Posts Tagged ‘history’

Immigration and The Road Ahead

Posted: December 20, 2025 in Uncategorized
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A country this big doesn’t change direction suddenly. It travels there, one decision at a time.

I started my morning with population numbers for Canada in the New York Times. For the first time since 1946 our population is down. Changes that look small enough to dismiss. Is it just a fractional dip, or a a quarterly adjustment? It would be easy to scroll past. But these numbers are flagging something important.

I am fortunate to know many new Canadians. I personally know international students who came to Canada with a plan. It was not through a loophole, nor a fantasy, but with an actual plan. To study, to work and to stay and build their life here. I know people on work visas who did exactly what we told them to do, only to realize the door they were walking toward is now quietly narrowing. They come from all over the world. This isn’t about one country or one culture. It’s about what happens when policy pivots faster than lives can.

I’m not speculating here. Professionally, I know how much anxiety is sitting inside certain industries right now. Real anxiety. Not because executives are worried about optics, but because the labour math no longer works the way it used to. We can scoff at low wage jobs, but the truth is blunt. There are jobs in this country that are not being filled. Not because Canadians are lazy, but because those jobs may be unstable, seasonal, or incompatible with raising a family. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make us principled. It makes us unserious. Often those from other countries are willing to take these jobs with a goal to ultimately better theirs and their families lives.

At the same time, because reality refuses to behave, I also know domestic students who couldn’t find work. So yes, the system was strained. Yes, some promises were oversold. Two things can be true, even if our politics can’t handle that sentence.

What’s still barely being discussed is post-secondary education itself. Most Canadians don’t realize how much our colleges and universities have been financially buffered by international student tuition. Not necessarily out of greed but rather out of survival. Those large international student fees helped keep programs running, facilities open, and tuition for domestic students from climbing even faster. When that revenue drops, and it is dropping, something gives. Programs shrink, staff disappear and costs shift. That’s basic mathematics. And then there’s the demographic fantasy we seem keenly aware of. Canada is not repopulating itself through birthrates. Nothing more complicated than that. We are a vast country with an aging population, and no amount of lecturing about “family values” is going to change that. And let’s stop pretending otherwise. When some people say “we should just have more babies,” they’re usually picturing a very specific kind of Canadian family. I had two children. That replaces exactly two people. I do not expect my sons’ partners to reproduce on command to soothe someone else’s demographic anxiety.

Now I want to talk specifically about National defence. We have said, repeatedly, that Canada needs to grow its military. Global threats are increasing, not receding, and much of the current instability has been accelerated by the man south of the border. For the first time in generations, both our southern and northern borders are strategically fragile. You don’t protect a country with slogans. You protect it with skilled, trained people and in numbers that work.

As you know an industry important to me is aviation. We already face a pilot shortage both civil and military. Airlines are competing with the air force for talent, and the pipeline is thin. And aviation has always understood something politics and people sometimes forgets. An airplane has never cared about the colour or ethnicity of the pilot flying it. It only cares whether the person in the seat is trained, competent, and ready. Physics is brutally fair that way.

If we continue drawing potential military pilots into civil aviation or fail to build the pipeline at all, that’s not a cultural debate but rather a capability gap. And you don’t fill cockpits, secure borders, or respond to crises with wishful thinking.

This is why it’s so frustrating when immigration gets reduced to irritation. The Facebook drama when someone didn’t quite catch your order at a Tim Hortons drive-thru. Yes, communication matters. Yes, standards matter. But confusing momentary annoyance with national strategy is like judging an airline’s safety record based on whether you liked the coffee on your flight.

And this is where I suspect our Prime Minister’s thinking actually is. Not in slogans nor in extremes. But in the uncomfortable middle, where immigration, defence, education, labour, and global instability all collide. The real work isn’t choosing “more” or “less.” It’s designing a system that actually supplies the people we know we need, in the places we know we’re vulnerable.

This isn’t an argument for open borders. It’s an argument for adult policy.

Because Canada does need more people. But like any long journey, growth without direction is just motion. You need a route. You need capacity. And you need to know why you’re heading where you’re headed, before you find yourself miles down the road wondering how you got there.

“When you blame others you give up the power to change”

Posted: December 9, 2025 in Uncategorized
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There’s an expression I’ve used for decades. I don’t know who first said it, but it has stayed with me longer than most political slogans or news cycles ever will. ‘If you blame others, you give up the power to change.’

When I first started using it, it had nothing to do with politics. It was about people I knew, family, friends, community members, who faced difficult circumstances. We’ve all known those situations where two children grow up in the same home with the same opportunities and the same challenges, and one rises despite adversity while the other drowns despite prosperity. Circumstance isn’t destiny. Choice is always part of the picture, small, incremental choices about how we react, how we cope, and how we move forward.

But somewhere along the way, this human truth got swallowed by something much larger. Blame has stopped being an individual habit and has instead become a societal norm. It’s now a default setting, a reflex, a cultural posture. It doesn’t just show up in personal relationships or family dynamics. It shows up everywhere now. In politics, in public discourse, in online communities, in the way we talk to strangers and the way we talk to ourselves. It has become the new standard, and an unhealthy one.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in the way politics is now practiced. Over the past decade, politics has increasingly become a performance of victimhood. Not genuine suffering, but strategic grievance. In the United States, Donald Trump has practically built an empire out of it. You hear his refrain daily. Joe Biden this, Crooked Joe that, on and on and on. It’s a relentless drumbeat of pointing fingers outward to avoid ever turning the mirror inward.

And here in Canada? We’re not immune. Pierre Poilievre has turned Justin Trudeau into his entire personality. Ten plus years of the same line: Trudeau broke it, Trudeau ruined it, Trudeau is the cause of every pothole, every grocery bill, every global shockwave, every structural issue that existed long before he was even an MP. There is never a solution, only a scapegoat. And if he ever stopped blaming, he’d have to start explaining, which is far more difficult.

But this isn’t just about them. The real danger is what this style of politics does to us. When leaders model blame, they normalize it. They give society permission to adopt the same posture. And suddenly we are a nation, and a generation, encouraged to externalize everything. Everything becomes someone else’s fault. Someone else’s failure. Someone else’s responsibility to fix.

It creates a kind of moral paralysis.

If everything is always someone else’s doing, then nothing is ever within our power to change. The story becomes fixed. Our agency disappears. And once agency disappears, cynicism fills the space it leaves behind.

This is not the country I grew up in. It’s not the country many of us tried to build. And it’s certainly not a healthy model for young people, because when the only thing they hear from politicians is blame, how on earth are they supposed to learn accountability? How are they supposed to believe they have influence over their own lives, let alone their communities?

If society keeps modelling the opposite, if our political culture keeps rewarding the loudest finger pointer instead of the most honest problem-solver, then we shouldn’t be surprised when the entire public starts behaving the same way.

Leadership is not about who can yell “not my fault” the loudest or who can dig up the oldest grievance. Real leadership is quieter than that. It’s steadier than that. It’s the person who wakes up and without pageantry puts one foot in front of the other and deals with the issues actually in front of them. No excuses. No endless rehashing of who messed up what ten years ago. Just the work.

That’s the kind of leadership I prefer: the kind that solves instead of performs. The kind that owns responsibility instead of outsourcing it. The kind that doesn’t need an enemy to justify its existence.

Because the alternative is exactly what we’re living through, a political landscape where deflection has replaced direction, grievance has replaced governance, and blame has become the cheapest currency in public life.

And honestly who is driving that trend? Donald Trump has built an entire political identity around never taking responsibility for anything, ever, even when the consequences are catastrophic. Pierre Poilievre has spent more than a decade scripting every sentence around Justin Trudeau as if reciting a grievance is the same thing as offering a plan. And Danielle Smith has turned deflection into an art form, blaming everyone from judges to civil servants to the federal government rather than simply governing the province she was elected to lead.

This is not strength. This is not vision. This is not leadership.

We deserve leaders who face the hard truths, not run from them. Leaders who build instead of burn. Leaders who don’t need a scapegoat to feel powerful — and who understand that their job is not performance art but public service.

And we deserve leaders who model that for our children. Because whatever behaviour we normalize at the top quickly becomes the behaviour young people believe is acceptable. They watch how we speak, how we react, how we handle conflict, how we take, or avoid, responsibility. If all they ever hear is blame, then blame becomes the cultural default.

We deserve a society that refuses that path. A society that understands that blame might feel satisfying in the moment, but it is a dead end. It does not move us forward. It does not solve a single problem. It keeps us exactly where we are, frozen in place, circling the same resentments, repeating the same grievances.

And it brings us back to the line I’ve carried through decades of my life, a line more relevant now than ever. “When we blame others, we give up the power to change!”

December 7th: Echoes, Reverence, and the Weight of History

Posted: December 7, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Other than being a beautiful, almost-winter day here in my corner of rural Alberta, December 7th carries a weight that never leaves me. For Canadians, Americans and the rest of the world this date is part of our shared history, a reminder that the world doesn’t fracture in isolation and that we have always stood shoulder to shoulder with our allies when democracy is threatened. Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbour, December 7th, 1941, the moment the United States was pulled into the Second World War, and the moment the trajectory of the 20th century changed. I debated writing about it at all because I try, so often, to anchor things “at home.” But everything I write comes from my own lived place, memory, emotion, experience, and this date sits at the centre of all of that.

My father, as many who read me now know, shaped so much of how I see the world. Back in 1981, during the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbour, my parents wanted one final trip to Hawaii, my mother already many years into the paralysis of her stroke. I met them there because my father couldn’t manage the physical care on his own, and because time with them mattered. Two things were important to him on that trip: travelling to the remote resting place of Charles Lindbergh, and standing where the Second World War began for America.

Standing above the sunken USS Arizona with them is something I will never forget. Tourists moved around us, reading plaques or pointing at the quiet water. But for my father, it was not a tourist stop. It was a place of reverence. A place of loss. A place that demanded silence. He stood there as a Canadian who had done his part in those dark years, because it was right to stand with an ally, with democracy, with the world. And I felt that through him. I wasn’t alive in 1941, but I knew the significance of that place because he carried it in his bones.

That’s why it sits so heavily with me that, according to reporting years later, when Donald Trump toured the USS Arizona Memorial in 2020, he asked what it was and why it mattered. The president of the United States standing on the graves of 1,177 Americans and not understanding the meaning of where he was. People say, “Well, that’s just Trump.” But that is the point. When you cannot feel history, when you do not carry its weight, you cannot grasp consequences. You cannot lead through the echoes of the past when you don’t even hear the original sound.

And today, after the United States released its new National Security Strategy, framed against a backdrop of global instability, authoritarian drift, and democratic stress this anniversary lands with a different heaviness. Because Pearl Harbour wasn’t only an American call to arms. It was a turning point for Canada too. My father, like so many Canadians of his generation, believed that when democracy was threatened, you didn’t shrug and say, “That’s someone else’s problem.” You showed up. You stood with your allies. You defended something bigger than borders.

And now, as Americans face a crossroads inside their own country, the echoes of 1941 feel unbearably loud. Not because history is repeating itself, but because, as a historian recently said, it is not repeating. It is echoing, resonating and warning.

I think about my father’s reverence on that platform above the Arizona. The way he held the past with both gratitude and responsibility. And I contrast that with a man who once stood in the same place and asked, essentially, “What is this?”

So maybe it’s an emotional weekend. Maybe it’s Christmas coming. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s the weight of watching the world tilt again in ways too familiar for comfort. But as a Canadian who once stood above the USS Arizona carrying the reverence my father carried, I will say this plainly:
We understand, perhaps more than we say aloud, that America’s turning points have always shaped our own, economically, politically, militarily, and morally. Canada has never been a bystander in the currents of history.

The anniversary of Pearl Harbour matters, not just to Americans, but to all of us. Especially now, as we watch a man who has never understood the weight of history wield presidential power without any sense of consequence. The echoes are loud. Please hear them.

Sometimes calm just isn’t possible

Posted: December 6, 2025 in Uncategorized
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People keep telling me I’m “not writing from a Canadian perspective”. So let me be uncomfortably blunt: everything I write, whether it’s about Washington, Moscow, Venezuela, or the moon, is through a Canadian lens. Because in 2025, there is no such thing as an American crisis that stays on the American side of the border. What happens there reaches us in real time. Economically, militarily, socially, digitally and emotionally.

Anything I write about the U.S. is about Canada. And this week, the danger became impossible to soften.

Two months ago, Pete Hegseth stood before senior U.S. military leaders and said the quiet part out loud, not hinted at, not theorized, not coded. No, he declared, “We don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill… Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for war fighting.”

Maximum lethality. Untie the hands, intimidate, demoralize, hunt, andkill. That is not doctrine nor strategy. That is permission.

So when the world watched the evolving, contradictory explanations around the second strike on a drug boat, one that looks chillingly like a war crime, none of us should be surprised. The guardrails are gone. They told us they were removing them. They said it right into the cameras.

And as Canadians we’re supposed to shrug and say, “U.S. politics are weird right now”? This isn’t “weird.” This is destabilization and destabilization doesn’t need a passport to cross borders. My nephew, who served his entire career in the Royal Canadian Air Force and now continues with them in a civilian role wrote something earlier this year that I keep returning to. I’m paraphrasing, but he described standing on a tarmac in Afghanistan watching Star Spangled Banner draped coffins being loaded onto a plane. He talked about serving beside Americans who lived, laughed, fought, bled, and grieved as brothers, never caring what flag was on your shoulder as long as you showed up. He believed, deeply, that those same American generals would never obey an order to turn their military against Canada. He believed it was unthinkable. And in March, I believed that too. But this is not March. And the United States is not the same country it was even eight months ago.

Last night’s National Security Strategy should have stopped the world in its tracks. Instead, it barely caused a ripple because we’ve all become numb to shock. But we cannot afford numbness. Not here in Canada. Not when the document refers to Canada, explicitly, as a vassal state. If you look up that term, it means the following. ‘A state that has a mutual obligation to a superior state or empire, similar to a subordinate in a medieval feudal system.’

This is how Trump’s America now views Canada. Not as an ally. Not as a partner. Not as a neighbour with whom it shares the longest peaceful border in the world. But as a subordinate with obligations to an empire.

Read that again. And if you still think Trump is a “good guy,” and that the far-right radical politics sweeping across North America are some kind of righteous populist uprising, then you’re reading the wrong post and the wrong blogger or exactly the one you needed.

People often tell me that my writing calms them. But today, I don’t think I can do that. Today is not about calm. Today is about clarity. About looking at the shift happening south of us, militarily, politically, psychologically, and understanding that Canada is not insulated.

And yes, of course we need to pay attention to what’s happening right here at home, not to hide from the global picture, but because what’s unfolding in Alberta is part of that global picture. The erosion of institutional trust, the attacks on journalism, the flirtation with authoritarian rhetoric, the manufactured chaos, it all mirrors, almost perfectly, what we saw in the U.S. before their political centre collapsed. And the truth is, action always begins closest to home. We can’t fix the entire world, but we can damn well protect the ground we’re standing on. If we don’t get our house in order here, if we don’t recognize the direction these currents are pulling us, then political chaos becomes a gift to anyone who sees Canada not as a nation to respect, but as a chess piece to be moved.

And as much as this fear sits in my chest like a stone, I remain grateful, profoundly grateful, that Mark Carney is the one steering the ship in this moment. Steady when the world is lurching. Calm when our neighbour is convulsing. Focused when others are consumed by rage, impulse, and decline. But leadership can only work when a country understands the stakes.

I wish I could tell you everything will be fine. I wish I could offer comfort instead of warning. But the truth is that Canada is vulnerable. Not because we are weak, but because the reality around us has changed faster than we have been willing to admit.

And the most dangerous thing we can do right now,  as Canadians, as Albertans, as people who love this country, is pretend that the ground beneath us isn’t shaking. I am still optimistic. I wouldn’t write any of this if I weren’t. I believe in us. I believe in what we can be. I believe in our capacity to meet the moment. But optimism is not the same as denial. And today, the truth is simple and unavoidable: When an unstable superpower drops its guardrails, every nation in its shadow had better wake up. Because history does not wait for those who refuse to see it coming.

Don’t mess with Franklin

Posted: December 1, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Before I even begin, I want to say this clearly: I would never change a Franklin book, its message, or its imagery to suit political commentary. These stories were foundational for my kids and for me and the lessons Paulette Bourgeois wrote and Brenda Clark illustrated deserve to be kept intact exactly as they are.

Which is why it feels so bizarre, and frankly insulting, to watch someone else drag Franklin into a political stunt while utterly disregarding the values these books were built on.

Because yes, the U.S. Secretary of Defense (who still calls himself the Secretary of War, as though renaming the job is part of the fantasy) posted an AI-generated picture of Franklin the Turtle hanging out of a helicopter holding a gun. And let me tell you, as someone who read Franklin books for decades and actually respects their moral compass: there is not a single Franklin story where he leans out of a helicopter with a weapon.

So while President Trump’s team continues rewriting norms, reality, and now children’s literature, I’d like to remind them what Franklin books actually taught. And if they’re going to keep dragging Franklin into this, the least we can do is put the real titles back on the table, the ones with actual lessons, not whatever that unhinged helicopter scene was supposed to convey.

Let’s look at some actual Franklin titles I read to my children as maybe they may be relevant in name only to those who frequent the oval office. And yes for the sake of this I will allow the titles to be related to the current US Administration. But just the titles and maybe the lessons that COULD be learned.

Franklin Is Bossy; inspirational reading for anyone who believes leadership involves yelling.

Franklin Plays the Game; although in Washington these days it’s mostly about changing the rules mid-game.

Franklin Is Messy; a political allegory if I’ve ever seen one.

Franklin’s Bad Day; every day ending in “y” when President Trump opens his mouth.

Franklin’s New Friend; once Putin, now the Saudi Prince… the club rotates.

Franklin Is Lost; spiritually, ethically, emotionally, geographically. Pick one.

Franklin Fibs; I don’t even have to explain this one.

Hurry Up, Franklin; or: Hurry up, Trump, could you please just step out of the building? Any building.

Franklin’s Secret Club; perfect for a president who loves a secretive inner circle, complete with loyalty oaths, whispered instructions, and a clubhouse password no one else is allowed to know. I’m guessing the entrance involves tapping three times on a gold-plated door and saying, “Do you love me? Tell me you love me.”

These books were designed to teach children kindness, honesty, problem-solving, and the value of friendship. It is… something else entirely to see those teachings twisted into a militarized meme featuring Franklin leaning out of a helicopter like he’s auditioning for a role in Rambo: The Turtle Years. My apologies for the sarcasm as I relate the titles to current American politics but would they understand the lessons if they moved past the titles

I don’t want to misuse Franklin here. I don’t want to transform a gentle Canadian icon into a prop. I don’t want to corrupt a childhood lesson into a political stunt. However I am using it to comment on the absurdity.

Because when we’re living in a moment where even after verifying screenshots, checking sources, and confirming clips, we still find ourselves asking, Is this parody then something has gone very wrong.

And CBC, if by chance you, Kids Can Press, or anyone who holds licensing rights to Franklin is listening, do you have any ability to tell the Secretary of Defense to stop? I know cease-and-desist letters can’t solve everything, but in this case, I would frame one on my wall out of sheer gratitude.

Franklin deserves better.

The Law’s’ of Armed Conflict.

Posted: November 20, 2025 in Uncategorized
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There are days when I worry we’re watching democracy get chipped away one unhinged Truth Social post at a time. Today was one of those days. Donald Trump, the man who dreams in capital letters and tantrums threatened Democratic lawmakers with arrest and execution because they did a video reminding military members to follow the law. That’s it. A group of veterans saying, “Your oath matters,” and Trump coming back with, “Hang them.” Not metaphorically. Literally.

And whenever something like this happens, the predictable chorus of extreme media voices kicks in. Left, right, and everything radicalized in between. People who treat politics like sport commentary, who defend the indefensible if it benefits their team and attack the reasonable if it threatens their scoreboard. I’m not talking about mainstream conservatives or progressives; I’m talking about the loudest, angriest, most hyperventilating commentators who seem to think democracy is a game show they’re trying to host. They spin and they excuse and they normalize. And they make it harder for ordinary people to see what’s right in front of them.

So let’s step out of the noise and into reality, Canadian reality.

Earlier this year, when Trump said he was going to “get Canada one way or another,” I spoke with people who’ve actually served. Friends, and people in my family. People who fought beside Americans in Afghanistan. And they all said the same thing at that time which was something I took some temporary comfort in: “The U.S. military leadership won’t follow an illegal order. Their oath is to the Constitution, not to the man. They wouldn’t invade Canada.

And I still want to believe that. But then came the Pentagon meeting a few months ago where Trump told senior commanders that if they didn’t fall in line, they could walk out the door. And if they did? They risked losing rank, pensions, and honours. Decades of service wiped away because they refused to bend to his personal will.

That’s not “leadership.” That’s coercion and the hallmark of someone who sees himself as a ruler rather than a president.

Today’s explosion over a simple reminder of legal duty only reinforces that. In my opinion nothing in that video was radical. Nothing was partisan. Nothing was even controversial. The message was something every soldier in North America learns on day one, your oath is to the Constitution, to lawful authority, not to the emotions of the person sitting in the big office.

This principle goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Principles, the foundation of post-WWII military law: “Just following orders” is not a defense for unlawful actions. Military personnel must follow lawful orders and challenge unlawful ones. And while yes, there are exact procedures depending on rank and context, the principle remains the same. It is the bedrock of a professional military.

Which is why there is absolutely nothing wrong with that video. It simply restates the oath Trump wants people to forget. And this is where my fear kicks in. Because not every enlisted person, especially the youngest ones has the background or confidence to distinguish between legality and politics. Many join because it’s their path to an education, a steady income, a future. That’s not a criticism, it’s the reality of recruitment demographics across the North America. Young people are trained to follow orders, not to decode the emotional storms of a man who treats the presidency like a spotlight he refuses to step out of.

Now imagine being a junior soldier hearing the Commander-in-Chief amplify posts calling lawmakers “traitors” and saying “hang them.” Imagine being a senior officer knowing your oath obligates you to refuse unlawful orders, while also knowing your entire career could be erased by the man issuing them. Imagine being a military family watching this unfold, knowing the oath your loved one swore is becoming a political drama. Imagine being an American soldier today.
It terrifies me. And here’s the Canadian part that should terrify you: Fifty percent of Canada’s Conservative base says they support Trump’s agenda and behaviour. Half. So if you’re in that 50%, I’m speaking directly to you: Is this what you endorse? A leader who demands personal loyalty from the armed forces?
A leader who suggests elected officials should die for reminding troops to follow the law? A leader whose outbursts require cleanup crews to appear on television insisting he “didn’t mean it”?

Because here’s the truth: It doesn’t matter if that soldier in the image below is Canadian or American, the oath is the same. In Canada and the United States, soldiers swear an oath to the law, not to the person who holds power.
The words differ slightly, but the meaning is identical: lawful authority first, democracy first, constitutional duty first. Not the ego of someone who thinks he’s above all three.

I’ve read pieces of my son’s papers from Royal Military College. Things like law of armed conflict, conflict theory, technology and warfare. And the lesson across all of it is simple and unwavering:

A professional military stands above political emotion. If Donald Trump, or anyone like him, expects soldiers to replace their oath with his ego, then democracy across this continent is in danger.

This isn’t about left vs. right. This isn’t about Democrats vs. Republicans. Liberals vs Conservatives. This is about the line between law and power, and who we expect our soldiers to follow. And that scares me. It scares me a lot.

The tales Donald tells…

Posted: November 20, 2025 in Uncategorized
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UPDATE: I need to stand corrected. Rumour now has it that this will pass the Senate. And if that’s true, it doesn’t reassure me. It confirms every darker suspicion I had. Because for the Senate to suddenly fall in line, something behind the scenes has shifted, and not toward justice. If anything, it tells me the machinery working in the background is even more insidious, more self-protective, and more calculated than I thought. Whatever deal has been made, whatever pressure has been applied, whatever narrative Trump has pre-scripted it’s worse than the version I was bracing for.

There is nothing I can say today about the Epstein file that hasn’t already been chewed up and spit out by every podcaster, blogger, Substack warrior, news anchor, and the never ending parade of self appointed truth tellers on social media. This story has been dissected, divided, incinerated, resurrected, and re-packaged more times than any of us can count. And yet here we are again, walking right into another so called “moment of reckoning” as Congress gets ready to vote this afternoon. So yes, I’m putting my thoughts down before the two o’clock gong sounds, not because my voice will change anything, but because the hypocrisy rolling through Washington today deserves to be stamped, labeled, and called out with full accuracy.

Let’s begin with the most predictable part: Donald Trump did not suddenly wake up and decide that transparency is good for democracy. The man has never acted out of moral clarity in his life. If he’s supporting the release of anything related to Epstein, it’s because he already knows exactly what he can protect, what he can bury, and what he can spin. He doesn’t do anything unless he can tighten his grip in the process. So the idea that he is suddenly on the side of “letting the truth out” is laughable. If he is allowing this door to open even a crack, it’s because he has already controlled the narrative.

I am not accusing him of having sexual relations with underage girls. I have no proof of that, and I don’t pretend to. What I can say, because it’s indisputable, is that he was there. He knew who Epstein was. He knew what Epstein was widely rumored to be. Trump was not some naive bystander wandering into the wrong circles. At absolute best, he was passive. At worst, he was complicit through silence, proximity, and willful ignorance. And that alone is enough to demand scrutiny. But apparently demand and receive are very different things when you’re dealing with a man who has trained an entire political party to kneel before his whims.

Which brings us to today’s vote in the House. Suddenly, Republicans have permission to support releasing these documents. Not because they grew spines. Not because they found moral purpose. Not because the victims deserve justice. No. They are supporting this because Donald Trump has told them it is safe to do so. Their king, their god, their idol, their living embodiment of whatever twisted movement they’ve built; well he said yes. So they obey. And with his blessing, they can now pretend they’ve been warriors for truth all along.

But don’t be fooled. Because once this leaves the House, it enters the building where accountability goes to be stalled, smothered, and diluted beyond recognition: the United States Senate.
This is the chamber where Trump’s influence runs deepest. This is where loyalty to him isn’t just encouraged; it’s required. Many of these Senators owe their careers, their fundraising machine, and their political safety to him. And the minute anything threatens his interests, they lock step like soldiers guarding a fortress. There is no scenario where a full, unfiltered release of Epstein files passes through that chamber while Trump still commands the Republican Party. None. Please prove me wrong.

I already knew this would hit a wall, until I made the mistake of listening this morning to Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, a man who manages to combine sanctimony, dishonesty, and self-righteous slime in a single breath. According to him, he has been in “discussions” with his Senate counterpart, and the Senate has “concerns.” Let’s translate that into plain language: this is going nowhere. The Senate will delay it, stall it, bury it in committee, or strangle it with amendments. Whatever the method, the goal is the same: make it look like they tried, without ever allowing anything real to surface.

And in all of this political maneuvering and reputation saving, what gets lost, what always gets lost, is the truth that there were victims. Real people. Real children. Young lives that were manipulated, coerced, abused, and then ignored by the very systems supposedly built to protect them. They were failed by prosecutors, by police, by powerful men with more money than conscience, and by every person who looked the other way because confronting the truth would have cost them something. These young women have carried the weight of this for years. Some were silenced and some were pushed into the spotlight to relive nightmares the world dismissed as gossip or scandal. They deserve more than selective transparency. They deserve more than curated disclosures crafted to protect the rich and powerful. If there is going to be a reckoning, it should centre them, not the men scrambling to shield themselves from consequences.

And yes, I’m saying this from Canada. We may be north of the border, but we’re not blind to the fallout. For decades, America was the example, the country that claimed to stand for law, truth, fairness. But this? This contortion of justice and loyalty? This is not the America we once measured ourselves against. And if any echo of that ideal was still hanging on, this behaviour snaps the last piece off. We care because what happens there never stays there, and because victims, on any side of any border, deserve better.

So yes, the House vote will happen today, and yes, it will pass. But the pass itself is hollow if it’s designed to go no further. What matters is whether the truth escapes the Senate, where Trump’s grip is tightest and where the incentives to protect him are strongest. And let’s be honest: he would never green light anything he feared. He is not suddenly embracing openness. He is repositioning. He is gaming the system. He is controlling the floodgates, not opening them.

This is not justice nor courage nor accountability. This is control, strategic, deliberate, and calculated. If anyone wants to celebrate today as some watershed moment, ask yourself who benefits. Ask who is still in control. Ask who gains when the public believes something meaningful has happened even when nothing has. Because Donald Trump has never once allowed truth to obstruct his own survival. And he isn’t about to start now.

My Remembrance Day

Posted: November 11, 2025 in Uncategorized
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As those who read me know, I speak often of military service, of my family’s involvement, of the deep respect I hold for those who serve and have served. But today, that respect carries a heavier gravity than I can recall feeling in many years. The world we are living in feels as though it is shifting under our feet, and while I cannot fully name what we are on the brink of, I know in my bones that it is frightening. On this Remembrance Day, the meaning of sacrifice feels sharper. Clearer. More urgent. It demands something from us.

I have attended Remembrance Day ceremonies for sixty-six years. I may not remember those very early ones, but I remember every year from the time I was six. I remember my Brownie uniform, my Girl Guide sash, attending beside Air Cadets. I remember laying wreaths for my grandfather, and later for my father. I remember attending ceremonies with my sons, one of whom would later stand in uniform among other serving members. I remember standing there in bitter wind, in snow, in quiet fall sun. Some years I attended with family, but most years I went alone with my children, not as a tradition, but as an instruction. To remember has always been for me a deliberate act. A responsibility.

And yet, somehow, we are forgetting. Some measure that forgetting by how many show up to a ceremony. But attendance alone is not remembrance. If the only day you acknowledge the sacrifices of those who came before us is the day the bugle sounds, then yes, at least you came. But let’s be honest. Let’s be bold. If that is where your remembrance begins and ends, how can you look at what is happening in the world right now and not recognize that the ground beneath us is becoming less stable? That we are, once again, entertaining the same ideologies, the same hunger for division and dominance, that cost millions of lives in the last century?

When I watched the national ceremony today, I forced myself to truly watch and to feel it. To let myself remember that when my father enlisted in 1941, he was eighteen. He stood beside other boys who stepped forward because they understood something we now seem to resist seeing: that freedom is not self-sustaining, democracy is not a given, and peace is not guaranteed. Those boys are few now. Those who remain carry the memory of what happens when hatred, extremism, and power-hunger go unchecked.

Canada lost more than 66,000 soldiers in the First World War. Another 172,000 came home bodily wounded but numbers were not kept for those spirits that were damaged. In the Second World War, we lost 45,000, and 55,000 were wounded. In the Korean War, 516 more. We lost lives in Somalia, in Bosnia, in Afghanistan. And we carry the unseen casualties, trauma, grief, fractured families, the quiet suffering that never makes the history books.

But today, we are witnessing the most horrific disrespect of what they fought for that I could have imagined. Not from some distant villain. But from everyday complacency. From the normalization of authoritarian rhetoric. From the cheering of cruelty as if it is strength. From the casual acceptance of lies, hate, and division, especially from those who claim to “love freedom.”

I find it difficult to reconcile that on a day as sacred to me as Remembrance Day, I have to speak about politics at all. But how can I not? What was fought for is being eroded. And not subtly.

I hate that I speak so often of American politics. I don’t want to. I want the United States to deal with their own chaos while we remain steady here. But we are too geographically, socially, culturally, economically intertwined to pretend their descent into authoritarian celebration does not affect us. And here, within our own borders, we are watching admiration for those very same anti-democratic impulses grow among people who stand under the same flag my father fought to protect.

I do not know what to do with this pain. This fear. This anger. I can list adjectives until the page collapses under them, none of them feel sufficient. What I do know is that Remembrance Day is not just symbolic to me. It is not a cultural performance. It is not background noise between errands. It is sacred. And when the world carries on casually today, shopping, scrolling, rushing, and arguing it feels like a bell ringing that no one hears.

So I wear my poppy intentionally today. Because it is a visible bell. A signal and a reminder that remembrance is not passive. That memory is not nostalgia. That silence is not neutrality.

On my sixty-sixth Remembrance Day, I am asking, no actually pleading that we understand the gravity of the world we are in. That we recognize we are not immune to the forces that tore other nations apart. That we stop comforting ourselves with the myth that Canada is somehow untouchable, incorruptible, insulated by politeness.

Do not show up to a Remembrance Day ceremony if you also cheer for authoritarianism, division, cruelty, or the dehumanization of others. You cannot honour sacrifice while celebrating the very conditions that required it.

I do not want my children, or their children, to live what their grandparents and great-grandparents endured. I am scared.

But remembrance is not about despair. It is about responsibility.

And we still have time to choose who we are.

September 11

Posted: September 11, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Twenty-four years. I remember every moment.

I had just sent my older son off to school. My younger one was a toddler, wandering around the kitchen while I stood at the island with paperwork spread everywhere, the TV set propped on the counter. And then the news alert saying the first tower was hit. Like everyone else, I was watching when the second was hit. I didn’t sit down. I just stood there, trying to keep my little one occupied, trying to absorb something that would change all of us forever.

My dad was still alive then. I called him from Calgary, his voice steady from New Brunswick, but we both knew this was different. He was a man who lived by service, signing on with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, then dedicating his life to his community and volunteerism. We spent much of that day talking and processing what we had seen and heard. That day reminded me just how fragile the world could be, and how deeply our choices matter. The loss of innocence for the generation before me was the Second World War. For me, it was September 11, 2001.

My sister and her husband live in Gander, Newfoundland and like most of the community opened their hearts when the planes arrived. My brother in law was an air traffic controller, but more importantly a very active member of his community. And that small community of fewer than 10,000 took in almost 7,000 stranded passengers. If you don’t know that story, you don’t know one of the proudest chapters in Canadian history. They fed, housed, clothed, and comforted complete strangers. They showed the world what it means to be human.

That day was also a reminder of the Canada–U.S. relationship. In modern history, outside of the Second World War, there has been no moment when we stood more firmly with our American friends. We didn’t hesitate. Because geography placed us side by side, but history, sacrifice,and human decency kept us there.

It was John F. Kennedy, speaking in Canada’s House of Commons in 1961, who said it best:

“Geography has made us neighbors.
History has made us friends.
Economics has made us partners.
And necessity has made us allies.
Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.”

That is what I hold onto today. Because I look at where we are now, at the toxic politics, at the self-serving narcissism of one man determined to tear countries apart rather than bring them together, and I think: my God, what a loss. The Department of War is not strength. Defense is strength. Community is strength. Humanity is strength.

For those too young to remember 9/11: this isn’t about the loss of shampoo bottles in your checked luggage or the inconvenience of airport security lines. It’s about the moment when thousands of lives were ended in real time, on live television. It’s about the day when every school teacher in North America looked at their classroom differently, wondering how to explain the unexplainable to terrified children. It’s about the trauma imprint, on parents, on kids, on communities, that still lingers close to a quarter century later.

I think of my own children and how that fear landed in our home. The phone calls to family. The way the air itself felt heavier. The stunned silence on streets and in the grocery store. I believe as I speak these words, I can still feel what it felt like. And as I write, I try to honour both the factual pieces of that day and the raw human pieces of how we felt.

That is why Gander matters. That is why our shared history matters. We rose to support our American neighbours not because of politics, but because of humanity. Because Canadians understood instinctively that the border was invisible when people were in need. And we acted on it.

And yet, walking through every single day now, watching the constant erosion of our shared ideals, the loss of that relationship between the United States and Canada feels even more hurtful. The U.S. once needed and wanted the world’s help. Now, under leaders who confuse bravado with strength, it acts as though it doesn’t. That breaks something in me. Because for all our differences, for all our arguments, the bond forged in tragedy should have been unbreakable.

But bonds only hold if we choose to honour them. The lesson of September 11th isn’t just about vigilance; it’s about unity. It’s about ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of fear. It’s about our country who opened its arms to stranded strangers and made them neighbours.

I miss being able to call my dad to talk about the things going on in our world, to hear what he would say. And yet, I’m also glad he isn’t here to see the anger and division that have followed. What I know is this: there are still people fighting for our country, not with weapons, but with words, service, and courage. They are the counterweight to war. The living proof of Kennedy’s words.

We say we will never forget. And we shouldn’t. Because forgetting isn’t just about losing memory; it’s about losing ourselves. And if September 11th taught me anything, it’s that the opposite of fear is not comfort, but action.

On that day, our innocence shattered, but our humanity showed. Today, our politics are bitter, but our capacity for decency still exists. It’s up to us to defend it, fiercely, to make sure geography and history continue to bind us, and to refuse to let any man, no matter how powerful, put it asunder.