Features

  To paraphrase Gordon Lightfoot, “There was a time in this fair land when the railroads were well run.”  But no more – at least to hear their customers tell it.   Shippers are screaming at Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific (CP) for not providing what they deem an adequate supply of empty cars and delivering the loaded cars ...

  It is often said, a picture is worth a thousand words and the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope did not disappoint. During the news conference on July 12, the world had a ringside seat to the most remarkable images of the universe ever taken. Over the hour, five images left us wanting more. This is only ...

For the most part, this past February 15 seemed like any ordinary day. We recognized Flag Day as the Canadian maple leaf that was first raised in Ottawa in 1965. But things played out differently on the surface of the sun with a huge explosion known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) into space. The good news for us, this ...

Looking back to 2021, there were many great space stories in the news including two lunar eclipses back in May and November. By coincidence, two more total lunar eclipses will occur in May and November 2022. We were also entertained by three great meteor showers in January, August and December but the moon ran major interference. The Northern Lights were ...

Beware of Canadian railway wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Two have been circling the Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS) since early 2021 and one is now getting ready to dine – it thinks.   The two northern wolves are our transcontinental railways, Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National (CN).  In their prime, both were powerhouses that spanned Canada, served U.S. border ...

  As the sun sets in the west, the sky slowly turns pastel shades from light to dark blue. This is my favourite time of evening as the brighter stars and planets begin to reveal themselves. Over the next twenty minutes, more tiny dots emerge like celestial popcorn. About an hour after sunset, the sky is full of stars as ...

It may seem odd to share with Northern Ontarians a recent article I wrote for the Toronto Star about a transportation agency in Southern Ontario.  But the reasons are many and my concern from a northern viewpoint is extreme because this politically-driven juggernaut has been expanding its empire out of sight – with billions of our tax dollars – through ...

Canada’s freight railways and its publicly-owned passenger carrier, VIA Rail, have never been in worse shape, despite the frantic efforts of their flacks to tell us the opposite.  But have no fear.  The Trudeau government has come up with a brilliant plan to fix this mess:  Loan $4.5 billion to Senegal to build a new double-track railway.   The economic, ...

Transportation injustice comes in two flavours in Ontario:  federal and provincial.  The latter is more recent, but it’s just as sour.   The federal vandalization of Ontario’s rail service has been going on for decades, all the way back to the 1940s when Liberal cabinet minister C.D. Howe dropped all concern about the health of our railways in favour of ...

July and August are typically deemed the hottest months of the year in Canada. Nights can be warm and sultry making it difficult to sleep without air conditioning.  A term that you might have heard to describe this season of heat is the “Dog Days of Summer”. It begins in the first week of July and could last a couple ...

Age, maturity and experience eventually bring the realization that some things in this life simply aren’t just or fair.  But that doesn’t mean surrendering to injustice without speaking out and pushing back.  Such is the case with the destruction of Northern Ontario’s rail passenger service.   For more than half-a-century, successive federal governments have committed transportation vandalism across Northern Ontario.  ...

Turn back time to 230 million years ago when dinosaurs began roaming the earth. Some only relied on a plant-based diet while others were meat-eaters. For a long period, they ruled the lands beneath their feet, never knowing a different world displayed above their heads we call the cosmos. Imagine how dark the starry sky must have looked back then ...

      A group of self-proclaimed advocates is demanding the government immediately restore Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) passenger service, have that publicly-funded agency buy CN’s Algoma Central line from Sault Ste. Marie to Hearst, restore the passenger train on that line and push a private freight operator off the Sudbury-Soo line.  These grand pronouncements are in their submission to ...

Vic Fedeli has dug himself into a pit with endless promises to restore Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) passenger service “before the next election.”  He’s now appealing for help from Liberal Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota.  Politics, passenger trains, and ill-advised promises make strange bedfellows.   The good news is MP Anthony Rota has offered to assist the ...

Frank magazine employed an effective and evocative word when reporting on dubious political statements back in its heyday:  nose stretchers.   What’s a nose stretcher?  Think of Pinocchio when he told tall tales.  Think of actor Leslie Nielsen in the movie, Airplane, whose proboscis grew each time he uttered soothing words to calm the frightened passengers without regard for the ...