When you could spend Canada Day eating hamburgers, dancing and playing on the beach, and listening to bands, why would you choose to work all day instead? Almost 100 volunteers come together to make the Canada D'eh Party at Baishawan (白沙灣) beach happen; last year the same volunteers who were checking tickets at the door at noon were still working at sundown.
"When you do something difficult, and it goes off well, there's a lot of satisfaction at the end of the day," says volunteer and Canadian Society board member Brian Rusk. "You get to meet people, talk to people and be a part of something that went off smoothly." Nonetheless, with so many fun things to do throughout the day - volleyball, foosball and tug-o-war, with four Luxy DJs spinning on the beach - there is a need to balance work and play.
"This year we want the principal volunteers to be able to enjoy it more," Rusk says. "Last year we were so concerned with making sure things were going well, which they were! This year we want to make sure people have the time to really enjoy it."
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CANADIAN SOCIETY TAIWAN
Pascale Dangoisse, chief organizer of all the volunteers, says volunteers are usually "people that you've asked straight out. There was direct contact with a lot of the volunteers - 70 percent to 75 percent are Canadian Society of Taiwan members or friends of members - it was mostly done by word of mouth." Despite wearing a cast this year, Dangoisse is enthusiastic about the event, and concurs with Rusk that meeting people is one of the main benefits of volunteering. "It's great to have all these Taiwanese, French-Canadians and English-Canadians come together and work on this one day: young, old, different professions - all these people come together to make it work."
A key figure behind the event is Pierre Loisel. "[H]e set up the first Canada day parties out at his place 25 years ago. It ran for several years then faded out," says Canada D'eh organizer Kevin Dempsey. Six years ago, when Dempsey joined the Canadian Society, the two met. "Pierre told me the stories and encouraged the idea to try it again. He says 'why don't we have a party' and then I started talking with [ICRT DJ] Rick Monday."
Three hundred people were expected to show up for the first Canada D'eh event; actual attendance was 600. Organizers expect 5,000 people to attend tomorrow's fest but have enough food and drink for 6,000.
At sundown the event moves from the beach to a field, where Aboriginal dancers will perform, followed by five bands: David Foster Syndicate, Johnny Fatstacks, .22, BoPoMoFo and 2 Acres Plowed.
In 1951, the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Reform Committee launched an English-language magazine, which, for the next 75 years, would serve as a mouthpiece for Taiwan’s government. Initially titled the Free China Review, and later rechristened as the Taiwan Review, the magazine published its final issue in March. Former editor Richard Vuylsteke has described the magazine as Taiwan’s “landmark foreign language publication going abroad.” The magazine was not universally respected. Some international scholars, including a few contacted for this article, dismissed it as a “propaganda rag.” But others, including Shelley Rigger, a top US researcher at
Mark Carney built a global profile this year by standing up to US President Donald Trump. If some prediction-market traders and prominent admirers are right, the Canadian prime minister could end the year with the Nobel Peace Prize and Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Carney briefly became the favorite Monday for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Kalshi, a US-based prediction market, when traders on the exchange put his chances at 14 percent. His odds later fell, illustrating the highly speculative nature of the wagering. There is no public evidence Carney is on the Nobel Committee’s secret shortlist for the prize
The spectacular rise of the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) in recent months has fueled great excitement among individual stock traders. Gate News reported that the stock market swelled 59 percent in the first half of this year, with margin trading volume surging nearly 20 percent. Local newspapers tell stories of stock buying “on the margin” by individual investors, often with dire results. The implication is that small investors are teetering on the brink of disaster should there be a market “correction.” How real is this threat? This scenario actually occurred this summer. In July the market fell nearly 4,000 points. “The
Speculation started to fly last month that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates running in the November elections wanted to keep their distance from party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文). That some in the KMT were concerned that Cheng’s firm ideological adherence to the “one China principle” is no secret. There had already been pushback from within the party on issues ranging from the budget to defense, as well as over some of her more hardline comments. The timing made sense, however. The KMT party congress unity love fest wrapped up at the end of July. Through the primaries and up to
RSS