To be in Florence is to reflect on Europe's intricate diversity - and its lost creativity.

Canadians tend to be a bit more religious than most Europeans - though not more than the Poles or Ukrainians. Most important, their attitude to immigration and ethnic minorities is more positive than that of most Europeans.

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.

The Eurozone has clearly gone spectacularly wrong, pulling down all the continental economies.

The main problem with American power is not that it is American... No, the main problem with American power is the power itself. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power.

Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.

If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you.