Canada, Land of Zero Tebows
By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - 0 Comments
(Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)
Tim Tebow. Say what you want about the man, and you will, but he is good copy. I got into a Tebow discussion the other day on Twitter after I started wishing aloud that he would come to Edmonton and save our CFL Eskimos from the wretched, dare I say almost Rider-like, state into which they have fallen. I was not really being serious. Well, OK: maybe ten percent serious.
About a year ago our genius general manager Eric Tillman decided to risk all on one turn of pitch-and-toss and trade our longtime quarterback, Ricky Ray, for magic beans from a passing pedlar. This decision was second-, third-, and nth-guessed at the time, and it was, we now know, rabidly opposed by head coach Kavis Reed. Ray does not throw the ball very far, or in an especially conventional way, but he has supreme accuracy statistics and had won two Grey Cups in Edmonton with pretty underwhelming teams. (The once-proud Eskies have not had a 12-win season yet in this century.)
Ray was divisive, though, Lordy, not Tebow divisive. But the trade united the city in agreement that the return was disappointing, and the unfolding of the Esks’ 7-11 season emphasized this in an especially brutal way. Continue…
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Good news … bad news
By macleans.ca - Sunday, November 11, 2012 at 5:20 AM - 0 Comments
On the case…
With the province still reeling from the tragic suicide of bullied
MICHEL VIATTEAU/AFP/Getty Images
On the case
With the province still reeling from the tragic suicide of bullied teenager Amanda Todd, the RCMP in British Columbia has responded with its own emotional YouTube video. Entitled “It Gets Better,” the nine-minute clip includes candid interviews with 20 Mounties discussing their experiences growing up gay—the ridicule, the confusion and the good days that eventually came. “I can absolutely tell you,” says one officer, “that it gets better.” Adds another: “Things get way better.” As public service announcements go, it doesn’t get much better.
Enriched relationship
After a two-year impasse, Ottawa has settled a key trade deal that will allow Canadian firms to sell nuclear technology to India. During his state visit to New Delhi, Stephen Harper announced that long-standing concerns about monitoring India’s use of Canadian uranium have been resolved. The feds had every reason to be cautious; in 1976, India used Canadian nuclear materials to test its first nuclear bomb. But any fallout from that dispute is long settled, and Canada now believes India—desperate for new sources of energy and overseen by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency—will act responsibly. Continue…
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Will we be safer?
By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, December 13, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 9 Comments
Strict new legislation will ensure every sex offender is put on a federal registry
Tillman’s name would have been registered under the new rules despite the fact that the prosecutor didn’t ask for a registration order | Troy Fleece/CP
Eighteen months ago, the federal government promised to finally fix Canada’s dysfunctional sex-offender registry. At the heart of the proposed legislation was a “mandatory inclusion” rule, ensuring that every person guilty of a sex crime actually ends up on the database. No exceptions. No excuses.
But eighteen months later, as Bill S-2 slowly works its way through Parliament, the status quo stands in the courts: a prosecutor must still ask a judge to add a rapist or pedophile to the registry—and some judges are still refusing. Like in the case of J.W., a Nova Scotia man sentenced to 15 months probation for pinning his girlfriend against a wall and tearing off her clothes. The Crown wanted him registered, but J.W. told the court he was planning to enlist in the military after serving his sentence, and that checking in with police on a regular basis would be tricky.
