Among 2020’s many unfortunate pandemic casualties was the Stratford Festival. Today it’s anybody’s guess how, when or whether the beloved cultural institution, held annually in the Ontario town named for the hometown of William Shakespeare, can restart. But, writes Grant A. Brown, serious wounds were already being inflicted upon the festival – from within. A Stratford resident and business owner, Brown brings a lifelong Shakespeare lover’s perspective to his dissection of the progressive degradation of the great playwright’s greatest works and the garbling of his eternally revealing insights into human nature.

Were he alive today, Sir John A. Macdonald would make short work of his many present-day critics through his legendarily quick wit, disarming personality and mastery of the facts. Unfortunately, he isn’t around to defend himself against horrifying claims he committed genocide against Canada’s Indigenous people. To take on this calumny, Greg Piasetzki goes back to the source. Using Macdonald’s own words and other contemporary voices, Piasetzki brings alive our Founding Father’s determination to save native lives and protect their interests throughout his time in office.

Slavery is an outrage, pure and simple, truly one where it is accurate to say “even one is too many”. But even slavery requires context. Out of the more than 12 million Africans captured and shipped across the Atlantic, by the year 1700 precisely six were held in what would later become Quebec. So how and why did La Belle Province decide to upend the truth of its past? In this version of an essay that appeared originally in the Dorchester Review, Frédéric Bastien chronicles Quebec’s bizarre orgy of “historical correctness” and the damage it is doing to memory, truth and perspective.

Canada’s diplomatic, corporate and legal establishments have worked to deepen ties with China for nearly 50 years, greatly abetting the Communist state’s historic drive for international normalization. Any pushback against such a policy of ingratiation has been fragmented, weak and usually portrayed as naïve or futile. Now this half-century of appeasement has come to a head in the most surprising way. Fin dePencier examines the legal affair of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, its profound impact on Canada-China and Canada-U.S. relations, the shifting tide of public opinion and our prime minister’s often-sorry role in the ongoing drama.

The lessons of history? These days, who cares? The past is no longer revered or even carefully examined as woke-leftists seek to topple statues, cancel contrarian views and remake society in a paroxysm of radical change. Yet such an approach hasn’t rendered history entirely obsolete, just obscure. Amid the revolutionary aspirations of our current age, Peter Shawn Taylor takes a look back to where it all started ¬and finds an era awash in bold promises, tragic failings, bloody repudiations and, in the end, desperate pleas for a return to normalcy. When it comes to revolutions, what goes around, comes around.

With its bizarre political melange comprising the colourful, the confrontational, the stodgy, the greedy, the eccentric and the unhinged, B.C. often confounds locals as much as outsiders. Could it be the NDP, of all parties, led by a former steakhouse waiter, that cracks that nut, breaks that mold and at last restores a measure of stability and continuity – if of a very big-spending kind? British Columbian Steven Threndyle takes a lively look at B.C.’s recent electoral contest and ventures some predictions about the governing style of a premier who seems more earthy unionist than latte-slurping hipster.

Barely 50 years ago a man could tire of his wife, tell her he wanted a divorce and, with a little luck in court, walk away financially intact, leaving his ex in virtual penury to start over if she could. Since then, the legal and financial pendulums have swung. And swung. And swung some more. About time, too! many will answer. But should there be no limits at all on spousal support obligations? Janice Fiamengo dissects a prominent – and, for the male party, extremely costly – divorce case to reveal the one-sidedness now baked into Canadian family law.

Threatening to take your ball and leave because you don’t like how the game is going is the sort of selfish behaviour we discourage in young children. So why do we celebrate it every four years when apparent adults do the same thing? With the U.S. presidential election only days away, American Democrats are once again vowing to move to Canada if Donald Trump wins. Don’t hold your breath. With bracing realism, Aaron Nava looks at how this electoral petulance always plays out, the hypocrisy it embodies and what it means for democracy in the U.S. and Canada.

Solar panels filling fields in cloudy northern countries. Wind turbines manufactured for export by the world’s largest builder of coal-fired power and worst emitter of greenhouse gases. Governments deliberately demolishing their country’s most valuable industry. It is increasingly clear that so-called green energy isn’t just another instance of youthful idealism going a little too far, much less a practical way to a clean future, but a nasty utopian ideology bent on impoverishing entire countries. Gwyn Morgan examines a slice of this destructive landscape and warns of the severe risk to Canada’s economic well-being.

In our Unbrave New World, most of us would prefer to keep our heads down or repeat empty slogans rather than face censure from the mob. Against this backdrop of timid conformity, a few determined individuals stand out for the fearlessness and gusto with which they speak their minds. Professor Frances Widdowson of Calgary’s Mount Royal University is among that handful. In a lengthy interview with Peter Shawn Taylor covering a range of important subjects, Widdowson defends her controversial stances, explains the necessity of difficult discussions and reveals how hard it can be to remain rational in these increasingly irrational times.