Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "Cartoonists taking aim at the White House are making progress. They figured out the tailored suits, facial expressions, hair style..." READ MORE
Review: His Eyes Gave Him Away
On the job at the CBC, producer John Scully recalls a supervisor once reprimanded him for doing a crossword puzzle on company time. Scully ducked out for lunch with his wife and began to sob: “Not just a few drops, but waterfalls of howling public pain,” he writes. “People looked away in embarrassment, but I didn’t care where I was. I was grieving, grieving so passionately for the loss of my skills and the lack of understanding from my bosses. The crying lasted half an hour.” The product of Scully’s torment is Am I Sane Yet? Clinically depressed for years – he consulted 40 doctors – Scully is also a skilled journalist with the concise eloquence you’d expect of someone who served 50 years in the newsroom. He is able to do what many other mentally ill Canadians cannot, document his own descent into self-agony. There was the time he was speaking at a book launch when a lone heckler rattled him and Scully could barely finish his remarks: “Zip, I suddenly had a depression crash. The stress was too much. ‘Is that it? Is that all there is?’" READ MORE
Trudeau’s Up For A Million
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today leaves office with the prospect of $1 million to $2 million from the federal archives to buy his personal papers. Previous leaders also received seven-figure payments to “acquire, process, preserve and make accessible” their private records: "Documents deemed to have national importance are those that bear witness to the Canadian experience." READ MORE
‘Don’t Need Canada’: Trump
There is “not a thing that we need” from Canada, U.S. President Donald Trump said yesterday. His remarks came as a Canadian cabinet delegation met with the U.S. Department of Commerce in a bid to avert a tariff-driven recession: "We don’t need anything that they give." READ MORE
Bilingualism A Black ‘Barrier’
The Treasury Board is hiring private tutors to coach Black federal employees on how to learn French, records show. Too few Black staff are passing bilingual proficiency tests required for promotion as executives, it said: "Language training has been identified as a barrier for Black employees’ advancement." READ MORE
Careful Ruling On Wage Cut
The Federal Court has dismissed penalties against a construction company that paid foreign labour less than a posted rate. The judge cautioned the decision was narrowly based on facts in the case and must not be seen as “undermining strong worker protections.” READ MORE
Says Bitcoin’s For Speculators
Bitcoin ownership in Canada is double pre-pandemic levels but remains low, Bank of Canada researchers said yesterday. Typical buyers were speculators under 34: "The primary reason for selling their holdings was cashing out for a profit." READ MORE
Guest Commentary
There had been discrimination against Catholics and Jews and Blacks and Indigenous and Ukrainians and the Irish and it was wrong. Yet if you were homosexual you could be fired, you could be denied an apartment, you could be prohibited from marrying. In those days, in the 1970s and 80s, the prevailing sense among the public – and even those who were homosexual – was not to discuss it. We’d all been brought up with this being a very deep social taboo. The word was so difficult to say. Many people choked on it. Even media preferred not to publish any stories about homosexuals. They didn’t like to use the word. And politicians never wanted to expend any political capital legislating equality for an unpopular minority.
