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"“Perhaps you will say that I should not take my ideas of the manners of the times from such trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them than from any historian: as they write merely to get money, they always fall into the notions that are most acceptable to the present taste.”
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 18th c writer, on popular fiction


Recent Articles

"I generally write a column every two weeks for the National Post (and the occasional piece for their National Post Platformed series, available only to subscribers), every two weeks for the Epoch Times, and occasionally for other publications. 

As the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 pogrom in southern Israel approaches, Jewish communities feel mounting dread, imagining the nefarious ways in which our enemies may choose to &ldquo...
The sands of time were already running low for Justin Trudeau’s government. Jagmeet Singh’s just-announced withdrawal from their mutually supportive contract has widened the waist of the h...
Given the negative blowback that hasn’t let up since it resurfaced, vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance doubtless regrets his sarcastic allusion to elite female Democrats, including Kamala Ha...
Four years in the making, the final “Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People,” written by esteemed pediatrician Hilary Cass, was released back in April...
On Sept 5-6, 1972, over the course of 20 hours during the Munich Olympic Games, 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were tortured and murdered by the terrorist group, Black September, an affiliate of the ...
Of all the sins white Europeans are charged with by progressives, colonialism ranks highest. Expiation for their forebears’ crimes, through the process known as “decolonization,” has...
It’s that time again. You need a perfect summer read. Not too heavy, not too light, solid human interest, above all a page-turner. Here it is: wine critic Natalie MacLean’s 2023 memoir, &l...
Earlier this month, the Fraser Institute published the results of a commissioned poll, conducted by Leger, that sought to know how Ontario parents of children in schools—both public and private&...
MONTREAL — In a 2008 Commentary Magazine article, Ruth Wisse, who in her youth was a Jewish studies pioneer at McGill University, issued a warning to diaspora Jews: if Arab “rejectionism&r...

Featured Articles

These are columns and articles dealing with subjects I feel invested in on a deeper level than usual. The common thread, I have come to realize over the years, is any idea that works to erode the health of our common culture, and that breaks down trust in institutions and in our fellow citizens. Whether it is the false assertion that pit bulls get a bad rap and don’t pose an elevated risk of harm to other animals and humans; or the false belief that social transition from one’s biological sex to the other literally transforms a person into that sex; or that an obsessive hatred of Israel has no relationship with antisemitism; or that mothers are more important to a child’s healthy development than fathers: these and other issues rouse my combative spirit, and spark the columns I take most pride in.

Earlier this month, the Fraser Institute published the results of a commissioned poll, conducted by Leger, that sought to know how Ontario parents of children in schools—both public and private&...
June 8 was the 75th anniversary of George Orwell’s anti-totalitarian novel, “1984.” Whenever we speak of the state’s encroachment on individual rights, on the role technology p...
Israel is home to about 150,000 Christians, 80 percent of them Arabs. They live and prosper in security and equality with their fellow Jewish and Muslim citizens. But they are an anomaly in the Middle...
Another Mother’s Day has come and gone. As florists, jewellers, and purveyors of brunch all across North America happily tot up their profits, it’s a good moment to reflect on our culture&...
According to a January report submitted to Israel’s Knesset regarding anti-Semitism around the world since Oct. 7, anti-Semitism is up 800 percent in Canada (higher than France, Germany, and the...
A pro-Palestinian activist group called Nakba Education BC has sent an open letter and a petition to Minister of Education Rachna Singh demanding that “the Nakba” be immediately (“NO...

Books

I have only written, or co-written, four books, but they are also four different genres:

Unworthy Creature is a memoir of an Indian-Canadian woman whose life has been bound up with the honour/shame culture of her ancestors since the day she was born;

Acknowledgements is a collection of essays, talks I have given and reviews that were never published elsewhere, anchored by my own cultural memoir;

A Three-Day Event is a murder mystery that takes place in a Quebec horse sport complex, the plot and characters based in my many years of managing my daughter’s three-Day Eventing career; and

Unsporting, my most recent, with athletic coach Linda Blade as principal author, is an exposé of the duplicity and misogyny at the heart of the trans activists in sport.

 

Radical gender activists are using a pseudoscientific theory of human biology to hijack sports and subvert the long-established concepts of fair play — forcing women and girls to risk thei...

It’s 1992, and language tensions are roiling Montreal. But 100 kilometres away at the peaceful Le Centre Equestre de L’Estrie in Quebec’s Easte...

A Cultural Memoir and other Essays is a collection of unpublished writing by National Post columnist Barbara Kay. This wide-ranging selection includes original essays – notably the title e...

Aruna Papp with Barbara Kay

Is the memoir of a South Asian immigrant to Canada, whose formative years in India were steeped in a reigning culture of ho...

Blog

This space is reserved for thoughts, short reviews of books, magazine articles, Netflix or other series recommendations, reflections of life, and other spontaneous musings I’d like to share with any interested visitors to this site, or for a great-grandchild 50 years after I’m gone.

Yesterday, my husband’s sister Marina died at the ripe of old age of 96, peacefully, without suffering. I fretted that we would not be able to attend the funeral, as she died in Mexico, and my h...
  On Pipers and Paying them (Apr 2022)         Trigger warning: this post’s theme necessarily puts me in a good light that may seem like humble bragging. I guess i...
    My readers are well aware of the contempt in which I hold forced DEI programs, equity quotas for minority groups, and compelled speech that reifies commitment to inclusivity. But that ...
        Grandmotherhood turned out to be quite different from my fantasies.   One fantasy I entertained was that I would pass along my love of reading books by reading ...
I see in my neighbourhood weekly paper that girls’ registration at the Westmount Soccer Club has dropped “significantly.” Girls have not been registering at the soccer club at the sa...
When I was growing up, we didn’t know from Boomers, Millennials or Gen X,Y or Z. You were young, then you were an adult, then you were middle-aged and then you were old. The Baby Boomers got th...