This summer I received an email from my friend Bruce Patterson, all-around nice guy and Deputy Chief Herald of Canada, informing me of a new historical and literary review just founded called the Dorchester Review. Intrigued, I obtained a copy and was pleasantly enthralled with what I found. The first issue of the Dorchester Review contained a variety of thoughtful articles on fascinating subjects. I spent an entire morning sitting comfortably on a café sofa and imbibing the intelligent and enlightening contents of the magazine.

The editors did issue a brief statement explaining the genesis of their new review. They had me at their Pieperian first sentence: “The Dorchester Review is founded on the belief that leisure is the basis of culture.”

Just as no one can live without pleasure, no civilized life can be sustained without recourse to that tranquillity in which critical articles and book reviews may be profitably enjoyed. The wisdom and perspective that flow from history, biography, and fiction are essential to the good life. It is not merely that “the record of what men have done in the past and how they have done it is the chief positive guide to present action,” as Belloc put it. Action can be dangerous if not preceded by contemplation that begins in recollection.

The endeavour of reviewing books, the editors acknowledge, has too often been reduced either to brief puff-pieces in the Saturday insert of the local paper or more high-minded but uncritical praise of like-minded academics for one another. “There are too few critical reviews published today, particularly in Canada, and almost none translated from francophone journals for English readers.” As someone with a lifelong love of Quebec, I am relieved that finally there is a review in my own language willing to take Quebec seriously.

“At the Review,” the editors continue, “we shall praise the good books and assail the bad.”

They also forthrightly explain their rejection of the narrow nationalist perspective that has been on the ascendant in Canada throughout the past century, especially since the foundation of The Canadian Forum. The Dorchester Review effectively throws Canada’s doors open to a more reasoned understanding of the country’s relationship with Europe (Britain and France particularly), America, the Commonwealth, and the world.

But the Dorchester Review is not a publication just for Canadians. There is a great deal of Canada in it, but also a great deal of the world. The second issue (just printed) features articles with titles such as “Why Marx is Still (Mostly) Wrong”, “1789: The First Counter-Revolutionaries”, “What Sort of Autocrats Were the Popes?”, “Can Vichy France Be Defended?”, and “The Scots Fight Back” (the last in response to an article in the first issue: “How the English Invented the Scots”).

Contributing editor Chris Champion is interviewed by CBC Radio here. A number of the contributors (Conrad Black, Paul Hollander, etc.) readers of The New Criterion will already be familiar with. The latest number also includes a book review by this, your humble and obedient scribe.

Head over to dorchesterreview.ca to find out more or subscribe.

To be filed under ‘Flags I Never Knew Existed’: the Québécois heraldist Maurice Brodeur designed a flag commemorating the French explorer Jacques Cartier, founder of Quebec and Canada. The banner was designed to hang as an ex-voto in the Memorial Basilica of Christ the King in Gaspé, conceived in the 1920′s as an offering of thanks for the four-hundredth anniversary of the claiming of Canada by Cartier. The Great Depression brought the project to a halt, and the church was finally finished in 1969 as a modernist cathedral in wood — the only wooden cathedral in Catholic North America.

Was the flag ever actually executed? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

The University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto is, so far as I can ascertain, home to the only memorial ‘slype’ in the world, the Soldier’s Memorial Slype. Today being Remembrance Sunday, it was adorned with the old Canadian flags: the Union Jack, the Red Ensign, and the Air Force Ensign. (I can’t quite make out from the photograph whether it’s an RAF ensign or, more likely, an RCAF ensign).

The University of Toronto is, curiously, a university with constituent universities (such as St. Michael’s) within it, something which always confused me even though it’s an increasingly common phenomenon (such as with the National University of Ireland). At U of T, Trinity College (sorry, the University of Trinity College) is generally considered the most trad, but it’s nice to see St. Mike’s, a Catholic institution, being a bit old-school itself.

St. Michael’s College also boasts such illustrious alumni as Marshall McLuhan and Dino Marcantonio.

The Queen’s Personal Flag for Canada (above, top), often informally known as the Canadian Royal Standard, was devised in 1962 (the same year similar banners were created for Australia and New Zealand). Until 2011, the Queen was the only member of the Canadian Royal Family to have a personal flag for Canada, but now she is joined by her son and grandson, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge respectively.

The Prince of Wales’s flag features a blue roundel within a wreath of maple leaves (in contrast to the wreath of roses on the Queen’s standard). Upon the blue roundel is the badge of the Prince of Wales: three feathers, a diadem, and the German motto Ich Dien (‘I Serve’). The three-pointed white label is the traditional heraldic mark of an eldest son.

The Duke of Cambridge’s personal flag also features the white label of an eldest son, defaced with an escallop (seashell) to indicate differentiation from his father. The escallop hails from the Spencer arms, indicating Prince William’s matrilineal descent. The wreath is of maple leaves and seashells, and the roundel features a ‘W’ monogram surmounted by a coronet.

« Les fondements de notre civilisation occidentale sont chrétiens ; le respect du christianisme est une condition sine qua non d’une droite qui veut conserver non seulement la prospérité économique, mais ce qui est au fondement de toute prospérité durable : le souci du bien commun, le respect de la loi naturelle, le sens de la justice. »

The latest issue of Égards, the premier journal of traditional conservatism in Quebec, contains an interesting analysis of the current situation faced by the various streams of the centre-droit spectrum in the province. I am, however, very much against the perpetual organisation-founding that goes on in political circles. There seems to be a belief that, when in doubt, start a new organisation, but this is precisely what the author, M. Décarie, proposes.

Canada boasts one of the most imposing parliamentary complexes in the world, presiding from a lordly bluff in the federal capital of Ottawa. While I think the city could do with an overall Hausmannisation, the government of the Confederation is undertaking significant efforts to renovate the buildings on Parliament Hill.

While the House of Commons chamber is renovated, the dominion’s lower house will meet in a new temporary chamber (above) constructed in the inner court of the West Block, one of a pair of high Victorian Gothic structures that flank the main parliament building. The restoration will take five to seven years, after which the temporary chamber will be converted into parliamentary committee rooms.

This determined Celt is gunning for Thabo

Kevin Bloom | The Daily Maverick
Ireland’s Paul O’Sullivan took over as head of security at South Africa’s airport authority in 2001, and discovered something was wrong from the start: why didn’t the policeman on duty want to take a statement about the attempted theft of his baggage? Since then, his life has been a series of bizarre events leading him ever deeper into the most complex criminal network of the post-apartheid era, including the recent the trial and conviction of former national police chief Jackie Selebi. But O’Sullivan’s determined quest to expose crookedness isn’t over yet, and he now has former president Thabo Mbeki in his sights. read more

The apparatus of state will simply ignore the government

‘Inspector Gadget’ | Police Inspector Blog
Police across England were told by the responsible minister of the democratically elected government that they must not chase performance targets any longer. “I can also announce today that I am also scrapping the confidence target,” said the Home Secretary, Theresa May, “and the policing pledge with immediate effect”. But the ‘senior management team’ of the West Yorkshire Police have stated they will go on no matter what the government says. read more

Has Christian Democracy reached a dead end?

Jan-Werner Mueller | Guardian.co.uk
The commentator completes a brief survey of the struggles of Christian Democracy in Germany and Europe today. The French leader Georges Bidault claimed that Christian Democracy meant “to govern in the centre, and pursue, by the methods of the right, the policies of the left”. But Christian Democracy’s brief French moment in the 1950s didn’t survive the return of de Gaulle, and Christian Democratic parties on the continent today face an existential crisis. read more

Also: Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro’s talk at the Roman Forum’s 2010 Summer Symposium, entitled The Problem of Christian Democracy will be made available online in audio form sometime in the coming months.

Deep in Shanxi, the most Catholic village in China

Anthony E. Clark | Ignatius Insight
Church after church dot the landscape and high steeples rise above small villages as they do in southern France. Passing through a narrow side road one arrives and is welcomed by three great statues at the village entrance: St. Peter holding his keys is flanked by Saints Simon and Paul. Thirty minutes before Mass the village loudspeakers, once airing the revolutionary voice of Mao and Party slogans, now broadcasts the rosary. Welcome to Liuhecun, the most Catholic village in China. read more

Look for me in the Cotswolds.

Dino Marcantonio
The apologists for modernist architecture have tried for a century to gain public acceptance of and appreciation for their horrors. While the elites have almost overwhelmingly been converted, the general populace around the world still sees that the Emperor has no clothes, and almost always prefers architecture that reflects the tried and true, the local and the natural. Alain de Botton, the Swiss essayist, ‘pop philosopher’, and former ‘writer-in-residence’ at Heathrow Airport, is the latest to give it a go, this time in the pages of the modernist Architectural Record. Dino Marcantonio provides a most useful fisking. read more

Canada is a French country

Andrew Coyne | Maclean’s
At the recent Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill, Canadian PM Stephen Harper spoke of “the steadfast determination and continental ambition of our French pioneers, who were the first to call themselves ‘Canadians.’” At other times he has spoken of Canada as having been “born in French,” of French as “Canada’s first language,” and, most famously, of Quebec City as “Canada’s first city,” its founding in 1608 as marking “the founding of the Canadian state.” While the sentiment may seen anodyne, moreover, the implications are radical. read more

Tintinophilia and its allied science of Tintintology can almost seem like a cult sometime, with Moulinsart, the commercial wing of the Hergé Foundation, acting feverishly to quell any and all unauthorised outbreaks of Tintin resurrection. Their assiduity notwithstanding, Tintin pastiches are fairly common (though illegal) and vary in nature from respectful admiration to downright mockery. The Quebecois cartoonist Yves Rodier is one of the foremost pasticheurs of the famous Belgian boy reporter, and produced this cover (above) of a non-existant Tintin book set in the beautiful capital city of Canada’s French province.

While Tintin did visit Scotland in The Black Isle, I’d love to see a Tintin in Edinburgh book, and even more so Tintin in the Cape.

But when & where’s the book launch you say? It’s Thursday, March 25, from 7:00–10:00pm at the Duke of York Pub, 39 Prince Arthur Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, in God’s Own Dominion of Canada. The book is printed by the Canadian publisher Novalis, and is already obtainable from Amazon.com. Copies of the book will also be available for purchase at the book launch.