If Monday’s slow at work, feel free to check out two outside projects from your Inkless servant. In this month’s Literary Review of Canada, I review John English’s new Trudeau biography. (The review opens with a hilarious extended riff about what we really need is a new Robert Borden biography. Thigh-slapper! One problem: As he hastens to point out in a rebuttal in the print edition, John English already wrote a Borden biography. Whoopsie.) Over on CPAC, last week I interviewed Ben Rowswell, the current Representative of Canada in Kandahar, in preparation for the big Coyne-Wells extravaganza in Halifax next week. This interview amounts to my debut as a teevee host, rather than just a guest. You can survey the wreckage over here.

I hear some readers are interested in those parts of the world that aren’t hosted or commented-on by me. Hard to believe, but if it’s so, you will want to check out the new blog at our sister publication l’Actualité, written by none other than Jean-François Lisée. Lisée was a reporter for the same magazine in 1994 when Jacques Parizeau was elected, and promptly amazed everyone by becoming Parizeau’s senior strategic advisor in the run-up to the secession referendum. I’ve long believed (it was the subject of my first article for Saturday Night) that Parizeau was a far more dangerous opponent for federalists than Lucien Bouchard was, and Lisée had imagination Parizeau lacked, thus making him even more formidable. But it’s not just because I’m on the other side of that debate that I’m glad Lisée has returned to (a kind of) journalism. It’s a good blog, with entries on Trudeau’s sex life, a rather delicious feud between Denise Bombardier and Pierre Foglia, and a review of John Parisella’s George W. Bush interview last week. Lisée accomplishes the first task of a blogger: he posts frequently. And in Chantal Hébert, he has excellent blogging company. Go check ‘em out if you are, or would like to become, fluent in the tongue of Molière.