Barbara Kay columnist and writer focusing on political subjects

A Canadian historian faces cancellation for rejecting comparison between residential-school tragedy and the Holocaust

June 18, 2021

The discovery of 215 children's bodies in unmarked graves at Kamloops, BC Indian Residential School is yet another troubling milestone in the ongoing documentary history of Canada's singularly inexp...

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Academics and theorists reframe opposition to dangerous pit bulls in racist terms

February 23, 2021

I am a seasoned polemicist in the pit bull wars (I'm not a fan of pit bull type dogs, to put it kindly, as you can see in this 2017 piece published in The Walrus online). It's been quite a while since...

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Anti-Semitism: The Haters Have Changed, but the Hatred Hasn’t

June 1, 2021

Commentary It’s been a difficult time of late for Jews everywhere. CombatAntiSemitism.org (CAM) reports that anti-Semitic incidents in the UK have increased 600 percent, while “dozens�...

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As Tighter French-Language Laws Loom, Is It Time to Recognize Montreal as a City-State?

September 28, 2021

Commentary Now that the federal election is over, we Montrealers are turning our attention to the city’s mayoralty elections, scheduled for Nov 7. The two viable candidates are incumbent Val...

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Barbara Kay: Academia’s gender bias — how men are being pushed out of higher education

September 13, 2021

The feminization of higher education is proceeding apace. According to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse in the United States, 1.5 million fewer students are enrolled in higher educati...

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Barbara Kay: Accusations of racist JEDIs, and other ways woke extremists are standing in the way of scientific progress

October 25, 2021

Humour and woke culture cannot co-exist in harmony. In January 2020, the pitch-perfect satirical site, Babylon Bee, ran a story joking that Democrats had called for the American flag to be flown at h...

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Barbara Kay: America is not a racist country and critical race theory is bunk

May 10, 2021

On April 28 U.S. president Joe Biden gave his first address to Congress. It will be remembered less for its content than for Black South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott’s charged words in ...

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Barbara Kay: Birth of a new resistance: Parents mobilize to tackle woke ideology

March 13, 2021

Riverdale Country School is one of New York City’s — and therefore America’s — most elite private schools. Last June the school administration sent a memo to parents alerting t...

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Barbara Kay: Boosters are a good thing. Not confirming the dosage in writing isn't

December 6, 2021

Got your booster shot yet? Mine is scheduled for Dec. 20. My first two were Pfizer, but this time it will be Moderna which, unlike Pfizer’s booster, comes in two strengths — full and half ...

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Barbara Kay: COVID unleashed a pandemic of eating disorders

July 29, 2021

The COVID-19 disruption hit adolescents hard, but teenagers don’t always voice their anxieties. Instead, they’ll often channel them into troubling behaviour, such as eating disorders. And we’re...

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Barbara Kay: Finding hope in the unlikeliest ways

February 26, 2021

In January 2014, Harold Heft, a successful writer, educator and communications executive, learned he had inoperable brain cancer of the kind that killed the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie. He had ...

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Barbara Kay: Following the science in the controversy over when you became you

January 29, 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 ...

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Barbara Kay: Gad Saad — the man who’s not afraid to call BS

April 23, 2021

A keen American observer of the human condition once described his rhetorical vocation as, “Standing off on the sidelines, viewing the various public escapades — political, cultural, socia...

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Barbara Kay: Historical association’s genocide statement ‘brazenly unscholarly’

August 16, 2021

To mark this past Canada Day, the Canadian Historical Association, which represents the interests of 650 professional historians, issued a statement whose purpose was to justify the application of th...

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Barbara Kay: In B.C., a small band of unelected Indigenous leaders continue to illegally block gas pipeline

November 8, 2021

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent appointment of eco-warrior Steven Guilbeault to the environment portfolio struck me as a boost to the renewed protests in British Columbia’s Wet’suwet’e...

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Barbara Kay: In the progressive era, even literary critics aren’t safe

March 29, 2021

In 1981, Toni Morrison wrote, “If there were better criticism, there would be better books.” Better can mean negative — sometimes even harsh — criticism. There was a time when that was receiv...

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Barbara Kay: Let’s stop pretending the left’s disdain for Israel has anything to do with politics

May 26, 2021

Public Jew-baiting is out of control in the United Kingdom and Europe. And in Canada’s big cities, unprecedented displays of anti-Semitism, including physical violence that has been well documented...

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Barbara Kay: MMA chokehold highlights the problem with porn

September 28, 2021

On Sept. 10, at the Combate Global prelims in Miami, female-identifying MMA fighter Alana McLaughlin — formerly Ryan McLaughlin, a member of the United States Army Special Forces — won her...

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Barbara Kay: Mary Simon’s flippancy about French is a danger to Canada

July 9, 2021

It was always very likely that the new governor general would be Indigenous, so Inuk leader and former ambassador Mary Simon’s appointment came as no surprise. And the news was warmly received: obs...

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Barbara Kay: Montreal needs to make a run for it — before the doors to the rest of the world close

October 9, 2021

Oct. 7 brought an end to consultations on Quebec’s Bill 96, which amends the 1977 Charter of the French Language (Bill 101) and — unilaterally, never before attempted by a province — the Consti...

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