Nancy's Notes

People sometimes ask if I have a direction with what I write. Fair question. I cover local, provincial, national, international, whatever’s rattling around in my brain that day. And today it’s climate. It’s chaos. It’s leadership failure. And it’s Alberta, where the Premier’s hatred of the federal government now outweighs her responsibility to govern.

Let me start with something I’ve said before: I support Mark Carney. That’s not new. And one reason I do is because he talks about the systems we need, not just slogans. And one of the things I am hoping he will initiate is a National Emergency Response system. Every week, we get another reminder why we need one.

Wildfires are getting more frequent, more dangerous, and more expensive. That’s just fact. Add in hail the size of baseballs, tornadoes that used to be unheard of here, and floodwaters that sweep in without warning, and the reality is: this isn’t “extreme weather.” It’s just “the weather” now. Our new normal.

Last night was another hailstorm in the “Hail Core Corridor.” That’s my new term for what used to be Alberta suburbia and is increasingly more often an uninsurable zone. People can’t get home insurance anymore, or they’re paying premiums that would make a mortgage broker cry. And we pretend this is normal.

It’s not. We need a national climate emergency strategy. Fires, floods, hail, tornadoes, and drought. We need coordinated disaster planning across the country. Maybe it’s FEMA-style, maybe something new, but pretending it’s someone else’s problem has run its course.

Which brings us to Jasper. The Town of Jasper is a municipality, run by local council, governed under the Muncipal Government Act and responsible to the people of the town. It sits geographically inside Jasper National Park. That overlapping setup means both federal and provincial authorities are involved in emergencies. And that’s exactly where things collapsed last year.

Jasper’s independent wildfire review of the 2024 fire found that Alberta’s government hindered the response. Provincial fire crews were told by the province not to assist initially, leaving Jasper’s tiny local team to deal with a growing wildfire. In a normal year, provincial support, especially air tankers, would’ve been automatic. But not under this government.

Why? Because Danielle Smith saw federal land and picked a jurisdictional fight. Instead of working together, Alberta tried to seize control of the fire response, causing confusion and delays. The Premier’s reaction? “This report comes as a shot out of the blue. It’s unfair, it’s untrue, and I would like them to withdraw it.”
Danielle Smith

It wasn’t a partisan document. It was a third-party review meant to learn lessons. But Smith took it personally, because she always does. I guess the significant loss of property and potential loss of life were not more important than challenging the Federal Government.

Now here is where my concern about local governments deepens. Smith’s government has been centralizing power in ways that should concern everyone, not just progressives. We’ve seen municipal authority stripped or overridden in Edmonton, Calgary, and rural areas. Jasper is just the latest example of a Premier who wants control without responsibility.

We’re watching creeping authoritarianism.

I write about a lot of things but this one touches on everything I care about. My fear for what’s happening to municipal leadership. My heartbreak at what Alberta could be and what it’s becoming. The dangerous, archaic way our provincial government is treating climate change. The pressure on a new federal government to lead while being stonewalled by provinces like ours. And the fact that the news cycle, here and across Canada, and in fact around world is so consumed by the daily meltdown of American politics that climate disasters get buried.

But the smoke isn’t going away. Neither is the hail. Or the floods. Or the fire bans. Or the evacuation alerts. And neither is Danielle Smith, unless people start realizing what’s actually burning.

And so back to wondering who I write these for? I write for those of us who refuse to look away. Who still believe we deserve a province, and a country that leads with honesty, protects with purpose, and plans for a future beyond the next news cycle.

Because climate doesn’t care about jurisdiction. And smoke doesn’t check who’s in charge before it rolls in. Danielle Smith can scream “federal overreach” all she wants, just like Trump screams “fake news”, but neither one of them can gaslight the weather.

Note: This piece was written just before this morning’s U.S. decision to claw back funding from public broadcasting. While that move directly impacts Americans, it’s a flashing warning light for Canadians too. Much of our media is already U.S.-owned or heavily influenced, and public broadcasting, here and there, is one of the last remaining tools for independent journalism and cultural integrity.

Walter Cronkite once said, “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.” Let those words sink in. Not “a part of.” Not “nice to have.” It is democracy. And right now, that democracy is on life support.

I spend all of my days now trying to gather my thoughts, too many thoughts, really, all swirling around one question: how the hell did we get here? I look at the state of the media, the state of our politics, the slow-cooked erosion of journalistic freedom, and I’m trying to understand why more people aren’t sounding the alarm. Or maybe they are. Maybe we’re just not hearing them anymore over the white noise of distraction and denial.

Stephen Colbert’s show was cancelled yesterday. And sure, not everyone loves his flavor of commentary, he wasn’t for everyone. But for many, he was the voice that helped them laugh when things felt unfunny, made them think without preaching, and reminded us that satire has always been a form of protest. Satire, like journalism, only survives when the powerful allow it to. When someone at the top decides it no longer serves their interests, it disappears, presented as a programming change, but no less political in consequence.

I grew up in a household where the newspaper was sacred. I watched my father, every single day with that great big broadsheet stretched out in front of him like a shield and a sword. He didn’t just read it. He used it, to understand the world, to prepare for conversation, to teach me that knowledge was the first defense against ignorance. He believed that if I could read the stock market page, the baseball scores, the opinion section, even the classifieds (some I was definitely not interested in), then I’d be able to speak to anyone about anything, at least with some basic context. That was the point: not that I would learn everything from the paper, but that I’d be inspired to keep learning. That foundation of curiosity was the real education. If something piqued my interest, I was expected to go deeper. And I did.

And yet in another breaking news twist, the Wall Street Journal now claims to have a copy of a letter Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein, one they’ve described as salacious in tone. That letter has sparked outrage, threats of lawsuits, and a fuming Donald Trump, who reportedly demanded Rupert Murdoch suppress its release. Murdoch, apparently, didn’t listen.

So now the question becomes: who’s controlling who? We used to worry about governments controlling the press. That was the red flag, right? Censorship. State media. Propaganda. But now it’s murkier, and maybe more dangerous. Because what happens when it’s billionaires controlling the press and the government? Or worse, when the lines blur so completely that you can’t tell who’s pulling the strings? Is it Murdoch controlling governments through headlines? Or is it governments using billionaire-owned media as their megaphone? When one feels slighted, can they take the other down with a few strategic leaks or lawsuits? Where exactly is the power wielded, and more importantly, who’s protecting the public interest in that game?

And here in Canada, we’re not immune. Most of our major newspapers are owned or influenced by American corporations. The rest lean heavily to the right, propped up by some provincial flirts with censorship through court-defying legislation and thinly veiled book bans. We criticize “state media” in Russia or China while pretending that corporate media, aligned with political interests, is somehow different. It isn’t.

We have been warned by leaders and scholars. Thomas Jefferson warned us: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Benjamin Franklin said: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” John F. Kennedy said: “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

That’s not just historical hindsight. That’s prophecy. And it’s happening now.

I’m not a journalist. What I write is opinion, informed by facts and shaped by lived experience. I try to get it right, but I’m not claiming neutrality. But I do know this: journalism used to mean something. It meant truth-seeking. It meant accountability. Now it often means survival in a market of clicks, outrage, and algorithms.

And if we’re honest, Donald Trump played a masterful role in normalizing the attack on truth. He stood at podiums and mocked reporters to their faces especially those who asked the hard questions. And we winced, or we looked away. But we didn’t stop him. And now that brazenness has metastasized. Now it’s expected. And now we are watching American democracy slide into something much darker, much faster, than any of us thought possible.

We’re not just consuming the news anymore, we’re watching the news about the news. Meta-media. Layers of spin. Stories about stories. Satirists being silenced. Journalists being discredited. And citizens being told: don’t worry, we’ll tell you what to think.

No. I want to think for myself. I want to know that the press is allowed to press. I want to know that a government afraid of free speech is still seen as a threat and not just south of the border. Because when the freedom to say it disappears, the freedom to be disappears right behind it.

Walter Cronkite’s words still echo: “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.” That’s where we begin. And that’s where we end.

July, 1969 : From Launch to Legacy, Awe Then and Now

Today my post will be less politics and more on Canada Strong, Free and Proud. Thirteen years ago, I wrote the following words about the death of Neil Armstrong, and about a moment in time that still lives vividly in my memory:

“I am generally not one to put a lot of value to celebrity and generally do not find my heroes in pop culture. But today as I heard of the death of Neil Armstrong; the first man on the moon, I suddenly felt profoundly sad. But why? Certainly he had been a pilot; something always close to my heart and several years ago my Dad had shared a table with him at an aviation event. But that was not the connection I was feeling. It was much more than that. It was the knowledge that I am now a full generation away from the little girl that sat riveted in front of that TV set on July 20th, 1969 when Neil Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon. I had spent weeks waiting for the event. I had scrapbooks full of every article or newspaper clipping I could find. My family did not leave the room on that Monday afternoon as we waited for the landing of the module on the surface of the moon, and stayed later still as we waited the 6 hours until Neil Armstrong placed his boot on the dusty lunar surface and proclaimed ‘That is one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.’ These men were my heroes. My father kept saying that this would be remembered as an amazing moment in our lives. It was a different world. We were in an era that still had ‘awe’. We could not computer generate a trip to another planet with a resolution that looked like we were really there. But what we did have was a grainy black and white picture that told us that as a society we had gone somewhere we had previously only imagined in our dreams. My father was right. I do remember July 20th, 1969 as an amazing moment in my life; partly because of it being a great moment in history but more so because I can still sense the incredible feeling of having shared that moment with my family. So the profound sadness I feel is not about the loss of a man I do not know. It is the sadness that yet another special moment in my life is now such a distant memory.”

At the time, I suggested that we were no longer living in an era of awe. But in hindsight, I realize I was wrong. Awe returned. And for me, it came in the form of someone remarkably close to home, someone born the very same year I was, who also sat in front of a television on July 20, 1969: Commander Chris Hadfield.

Chris Hadfield didn’t just become an astronaut, he became a storyteller, a scientist, a musician, an educator, and a symbol of Canadian excellence. He reminded us that space wasn’t just about rockets and math, it was about perspective, wonder, and responsibility.

I’ve been fortunate enough to connect with him more than once. I met him at the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame when he was inducted and my father was already an inductee. We had the opportunity to speak and spend time together then, a deeply meaningful moment, given how aviation had already bound my family to these kinds of historic milestones. Later, during an aviation tour, our paths crossed again. Somewhere, I have a photo of the two of us, Chris Hadfield and me, with the world in the background.

I was also invited to the splashdown event at the Canadian Space Agency in Saint-Hubert, Quebec following his return from the International Space Station, in part because of the original piece I had written about Armstrong, and maybe also because I had tapped into something we all feel when space reminds us of our shared humanity. Chris Hadfield didn’t need a press agent or a spotlight to be extraordinary. He’s just real. And through his words, his photos, his voice, he reawakened that sense of awe in a whole new generation.

So today, on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch, I want to honour the memory of that little girl in New Brunswick, eyes wide with wonder as the rocket left Earth, and I want to celebrate the fact that the awe didn’t end with Armstrong.

It continued, and in my case, it came full circle through a Canadian who still makes us look up.

This post isn’t my usual political reflection, but sometimes, we need to come back to the core of who we are. These are the moments that shaped me, and they continue to define what I believe about leadership, humility, exploration, and national pride. This is Canada Strong. This is Canada Free. This is Canada Proud.

And once again, it turns out my Dad was right, a single moment in time really can define a lifetime.

“Eye of the Storm” This photograph, taken by Commander Chris Hadfield aboard the International Space Station in March 2013, shows Tropical Cyclone Haruna over Madagascar, with Canadarm2, a Canadian invention, pointing directly at the eye of the storm. A powerful reminder that Canada’s presence in space is not just symbolic, but deeply integrated into international exploration and innovation.

Photo credit: Chris Hadfield, 2013

Today, as I write this, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are meeting at the White House. The headlines haven’t landed yet, but I think we all know how the press release will read: they had a “productive conversation,” “mutual respect was reaffirmed,” and Trump will likely describe Netanyahu as “a very strong leader,” maybe even “a terrific guy.”

But while those statements are being polished, I’ve been sitting with something more complex, and frankly, more honest, than anything that’s likely to come out of that meeting. I hesitate sometimes to write about Israel. And maybe that’s the right instinct, to pause before speaking about something so layered, so painful, and so steeped in history that I can’t possibly claim to understand it the way others do. Especially not from the perspective of Jewish people, for whom this land, this history, this trauma, and this hope are not theoretical but deeply lived.

But something New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said recently at the Aspen Ideas Festival struck such a chord with me that I’ve been turning it over in my head ever since. And I guess this is less a post than a bookmark of that moment, one I don’t want to lose.

Friedman said that to understand the Middle East, and Israel in particular, you have to hold three truths in your head at the same time. And yes, he acknowledged, that’s not something we’re very good at, especially in the polarized world of North American discourse (campuses and Twitter/X alike). But here they are:

1. Israel is an extraordinary place. What the Israeli people have built in just 75 years, out of exile, out of ashes, through wars and waves of immigration, is nothing short of astonishing. A technological, agricultural, and military powerhouse. An improbable success story.
2. Israel is doing really bad things right now. Especially in Gaza, and in the West Bank. And it’s not new. The occupation, the dispossession, the deaths of civilians , these are not myths or propaganda. They are real, and they are wrong.
3. Israel lives in a crazy neighbourhood. One where it’s surrounded by failed or barely functioning states, some of which are under the grip of Iran, an authoritarian regime exporting chaos. Israel’s security dilemmas are real, and existential.

And that’s what grabbed me: the idea that more than one thing can be true at the same time. That Israel can be both remarkable and responsible for grave injustices. That it can be both a beacon and a danger to its own future. That people inside and outside the region can love it and criticize it, sometimes in the same breath.

This framework helped me as someone outside the faith, the culture, and the history, a gentile trying to make sense of something I can’t fully feel. I can’t understand what it means to carry generational trauma like the Holocaust, or to see a homeland as both sanctuary and struggle. So I offer this with all humility. If any Jewish readers find my agreement with Friedman too simplistic or misapplied, I understand. But I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to listen.

What also struck me, and this is something Friedman emphasized, is the deeply uncomfortable truth about Benjamin Netanyahu. According to Friedman, Netanyahu is a man who just presided over a monumental military victory, not just against Hamas, but symbolically against Iran and its network of influence over Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. And yet, at the same time, Netanyahu is continuing a campaign of destruction in Gaza well beyond the defeat of Hamas, at great humanitarian cost. And at the same time again, he’s pushing forward a domestic judicial overhaul that would weaken Israel’s Supreme Court and, potentially, set the stage for annexing the West Bank.

It’s not just that these things are happening at once, it’s that they are deeply contradictory. And Friedman made a powerful point: the very people who delivered this military success, the elite pilots, the cyber warriors, the scientists and tech minds of Israel’s defense, are often the same people who spent the entire nine months before the Hamas war protesting Netanyahu’s attempts to undermine democracy. These are people who love their country deeply and are willing to defend it with everything they have, but who are also terrified of the direction Netanyahu is dragging it.

That contrast, between military heroism and political despair — has stayed with me. It reminds me again that complexity isn’t a flaw in the conversation. It’s the core of it.

It’s not lost on me that I’m writing this on a day when the headlines aren’t screaming. There’s no new airstrike footage flooding the news cycle at this moment. And yet, like you, I know that every day is escalated in some way. Still, maybe quieter days are when we should be thinking hardest, not in reaction, but in reflection.

This might not be a post that travels far. It’s not spicy, not viral, not packed with certainty. But it’s honest. And it’s grounded in something that I think we need more of: the ability, and the courage, to hold conflicting truths without rushing to flatten them into just one.

So yes, I’ll keep thinking about this.

And maybe that’s the point.

On July 5th, 2025, as much of Texas woke to what should have been a hot and quiet long weekend, everything changed in a matter of hours. Flash flooding, violent, fast, and utterly unforgiving, tore through parts of Central and East Texas. Bridges collapsed. Homes were swept from foundations. At the time of writing, the death toll stands at 70. Dozens are missing. And I can’t stop thinking about the sky.

Let me explain. I was raised in a family business where aviation wasn’t just a profession, it was a way of life. And in aviation, especially before Foreflight and real-time radar apps, weather wasn’t a side topic. It was the topic. My father talked about pressure systems over breakfast. We learned to read clouds before we could parallel park. When your safety and livelihood depend on the weather, you don’t take it lightly.

Even now, decades later, I check five weather apps, scan radar, read METARs and TAFs, and still go outside to squint at the sky, just to be sure and that’s just to do gardening. Some people think I’m overdoing it. I think I’m paying attention.

That brings me back to Texas. The storms that hit on July 5th weren’t a surprise to forecasters. Some parts of the state received flash flood watches the evening before. Others got warnings the morning of. But here’s the thing, “a warning” is only useful if it comes in time, if people understand what it means, and if systems are in place to act on it. In Texas, in some places, the water rose in minutes. Hardened ground from drought couldn’t absorb a drop, so the rain just ran, taking everything in its path.

Did people get warned? Some did. But too many didn’t get enough notice, or didn’t trust the alerts. And here’s where it gets political, whether we want it to or not.

The U.S. National Weather Service has been under strain for years. Budget cuts, staff shortages, and now even a further reduction in weather balloon launches. Those cuts, furthered through DOGE have eroded the capacity to give the kind of hyper-local, real-time data that saves lives. A weather balloon costs about $300. They were among the “non-essential” items cut and those losses haven’t been reversed.

I don’t mean to be flippant, but how many weather balloons could you launch for the cost of one political parade or a golf weekend? What value do we place on knowing what the atmosphere is doing before it unleashes itself on us?

And I know people get tired of alerts. I do too. We get them constantly now, severe thunderstorms, tornado watches, snow squalls, extreme heat. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes the radar looks worse than what reaches the ground. But here’s what I know from aviation: when something’s uncertain and potentially lethal, you plan for the worst and hope for the best.

I will always prefer a false alarm to a missed warning. Always.

We are lucky in Canada. Not perfect, but lucky. We still have meteorologists with funding, tools, and a weather service that issues alerts proactively. Sometimes they seem premature, or overblown. But when I see a red banner across my screen, I don’t roll my eyes. I lean in.

Because I can still hear my dad muttering about “unstable air” as he watched the cloud bases lower. I can still feel the hum of tension before a storm when a decision was made to cancel a flight, not because the radar was dramatic, but because something didn’t feel right. I learned that you don’t ignore risk just because it’s inconvenient.

And as I looked at footage from Texas, roads turned into rivers, families clinging to rooftops, I couldn’t help but think: how much of this was preventable? Not the rain itself. But the death. The destruction. The disbelief.

We are in an age where weather is going to come at us faster, harder, and more unpredictably than we’re used to. And let’s be clear: climate change is not up for debate. It is real, it is here, and it is accelerating the frequency and severity of these events. This isn’t just “bad luck” or “Texas weather.” It’s what happens when a destabilized climate system collides with underfunded public infrastructure. Floods, fires, droughts, and storms, these aren’t isolated events anymore. They’re the new normal.

And so, we have a choice: to invest in knowledge, in alerts, in public systems that keep us aware and alive, or to spend money on things that look good on television but do nothing when the skies open.

As for Canada, we’ve had our share of wildfire seasons that stretched the limits of provincial response. The need for a coordinated national fire strategy, and yes, that applies to the U.S. too, is urgent. But I’ll leave that for another post.

For now, I’ll keep doing what I’ve always done. I’ll look at the increasingly detailed radar available to all of us. I’ll read METAR reports when someone in the family is flying. I’ll check multiple weather apps and still look out the window, because the sky is still the best indicator I know.

And I’ll never apologize for checking it one more time.

To my American friends. I know I’m not supposed to care this much. I’m Canadian. I should turn off the news, shrug my shoulders, and tell myself it’s not my fight. I should roll my eyes at your politics, scoff at the fireworks, and say, “If you’re really going to hand it all over to one man, then you’re on your own.”

But I can’t. Because what happens to you doesn’t stay within your borders. Because every tremor in Washington sends aftershocks across the world. And because, whether I like it or not, your country is still tethered to mine, economically, culturally, diplomatically. When America sneezes, Canada gets pneumonia. And right now, it feels like you’ve got a full-blown democratic hemorrhage.

So when I see you gearing up for another Fourth of July, red, white and blue streamers, hot dogs, parades, and speeches about liberty, I can’t help but feel the world tilt a little more off its axis.

So what exactly are you celebrating? Freedom? Independence? From what? From facts? From institutions? From your own damn Constitution?

I grew up admiring the United States. The scale of it. The confidence. The belief in ideas bigger than one person. But somewhere along the way, something got hollowed out. The flag is still flying, sure, but it’s covering something dark, and decaying fast.

This past week was proof. A giant, flashing billboard that read: ‘We’re not even pretending anymore.’ I watched members of Congress and Senate, elected to serve the people, fold like cheap lawn chairs under the weight of one man’s threats. I saw backroom deals crafted not in the interest of Americans, but to secure loyalty, silence dissent, and grease the machinery of a government increasingly run by fear, not policy.

That wasn’t compromise. That wasn’t negotiation. That was hostage-taking. And then the bill passed. A bill that carved out billions, not for schools or healthcare or housing, but to help faciliate immigration detention and other tools of control. You tell me: who did that bill serve? Did it serve a single mother in Ohio? A veteran in Arizona? A teacher in Georgia? No. It served power. Consolidated, corrosive power.

And now, as the smoke clears from the Capitol, you light up the sky with fireworks in celebration. The contrast is staggering.

You don’t need to hear this from me, but maybe it matters more because I’m not American. I’m watching from across the border trying to process how the country that prides itself on freedom of speech is silencing journalists. How the country that fights wars in the name of democracy is dismantling its own. How the country that invented the phrase checks and balances now seems to believe that loyalty to one man outweighs the rule of law.

It’s like watching someone burn down their own house and throw a block party in the front yard while the roof collapses behind them.

After Nov 6th I took a break. I had to. From the headlines. From the outrage fatigue. I turned it off. Stopped watching the cable carnage and disappeared into a haze of documentaries and crime series, because those felt less disturbing than reality.

But when our Canadian federal election kicked into gear, I plugged back in. And what I saw this past week snapped me out of every last shred of numbness. Because you can only tell yourself it can’t get worse so many times before you realize, it already has.

And so, I ask: What exactly is the Fourth of July this year? A celebration of what’s been preserved? Or a distraction from what’s been destroyed? Maybe patriotism isn’t what I thought it was. In Canada, we’ve often looked at American pride and felt like we lacked something. We don’t pledge allegiance. We don’t sing our national anthem in every school. We’re quieter. Less performative. But now I think maybe I’ve misunderstood it. Maybe patriotism isn’t about pageantry. Maybe it’s about protecting what matters even when it’s not convenient. Maybe it’s about asking hard questions, even when the answers are ugly.

Because let me tell you something uncomfortable: tyrants don’t destroy democracies alone. They need help. They need people to stay silent. They need people to rationalize. So no, I won’t be celebrating with you. But I won’t look away either. Because deep down, I still want to believe that enough of you are wide awake. That you see it. That you feel the fire under your feet. That you know the difference between real freedom and manufactured consent.

And if you don’t? Then this isn’t a holiday. It’s a funeral with fireworks.

Canada’s model for health care is the envy of the world. In the U.S. Donald Trump is tearing theirs apart and Alberta has a leader that supports the American model. Millions of Americans just lost access to basic coverage under Donald Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill.” And I can’t stop thinking about it, because I know exactly what it means when a health system works… and when it doesn’t.

This is a very short version of a very long story. There were dark nights, painful setbacks, near-deaths, and small mercies. I make it sound neat here, but it wasn’t. Not even close. Still, you’ll get the gist.

Of course we have had our share of emergency visits and surgeries over the years but our family’s medical journey escalated in 2020, before covid vaccines, when my healthy husband, at only 55, was hospitalized with COVID. He survived, barely, but that moment marked a turning point. His health was never quite the same again.

In October 2022, we were hit again, this time, far harder. He had been feeling unwell for months, and finally, he collapsed. Scans showed masses across nearly all his abdominal organs: liver, pancreas, spleen, gallbladder, colon. A palliative care doctor told us it was likely terminal metastatic cancer. “Prepare for end of life,” they said. But within a day, chemistry results revised the diagnosis: Aggressive High Grade Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma stage 4. It wasn’t good news, but better than originally thought.
Chemotherapy began immediately and the treatment nearly killed him. There were two drug-resistant staph infections, kidney failure from antibiotic toxicity, pulmonary embolisms, and malnutrition.

Aggressive chemotherapy continued and by April the grapefruit-sized tumors had shrunk to the size of walnuts. Some were gone altogether. He was sick from chemo, his 6’1 body weighed just 135 lbs but he was alive.

Then in March 2024, our youngest son, just in his twenties, with a career dependent on his eyesight, woke up with almost no vision in one eye. His optometrist saw him immediately and diagnosed a retinal detachment. Within 15 minutes, we were rushing to a retinal surgeon, one of the best in the country, on-call that day by chance. Five hours later, he was in surgery. The surgeon chose a more painful but more effective technique to preserve his vision, because he understood what was at stake for a young man whose eyes are his livelihood. There was no invoice. No haggling. No deductible. Just… care.

Then just 8 weeks later, June 2024, and we nearly lost my husband again. He’d been working outside in the heat, still thin and depleted from his cancer ordeal. He collapsed. No pulse. No breath. Cardiac arrest.

Our son, still recovering from eye surgery was home. His training from the Canadian Armed Forces kicked in. He began CPR immediately. EMS arrived in 9 minutes. Firefighters shortly after. Forty minutes passed with no signs of life. They were preparing to call his death.

And then… a gasp. Once at hospital he was intubated, placed in a medically induced coma, and against all odds, he woke up days later, dazed but intact. Only 10% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests end in survival. Almost none after 40 minutes. He beat the odds, because of immediate CPR, and because our system responded.

Since then, he has had several cardiac procedures, including the installation of a cardiac device that will assist his heart if it fails again. And the system continues to hold him. There are still follow-ups. Still supports. Still care.

I’ve said many times: I was able to fight for my family because I’m resource-driven, maybe a little relentless, and am English first language. That matters. It shouldn’t, but it does. I could push, research, ask the right questions, and advocate. But even with those advantages, I still marvel that we got what we did, because I’ve seen what happens in countries where people don’t.

During this time I joined many online support groups, for cancer, cardiac arrest, retinal detachment. I’ve met people from around the world. Some in developing nations, yes. But what shocked me most were the stories from Americans.

People denied life-saving surgery because of co-pays. Young people going blind because of insurance loopholes. People dying because they couldn’t afford the heart devices.

This isn’t anecdotal. This is systemic.

The United States is not failing at health care, it is succeeding at a system that was never built to care for everyone in the first place.

It brags about innovation while millions are locked out. It sells the dream of opportunity while robbing people of the basic chance to survive.

Here in Canada, we complain about hallway medicine and long waits, and we should. We need to keep fighting for improvement. But we must never forget the alternative. Because when cancer attacked my husband we were treated without question. When he flatlined for 40 minutes, they brought him back. When my son’s vision was slipping away, they saved it.

All of that happened because we live in a country where health care is a right, not a privilege. Doctors have told us that the health care costs for the past 5 years would have been between 4.5 and 5 million for what is some of the most expensive and resource intensive care our system offers. And our family didn’t have to decide between treatment and bankrupcy.

So no, I won’t stay quiet while Trump guts another piece of his country’s safety net and I won’t pretend Canada doesn’t have something worth defending here.

I am terrified for the millions of Americans now left without care, watching their lives shrink to the size of a co-pay. And I am profoundly grateful to live in a country where health care, however imperfect, is still based on need, not net worth. And don’t be fooled, Alberta, Danielle Smith is dragging us in that direction, and far too many are nodding along. We should be strengthening public care, not selling it off piece by piece.

There’s a trade-off for putting my opinions out into the world, and my family has made it very clear: no images, no specifics. That’s the boundary. And I respect it. So instead, I post what I can, like this photo of me, messy hair and all, sitting on the Canada 150 F-18 sitting on the tarmac in Yellowknife on July 1, 2017. That jet? That sky? That’s where so much of my pride lives anyway. Aviation. Military service. It’s the country I love.

I wasn’t going to write another Canada Day post. But here we are on the edge of something. A moment in my life, a moment for our country, and a moment for the world. It’s all pressing in. And somehow, that photo, wild and imperfect, captures exactly what I’m feeling: reverence, pride, tension, and the ache of transition.

Because this isn’t just about celebration. It’s also about decision. Last night, Prime Minister Mark Carney made the call to hold back the digital services tax (DSA). Some are calling it a climbdown. I call it strategy.

Was it a revenue loss? Yes. But sometimes you make a decision to abort a landing and do a go around. The U.S. under Trump is playing hardball. Carney knew that. We all should’ve known that. And as I said in my post a few days ago protecting Canadian jobs, from autos to aluminum might mean stepping back on the DSA for now. That tax was always a card to play. And he played it.

Not weakly. Wisely.

Some of you voted for Carney because of climate, or housing, or health care. And I support those things too. But many of us, especially those of us watching the geopolitical weather patterns, voted for him because we knew he could handle the chaos from the south. And now, in real time, he is. Steady hands, sharp mind, no bluster.

The other side of July 1st is where things get real. We’ll see if the trade talks hold. We’ll see if Trump escalates. We’ll see if calm can prevail. But I know this: we’re not rudderless. We’ve got someone who understands the game, sees the next moves, and refuses to let Canada get steamrolled.

I look out over blue skies today and think of the last hundred years. Not just the image of that centennial jet, but the men in my family who flew and fought before me. We are nearing the 100th anniversary of the start of World War II. And somehow, that history is humming under everything right now. The stakes feel high because they are. For our economy. For our democracy. For our future.

And that’s why I posted the photo. Not because it’s perfect—but because it’s real. Because it’s mine. And because it reminds me of what we’re trying to hold onto in this moment.

Hold the line, this flight’s not over, and the storm isn’t done circling.

June 30, 2025 NDM