Blacklock's Reporter

It’s unfashionable today to recall the settlement of the West as a romantic era. Yet not every sodbuster was an agent of genocide, and very many sincere people dedicated their lives to building up a young country with genuine affection for the land and its people. When Sam Steele lay on his deathbed in England in 1919, he asked that they bury him in Winnipeg where he started his career as a $1.25-a day constable with the North-West Mounted Police. Well into the 1950s, generations of Canadian schoolchildren remembered Sam Steele as the most famous policeman in the country. He was renowned not for any extraordinary crime-busting exploit but as an honest lawman in an era of hornswogglers. Steele was famous enough that he published his 1914 memoirs Forty Years In Canada, and his son Harwood in 1956 recounted Steele’s life in The Morning Call, “a truly wretched book” filled with many factual errors, writes historian Rod Macleod, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta. READ MORE

The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations says it doesn’t believe any managers meant to steal paintings, jewelry, sculptures or other works that vanished from a $14.4 million Indigenous art collection. It is not known what happened to scores of artworks used to decorate the department's regional offices: "This went on for decades." READ MORE

Canadians nationwide have “strong interest” in a proposed $90 billion regional high speed railway in Eastern Ontario and Québec, Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday. In-house cabinet research shows taxpayers are wary of the venture managed by publicly-owned Alto Corporation: "I’m speaking to all Canadians." READ MORE

A federal judge yesterday ordered Heritage Minister Marc Miller to release portions of censored files on Nazi fugitives in Canada. The Federal Court dismissed a range of excuses invoked by Miller’s department and Library and Archives Canada in refusing to name names: "What could possibly be in it that still needs to be declassified so many decades later?" READ MORE

Two Maritime casino operators yesterday were fined a total $631,538 for breach of the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act. The latest penalties follow a series of checks on the gaming industry by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre: "Violations were found during the course of a compliance investigation." READ MORE

Home bakers yesterday launched a federal petition drive to have Parliament proclaim National Butter Tart Day. The all-Canadian pastry is an indelible part of the country’s “culinary and cultural heritage,” wrote petitioners: "The butter tart is a cherished Canadian dessert." READ MORE

A widening tariff war with the United States including a 50 percent Canadian surcharge on smartphones will not have “a big ongoing impact” on the economy, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem yesterday predicted. Macklem said workers and businesses alike were taking higher costs in stride: "Businesses, workers, they’re adjusting." READ MORE