Dispatch from the Front Lines: China and India and MAiD!
Oh my!
Happy Sunday, people of The Line. We want to start this dispatch with a simple note observing the passing of our colleague Robert Fulford. Line editor Gurney had the pleasure of being Bob’s editor during his last years as a columnist, and it was a pleasure, if intimidating. Gurney’s imposter syndrome was never more powerful than when he was editing — “editing” — Bob and his contemporary, George Jonas. He misses them both.
Much has already been said about his passing, and more importantly, his life. The National Post has reprinted an excerpt from one of Bob’s books, in which he discusses the prospect of his own mortality. It’s delightful, and worth reading. Bob also wrote his own obituary — of course he did — and you can read that, too. Friends of The Line Ken Whyte and Paul Wells have written, as well. We don’t really have much to add to that. They knew him better.
So we’ll simply salute him and his career, send our best regards to his family, and wonder, a bit wistfully, if by the time our days draw to a close, there’ll be enough left of Canadian journalism to even let people know we’re gone — assuming anyone remembers us at all. We hope they will! But we doubt there’ll be many more Robert Fulfords. The ecosystem that would even allow such a career no longer really exists, alas.
But we can worry about that later. If you’re interested in what we’ve been up to more recently, check out the latest episode of The Line Podcast:
As always, the audio version of the podcast (along with a bunch of ways to subscribe to it) can be found here. Please help us out, as always, by liking, subscribing, leaving reviews, etc. And! Tell your friends about us! Word of mouth is a huge part of our growth strategy.
And now, on with the dispatch.
Earlier in the week, beholding the absolute shitshow of the prime minister’s testimony at the Foreign Interference inquiry and the resulting response by the leader of the opposition, Line editor Gurney lamented that his next column was going to need to be 15,000 words long in order to even scratch the surface of what had transpired.
Luckily for him and the readers, the column he wrote ended up being somewhat more concise and focused. But he was mindful while writing it that there was a metric ton of worthy material that he was leaving not even on the cutting room floor, so to speak. He wasn’t even touching it at all, because, simply put, there was far more material than one person could ever handle in one article.
Rather than writing a half-dozen columns about it, The Line is going to present to you a couple of “bits and bites” that we took away from what happened this week. None of this stuff is as important as what Gurney wrote about on Thursday, but it all warrants mention. Let’s jump in.