Christopher Dornan

I can’t go there anymore. Not to Ithaca in upstate New York, where I had my first university teaching position and remember it so fondly. Not to Vegas or Disney World. Not to Chicago, San Francisco, the high desert in California, Cape Canaveral, or anywhere else I’ve had a wonderful time in the U.S.

What we’re being told about it is fragmentary, tenuous, highly politicized, highly policed and highly contested, as the coverage of war always is. But when a country going to war takes measures to make sure there are no frontline correspondents, that tells us something. Let’s watch.

When not in character, Brittlestar is Stewart Reynolds, who lives in Stratford, Ont. His Kesterton lecture is called 'Peace, Order, and Good Journalism (with a Side of Comedy).'

Marsha Lederman’s October 7 is a book that comes out of the Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s military response, but it’s not an account of the war in Gaza or how it is playing out in Israeli politics or in the Arab world. It is about how the conflict is being felt here in Canada, culturally.

Andrew Coyne is right to raise his voice about the crisis of Canada. But the extinction-level political disaster he’s so worried about hasn’t happened over the span of this country’s ungainly, unworkable existence. Which means that Coyne could be right tomorrow, but so far has been wrong for the past 158 years. 

Andrew Coyne is right to raise his voice about the crisis of Canada. But the extinction-level political disaster he’s so worried about hasn’t happened over the span of this country’s ungainly, unworkable existence. Which means that Coyne could be right tomorrow, but so far has been wrong for the past 158 years. 

The narratives of nation building have always been aspirational, and for a country that holds itself to be just and tolerant, Canada’s past and present are rife with injustices and intolerances. Amid the prosperity, there remains poverty. Alongside compassion there is an ineradicable strain of selfishness. The project that is Canada is not yet finished. Long may it remain a work in progress.

The narratives of nation building have always been aspirational, and for a country that holds itself to be just and tolerant, Canada’s past and present are rife with injustices and intolerances. Amid the prosperity, there remains poverty. Alongside compassion there is an ineradicable strain of selfishness. The project that is Canada is not yet finished. Long may it remain a work in progress.

Ken McGoogan’s Shadows of Tyranny is a calm work born of panic, written before Trump was re-elected. If you’ve ever wondered how you would have behaved in the late 1930s when the world pitched toward authoritarianism, this book is an almanac of character sketches of people who saw it coming and tried to stop it, or took up arms to try to end it.

Through nine persuasive yet demoralizing chapters, Jonathan Manthorpe leads us through his rational report card on our nation’s prospects. If we don't attend to matters now, he warns, Canada is Argentina waiting to happen.

Through nine persuasive yet demoralizing chapters, Jonathan Manthorpe leads us through his rational report card on our nation’s prospects. If we don't attend to matters now, he warns, Canada is Argentina waiting to happen.