@iamconversative
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Shakespeare, great books, schools. Covenant in religion, politics, and narrative. Known migratory path: YYC, UK theatres, PRG.
Calgary, Alberta
Joined March 2017
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William French retweeted
Sobering numbers that tell us the depth of the economic collapse
I did some number crunching this weekend.
In 2012, Ontario filed roughly as many bankruptcies as consumer proposals.
Today, it’s 79% proposals to 21% bankruptcies, and in August, bankruptcies grew six times faster than proposals.
Homeowners filing a consumer proposal with us who owe more than the house is worth:
2015: about 1 in 15
2022: zero
2026: more than 1 in 5
Share of insolvent Ontarians in our offices who owned a home:
2022: one in sixty
2026: one in nine
Homeowners avoided insolvency for a decade.
They’re coming back.
William French retweeted
Mohammed arrived in Warsaw.
With a plastic bag, an engineering degree from the University of Al-Couscous, and the naïve belief that if he didn't kill anyone right off the bat and obeyed the Shariah, everything would be fine.
Everything was not fine.
He started looking for a job.
The first recruiter liked his CV until she saw his full name.
The second asked whether clients would be “comfortable” with him.
The third told him the company had found someone else. The vacancy was reposted the next morning.
After forty applications, Mohammed finally got an interview.
The receptionist looked at him.
— You're Mohammed?
— Yes.
She disappeared.
Five minutes later somebody came back to explain that the position had just been filled.
Mohammed began looking for an apartment.
This was worse.
“No foreigners.”
“No Muslims.”
“Polish tenants only.”
One landlord agreed to meet him, looked at his face and suddenly remembered that his cousin needed the apartment.
Another demanded six months' rent in advance.
A third simply closed the door.
Mohammed tried a hotel.
Full.
He checked online.
Twelve rooms available.
He began to suspect Poland was developing accommodation shortages specifically around him.
Then came the administration.
He needed one document to obtain another document.
To obtain the first document, he needed proof of address.
To obtain proof of address, he needed an apartment.
To rent the apartment, the landlord wanted the second document.
Mohammed returned to the office.
— But this is impossible.
The clerk shrugged.
— Następny.
Next.
Outside, somebody called him a terrorist.
On the bus, an old man told him to go home.
At the supermarket, security followed him through four aisles.
At a restaurant, somebody asked whether he was going to blow the place up.
At night, three drunk men followed him for two streets shouting at him.
The following morning somebody had written WON ("FUCK OFF") on the door of the room he was temporarily renting.
He went to the police.
The officer asked whether anyone had actually attacked him.
— Not this time.
The officer looked relieved.
Mohammed was not.
By the third month he had no permanent job, no permanent accommodation, an impressive collection of administrative papers and a completely new habit of looking behind himself whenever he heard footsteps.
Then his landlord called.
A neighbour had complained.
About what?
Mohammed.
Apparently his existence had become a noise disturbance.
That evening he sat on his bed surrounded by documents, rejection emails and his plastic bag.
Somebody shouted something under his window.
Mohammed didn't even check what.
He opened his Ryanair app.
Warsaw → Al-Couscous. One way.
The next morning he went to Modlin Airport three hours early.
He passed security.
He reached the gate.
He sat down.
For the first time in months, nobody wanted a document from him, nobody refused to rent him anything, nobody followed him through a shop and nobody asked him when he was going home.
The boarding announcement began.
Mohammed almost ran onto the plane.
Poland hadn't deported him.
It hadn't needed to.
Mohammed had become so terrified of Poland that he SELF-DEPORTED.
William French retweeted
Prime Minister of all the Canadas went back to his old school in Alberta and delivered...what? Nostalgia for an Alberta which is rapidly disappearing, promises for projects which should have been built a decade ago. 1/
William French retweeted
Hola, soy palestino. 🇵🇸
Y como la honestidad es poco común en mi política, permítanme confesar algunas cosas.
1947. La ONU me ofreció un estado. Junto a Israel. Fronteras, independencia, reconocimiento. Dije que no. Mis líderes prometieron que la guerra "arrojaría a los judíos al mar". En cambio, lo perdí todo y lo llamaron catástrofe. No porque no me ofrecieran un estado, sino porque lo rechacé.
1948–2025. Los estados árabes podrían haberme integrado, dado derechos, pasaportes, dignidad. En cambio, me encerraron en campos de refugiados durante generaciones, para que siguiera siendo un arma contra Israel. Construyeron palacios para ellos y cárceles para mí. Me usaron como propaganda, no como personas.
1967. Tras otra guerra perdida, podría haber construido un estado en Cisjordania y Gaza. En cambio, insistí en "ni paz, ni reconocimiento, ni negociaciones". Tres noes. Cincuenta años después, sigo sin Estado. Resulta que el rechazo no paga el alquiler.
Oslo, década de 1990. Israel dijo: «Intentémoslo». Me dio autonomía. Armas para la policía. Miles de millones en ayuda. ¿Qué hicieron mis líderes? Robaron el dinero, armaron milicias y lanzaron una intifada. Atentados suicidas en lugar de escuelas. Cohetes en lugar de fábricas.
Gaza, 2005. Israel se fue por completo. Sin colonos, sin soldados. Tuve la oportunidad de convertir Gaza en un Singapur mediterráneo. Voté por Hamás. La convirtieron en Mogadiscio junto al mar. ¿Miles de millones en ayuda? Túneles, cohetes y palacios para sus líderes, mientras mi gente come comida enlatada en la oscuridad.
¿Democracia? No he tenido elecciones en casi 20 años. Hamás mata a los disidentes en Gaza. Fatah los encarcela en Cisjordania. Mis líderes cancelan elecciones porque están demasiado ocupados luchando por el poder.
Religión. En lugar de construir un futuro, pongo a clérigos en televisión enseñando a los niños a odiar a los judíos. Glorifico a los "mártires" que hacen estallar autobuses. Crío a mis hijos con canciones de sangre y fuego en lugar de libros y ciencia. Cambio la esperanza por la guerra santa.
Mundo árabe. Los regímenes árabes me llaman "hermano". Pero pregúntenles cuántos palestinos pueden vivir libremente en Líbano, Siria, Egipto o Kuwait. Me excluyen, pero celebran mi muerte, porque mi muerte es su excusa.
Absurdo. Sigo diciendo que quiero "construir un estado". E irónicamente, justo al lado está Israel: el vecino que construyó una democracia próspera, una potencia tecnológica, granjas en el desierto, ciudades de polvo. Sin petróleo, sin riqueza infinita, solo coraje. Podría haber aprendido, copiado, colaborado. En cambio, elegí la envidia y la rabia.
Obsesión antijudía. Podría haber aceptado a los judíos como vecinos. Podría haber dicho: "Dos naciones, dos estados". En cambio, repito: "Del río al mar". En lugar de exhibir el honor, la hospitalidad y la rica cultura árabe, mostré solo la cultura de la espada: la ira, el extremismo y la sangre. En lugar de gritar salaam (paz) a los israelíes, grité muerte a los judíos. Y luego finjo sorprenderme cuando los israelíes no confían en mí, cuando están enojados, decepcionados y convencidos de que no quiero coexistencia en absoluto.
Responsabilidad. Culpo a Israel de todo. Siempre. ¿Mis líderes roban miles de millones? Culpa de Israel. ¿Hamás dispara cohetes desde hospitales? Culpa de Israel. ¿Glorifico la muerte más que la vida? Culpa de Israel. La responsabilidad no es mi fuerte.
Soy palestino.
Podría haber construido una nación, muchas veces. Elegí el rechazo, la corrupción y la guerra sin fin. Podría haber vivido en paz con Israel, pero elegí vivir a la sombra de su destrucción.
Así que sí, soy una víctima. Pero con demasiada frecuencia, soy víctima de mis propios líderes, de mis propias decisiones y de mi propia negativa a abandonar el odio.
Y esa, querido lector, es la tragedia que nadie quiere admitir.
William French retweeted
Over and over again, Alberta Option 2 voters said it.
Will it benefit me? Maybe but independence is so Albertas kids have a chance at a wonderful life.
William French retweeted
Twelve years ago, I went up to Yale to see Arcadia (again) and dragooned every undergrad I knew to go with me. Among them, one @AlexiSargeant
After the show, he pressganged us into carrying props and furniture from the closing Importance of Being Earnest to his production of The Man Who Was Thursday (his adaptation)
I was so fascinated that I picked a heavy table so I could ask Alexi to carry it with me. We talked the whole time, and I had someone take a picture at the end, in case something came of it.
First date one year later (Oct 31, 2015)
Wedding one year after (Oct 15, 2016)
Ten years married this Thursday!
William French retweeted
Kenneth Clark’s "Civilisation" (1969) remains one of television’s greatest achievements: a luminous, 13-part journey through Western art, architecture, and ideas from the fall of Rome to the 20th century. Clark’s cultivated yet deeply personal narration pairs with stunning location filming of cathedrals, paintings, and landscapes to show how culture has shaped history. More than a survey of masterpieces, it argues that civilization is a fragile, hard-won achievement worth understanding and defending. Watching it sharpens the eye, expands historical imagination, and offers a rare model of intelligent, humane cultural commentary. Few documentaries have matched its grace clarity.
William French retweeted
I was recently on a panel discussing A.I. and the Humanities. My co-panelist advocated for the Humanities as teaching empathy, by which he meant a global perspective. So I took an anti-empathy stance (no surprise there).
I did that partly for patriotic reasons, as "global perspectives" typically, and quietly, facilitate the transformation of us from embedded human beings into "individuals" amenable to institutional governance. We can be cast about the economy and the state more readily thereby, with little to no benefit to the far-away people we're supposed to be helping. And the question of the good life and the healthy community? An answer assumed, it is never raised.
Besides eroding patriotism, it also guts the core of humanistic education, which is the civilization and discipline of the human mind, traditionally through the seven liberal arts. It teaches us how to think well about the nature of all things, on one hand, and speak well, whether to the community of the learned or to the wider community of one's compatriots, on the other. At the top end, philosophy; at the lower end, rhetoric and poetry.
At a time of deep political discord, where people feel neglected by their government, where they believe it serves foreign or special interests rather than their own, restructuring the Humanities along the ends of liberal and civic education seems indispensable.
Our politics needs fewer global citizens, that much at least is clear.
Elite schools and universities: stop worrying about creating "global citizens" and start worrying about creating American ones.
My latest Substack: thesolveiggoldstandard.subst…
William French retweeted
Drag you through what? A badly needed debate about our ‘so called democracy’?
How is that bad? Even many diehard federalists see the justified concerns many Albertans have. Let find a way to fix them or it never ends.
Option 2 is that way to healthy reforms.
William French retweeted
How many times does Alberta have to ask?
For nearly half a century, modern Albertans have tried to change their relationship with Ottawa.
We asked for a Triple-E Senate. We held elections for our own senators. We tried constitutional reform.
We proposed the Alberta Agenda, calling for greater control over pensions, policing and taxation.
Four Alberta MPs presented the Buffalo Declaration, outlining what they believed was necessary for Alberta to become an equal partner in Confederation.
We established the Fair Deal Panel.
We held a referendum on equalization. Nearly 62% voted for constitutional change.
We fought federal energy policies, challenged legislation in court, and watched major pipeline projects disappear amid political and regulatory disputes.
But the larger question remains.
After decades of elections, proposals, negotiations, court challenges and referendums, how much has actually changed about Alberta's structural position within Canada?
And perhaps more importantly:
What evidence do we have that another decade of waiting will produce a fundamentally different outcome?
That's the question I think Albertans should be asking as they consider their future.
Vote Option 2 on October 19th.
#cdnpoli #abpoli #AlbertaIndependence
🤖 Made with AI
William French retweeted
My goal this weekend was to convince my entire family to vote option 2. We had a great discussion & at times it got a bit heated but I’m proud to say all 24 family members are voting yes to option 2. Some disagree with separation but ALL want Alberta to have a stronger voice.
William French retweeted
Western alienation is older than Alberta itself.
In 1879, Ottawa's National Policy protected Central Canadian manufacturers with tariffs, while western farmers faced higher costs for machinery and limited railway competition.
When Alberta became a province in 1905, Ottawa retained control of its Crown lands and natural resources. It took another 25 years for Alberta to gain the resource rights enjoyed by Canada's original provinces. Of course they didn't expect the Leduc oil discovery in 1947, so once again Ottawa's hands started to dig into Albertans pockets.
Then came the oil-price controls of the 1970s, the National Energy Program, failed attempts at Senate reform, and more recent battles over pipelines and energy policy.
The issues have changed, but the underlying grievance has remained remarkably consistent: Alberta's economic interests can be overridden by federal decisions made in a political system where it has limited influence.
Western alienation is more than 150 years in the making. The independence movement is one response to that history.
This isn't new, and it won't disappear until the core issues are resolved. We've tried to resolve them for generations within Canada with no success.
There will never be a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. There can only be an independent Alberta that controls its own interests.
#cdnpoli #abpoli #ableg #AlbertaIndependence
William French retweeted
This is why startups win
A retired NASA engineer who had worked on the Space Shuttle program for 25 years was hired by SpaceX at age 62. He described the first week as the most disorienting experience of his professional life.
At NASA, a design change required 3 meetings, 2 committees, a review board, and 6 to 18 months of documentation. At SpaceX, his new supervisor said "if it works, build it. If it doesn't, change it by Friday."
He sat at his desk after the first day and called his wife. He told her he felt like a man who had been swimming with ankle weights for 25 years and someone just cut them off. He could move. He could decide. He could build something in the morning and test it in the afternoon. The constraint that he had accepted as the nature of aerospace engineering turned out to be the nature of bureaucracy.
Within 6 months he had contributed to more design iterations than he had completed in his last 5 years at NASA. Not because he was working harder. Because the time between having an idea and testing the idea collapsed from months to hours. The same brain. The same knowledge. A different operating system.
He described a specific moment where he proposed a modification to a Raptor engine component. At NASA, the proposal would have entered a queue. At SpaceX, the modification was machined by the end of the day and tested by the following morning. He watched his idea become a physical object in 18 hours. At NASA, 18 hours would not have been enough to schedule the first meeting to discuss whether to schedule a meeting.
He told an interviewer: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way."
The difference between SpaceX and NASA is not talent. NASA has extraordinary talent. The difference is the time between a thought and a test. SpaceX compresses it. NASA elongates it. The same engineer produces 10x more at SpaceX than at NASA because the bottleneck was never the engineer. It was the meetings about the meetings about the work.
William French retweeted
From 1936: "The view that Alberta enjoys full right to follow any course it chooses in all important matters is preached openly by a number of leading members of the Social Credit Party. This view raises vital questions of the relationship of Canadian provinces to the Federal Government. Coupled with the drift to Provincial nationalism discernible in Aberhart policies, the claim to autonomy is sufficiently pronounced in some Social Credit speeches to give rise to speculation on the possibility of Alberta's secession from the Canadian Federation."
The William Aberhart-led Social Credit Party came to power as Alberta's provincial government in 1935, preceded by the United Farmers Party who had formed government in 1925. During their long reign from 1935 to 1975, the Social Credit government attempted time and again to challenge Ottawa and make the system better for Alberta. Unfortunately, Ottawa continued to block any major attempts at change so the party was never able to accomplish the things they had set out to do. If only they had been willing to do the one thing which would have forced change--the pursuit of secession from Canada.
William French retweeted
HUGE ALBERTA NEWS 🚨
JUST HAS A CONVERSATION WITH A FRIEND WHO WAS AT THE UCP TOWNHALL IN RED DEER 2 WEEKS AGO!
MLA Jason Stephan asked the crowd how many people at the meeting supported Alberta Independence.
80% OF THE ROOM STOOD UP!
@ABDanielleSmith then asked the room how many people supported remaining in Canada.
ONLY 5 % OF THE ROOM STOOD UP.
She then asked if anyone was upset that there would be a vote on independence,
NO ONE STOOD UP.
Then a man stood and told SMITH that he supported her when she ran for leader. He told her that he voted for her in the last election. He told her that because she was using 4,000,000 tax dollars that he contributed to, to campaign against his family’s best hope for a real future he would never support her ever again.
He got the loudest applause of the evening.
SMITH was visibly chagrined.
William French retweeted
The traditional English pub was never just somewhere to have a drink. It was the heart of the community for generations 🏴
They were tough places. Business was done, arguments were settled, fights broke out and friendships were made. Working men gathered after a hard day's graft, putting the world to rights over a few pints.
You drank in the same boozer as your father and grandfather before you. Everybody knew everybody. These places were woven into the fabric of English working-class life.
They weren't always pretty, polished or respectable, but they were real.
Every traditional pub that closes takes another piece of our history and community with it.
Killing off the English pub is another step towards destroying the very soul of this nation. It's been done on purpose 🏴
William French retweeted
WHAT OPTION 2 DOES:
- Starts the legal process
- Creates potential leverage
- Keeps the path to a referendum open
WHAT OPTION 2 DOES NOT DO:
- Does not separate Alberta today
- Does not guarantee negotiations
- Does not guarantee a better deal
Why is it worth considering?
It could create leverage. Why not find out?
VOTE OPTION 2 FOR A BETTER ALBERTA.
William French retweeted
The criminal alliances are losing state protection. Maduro, first indicted in New York in 2020 on narco-terrorism charges, is held in a Brooklyn detention centre. Petro is gone and Colombia’s guerrillas face a president elected to fight them. Ecuador has used its army against the gangs since declaring an “internal armed conflict” in 2024. Criminal groups rarely disappear when pressed; they relocate, and Mexico, Central America’s coasts and the Pacific ports are the obvious places to watch.
open.substack.com/pub/navarr…
William French retweeted
Mark Carney and Zelenskyy are operating on behalf of the DNC to interfere in the American midterms.
Quite frankly, if Carney is so committed, he should pay for Ukraine’s defense.
Today, Prime Minister Carney spoke with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Read a summary of the call: pm.gc.ca/en/news/readouts/20…
