Profile of Bob Wakeham

All articles of Bob Wakeham

• Rite of Spring recalled
  An annual rite of Spring for generations of Newfoundland men, as even chronically distracted sixth graders would know, or should know, was a trip ...
• No winners here
  Byelections, either of the national or provincial variety, are for the most part political plays that follow similar scripts. To state the ...
• A welcome home and a political primer
  In 1962, late June as I recall, an eternity ago, it seems now, my parents paraded their five young offspring onto an escalator at Gander Airport ...
• A rite of reporting passage
  Peter Cowan, the CBC television reporter in Labrador, may not be aware of it yet, but I think he had a seminal moment in his young journalistic ...
• Crime and punishment
  For the record (so to speak): I’ve been arrested three times. Twice I was convicted — once on a shameful impaired driving charge and on another ...
• Accolades to a retiring Ray
  Whenever there’s a deluge of political news begging to be satirized — this week alone, we had the continuing saga of Penashue-gate, an unctuous ...
• A new level of gall
  Peter Penashue, I do believe, missed his true calling. He should have been a consultant. After all, there are consulting firms throughout the ...
• NAPE ads are surely taking their toll
  Whenever Kathy Dunderdale happens to see that television ad that so effectively captures the head-scratching bewilderment of thousands of ...
• Escaping from smokes
  OK, full disclosure time: I absolutely loved smoking, and I sometimes — sometimes being the operative word here — miss it dearly.And, oddly ...
• Popes, premiers and other saviours
  Bless me Father Fourth Estate for I have sinned in having arrived lacking in punctuality to the papal punditry of recent weeks, but I hope my ...
• Remember when polls actually meant something?
  With all this yak of late about the sleazy way politicians (imagine, politicians and sleaze mentioned in the same breath) try to manipulate ...
• Lights, camera . . . opinion
  A somewhat peculiar letter to the editor last Saturday from an apparent wannabe film critic has given me an excuse to again delve into my ...
• Dish it out? Be prepared to take it
  Before passing a comment or two on Randy Simms’ boorish, on-air description of one of his callers as an “arsehole,” I can’t help but admit to my ...
• Crime and punishment
  All those neat and tidy and politically correct terms like redemption and rehabilitation and restorative justice evaporated completely last week ...
• Lance the Liar
  About nine years ago, a former colleague of mine mailed me a copy of Lance Armstrong’s autobiography centring on the famous bicyclist’s fight ...
• Finding a new Queen's representative
  It will be just a matter of time, I’m convinced, before I’ll be hearing from that committee established to come up with a list of names of ...
• Hunger strikes and redress for wrongs done
  My sense of priorities this past week became abundantly clear, if not selfish: of all the news circulating throughout the province and the ...
• Truth and fiction
  It was just a stroke of luck, I’m sure, but right around the time our city fathers and mothers were embarrassing themselves with a Codco-like ...
• Muskrat theatre came close to mocking Newfoundland...
  If you didn’t know differently Monday evening, you’d have sworn CBC reporter Lee Pitts must have had an inkling that the announcement of the ...
• The world according to Malone
  After reading Greg Malone’s fascinating and thought-provoking book, “Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders,” I couldn’t help but think of a story I’ve ...
• A government Smallwood would love
  You may have thought you were accorded complete media coverage of last Wednesday’s perfunctory debate in the legislature on the Muskrat Falls ...
• Waiting for messiahs
  In the category of messiahs I have known: the first time I actually witnessed up close and personal the miracle of a political messiah descending ...
• Offside at the House of Assembly
  Darin King is starting to remind me a bit of Gary Bettman. King, of course, is the government House leader who stubbornly refused to give into ...
• Folly at play on the Fortune file
  Deadlines being what they are, that well-publicized racket over yellowtail flounder may be settled before this particular Saturday spiel makes ...
• Controversy is nipping at Penashue's heels
  So I’m up in the woods the other day, standing over a still-twitching rabbit, the first kill of the new season, when my hunting partner — ...
• The queen's speech
  If you’re one of those Newfoundlanders with a softening of the heart affliction that provokes some sympathy for the polls-challenged Kathy ...
• Giving Brian Peckford his due
  According to Brian Peckford himself, Frank Moores called him “Pecky.” What Peckford may not know is that some media types had a ...
• Hockey night in Flatrock
  Like a multitude of Newfoundlanders, I’ve had an unabashed love affair with hockey forever and a day. Admittedly, my actual playing career was ...
• Stay for the show
  I don’t know whether reporters react today the same way that newsroom types of my era did whenever we were blessed with incidents of political ...
• 40 and counting
  I have an anniversary this week. Nothing, mind you, that calls for a flag ceremony at the former Press Club on Water Street West, or the ...