Canadian veterans find new purpose by providing aid in Ukraine
So much of the impact of the war in Ukraine unfolds away from the public eye. Including the Canadians who have travelled there to provide humanitarian aid. In this exclusive report, Heidi Petracek introduces us to two of them – military veterans who say they've found new purpose.
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump Has Completely Wrecked America's Brand
The longest undefended border in the world has a new and insurmountable wall running the entire length of its extent, from sea to shining sea, a barrier as real as it is imaginary. For Canadians, the constant recipients of Donald Trump's lurid attempts to be press-ganged into becoming the 51st state, there is no longer any need for American border control at the many crossings into the United States. The border is now self-controlled and self-policed, with virtually the entire population of America's peaceful neighbor to the north, my homeland, agreeing that crossing over to America is not just taboo — it's a kind of betrayal, even borderline treasonous. For decades, the greatest cross-border threats to Canada have come from the south: guns, drugs, weak beer, idiotic wars, reactionary politics, reality TV, idiotic wars, and now epically stupid tariffs and the deranged lunge for annexation. For Americans, Canada has always been a place of refuge — for loyalists fleeing the Revolutionary War and slaves in the Civil War, to draft dodgers during the Vietnam War and women in the all-too-real fictional gender war of The Handmaid's Tale. It has also been the butt of lame jokes — an easy source of mockery, yin to the Yankee yang, universal health care and social justice to America's 'we're all going to die' nihilism. A quiet and politely passive neighbor, prospering under a mutually beneficial trade agreement negotiated by Trump in his first term, Canada has long been taken for granted, to the extent its existence is even noticed at all. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father of the recently replaced prime minister Justin, once said that living next door to the United States was like sleeping with an elephant — every twitch and twinge can be felt. But what about trying to exist next to an angry, irrational, vengeful orangutan on a rampage, a tariff-imposing, grudge-holding mob boss with a Nero-strength case of narcissism, who seems intent making himself a Mount Rushmore-worthy historical figure, or failing that, a dictator — even as he turns himself and increasingly America into a laughingstock? AS A SELF-DESCRIBED mastermind marketer and salesman, Donald Trump has always placed a supreme premium on the value of his brand, claiming it alone is worth billions — ascribing the greatest part of his invented net worth to the intangible monetary appeal of his P. T. Barnum carnival act. As president, Trump has enriched himself and his grifter children with corrupt crypto and creepo businesses, with his family demanding the construction of a Trump-branded golf course for peasants to play on the rice paddies of Vietnam as their latest extortion racket, along the way plunging the concept of graft to a new low — perhaps even rivaling his hero Vladimir Putin. But Trump is also the steward of the most valuable brand in human history: the United States. Instead of Trump's paltry few billion, the brand of America is worth trillions upon trillions, an incalculable value proposition that is undergoing the most radical relaunch since New Coke in the 1980s. A Manhattan advertising executive for a global agency once hired to promote 'Brand USA' during the Obama years tells me that the approach used then was simple and effective: democracy, independence, freedom. The key phrases now, he says, are capitalism and culture — but that is putting the best possible spin on what's really happening to America's global reputation. 'The world is in denial about what's really going on in America,' the executive says. 'The election was a mirror reflecting America back to itself — the election is who America really is right now — and that is frustrated young white dudes who are angry at the world.' For Canadians intent on boycotting American-made goods and services in favor of Canadian content, as a reaction to Trump's frontal assault on its economy and sovereignty, there is still a humorous element to the undeniable crack-like attraction of American culture. A recent comedy sketch from the CBC show This Hour Has Twenty-Two Minutes titled 'Canadians Anonymous,' illustrates the point, as addled hosers admit that they can't get enough Yankee three-ply toilet paper from Walmart, let alone swap Diet Pepsi for generic Canadian diet cola. As the mortified Canadians sit in a circle of trust, confessing to their relapses buying American products like dry drunks in an AA meeting, they share the strange love-hate relationship between the two countries — a longing felt exclusively, it seems, by America's northern neighbor. 'Now, who wants to get drunk?' the sponsor asks as the group session ends. 'Me,' comes the instant reply. 'I can't be sober during this trade war.' The star of This Hour is Mark Critch, a Newfoundlander, a peculiar subspecies of Canadian with a mid-Atlantic brogue and a wicked sense of humor — not the kind of comedy that travels to America in the milquetoast guise of Mike Myers or Jim Carrey, with Canadians passing as Americans. Critch is a specific kind of celebrity — world-famous all-over Canada, you might say — who creates comedy for Canadians, without having to pander in search of the supposed big time. 'When I order a Manhattan in a bar in Toronto now I get the instant judgy eye,' Critch tells me. 'Like it's the most horrible thing.' Critch likens Trump to a toxic boyfriend negging Canada, a form of gaslighting that has the predator president claiming that America doesn't need Canada's lumber or steel or boundless fresh water — when of course the opposite is true. Ironically, Trump's constant attempt to neg Canada has only developed an historically unprecedented positive form of patriotism, from urban hipster leftists to redneck prairie farmers insulted by the bullying and repulsive lechery for Canada's own priceless resources — natural, national, intellectual, historical, but above all civilizational. For generations, Canadians have defined themselves largely as not being American, a counterpoint form of identity that seemed to lack its own driving force, until Trump came along. Now, not being American has taken on an entirely new significance — a national characteristic that is both exceptional and the envy of the world. A LITTLE APPRECIATED aspect of the self-generated reality of the con artist is that they need to surround themselves with people stupid or craven enough to go along with their scams. The same is true for Trump, just on an epic level, with the halfwitted J.D. Vance and fake tough guy Don Jr. leading the charge, along with wide-eyed maniacs like Peter Navarro, Stephen Miller, and Kash Patel, as the new brand ambassadors for the United States. Then there are those who are wise to the con, but who believe it's profitable to go along with the Big Lie while it lasts — like Elon Musk, depending on the level of ketamine in his system measured against his naked, corrupt self interest and sadistic impulses. Together, as the con artist preys upon the gullibility of his followers, promising fantasies that are literally too good to be true, they are enveloped by the giddy sense that if the lies are big enough the bullshit might actually come true. But the result is that the loneliest man in every room is the con man surrounded by idiots — particularly because he is frequently his own victim, convinced by his own lies, isolating himself from his own tenuous grasp on reality. The new prime minister of Canada appears aware of this context — and the dire threat to Canada's national interest Trump represents. Sitting with Trump in the White House, as poised as any Goldman Sachs banker — because he was one — freshly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney is the kind of sophisticated financial figure who routinely refused to do business with the failed businessman Trump, and for very good reason. Carney is a true plutocrat, fluent in the language of Wall Street and global commerce in a way that Trump can only dream of. As Carney sits politely listening to a torrent of Trump's lies, he effortlessly deploys the arcane argot of the global elite, offering a 'step change' in the trade agreement between the two countries, for example, as Trump leans forward in an odd form of deference wondering what precisely fancy words like 'step change' might actually mean — an illustration of the Canadian leader's mastery of America's worst and most ridiculous excesses. 'Carney gives Trump the opportunity to not look stupid,' the comedian Critch tells me. 'Carney can explain things to him. Carney has dealt with every kind of bullshit developer like Trump. They recognize something in each other.' So it is that Trump lives inside a kind of Potemkin village, the fake model settlements 19th century Russians courtiers built to hide the truth about the poverty and suffering of the peasants from the clueless tyrannical Tsar. Only in Trump's case, the entire world is his ornate Potemkin snow globe, a kind of inverted psychedelic trip where Trump is never wrong and foreigners pay tariffs — not American consumers. Inside this bubble, Trump is respected and admired and worshipped — not ridiculed and loathed. In this alternate reality, with Trump's acolytes urging on his worst instincts, he continues to insist that Canada will become the 51st state, despite the nearly universal disgust and contempt the president engenders in Canada. 'The Canada stuff started as a joke, and I suppose it still is a joke,' Critch sighs. 'But the world is starting to realize there is no plan.' For Carney, having a plan always beats having no plan, as he said repeatedly during his successful electoral campaign. Like most every world leader — many eagerly watching Carney to see how it's done — Carney's plan is to not rile Trump, thus not poking the bear, at least in theory. But behind the polite deference, Canada is furiously building a future that looks beyond America to trade across the country's provinces, with internal commercial barriers disappearing, along with new treaties with Europe and Asia; like the rest of the western world, Canada is frantically preparing for a post-America order, the aftermath of the decline and fall of an empire at the hyper-speed of the digital age. THE WORD 'CANADA' is derived from the Iroquois word for a collection of villages, an apt metaphor for a society defined by diversity and contradictions and multiplicity. There are countless complexities to Canadian politics, like the fact that the French-speaking separatist movement in Quebec likely saved the country in the past election by voting for Mark Carney's federalist Liberal party, while a rump of hard-right prairie MAGA-wannabes have now set out to separate from the country. In the same way that Americans quake in fear at so-called 'polar vortex' storm fronts that Canadians simply call 'winter,' there is a word the folks north of the border use for resolving seemingly intractable problems, without resorting to fascism or assaults on sanity and fundamental human decency: 'democracy.' Just below the surface for Canadians, rarely mentioned, is the shocking and painful realization that virtually no one in America has defended the country and the centuries-long alliance — at least not until the economic pain started to be felt. Despite the unhinged attacks, Trump's approval rating remains relatively high, with many Americans apparently more than happy to toss aside generations of cooperation — displaying the appallingly flimsy roots of the relationship with Canada. Another of the most difficult facts to swallow for Canadians is also the biggest reality of them all: Trump's attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion is an assault on the most basic values of Canadian society. Canada is a nation built on immigrants, as is America, and it's also a society that is facing a demographic catastrophe without the influx of immigrants creating a new kind of society and nation. Through a policy of multicultural toleration and even celebration of difference, Canada is becoming a post-national nation, as former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted in an interview with me more than a decade ago — a notion that has been mocked by Trump and America's extremist nationalists, but that is the only plausible way forward for a species sharing a fragile, warming, and shrinking planet. THE BORDER CROSSING north of Watertown, New York, usually has hundreds of cars lined up on both sides of the frontier on Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start to the summer. This year there were no cars waiting on the Canadian side to cross into the United States, despite the onset of the tourist season. Not a few cars or a slow day: only the one driven by my kids returning from a semester in university in Canada. The statistics about declining tourism revenue in America aren't simply numbers: This is a cultural and patriotic and civilizational transformation, a fact that MAGA extremists delight in, but that will only further isolate America in Trump's chaotic, delusional, and cowering country. Canadians love America, truth be told, but not at the price of their dignity and independence and self-respect. The half-filled state fairs in Minnesota and the condos for sale in Florida and the struggling Maine hotels are a sign of a troubling change for relations between the countries, but on a deeper level they represent the fact that the two countries are really parting ways. As seen from the far side of the 49th parallel, America doesn't seem to be turning its back on Canada, so much as it is turning its back on itself — its history and Constitution, the world, the future. To Canadians, America is freefalling into an abyss where even freedom of speech is becoming a questionable right. Consider this: Possessing the magazine you're reading — in print, on your electronic device — could now easily constitute a crime at the border crossing into America from Canada, if you possess the wrong nationality or passport or skin color or religion or immigration status. As Canadians are discovering on the frontier to the United States, all it takes is for an American border patrol officer to confiscate your belongings and search for any expression that is objectionable to the Trump regime — whatever the Dear Leader says that means on any given day, a category that might easily include Rolling Stone. Cross into Canada at the same frontier, over the majestic Thousand Islands Bridge spanning the blue waters of the St. Lawrence River, and you, dear reader, can find yourself on the far side of the only actual wall Donald Trump has ever successfully constructed, in a land that is not seized by the pathetic rage and self-pity of a sad old man — in the true north, strong and free. More from Rolling Stone Marines Arrive in Los Angeles as City Braces for 'No Kings' Protests Trump's Military Crackdown Is Starting To Dent His Poll Numbers Kim Gordon Has Words for Donald Trump on Re-Recorded 'Bye Bye 25!' Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Hamilton Spectator
2 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Federal travel advisory issued for Israel following missile exchange
The Federal Government is urging Canadians to avoid all travel to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza following retaliatory Iranian missile strikes Friday. The exchange of missiles between Israeli and Iranian forces has prompted the Canadian Government to cancel all flights to and from Ben Gurion International Airport. 'Drones, missiles and other types of projectiles could get past air defense systems and reach their targets,' the statement reads. 'Interceptions could produce military debris falling in various locations.' Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand urged Canadians in the region to immediately register with the Canadian Embassy to receive timely updates in a post to social media. The two countries traded more fire on Saturday morning as Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes on Israel, killing at least three people and wounding dozens. Israel's assault used warplanes, as well as drones smuggled into the country in advance, to assault key facilities and kill top generals and scientists. Iran's U.N. ambassador said 78 people were killed and more than 320 wounded in the attacks. The government also urged travellers to avoid Jordan unless it is absolutely necessary as the region battles falling debris from intercepted missiles. The government has already been telling Canadians to avoid all travel to Iran due to 'the volatile security situation, the regional threat of terrorism, the high risk of arbitrary detention and unpredictable enforcement of local laws,' according to a travel advisory. Prime Minister Mark Carney convened Canada's National Security Council on Friday 'to ensure that all necessary steps will be taken to protect our nationals and our diplomatic missions in the region,' he said in a post to social media. Anand added that peace talks between the United States and Iran are the 'best path to achieving a lasting and peaceful resolution,' though Iran's Foreign Ministry later called the nuclear talks with U.S. 'meaningless' after the Israeli strikes. Israel said the barrage was necessary before Iran got any closer to building an atomic weapon, although experts and the U.S. government have assessed that Tehran was not actively working on such a weapon before the strikes. This threw Iranian-American conversations over an atomic accord into disarray days before the two sides were set to meet Sunday. Both Israel and Iran said their attacks would continue, raising the prospect of another protracted Mideast conflict. With files from the Associated Press. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Yahoo
Canadian demonstrators held, passports confiscated ahead of planned global march to Egypt-Gaza border
More than 40 Canadians planning to participate in the global march to Gaza, alongside thousands of other foreign activists, have been detained in Egypt and had their passports confiscated by authorities, organizers told CBC News. A group of 83 Canadians arrived in Cairo on Wednesday and Thursday, ahead of the scheduled march to Egypt's border with Gaza, an attempt to draw attention to the deepening humanitarian crises facing Palestinians under Israel's blockade of the war-torn territory more than 20 months after attacks began. The Global March on Gaza was slated to be among the largest demonstrations of its kind in recent years, coinciding with other efforts, including a boat carrying activists and aid that was intercepted by Israel's military en route to Gaza earlier this week. Thousands of demonstrators from 80 different countries gathered in Cairo this week in preparation for the march. Tatiana Harker, a member of Palestine Vivra Montreal and march co-ordinator, said Canadians were among the thousands of demonstrators en route to Al-Arish, where they were expected to begin a three-day march toward Egypt's Rafah crossing with Gaza to hold a peaceful demonstration there. "A lot of people are being detained, left in the [heat] without any answers, for two to three hours," Harker told CBC News on Friday from Montreal. Harker said Egyptian authorities confiscated their passports at a checkpoint in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia on Friday without providing a reason. "The [Canadians] have been contacting the Canadian embassy in Cairo with no answer whatsoever. Our government is completely ignoring us." Passports confiscated, protesters told to board buses Canadian demonstrators at the checkpoint were told by authorities to board buses in order to retrieve their passports, without any other details, according to Harker. Ottawa family physician Dr. Yipeng Ge, one of the demonstrators in the Canadian group, said they were told they would not be allowed to cross the Ismailia checkpoint unless they are Egyptian. "People are not getting their passports back. Some have been waiting for hours," Ge said in a post on X on Friday, with a video of hundreds of protesters chanting "Free, Free Palestine," as they are held at the checkpoint. Global Affairs Canada said in an earlier statement to CBC News that it advises Canadians to avoid all travel to the Governate of North Sinai in Egypt and to Gaza. "Canadians who choose to travel to the region do so at their own risk," it said Thursday. Demonstrators were set to travel by bus to Egypt's coastal city of Al-Arish to start the walk on Friday. Canadian organizers told CBC that authorities did not allow demonstrators to bus to Al-Arish, and they had to find other modes of transportation to get there. The 48-kilometre walk between Al-Arish and the Rafah crossing is expected to take up to three days, with protesters sleeping in tents along the way. After reaching the Rafah area, they plan to camp there for roughly three more days before returning to Cairo, according to the coalition's website, though it noted that much of their plans will depend on authorization from Egyptian officials. Egyptian authorities on Friday detained more activists who were joining the planned march, while security forces in eastern Libya blocked a convoy of activists en route to meet them. Organizers on Friday said authorities confiscated the passports of 40 activists at what they called a "toll both-turned-checkpoint" being patrolled by riot gear-clad officers and armoured vehicles. They said security forces had begun detaining and using force to remove activists from the area and suppress protests. "If individuals are forcibly taken to the airport for deportation under false pretenses, participants are prepared to ... initiate a hunger strike," organizers said. The group's spokespeople urged officials from the activists' home countries to push Egypt to release their citizens. Egypt's Foreign Ministry didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Friday's detentions come after hundreds arriving in Cairo were previously detained and deported to their home countries in Europe and North Africa. Before authorities confiscated their passports, the activists said they planned to gather at a campsite on the road to the Sinai to prepare for Sunday's march. They said authorities had not yet granted them authorization to travel through the Sinai, which Egypt considers a highly sensitive area. "We continue to urge the Egyptian government to permit this peaceful march, which aligns with Egypt's own stated commitment to restoring stability at its border and addressing the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza," the activists said in a statement. Hicham El-Ghaoui, one of the group's spokespeople, said they would refrain from demonstrating until receiving clarity on whether Egypt will authorize their protest. The planned demonstrations cast an uncomfortable spotlight on Egypt, one of the Arab countries that has cracked down on pro-Palestinian activists even as it publicly condemns aid restrictions and calls for an end to the war. Alexis Deswaef, a Belgian human rights lawyer, said he woke up on Friday to dozens of security vehicles packed with uniformed officers surrounding Talat Harb Square, where he and other activists had found hotels. Members of his group snuck out of the lobby as security entered, holding up a guidebook and asking an officer for assistance booking taxis to the Pyramids of Giza, where they've been since. "I am so surprised to see the Egyptians doing the dirty work of Israel," he said from the Pyramids. He hoped there would be too many activists at the new meeting point outside Cairo for Egyptian authorities to arrest en masse. Meanwhile, an aid convoy travelling overland from Algeria picked up new participants along the route in Tunisia and Libya, yet was stopped in the city of Sirte, about 940 kilometres from the Libya-Egypt border. The efforts — the activist flotilla, the overland convoy and the planned march — come as international outcry grows over conditions in Gaza. Israel has continued to pummel the territory with airstrikes while limiting the flow of trucks carrying food, water and medication that can enter, saying it is applying pressure on Hamas to disarm and release Israeli hostages.
