My friend texted "Roxham Road closed" on Thursday. Joe Biden was on Canadian soil. That sounded about right.
The debate over revising the Safe Third Country Agreement, has been on the table since 2017 with the angry toddler wrecking havoc south of the border. President Joe Biden was in Ottawa and that was the conclusion of the mess that has been border issues between Canada and the United States.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." — Mark Twain
There is a lot of symbolism with the U.S. president on Canadian soil, the first president in a long time to sleep in Canada, and having the U.S. first lady along for the trip. The U.S.-Canada relationship is terribly important. This relationship can survive butting heads in charge, such as Pierre Trudeau and Richard Nixon as well as those who see eye to eye, such as Brian Mulroney and George H.W. Bush as well as Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama.
The relationship doesn't do well when U.S. presidents have a hatred for Canada (2 leap to mind) and Canadian prime ministers who love the United States a little too much (yes, we are looking at Stephen Harper). Friendliness is encouraged; acceptance is enough.
Vice President Kamala Harris lived in Canada during her teenage years. Instead of that being a source of pride, Harris has to hide that fact among the American electorate.
The Three Amigos, when working well, is a way to be a budget version of the European Union, but there is too much distrust. Free trade handled poorly under NAFTA and made terribly worse under the CUSMA (USMCA) trade deal. Borders should be much more open. Those in the United States who want to live in Canada. Those in Canada that would love to live in the United States. That should be way easier.
The president of the United States and the prime minister of Canada meeting in each other's countries should be commonplace. We make them a big deal because they are a big deal. Sovereignty is crucial for both countries but commonalities should also be enhanced between the countries.
Ideally, we would insist on an entire debate devoted to U.S.-Canada issues for all presidential and vice presidential candidates. We know that is a pipe dream and not a pipeline dream.
Thank you, Mr. President and Mrs. First Lady for coming to Canada. You are welcome back, maybe for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals between the Toronto Maple Leafs and an American team at Scotiabank Arena. You can have some butter tarts and even a little poutine.
video credit: YouTube/White House photo credit: CPAC
The president of the United States will be in Canada today … and tomorrow.
Unlike the Barack Obama trip in 2009, Biden is bringing the First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, and the couple is staying overnight Thursday night.
Biden is expected to arrive in Ottawa later tonight and meet with Governor General Mary Simon. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have meetings with Biden on Friday. The U.S. president will address Parliament before leaving Canada.
The last top official from the United States to make a formal trip to Canada was then Vice President Joe Biden at the end of 2016.
Canadians may pick up on the fact this will be the first visit by a U.S. president with an overnight stay in Canada during a bilateral visit for the first time in decades.
Border issues, Buy American, guns, Safe Third Country deal/Roxham Road, Haiti, NORAD, NAFTA 2.0 aka CUSMA. Some of the many challenges that won't get solved by the end of Friday night. The people under the U.S. president and Canadian prime minister work on these issues.
The chant from the Liberals and the NDP in the House of Commons — "Four more years" — might have been the most memorable moment from President Barack Obama's speech before Parliament in June 2016. The experts will monitor the speech for the platitudes and the not-so-hidden messages.
President Biden will have those messages in his speech tomorrow before the House of Commons in Ottawa.
Canada and the United States are allies, neighbours, and friends. Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the President of the United States, Joe Biden, will visit Canada to continue working together to advance our countries’ shared priorities: https://t.co/U2vEv4iEO0
CBC News Network will present live coverage of the President Joe Biden visit with a CBC News Special: U.S. President Biden in Canada starting at 1 pm Eastern on Friday. CTV News Channel will also have live coverage.
CPAC in Canada has extensive coverage. C-SPAN hopefully will cover the speech, likely through CPAC, though its schedule gets updated at the last minute.
MSNBC and CNN might have some related coverage though we wouldn't expect either channel to spend much time on the actual speech.
"The ArriveCAN app is optional." That might be the most glorious Canadian travel news of 2022.
We have feigned hope for more travel in the last couple of years but that hasn't been a reality. Canadians, who were vaccinated, were encouraged to come to the United States. Americans to Canada? Not so much.
Let's hope 2023 sees a return of Americans to Canada, swayed by beautiful scenery and landscapes as well as a cheap Canadian dollar.
Making up for lost travel time is an ideal goal for 2023, provided you have the time and money.
Your humble narrator finally got to be on Canadian soil. As tempting as kissing the ground might be, didn't get that literal in my appreciation for being in Canada. Poutine, ketchup chips, butter tarts, even a decent shawarma were on the menu. All of that went well with legal marijuana in Canada.
The most famous person who isn't Canadian who came to Canada in 2022 was Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church. The trip was mostly to Alberta with a brief stop in Quebec and an even briefer stop in Iqaluit in Nunavat.
The trip was good in that attention was brought to what happened in residential schools. Unfortunately, after the trip, the issue of reconciliation disappeared from the headlines.
Making travel plans for Canada in 2023 will be a lot easier now that restrictions have been lifted. You should be vaccinated but that isn't a requirement. Just a healthy suggestion.
We are partial to Nova Scotia and happy for those who finally got to see a CFL game in that province. The 2023 version will be in Halifax proper. The donair is a beautiful local food to enjoy as well as amazing seafood.
Toronto, among many other Canadian cities, are great eating destinations. We aren't sure how many of those places are still in business. The pandemic did a lot of damage to restaurants.
If you want to travel by bus and haven't done so recently, Greyhound abandoned Canada in 2021 with the grand exception of incoming buses to Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver. If we travel by bus, we will share our experiences.
A trip back to Montréal. A first trip to Saskatoon. A chance to see relatively new CFL stadiums in Regina and Hamilton. The Icefield Parkway in Alberta. Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. Gander in Newfoundland. Churchill in Manitoba, though that might be a pipe dream. The interior of British Columbia, a world not Vancouver or Victoria.
I've been to Quebec City but would like to try areas of the city I didn't get to see. Stratford, Ontario as an adult: have been there as a kid. Explore the Acadian part of New Brunswick.
The previous 2 paragraphs look familiar for those who remember our 2022 travel guide. We made a trip to Windsor for the film festival. Would love to go deeper into Canada in 2023.
Even if you are able to travel, right now, travel sucks. Not what it used to be or what it should be. Do research. Hope that trip will be what you want that to be. Someday. Please make it soon.
That media talks about baby formula shortage w/o knowing whats going on is amazing. Trump's USMCA restricted imports of formula from Canada, so we imported no formula from Canada in 2021, leaving us vulnerable to domestic shock. The shock hit when Abbott plant was contaminated.
The United States has baby formula shortages. Canada makes baby formula and would want to increase its exports to the United States and please a top trading partner.
Too bad the dreaded, horrible, terrible USMCA (CUSMA) made this impossible.
"As part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), negotiated by President Donald Trump to replace the North America Free Trade Agreement in July 2020, Canada agreed to impose an additional surcharge of $3/kg if the total volume of its global formula exports—not just exports to the U.S.—broke a certain threshold. That threshold is currently set at 40,480 metric tons for the current "dairy year" of August 1 2021 to July 31 2022.
"The new duties seemingly closed off Canada as a source of infant formula. The U.S. imported a grand total of zero tons of baby formula from its nothern (sic) neighbor in 2021, yet has shipped tons of domestic formula into Canada. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S.-manufactured infant formula made up the largest component of U.S. dairy exports to Canada in 2021, accounting for 22% of all northbound dairy trade."
The crybaby toddler who somehow had a lot of power was rather vindictive toward Canada on multiple fronts. We didn't factor in baby formula.
Abbott accounts for nearly half of the domestic production of the U.S. baby formula market. The U.S. makes 98% of its formula domestically.
That is a problem with a February recall of Abbott Nutrition formula contaminated with bacteria from its Sturgis, MI factory. 4 infants became sick with bacterial infections; 2 of them died.
The irony is that United States standards are much more lax than Europe or Canada in terms of the quality of the formula. This isn't a matter of Canada or Europe formula meeting those standards because their formula exceeds the U.S. standards.
The United States lags behind the Western World on maternal elements, such as leave. Improved standards for women might encourage more breastfeeding. As much as we (and our sibling blog, BalanceofFood.com) endorse breastfeeding, there is a reality for baby formula that needs to be addressed.
Canadian milk holds a higher standard on milk, not allowing recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), an artificial growth hormone allowed in American milk. The anger by the crybaby toddler is over this difference in milk. If this were a baby formula shortage in Canada, importing formula from the United States would be a concern over bringing rBST into Canada.
The party of the crybaby toddler is the party that is trying to take advantage of the political ramifications of the baby formula shortages. As little as we think of Canadian journalism, U.S. journalism is the grand leader of cluelessness. Kurt Eichenwald being a grand exception as noted in the top of the column.
Trade deals can be tricky when all involved parties are acting in free will. The CUSMA/USMCA trade talks were a shambles and the complete opposite of an ethical trade deal process. Innocent people get hurt when a trade deal goes this poorly.
We noted that Americans might drive to Canada to get an abortion. We can't condone, under any circumstances, the illegal importation of any product from Canada into the United States. We can point out that they sell baby formula in Canada.
American mothers who rely on baby formula should be able to access quality products without a monopoly and heavy-handed political tactics.
Twitter capture: @kurteichenwald photo credit: Dairy Farmers of Canada
Canadians can access abortion services, though like most healthcare, getting an abortion is a lot easier if you live in a large Canadian city. The United States, even before the leak of a decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, has been a place where getting an abortion was extremely difficult unless you lived in a large urban setting.
Canadians don't have the draconian laws of their southern neighbours.
Karina Gould, Canada's minister of families, affirmed that Americans can access abortion services in Canada. “If they, people, come here and need access, certainly, you know, that’s a service that would be provided,” Gould told CBC News.
This may be notable in states such as Michigan that border Ontario.
Matt Galloway talked about abortion in a recent segment on The Current on CBC Radio One. The emphasis was mostly on Saskatchewan, pointing out that access was easier in Regina than even Saskatoon.
The Trudeau Government had recent announcements on already assigned funding: more than $3.5 million in funding for 2 initiatives to improve access to abortion services and reproductive health information.
Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Action Canada would get $2.1 million over 3 years to improve information and referral services. The funding will also cover travel and accommodation costs for people seeking abortions.
The National Abortion Federation Canada will get $1.4 million over 3 years to help train health care providers to perform abortions and ensure facilities have the capacity to provide the service.
The CBC News report noted the passport concern for Americans traveling to Canada for an abortion. Americans also need to register via the ArriveCAN app and be vaccinated to come to Canada, ideally in a land crossing.
Canada was a destination for same-gender marriages while the United States did this on a piece meal basis. The dreams of marijuana tourism have been thwarted by a delay on edibles and the pandemic. Plus, if you are an American wanting to do marijuana tourism, a flight to California has better weather at the destination and may be cheaper, depending on location.
Abortion tourism won't be marketed but might be a small slice of desperately need tourism money for Canada. As much as any kind of tourism would be helpful, abortion is the type of procedure where you want to be in your own bed after the procedure.
Home is an option for drugs that induce a miscarriage. That can make the process easier on women in Canada, the United States, and around the world.
There are groups of people who will particularly struggle with this not so distant future: poor women; women of colour, especially Indigenous women; and young women.
Women should have the full and complete right to decide when and how they get pregnant and how they deal with the situation should they become pregnant. Full stop.
photo credit: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee/TBS video credit: CBC News
Protest is a necessary part of a functioning democratic society. Train strikes in Europe. Picket signs outside a company that you think is doing damage to society. Letting the government know what you feel.
We usually associate protest with liberal or left-leaning groups. After all, they have to work hard just to come up short in opportunities in society. We've seen police crack down hard, especially in recent years, on protesters.
What we've seen in Canada: Ottawa, Windsor, and many other places — this may look like a protest. They have signs, they seem to have a purpose. It's okay to be upset that the pandemic has upset lives. Here are some missing elements to what is happening in Canada.
The action is being portrayed as a truckers convoy. Most of the people are not truckers. This is like saying "blueberry" on the front of the food label and finding blueberry to be 9th or 10th in the list of ingredients.
These people are upset at COVID-19 restrictions. Those fall under the jurisdiction of provinces, which is why some provinces have done okay and some have done awful. The federal restrictions involving actual truckers requires truckers entering Canada to be fully vaccinated. Again, most truckers are vaccinated.
If you are sincerely protesting, which is debatable, you would have clear messaging for what you want to accomplish. Nazi flags, distorted Canadian flags with swastikas, loud noises waking up people who live in downtown Ottawa, blocking traffic so Canadian nurses can't go to work in the United States, setting up an encampment in Ottawa. This is not about protesting, this is disruption.
The Ottawa police treating these people with much more kindness than people who are protesting on the opposite side of the spectrum. Their performance has been pathetic. The people of Ottawa need to be defended from these people, not sucked up to by the police force.
The image of using children as shields is standard "way beyond any real sense of protest."
The auto industry is suffering because of the blockades with the Ambassador Bridge in a time where more cars need to be built. Downtown Ottawa, normally a very boring place, has received too much excitement, especially in a negative light. Other areas of Canada are dealing with selfish, boorish, outright illegal behavior.
U.S. groups financially supporting these people should understand the concept of sovereignty. This is literally not your fight.
The Conservative Party of Canada is sucking up to these people. Candice Bergen won't be the leader of the party when the ramifications truly come but she is loud and proud. "The economy that you want to see reopened, is hurting.” The people Bergen is supporting are hurting the economy.
The Conservatives had many reasons to get rid of O'Toole. The timing of his dismissal as party leader seemed to also be a timing to respond as stronger allies with these people.
United Conservative Party Alberta premier Jason Kenney has been critical of protests that interfere with business yet these people, socially and culturally aligned with conservatives, are doing just that.
We know people have short memories. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been slow on so many challenges, including the convoy. Ford did declare a state of emergency but why did this take so long.
The Ontario election is set for June 2. Will this change minds away from Ford Nation that were previously undecided?
Mick Jagger famously said "Why are we fighting?" at Altamont in 1969. Liberals and left-leaning people are upset at COVID-19 restrictions. We have argued numerous times that Canada is too cautious in pandemic restrictions.
This is frustrating that conservative people are acting out their frustrations, whether that be masks or vaccination requirements or some other kind of "victim" syndrome. We love that Canada acts more as a society and, despite this, Canada is that country.
Those who were tricked into believing the "memorandum of understanding" was a real thing should have to take the test that immigrants have to in order to become a Canadian citizen.
We saw some of this same element, perhaps the same people, with antisocial disturbing behaviour at Justin Trudeau rallies in the election last fall.
Update: Just a few bad apples waving swastika/Confederate flags, stealing food from homeless, dancing on National War Memorial, defacing Terry Fox statue, assaulting journalists, storming Rideau Centre maskless
Stop being babies. Stop throwing tantrums. All of us are sick of having to do what we do. Restrictions and mandates should end based on science, not intimidation from those who haven't wanted to play by the rules.
People who protest know what they want in terms of solutions. These people want to disrupt without an end plan. They have a right to be frustrated but they are not responding like they have a clue or a solution. This is Canada but a small minority.
Editor's note:There is definitely language and stories that could be triggering to sufferers of the impact of residential schools in Canada.
60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper came to Canada in October to look into the unmarked graves found at residential schools. Last night, they told the U.S. audience of the atrocities north of the border.
Cooper spoke with Leona Wolf, Chief Wilton Littlechild, and Ed Bitternose. The idea was to speak inside the residential school buildings so they could point to rooms or places where these horrible incidents happened.
Wolf spoke of Father Joyal fondling girls, including her cousin, who was 8. Littlechild came to a residential school in Alberta, where his name was 65 as in "Sixty-five, pick that up stupid." "65, why'd you do that, idiot?" Bitternose said because of his experience, he didn't tell his wife he loved her until they were married about 40 years, "and then I was very careful how I said it."
Cooper covered the basics that have been reported. The exceptions were how the Catholic Church reneged on restitution money as well as how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said there were thousands of graves long before they were discovered.
“That's where my house was. I would sit here and wonder why I couldn't be home.”
Ed Bitternose was taken to a residential school within view of where his parents lived. He says he was abused by other children and a nun, but began healing when he re-discovered his Cree culture. pic.twitter.com/6Mk8qEZNbZ
Archeologist Kisha Supernant weighed in on the multi-generational impact of residential schools, "Our communities still feel the impacts of these institutions in our everyday lives. We're way over-represented in child welfare and adoptions and foster care. We're way over-represented in the prisons. You can draw a direct line with that to these places and the pain of that, that has been passed on from generation to generation."
Wolf spoke to that with her mother and how she treated her and how she treated her children.
The segment was about what happened in Canada. The piece did have a paragraph about what had happened in the United States. "The idea for the schools came in part from the United States. In 1879 the Carlisle Indian Industrial School opened in Pennsylvania, where this photo was taken of Native American children when they first arrived. This is them four months later. The school's motto was 'kill the Indian, save the man.'"
There is a trauma in having the interviews inside the buildings where these horrible deeds took place. The cruelty of having their hair cut, being assigned numbers or Christian names, as Littlechild put it, the motto was, "kill the Indian in the child": these are the small but painful traumas deliberately set into a system justified by the government.
Regular readers know we are destined to bring up Lynn Beyak's name in all of this. The former Conservative senator, one of many scandalous appointments by then Prime Minister Stephen Harper, spent a lot of political capital on the idea that residential schools weren't so bad.
Beyak retired just over a year ago from the Senate. She might have watched the 60 Minutes story and not learned a lot from the experience. While some Canadians may agree with Beyak's views, at least they aren't in the position of a senator.
2021 showed us that Canadian elections early in a pandemic are a different beast than elections later in a pandemic.
We started 2021 knowing 3 provinces had run pandemic elections pretty well. That was an encouraging sign in Newfoundland and Labrador and later Nova Scotia for the party in power.
The Newfoundland and Labrador election started well and ran smoothly until the last week when COVID-19 fired up in the Avalon Peninsula. The simple solution seemed to be have everyone vote on Election Day but those in the Avalon Peninsula. The province halted the vote for everyone and switched to a mail-in format.
That went particularly poorly in Labrador, especially for those who had to learn more English to participate. Andrew Furey (Liberal) won a slim majority government after taking over for Dwight Ball. Furey would have done better if the election had been on time.
The Liberals in Nova Scotia suffered a worse fate being tossed out for the Progressive Conservatives in August. Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin, who took office back in February, ran a poor campaign. Tim Houston ran a better campaign.
Manitoba went a year early in 2019; the Progressive Conservatives ultimately voted for Heather Stefanson as the new premier. Former Conservative MP Shelly Glover did not concede gracefully.
The federal election that the pundits desperately wanted became the election nobody wanted once the campaign started. An odd Willy Wonka ad, only having 3 debates, a Green Party leader who barely traveled, and guns in the campaign were the highlights or lowlights. Justin Trudeau ended up with a similarly strong minority government.
The excitement in most provincial elections are limited to that province. The Ontario and Quebec elections will seem louder than the others. The power base living in Toronto and Ottawa as well as those in Windsor, Sudbury, and Thunder Bay are affected by what happens in Queen's Park.
On paper, Doug Ford would seem to go down easily as a 1-term leader for the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario. A few factors to consider: voting against someone is easy but the question is where those votes will go. The NDP is in opposition with the long-time leader Andrea Horvath.
The PCs will bring up Bob Rae and the 1990 election (NDP). The NDP could bring up Mike Harris but smartly won't. There is plenty of ammunition in what Ford has done and not done as premier.
The Liberals were reduced to third party status at Queen's Park with new leader Steven Del Duca. If the NDP win a minority government, the Liberals could make the difference. Would progressive voters pick red over orange?
The Quebec election will be more difficult to measure since the relative Coalition Avenir Québec popularity. Predicting is always difficult, especially in La Belle Province.
Amita Kuttner is the new interim Green Party Leader, replacing Annamie Paul. Kuttner runs the Moonlight Institute, a non-profit that deals with climate crisis solutions.
So much went wrong for Paul and the Green Party. No one apologized for the anti-Semitic accusations from Paul's senior adviser Noah Zatzman against NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Green MPs. The loss of Jenica Atwin before the election and Paul Manly's loss at the election did a lot of damage to the Green Party.
There were high hopes for the Green Party of Canada when Annamie Paul was elected by party members. The stubbornness to run in Toronto Centre, the reluctance to travel to key ridings: these were some of the downfall for Paul as leader of the Greens.
Paul, who is Black and Jewish, was the first Black permanent leader of a major federal party. She was only the second Jewish person in that role; former NDP leader David Lewis also had that role.
The Conservative Party decided to keep Erin O'Toole. This puts him a step ahead of Andrew Scheer, who did not stay around as party leader. Scheer is still an American citizen, a secret we discovered in the 2019 election.
Ontario and Quebec are up to the plate in 2022.
Here are the tentative election dates for the provinces in 2022:
Ontario — June 2
Quebec — October 3
Here is the list of the provinces and the year of their last provincial election.
Newfoundland and Labrador — 2021 Nova Scotia — 2021 British Columbia — 2020 New Brunswick — 2020 Saskatchewan — 2020 Alberta — 2019 Manitoba — 2019 Prince Edward Island — 2019 Quebec — 2018 Ontario — 2018
We now have 3 women in the opposition leader role in the Canadian provinces: Andrea Horwath (Ontario), Rachel Notley (Alberta), and now Dominique Anglade (Quebec). Anglade, former deputy premier of Quebec (Liberal), has been in that role since May 11. She represents the Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne riding.
Manitoba has its first female premier: Former PC cabinet minister Heather Stefanson defeated former Conservative MP Shelly Glover.
Sonia Furstenau (British Columbia Green Party), Manon Massé (Québec solidaire), and Alison Coffin (Newfoundland and Labrador New Democratic Party) are female leaders of a provincial party with legislative members. Coffin lost her seat in the St. John's East-Quidi Vidi riding in 2021.
Amita Kuttner, the new interim Green Party Leader, identifies as transgender, non-binary, and pansexual, using they/them and he/him pronouns. Kuttner are the first transgender person and first of East Asian descent to lead a federal party in Canada.
Having Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig on Canadian soil was the biggest story of them all.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden will be busy with getting the border to be truly open in 2022. At least there is a permanent U.S. Ambassador to Canada in David L. Cohen.
That makes a great difference in the Canada-U.S. relationship.
photo credit: CBC News video credit: This Hour Has 22 Minutes/CBC
New year, new excitement about Canadian travel. We had hopes for 2020 and even 2021; there was some cross border travel but not as much as people hoped. Requiring a PCR COVID-19 test made getting into Canada a lot more difficult, even if you were Canadian. We love when Canadians visit the United States; our goals is to get Americans to Canada.
When Americans get a chance to reasonably enjoy Canada, they would need to do some research for finding a bus option within Canada. 2021 marked the final time Greyhound did business in Canada. The obvious exceptions were U.S. buses arriving in the Big 3: Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver.
Some local bus companies have taken over some routes. Take Toronto-Ottawa as an example. Flying out of Toronto to Porter Airlines to Ottawa requires getting to both airports, waiting. The flight itself is brief and nice. The problem is the cost.
ViaRail gets you conveniently from Union Station to the Via Rail station where you can take the new Confederation Line from Tremblay west to downtown. The bus takes you from Bay and Dundas in Toronto and puts you on Bank Street sort of halfway between downtown and TD Place, home of the Ottawa RedBlacks in the CFL.
When your humble narrator took Greyhound from Toronto to Ottawa and back, I was able to travel overnight to cut down on my lodging bills. This was a few years ago but was able to travel one-way for $20. The trick was paying for Toronto-Montréal, which was further yet cheaper than Toronto-Ottawa.
We wouldn't recommend a specific bus service, especially without trying it out. Schedules may not be as flexible and costs may be higher.
2021 brought a few "well, you can sort of come if, if, and if" scenarios. This was well-suited to those who lived really close to the border. We are happy for them and want others to join in the fun.
With limited travel, we have had some fun with different types of travel articles. Fogo Island in Newfoundland is now a destination thanks to new infrastructure. Sometimes, travel issues are local when someone complained about how difficult getting to see a football game was in Toronto.
Though more Americans can get legal marijuana, there is still an argument for marijuana tourism in Canada. We just haven't had a chance to see this in motion.
For a lot of people in North America, travel between the countries has little to do with vacation but a practicality of having part of your community across an international border.
Alberta is an amazing pretty place whether mountains to the west and flat areas to the east. I might be a bit reluctant to venture to Alberta until the pandemic is truly settled, not just if Alberta premier Jason Kenney says so. The "pro-business" mentality has really screwed small, local businesses. Being more cautious and willing to make unpopular decisions for the better good: that is truly being pro small business.
We have tracked this idea for a few years ago. Where to go. Where do I want to go?
A trip back to Montréal. A first trip to Saskatoon. A chance to see relatively new CFL stadiums in Regina and Hamilton. The Icefield Parkway in Alberta. Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. Gander in Newfoundland. Churchill in Manitoba, though that might be a pipe dream. The interior of British Columbia, a world not Vancouver or Victoria.
I've been to Quebec City but would like to try areas of the city I didn't get to see. Stratford, Ontario as an adult: have been there as a kid. Explore the Acadian part of New Brunswick.
Even as your humble narrator has been to all 10 provinces, there are so many Canadian travel possibilities.
Even if you are able to travel, right now, travel sucks. Not what it used to be or what it should be. Do research. Hope that trip will be what you want that to be. Someday. Please make it soon.
Our happy holidays message also applies retroactively to Hanukkah, which ran from November 28-December 6.
A new season of Letterkenny is a wonderful way to end 2021, a year with a few setbacks. This is one Christmas gift Canadians will get on Christmas Day as Season 10 of Letterkenny will be on Crave. Those on the U.S. side with Hulu have to wait until Boxing Day.
This follows the release pattern we saw in 2020.
There will be 7 episodes in Season 10 (Episode 7 comes out in March). We know they shot Seasons 10 and 11 this summer.
Season 9 of Letterkenny was a highlight of the holiday season in 2020.
Shoresy is a spinoff of Letterkenny coming to Crave in the next few months. Fans of the show know Shoresy is an unseen character voice by Jared Keeso, star and creator of Letterkenny. Shoresy will move to Sudbury to work with a struggling minor league hockey team.
We have some doubts since Shoresy wasn't that interesting of a character and we presume the gag is that we still won't see him. Maybe that will change. We don't know if Hulu will pick up the show, though that should be a no-brainer. Hulu is carrying NHL games through its sibling streaming service ESPN+.
I am eager to hit the ground running and start meeting Canadians from all walks of life across this incredible country. Until I get to your neighborhood, you can learn a little bit more about me and my priorities as U.S. Ambassador here. pic.twitter.com/VPXT85fKfW
— United States Ambassador to Canada (@USAmbCanada) December 7, 2021
David L. Cohen has been serving as the U.S Ambassador to Canada since December 1. That news was as quiet as a church mouse. Cohen took over for Arnold A. Chacón, who was the third and final interim pick since the long ago departure of Kelly Knight Craft. Craft left officially on August 23, 2019 but in terms of work didn't do much when she was around.
You could almost, almost feel sorry for Cohen. Between electric vehicles, Five Eyes, pandemic, border crossing problems, China, CUSMA/USMCA and countless other issues, Cohen will be busy.
We really hope Cohen will be effective in his job. We had little faith in David Jacobson and Bruce Heyman, but they turned out to be good picks. They didn't have the incoming troubles that Cohen has in front of him. Bonne chance!!
Fatemeh Anvari recently became the face of the ongoing concerns over Bill 21 in Quebec. The law prohibits certain people in positions of authority to wear religious symbols while on the job in the province.
Bill 21 has been the law since June 2019 while the case works its way to the Canadian Supreme Court. Anvari accepted a position teaching a Grade 3 class at Chelsea Elementary School. Chelsea is just north of Gatineau, a very short distance from Ottawa, the national capital. She wore a hijab in class and was removed from that classroom in accordance with Bill 21.
The law is clearly a violation of Canadian law. The Quebec government invoked the notwithstanding clause.
Justin Trudeau (prime minister, Liberals) and Erin O'Toole (opposition leader, Conservatives) have dipped a few more toes into the pool of weighing in on Bill 21, which became law in June 2019. Both major parties have had to balance the need for votes in Quebec with responding to the law. We know justice moves slow in Canada but the Supreme Court should have had to render a decision long before now.
With respect to Fatemeh Anvari, hundreds if not thousands of people have been directly affected by Bill 21. In the English language media at least, the plights of those people have been ignored. People who couldn't apply or move up in their positions are more difficult to write about. They exist, despite being ignored by the English language media in Canada.
Anvari was teaching in English, which is relevant because the Quebec Superior Court struck down part of the law this spring, making an exception for English language education. However, that exception hasn't been allowed to go ahead since the Quebec government is appealing that decision.
The law applies to orthodox Jewish men and Sikh men but is really targeted at the hijabs and niqabs of Muslim women in Canada. The argument, as such, is that Quebec is a secular state and that visible religious symbols violate that principle. This is a backlash for how the Catholic Church dominated Quebec society until the 1960s. The people who are most likely to support the law are also most likely not to run into the people directly affected by the laws.
Perhaps Anvari's story will elicit more sympathy for the horrible law, though that sympathy should have been there front and center before the bill was signed into law.
Quebec will have a provincial election in 2022, on or before October 3. We'll have more on that election in our 2022 Canadian politics preview in a couple of weeks just after the first of the year.
You may have missed yesterday's news about the Academy Awards shortlist for the Best International Feature Film. Les Oiseaux Ivres | Drunken Birds is reportedly a good film; the competition was really tough. If you are up to going out to a theatre and a top Canadian film is playing, you should give that a shot. If you do have an in-home option, go for that. To each their own comfort in watching Canadian films.
We know the siren of American films is really loud in the holiday season. Night Raiders (above picture) is supposed to be really good. I saw it the other night from the comfort of my home. Really good. Just saying. The film made the top 21 films of the year from Eli Glasner of CBC. There are a few Canadian films on his list.
The World Juniors tournament will take place in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alberta starting on Boxing Day. The tournament runs through January 5. The games will be at Rogers Place in Edmonton and Westerner Park Centrium in Red Deer.
TSN (Canada) and NHL Network (United States) will carry the action. The pattern has been for the U.S. network to produce coverage of U.S. games and take TSN feeds otherwise. Canada is in Group A while the United States is in Group B.
Alberta finally became the last province (with NHL) to introduce a 50% capacity. No eating or drinking either.
We don't really cover this tournament anymore but you should know the basics if you are tuning into the tournament. All of this is subject to change thanks to COVID-19.
The new Omicron COVID-19 variant has taken its toll in real life as well as Canadian sports. We wrote a special story on Saturday with the latest. The Canadian teams have been shut down until December 27. This is subject to change. Be careful in your holiday travels.
.@NFL Announces International Home Marketing Area Teams and Markets
Canada loves the NFL. The NFL love for Canada? Working on it.
The recent announcement of international home marketing area teams and markets was met with a lot of confusion. Minnesota and Seattle would be a natural fit for certain parts of Canada. Buffalo and Detroit, kilometres away from Canada, not so much. New England makes a lot of sense in Atlantic Canada.
The Oakland Raiders preseason game in Winnipeg was not handled well by the NFL in terms of marketing. The Buffalo Bills in Toronto was poorly handled by Rogers and the NFL didn't do much there.
CTV and TSN embrace the NFL in their coverage. Canadians with cable get access to way more NFL games than most U.S. households. A key section of season tickets in Buffalo and Detroit (outside a pandemic) comes from Canadians. The NFL would be wise to appreciate how much Canadians love their sport.
Check out our border crossings coverage and dream of a lot more travel in 2022. We also have other categories on the right-hand column in case you want to catch up in a category important to you.
The fine folks at CanadianCrossing.com are taking a holiday break. The CBC winter schedule preview runs a week from now. The NHL month in preview is on January 1. The year to come in travel and politics will run that first full week in January. Breaking news will run as needed. We have a lot of archive material to read over the holidays, including many film reviews.
photo credits: Letterkenny/Bell Media; Night Raiders film video credit: Letterkenny/Bell Media Twitter capture: @USAmbCanada; @PR_NHL; @NFL345
