Why Have This Blog

Why have this blog? Aren’t you writing to read yourself write? Perhaps, but its objective is something other than this. This is the first year I have provided a blog for my courses at Mount Allison University and it might be the last, if it does no good. The objective of this blog is to do several things. It allows me to address current events as they pop up that might warrant attention. It allows me to clarify points I might be making in class. It allows to me raise questions or go in directions different than those staked out in class. And, it allows me to address side issues for which there is not time in class. This blog is not homework but a voluntary extension of what we are doing in Canadian Studies in my courses at Mount Allison University. If you’re a student in one of my classes, you don’t have to read this blog, you aren’t tested on it; in no way does knowledge of it constitute an evaluated component of my courses. Instead, this blog is here for other reasons. It is, in this sense, an extension of the courses I teach and the subjects I address in those courses. Read it, enjoy it, feel free to contact me and comment on it.

One word of warning: this blog is not academic; it is not scholarly. Much of what I put on-line here is far more opinionated than the material I provide in class. In this sense, this blog provides a more transparent view of my own biases than the more measured approach to Canada I try (with greater or lesser success) to develop in class.