It has been, for us, a relatively mild winter. This area of Eastern Ontario has always been awarded plentiful sunlight throughout the winter months, and if anything we've enjoyed more than usual, this year of winter 2011/12. We've also received significantly less snowfall than is usual for our Ottawa Valley winters. Some might say the snow deficit has been absorbed by the amount of freezing rain events we've alternately received.

And, along with fewer snow events, we've also been gifted with a somewhat milder winter as far as temperature lows are concerned. We've had a few days of minus-20 highs, but few indeed. When the temperature dips below minus-20 it usually struggles, throughout the day, to rise to minus-10, or -8 degrees, a manageable level of frigid weather.

Truth to tell, the snowpack in the ravine gauges to us similar to what it generally is, at this time of year. The packed snow on the ravine trails elevates us well beyond our usual reach, in respect to the surrounding trees, evident to me as I am now able to more easily reach the cache spots in tree trunks where I usually leave peanuts for the squirrels.

Contrast that situation with what Europe is currently undergoing, in its weather blitz of miserable cold and snowy weather that has taken eastern, western Europe and even a portion of Africa by surprise. Unaccustomed to such cold-weather extremes, they are certainly not prepared to deal with the situation in terms of snow-clearing equipment, appropriate heating systems, and generally having to cope with what has turned out to be catastrophic for many.

The homeless in particular - over 400 now calculated to have died as a direct result of the freezing chill. Including poor countryside and city dwellers who cannot afford to heat their homes. And now, coping with the Danube beginning to freeze over impacting commerce. And dams breaking or threatening to be overwhelmed, causing flooding and further isolating remote villages.

Here's hoping there will soon be an end to the miserable conditions that have made this winter an unfortunately memorable one for Europe.

Canada's population of 33.5 million people is growing faster than that of any other G8 nation — fuelled primarily by immigration — while the booming West continues to reshape this country's demographic landscape, a new census has revealed. Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia News files, National Post

When I was a child it was seldom that a face not appearing Caucasian would appear among the throngs of people I might encounter in downtown Toronto, where my family lived as immigrants; by that time my parents having been several decades in the country. I do recall when I became a teen and my parents owned their first house, they rented out a room to a mixed-race couple, a Chinese man and a white woman. They had no regard for scandal, and felt it the right thing to do.

I was taught by my parents that we were are all equal, no matter what we looked like, regardless of origin, ethnicity, language or customary heritage. Equal respect was due all. They were progressive in their outlook and socialist to the core. My mother made it a point to march in peace protests, away back then, long before the Hippies popularized that kind of protest movement. Later, she didn't feel out of place marching alongside Hippies, either.

The face of Canada no longer resembles what I became familiar with as a child, even throughout my growing years to maturity. Now, in my neighbourhood, live families who come from all points of the Globe, representing a myriad of ethnic groups, languages, customs, and religions. And Canada, for the most part, has done a fairly good job of welcoming these immigrants, of encouraging them to find their place in this society.

But not necessarily of stimulating them to become fully assimilated rather than gather in social clusters, finding comfort in the close company of others of the same origin. That, to the exclusion of gradually joining the mainstream and adapting to their values, is a fairly recent phenomenon, much post-dating my own much earlier experiences as a child of immigrants, familiar with other children of other immigrants who came from disparate countries of the world, but who were not necessarily 'visible minorities'.

Statistics Canada's recent release of population figures for the country gives us a total population of 33.5 million - representing those who were enumerated, in any event. The raw data show population increases from before the turn of the century to the present. Canada grew, from the year of my birth, from roughly ten million people to the current figure of 33.5 million in 2011. That's a considerable population spurt, but the vast majority of it does not represent a 'natural' increase.

Canadians, native-born or long settled as citizens in the country are not reproducing at a rate to grow the country 'naturally'. Rather, we are dependent on the migration of people from various parts of the world to make Canada their home, for our steady growth. Canada is now accommodating a quarter-million emigrants leaving their countries of origin, to settle as permanent residents in this country.

Two-thirds of population growth has resulted from Canada's open and welcome immigration system. We are a multifaceted, multilingual, multicultural country, at a time in world affairs where few countries that are considered economically and socially advanced can claim to be homogeneous in their population base - with the possible continuing exception of Japan.

He's a natural-born raconteur, a story-teller, a purveyor of insider tales, someone who is capable of ingratiating himself into the confidence of those whom he sets out to probe; their place in the hierarchy of Canadian entrepreuneurship, society, politics. He takes careful notes of their tics, their likes and dislikes, their private lives, their public personnas, the confluence between their ties to government and their business success, and relays that information through the medium of his many published books.

He is a skilled writer, able to turn a phrase in a manner that reflects his very personal writing style. A writing style that he has himself credited with changing the way in which non-fiction writing and the narrative within, he himself, single-handedly altered to reflect modern realities. Much as Ernest Hemingway has been credited with altering the way in which fiction writers, in his time, made language simpler and more accessible in drawing a mental landscape for the modern reader of creative fiction.

It takes some time to get through Peter C. Newman's books. They're distinguished by good writing, yes, but also by the distinctiveness of his penchant to prolixity; exhibiting through the written word a talent for running on, much as a chatty gossip is wont to do. Except that, when confronted by a real, live audience, even one-on-one, he becomes strangely tongue-tied, by his own admission. His mode of communication is through the written, not the spoken word - and lots of them. His books are veritable tomes - both of information that is useful, and of personal tidbits which are unuseful, but titillating to the reader.

He excels at revealing to a curious public the personal predilections and pecadilloes of those he befriends under the guise of a professional writer (which he is), seeming entirely neutral, but whose penchant to reveal all, to engage the reader in his own type of curiosity, unveiling in the process peoples' all-too-human failings related to ego and inner needs attracts his reading public.

In the final analysis, his own self-confidence and skills are entirely bound together within the persona of a egotist. His celebration of self, his writing skills, interpretive acumen, expansive vocabulary and disarming charm in inter-personal relations do become a bit cloying. A dutiful reader, I hate putting a book away without slogging completely through it.

His background in Canadian publishing, with the Toronto Star and Macleans magazine is legendary. And he loves embellishing that legend, making himself larger than life. Recounting his interactions with other well-known literary figures. Most of whom have reason for regret if they ever gave this man reason to note their eccentric behaviour of which he made note and later revealed in his inimitable way.

When I finished Here Be Dragons, I was glad to set it aside. In the end, the tail of the title, "Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power", said it all. Gossip with an acerbic sprinkling of writerly superiority, executed with skill and pride.