It is easy to separate the facts from the myths about “genocide” allegations at Indigenous residential schools. Just read the TRC report
Gerry Bowler
Government’s Attempt to Erase Canada’s Past Follows the Path of French Revolution, Communist Regimes
A person without roots, without a memory, without a story can be easily influenced and cause no trouble to the authorities. A nation without a common history in which citizens can take pride cannot long survive.
Bud Light – An Alphabet Too Far?
Beer is big business. Canadians quaffed 2.1 billion litres of the sudsy beverage last year. The American market for the stuff is worth over $120 billion annually. People care about which beer they drink; they wear hats and t-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to a...
We Need a Little More Christmas
It is late December and, as one looks around, the usual sights and sounds are in evidence. The parking lots of shopping malls are full. The postman’s bag is swollen with cards, flyers, and appeals from charitable organizations. Stacks of Amazon boxes pile up beside...
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
The Importance of Diversity
Recent American studies have revealed a striking lack of variation in political views among the nation’s university professors. For example, 85% of academics teaching political science rated themselves as left of centre; only 10% considered themselves to be in the...
What to Do with a Pirate State
For centuries, Arab states across North Africa made fortunes from piracy. Raiding the coasts of Spain and Italy, scouring the Mediterranean, and ravaging into the Atlantic as far as Iceland, Barbary corsairs captured over a million Christian prisoners for their slave...
We’ll Always Have Christmas
Let’s face it, 2020 sucked. It was one of those years that people will remember their whole lives, the kind to judge all others by. The sort of year that, in the future, when your house burns down, your son flunks out of clown college, and your dog dies, you will be...
Living the Post-COVID Life
Pandemics have a way of changing the world. The Plague of Justinian which hit the Mediterranean area in the 500s not only killed millions but it crucially weakened the Byzantine Empire and helped ruin its plans to reconquer western Europe from the barbarians. The...
Obsession With Identity
On my desk is a commemorative plate honouring the 1966 Grey Cup champions, the Saskatchewan Roughriders. On it are the pictures of football legend Ronnie Lancaster and his teammates. A quick scan of these portraits reveals something odd: just three of the players’...
Why Do We Remember?
Ever since 1931, Canadians have paused on November 11 to mark Remembrance Day, a commemoration of those who have died serving in our country’s wars. (From 1919 to 1930 the observance was called Armistice Day and held on the Sunday nearest November 11.) Men and women...
Support for a Non-confidence Vote?
For the past 90 years, Canadian politics has been influenced by the presence of a genuinely left-wing political party. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) emerged in 1933 demanding nationalization of essential industries, universal public pensions, health...
Who is Worth it?
The academic world was all a-twitter a few weeks back with the enormously humorous idea of a “Scholars’ Strike”. The idea was that on September 9th and 10th, university professors would put down their intellectual tools and by doing nothing – or indulging in...
A Short History of Political Corruption
As public attention in Ottawa focuses on accusations of skullduggery and jiggery-pokery in the awarding of government contracts to certain charities, it may be useful to remember that corruption is as old as civilization. Those in authority, from the loftiest of...