Flashback: Where the present meets the past
How is growing a beard on vacation similar to being unpopular in Alberta?
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Quitting time
Justin Trudeau announced last week he would resign as prime minister once the Liberal party chooses a successor as leader. "Canada has seen a few versions this movie before," noted CBC News in its look at Canadian political leadership shakeups of the past.
Moving on from being Liberal leader, like growing a vacation beard and being unpopular in Alberta, is another way Justin is like his father, Pierre. In 1979, as Leader of the Opposition, the senior Trudeau said he was stepping down as Liberal leader and that he'd asked the party to plan a leadership convention.
"There's no easy way or ideal time to leave, and there are always strong public and private reasons both for going and for staying on," he said. But the leadership vacuum was short-lived: three weeks later, the Tory government fell on a confidence vote.
Representation matters
Justin Trudeau said not fulfilling his 2015 pledge to overhaul Canada's electoral system was his biggest regret about his time as prime minister, according to a CBC News story that emerged in the wake of his announcement last week.
Electoral reform has evidently long been on the minds of politicians. When Quebec MP Jean Chrétien was in Edmonton making a speech to delegates during his first run for the Liberal leadership in 1984, CBC reporter Paul Workman said, like all the candidates, Chrétien was making "a special pitch to win the West."
"From Chrétien, it's a promise to look at proportional representation, to ensure that the West will have its share of MPs on the government side of the House of Commons," Workman said.
Jacked up
Canadians planning a short-term visit to the United Kingdom must now obtain an electronic travel authorization that costs £10, or about $18. The fee is "the price of travelling," an expert told CBC P.E.I.'s Island Morning last week.
Tourism was "big business" in Britain in 1991, according to a report by the CBC's Fred Langan on the program Venture. He said thrifty travellers from parts of Europe were insufficient to help the industry recover from the recent recession.
"The British need Americans and Canadians, because we North Americans, while maybe a trifle gauche, bring lots of cash," said Langan.
Gopher it
Over the holidays, CBC Calgary told readers about a small-town museum where the attraction is Richardson's ground squirrels, commonly called 'gophers' on the prairies, in taxidermy form. Gophers are evidently a draw in Alberta, but in Saskatchewan in 2001 they were considered a pest.
Giving it a rest
From gophers to groceries: CBC Calgary recently explored how a store in the city took its fight to open on Sundays all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1988, 400 stores in Quebec defied a ban on Sunday shopping. A CBC News report found customers who liked it and workers who didn't.
Mark of distinction
Last week, CBC Calgary asked when Albertans will get sturdy plastic health-care cards to replace their paper versions, which can easily get "mangled." We just hope the province doesn't rush it, lest it repeats Nova Scotia's 1980s error of issuing a form of ID that misspells its own name.
Stamp of disapproval
On Monday, Canada Post raised the price of postage stamps purchased "in a booklet, coil or sheet" by 25 per cent, CBC News reported. Compare that to the 70 per cent hike on stamps in 1982, which the CBC's Knowlton Nash said gave Canadians "another reason to hate the post office."
