Having watched the initiation of Donald J. Trump it was difficult not to have perceived the distinctly theatrical nature of the enterprise. With its ornaments of sound, architecture and fame, the proceedings were – that is, until the singing of America the Beautiful – perfectly executed and imaginable. The malfunctioning of the recording to back Underwood’s singing instantly deflated the ceremony and poignantly reversed the grand theatrical pomp to the common allure of a child school production. It was a reminder of inescapable reality even at the behest of what Trump called the best country in the world (an assertion as implausible as its World Series baseball).

Continue reading →

Never before have I felt as uncomfortable as I do now about the difference between being American or Canadian.  This is not to suggest there are not differences. Those differences are historically both expected and tolerated, as well they should be in different countries. But a peculiar shard of indifference has come between us, an unforeseen detachment. When I was a child living in Washington DC my family enjoyed an enviable experience there. When I was 14 years old at boarding school I recall boys being summoned by the Headmaster to assemble in chapel to mourn news of the assassination of JFK.  When I began practicing law and learned the horror of the collapse of the World Trade Centre, I was speechless with remorse.  When I retired and for the next decade spent 6 months each year in the United States of America I cherished those experiences and the people there whom I met and befriended. Throughout that time, covering a breadth of 70 years, I have always felt that the United States of America and Canada were collaborative neighbours much the way members of a family unite even in moments of disagreement.

Continue reading →

In the hurtle that is life it is not uncommon to overlook what we owe to those whom we’ve met along this sometimes uncontrollable passage. While driving home this wintry day today on my customary route in the country, my mind was unaccountably overtaken by memories in the snow many years ago at Mont Tremblant, Québec with my friends Ian and Pierre.

Continue reading →

The word oligarch derives from early 17th century: from Greek oligarkhēs, from oligoi ‘few’ + arkhein ‘to rule’.  It is frequently acquainted with “a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence”.  On the eve of the inauguration of the next president of the United States of America, the prospect of an oligarchical rule is far from unimaginable.  As such there are those who delight in deriding the upcoming government much in the way portrayed in the featured image. H. L. Mencken gave little credit to democracy (a subject which lately has been a theme of current American affairs).

Continue reading →

Talk about encroachment upon boundaries! As if it weren’t already bad enough that TikTok is being defamed and flayed in the Supreme Court of the United States as China’s usurper of American teenage passwords for future surreptitious purposes, I learned today that my erstwhile favourite corner store sweet Cherry Blossom is imperilled. Even more disheartening is the company officials offered no reason for the evacuation. It resonates with all the platitudes surrounding the condemnation of tobacco smoking!  Yet another cause for a freedom march.

Cherry Blossom, a mainstay of Canadian candy store shelves for decades, will soon disappear as Hershey Canada has decided to no halt production.

Never having been an habitual candy buyer, whenever I succumbed to the toxic temptation in the field house tuck shop at boarding school following afternoon football practice, Cherry Blossom was the sweet I counted on for delivery. It was unrepentant sugar.

Cherry Blossom was first produced in the 1890s by the Lowney Company’s Canadian subsidiary before a series of acquisitions eventually landed it in the hands of Hershey Canada in the late 1980s.

“Known for its signature combination of maraschino cherry, roasted peanuts, and chocolate coating, this Canadian confectionery icon has created sweet memories for generations of fans,” a spokesperson tells CityNews.

The Walter M. Lowney Company,  an American candy and chocolate manufacturer, created the Cherry Blossom in the 1890s and eventually opened a factory in Quebec.

Operations were eventually taken over by Hershey Canada in the 1980s, with the candies being manufactured in one of its plants in Smiths Falls, near Kingston, until it closed in 2008.

It is for me yet one more instance of serendipity in my life that the syrupy sweet was manufactured in the little known Town of Smiths Falls in the same County of Lanark where I ended practicing law for my entire career.

After an apprenticeship to a Lancaster confectioner in 1873, Milton S. Hershey opened a candy shop in Philadelphia. The venture failed, and so did a subsequent one in Chicago. After a third failed business attempt in New York City, Hershey returned to Pennsylvania, where he founded the Lancaster Caramel Company in 1883. The Hershey Chocolate Company was founded in 1894 as a subsidiary of Lancaster Caramel Company.

Hershey’s chocolate is available in 60 countries. In 1903, Hershey began construction of a chocolate plant in his hometown of Derry Church, Pennsylvania, later known as Hershey, Pennsylvania.

By coincidence many years ago when driving through Pennsylvania en route home from a winter sojourn we passed through the town of Hershey which inspired our curiosity.  We stopped there for lunch in a mountain top hotel by the same name. It has forever left a haunting impression, testament to an age of grandeur long since past.

The success of Hershey is uncommon and quite unanticipated.  It is as much a definition of American entrepreneurial achievement as that of Henry Ford and one more example of the lingering appeal of life in the United States of America. Clearly it pays to be sweet!

In 2024, after 61 years of stock splits, the original 666,316 shares of Hershey common stock received by the Reese family represent 16 million Hershey shares valued at more than $4.4 billion, paying annual cash dividends of $87.6 million.

Having lately wiped that slate clean of all outstanding bureaucratic matters, I find myself this bright sunny morning attired in comfortable freshly laundered clothing, satisfied after a nutritious and delicious breakfast, staring at the narrow, winding and unfrozen surface of the shadowy river. The slanting southwesterly sunshine contrasts the dark river with the blinding white snow on the shoreline and adjacent fields. As my eyes wander northward into the agricultural fields beyond the glassy river trail, it is universally a subdued image of static denuded trees and faint parallel lines beneath the snow in the harrowed rolling hills beyond.

Continue reading →

Once again this morning I promptly arose from my overnight lair at 8:30 am.  This early morning repeat activity has become a ritual only of late as I prepare to address various outstanding coincidental and planned commitments or undertakings, all of which have thankfully concluded as of today. Until today the focus has been upon fulfilling whatever might arise or possibly be required of a general nature before we abandon our roost for a barrier island along the North Atlantic coast.

Continue reading →

“We find this great precept often repeated in Plato, “Do thine own work, and know thyself.” Of which two parts, both the one and the other generally, comprehend our whole duty, and do each of them in like manner involve the other; for who will do his own work aright will find that his first lesson is to know what he is, and that which is proper to himself; and who rightly understands himself will never mistake another man’s work for his own, but will love and improve himself above all other things, will refuse superfluous employments, and reject all unprofitable thoughts and propositions. As folly, on the one side, though it should enjoy all it desire, would notwithstanding never be content, so, on the other, wisdom, acquiescing in the present, is never dissatisfied with itself. —[Cicero, Tusc. Quae., 57, v. 18.]—Epicurus dispenses his sages from all foresight and care of the future.”

Excerpt From
The Essays of Montaigne — Complete
Michel de Montaigne

Continue reading →

In spite of having done very little of consequence today, for some inexplicable reason I feel as though I have accomplished a great deal.  This, by the way, includes an afternoon snooze during which I slept uncommonly soundly for at least an hour. But when I awoke, it was without reluctance that I immediately re-engaged in my day of indolence and irrelevance.

Continue reading →

As a student of philosophy (it was my undergraduate major) I am conditioned to an immediate interest in “the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence” or what some people feel disposed to call bullshit.  And, who knows, they might be correct. On balance however I find there is a confusion arising between the two poles of characterization.  What on the one hand is misinterpreted as flamboyant language and impossible projections is on the other hand (my hand, for example) regarded not so much as insight or truths; rather the exercise is, firstly, purely cathartic (in which case the outcome is irrelevant) and, secondly, an exercise in logic (in which case the outcome is no more determinative than winning a high-school debate). Recognizing that so much of logic depends upon the major and minor premises assures that whatever ensues, the outcome will depend upon the quality and nature of the input.

Continue reading →