Philip Shaw

It seems like a long time ago now.  I got a call from my good friend and mentor John Gardiner telling me he was going to start an online newspaper.  He said something about it being called the Chatham Kent Gazette.  That quickly morphed into something called CKtimes.ca and the rest as they say is…

If there is ever a place that I am passionate about it is Southwest Ontario.  I have learned through my life that wherever you call home is a place for the most part that you feel comfortable to live in.  I’ve always felt that Southwestern Ontario was a bit of an ignored place.  It always…

The provincial election has been over for a month now and the political parties are sparring in Toronto.  Premier McGuinty has been humbled to an extent.  I give his government 13 months in power before the opposition tries to defeat him.  Politics is a messy business.  We’ll see what happens. Interestingly enough today the Ontario…

Well, how did we get here?  Last Thursday marked the 25th year anniversary of the 1st time I wrote my agricultural column, Under the Agridome.  25 years ago I was a kid.  Now, I’m on the other side of the hill, in fact have been there for quite a while. Through the years it’s been…

For market watchers the ongoing debt problems in Europe have surely caused a lot of angst for investors.  It seems like every day there are new problems with sovereign debt in Europe.  What once was Greece has now spread to Italy, Spain and several other countries.  Even France has seen their borrowing costs rise as…

If I had my druthers I’d be a professional NBA writer.  As many of you know my favorite sport is basketball and my favorite team is the Detroit Pistons.  It is been that way forever.  Interestingly enough, when you are a NBA fan in a Canadian world over a span of 40 years it puts…

Yes we can!  Those were the buzzwords about one year ago with the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.  It was quite a night when President-elect Obama walked out onto the stage at Chicago’s Grant Park.  He was the 1st president of color to be elected in the United States and…

For those of us in Southwestern Ontario, Europe seems so far away.  However, over the last few months if you have been following your investments, almost every day you hear about the European debt problem.  It’s easy to understand why an investment of capital in southwestern Ontario shouldn’t be impacted by problems in Europe.  Clearly…

It has been a couple weeks now since Ontario voters reduced the McGuinty government to a minority. It has been quite some time, over 20 years, since Ontario has had a minority government and the way ahead will surely be fraught with a little bit of political tension.  Premier McGuinty will have to listen to…

I have been so busy with life over the last few weeks that I don’t have time to take part in some of the “occupy” protests that are going on around the globe.  I suppose that I am part of the 99% and that I should be railing against the 1%.  Needless to say, I…