Nancy's Notes

Today is March 15th. Most years that date passes quietly. Someone might remember the Shakespeare line from Julius Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March.” In history class it felt distant, almost theatrical. This year it feels different.

For the last few nights, I’ve found myself waking in the middle of the night and doing something I hate admitting. I reach for my phone and glance at the notifications, wanting to know if something catastrophic happened in the two hours I managed to sleep.

That’s not a healthy habit. I know that. But I also know I’m not the only one doing it.

Today, however, began beautifully. One of those clear late-winter prairie days where the sunlight reminds you that spring is slowly making its way across Alberta. And I had the absolute joy of spending time with my granddaughter. There is something about a small child that instantly resets your soul. For a few hours the world becomes very simple again. Laughter. Curiosity. A tiny hand reaching for yours. As I watched her laugh and chase bubbles in the sunlight, completely absorbed in the wonder of the moment, I felt that deep joy only a grandchild can bring. But I would be lying if I said there wasn’t also a quiet sadness sitting beside it, knowing that for many children around the world that same carefree moment is something they may never experience simply because of where they were born, the religion they were raised in, or the political and ideological battles of the adults around them.

And then you get back in the car and drive home and the larger world comes rushing back in. The weight of it all.

Later tonight much of the world will be watching the Oscars. Pop culture has never been something that matters much to me, although I will admit I might glance at the red carpet and the spectacle of it all. What I will be listening for, though, are the moments when someone inevitably steps past the glamour and speaks about the world beyond that stage. It happens almost every year. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes courageously. And given the moment we are living through right now, I suspect there will be voices trying to remind us that the world outside the theatre doors is carrying a very different weight.

Lately I have been struggling with something that I suspect many people who follow global events closely are feeling but not saying out loud. The sense that the ground beneath the world’s politics has shifted so dramatically that it’s hard to know where the center even is anymore.

I get called a lot of things online these days. “Woke.” “Radical left.” “Libtard.” It would be funny if it weren’t so exhausting. Because philosophically I have always considered myself a centrist, probably slightly center-left if someone forced me to choose a label. I believe in democratic institutions. I believe in careful policy. I believe in economic reality and fiscal responsibility. I believe in international cooperation. I believe human lives matter regardless of the passport they carry.

Apparently those positions are now considered radical.

What troubles me most right now is the way empathy itself has become polarized. That kind of reaction makes you stop and wonder what is happening to our collective sense of humanity. Because surely the one thing we should all be able to agree on is that the unnecessary death of children is tragic, whether those children are in Gaza, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, or anywhere else on this planet. Children are not geopolitical actors. They are simply children.

At the same time the world seems to be moving deeper into a dangerous phase of great-power politics. The United States, Russia, China, Iran, Israel, each operating with their own strategic interests, their own narratives, and their own audiences.

The thing that troubles me most about the current moment is not simply the conflict itself. It is the assumption that military force can solve problems that history repeatedly shows cannot be solved that way.

If the goal is to fundamentally reshape a nation like Iran, that is not something accomplished through airstrikes alone. Iran is a country of nearly ninety million people with enormous internal security structures, multiple armed forces, and a deeply entrenched ideological system. History has shown us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya that removing one piece of a political structure rarely produces the clean outcomes people imagine at the beginning of wars. Often it unleashes forces no one fully understands.

And then there is another contradiction I cannot quite wrap my head around. We are constantly told that the United States possesses the greatest military force in the history of the world, the most powerful Navy, the most advanced Air Force, the strongest Army ever assembled. If that is truly the case, then why are other nations now being asked to send their ships, their aircraft, their pilots, their sailors, and their soldiers into harm’s way? Especially when those same nations were never asked for their opinion before this conflict began.

Alliances matter. They always have. But historically alliances involve consultation, shared decision-making, and shared responsibility for the consequences. Asking others to join a war after the fact, particularly when those lives will be placed at risk, raises difficult questions that responsible governments have an obligation to consider very carefully.

Meanwhile the alliances of the world are shifting. The United States once positioned itself as the “leader of the free world.” Today many nations are quietly recalibrating their relationships as American politics becomes increasingly transactional and inward-focused.

And in the middle of all of this are countries like Canada. We are not a superpower. But middle powers can matter. Diplomacy, economic cooperation, and multilateral relationships are the tools countries like ours have always relied on.

Which is why I find myself genuinely grateful for the leadership Canada currently has. I do not often speak about politicians with that level of sincerity, but Mark Carney represents something that feels increasingly rare in modern politics: seriousness. He is building economic relationships, strengthening alliances, and working to position Canada in a rapidly changing global order.

That does not make someone radical. It makes them pragmatic.

Yet if the online comment sections are to be believed, supporting stability, diplomacy, and economic cooperation somehow places you on the extreme left. If that is the label someone wants to give me, I suppose I will live with it.

Perhaps that is why days like this feel so heavy. Because for all the talk of strength, security, and victory, wars are rarely carried by the people who speak about them the most. They are carried by young pilots, sailors, and soldiers who will live with the consequences, and by civilians who never chose to be part of the story in the first place. Leaders will argue about strategy, television panels will debate who is winning, and markets will open tomorrow morning as though the world can simply absorb another crisis. But the real measure of leadership has never been how loudly a nation can declare its power. It is whether those in charge remember why that power exists in the first place. Standing in the sunlight today after spending time with my granddaughter, I found myself hoping that somewhere inside the calculations likely being made tonight, someone still remembers that the purpose of power was supposed to be protection.

Because somewhere tonight, a child is still chasing bubbles in the sunlight, and the rest of us should never forget that protecting moments like that is the entire point.