Fly Straight
...and that has nothing to do with what goes on in your underwear
Why here, why now?
It's fair to say that I'm not an early adopter - a journalist for 35 years, I'm like a typewriter in a iPhone world. But I feel the need to change the way I do journalism and that's why I'm here on something called Substack that I don’t really understand yet.
Journalism has changed beyond recognition over three decades but in some ways it remains a very top down, pedagogic process, where I write whatever is on my mind in splendid isolation from my readers, with little reciprocity of ideas. Yet throughout my career, I have found readers often have a better grasp of things than I do - such as the farmer from Steinbach, Manitoba, who compared Canada’s sponsorship scandal to getting moisture in his grain. “You have to throw the whole batch out,” he said.
I chat most days to another farmer in Alberta called Brian Allison, who gives me a very different perspective on Canadian politics and the weather than I have from my perch in the Tropics.
(For any new readers, I am a Scot who emigrated to Canada in 1998 to help launch the National Post and have been covering Canadian politics since 2003. Last year, our family moved to Costa Rica on posting, where my wife is a Canadian diplomat. I quit being Postmedia’s Ottawa bureau chief but remain a columnist with the National Post.)
What can you expect?
I would like to build a little community that discusses the major issues of the day in this age of disruption. I have been attempting to plow a furrow between the intolerant, illiberal left and the noisy, authoritarian populist right. Partisans at the margins have dominated the conversation but I think there is a quiet majority that still holds to the principles of classical Western liberalism, where progress comes from debate and incremental reform; a constituency that is under-represented in our national parties that believes societies are best governed when there is an emphasis on individual rights, open markets and limited government. Hence Fly Straight, which was the advice always offered by the late, great Toronto Star columnist, Jim Travers.
Come on in, the water is fine
I’m not sure yet how this will go but I hope to post here regularly on politics in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and even Central America, which is emerging as one of the front lines in a new Cold War. There will be comment on news, music and sports (by which I mean, of course, football - the one played with feet). I’d like to add video and audio interviews at some point. I want it to be a discussion - tell me about your favourite music and books; your thoughts on politics and our changing world. Every week, I’d hope to spend some time hanging out online and chatting in a respectful fashion that seems to be quite beyond newspaper message-boards and social media.
Subscriptions
This is all free for now. If it grows and I have the capacity to produce quality content then some of it will go behind a paywall for a minimal monthly fee. I realize that money’s too tight to mention and that there are many options out there. But this isn’t my hobby, it’s my livelihood. That said, please subscribe for free and you can judge if it’s worthy of your time.
If that's the Brian Allison I remember, he understands international trade better than many trade lawyers. Canada's farmers have to, out of self-defence
I’ve always enjoyed your articles. I hope this venture will be successful. All the best.