Dame Helen Mirren as the next Doctor!

I live in Ashcroft, British Columbia, and on July 6 a small fire (cause unknown) started just south of town. By Friday afternoon the village was under evacuation alert; we had lost all power, phones, cell service (except where I live in a subdivision above town), and Internet. The fire swept north across tinder-dry…

No one is currently punching it?

It's not even 9 a.m. here, and now I want potato salad.

I think it's Groban's 'Go f*ck yourself' comment. Apparently Hannity thinks that's what incest is.

Our teenage son got a small loan from his father and me when he got a job 450km north of here last year and had to suddenly get an apartment, furnish it, buy all those things you take for granted at home (tableware, bedding, towels, cutlery, lamps, etc.), rent a Uhaul trailer to get his stuff up there, pay a damage…

'All those kids drinking lead-poisoned water will be much more likely to vote Republican IF they grow up.'

Canada already is. Last month Chrystia Freeland, our Foreign Minister, gave an extraordinary address in Parliament about Canada's need to look after itself.

Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation (i.e. Great Britain saying 'Okay, we're cool, you're your own country and all, more or less') happened on July 1. I'm old enough to remember when Canada Day was Dominion Day (since in 1867 we became a British Dominion).

The first Doctor is my favourite of old Who. I haven't been keeping up with the Capaldi series, but my son has, and he recorded the last minute or so of tonight's episode and sent it to me on FB a few minutes ago while he was on the phone with me, saying 'You have to watch this while I'm on the phone.' As soon as I…

Why is it that when people post links here they taper off into ellipses, and when I click on the link I get a 'Server not found' message?

As a professional editor, just the thought of trying to edit any of Trump's word salads into comprehensible English gives me a headache. There are not enough em-dashes in the world.

Thank you, Gwen, for the All About Eve party; that's the one that leapt to mind.

Another anglophile here, and I'm sure it was the Paddington books that started me down that road. I made my first visit to England when I was 17; and yes, I went to the Portobello Road Market.

I loved these books when I was a child, and read them over and over. Growing up on the west coast of Canada, they were an enchanting window into the foreign (to me) world of middle-class England after the war. I wanted to have a friend like Mr. Gruber, and have iced buns and cocoa, and wander Portobello Road.

For the same reason that the 'save' icon on a computer looks like a floppy disk, or the phone icon on a iPhone looks like an old-fashioned handset: tradition (plus old habits are hard to break).

'Now would be a good time to practice our horrendous British accents.'

That is one of my favourite catchphrases, much used when something or someone annoying or bothersome finally goes away.

Lt. Arthur Peuchen was one male survivor whose reputation suffered after the Titanic sank. He was Vice-Commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club and (not surprisingly) owned his own yacht, so knew something about boats. On the night of the sinking he saw that Lifeboat 6, which contained Molly Brown, was undermanned,…

I agree that we were lucky to bring in universal health care when we did (it also probably helps that we have historically had about one-tenth the population the U.S. does). The ties to Great Britain probably helped a bit, as well; Britain adopted National Health in the 1940s.