Steve Paiken’s back story on Mark Steyn and the Maclean’s Three.

To Steyn’s credit, he may have offered the first olive branch when he said as I was closing the show, “would you guys like to go for dinner?” One of the lawyers immediately said, “No!” They may not have broken bread, but they did continue the dialogue.

What became clear is that the rancor that started the evening was gone by the end of it. We’re now trying to see whether we can bring all four participants back some time towards the end of the month, in hopes of having a somewhat calmer discussion about the actual arguments in Steyn’s book. We didn’t get to much of that last night because so much time was taken up with questions about whether Maclean’s was practising good journalism or not.

While there may be several morals to this story, one I’d like to highlight is this: many bloggers were taking potshots at various parties yesterday as the behind-the-scenes negotiations went on. While it may have made for provocative reading, much of it bore no resemblance to the truth at the time, and obviously not to what transpired in the end.

It reminded me of an expression I recently heard: 90% of what we worry about never happens.

TVO debate.

Did Donna Cadman, widow of Chuck Cadman and candidate for the Conservative Party in Surrey North understand she was calling Doug Finlay and Tom Flanagan yahoos?

“I hope eventually the RCMP will find out who offered what,” said Cadman in an interview yesterday. “Chuck never told me who they were. I’m in the dark as much as anyone else and it would be nice to know who these two people were. They could be just yahoos.”

Happy Mother’s Day Mrs. Martin.