Ronnie Hawkins - Interview - George Stroumboulopoulos 

It’s great you put a Ronnie Hawkins interview by Strombo on. He was quite the character. I had the good fortune of meeting him at his estate north of Peterboro, Ontario many years ago. He was a very nice,down to earth gentleman. He is a legend in Canada’s music history. Thank you very much for this video. As far as Pierre Elliott Trudeau goes I did not agree with a lot of his policies but he was imo an intellectual powerhouse that stood his ground both domestically and internationally. Definitely a huge political force that could mentally and intellectually outwit any other politician of his day. Thanks again for this video.

Romping Ronnie Hawkins. What a class guy..

Ronnie Hawkins played in several movies of which Heaven's gates,From Cimino! What a personality!

Justin Trudeau ( present Canadian P.M. IN 2024 ) is the son of Pierre Trudeau who was shown with John and Yoko...

Oh interesting interview, too bad he's no longer with us, He worked with many artists Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin ... He must have lived in Canada for a long time, because he became a citizen of this country. The interview was amazing, thanks Rory👍👏🎼🎵

That was his father.

Yes, it was me. I made the Vedder comparison to help sell you on Ronnie (although it turned out to have been completely unnecessary, as you were quickly taken with him without any more help from me than the initial requests!).

Finally, re: your (Rory's) reference to political parties, the best rule of thumb is that Canada sits about half-way between the UK and the US, so we have some of both of their politics in play here. Our Conservative Party lines up reasonably well with yours, but it's our Liberal Party that lines up best with your Labour Party (from Blair to Starmer (but perhaps excluding Corbyn). The biggest historical difference between them is that the Liberal Party of Canada has been the "natural governing party" of the country for most of its existence - a feat accomplished by espousing no bedrock ideology (you might call them the ultimate pragmatists). They were arguably just a little right of centre in the 90's and 00's but are now - by far - the most left-wing government the country has ever known. Our third party is the New Democratic Party, which - at least at the federal level - has had an unabashed socialist (lite) platform since it was formed over 7 decades ago. Notwithstanding, it slots in best as the counterpart to your LibDems. Here, the only big difference is that the NDP never purported to be "liberal" (at least not in the traditional sense of the term). Today, both seem capable of aspiring to no more than playing a supporting role when the Liberal/Labour Parties win only a minority government and are only too happy to promise to open the spending spigots just enough to keep their juniors content enough to stay in line. The US-twist here is that we have increasingly seen the leadership of both of our Liberal and NDP Parties identifying with the same cultural ideology against which the current version of the US Republican Party and a slice of the Canadian Conservative Party's membership currently stand (in the name of anti-wokeness, so to speak). From a cultural perspective, they've been able to tap into the working class vote that would have traditionally voted NDP up here and been part of the larger coalition that is the Democratic Party down there. It's just that the current leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is much more deft at appealing to those who would vanquish "wokeism" (to the extent that they could actually explain what it is) while not alienating the traditional social conservatives and economic liberals that have always comprised its base. I now declare this impromptu, comparative political science class over! 😂

About Trudeau, I recall providing a you with a long explanatory comment, but it was friendly and I sure didn't unsubscribe. Maybe I sent that one by emai instead? Long and short of it is that Trudeau hasn't really been an autocrat (at least not in the mold of a 20th Century dictator). But if we're talking about the excessive use (and definitely also some abuse) of governmental authority, there certainly have been some quite troubling examples. Chief among them was his government's unlawful use of The Emergencies Act to end a large protest - originally against COVID rules that (by that point in the pandemic) unreasonably threatened the livelihoods of the countries' cross-border truckers. They tied up downtown Ottawa's streets for weeks - but they could have been shut down using normal criminal law. There was no need for the patently unconstitutional steps taken under the authority of the Act (worst among them being the arbitrary freezing of thousands of people's bank accounts - quite shockingly including people who weren't in-any-way responsible for organising or even participating in the protest!). Here, I'll just take a moment to anticipate and preemptively answer a reply from one or more of my more left wing friends. A commission was struck to review Trudeau's government's use of the Emergencies Act, as required under it. The Commissioner wasn't prepared to find that any of the powers exercised by Trudeau's government were unjustified. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that commissioner was hand-picked by the Prime Minister for the role. The strained reasoning he used to reach his conclusion was only the kind of logic understood by the political and economic elites of Ottawa and Toronto. We now know this to be true after the Federal Court (quite recently) rendered a scathing judgment against the government in which those same measures were found in breach of the constitutional rights of many Canadians. So, there's that... Others would point to his government's aggressive (some would say inexplicable) measures imposed in the name of fighting climate change, but I'm a lawyer, so...

Don't worry Rory. There are whackos everywhere. As a Canadian I must say Pierre Trudeau was one of the greatest Prime Ministers in Canadian history.