National Post

For many years, I have vacationed in Canada, in Ontario's Ottawa Valley in particular. Because I am a news junky, I need to sit down to breakfast with my paper every morning. In years past, I would normally read the Toronto Star or the Globe & Mail (also from Toronto). As an avid reader of literature, I would delight in both those papers' high literacy -such an antidote to the dumbed down, eighth-grade English of American papers. As a political conservative, though, I would scratch my head a bit and think, "My, those Canadians sure are...different."

Enter the National Post, Canada's answer to our USA Today, but a far more literate read. I had honestly thought that conservatism had died out in Canada when former Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's left office under a cloud of suspicion. Yet, when I visited Canada this June, I discovered this paper, which has a conservative slant, while dining at a Husky truck stop. I arrived the day before national elections, and the Post was boldly anticipating minority rule government and a return to centrist policies in its headlines.

So, I thought, scratching my head: "Hmmm."

When I returned to Canada in late August, the National Post was covering our own Republican convention in New York City. On balance, the coverage was quite fair, and the usual smug anti-American (or anti-Republican, at least) slant one normally sees in Canadian publications was gone. What a breath of fresh air in a country already blanketed by clean, fresh air!

The editorialists who covered the RNC covention did not uniformly support President Bush and his policies, but absent also from the pages of the Post were the bitterness, vitriol and haughty attitudes which characterize too many American newspaper editorials, not to mention those written outside our borders.

Particularly enjoyable are the writings of Tory editorialist Andrew Coyne, television critic Jason Chow and columinst Jonathan Kay, whose work also appears with some frequency in Commentary magazine.

Because many Americans are under the misimpression that Canadians are all knee-jerk liberals, I entreat them to read this fine publication. Erudite, witty and a bit brash, it also boasts a clean, modern layout and bold color photography.

Personally, the National Post is my favorite newspaper, along with Great Britain's Daily Telegraph and the Washington Times, New York Post and Wall Street Journal over here.

For those laboring under the stereotype that our neighbors to the north have nothing to say, I invite them to unfold this most pleasant surprise of a broadsheet.