It had appeared, in the summer of 1987, that Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative federal government was headed for one of the worst defeats in Canadian political history. In many of the 1986 and 1987 polls, the federal P.C. party stood at about a quarter of committed popular support, behind both the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada’s social democrats. Indeed, the NDP had temporarily surged into first place. Despite the early hopes placed on him, and his overwhelming majority (won in 1984), Brian […]

These are memories of a happier time in East-Central Europe, twenty years ago. Poland is a country where the fashion sense and interest in cosmetology of many women is perhaps the third-highest in Europe (after France and Italy). Already during the later Communist era, it was said that women in Poland’s large cities would adopt the fashions of Paris a few days after their appearance in the West. Also, many Polish women tend to visit their “kosmetyczka” (cosmetician) at the beauty salon or aesthetics center […]

Author’s Introduction (2023): I would like to present to the readers a text whose initial drafts go back to around October 1985. Among the aspects of the text I have decided to maintain are considerable polemical and combative elements, because trying to excise them would lose a lot of the flavor of the writing. The text was written from a feeling of deep alienation and loneliness, at a time when Canada was definitely NOT sharing in the spirit of what was then called “the Reagan/Thatcher […]

(The earliest drafts of this essay go back to the early 1980s.) This essay will endeavor to offer a short yet cogent definition of Western traditionalism (or conservatism). Surely, persons who are conservative-leaning should try to delineate and define what separates them from Communism, from Nazism and fascism, and from liberalism and left-liberalism, in all their myriad forms. A positive step would be to call all those persons who are traditionally-minded back to their first principles. Left-liberalism, liberalism, Communism, and Nazism can all be seen […]

Author’s Foreword (2023) The following essay arose out of a presentation to a ginger group the author belonged to at the time, which took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on December 16, 1988. The starting point of the discussion was the theme “Tories vs. Whigs”. These were rather unhappy times for the author. Before the Internet, living as a conservative and traditionalist in a megapolitan metropolis like Toronto, one often almost felt (as Orwell had put it) that the only things that belonged to you […]

A survey of conservative publications in Canada tells a sorry tale of short-lived efforts lacking the ideological coherence and material support necessary to make a significant impact. Any group of conservative writers and thinkers needs to be aware of the struggles of those who have gone before and to learn, if possible, from their mistakes. One of the most well-known quotations by Conrad Black concerns his promise (or threat) to establish a publication in Canada which would be a “National Review North.” Although Lord Black […]