’s latest renaissance is propelled in substantial part by the remarkable indigenous technological transformation of a hand-held computerized gadget — the mundane mobile telephone — into a powerful instrument for human advancement. Africa pioneered gathering and transmitting merchandizing and market information. More recently, it invented and popularized banking and financial transmission by mobile device. Now […]
Helping after the Philippines’ Typhoon Haiyan
Typhoon Haiyan — the strongest storm ever to hit landfall — ripped through central Philippines in November 2013, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying more than one million homes. More than 14 million people were affected in some way. Typhoon Haiyan left complete devastation in its wake by sweeping away houses, uprooting coconut trees, […]
John Baird: ‘a pragmatic internationalist’
When he became foreign affairs minister in 2011, one of the first things John Baird did was to issue an edict to hang an oversized portrait of the Queen on the main wall of the lobby of the Pearson Building, Foreign Affairs’ headquarters. He also ordered her portrait to be prominently displayed in all of […]
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