Rick McGinnis This year has been the half-century anniversary of a lot of things. I recently wrote about the 50th anniversary of The Godfather, but the significance of this cultural event wouldn’t become important to me until much later in life. More crucial to my world when I was eight years old was the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibit, opened at the British [...]
Andrew Lawton A comedian with whom I worked on a project a while back once told me that there are no bad experiences in life – just good experiences and material. As a columnist and commentator, I’ve certainly tried to embrace this, and channel life’s unpleasantness into something constructive. That said, I must confess I could live with a bit less material than [...]
From the editor’s desk Paul Tuns I read a lot and many of the books I read get reviewed in these pages, either in longer reviews or essays under my byline or as unsigned brief reviews. But there are many that I can’t get around to writing a review about and I want to let you know about several of them, and [...]
John Carpay: Interim writer, John Carpay, Law Matters Canadians remain divided about the Freedom Convoy truckers’ protest in Ottawa in January and February of 2022. Some Canadians saw the truckers as heroes resisting unjust laws, while government-funded media portrayed thousands of peaceful protesters as a harmful nuisance at best, and as dangerous racists and violent criminals at worst. I know [...]
Andrew Lawton: When the Canadian government gave itself the authority to freeze its political critics’ bank accounts earlier this year, it should have rattled the confidence in the state held by the most trusting among us. You didn’t have to be a donor to the Freedom Convoy to realize the dangers of this sort of power. Though as is so often the [...]
Paul Tuns: In July, the United Nations’ Population Division predicted that on Nov. 15, global population would hit 8 billion people. Let us be among the first to wish the newborn baby boy or girl, probably born in Africa, the Middle East, or south Asia, a happy birth day and welcome to the human family. Typically, the UN’s population estimates come with [...]
Rory Leishman: In treating long-known and well-researched mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, drug addiction, and schizophrenia, psychiatrists can alleviate enormous suffering and spare their most vulnerable patients from an ignominious death by suicide. What a pity, then, that so many of these same psychiatrists are prone to embracing the most absurd psychiatric fads. A case in point is “recovered memory therapy,” [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Determining right and wrong for themselves, the godless have become their own gods – an aphorism with which I have been long acquainted. Another godly attribute which they seem to have bizarrely assumed: infallibility. Consider: Abortion and euthanasia are matters of life and death. Sex changes, while not quite as fatal, [...]
Rick McGinnis: We have been living with Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather for 50 years. Even more than the Mario Puzo book on which it’s based, what book can hope to resonate in what has become an increasingly visual, post-literate society? Coppola’s film has had a profound effect not just on movies, but on how a first world society built on [...]
John Carpay: Since lockdowns were first imposed in March of 2020, Canada’s federal and provincial governments have paid little attention to the harmful effects of their policies. Instead, politicians and government-funded media repeat endlessly that “lockdowns save lives.” We know how propaganda works: when people hear a claim often enough, they come to accept it as true. Public health agencies and most [...]
Paul Tuns: In 2017, the British journalist David Goodhart coined the theory of Somewheres and Anywheres to describe those who were grounded to the place they were born (and were generally more politically and personally conservative) and those who see themselves as citizens of the world (and were generally more politically and personally liberal). Somewheres usually outnumber Anywheres but Anywheres have outsized [...]
Andrew Lawton: The minting of Pierre Poilievre as the new Conservative leader shouldn’t surprise anyone. From the time the firebrand Carleton MP launched his campaign, it has been clear that no one was going to catch up to him, or even come close. As always in the aftermath of a leadership race or nomination battle, two words became inescapable: “unity” and “pivot.” [...]
Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey They say you should never read the comments, but we all do anyway. I was interviewed on CBC’s Power and Politics on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I came home that day to a bunch of notifications on Twitter – not that many, really, but more than I usually have. Your consummate CBC [...]
John Carpay: In Nanjing, a man crosses the street while the pedestrian light is still red. Within seconds, a billboard-sized screen nearby displays his name, his face and an admonition to obey the traffic lights. The Communist Chinese government surveillance cameras have captured the moment, secured an image of the man’s face, compared it to a central database of faces compiled over [...]
Andrew Lawton: Man does not live on Supreme Court decisions alone. The Kansas abortion referendum should serve as a reminder that culture matters far more than politics does. Last month, Kansans rejected a ballot measure that sought to affirm the Kansas state legislature’s right to restrict abortion access. The proposal was defeated 59 per cent to 41 per cent, which is about [...]