“Kim Campbell… named by the National Geographic Society as one of history’s 50 ‘most important’ political leaders…. on a list … in a new reference book – the Almanac of World History, recently published by the society … ‘It’s ridiculous,’ says Michael Bliss… But … ‘Given that there have not been that many females who have led nations, we chose to include her,’ says Jane Sunderland, a project manager at the Washington D.C.-based society, who says she ‘stands by the choice’ of the book’s authors.… ‘I don’t think Kim Campbell should even make a list of great Canadian leaders,’ he [James Marsh, editor-in-chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia] says. ‘She was the first and only (female) prime minister of Canada – and that’s stretching her accomplishments to the limit.’… the Almanac says nothing about her legacy except that she is a woman…. The top 50 world leaders, according to the Almanac of World History, in alphabetical order: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) Atilla the Hun (ca 406-453) Benazir Bhutto (1953 -) Bilqis, The Queen of Sheba (10th Century BC) Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) Kim Campbell (1947 -) Catherine de Medicis (1519-1589) Catherine the Great (1729-1796) Charlemagne (742-814) Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Cleopatra (69-30 BC) Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Fu Hsi (2900 BC) Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) Genghis Khan (ca 1162-1227) Hannibal (247-183 BC) Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989) Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) Empress Jingo (ca 169-269) Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) John Kennedy (1917-1963) William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-1891) Nelson Mandela (1918 -) Moctezuma I (reigned 1440-1469) Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) Nero (A.D. 37-68) Pericles (ca 495-429 BC) Eva Peron (1919-1952) Chief Pontiac (ca 1720-1769) Ramses II (reigned 1304-1237 BC) Romulus (753 BC) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) Shanakdakhete (reigned 177-155 BC) Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Raden Suharto (1921 -) Suleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566) Margaret Thatcher (1925 -) Getulio Vargas (1883-1954) Queen Victoria (1819-1901) George Washington (1732-1799) William the Conquerer (ca 1028-1087) Mao Zedong (1893-1976)”

Ottawa Citizen April 10, 2004

In my latest Epoch Times column I say that instead of redoubling our fury at our partisan foes in the wake of a very narrow brush with disastrous chaos, we might all take a minute to improve the tone of our own thoughts and words.

In my latest Epoch Times column I started by asking why the new British cabinet was so small and ended up explaining why it was so large.

In my latest Epoch Times column I ask how even Canada’s Department of National Defence, or lack of same, can be baffled at what it takes to make a standard 155mm artillery shell.

“Will you permit the sacred fire of liberty, brought by your fathers from the venerable temples of Britain, to be quenched and trodden out on the simple altars they have raised?”

Joseph Howe [in appealing to a jury Halifax in 1835 to acquit him on libel charges because what he’d published was true even though at that time truth was not a defence in British law, which they did, thus engaging in “jury nullification” to uphold that liberty] in Dennis Gruending, ed., Great Canadian Speeches

In my latest Mercatornet column I ask how the United States, of all places, could have become vulnerable to tyranny.

In a talk to the Augustine College Summer Seminar I argued that the American Revolution brought liberty and prosperity because it looked back to the solid foundations of Magna Carta, Christianity and the Western tradition, while the French Revolution brought misery and death because it looked forward to a utopian future unconstrained by the past.

“Cromwell was about to ravage the whole of Christendom; the royal family was lost and his own set for ever in power, but for a little grain of sand getting into his bladder. Even Rome was about to tremble beneath him. But, with this bit of gravel once there, he died, his family fell into disgrace, peace reigned and the king was restored.”

Pascal Pensées