As Canadian universities descend into apparent madness – hiring for skin colour rather than merit, enforcing draconian speech codes and unravelling the ancient protection of academic tenure – one voice has been resolute in demanding a return to higher standards in higher education. Mark Mercer, president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship since 2015, has proved Canada’s pre-eminent defender of Enlightenment values throughout the academy. In a wide-ranging discussion with C2C Journal’s Patrick Keeney, Mercer charts the origins of our current Woke revolution, the overarching significance of academic freedom and how its loss is affecting life both on and off campus. It may not be a happy story, but it is a necessary one.

The coronation of King Charles III led many Canadians to ask, once again, a simple question: Why should an old man in a land across the sea be our head of state, simply because his ancestors were? It’s a good question, and the case against the monarchy seems powerful. Jamie C. Weir takes on the key arguments and explains why an antiquated and undemocratic institution remains the centrepiece of Canada’s unique political culture, provides a profound and even magical link to our past, and serves as an essential bulwark against the two political death-traps of anarchy and tyranny.

It has been one year since Gwyn Morgan’s article The Dictator and the Truckers: A True Canadian Folk Tale appeared in C2C. The saga did not end there – unfortunately. The Liberal dictator’s targets continue to endure the whims of Canada’s increasingly politicized justice system. While habitual criminals with dozens of past convictions are allowed to roam free only to commit multiple horrific murders, the peaceful if outspoken organizers of the Freedom Convoy barely gain bail and have their conditional liberty revoked on the flimsiest of pretexts. Now, as key Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich contemplates her criminal trial later this year, Morgan sets forth the grotesque violations of constitutional rights that brought us to this point.

Do you love Canada? The answer ought to be axiomatic. How could anyone not love a country with such a long democratic tradition, born of a spirit of accommodation and committed to the betterment of all who live within its borders. Yet expressing such an emotion today seems utterly obsolete, as our national narrative has become obsessed with shame and regret over our colonial past and racist present. If even native-born residents can’t find a reason to show any ardour for their homeland, why should we be surprised when new arrivals act likewise? Peter Shawn Taylor examines the recent decline in citizenship rates among immigrants to Canada and wonders if it says more about us than about them.

There’s a minimum legal age for voting. You have to pass a test to drive a car. You even need a licence to get married. When it comes to having kids, however, there are no restrictions or official requirements at all. But if it’s so easy to do, why are Canadian women choosing to have so few children? More important, why are they choosing to have fewer kids than their own stated desires? Based on exclusive survey data, demographer Lyman Stone uncovers the intimate details of fertility expectations in Canada, what is driving them and what is happening to the life satisfaction of Canadian mothers.

In these, the longest nights of midwinter, Canada feels as “northern” as it ever gets. Though we may dream of beaches and warm sunshine, our nation is second only to Russia in its sheer northern expanses, and most Canadians still seem to think of themselves as northerners, even if reluctant ones. But what is the north? Does it, in one writer’s words, dazzle with the promise of “the luminous, pearl, interior day”? Is it, as another put it, “a physical challenge and a hard thought”? Or does it signify something else entirely? David Solway harnesses an impressive troupe of writers and artists to help him explore these questions, finding that, for some, heading North can be a one-way journey.

Society’s overall respect and admiration for science and scientists has probably never been greater. Why, then, do relatively few young Canadians seemingly want to become scientists? Why are so many schoolkids unwilling or unable to dig into the foundational learning needed to position themselves for an adulthood focused on a scientific career? Especially in an era when the economy is generating job opportunities by the tens of thousands for graduates with scientific training. Gwyn Morgan outlines the nation’s growing shortfall of STEM-trained professionals and looks into some ways to start overcoming the troubling inability of the education system to motivate Canada’s kids to focus on science.

History was once a collection of facts, relics and other evidence organized in ways that illuminated our past and explained our present. And museums were where we kept much of that history safe, accessible and easily enjoyed. But that’s so yesterday. Today, Canada’s museums are accused – often by their own staff and leaders – of perpetrating “Euro-centric ableist narratives of patriarchy, exploitation, colonization and heteronormativity” and must therefore be comprehensively dismantled. Larry Ostola examines the mysterious disappearance of Toronto’s popular Fort York Guard, a long-time tourist attraction, as museums across the country descend into identity politics madness.

They’re waving the Canadian flag on Parliament’s grounds – in New Zealand. Columns of trucks are mustering in France with the aim of converging on Paris. “Convoy politics” has become an international term. Canada’s Freedom movement is inspiring people around the world who want pandemic mandates to end and their freedoms restored. Here at home, the latest polls find nationwide support soaring to 46 percent. Not bad for a bunch of marginal nobodies. Still, many Canadians remain guarded or wish the truckers and their hangers-on would just fall silent, go home, get their shots and behave. George Koch checks out Canada’s Freedom movement in person.

If Canada’s past is not to become a pure tool of politics and ideology, we must insist that the facts still matter, including if not especially in controversial areas like Indigenous history. In a meticulously documented essay containing original archival research, Greg Piasetzki chronicles the remarkable career of a late 19th – early 20th century Canadian who embodied many of his era’s signature characteristics – enlightenment rationality, belief in progress, idealism and commitment as well as vanity, opportunism and jarring prejudice. The facts, Piasetzki finds, make for a fascinating though decidedly mixed and at times disturbing story. So why, he asks, do this complicated man’s present-day Indigenous supporters insist on elevating him to near-sainthood?