The latest numbers on COVID-19 in Canada for Aug. 2

Many thanks

My life changed the day after Thanksgiving, 1967. My wife and I crossed the bridge at Fort Francis, Ont., and were accepted into Canada; she was a citizen and I was a draft dodger. We went to Winnipeg, looked for work and found rooms upstairs in a nice home owned by an older couple.

I remember the wind and cold that December as I went around town, failing to find a job. But our small savings dwindled fast and, after Christmas, we were forced to make a tough decision, to stay or go.

I am almost 80 now and I have never since found myself in such a hard spot. A few days after paying our next months’ rent, I had to ask our hosts for our rent back. They were due it and they had earned it; I had no rightful claim on it.

Should Donald Trump be found guilty of all 34 felony charges he is currently on trial for in a New York City courtroom, he could be sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence the state allows for the type of offences he has allegedly committed.

The odds are that his prison term would be much less, if he is incarcerated at all.

Even if he is locked up, and assuming that he becomes the Republican party presidential nominee, a conviction would not disqualify him. True, millions of voters might (finally) turn against him, yet there is no U.S. constitutional law that individuals with a criminal record cannot run for a federal office.

Moreover, it has happened before. More than a century ago, Eugene Debs, the head of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), ran as a third-party candidate in the 1920 presidential election from his cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. In September 1918, he had been convicted on charges for violating the Espionage and Sedition Acts and was given a 10-year prison sentence.