Only Game Eight of the 1972 Summit Series can match the explosive political and sports combination of Feb. 16, 2025.  Guesses are now being accepted over just what Canada and Canada’s hockey team’s program might look like by the end of the 2020s. Once certainty— if the game Saturday is any indication fraternal friendship between the U.S. and Canada will be on hold for a while.

When props first began to catch the public interest, they were a novelty. Snobs saw them as sucker bets for squares. In Vegas, books would stage a glitzy launch ten days before the game to announce their props. No more. The first props for SB LIX were out minutes after the conference final games were decided. The brushfire is now a conflagration.

The fate of hockey stars may be only a small piece of any future U.S. trade deals. But they will be very visible to Canada’s hockey fans. Not being able to satisfy them is a political price no politician wants to face. But given the current intransigence by Justin Trudeau scrambling to stay in office it is far from improbable.

Society is in the eye of the trans contagion right now, so most people can't see the damage being done, says Mia Hughes of the MacDonald Laurier Institute. But soon, all the young people emerging from this contagion sterile and missing body parts will be visible for all to see, and people will be horrified that they supported such evil.

Play this drinking game. Every time some football analyst on TV says during the course of a game, “He’ll be a star for this team for years” take a drink. You’ll be tipsy in a hurry. The concept of the players you’re loving now lasting very long with NFL, NHL, NBA or even MLB teams has come and gone.

What might be of interest to Canadians is that people in the development system of American hockey are similarly distressed about the problems of developing players in their country. Cost, bureaucracy and the sheer time commitment for families is breaking a lot of people. The culture of big-money development has taken hold with a vengeance.

Poilievre has to stop pretending that a heavily indebted and structurally crumbling Canada can withstand the next four years of Trump bombast. He must have an intervention with the Canadian public to bring them to the bracing reality they face. Only when they know which side is up, away from Trudeau, will they start to climb out of this mess.

Trump has asked a question that petrifies the Canadian establishment. Would Canadians rather join the powerful U.S. and abandon a rickety Canadian union? Which future holds the greater attraction, being a state/ partner of America or continuing to go it alone in a world of ambitious nations like China, Russia and India? The polling is shocking.

Having gotten their news from captive media, the average CDN does not understand the border security crisis. While the Libs/ NDP swooned over climate and pronouns, Canada became a place that Donald Trump and other nations simply don’t trust. Security officials fear that anything said to Trudeau’s government will end up getting to China or other bad actors. To say nothing of money laundering.

In his introduction to a nation that didn’t know Mark Carney was a solution to anything, Carney insisted that Canadians want new ideas, new energy, new purpose. And who were the architects of the malaise requiring such an overhaul? The Liberals themselves. You can’t make up this stuff.

For those wondering how it got to this point where the nation faces external and internal peril, look no further than the kamikaze attacks on the American election by the son of Pierre Trudeau, previously the most imperious man to be PM. Writing cheques with his mouth PMJT now asks Team Canada to back them up with its butt. Suggesting Canada change their brand of ketchup (now debunked) is typical of this unserious approach.

If Trudeau lets the crisis go past Feb. 1 without a deal or an election call it will led to the worst constitutional crisis since conscription in WW I and II. Expect no mercy from down south. Every turn of the screw on Canada increases Donald Trump’s polling. The Family Compact ain't saving you, Skippy. And they won’t save the midwits who elected Trudeau PM three times.

Stephanie Cesca is a strong and capable storyteller. Her passion for detail and vivid imagination creates an authentic fictional world. Readers can see her characters in their mind’s eye. They can relate to their pain.

Throughout the book’s 384 pages, readers are kept guessing as to the killer’s motives. Could such rampaging violence be  a professional hit or a random act of madness? Or was the victim bludgeoned out of existence due to his shady business dealings and abusive, violent past?

Clewes is a sensory, effusive poet. Her lyrical words reflect a deep musical sense. In the third section, Calle Obispo, the poem of the same title, references Nobel Prize-winning poet and Polish-Lithuanian  author Czeslaw Milosz. The first stanza turns a plane trip into a spiritual experience.

Green’s complex, colloquial whimsy is grounded in a strong academic backbone and a broad knowledge base that references Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath. And how she loves wordplay and puns,

Winning a literary award hikes a book’s profile, as the books are put on course curriculums, book club reading lists, and are listed as library best staff picks. This creates more profits for publishers, which is a boon for authors because it increases a book’s promotions budget.

I think books in this genre require a bright label along the spine: Beware. A second reading may be required to fully comprehend this book.