Letters-to-the-Editor

Here are four letters that I have submitted to various newspapers in North America. Two of them were published. Which two?


Tuesday, December 12, 2006


To Whom It May Concern:

I see Mr. Nagy is at it again. High atop his perch on the stool in the corner he adjusts his cap and turns his dyspeptic gaze once more on the SIJHL and proceeds to rain down opprobrium on this vibrant and growing local junior hockey league.

I’m not sure what Mr. Nagy’s problem is. He apparently does not read the wonderful dispatches from the fine cohort of sports reporters sent to cover the leagues many games. Perhaps the enthusiasm and all round excellent work his sports reporters bring to their coverage of this improving league for young men in Thunder Bay and district is beyond his limited and myopic view. Perhaps he is one of those unfortunate, misguided individuals who find it distasteful to say anything positive or encouraging about a home grown product.

That the SIJHL is thriving despite Mr. Nagy’s unrelenting negativity is a testament to the resilience of the league and/or a telling commentary on the feckless influence Nagy has in the local sports community.


Tuesday, July 3, 2007


Dear Editor:

Today’s column by David Brooks “Ending the Farce” is beyond the pale, especially when this exemplar in partisan bull twaddle is compared to the far more judicious, reality-based editorial “Soft on Crime.”

You just know that Brooks has been imbibing the Republican Kool-Aid too long when he can type a sentence of exquisite irony “President Bush entered the stage like a character from another world, a world in which things make sense.”

Brooks, at least, got half that sentence right: Bush is from another world – a world no sentient human being is aware of or has ever visited.


Saturday, January 12, 2008

Dear Editor:

I just finished watching the Detroit/Ottawa game and I wonder if anyone else in this city is thinking what I’m thinking? Why, oh, why must we endure the lousy play of a decidedly mediocre (I’m being awfully generous here) team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, every single Saturday night during the regular NHL season? What happened to giving us the hapless Leafs every second weekend, and now that we have the excellent Ottawa Senators, why don’t we watch the Leaf train wreck every third week? Montreal fans would really appreciate seeing their team and listening to an English version of their games and Toronto fans will only have to hyperventilate and do whatever it is they do while the Leafs lose another one every three weeks.

It would seem to be a no brainer to me. Hockey fans, like me, would not have to put up with the constant soap opera-like atmosphere that permeates every Leaf game. To wit: they’re fragile (what are they, the ice capades?); they have to trade Sundin and anyone else of value (that would be Kaberle; that’s about it).

Tonight’s game, supposedly the marquee game of this NHL season was a case in point. After the first period we had to endure the relentless stupidity of Don Cherry and his pet monkey say nothing about what had transpired in the first period, but Cherry assured the Leaf nation that Curtis Joseph was on his way back to Toronto and ‘he would be our saviour.’ The second intermission had the hot stove league brainiacs talking exclusively about the Leafs’ myriad problems and how Scotty Bowman is just the saviour that the Leaf front office needs. Two saviours in two intermissions. Thank God almighty I can reserve my patch of pavement on Yonge Street for, you know, THE PARADE.

So there you have it, hockey fans. Apparently there was a hockey game tonight between the two best teams in the league, and all the babbling bobble heads could talk about was… you guessed it, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Friday, December 15, 2006


Dear Editor:

Oh, the richness of the ironies that abound in today’s column by Dr. Krauthammer (“In Baker’s Blunder, A Chance For Bush”). That Krauthammer believes that some how, some way President Bush will recommend ‘something new and bold’ is astounding on its face.

While the doctor is not incorrect in his assessment of the feckless impact of the Iraq Study Group, he is still inhaling the same vapours from the president’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of fantasy gas. He accuses the commission of not attempting to come up with a plan for success in Iraq – and the president has? But the ironies keep getting better. In the next paragraph the good doctor opines that the report has an ‘air of detachment from reality.’ Really? Where has he been for the last six years?

I would humbly suggest that Charles Krauthammer has been on the Kool Aid drip far too long as evidenced by his tenacious, albeit misguided, support for a president whose predilection for screwing everything up remains fundamentally unchanged and, for this columnist, unchallenged.