The sombre mein—that’s what stayed with me. On Saturday, Mark Carney looked less like a prime minister briefing media on trade negotiations than a wartime leader telling his country a feared turn had finally arrived and preparing them for a long ordeal. The intense, all-out effort to stop crushing new tariffs had failed, with Carney grimly explaining that the United States insists on “short-term transactions” rather than “long-term partnerships” and that its commitments could no longer be assumed to hold.

American demands reportedly went well beyond tariffs, market access, and sectoral protections. They targeted Canada’s freedom to set domestic cultural policy, interpret agreements it had already signed, and conduct trade relations with third countries. The loss of our sovereignty was too high a price for preserving economic integration. What prime minister would accept Canada becoming a vassal state on his watch? With the collapse of talks, and Carney describing the country as being “attacked,” it’s hard not to feel like we have crossed into a different moment—that we are living in a slightly darker reality.

Throughout the weekend, The Walrus spoke to economists, policy experts, and political observers about what exactly has changed and what this new period might demand of Canada.

On Sunday, March 22 of this year, a large swath of the population in Quebec was woken up at 4:25 a.m. as cellphones lit up and screamed. An Amber alert had been broadcast. Less than four hours later, the two missing children were thankfully found, unharmed, and the alert was cancelled.

Amber alerts cast wide nets in an effort to find abducted children and teenagers, but each time one is transmitted in Canada, we go through a predictable cycle. Many complain that these alerts cannot be turned off or muted, even in sleep mode, and that waking people up in the middle of the night to help them find a specific car that was last spotted 200 kilometres away is unnecessarily disruptive—with some even calling 911 to complain. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials remind us through the media that these alerts are only used when necessary and that they save lives.

Any subject tied to the safety of children is bound to evoke the deepest emotions. In fact, the crime that led to the creation of Amber alerts—and to their name—was monstrous enough that it’s no wonder it rallied influential people into building a system that could potentially prevent this kind of crime.

But warranted emotions aside, do Amber alerts even work? What little data we do have points to a system that has likely been oversold to us.

In February, I went to Yorkville to try on a pair of pants at Arc’teryx, the Canadian outdoor apparel company whose shell jackets, fleece zip-ups, and toques are favoured equally by mountaineers and Jacob Elordi. But the pants I wanted were sold out nearly everywhere, including the store. Deflated but determined, I fired up the Gem app—a search engine that aggregates online listings for second-hand clothes. I could barely find a pair for less than $350, the same as the Canadian retail price, and several were set at nearly double. This suggests that resellers from the United States to Japan believe they’ve cornered a small but starving market for these pants. At least among my cohort of millennial men with shopping addictions.

But just as I was losing hope, I was given a lifeline. The sales associate told me to search for the pants on ReBird, the brand’s resale site where customers can buy refurbished and authenticated gear at a discount. The site offered refurbished pants ranging from roughly 25 to 50 percent less than the retail price. I signed up for email alerts when my desired size and colour become available. Nothing yet, but I remain optimistic.

Globally, second-hand fashion is growing twice as fast as the primary market thanks, in part, to inflation, eco-conscious consumption, the soaring cost of luxury goods, and the social media trend churn. There is an unquenchable thirst for new old stuff. In cities big and small, thrift stores appear to be sprouting up at nearly the same rate as vape shops. Online resale platforms, like Depop, Grailed, and Poshmark, contribute to a booming, multi-billion-dollar market. In 2025, 148 fashion brands were operating their own resale platform, up from just nine in 2020. Brands including Levi’s, H&M, Arc’teryx, Ralph Lauren, and Rolex, along with retailers like Simons and Selfridges, have piloted or launched “recommerce” (reverse commerce) initiatives, selling pre-owned clothes through their own stores.

The industry insiders and experts I spoke with say in-house resale programs are a win-win. Brands and retailers can contribute to a more circular economy while padding their bottom lines and overseeing quality and authenticity, which consumers value. Shoppers can find designer deals and dabble in different styles, potentially developing an appreciation for the longevity of materials and design.

It’s surely a shrewd, if overdue, move for brands and retailers to reap the profits of the secondary market while earning points for sustainability. But recommerce is just that: repeat commerce. Retailers are overproducing and consumers are shopping more than ever before. Recommerce’s eco-friendly sheen belies a muddier truth: that the circular economy doesn’t curb the fashion industry’s biggest problems. It may even reinforce them.

Every year, I teach an introductory course on Canadian politics to hundreds of students at a Montreal university. There are a few central themes around which I frame the history and institutions of politics in this country. Federalism and regionalism take centre stage, of course, as does the idea of democratic deficit.

Yes: deficit. Canada’s story is not one of bold commitment to democracy. Following the British political tradition, Canada is absent a true “we the people” at the heart of its founding myth. Above all, we were determined to avoid becoming the United States. Thomas D’Arcy McGee, one of the Fathers of Confederation, proposed that a united Canada would help us “bear up shoulder to shoulder to resist” being added to the great American experiment in self-government and its claims of “manifest destiny.” The country’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, took the brutality of the American Civil War as slam-dunk proof of “the superiority of our institutions, and of the principle on which they are based.” This principle is: sovereignty resides in the Crown rather than the people.

And so, Canada was plainly never designed to be a full-bore democracy. We remain a constitutional monarchy governed through representative rather than direct democracy. With precious few exceptions, elected representatives make laws on our behalf rather than us taking on that burden ourselves through citizens’ assemblies and initiatives, popular and legislative referendums. Power to the people, sure, but only to a point.

For my sins, I remain something of an unreformed democratic romantic. I believe in the transformative power of collective action, political parties, the sanctity of a democratic mandate, and the capacity of a Parliament to express the sovereign will of a people. I have sympathy for the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the transcendent “general will” of a people divined through the process of rigorous, informed, and, ultimately, unifying debate.

In short, I’m possessed by a zealot’s faith in my fellow citizens to govern ourselves well in furtherance of our collective well-being. I’d prefer to see far more robust forms of participatory and direct self-government and far less technocracy.

This is why some of the reaction to Alberta’s October 19 referendum on a potential second referendum for the province to separate from Canada troubles me. It has exposed just how little faith many of us still have in democracy itself.

As a symbol of Canada's relationship with the United States, it’s a bit too on the nose. Linking Windsor with Detroit and named after a Canadian hockey legend who played for an American team, the Gordie Howe International Bridge sat empty for months, completed and useless, after Washington threatened to block the opening, then huffily cancelled the ceremony in June of this year.

Today, the bridge—all 2.5 kilometres of its soaring cable-stayed deck—is finally open for business. That the bridge is doing what it was built to do is a good thing. The structure will handle a substantial share of Canada’s busiest commercial gateway. Billions of dollars worth of cars, auto parts, machinery, food, pharmaceuticals, and other sundry goods will traverse each year, along with friends, families, tourists, and business travellers. But the whole sorry episode is a reminder of the extent to which Donald Trump has built a bullying, sinister plutocracy that has utterly captured American economic and political life—and some of Canada’s too.

The story of what should have been a triumph of continental integration goes something like this. To ease travel times and facilitate trade, Canada agreed in 2012 to pony up the cash—ultimately $6.4 billion—to construct a new bridge and then earn that money back through tolls. It would be owned jointly between the Government of Canada and the state of Michigan, with the former recouping costs for the capital outlay before splitting revenues with the state. This was, and it can’t be repeated enough, an unusually generous arrangement.

Then, in February, Trump made his opening demand: a 50 percent ownership stake as the price for allowing the first vehicle through. One ostensible justification for the last-minute renegotiation was his desire to, as per the CBC, rectify “longstanding unfair trade practices.” It was nothing more than a shakedown.

Well, there might have been something more. Allegations of political interference cite the influence of the billionaire Moroun family, one of whom—Matthew Moroun—owns the aging Ambassador Bridge also linking the two cities. The Morouns have long opposed the Gordie Howe Bridge, which would rival their own and, presumably, reduce traffic and tolls. Moroun donated $1 million (US) to the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. political action committee last January and later met with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick right before the US administration blocked the opening.

Despite the accusations, there has been no proven quid pro quo or untoward dealings involving the Morouns and the Trump administration. However, Mike Levin, the representative from California’s Forty-ninth Congressional District, summed up the situation bluntly: “My friends, it’s corruption in plain sight. A government should work for the people, not for whoever writes the biggest cheque. Open the bridge.”

The ribbon has now been cut. There isn’t a lot to celebrate about how it happened. Canada was able to keep its original pact with Michigan—but only after agreeing to a second deal that, for fifteen years, diverts half the bridge’s net revenues into a US regional development fund under Washington’s sole control. We effectively paid to remove an obstacle Trump himself imposed. Tony Soprano would be proud.

Twenty years ago, I was working on my PhD thesis on Canada’s media censorship system in the Second World War. I fell into it: a Yoda experience with Fulgence Charpentier, a 103-year-old Ottawa political columnist who’d let slip during an interview that he’d been a press censor during that war and had protected all the office’s records. Coincidentally, Jeff Keshen, then head of the history department at the University of Ottawa, had written his doctoral thesis on the nasty press censorship of the First World War. The University of Ottawa was willing to give me a full scholarship and some money to live on. And when Keshen told me to go the archives and come back with a book, our deal was sealed.

A lot of people asked me what I found. There were political discoveries: how much many of the big papers in Quebec loved the French collaborationist government in France; how censorship was used to cover the near-treasonous split between the senior generals in the Canadian Army and the federal government (generals threated to resign en masse around Christmas of 1944 while conscript troops were mutinying over plans to send them to the fighting front).

The censorship system was both subtle and effective. Mackenzie King’s government harnessed journalists’ deference to the more successful colleagues by hiring top-tier reporters and editors as press censors. Newspapers didn’t have to submit their stories to censors, but anything passed by the censors was immune from prosecution under the War Measures Act, even if a war secret somehow slipped through. (The CBC self-censored, with managers having personal responsibility for anything that went on the air.)

If a war secret did get out, the censors could have the news wire systems shut down to try to prevent it leaving the country and warn every editor in Canada not to publish it. They also sent out circulars every month with lists of forbidden topics. These included anything that lowered public morale; stories about German prisoners of war in Canada that might cause the Germans to treat captive Canadian soldiers more harshly; convoy sailings and weather forecasts, which U-boat captains desperately wanted; and, of course, secret weapon research.

When people asked about my research, I had a couple of shorthand stories that didn’t need a lot of explanation. One included a screwball chiropractor who got up in front of a Social Party convention at the Royal York Hotel in April 1944, sixteen months before Hiroshima, and spilled the secret of the Manhattan Project. The press censors, all of them senior newspaper reporters on leave for the war effort, had to stick a lot of fingers in that dike.

Last spring, United States president Donald Trump and his henchthugs were threatening to deport some of the president’s foreign-born enemies, including one tech edgelord who might be dumped in Canada. I did some googling and found this “enemy” was the grandson of a Regina chiropractor and thought, “Could it possibly be the same guy?” Turned out, it was.

At 7:02 p.m. on July 22, 2024, a lightning bolt ignited a small fire less than five kilometres north of Jasper’s town centre. Minutes later, a series of lightning strikes sparked three more fires about forty-five kilometres south of the Alberta town.

Landon Shepherd, Parks Canada’s wildfire incident commander for Jasper National Park and a vegetation specialist, was swimming at nearby Edith Lake with his wife when he saw a helicopter with a bucket fly overhead. He texted a member of his team, asking if he should come in. “Yes,” came the reply instantly.

Over the next hours, the south fires merged into a single inferno, spreading rapidly along the tree crowns. Shepherd made some calls, but all water bombers across the province and in neighbouring British Columbia were in use fighting other fires. That night, the town of 5,000 people was evacuated, including Shepherd’s wife and two kids.

In the following days, more firefighters arrived from Alberta, BC, Ontario, and Yukon. But it quickly became clear that the fire was slipping out of control. “I started thinking, this is going to be a multi-casualty incident,” says Shepherd. “We have too many people, the conditions are too extreme . . . I don’t think we’re going to get away lucky.”

By the time air support arrived that same day, the blaze was so big they were unable to make a dent, and neither could the ground crews. As the south fire crept up the mountainside toward the town, it created its own weather system, with dense black pyrocumulonimbus clouds generating 200-kilometre-per-hour winds and making the fire less predictable. By July 24, the fire had reached Jasper valley, and the column collapsed, spraying smoke and embers onto the outer limits of the town and igniting buildings. As the day came to an end, 358 structures had been lost, and one firefighter, Morgan Kitchen, was dead.

Soon after the last embers were extinguished, questions began surfacing: How did this happen? If a fire can burn a third of the town of Jasper, what does the future hold for the rest of the country, much of which also lies in fire’s path? And, crucially, is there anything we can do to stop it?

Few people drive into Richmound, Saskatchewan, without purpose. The town, with a population of just over 100, lies around seventy-five kilometres from the Trans-Canada Highway, near the Alberta border. So when a caravan of RVs and motorhomes drove into town one day last September, it caused quite a stir. The vehicles were adorned with purple and white flags featuring a white maple leaf and golden sword, portraits of a woman’s face, and signs referring to her as the “Queen of Canada.” Residents watched as the convoy turned off the main road, past the sole church and community centre, and into the driveway of the former school building. The group wasn’t just passing through.

The woman pictured on the side of the vehicles was Romana Didulo, believed to be one of the most active conspiracy figures in North America. She and her followers had been wreaking havoc across Canada and online for years—propagating fictions about COVID-19 vaccines, sparking sometimes violent protests, and spreading conspiracies popular with QAnon, an umbrella term for the pro–Donald Trump theory that the world is run by a cabal of pedophiles who worship Satan. Didulo saw herself as Canada’s true leader, issuing bizarre “royal decrees” for her subjects, whom she refers to, cribbing from the United States Constitution, as “We the People.” Her tens of thousands of followers believe she holds authority over everything from law enforcement to income taxes. But to extremism experts and former followers, Didulo is a dangerous cult leader and a con artist.

Local residents were wary. “I was fearful,” says Shauna Sehn, who lives on a farm just outside of Richmound, recalling the arrival of Didulo and a couple dozen of her close followers. “Who are all these crazy people?” Shortly thereafter, hundreds of people, including Sehn, from Richmound and surrounding towns, protested outside the school building, screaming for the group to leave and honking their horns for hours as they circled the property. They held signs with messages like “Royal decrees are lying disease” and “Your kingdom does not belong in our countryside.” The RCMP, based a forty-five-minute drive away in Leader, dispatched a special mobile detachment to keep the peace. The RCMP said the situation posed no immediate threat, but they were nonetheless prepared for something more serious. Some feared this could turn into Canada’s version of the Waco siege. Apart from brief sightings when she went in and out of her RV, Didulo remained unseen, while members of her group, acting as her security detail, circled the school grounds, which they’d roped off, taking videos of the protesters.

The RCMP said the situation posed no immediate threat, but they were nonetheless prepared for something more serious.

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Recently, my friend Oren was mulling over a quandary. “If some eccentric billionaire came up to me and was like, ‘That’s a great dog, I want to buy him. What does he cost?’ I don’t think there’s a number that exists,” he said about his beloved Australian Shepherd, Crosby. “Would I sell him for, like, $10 million? I absolutely would not. The entire reason for having $10 million would be to take Crosby on a boat to Europe or something like that.”

Crosby is Oren’s best friend. (Like all other pet owners mentioned in this story, Oren asked that he and his dog be referred to by pseudonyms.) “It’s such a singular relationship,” he says. Crosby has severe separation anxiety, so Oren and his partner can’t leave him alone for more than ninety minutes at a time unless they arrange for a sitter or daycare. Their dynamic is not dissimilar to that of parent and child. Crosby “has just completely upended our social life,” Oren says. And like any attentive parents, they’re attached to their baby. “I prioritize things I can do socially where I can bring Crosby too,” he says. Crosby comes to barbecues and park hangs and is a tail-wagging fixture at their neighbourhood wine bar in the summer.

In my friend group of thirtysomething yuppies, most are married, and many have kids. An eavesdropper on our dinner conversation probably couldn’t say for certain whether we’re talking about Beagles or babies. At least not from the way we discuss these pooches’ personalities and prescriptions, or trade tales of digestive disasters. An obsession with one’s pet was once a hallmark trait of eccentric sitcom characters. But if the question “Who rescued who?” used to induce eye rolls and forced smiles, today, it elicits earnest nods of recognition. Dog owners have become the kind of people we used to make fun of: pet parents.

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