A first-ever federal investigation of fake election news has come up empty. A byelection hoax traced by the Commissioner of Elections to a Tel Aviv software company saw Canadian investigators question the broker, an Israeli daily today reported: "The item was published in good faith and without malice." READ MORE
The Canada Revenue Agency has gone to extraordinary lengths to deny legitimate claims for credits, say tax consultants. The Agency proposes to cap consultants’ fees in a move that would curb Tax Court challenges of its rulings, said advocates: "People had nothing, they will get nothing." READ MORE
Canada Post is again raising stamp rates by $8.8 million after winning cabinet approval for a $26 million increase last January 14. Management cited “challenging weather” in justifying its rates. READ MORE
Health Canada will license the retail sale of cannabis edibles as early as December 17. The trade raises “fundamental concerns” about drug consumption in the workplace, employers earlier warned: "There are no obvious smells." READ MORE
The Senate has passed a cabinet bill to appoint a Commissioner of Indigenous Languages. More than 60 Indigenous dialects are spoken nationwide, by official estimate: 'Five generations have brought us to where we are today.' READ MORE
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock's tradition each and every Sunday: "Andrew Scheer faces a delicate task..." READ MORE
In the days before Facebook, police reporters visited families that suffered sudden, tragic loss to request a photo of their loved one to print in the local newspaper. You’d think families resented the intrusion, but the opposite was more often the case. Grieving parents typically invited the reporter into their home, as if press interest validated the fact their child’s death mattered, that even strangers cared. This same sentiment must have prompted Mr. and Mrs. Smith of 16 Geneva Avenue to deposit their lost son Charlie’s diary with the Baldwin Collection of Canadiana at the Toronto Reference Library. He was a good boy who died tragically. He mattered. And there his diary sat in a box, year after year, until it was discovered by poet Jonathan Locke Hart and transformed into this beautiful book, Unforgetting Private Charles Smith. READ MORE
My father Stanley’s diary is among my most precious keepsakes. He wrote it secretly as a slave labourer in a Japanese POW camp near Kanchanaburi in Thailand, home of the actual bridge over the River Kwai. Dad never spoke of his experience, but kept surreptitious notes. It was only after his passing in 1981 that I got to know my father.
