Author: Ian Chadwick

Retired writer, editor, reviewer, media relations & communications consultant, municipal politician. Ukulele player. Aficionado of Shakespeare, Horace, Machiavelli, Chaucer, Cicero, Homer, socialism, science, Godzilla, ERB, & tequila. Curmudgeon, skeptic & cynic. Lay historian. Community volunteer. PC gamer. Avid reader. Woke socialist. Loving husband. Companion to one dog & three cats. Passionate about my small town. Perennially curious about everything. My writing is copyright © protected.

Real Bread, Slow Dough, Bread Books

Making bread is a small passion of mine, has been for many years as readers here will know*, although the results of my efforts do not always match my optimism. It’s always a bit of a guessing game what will result when I put the dough in the oven. That doesn’t stop me from trying, though, and I thoroughly enjoy the tactile process of making the bread, even if the end result is occasionally more brick-like than loaf-like. There’s something to be said about making bread as mindfulness therapy… Yes, making bread is also therapeutic: it involves focus, freedom from ……… click below for more ↓

Thank You for Your Support!

2022-10-25 2022-10-25 Collingwood / Council / Municipal elections pastOne Comment

Thank you to everyone who endorsed my nomination papers, who donated to my campaign, who took a lawn sign, and, of course, who voted for me in this 2022 municipal election. Three thousand, three hundred and forty seven of you believed in what I stood for and voted for me; a mere five votes shy of winning a seat on council. That was 38.1% of all the votes cast for council, and 15.1% of eligible voters, but not quite enough to get me back to the table. My sincere appreciation for your votes. A special thanks to my wife, Susan, ……… click below for more ↓

Should mayoral candidates endorse council candidates?

2022-10-15 2022-10-16 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Municipal elections past3 Comments

One of Collingwood’s current mayoral candidates is doing meet-n-greet events and openly endorsing a fixed slate of the seven council candidates she wants to be elected with her (but not, curiously, a deputy-mayor; see below). Is this appropriate for a would-be mayor? I don’t believe so. First, in the last two terms, we’ve seen how a slate of candidates can negatively affect governance by voting en masse for whatever their leader wants regardless of its impact on Collingwood. This term, we saw how a block of councillors collectively bullied a female councillor (Tina Comi) out of office so they could ……… click below for more ↓

Back to Horace No. 2

2022-10-12 2026-03-22 Books & Reviews / Classics / Poetry2 Comments

I was browsing online recently because I wanted to order another book of Horace’s Odes or maybe his Epistles in my efforts to understand and appreciate the poet more fully. I was scrolling through the always-poorly organized list of items on Amazon’s search page results (selected, it seems, mostly to promote a wide range of unrelated rubbish they want to offload…). Some titles caught my eye (wanting more books is a longtime obsession… and owning many translations of the same work is commonplace with me) but wasn’t sure if I already had that translation. Who can remember all the names ……… click below for more ↓

How to Win an Election

2022-09-28 2022-09-28 Books & Reviews / Classics / Municipal elections past / Municipal Politics / PoliticsLeave a comment

Anyone running for office should consider reading How to Win an Election, by Quintus Tullius Cicero, translated by Philip Freeman. It’s a short, small book subtitled An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians (Princeton University Press, 2012). It contains both the Latin and the English translation of Quintus’ letter to his more famous brother, the orator Marcus Cicero. Quintus penned it in 64 BCE when Marcus decided to run for the position of Consul, the highest office in the Roman Republic. No, it won’t give you a secret winning strategy. Nothing will. But it has some practical advice that might help, ……… click below for more ↓

Back to Horace

2022-09-27 2022-09-27 Classics / Musings / Poetry / Poetry & LyricsOne Comment

During the pandemic lockdowns, I heard a lot of people bemoan their inability to travel; on vacation, to visit relatives, to shop, or just to get out of their homes and see new places. People felt isolated, some went stir-crazy. We are a not merely a culture easily bored with staying in one place: our entire species has wanderlust. Two millennia ago, the poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus — aka Horace — wrote a letter (Epistle I.XI) to his peripatetic friend, Bullatius, a man who travelled the known world looking for contentment. Horace chided him, saying, You can change the colour ……… click below for more ↓

The Science Fiction of Robert Frost

2022-09-25 2022-09-25 Musings / Poetry / Poetry & Lyrics3 Comments

Robert Frost was a great American poet, and I’ve enjoyed many of his poems over the decades I’ve been reading poetry. Some are a tad bucolic for my taste, but many also plumb the depths of human emotions so succinctly as to make Frost more universal than simply American. But while he never wrote any science fiction, his words have been used in that genre. Recently I came across a verse in one of Ben Bova’s more recent scifi novels that made me re-appraise and re-read Frost. It was: They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars — ……… click below for more ↓

Exceptions to the Law?

2022-09-24 2022-09-24 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Municipal elections past2 Comments

There seems to be a whiff of hypocrisy in the fall air this year. And it is also tinged with the greasy odour of entitlement. You see, there are rules in place for candidates in Collingwood’s municipal election. And some of those rules appear to be being broken by some candidates, openly but without any penalty. Rules tell candidates how many signs they can have on public property and where these are allowed. Rules say when signs can be brought out and how large they can be. There are other rules that outline the prohibited use of town resources, property, ……… click below for more ↓

A Call to Arms

2022-09-21 2022-09-21 UncategorizedOne Comment

A newly-formed group calling itself “Arms Around Collingwood” sent a questionnaire to candidates for this municipal election. And while I have never heard of them, they claim to have “a minimum 2,500 voting contacts in Collingwood.” Below you will read the questions they asked along with my answers. They requested that respondents “limit answers to 50 words or less.” Leadership Do you have any conflicts of interest that may influence your decision making at the Council table? Please answer either ‘Yes” or “No? No. Will you commit to implementing all the recommendations from the Judicial Inquiry report? Please answer either ……… click below for more ↓

Another Abuse of Power and Position

2022-09-19 2022-09-21 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Municipal elections past4 Comments

As this term of council winds down, with only a few weeks before the election, it seems some members at the table can’t help themselves abusing their position and their power. Their sense of entitlement is an embarrassing display. At tomorrow’s council meeting (Sept. 20), Councillor Jeffery will make the following notice of motion: THAT Council appoint Acting Deputy Mayor McLeod as Deputy Mayor for the duration of the current term of Council. This isn’t just a change in title: it is a political gambit to allow McLeod to campaign as the Deputy Mayor, not merely the Acting DM. Apparently, McLeod’s ……… click below for more ↓

What About the Code of Conduct?

2022-09-18 2022-09-18 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Municipal elections pastLeave a comment

I attended a two-hour seminar hosted by the town about Collingwood’s Code of Conduct last week. It was intended as an introduction to the policy for new candidates and a refresher for incumbents, and was presented by the town’s Integrity Commissioner, whose slides ranged from conflicts of interest to accountability, from public behaviour to confidentiality. Councillor Bob Madigan wasn’t there. Four incumbents running in this election attended (Doherty, McLeod, Hamlin, and Berman), for which I give them credit. Madigan didn’t show. Perhaps it’s because the town’s web page about the conduct of members of council says (emphasis added): “Members are ……… click below for more ↓

Just Gonna Leave This Here…

2022-09-13 2022-09-13 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Municipal elections past4 Comments

This headline appeared in CollingwoodToday: “Town councillor, deputy-mayor candidate charged with assault.” In Simcoe.com (Collingwood Connection), the headline was “Collingwood councillor, deputy mayor candidate Bob Madigan facing assault charges.” Bob Madigan is running for deputy mayor of Collingwood. Is this the sort of behaviour you want in your elected representatives? Given his past behaviour, this latest event didn’t surprise me. But by the time this reached the local media, his arrest was already well-known around town and shared in the coffee shops and sidewalk chatter. I’m only sharing it here because it’s now been reported in local media.* As CwoodToday ……… click below for more ↓

Hobbesian vs Benthamite Politics

2022-09-03 2022-09-03 Collingwood / Council / Political philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was not an optimist about human behaviour. Writing more than a century after Niccolo Machiavelli, the English political philosopher argued in his masterwork, Leviathan (1651), that the quest for power was the main motivation for humans. And that our quest to acquire more would never cease until we were dead. He wrote: …in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than ……… click below for more ↓

Ancient Election Wisdom

2022-09-01 2022-09-01 Classics / Election campaigns / Political philosophy / Politics / Stoicism & classical philosophy2 Comments

I recently came across this piece by Marcus Tullius Cicero (one of my favourite classical authors) on the Sententiae Antiquae website (a good source of classical Latin and Greek translations), taken from Cicero’s oration Pro Murena (35-36). Lucius Licinius Murena was elected as his election as consul in 62 BCE but was subsequently accused of bribery. He was defended by Cicero, who recorded his speech for posterity. Here’s what Cicero said about elections in general: What strait or what channel do you imagine has as many currents, twists, and tide changes as the disturbances in the breaking waves produced by ……… click below for more ↓

What Just Happened?

2022-08-30 2022-08-30 Collingwood / Council / Election campaigns / Municipal elections pastLeave a comment

I was startled to see that one of our candidates for municipal election — the third person in the deputy mayor’s race — dropped out shortly after submitting her papers. According to the town’s web page, Jordan Fleming filed her papers at 11:34 a.m. on August 19; two-and-a-half hours before nominations closed. She withdrew at 2:54 p.m. on Aug. 24. According to the interview in CollingwoodToday, she decided to drop out almost immediately because of family issues. I was surprised she hadn’t considered those issues in the three months nominations were open before she filed at the very last minute. ……… click below for more ↓