Most people would probably agree 2020 has been a tire fire of a year. A lot of that comes from the coronavirus, but part of it also comes from issues that have been building for a very long time.

The federal government had to borrow a colossal amount of money as part of its relief efforts to keep people from losing their livelihoods and provide medical care. It’s also had to order and import a vaccine developed in a foreign country. I can’t help but wonder how much lower those deficits would be if previous governments hadn’t repeatedly cut taxes…

This article is the second in a series of reviews of books I’ve read on Canadian politics and history, summarizing their contents and considering their relevance to modern Canada.

The first book I reviewed was Peter Russell’s Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become A Sovereign People? Just as this review is a sequel to the first one, Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based On Incomplete Conquests is a sequel of sorts to Constitutional Odyssey. …

Canadian Hero’s

Each November, Canadians commemorate Remembrance Day as a way to pay respects to the soldiers and veterans who fought and gave their lives for our freedom. The stories of many of the soldiers who fought for us are rightly known to most Canadians, but the stories and contributions of the Indigenous soldiers are often overlooked. It’s a shame, particularly when you realize the context in which those Indigenous soldiers enlisted and fought.

In her book Canada’s First Nations, A History Of Founding Peoples From Earliest Times, Métis historian Olive Dickason noted Indigenous people enlisted during the World Wars at a…

After reading Ken Allred’s rant about how the West allegedly ‘wants out’, I just have one thing to say:

Speak for yourself.

Allred actually makes a number of valid points about the problems Western Canada faces, like our being underrepresented in Parliament, about how we’re shafted when it comes to our resources, and so on. He goes completely off the rails, though, when he raves about how Pierre Trudeau and his supporters accomplished the ‘francization’ of Canada.

What Allred forgets — or perhaps prefers not to mention — is that Quebec separatism and Trudeau’s bilingual policies in fact came from…

A lot of Canadians are frustrated by the blockades and protests Indigenous people and their supporters have erected in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who are protesting the Coastal Gas Link pipeline in British Columbia. There have been a lot of calls for the police to enforce the rule of law by more forcefully dismantling the blockades. The police are accused of being derelict in their duties when they delay before acting, such as when the Ontario Provincial Police waited 18 days before dismantling the Tyendinaga Mohawks’ blockade in Ontario.

On the surface, the dispute seems simple. To many…

I’m writing this on the morning of Canada Day 2020, thinking about all the fascinating things I’ve read and the people I’ve met.

For the past several years, I’ve written about various deep, philosophical Canada-related subjects. This year, though, I decided to try something different. Historians like Will Ferguson, J.L. Granatstein, Norman Hillmer and George Bowering have ranked Canada’s Prime Ministers, so I thought I’d try and do the same. I’ve mentioned where some of the Prime Ministers would rank in my previous writings, but now it’s time to show the full list.

The Greats

1. Sir John A. Macdonald

Time In Office…