There is something touching with prime minister Justin Trudeau’s blithe assumptions about Canadian values. His SJW sanctimony allows him to wade into debates that sober men and women in politics would otherwise avoid. The results are anything but pristine.

t’s comforting to know that there are people in this age helping us luddites navigate history. A recent example of this thoughtful process are the Nurse Ratcheds (above) of B.C.’s  School District 74 (which covers many communities in B.C.'s Interior, including Ashcroft, Clinton, Lytton, Lillooet, Cache Creek and Seton Portage).

This must be how Phillip Nolan felt. Nolan was the protagonist in Edward Everett Hale’s The Man Without A Country. Nolan, an Army lieutenant, renounces his nation after a trial for treason. He’s sentenced to spend the rest of his life on a series of ships without a word about the United States, never allowed back in the homeland again. 

In Daniel Kahneman’s bestseller Thinking Fast And Slow, he describes a human brain governed by two systems. At the risk of over-simplifying professor Kahneman’s Nobel Prize winning work, the first system governs our everyday functions, quickly assessing and sorting information and stimuli to help guide us through myriad tasks both small and large. 

In a land far away and a time long ago, the NHL merged with the World Hockey Association, ending a protracted and costly struggle for supremacy. As part of the 1980 deal, the NHL would accept a certain number of the WHA teams. 

Empathy. 

It’s a hard word to find in today’s constant turmoil over gun violence, psychotic white 20-somethings and the parade of virtue signallers on both sides of the debate.

Apparently the prime minister of Canada is not sold on Canada’s system of trial by jury. He’s not alone. Members of his cabinet also seem to think there’s a better way to dispense justice.

Watching the film All The Presidents Men back in 1975 made me want to be a reporter. Seeing  Richard Nixon hoisted by his own petard— and a couple of unheralded reporters— was thrilling.

n politics it’s the coin of the realm, the currency that keeps the wheels of the state spinning. The lubricant that allows journalism to function smoothly.

It’s rare that a single story can capture the tortured vanity of the modern-day Canada ruling class. But “Who cut my hijab?” will do until something better comes along.

Our distraction du jour is the sudden revelation that Oprah Winfrey, the self-made billionaire conduit of moist feelings and product placement, may challenge Donald Trump, huckster suprème, for the presidency he won in 2016. Winfrey’s letter-perfect job application dropped last Sunday night at, appropriately, the Golden Globe Awards. 

Everyone has their goals for 2018. A cursory twirl around the internet will reveal any number of scribblers who’ve ventured a list calling for world peace and freedom to the oppressed masses.

My list is somewhat less ambitious. Here are simple requests that would make (my) world a better place in the next 12 months.

As the Chinese will readily tell you, Canada’s prime minister has no self-esteem issues. Justin Trudeau parades his moral certainty the way Charlton Heston brandished the Ten Commandments in the movies. It was Trudeau’s insistence on playing to his base on social issues rather than engaging the reality of Chinese diplomacy that scuttled the promised trade deals with the regime in Beijing.

After the Alabama senatorial election, the prevailing media opinion is that the state is Yahoo Central, a boiling cauldron of humanity’s worst instincts. The highly regrettable candidacy of Roy Moore, 40-year-old charges of sexual indiscretion, six-shooters, confederate statues… the special election had all the clichés beloved of the coastal elites.

The Donald Trump/ Russia collusion case has only one certainty: Anyone who gets too close will get hurt. Ten months since Trump’s inauguration, the attempt by the stunned liberal left to negate his election has spun a web of deceit and confusion.

Now appearing in a hell near you: Matt Lauer. The uber-successful NBC host of the Today Show has become the latest news notable to be removed from his job for sexual indiscretions. An unnamed NBC colleague accused Lauer of inappropriate sexual behaviour. The network also hinted at other unsavoury stuff in its press release announcing his abrupt firing.