I don’t think so, and I said so to Mr. Nuttall at The Tyee:

Political consultant and former North Vancouver Liberal candidate Warren Kinsella rejects that idea.

Kinsella told The Tyee the Liberal strategy has always been to win as many seats across the board as possible. Although some “central Canadian” strategists may suggest trying to trade off seats in B.C. for gains elsewhere, Kinsella said he doubts Trudeau would go for it.

“That kind of calculus is pretty risky,” he said. “I just do not believe that of him, that he would discount the ever growing number of seats found in B.C. because somebody suggested to him he could make it up somewhere else.”

Kinsella said the Liberals do seem out of touch on some environmental issues in B.C.

But some of the groups Trudeau has upset in B.C., such as the anti-pipeline contingent, would have likely voted for the New Democrats anyway, he added.

The government has been “losing its sea legs” in other provinces lately and it’s not an issue specific to B.C., Kinsella said. “Sometimes you get into those phases where everything seems to be going wrong and you can’t catch a break.”

With an “untested” Jagmeet Singh leading the federal NDP and new Conservative leader Andrew Scheer a “dud,” Kinsella said Trudeau is still the contender to beat in 2019.

Others interviewed include Kai Nagata, David Moscrop and my friend Herb Dhaliwal. Check it out, comments are open.

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Twenty bucks will get you the book and the record (both signed)! Ten bucks will get you the bands and a bad rash.

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Let us peer into the oracle that is Abacus (who, full disclosure, Daisy uses all the time, and proudly so).  It contains all sorts of interesting factoids and fun.  A chart, for your perusal:

It astounds and astonishes me that Blandy Scheer is this competitive – but if Abacus says he is, then he is.  It is less surprising, however, that Justin Trudeau – only now emerging from three months of myriad Morneau-messes – is slightly less popular.  And it is decidedly puzzling that Jagmeet Singh has yet to register on the public consciousness, because the new-New Democrat boss is a Trudeauesque charismatic hipster.

Anyway.  Full poll is here.  And comments are open.

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Top:Herr Marchand.  Top right: Bill Corcoran and a rabble-rousing punk.

It’s Thursday, which means old folks get to circulate photos of themselves when they were younger, better-looking and less preoccupied with mortgage payments.

My contribution to today’s #TBT is the photo above, taken sometime in 1976.  It’s the St. Bonaventure Junior High Student Council in Southeast Calgary, a not-so-benevolent dictatorship presided over by Mr. Marchand, who declared aloud that Bill and me (and Dan and Lee and Pat and Neil and others) were “Marxist agitators.” Guilty as charged.

That was the Spring that the Ramones first album had come out, of course, and our lives – previously mired in the Satanic monoculture that was suburban Calgary – changed for good, and for the good.  As you can see, I was already doing my utmost to look like Dee Dee Ramone.

We had started up something called the NCNA – the Non-Conformist News Agency – to antagonize the school administration.  We burned the school’s constitution, we put up posters memorializing the shootings at Kent State, and – to royally piss off Mr. Marchand, mission accomplished – we ran a fictional candidate in the student council election.  We called him Herbie Schwartz, and Herbie won in a landslide.

Mr. Marchand was unimpressed.  “You little bastards are going to serve on student council,” he said to Bill and me, so we did.  He came to regret it.

All of this, and more, is found in Recipe For Hate, coming soon (or now out, depending on how with-it your local bookseller is) to a shelf near you.  And everything in that book, pretty much, got its start in suburban Calgary in the Spring of 1976, when the Ramones rewrote the future for a bunch of suburban Calgary shit-disturbers.

Of such things is #TBT made.  Sometimes, you can even write a YA trilogy about them.

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Here it is.

And here is a snippet:

I have been resisting #MeToo. I have.

For starters, I am generally pretty unenthusiastic about hashtag campaigns. Most of the time, they are just slacktivism, i.e. the false belief that posting something on social media is enough. It isn’t. Ever.

And, most of the male responses I have seen have been completely idiotic. Stuff like: I have daughters, and now I understand, etc. Or: Sure, but don’t blame me, etc. Or: here’s my own hashtag!

But mostly, I have resisted writing or saying anything about #MeToo because I felt men should just shut the fuck up and listen, for once.

My wife, however, reminded me that I have four million visitors to my website every year, and that I write columns and books, and that I shouldn’t be silent simply because I despise my gender (more on that in a minute), or because I don’t know what to say that has a fraction of the significance of #MeToo.

After some reflection, I decided she is right. As usual.

So.

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Check it out: Apple is promoting Recipe For Hate on their iBooks web site!

My ever-patient Dundurn Press publicist, Kendra, says that Apple has decided to promote pre-orders of the book on their Sneak Peaks pages.  A short download of the book is there, too, to encourage folks to check it out.

Is this a big deal? I’m told it is: “iBooks is available in 51 countries. It ranks second in the U.S. for reading devices/reading apps, after Kindle…that’s still a lot of readers you’re missing if you are not publishing on iBooks. In Canada, iBooks is also ranked second, but not to Amazon; Kobo is the number one reading app/device in Canada. In the UK Amazon’s Kindle and iBooks are neck and neck. In Australia, iBooks is the number one reading device. Canada, the UK, and Australia are three English-speaking countries where you are losing sales if you are not publishing on iBooks.”

Among other things, it reminds me (again) that the book business has certainly changed in the 25 years since Unholy Alliances was published: back then, publishers still did big book tours and there were actual book sections in newspapers.  Now, however, book tours have become pretty rare, and book sections have effectively disappeared, too.

In the coming weeks, however, we are going to have an old-fashioned book launch for Recipe For Hate in Toronto, to which you are all invited (see below), there will be book tour-type visits to Ottawa and the West and around T.O. and in the U.S., and there will be lots of events (and if you want me for a speaking event, email me at wkinsella@gmail.com).

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