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.

It is one sign of the remorseless march of the administrative state that appeals to Canada’s Constitution appear almost quaint, as well as typically toothless. The news media often frame provincial objections to federal encroachments as claims or perceptions rather than testable assertions, as if Canada’s constitutional documents comprise long-lost secret scrolls written in a dead language. It has been Canada’s judges, however, who have most decisively tipped the balance in favour of federal supremacy in more and more areas. No case has proved too small to keep the process rolling. Not even, as Grant A. Brown reports, a dispute over a simple Ontario government sticker that even the judge had to concede was factually accurate.

Most of us probably regard the word “narrative” either as an creaky cliché thrown around mostly by posers or, if we unwittingly fall into the latter group, as a handy instant signal that we’re culturally au courant (to use another aging cliché). There’s far more to the concept of narrative – unfortunately. Would that it were harmless trivia. Instead it has shown not only indestructible staying power but a viral cunning, mutating and replicating and insinuating itself into every cultural nook and cranny. And that’s profoundly dangerous, writes David Solway, who provides the intellectual heavy lifting in this thorough analysis of the concept’s nature, seductive allure, political misuse and potentially civilization-wrecking power.

Erin O’Toole became leader of the Conservative Party of Canada on the strength of his Big Tent vision for the party. But how big should that tent be? Recently O’Toole surprised commentators by extolling the benefits of the union movement and repeating many of its claims as Conservative policy. Matthew Lau charts the origin of this unorthodox political strategy, and its worrisome economic implications. If the Conservatives want to attract workers’ votes, he argues, they should start by recognizing the damage done by unions to growth and job creation.

Left versus right. Urban versus rural. Baby boomer versus millennial. Us versus them. There’s no shortage of division in society these days. As we all retreat into our separate corners, Brian Lee Crowley, head of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute, offers up a brand new pair of opposing, society-defining categories: gardeners versus designers. In his review of Crowley’s latest book, veteran journalist Paul Stanway points out what works and what doesn’t with this novel take on the eternal political struggle of ideas. And how it just might decide the next federal election.

We are living in an “unprecedented reality” according to the recent Speech from the Throne. Certainly the effects of Covid-19 have been serious and far-reaching. But unprecedented? Hardly. As difficult as our current situation may seem, it doesn’t hold a candle to the situation 100 years ago when a vastly more terrifying global epidemic struck a far less prepared world. With a second wave of Covid-19 on the horizon, Lynne Cohen takes a close look at the Spanish flu of 1918-20 and finds many stark and revealing differences – as well as some unsettling echoes that suggest while times may change, our fundamental fears do not.

How do you make new laws and policies or reform old ones in a democracy? You talk openly about every aspect, carefully consider the pros and cons and the long-term implications, and strive to come up with solutions that are fair to everyone. That has been the ideal, anyway, in Canada since Confederation. So what happens when vast areas of law and policy cannot even be discussed any longer? Bruce Pardy lists the things that have become perilous to say regarding Indigenous issues – but that need to be said if Canada is to maintain a legal system that is fair to all Canadians.

Supporting or working to bring about “democratic” socialism has become an alluring option for ever-more voters across North America. It is ascending on clouds of virtuous intentions, high hopes and utopian goals, backed by elaborate theories, with good doses of anger and envy adding punch. Yet it has all been tried before – and failed calamitously, an unmitigated horror ending in ruination. Luckily, people who have personally lived through it are still around to tell the tale. Through the eyes of one survivor of Eastern European communism, Doug Firby issues a stark reminder of what real oppression looks like and a plea to younger Canadians to resist the seductive call of socialism.

It will remain forever unknowable how Canada would have fared had our country not largely aped the “lockdown” model adopted by most of the advanced countries. But there is meaningful evidence for those who care and dare to look – and the implications aren’t pretty for our public health officials and their political acolytes. Brian Giesbrecht examined an obscure, far-off country run by an eccentric old man who decided to do the pandemic his own way – and may well have saved not only his nation’s economy but hundreds of his compatriots as well.

Copernicus disproved Ptolemy. Galileo disproved Aristotle. Einstein took physics beyond Newton. Human understanding moves forward as existing beliefs and doctrine fall to bold new theories and ideas. Recognizing that enforced dogma is the enemy of progress, UBC professor Andrew David Irvine offers a lament for the rigid political monoculture currently found in Canadian universities. Amid today’s statements of political solidarity and demands for conformity, it is becoming harder and harder for independent minds to follow the evidence wherever it might lead them.