The Trojan War without Homer was nothing more than a battle over trade routes.

Canada is like several puzzles that we are all working on at the same time. Everyone has a part to add, but no one has seen the whole picture yet.

Certainty is usually a sign of pathology.

If our dreams can last, then we could turn our time and place to gold.

Here I find a puzzle of great beauty: Canada works well in practice, but just doesn't work out in theory.

We have to learn how to contact one another over an enormous land space, across five-and-a-half time zones, in what as once a wilderness of scattered settlements, in what is now a sprawl of suburban edge cities and satellite towns. Technology forges connections and disconnections here.

Electrical fire and the fire of greed kindle economies. In that flux, nations become digitized commodities on stock-exchange floors and on investors' rating screens. A country becomes a product to be rated for its obedience to paying of deficits and debts.