Crude Observations

Hi people – apologies for missing last week, I was out dealing with some personal matters but I am now back in the saddle and ready to get back out there. And it feels like 2026 is finally heating up and will present a lot of compelling blog topics as we stumble through this, the year of the prancing pony or golden horse or whatever it is. I mean seriously, between Pierre Poilievre trying to out-collapse Donald Trump in net-approval polls to the ongoing crisis in Canadian hockey, there is so much material.   Add […]

Alright folks, I was going to take a week off because I am technically on vacation (for Valentine’s Day?) but I couldn’t resist doing a blog because I have really exciting news to share.   The “book” is published! I am super-excited to say that I am officially a (self) published author which I think is neat. I expect I will be as rich as most authors are before too long. Ah, who am I kidding. Richer!   All kidding aside, the book is done and for that reason I am shamed into doing a […]

Every once in a while I am reminded that I actually have a full time job.   And then I am reminded that that job is in fact NOT being a blogger.   Nosirree. I am in fact an experienced M&A professional that spends most of my time working with clients helping them close the sale of their businesses or the financing and acquisition thereof. Clients who are mostly Western Canadian based, private and mid-market in size.   I say this for several reasons.   First, my kids STILL ask me what I do for […]

Time for the annual Groundhog Day post.   Well it’s not really annual anymore is it, since I have missed two or three times already, but you know how it is – if you’ve seen one groundhog you’ve seen them all and true to the theme of the Groundhog Day movie where the same day repeats over and over again ad infinitum, is it really necessary for someone like me to rehash the same theme over and over again ad infinitum?   I didn’t think so. But, inasmuch as Groundhog Day is coming on February […]

Hey everyone, it’s Davos week! Super exciting, right? Time for the World Economic Forum where the leaders of the free world and assorted rich people get to hobnob with each other, make important speeches and eat expensive food whilst guzzling magnums of Chateau Petrus and basking ion the glow of their own self-importance.   Not that I think it’s a waste of time or anything. Certainly, there must be some benefit to being there or we wouldn’t see the same people trek there year after year. I mean, I used to regularly attend industry conferences […]

  Alright folks, pull up your chairs because it is time once again to bask in the fonts of wisdom that is my annual set of insightful predictions, wild guesses and prognostications that form what can only be charitably called the greatest annual forecast blog of all time.   That’s right. It is time for the Annual Fearless ForecastTM. A set of predictions that is unparalleled on this the sixth floor of Highstreet House in Calgary’s Beltline district. I defy you to find one better anywhere nearby.   As always, the Fearless Forecast comes with […]

Happy New Year one and all! Did anyone miss me over the holidays? I know I missed you all. I hope it was a relaxing break for everyone and that batteries were sufficiently recharged. I know mine are. I put the proverbial pen down and didn’t even open up the laptop for a solid week and a half. It was glorious!   But now to the matter at hand.   DID I MISS ANYTHING WHILE I WAS OFF? DID ANYTHING CONSEQUENTIAL HAPPEN??????   I know, I know. It’s a rhetorical question. There is always something […]

Well here it is, Christmas Eve, the shopping is finally stopping and the family is sitting around being uber-lazy and getting ready for the big day.   I know I promised last Friday was the last blog for the year but I can’t help myself.   The tradition is a poem on Christmas Eve and gosh darn if I’m not going to honour that and regale you.   In 2024 at this time everyone was feeling upbeat and constructive on Canadian energy, but the rest of the world was sweating it out through runaway inflation, […]

Hear ye, hear ye. I bring to you, upon this, the 6th day before Christmas, a purloined list of characters both naughty and nice, as well as some ideas for gifts for our favourite characters and influencers from the year just past. And to be fair, there is no shortage, at all, of worthy and unworthy recipients of the Big Guy’s largesse or ironic gifts intended to be lessons for one and all.   Upon review of this list, we will be able to decide whether the named individual is to be bequeathed a gift […]

This week is all about my top 10 Christmas movies, but as always I reserve for myself the right to take some gratuitous holiday potshots at my favourite target, the Canadian Federal government, the governing Liberals, Mark Carney and, for good measure, the toddler known as Pierre Poilievre.   For those of you who are living under a rock (or just don’t care) the Canadian Liberal minority government continues to underperform even the complete lack of expectations that Canadians hold. No mean feat for Canada’s Natural Ruling Party.   I do have Christmas/Holiday stuff to […]

Ah, the best time of year is finally at hand. That’s right, it’s the Holidays and the official launch of my various and sundry Yuletide traditions. I used to pretend that these were all new versions of old classics, but I have to admit that ten years in there is a decent amount of repetition. It’s just not avoidable.   But far better to be rehashing the 12 days of Christmas or polishing up a diatribe on the best Christmas movies, writing poems and putting together the world’s most impressive nice and naughty list than […]

Anything important happen this week? Any new US tariffs get announced? Any imminent threats to Canadian sovereignty? I feel like maybe something important happened. Someone got fired or some key event transpired. Was it American Thanksgiving? No, that wasn’t it. I mean, yes. It was American Thanksgiving and those two giant turkeys got pardoned, so there was that. But I don’t think that was it. Maybe we energy folks should have something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving?   Oh wait, I know what it was. David Eby had yet another press conference where he […]

Last week was supposed to be a day off and I didn’t take it. This week I was supposed to take a day off and here I am writing again, with very little inspiration behind me but I will persevere if only because I need to prove to people that I work hard every week. That said, this is going to be short and meandering because I have no theme this week.   First, a bit of a mea culpa. Last week I intimated that the redevelopment and repair of the White Rock Pier was […]

I wasn’t going to do a blog this week because I was out of town for some needed R&R, enjoying a few days in Banff with my wife as our traditional jaunt to Phoenix was probably not the best idea given the government shutdown in the United States and the very real possibility of flight cancellations or worse. And I’m not kidding – it was bad for a lot of people. One of my favourite sports columnists has a great post on Substack about his epic flight cancelled journey home from New Orleans which interrupted […]

Well, that was quite a week wasn’t it? Some real stuff happened that probably deserves some commentary from me and I think I am up to it. I was going to start on Monday, but I was still exhausted from attending that little Great Gatsby themed shindig at Mar-a-Lago. You know, the party that, as Jon Stewart so eloquently put it, was designed to celebrate income inequality.   I jest of course. I received no invite to that particular party. But I was struck not so much by the hypocrisy of such a lavish billionaire-laden […]

Faced with a passel of activity keeping me away from my keyboard (casino volunteer? Why!?!?!?), I found myself faced with an agonizing choice. Either do a blog about the upcoming COP3037 enviro conference and bafflegab or recycle one of my favourite types of blogs, the infamous trick or treating guide for us fellow travellers on my journey of cynicism.   The COP blog holds a lot of appeal if I’m being honest, because these US sponsored sessions are just so painfully earnest and represent the peak of enviro-hypocricy as literally thousands of government (taxpayer) paid […]

Howdy everyone, hope your October is going as swimmingly as mine. I know it’s been a while since I posted, but I have been distracted the last few weeks by matters of a personal nature and as it turns out, by the time I came to my traditional Thursday blog writing window, I was either too mentally drained to put pen to paper (yeah I know, not a thing) or found myself trapped in a meeting with literally at least 300 people all wanting my head on a platter (don’t ever volunteer for a community […]

You know, every year I do a forecast and I hope that world events don’t careen out of control and embarrass me so completely that I have to run and hide.   And every year, the same thing happens. World events careen out of control and embarrass me completely.   Except I have nowhere to run to and I’m not a big fan of hiding, being more of a stand up and face the music kind of guy. So here I am – facing the music and for this Forecast, it’s a funeral march.   […]

So, this is probably going to disappoint a lot of readers but this isn’t really a “blog” as you’ve come to know them this week. Instead it is a self-serving request of you, my favourite people, the ones who have sacrificed at least 15 minutes a week for the past 10 plus years to humour me as I rant and rave about subjects dear to my heart, if to always yours.   To explain. As some of you regular readers may know, I turned sixty last June and my lovely wife did the completely unexpected […]

Hmm – I’m travelling today so I am going to do the unforgivable and revisit a discussion from a prior blog and take some liberties in updating it.   That’s because there is a thing that happens around this time every year. You can almost set your old timey pocket watch by it, it is that predictable. No, I’m not talking about people predicting this might be the year the Leafs finally do it, nor am I talking about the annual exodus of Canada Geese to warmer climes or the annual weather debacle that is […]

Happy Friday everyone, I hope you are having a decent day because the week has been anything but fun, with the continued roller coaster ride, which often feels a bit broken, taking everyone’s breath away while scaring the living daylights out of us all.   While I have many thoughts on current events, I have learned long ago that wading too deep into the swamp that is the political arena does not lead to anything resembling a satisfactory result. Rather it is just a path to further rage and acrimony, more polarization and the propagation […]

We had a prospective client management and executive team in the office the other day and we got into a high level top down discussion as it regards commodity prices and the future price direction of everyone’s favourite toxic substance – oil. It was an interesting dialogue because at this stage in the cycle, it is safe to say that no one really knows and, if we are going to be completely honest, the people that claim to know the most generally have the least accuracy and a dart board may be in order.   […]

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the official last blog of the summer. Yes summer. It’s the Friday before Labour Day, kids are going back to school, the leaves are actually starting to turn, CFL is in week 30 of its 57 week season, hockey players are thinking about returning to training camp and the NFL season kicks off in less than 6 days.   By the way – the AI still needs some work. Apologies to the three-armed man in the picture.   But, it’s the end of summer and I don’t care what […]

Okay fine. I will do a super short blog because I am waiting on an email and I have some time to kill. This one is going to set a record for brevity. I promise less than 800 words.   I know I said I would give everyone a week off and I really meant to, but with all the late breaking news this week, I thought it might be worth just revisiting some of the most relevant developments, especially since I know we are all waiting with bated breath for yet another showe to […]

I’m supposed to be a on a break this week doing the every two week summer blog thing but I felt that since last week’s blog was so heavy on the whole Canada is great thing and dumping on Wexit that I needed to win back some points with some of my more anti-Ottawa readers by providing a more light-hearted and fun summer time read.   And for the record, just so no one is confused, I do actually believe that Alberta and the West is under-represented federally and has many, legitimate grievances and is […]

I’m back! Did anyone miss me? I hope so, because I sure missed all of you. I think this may be the first time I have gone so long without doing a blog, missing three Fridays in a row. Hopefully this doesn’t result in me losing readers, which I never actually considered. At any rate, it was nice to check out for a while and recharge the proverbial (Canadian taxpayer funded) batteries.   DID ANYTHING IMPORTANT HAPPEN WHEN I WAS AWAY?   I think not, or I would have heard about it for sure. No […]

Here it is everyone – the last blog of the pre-Summer period and it couldn’t have come at a better time, what with 35% tariffs being gifted to us by Donald Trump just yesterday, to make everyone’s day brighter. Expect that next week you won’t hear from me, and maybe not the week after. Or the week after that. Why you ask? Well, yours truly is taking off on vacation, which I am allowed to do apparently. And I won’t be allowed to write. More than likely.  Because I will instead be driving. Some of […]

So here we are at the halfway point of the year and as I mentioned last week, it is time to yet again check on my Fearless Forecast to see how badly I have managed to mess up my prognostications and the portfolios of those you foolish enough to follow my advice.   But first, I feel I must stop and veer. Because today is someone very special’s birthday. No, not Geraldo Rivera or Neil Simon. Not even Nathaniel Hawthorne or Post Malone.   None of those. I am talking of course about Uncle Sam […]

Today is one of those glorious historical anomalies for the Crude Observations blog that some people might call a coincidence but that I consider to be a Gregorian twist of fate. As we enter the summer months, I have many traditions for the blog including the birthday blog (last week), the review of my terrible forecast blog (next week!), the Canada Day blog (today!) and the Stampede blog (next week or the week after). Then it’s the vacation blog. If I feel like it. That covers pretty much all of July!   It is rare […]

Well folks, here it is. That time of year where we all hopefully are starting to wind down. Kids are coming out of school, people are getting excited for their upcoming vacations, even if the US isn’t as popular for Canadians as it once was, and all of Calgary is preparing for Stampede in their own unique way. Whether that is dusting off the cowboy costumes for another year of fun or high-tailing it out of town doesn’t really matter – I’m all about tradition.   Another tradition this time of year is the ritual […]

So here we are, another Friday the 13th, a day renowned for bringing the best of luck to everyone around, because as we all know nothing bad ever happens on a Friday the 13th, just ask all those people who spent some time with their good friend Jason.   I know for a fact that there is nothing to be afraid of on Friday the 13th, much like I know that our building doesn’t platy into the whole superstition thing and doesn’t avoid calling the 13th floor the 13th floor. Alright, that’s a lie, I […]

It’s a million degrees outside and I want to get home on this last Friday of May so I am going to keep it short today. Pithy. To the point and waste no one’s time.   Originally, I was going to do a re-write of the Speech from the Throne so I could heap scorn on the newbie Mark Carney government before they take off on summer vacation, but then I decided that instead of finding the speech mock-worthy, I actually enjoyed all the pomp and ceremony and just general regal weirdness of it all […]

Sometimes a blog is so obvious it becomes too easy to write. The words just kind of flow out the brain and through the fingertips and voila, it’s a blog. Like with tariffs – those are so easy to write since, as has been well-established, I really, really hate tariffs. Or Alberta separation. I could write thousands of wors about that little bit if Wexit if I cared to dignifiy it with my time.   National politics? Hate it, love to write about it. Provincial and municipal politics? Equally targeted with my scorn.   The […]

I am reupping this annual missive to the Canadian May Long weekend for several reasons.   One – I am tired and need to be a reposter for a bit but I know you all like this annual reminder about Canada’s greatest holiday after the Annual Poutine & Maple Syrup Festival.   Two – It’s rainy and cold, my wife is out of town and I’m in the office so if I have to suffer, you have to suffer.   May Long. The best weekend of the year for us Canadians. Any number of reasons. […]

If you are a follower of this blog, you are probably aware that last April (2024) my mom passed away and I wrote the below blog to pay tribute to her. I am choosing to repost this year because it is, absent anything else, a tribute to a mom who made a difference. In this case my mom. One example of mom’s doing their thing every day, subtle and overt, intentional or otherwise. This includes all the other moms who play a role in my life, including most obviously my wife who is remarkable in […]

Before I start in on this week’s abbreviated blog, you should know that I wasn’t actually going to do one this week as I found myself struck down by some teenager imported plague for mist of the week. How bad was it? Well, I actually worked from home for two days (until I got kicked out) and slept in a separate room (an actual room, not just falling asleep watching endless hours of hockey).   Not to mention that I was pretty choked that having to do that stupid election blog last week prevented me […]

Alright fans, hangers on and wannabes. This is the week you have all been waiting for. The missive with the prediction. The rant on current issues and a review of our political future. A wash and rinse of the tea leaves, revealing the inner secrets of the Canadian body politic. A bona fide prognostication of epic proportions on this, the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER! Well at least the most important election of the modern era. Hmm, well maybe not. How about the most important election of the 21st century? No? Since the Free Trade Election? […]

This leaders’ debate is excruciating, so I wrote a blog and borrowed some old stuff. To spruce it up I decided to ask Elon and Grok to translate it into Pirate. Enjoy.   Cap’n’s Log, April 18, 2024     Hoist the colors, me hearties! ‘Tis time to swab the deck and chart the stormy seas o’ current events plaguin’ Canada and the world beyond. Take a gander at the tariffs, the stock runs, the plunder gained, the treasures lost, and the cursed losses aplenty.     This trade war’s shown us Canucks we’ve got […]

Well thank god that quarter is over, right? That chaos to Macrh 31 was about all I could ta. Thank god that nothing bad ever happens in April. Like tariffs. Or Pandemonium.   Ah, who am I kidding. It’s all going hell in a hand basket and all we can do is watch and hope that someone somewhere gets some sense.   And why was I talking about March anyway? I clearly knew that it was past April 2, because I dod a blog last week where I went off on tariffs. Yet again. Seems […]

Hi everyone, did you miss me? It’s OK to day no, even though I know that would be a lie. I missed you guys, especially as I was off doing some stealthy reconnaissance on behalf of my mostly Canadian readers.   Where was I you might ask? Well I was doing some undercover research on behalf of all of us in what we can currently refer to as the demilitarized zone, otherwise known as Phoenix Arizona. USA. Yes dear readers, I did what so many Canadians seem afraid to do. I went into the belly […]

I seem to be in a bit of funk these days (tariffs will do that to you), but fortunately I find myself saved by one of my moistest favourite annual rites of Crude Observational status. The ubiquitous sports metaphor and life story. The one time of year when I actually will have multiple televisions on in the office (yes, we have multiple televisions, the question is, why don’t you?). I am referring of course to the annual NCAA Final Four Basketball tournament. Otherwise known as March Madness (even though it ends in April) and the […]

Happy Ides of March everyone! Or is it Saint Patrick’s Day? Or, to be honest, Pie Day. Or is it some weird mashup of all of them. It’s a weird convolution of all these days into one glorious green-festooned ritual stabbing in the back of and drinking of Caesars and other cocktails made famous by betrayal and the shepherding of snakes off an inhospitable island.   To honour the days in question and to be effective with my time, I am going to go out on a limb with a not very well thought out […]

Wow, here we are, a mere 7 days into March and I have completely run out of things to say.   Actually, allow me to restate that. I have plenty to say. And say it I will. Just not in this venue. Because they can’t be said in polite company.   We are now officially 4 days into Trade War 2.0 TM and I am exhausted. The battles on the front have been intense and filled with many angry words and nationalistic beating of chests. An old Molson ad has been updated for the digital […]

Hi all.   It’s February 28th. I’m in hiding. Because I write blogs that are critical of tariffs and I’m worried that I might get outed and picked up by the 51st State Troopers. Look. I’m not kidding. It can happen. They have operatives and spies everywhere. I think even some of my readers may be of concern to my freedom.   I’m specifically thinking that if you’re middle-aged, wear Lulu dress pants and Uggs and have recently bought a mid-life crisis station wagon with a super-charged rocket engine, you are prime material to be […]

Okay. I’m just going to say this once. It’s just a hockey game. Right? It is not a metaphor for our relationship with the United States or their relationship with us. The fights during the first game were a bit ridiculous but let’s be realistic, the Tkachuk’s are all a bit ridiculous, so it is no surprise to see them in the thick of it.   I am writing this blog on Thursday at 5 PM MST, exactly one hour before the puck drops in Boston and we can hopefully put all this sports as […]

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone who celebrates. And to those who don’t, thank you for taking a few minutes out of your loveless and desperate lives to read this blog. I may soon start posting this on X regularly so I can get some money back on my Tesla shares that seem to be in a bit of a freefall – correlation with USAID? One will never know.   At any rate, I know you all have nothing better to do than read this so I may as well entertain you.   Not with tariffs […]

Dear readers, I feel I owe you an apology. Lost amidst all this tariff nonsense of the past few weeks has been some missing out on tradition. You see I have a series of blogs I do as we transition from January to February, the main one of course being my Groundhog Day one, which, given Trump Redux or Trump 2.0 seems like it is rather timely. And waiting to see if a mangy rodent sees its shadow or not as a weather predictor is one of my favourite annual traditions. But I missed it […]

Well here we are ladies and gentlemen. T-Day minus one. What does that mean? It means exactly what it means. It is January 31, 2025, one day before our new overlords to the South will be implementing their dreaded tariffs on the backs of unsuspecting Canadians and the media and political frenzy is AMPED UP!!! Time to fight back as only Canadians know how!   Maybe. Maybe tomorrow. Sheesh. Try to settle down people. Maybe we need a saviour? London, where are you when we need you?   Instead…   On the one hand we […]

Wow – what a century the last week has been, eh? I tell ya, it warms my heart to put all that work into my annual Fearless Forecast only to have it blown to pieces in the blink of an eye. I did not see the Lions losing to that Washington team, especially not in such spectacular fashion. Nor did I think that Vivek would be punted out of the White House inner circle before the inauguration, but here we are. As for the rest of my missives and takes and predictions? Only time will […]

And now I have to start all over again while the whole world is crashing down around us.   That is right folks, it is time for the annual rite of passage wherein I give my top insightful insights into the world, nay, the universe.   It is time for The Fearless Forecast TM. That one blog of the year that everyone and their cousin Vinny turns to base investment and asset allocation decisions on. I have heard that no less an investment icon than Jim Cramer regularly references the Fearless Forecast and broadcasts its […]

Well Thank God that year is over, right? It was a rough one, both fore prognosticators like myself and all the little people who hang on my every word.   Never mind that my 2024 words were oh so wrong. I can’t even begin to fathom what I will predict for 2025, which is my next week blog, since it feels like an tire year has already gone by in the first 10 days. By the time I get to my 2025 Fearless Flop, everything new will be old again and vice versa.   Has […]

Well here it is, Christmas Eve, the shopping is finally stopping and the family is sitting around being uber-lazy and getting ready for the big day.   I know I promised last Friday was the last blog for the year but I can’t help myself.   The tradition is a poem on Christmas Eve and gosh darn if I’m not going to honour that and regale you.   In 2023 at this time everyone was feeling upbeat and constructive on Canadian energy, but the rest of the world was sweating it out through runaway inflation, […]

Hear ye, hear ye. I bring to you, upon this, the 5th day before Christmas, a purloined list of characters both naughty and nice, as well as some ideas for gifts for our favourite characters and influencers from the year just past. And to be fair, there is no shortage, at all, of worthy and unworthy recipients of the Big Guy’s largesse or ironic gifts intended to be lessons for one and all.   Upon review of this list, we will be able to decide whether the named individual is to be bequeathed a gift […]

This week is all about my top 10 Christmas movies, but as always I have to take a few minutes to do an aside about the government because no year end series of blogs would be complete without me taking warranted potshots at the most tired and bereft of ideas government in Canadian history – the Trudeau federal government..   For those of you who are living under a rock (or just don’t care) the Canadian Liberal minority government continues to underperform even the complete lack of expectations that Canadians hold. No mean feat for […]

Short and sweet this week as it is time to start slowing down but I don’t want to use all my Christmas magic too early since there is a lot of ground to cover between now and the big day. And, as we all know there are a lot of days in the whole Christmas pantheon. There are days off, the days between Christmas and New Year’s, it took the wise men a couple of weeks almost to get to the manger after the big birth, there are – variously – 12 or 24 days […]

Before I get into my annual recycling of holiday blog ideas, I first wanted to say a few words about Donald Trump and his ridiculous 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, including oil and gas imports, unless we clean up our act on illegal immigration into the United States and the importation of illegal drugs, specifically fentanyl.   Unlike most Canadians, at least those the Liberal party, my initial reaction wasn’t feigned panic, surprise and oh so serious proclamations that it was time to put aside our partisan differences and gather together as a country, […]

Another week gone and another week closer to the Holidays and the Holiday blogs, including the epic fan favourite – the top Christmas Movies of all time according to me. But in the interim, we have to cover some ground and discuss some topics of mutual interest along the way.   And these topics are going to be true Crude Observations because there is a lot of stuff going on that I feel needs the proper treatment. There won’t be a lot because a) I don’t want to bore you, and; b) I have a […]

Not a lot of time this week as I am in final preparation for the Boss coming to town. No, not my wife. She is already here. Nope, it’s the Bruce Springsteen concert, not sure if it’s a farewell tour, but it’s a concert we have been waiting for since, well, the last time he was here which was a very long time ago. I should know, I have the T-shirt and I’m going to wear it. Frays, moth-holes and t-shirt hoarder embarrassment all rolled into one tightly fitting (now) pink package. It’s great to […]

America – You are Great! Again. I guess.   So much déjà vu all over again. I feel like it’s maybe 2016!   And what a night! Unlike 2016 where I watched the results trickle in with Wolf Blitzer getting excited about a 10 vote swing in Fiddle-Faddle County North Carolina and CNN with their magic wall, this year I followed the election results on Twitter which was interesting since as I follow both right, centre and left wing people I was able to feel their full range of emotions and disbelief as the evening […]

It’s Blog time, time for a super scary Halloween edition filled with spooks, ghosts and surprises. Terrors both large and small, the usual litany of candy and trick or treating fun and, for those who want such things, a bold election prediction.   But first, Halloween. Way more fun than crazy election predictions, although I am sure I can weave some random bouts of politics into this. We had more kids than usual. Costumes were on the fantasy side. No one wore a garbage bag. No Trumps, Trudeaus, Kamala’s 0r Biden’s. It was a nice […]