Jessica Mulroney was exonerated —so why isn't anyone apologizing for her cancellation?Sunday February 14th, 2021
It's not often an opinion columnist has the opportunity for a "scoop"—that is, the opportunity to break a story to the public that has not been covered by other media outlets. It's a gratifying experience when it happens—and also, to judge by the feedback—an instructive one.
In December, my editor at the National Post invited me to write a feature article based on material th...
Wider access to assisted dying in Canada will be catastrophic for the disabledSaturday February 13th, 2021
A bill to expand access to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) comes to a Senate vote no later than Feb 17. That leaves a bare working week for the House to consider what may be a number of Senate-approved amendments before a court-imposed deadline for final passage on Feb 26.
Bill C-7 is the Trudeau government’s response to the 2019 Quebec Superior Court Truchon ruling — named for ...
Instead of Expanding MAiD, Expand Palliative CareMonday February 8th, 2021
Commentary
A good friend of ours died last year of a slow-growing but inexorable form of lung cancer. In his final months, he received expert outpatient care from a team of palliative-care specialists. When the end was imminent and breathing became difficult, he was asked if he preferred lucidity with suffering, or comfort. “Comfort,” he whispered. His medication was adjusted, and he re...
U of T student faces petition to revoke academic award because he is conservativeThursday February 4th, 2021
Academia is so dominated by progressive dogmas that most students and professors who hold conservative views keep them on the “down low” to avoid being censured by the thought police. But a diminishing few still boldly thrust their heads above the parapet.
We find an example of this endangered species in Arjun Singh, a University of Toronto political science student whose extracurr...
Following the science in the controversy over when you became youFriday January 29th, 2021
One of the great pleasures of a second pregnancy is telling your first child that he or she is to have a sibling. Anticipated questions bubble up. How did the baby get in there? Can (s)he see me? The child may start talking to the baby by name (real or invented).
If the child is old enough to understand — say six or seven — the gift of an illustrated children’s book explainin...
Text messages exonerate Jessica Mulroney after she was cancelled last summerThursday January 21st, 2021
“Cancel culture” is pandemic today, but the virus was already in patchy play 30 years ago.
In 1991, Toronto journalist and social activist June Callwood was charged with racist behaviour by a Black staff member of Nellie’s women’s shelter, one of 50 social organizations Callwood helped establish in her lifetime. The staffer accused Callwood of being “a woman of pr...
Ryerson journalism student should not be barred from school newspaper for his religious viewsSunday January 17th, 2021
There are two student newspapers at Ryerson University: The Ryersonian—funded by the university—and the Eyeopener, which is independent, but receives $6 per student, a contribution students may not opt out of.
Jonathan Bradley, who is a contributor to The Post Millennial, is a fourth-year journalism student at Ryerson who by last spring had achieved the status of contributing write...
Faith and family are at the core of Netflix's 'Greenleaf'Sunday January 17th, 2021
I am a sucker for soap operas, and always was.
One of my favourites was the CBS series, Dallas, which ran from 1978 to 1991. Its plotline had family patriarch Jock Ewing, founder of Ewing oil, presiding over all the ways in which such an apparent blessing can go wrong through no fault of his own, but plenty of fault shared out amongst his offspring, especially the Machiavellian older of his tw...
Despite Trump’s Accomplishments, I’m a Never-Again TrumperThursday January 14th, 2021
Commentary
Mea culpa. I had assumed there were limits to Donald Trump’s narcissism and it turned out there were not. I never liked Trump, and I never had any illusions about his character—both weak and bad—but, like so many others who voted for Trump (or in Canadians’ case, “voted”), I believed the alternative would be worse.
My “vote” was transactional: accommodation to a disagreeable ...
Despite Trump’s Accomplishments, I’m Now a Never-Again TrumperThursday January 14th, 2021
Commentary
Mea culpa. I had assumed there were limits to Donald Trump’s narcissism and it turned out there were not. I never liked Trump, and I never had any illusions about his character—both weak and bad—but, like so many others who voted for Trump (or in Canadians’ case, “voted”), I believed the alternative would be worse.
My “vote” was transactional: accommodation to a disagreeable ...
Communism’s Long March Through the Institutions Has SucceededMonday December 28th, 2020
Commentary
Karl Marx was convinced that his envisaged revolution to save the world from its march to perdition would be realized by the united workers of the world. They would throw off the shackles of capitalism, voluntarily re-inventing their various regions as socialist utopias joined in global sodality.
That never happened voluntarily, of course. It seemed the workers of the world w...
My reason to be grateful in a thankless yearSaturday December 26th, 2020
Today’s theme is gratitude, without which equanimity in tough times is impossible. A personal story.In Grade 2, our teacher gave us a simple vision test. We covered our left and right eyes in turn and, from a distance, identified letters on the blackboard. With my right eye covered, I couldn’t identify a single letter.Barbara Kay: My reason to be grateful in a thankless yearI was ta...
Tracing the Pernicious Social Contagion of Adult-Child SexTuesday December 22nd, 2020
Commentary
In my youth, sexual abuse of children was a little understood and never-publicly-discussed phenomenon. Pedophiles were considered to be deviants of the worst kind, in no way associated with “respectable” society or “decent” people.
But in the 1970s, the veil of our ignorance was lifted by the open flirtation of far-left ideologues with the normalization of pedophilia (sex wit...
Tracing the Malign Push to Normalize Adult-Child SexTuesday December 22nd, 2020
Commentary
In my youth, sexual abuse of children was a little understood and never-publicly-discussed phenomenon. Pedophiles were considered to be deviants of the worst kind, in no way associated with “respectable” society or “decent” people.
But in the 1970s, the veil of our ignorance was lifted by the open flirtation of far-left ideologues with the normalization of pedophilia (sex wit...
The Inquiry reveals Cornwall's history of sexual abuse against boysThursday December 17th, 2020
In the 1980s Canadians were shocked into awareness of the widespread evil of child sexual abuse. Before that era, child sexual abuse was never considered a public health issue; it was thought of by decent people—if thought of at all—as an evil associated with obviously dissolute monsters. Certainly not something any "respectable" citizen would ever do. The sickening truth began to s...
The glaring flaw of ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ that no one wants to mentionFriday December 11th, 2020
Thanks to a well-crafted Netflix series, “The Queen’s Gambit,” chess is having more than a moment this season. Google chess searches doubled from October to November, and participation in online chess sites is soaring.
I well remember the 1970s popular surge, when American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer showed the dominant Russian chess mafia who was da real Cold War bomb, beati...
Former radio host takes station to human rights tribunal after getting trolled on TwitterWednesday December 9th, 2020
If you are an opinion journalist worth readers’ or listeners’ time, whether your views are left, right or centre, you will have lots of people disagreeing with you. Your more uninhibited responders, some of them downright sadistic bottom feeders, may express their contempt for you with shocking imagery on social media. They will wish you death in a grease fire, accuse you of every p...