Nancy's Notes

So, apparently we’re all supposed to swoon over the optics of this U.S.–U.K. royal handshake tour. Cue the bagpipes, the Union Jacks, the slow-motion footage of motorcades rolling through London, and Donald Trump trying to look statesmanlike next to King Charles. But let’s be clear: there is no ideological love story here. Charles has spent his life talking about climate action, biodiversity, and international development. Trump… well, Trump tears up agreements, mocks science, and measures success in applause counts. Oil and water.

Yes, the photos will show them smiling. Maybe Charles even puts a hand on Trump’s back. But don’t be fooled: that’s not friendship, it’s choreography. The monarchy survives on ritual, not on personal chemistry. This visit is about protocol and geopolitics, not mutual admiration. It’s Britain trying to keep the “special relationship” on life support while its own citizens wave placards outside the palace gates.

Do I like it? Not even a little. I hate watching the pomp used to burnish Trump’s ego. I don’t want the red carpet rolled out for him. I don’t want anything that makes him look good. I don’t want anything that feeds his ego, because it’s exactly what he craves, the optics of respectability. Right now, he’s not getting that from his supposed friends. Putin’s busy, Xi Jinping is recalculating, Kim Jong Un is playing his own games. So this visit, with its royal backdrops and ceremonial salutes, becomes the next best hit of validation. It’s the kind of spectacle that soothes a bruised ego.

However the palace knows how to choreograph a spectacle. But even amid all the pageantry, we shouldn’t forget Queen Elizabeth’s own quiet steel. She was famously courteous yet famously shrewd, and she didn’t suffer fools. Whatever else can be said, her meetings with Donald Trump were marked by a polite frostiness that spoke volumes.

And hidden away, out of sight, is another uncomfortable truth: you won’t see Prince Andrew sidling up to Trump for a chat about Epstein. That photo op won’t happen. Andrew is kept far from public view for a reason. The royal family is ruthlessly careful about who appears where and when. They know exactly how toxic certain images would be.

Here’s the geopolitical kicker: these three countries, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. were once united allies, the dependable triangle of Western democracy. Today it’s only two of them. Canada and Britain still stand for the rules-based order, climate responsibility, and alliances. The U.S., under Trump, has drifted into transactional nationalism, tariffs, and thinly veiled contempt for its oldest partners. That’s the unspoken tension behind every handshake photo and parade step this week. The monarchy and Britain have to do what they have to do. But let’s not confuse duty with devotion.

Still, there’s a part of me hoping for one unscripted moment. My fantasy? King Charles leans in and says, “Mr. President, just a reminder: Canada’s still part of our Commonwealth and not for sale.” Or maybe he sneaks in a gentle lecture about climate change. But I won’t hold my breath. This visit is survival, not solidarity. It’s ritual, not rapprochement. It’s the monarchy protecting itself, not endorsing Trumpism.

What makes this so frustrating to watch is that it feels designed to fool people who only see headlines. “Look, King Charles and President Trump smiling together!” It’s as if that means anything. You can practically hear the stage directions: “Cue the cavalry horses, cue the trumpets, cue the handshake.” Meanwhile the British public, the bulk of whom have nothing positive to say about the current president of the United States, look on with a mix of resignation and protest.

Maybe it’s petty and childish of me, but I wish this weren’t happening. I wish the crown could simply say, “No thanks, not this time.” But monarchies don’t get that luxury. They live and die by symbolism and continuity. And so we’re stuck with the show.

Bottom line: don’t mistake a royal welcome for a royal endorsement. In just a few days Trump will be back to the same controversies and court cases and questionable allies he arrived with.

The red carpet may hide the dirt, but it can’t scrub off the footprints of history, and no handshake, crown or trumpet blast will ever make Donald Trump look kingly.

In the past couple of days I’ve been thinking hard about the kind of people we choose to elevate as leaders, influencers, or “truth tellers.” Not just in politics but in every sphere where public words can either heal or harm.

Too many public voices today frame compassion as weakness, diversity as tokenism, facts as optional, and even the loss of innocent lives as an acceptable “price” for certain rights. I believe the opposite. The people I admire, the ones I consider heroes, hold empathy at the core of their being. They see diversity as strength, facts as non-negotiable, and human life as sacred, never expendable.

I want to live in a world where you step onto an airplane and feel equally safe and confident regardless of the pilot’s skin colour, accent, or gender, because skill has no ethnicity, safety has no gender, and professionalism speaks louder than prejudice. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed his disabled Airbus safely on the Hudson River, once said: “The airplane doesn’t know what colour the pilot is.” Exactly. I want to live in a world where women can choose not to marry or not to have children, and be respected, and where men can be stay-at-home parents without ridicule. A world where family roles aren’t assigned at birth but chosen freely, and where dignity is not tied to traditional stereotypes. I want to live in a world where people can live openly as their authentic selves, where sexual orientation and gender identity are not hidden but celebrated, and where the younger generation of my friends can stand proudly in who they are without fear of losing jobs, housing, or community. Seeing that shift in my own lifetime gives me hope. I want to live in a world where rights are designed to protect life, not to justify its loss. Some public voices say a few gun deaths each year are a fair trade for broad gun rights. I believe human life is sacred, not expendable. We should ask harder questions about public safety before more families grieve. I want to live in a world where faith inspires compassion rather than control, where no religion claims to own morality, and where power is used to serve, not dominate.

These aren’t radical ideas. They’re the opposite of cynicism. They’re what empathy looks like applied to real life. Some people demand admiration while building a smaller, crueler world; my admiration goes to those building a larger, kinder one.

And it’s not soft. It’s not weakness. It’s discipline. It’s courage. And it’s at the heart of every real social advance we’ve made. Think of how far we’ve come in just a few generations: Women winning the right to vote and control their own destinies, families reshaping roles so a man can be a stay-at-home parent without ridicule, people able to love who they love without government interference, that we can break down barriers so that talent and skill, not gender or race, open doors in workplaces, classrooms, and cockpits alike.

We can still debate. We should debate. A healthy democracy thrives on disagreement. But when debate becomes dehumanization, and dehumanization becomes policy, the social fabric tears. We start seeing each other as enemies instead of neighbours.

This reflection didn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from watching, in real time, how easily cruelty and mockery can be rewarded, how words thrown around on talk shows, podcasts, or social media aren’t just noise but can shape real-world violence. Vitriol may seem like entertainment, but it sets the conditions for tragedy.

We can disagree without dehumanizing. We can argue policy without promoting ideologies that harm. Because not every idea is just “different”, some ideas are designed to strip rights, erase people’s dignity, and make violence seem inevitable. We have to name that and refuse to amplify it.

So what I want to lift up right now is not tragedy, not outrage, but the strength of empathy, authenticity, and courage, the quiet revolution of people living their values and moving us forward without violence and without stripping others of their humanity.

Because words matter. Ideologies matter. They can take lives or they can save them. And if we don’t hold leaders, influencers, and ourselves to that standard, we’re not just pausing progress, we’re rolling it back. I will always choose to honour people who build a compassionate world, not those who promote division. Yes, I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past few days…

Sometimes life hands you adversity and you rise to meet it. Other times, prosperity lands in your lap and you still manage to stumble. I’ve seen both kinds of people. And I think there are two kinds of entities too: the ones that dig in and adapt, and the ones that fold when the weather turns rough. That’s where Canada is right now, perched between adversity and opportunity, deciding which kind of country we’re going to be.

The word resilience gets tossed around so much it risks becoming meaningless. But when you strip it back, it’s about survival and adaptation. Sometimes resilience is innate. Sometimes it’s learned the hard way. More often, it’s a messy blend of grit, stubbornness, and sheer Canadian weather-hardened willpower. You live in a place where the prairies freeze you one week and drown you the next, where distances stretch for days, and when the neighbour to the south can’t stop thinking about tariffs you learn to pivot.

That was the tone Prime Minister Mark Carney struck today at Mitsubishi Heavy in Ontario, flanked by ministers and industry leaders. His government unveiled what amounts to a pivot plan for a country stuck between a ruptured global trade system and a domestic economy that still needs housing, jobs, and stability. I don’t love every piece of it, but I know this: it’s a hell of a lot better than drifting with no plan at all.

Here’s the broad strokes of what was announced, minus the jargon.

• Major Projects Office to fast-track big national projects.
• Build Canada Homes, a new entity aimed at doubling housing construction over the next decade, using Canadian lumber, Canadian workers, Canadian tech.
• A defence industrial strategy this fall, tying huge military spending to Canadian jobs. Negotiations with the EU for defence and security partnerships start this month.
• A $5 billion Strategic Response Fund to help industries retool, pivot to new markets, and boost competitiveness.
• Workforce retraining for 50,000 Canadians, expanded EI (up to 65 weeks), and a jobs-matching platform built with Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and eCampus Ontario.
• A Buy Canadian procurement policy — shifting government from “best efforts” to a clear obligation to source from Canadian suppliers. Exceptions only with ministerial sign-off.
• Liquidity relief: BDC loans raised from $2M to $5M, new facilities for large enterprises, longer terms and lower interest.
• Agriculture and seafood supports: $370M for biofuels, higher canola loan limits, help for beef and lobster sectors hit by tariffs, expanded SME support programs.
• EV mandate pause: the 2026 target suspended, with a 60-day review to “recalibrate.”

That’s a mouthful. But taken together, it’s a government saying: the old global order is gone, the new one is punishing us, and we need to get serious about building at home while diversifying abroad.

I know there will be people furious about the EV pause. I get it. I want us to lead on climate too. But let’s remember, Carney has been criticized for being too focused on climate in his career. The man who built his global reputation on climate finance isn’t suddenly tossing his principles in the recycling bin. What he’s doing is what many of us have had to do in our own lives: taking a breath, recalibrating, buying time to pivot.

Think of it like losing your footing on ice. Do you cling to the plan of walking straight ahead, or do you adjust to keep from landing on your back? Sometimes resilience is about the detour, not the direct line.

I keep circling back to the children’s story of the Little Engine That Could because as you may know I love good fairy tail or storybook. A tiny train staring up at a daunting hill, muttering “I think I can.” Canada has done that before. Building a transcontinental railway across mountains and muskeg. Retooling our factories for a world war. Housing hundreds of thousands of veterans in record time. Constructing the St. Lawrence Seaway to unlock trade. None of those feats were easy. All of them required resilience.

Today, the hill is steeper tariffs, disrupted supply chains, and industries caught in the crossfire of U.S. protectionism. Our auto, steel, aluminum, and lumber sectors once thrived on cross-border integration. Now that dependency is a vulnerability. Add in a housing crisis, climate urgency, and an anxious workforce, and you’ve got a test of national resilience every bit as tough as the old ones.

What struck me today is that even the industries most affected, auto manufacturers, steel, lumber, canola, aren’t howling. They’re not cheering every line of the plan, but they’re acknowledging the pivot. The AutoManufacturers Association called it good news. The Global Automakers said members were “pleased” with the EV mandate pause, something they’d been asking for. They’re not pretending it’s perfect. They’re saying it’s realistic.

That’s where resilience comes in again. It’s not about loving every turn in the track. It’s about keeping the train moving. Today I even tried to listen to Pierre Poilievre’s press conference afterward, because I make a point of hearing the other side. But it’s always the same: ranting and raving with no indication of how he’d actually solve any of this. He pounds the podium about food prices, about job losses, about housing forecasts, but never once offers a concrete plan. I genuinely try to be objective, to hear him out, and I can’t bear it. Because it’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Empty sound bites wrapped in outrage.

So, I’m not blindly celebrating this. There are trade-offs. Climate advocates have reason to worry. Business skeptics will ask where the money’s coming from. Free-traders will grumble about Buy Canadian. And some Canadians will shrug, because resilience is harder to measure than GDP growth or inflation drops. But here’s the truth: resilience is what you do when the old order collapses. It’s what you summon when you’re the little guy, facing bad weather and long odds. It’s what this country has always done, and it’s what this government is at least trying to frame, not as weakness, but as determination.

Canada doesn’t get to pick the weather, economic or otherwise. But we do get to decide whether we’re the little engine that could, or the one that stalls at the first steep hill. And let’s be blunt: if we choose to stall, nobody’s coming to give us a push.

I know which one I’m betting on.

Today, August 27th, there was another mass shooting in the United States. This time in Minneapolis. A shooter decided that taking the lives of vulnerable children just beginning their school year, children kneeling in prayer at the church attached to their school, was a good idea. The shooter barricaded the church doors to stop anyone from running to safety. That detail alone makes the horror almost too much to comprehend.

The official statements came quickly. From Donald Trump: “I have been fully briefed on the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The FBI quickly responded and they are on the scene. The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation. Please join me in praying for everyone involved!” From JD Vance: another version of “We are monitoring this. We are praying.” Both posts ended with an exclamation mark. As if prayer needed emphasis.

Forgive me if I don’t feel moved by another press release telling me to join in prayer. The mayor of Minneapolis said it best: “Don’t just say you’re offering your thoughts and prayers right now because those kids were literally praying.” Holy, does that resonate. They were on their knees, in prayer, when bullets ripped their innocence apart.

So when, exactly, is the point where America realizes there is a problem with guns? I’m not debating the “right to bear arms” here. That was about muskets in 1776, not AR-15s in 2025. I’m talking about access. These are almost always legal guns, bought legally. Often the shooter has a history, criminal, or mental health struggles that somehow didn’t stop them from getting a weapon. And if this person’s pain or illness was known, why wasn’t it addressed, and if it wasn’t recognized, why on earth was access to deadly weapons so effortless? Different states, different rules, same outcome: children bleeding on the ground.

And here’s the data. In the last 20 years: The United States: ~4,000 mass shootings (~120 per 10 million people), Canada: ~20 (~5 per 10 million), United Kingdom: ~10 (~1.5 per 10 million), Australia: ~5 (~2 per 10 million), and Germany: ~30 (~3.5 per 10 million)

The U.S. is an outlier, off the charts. Other countries have mental health issues. Other countries have marginalized populations. Other countries have political anger. But only in America does all of that combine with the sheer availability of guns to create this endless cycle of massacre and trauma.

And here’s what makes it even darker: those mental health issues, especially in marginalized populations, the very people who already have the least access to care are about to get even less support. Cuts to programs. Clinics shuttering. The stigma that keeps people away from help. Into those cracks falls despair. Into those cracks falls violence.

As a mom and a grandmom, I can’t imagine the unbearable pain of sending your child off to school in the morning only to learn they’ll never come home. And yes, say your prayers! Of course say your prayers. But don’t fool yourself into thinking prayers are enough. If I were to pray, it would be that the leaders of the United States, especially the gun-worshipping Republican Party, could finally pull their heads out of the sand (or somewhere else) and face reality. But unfortunately I don’t believe that prayer will be answered. We need more than prayer or at least as the principal of Assomption school in Minneapolis quoted today from an African proverb. “When you pray move your feet.”

The right to bear arms? Bullshit.

It’s not every day that you get to witness patriotism being written right in front of you, in ink, with signatures, and often with stories that spill out alongside the pen. That’s what the Forever Canadian initiative has felt like for me.

At the start, it seemed like the people showing up were all a little like me, white boomers, carrying the weight of memory and responsibility. But slowly, beautifully, that changed. Grandparents arrived with their grandchildren, not to lecture but to share in something bigger than themselves. Young parents came with toddlers on their hips, saying, “This is their Canada too.” And one night, Alison and I found ourselves invited into a gathering of Indo-Canadian families. At first, we stood out like wallpaper. But once the conversations began, stories poured forward, stories of immigration, of long waits and proud oaths of citizenship, of three generations now fully rooted in this province and fiercely proud to be Canadian.

That is what unity looks like. It isn’t forced. It doesn’t come with slogans or party lines. It grows in the space where people can openly say, “Yes, I want Alberta to remain a part of Canada. Yes, I want to keep this country strong.”

I’ve heard farmers say their neighbors might hang separation banners as a political protest, but in the kitchen over coffee, they admit they don’t actually want to break up Canada. I’ve spoken with people who once felt afraid to fly the Canadian flag because of how aggressively their neighbors flew it upside down. And now, I’ve watched those same people put their names down with a sense of relief, finally able to reclaim their pride in this country without fear. And one of my first signatures was an Indigenous elder, representative of the first peoples of this country, whose presence and contributions remain foundational to who we are as Canadians.

This is something every individual can do right now to support our country. Signing isn’t symbolic, it’s action. It’s saying that as we work through the challenges in front of us, we choose unity over fracture. And this is not just about Alberta. It’s about Canada. It’s about those who have been here for many generations, those who have been here for one or two, and those who have only just arrived. I think often of the people who stood at my table, eager to sign, only to stop themselves with quiet disappointment: “I can’t. I’m PR, permanent resident.” Even they want to add their names, to show their commitment to the future of this country they’ve worked so hard to join. That alone should remind us of the value of what we already have.

Our amazing tapestry is woven from people whose families carved out farms and towns a century ago, alongside those whose grandparents arrived through post-war immigration, alongside those who stepped off a plane only a few years back with little more than their dreams and their determination. They all want Canada to succeed. They all know this country is worth keeping whole.

So yes, this exercise is about what must be done for our country. But maybe just as much, it’s about what we already have, and too often forget to see. Instead of dwelling on what’s broken, this effort has reminded me of what’s still unshakably strong: the love of country, the pride in unity, the refusal to let division win.

On a Saturday morning, as I pack up my things and head out for another pop-up, I feel reinforced and revitalized. And I remember the words of my father, who told me as a child: “When you were born in Canada, you had already won the lottery.” Please, let that remain our truth.

Dear 2025

I am writing from a future you might not recognize, though you shaped it with your choices, and with your silences. I am twenty-one now, stepping out into a world marked by the consequences of what you allowed, or ignored, two decades ago.

You told yourselves it was strategy. That if you ignored him, if you let him rant, if you bargained quietly around him, the danger would pass. But it didn’t. He drew strength from your silence, and others, men just as mad, just as ruthless, saw their chance. The Kremlin made it clear in 2025. Putin never intended a meeting with Zelenskyy, never sought compromise and never intended for there to be peace. He sought conquest. And he found his partner in America’s unraveling.

I watch the old recordings of Trumps speeches. Back then, you must have seen the signs. You heard the lies, the unravelling words, the speeches that made no sense. You watched a man who was clearly fading, whose mind slipped and sputtered, whose ego expanded even as his grasp of reality shrank. You knew he was not fit, but you said little. You watched the emperor, bloated and orange, strut naked before you, and still you bowed your heads and pretended he was clothed. And, I wonder, more painfully, how the leaders of the world managed to keep straight faces while bowing at his feet. If they truly believed he was in command of his faculties, that frightens me. If they didn’t, and still played along, that terrifies me even more.

And maybe this is where I speak as a Canadian. We never had the same weight as the United States or Europe, but what we did have were good people, and in 2025 we had a prime minister who spoke the truth. Mark Carney led a smaller country in a world gone mad, and it wasn’t easy. But at least he spoke plainly. And maybe that’s still the type of leadership we should be paying attention to. I also heard that in those days, at home here in Alberta there were voices talking about separation. My own province wondered if it should break away. Thank goodness that mentality was quickly stifled, because if it hadn’t been, Canada might have fractured too. And yet Canada stayed mostly whole and stayed mostly coherent. Despite Canada being a country of conscience for the most part, it was still seriously impacted by the power of the bully to the south. Many Canadians followed the ideology of the movement they called Maga and for that they hold accountability.

You all had a chance to pay attention, to recognize the elephant in the room when it grew too large to ignore. Instead, many of you dismissed it, laughed at it, or told yourselves it couldn’t really be happening. Project 2025 was published, in black and white, a manifesto for dismantling democracy. You could have read it. You could have acted.

Some of you did, I know that. My Nana Nancy and many others spoke up, (I think they were called Boomers) even when people criticized them, even when it would have been easier to stay silent. Nana raised her voice through her writing because she loved this country, this world, and the generations who would come after. I wish more of the younger people had done the same.

Now, in my time, I walk through a world that feels diminished. The great promises of cooperation, of shared progress, feel like faded posters on the wall of a crumbling station. You had all the information you needed, yet you carried on as though time would stop and wait for you to be ready. Do you know what it feels like to grow up with rights you never had? To read about freedoms others once held, and realize they were lost before you were even old enough to claim them? That’s my inheritance. Not opportunity, not choice, not the wide open horizon of possibility, but the rubble left when ego, apathy, and cowardice were allowed to rule.

I write this not because I’m angry with you, but because I live with what your inaction built. I write because I want you, if somehow these words travel back to you, to wake up. Imagine a time machine dropping this letter on your desk in 2025. Would you read it and laugh it off as melodrama? Or would you finally see what was right in front of you?

You always said children were the future. Well, I am that future, and I am telling you: we needed more from you. More courage, more clarity, more refusal to play along with the lie that the emperor’s robes were anything but thin air.

So maybe the time machine is allowing you to read this before we go totally off the rails. Then maybe the world you hand me could be different. Please stop pretending, stop excusing, stop applauding incoherence because it feels easier than facing the truth. The truth is hard, yes. But lies are heavier. They crush generations. I should know. I carry their weight every single day.

So please, for me, for those yet to come, pay attention. Because history does not forgive blindness, and the future cannot survive on silence.

Signed,

Nana’s little girl in 2045

I sat through the Trump Putin spectacle in Alaska yesterday and couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen it before, not on network TV, but in a children’s book. It was The Emperor’s New Clothes, rewritten for the 21st century.

Trump strutted like Andersen’s emperor, convinced that he alone had spun some invisible garment of diplomacy. Putin, the sly tailor, flattered him with talk of “trustworthy tone” and vague hints about “bringing back business.” And Zelensky, though not even in the room, is cast as the child, the one who sees the naked truth, but who can’t shout it, because survival demands silence.

Trump called the summit “extremely productive.” He declared that “many points were agreed to,” even though he couldn’t name a single one. His magic phrase of the day was “no deal until there’s a deal,” as if tautology is a policy achievement. By his own standard, the summit was a failure. Trump had promised a ceasefire. He didn’t get one. He left Alaska empty-handed, hoping his performance would pass for substance. And like the emperor parading through town, he expected the rest of us to nod and applaud.

Putin was delighted to oblige. He wrapped Trump in threads of illusion: “If Trump had been president, there would have been no war.” “We had a trustworthy conversation.” “This is the starting point.” All empty cloth. The so called “root causes” Putin insists must be addressed are just his old justifications, that Ukraine isn’t real, that NATO is a threat, that Russia must have its vassal. He hasn’t given an inch on territory, on sovereignty, on the reality of his invasion. What he has done is what tailors of illusions do best: buy more time, flatter the client, and smirk as the crowd pretends to see fabric that isn’t there.

Zelensky wasn’t on stage yesterday, but he is at the heart of this story. He knows the emperor is naked. He knows the tailor is lying. But he cannot shout it from the crowd, because doing so risks the only lifeline his country has: American weapons and aid.

So he waits, and he listens, and he will have to respond carefully later today. He’ll walk the tightrope again, praising the effort without endorsing the illusion, and hoping that, somehow, his country doesn’t get traded away in a deal of smoke and mirrors.

Commentators confirmed what anyone with eyes could see, there was no breakthrough, no fabric, no garment, just spectacle. Former defense secretary Leon Panetta was blunt: the fundamental test of this summit was a ceasefire, and it failed. Fareed Zakaria called the atmospherics “cringeworthy,” but admitted it was better that Trump came away with nothing than with a dangerous concession. Analysts pointed out that Putin’s language of “root causes” hasn’t changed in three years.

And if the absurdity of the red carpet weren’t enough, they capped it off with what would normally thrill me. It was in essence an air show: one B-2 stealth bomber flanked by four F-35 fighters. That’s some serious star power. Air Force muscle and fifth-generation stealth all rolled out, not for NATO allies, not for democratic partners, but for Vladimir Putin. It was performance at its finest, and exactly the sort of pageantry the tailor expected for the emperor’s parade.

I’ll admit, part of me dreaded Trump walking away with a win. The idea of him basking in the glow of “peace in our time” was unbearable. But of course ultimately I hoped that maybe a ceasefire could emerge, because human lives matter more than my distaste for Trump’s ego parade.

Hillary Clinton captured the paradox when she said she’d nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if he pulled off a deal. She could say that precisely because she knew he wouldn’t. But it was also a reminder of the stakes that even those who loathe him would grit their teeth and clap if he ended the war. That’s the moral burden of leadership: sometimes you have to applaud the emperor if peace is real, even if you can see his naked backside.

And yet, if you step back from the red carpet and the flyover, the truth is simpler: Putin got what he came for. A hold on new sanctions. More time to maneuver. No ceasefire. Every day of delay is a day he can sell oil, move weapons, and dig deeper trenches.

What happens in the next few weeks, whether his forces escalate or hold steady, will tell us whether this “productive” summit was just a photo op or the prelude to something darker. My bet? The tailor knew exactly what he was weaving.

So here’s where the fairy tale leaves us: The emperor insists he is clothed in glory. The tailor whispers flattery and sells him nothing. The child sees the truth but cannot shout it. And the crowd stands in the square, half-pretending, half-gasping, all waiting for the moment the illusion collapses.

But unlike Andersen’s story, this one doesn’t end when someone blurts out the truth. The emperor keeps parading. The tailor keeps spinning. And the child has to live in a world where truth is too dangerous to say aloud.

Trump said last night: “We didn’t get there, but we have a good chance of getting there.” The problem is, no one knows where “there” is, or if it even exists.

For now, Ukraine still burns, Russia still stalls, and America still pretends. The emperor struts naked through the square, the tailor smirks, and the child watches in silence.

But the reality is that fairy tales are bedtime stories and wars are not.

Oceanfront Property? NO not Ukraines and not Canada’s. The photo you see here was taken in Taloyoak, Nunavut, during an air show in mid-June in 2017. The man’s name is Guy. He had rushed from work to make it in time. He stood on that rock with the ice flows behind him, hand over heart, as we played O Canada before the show began.

What struck me wasn’t just the backdrop, or the sheer beauty of the North, but the pride on his face. Pride in his country, despite the weight of history: colonization, residential schools, the day-to-day realities of life in the Arctic that most Canadians will never fully know. That moment crystallized for me why the North matters so much.

It’s not an empty expanse. It’s home. It’s culture. It’s people. And it makes up a massive portion of Canada’s landmass. A part of our identity too often treated like a distant afterthought until someone from far away sees an opportunity in it.

That’s why tomorrow’s meeting in Alaska between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin makes my stomach turn. Because when men like this talk about “oceanfront property,” whether it’s Ukraine’s Black Sea coast or Canada’s Arctic coastline, they don’t see Guy. They don’t see communities. They see leverage.

The White House has been calling this a “listening exercise.” And if it “goes well,” Trump says he’ll immediately schedule a second meeting, this time with Zelensky at the table. But let’s be clear: Putin’s starting position isn’t some mystery. He wants:

• Recognition of all his territorial gains in Ukraine.
• A permanent NATO ban.
• Caps on Ukraine’s military capacity and weapons.
• Elections in Ukraine — under Russian occupation.

That’s not a negotiation starter. It’s the terms of surrender. Zelensky can’t agree to that without betraying his own people, which is why he’s made it clear: ceasefire first, then security guarantees, then talks. The Kremlin’s agenda is much wider than Ukraine. They’re openly talking about arms reduction, space cooperation, economic deals, and, here’s the one that hits me personally, Arctic resource exploration. That’s not just Alaska’s Arctic. That’s Canada’s Arctic too. Our sovereignty. Our land. Our people.

Putin’s already wins something just by walking into that room. After years of sanctions and diplomatic isolation, he gets to tell his people (and the world) that he’s back at the “top table” of global power. Trump’s giving him that stage before a single concession is made.

We’ve also learned something about the mood going in. In recent months, Trump’s frustration with Putin has grown. He’s been asking aides and Europeans what’s changed about the man since his first term. Some experts say it’s COVID. U.S. intelligence believes Putin grew paranoid during the pandemic, limiting his contacts, surrounding himself with fewer voices. Maybe that’s shifted his short-term goals, perhaps he’d pocket some territorial gains or pursue economic deals, but on Ukraine’s sovereignty, the maximalist demands are unchanged. And U.S. intelligence still can’t fully read how Putin makes decisions.

Trump thinks he can. He’s been telling people he’ll know within minutes whether the meeting is “successful.” That’s a dangerous kind of confidence when you’re dealing with a leader who has ruled for decades, plays the long game, and genuinely believes he’s winning.

And then there’s the question of who’s in the room. The last time Trump met with Putin, he had no advisors. No one to reality-check him in the moment, no one to push back if the conversation drifted into dangerous territory. We don’t even know if the translation will be airtight. Putin speaks English, Trump doesn’t speak Russian. That’s already an advantage to one side. And if the closest thing to a “foreign policy advisor” in the room is Steve Whitkoff, a fellow real estate tycoon with zero diplomatic experience, then the only thing being traded here is property metaphors.

Between Wednesday’s meetings with European leaders, which included Prime Minister Mark Carney and Zelensky, and Friday’s summit, there’s talk of “cautious optimism.” But seriously, what does that even mean? What does “progress” look like in a room where one man’s goal is international legitimacy and the other thinks he can wing peace talks on instinct?

This is where I come back to the North. I’ve been there. I’ve seen what it looks like, felt what it feels like. At the northernmost tip near Alert, you can almost touch Greenland. No wonder it’s on the radar for men who think in maps and power plays. I don’t want to resurrect the Greenland conversation, but it’s there. And it’s why I feel the vulnerability in my gut. The Arctic isn’t just strategic, it’s human. It’s ours. And the thought of two men with imperial appetites circling it? That part is hard to even write about.

“Oceanfront is everything,” Trump said about Putin’s desire for Ukraine’s coastal regions. But in the North, oceanfront isn’t everything. It’s not for sale. Not in Ukraine. Not in Canada. Because it’s not just land, it’s people. And people aren’t bargaining chips.