Cam Guthrie

By:
On:
In: Other writing, Words

I have family members in four different countries, and they are all a mess. Not the family members, the countries. Or three of them. I don’t pay very much attention to Australia. One of my nieces is there on a student visa that runs out soon. She’s nearly finished a PhD in some electrical engineering thing and will be coming home to Canada before too long. It’s the other three countries I worry about. Canada, the United States, and not-so-Great-these-days Britain. They are all run by people who pretend to work for the citizens but really do the opposite. Whatever they do to make thingsRead More →

By:
On:
In: Other writing, Words

On Christmas Eve, Lynne and I watched the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. It’s something we try to do every year. It is based on a novel Charles Dickens wrote in 1843 and has a lot to do with poverty. Early in the story, a pair of bleeding-heart liberals come to Ebenezer Scrooge’s office raising money for poverty relief. Are there no prisons? Scrooge asks. Are there no workhouses? He sends them away empty-handed. Later, the Ghost of Christmas Present shows him two starving children. The boy is Ignorance, the ghost tells Scrooge, and the girl is Want. Society should beware them both,Read More →

By:
On:
In: Other writing, Words

With less than two weeks left until the City Council election we see some ballot box issues crystallizing. These are the issues that candidates hope will be front of mind when you stand at the ballot box on October 22. Let’s look at some of them. Experience Should this be a deciding factor in our choice of Mayor? Experience on Council is important, but so is real life experience outside city hall. Managing the city is not in the Mayor’s job description. The Mayor chairs meetings and leads the governance process. City Council hires a Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to manage the city. The CAORead More →

By:
On:
In: Other writing, Words

In 2016 Cam Guthrie gave some advice to students. People who experience racism or extreme prejudice, he said, should never play the victim card. He would know. As an English-speaking white male with a background in insurance sales, racism would have touched his life in countless ways, wouldn’t it? This wisdom was shared in an interview with the campus newspaper The Ontarion after completing his first year in the mayor’s office. Now, three years later, he ought to take a long look at himself. He is busily playing the victim card as he runs for re-election. He played it a couple of times at theRead More →