Seven Highlights from 2004
December 21, 2004

As 2004 winds down, and Seven Oaks succumbs to the holidays’ inertia with a two-week issue, we thought we should look for this year’s silver lining. We looked hard, and came up with 7 highlights from the past year, complete with links to our take on the events. Enjoy.

7) SevenOaksMag.com goes on-line on February 21, 2004. OK, so this is really only a top six list. It was a rough year, after all.

6) Tommy Douglas wins greatest Canadian (man) contest put on by the CBC in a desperate attempt to salvage their ratings without hockey season. No matter how contrived or gender-blind the contest, it was great to see a socialist win on the eve of George Bush’s official visit to Canada.

5) Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish stomps on a Bush doll in a televised comedy sketch. Since Jack Layton decided to pose "statesmanlike" during the war criminal’s visit, it was left to Parrish to express how millions of Canadians were feeling about the U.S. president.

4) Ronald Reagan dies. He may have forgotten his crimes, but we haven’t. He only makes number four, though, as it came too little, too late for the people of Lebanon, Libya, and Central America, not to mention working class Americans, among others.

3) Michael Moore releases Fahrenheit 9/11, a modern day All Quiet on the Western Front. Moore’s dispatches from Iraq and depressed, post-industrial America may have fallen on deaf hears among the hacks in the Kerry camp, but it reached millions of ordinary Americans and will stand the test of time as a classic of cinematic dissent.

2) The Spanish people vote out the Azner government only days after a terrorist attack his regime clumsily tried to blame on the Basque, in an electoral reflection of the overwhelming anti-war sentiment in Spain. The new Socialist government pulls Spanish troops out of Iraq.

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