In 1881, a religious leader named Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Fahal proclaimed himself the Mahdi in Sudan, rallying thousands under a green banner and defeating Egyptian forces sent to suppress him. As British interests in Egypt grew following c...

Canada will be bankrupt in five years, just like Madagascar, Greece, etc. Countries don’t actually go bankrupt, but there will no longer be any investors who will want to buy our worthless government debt, whatever the return on investment. The Libe...

Talking about heat traps, have you seen the news reports about cage/coffin homes in Hong Kong? For some $320 a month, you can rent a subdivided space about four feet by four feet (15 sq. ft.) in the world’s most expensive property market with n...

Some of you may remember that I wrote a blog back in February about historical fiction vs non-fiction works (Are Readers feeling cheated?) and how it is important to differentiate between the two and for authors to be honest with the reader. The Sal...

Over the last twenty years, Canadian governments (federal, provincial, and municipal) have overspent on programs that were unnecessary and in many cases quite unjustified. Today, there is not one fiscally responsible government in the entire country...

England and Portugal invented free trade in 1703 with the Methuen Treaty: English woolen goods were exchanged for port wine. It was a hugely successful military and commercial agreement for much of the 18th century. Then there was the Canadian–Americ...

What does the term ‘historical fiction’ mean? Are the stories made up or are they real? We know that readers enjoy true stories based on real characters. Historical fiction is usually just that: true stories based on historical facts with elements t...

“Many of Napoleon’s biographers have mentioned that he […] used to carry about a certain number of favorite books wherever he went, whether traveling or camping,” says an 1885 Sacramento Daily Union article posted by Austin Kleon, “but it is not gene...

The controversial PBS documentary which suggests that the SS Mount Temple was the “mystery ship” seen near the Titanic during its sinking, has set the cat among the pigeons. The passengers reported seeing a light shining across the ice field from a p...

In recent weeks the President-Elect Trump has shown himself to be certifiably insane. Just like Mad King George who was crowned in 1762 and went on to lose the 13 colonies in the American War of Independence. His ravings about attacking Panama, seizi...

In recent months we have heard about the debt crisis spreading across the democratic nations of Europe and North America. Britain and France again woke up to huge budget deficits and an unsustainable debt level this year. In Britain, the government c...

I recently saw an interesting article the other day in the Journal de Québec about the famous rock slide that occurred in Quebec City on September 19, 1889, after a day of heavy rain. An overhanging piece of slate rock broke off from Cap Diamant just...

"Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall' is a startling achievement, a brilliant historical novel focused on the rise to power of a figure exceedingly unlikely, on the face of things, to arouse any sympathy at all,” wrote Stephen Greenblatt in the New York Revie...

The province of Quebec has never been a unilingual country. Under the French regime, not everybody chose to speak in French. The French settlers were surrounded by English traders and Indian tribes who spoke numerous languages including Abenaki, Alg...

The New Portneuf Bridge - The Fourth linkIn March, 2024, the Francis Scott Key Bridge across the Patapsco River near Baltimore collapsed after the container ship Dali struck one of its piers. The disaster affected more than 8,000 jobs in Maryland and...