Alex Carrick’s Blog

What’s with the Canadian obsession for categorizing our artists according to numbers? There is the Group of Seven, Painters 11 and the Regina Five, for starters. We’re not the only nation to do this. The Americans had The Eight and I am sure that there are many other examples around the world. However, we may be unique in not being able to count.

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This blog entry comes under the category of fascinating life stories. There are those among us who truly are compulsive and obsessive and others who think we might be. Whenever I start to go down this path, I remember the example of Caravaggio. There was a man who truly “lost his head” over a single […]

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Yesterday, I talked about how the U.S. has become obsessed with voting. The two most obvious examples are in terms of politics and polling. But voting has also taken over the broadcast airwaves through another medium, TV reality shows.

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The United States has become the all-voting, all-the-time nation. Furthermore, this is now taking several forms, from the traditional ballot casting and frontrunner polls, through casting off participants in TV reality shows, and on to the notion that certain kinds of gambling can be interpreted as a variety of voting.

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My wife and I argued over a plant tonight and it isn’t even our plant. During our usual de-briefing after a busy day, she told me the following story about her workplace that I think will resonate with many readers. I am changing most of the names to protect the innocent and this is, truly, […]

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The day I have been dreading has finally arrived. Yesterday, a flyer arrived in the mail from the City of Toronto requiring the Carrick family to decide about our future garbage handling requirements. Specifically, we have to choose the size of bins we will need and the resulting extra charge this will entail.

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Faced with the rapid changes brought about by computers and the Internet, one can easily be fooled into thinking that leaps in technology are something new in the course of human events. In actual fact, there have been similar seismic shifts throughout history. These have often come in the area of military advances, to gain […]

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Looking for a “big gulp” experience? Fill up your gas guzzler. With gasoline at $1.20 per litre in Canada, it can bring a lump to your throat and tears to your eyes.   Yesterday, the Bank of Canada concluded that the Canadian economy is facing a difficult time over the next two years. In an […]

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There is a new fact of life that we have to deal with in the U.S. and Canada. That new reality is high world commodity prices. These are having a tremendous impact on costs and pricing, resource investment and currency values.

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In Jeopardy game-show fashion, the recent woes of Eliot Spitzer give rise to the following answer, “Only one, the Governor of New York.” But what are the six questions?

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