Integral to Trump panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money courtesy of the Liberals. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. It worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week when they finally lost the plot.

So how much do Canadians love the Winnipeg Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a first Canadian Stanley Cup since 1993? We may be about to find out.

Rogers dabbled in the brave new world tech briefly in 2013, blanched at the cost of being creative and largely went back to doing hockey the way it had always been done. Taking no risks. If you were expecting dashboard cameras and drone shots you were sadly disappointed. This new contract means more of the same till Bettman retires.

While it’s true that the sun can’t shine on the same team every day, Blue Jays fans across the nation believe it would be nice if the great orb would find their club as it did in 1992/93. Instead of the reflected glory of past stars winning for other teams. Patience is thin. Excuses are many. But time is short.

George Foreman’s rebound story was uniquely American. Where Canadians are enthusiastically damning Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky for political reasons, Foreman never became a captive of angry radicals or corporate America. He went his own way, thumping the bible and his famous grill. It’s unlikely we will see his like again.

It remains to be seen if a Canadian federal election held alongside the NHL playoffs will have any repercussions on the ice. But in the current manic mood of Canadians freaked out by Trump nothing is beyond possibility. 

The Liberal Party “Team Canada” propaganda war— featuring longtime U.S. emigrés Mike Myers and Neil Young ripping Trump’s tariffs on Canada-- is just the latest in a cultural war against America. That conflict has its roots in the estimated 50-100 thousand draft resisters who came to Canada and turned its politics leftward. It persists today.

Donald Trump has activated Canada’s affinity for authority and the expert class. While the rest of the world has awakened to the government’s deliberate manipulation of fear and white-coat reverence during Covid, Canada’s Boomers are still in awe of people like Carney. They still think the vaccines work. That The Science was behind it all. That Carney is a respected economist.

With so little uniting the regions of the country any longer, devolution on the UK model might provide a solution. While the idea is fraught with pitfalls it nonetheless remains preferable to talk of a breakup of the nation, which four more years of Liberals rule under Mark Carney and the same Trudeau characters will likely precipitate.

Rather than confront the China problem Canadians have decided to engage in a Mike Myers nostalgia fest for a nation long gone. A nation overly dominated by its smug, satisfied +60 demographic that sits back while younger Canadians cannot get into the economy. Reaching past the sunset media to those people is Pierre Poilievre’s task.

There is a compelling cultural story surrounding non-binary Carney. Sasha is just one of a dramatic spike of young middle- and upper-class persons born as women who are engaged in a campaign of mass psychosis over dysphoria. With or without the help of parents many are hacking themselves surgically or castrating themselves chemically. It’s a demographic disaster.

Why are 43 percent of 18-36 male CDNs telling pollsters they would accept U.S. citizenship if they were guaranteed full rights and financial protections? These young men appreciate Canada but they don't share the Boomer nostalgia for the Canada of 1967-2000 that is powering the current patriotic spasm. And yet they’re being passed over.

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.