The smart play, as Michael Corleone would say, is move fast. Trade McDavid before the start of next season for a boatload of young players to supplement Draisaitl. Take a short-term PR hit but live to compete another day. Remember the re-structured Oilers won a Cup in 1990 using Mark Messier and the players they got for Gretzky. Think about it, Edmonton.

While domestic marketers are playing the Maple Syrup March over the Stanley Cup Final they missed an even better opportunity to marry Canadian patriotism with sport. We speak, of course, of the inevitable crowning of Canadian stars like SGA as champions of the NBA. In fact the entire progress of the postseason in the sneaker league has witnessed great Canadian results. 

Biles has made a secondary career as an object of pity, but took exception when former swimmer Riley Gaines, an opponent of trans men competing against women, sent a picture of softball team that recently won a state title with a transgender pitcher.

The two Florida teams are benefitting from the new sports economics in which players making large, sometimes huge, salaries are choosing to play in one of four states which has no state income tax. The combination of much lower taxes, warm weather and the relative anonymity of being a hockey celebrity in cities that have NFL or NBA teams is proving an advantage in attracting or keeping star players.

The problem for those hating on Caitlin Clark, who’s been everything advertised, is that she has brought attention to their sport, attention they failed to generate themselves despite national TV contracts and the chequebook of the NBA. The latest TV deal increased sixfold as Americans tuned in to see Clark.

We can now safely say that the fate of the nation hockey-wise falls to Alberta. Okay, an Alberta city. Edmonton. With the annual falling of the Leafs (genus Torontonius) and the shocking second-round collapse of the NHL’s  No. 1 team during the season-- Winnipeg— it falls to the Oilers to break the 1993 Stanley Cup schneid for Canadian clubs.

Rick Mercer. Don Cherry. Both brilliant masters of the craft of holding eyeballs. But they represented polar opposites. Mercer was the glib political voice of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. There was never any doubt in CBC’s upper reaches about whose side he was on in the culture war. Cherry was the unpredictable voice of Hockey Night in Canada. Who scared CBC/ Rogers to death.

Mercer was worshipped by the folks in the C suite.

Both these leaders, for better or worse, changed politics irrevocably. Trump’s audacity and pitiless style— thought to be political poison— have re-written the book on what works. Politics will never ever be the same down south. The same can be said for the style of Justin Trudeau. He defined a style of politics for Boomer Canada, long on Woke platitudes, short on concrete policy. It worked. Three times.

Canadians dozed when Trump made clear in his election campaign that the American economy is the greatest in the world. If you want to fish in that pond it’s not going to be free. That means tariffs. Now they’re shocked.

Nowhere is victimhood more bizarre— and dangerous— than the Hamas infatuation. “Terrorists, criminals, psychopaths, and fantasists from every part of the globe have grafted themselves on to the Palestinian cause,” writes Lee Smith in Tablet. “(It) gives hope to each of these groups—hope that their own nihilistic and murderous ambitions could win world favour as well. And they have.” 

The contradictions between Carney’s promises and reality will soon pile up. His Euro-based climate and social media policies will tell on a jaded public. His housing minister— who has promised to stabilize house prices— produced 170 percent jump in home prices while mayor of Vancouver. 
Which will give Danielle Smith all she needs to introduce plans, if not for separation, then for a new decentralized Canada.

For those Canadians in media who regularly make fun of Americans’ bravado and bluster there has been no awareness of how Canadians had been played like a cheap violin. Nice work if you can get it. Mark Carney got it, and now his Boomers can swallow deep.

Nice work if you can get it. Mark Carney got it, and Boomers swallowed deep.

Four dynamic poetic voices— each with distinct perspectives on spiritual enlightenment, trauma, pastoral beauty and the joys of the physical body— were highlighted at McClelland & Stewart’s 2025 spring poetry night held earlier this month.

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.