The Battle of Queenston Heights occurred on October 13th, 1812, on the edge of the escarpment overlooking the Niagara River, within easy shouting and shooting distance from the U.S. shore. It was the first significant engagement in British Canada’s desperate fight for survival against the expansionist United States between 1812 and 1815 — an America intent on forcibly incorporating the British Canadian colonies into its republican experiment.
While the EU is pivoting to American LNG, the switch comes with a price premium and security of supply concerns.
Europe says it has turned the page on Russian energy, but 2025 data tell a different story: the European Union continues to import gas from Russia —above all in the form of LNG— and a fraction of crude thanks to exemptions on the Druzhba pipeline. In July, the five largest buyers transferred 1.100 billion euros to Russian suppliers; more than two-thirds was gas via TurkStream or LNG carriers. Hungary (485 M€) topped the list, followed by France (239 M€, all LNG), Slovakia (169 M€), Belgium (102 M€), and Spain (66 M€). One month earlier, the EU-wide total was 1.470 M€.
For as long as Canada and the United States have been neighbours, some people have advocated for a more open border – for fewer restrictions on the flow of goods, services and people between the two countries. I have long been one of those advocates.
No more. For the sake of our country’s survival, Canada must distance itself as much as possible from the United States: economically, culturally, militarily.
Though it breaks my heart to say it, the Canada-U.S. relationship, at least for now, must enter a period of separation.
Canadians are proud of their universal healthcare system. Politicians hold it up as proof of our compassion, while unions fight to preserve it, and judges unfailingly defend it. But pride and rhetoric can’t mask reality: Canada spends more on healthcare than almost any other country in the world and delivers some of the worst results. Our hospitals are overloaded, wait times are intolerable, and tens of thousands of patients die each year before receiving the treatment they need.
Talk about being bad to the bone! A California woman is facing jail time after she allegedly registered her dog to vote and cast ballots on her pooch’s behalf not once — but twice.
Sixty-two year-old Laura Lee Yourex allegedly registered her dog, Maya Jean Yourex, to vote and cast ballots under the dog’s name in the 2021 gubernatorial recall election and 2022 primary election, The Los Angeles Times reported, citing the Orange County district attorney’s office. Only the 2021 was ballot was accepted, according to the report.
Timing is everything. After the Coalition of the Willing came together in Paris and vowed to provide Ukraine with security guarantees “the day the conflict stops”, Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately threw a spanner in the works, stating that Moscow would regard any Western troops deployed as “legitimate targets for strikes”.
While the Coalition may have seemed united at Thursday’s meeting, Putin will know that such ominous words will only exacerbate existing divisions inside the EU. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, for example, is opposed to putting Western peacekeepers in Ukraine for exactly this reason, fearing that any attacks on them by Russian forces would require a Nato Article 5 collective response and so spark a wider conflict. Germany is also reluctant about sending its soldiers, while the UK and France’s enthusiasm is gung-ho verging on delusional.
As Ottawa embarks on a 60-day review of its electric vehicle (EV) mandate, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly says the plan is not to get rid of the policy but rather to boost the production and importation of the vehicles.
“We want to build more EVs in Canada. We need to because we know that’s where basically the world is heading, and we want to make sure that we are able to compete with also Chinese EVs,” Joly said during a press conference in Montreal on Sept. 8.
Give her a bottle and she’ll say anything.
There is not much freedom of speech in Gaza, but Europe is not doing much better.
The West complains that foreign journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza. But a Jewish writer being barred from a book fair in France in 2025, what is that?
The participation of writer and essayist Raphaël Enthoven in the Besançon literary festival has been canceled. “Raphaël Enthoven’s recent controversial statements risk compromising the smooth running of the literary festival,” a spokesperson said. “Under these circumstances, the organizer, Grand Besançon Métropole, asked the event service provider to cancel his participation at the end of September.”
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the sick practice whereby a girl has her labia and clitoris removed with a knife, before her vagina is effectively sealed, with a small hole left for urination and menstruation. It is carried out in predominantly North African countries – notably Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia – and is done to ensure the girls’ chastity and ‘cleanliness’ prior to marriage. It is a crime in the UK and one of the most repugnant violations on the rights of women and girls. And men, too – according to the College of Policing, that is.
In 2021, the National Film Board decided to become a political organization. It adopted a grand plan to hire based on identity, create new management roles focused on enforcing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), promote progressive concepts like intersectionality and reconstitute its policies around race. And reconstitute it did. That year, it began restricting the use of archival footage by race.
As part of its DEI overhaul, the film board instituted an “Indigenous Content Moratorium,” halting the “licensing of archives, excerpts and photos portraying Indigenous participants to clients who do not self-identify as Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit or Métis).” The policy, which the NFB described as “temporary,” applies to about 600 entries in the archive. An archive entry that contains mostly white people and only one Indigenous person would not be covered, however.
The mother of a victim of suspected serial killer Jesse Calhoun has said Portland officials ‘did us dirty’ after he was released from prison early – going on to allegedly murder four women.
Kristin Smith’s mom Melissa Smith said she believes then-Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s office owes the victims’ families an apology over its decision to free Calhoun due to his participation in a prison firefighting program.
‘I’m not going to say it’s their fault. But I am going to say I think they owe us moms an apology,’ she said on stage at CrimeCon 2025 on Sunday.
No one has lost their job over this.
Germany is experiencing a new migration conundrum. While judges are overwhelmed by tens of thousands of new appeals against asylum decisions, only a handful of Syrians—fewer than 2,000 out of nearly one million living in the country—have requested official assistance to return to their homeland, despite the fall of Bashar al-Assad having been celebrated as the condition that would make their return possible.
The first half of 2025 brought a record number, 76,646 lawsuits by migrants initiated before administrative courts, more than in all of 2023 (71,885) and three-quarters of the 2024 level. Densely populated states such as North Rhine-Westphalia (13,304), Bavaria (11,412), and Lower Saxony (over 11,000) account for much of this surge.
Cabinet’s $191,000-a-year Special Representative on Combating Islamophobia insists she had no correspondence with the Muslim Association of Canada, despite being photographed at the group’s June 6 conference where its chair accused Israel of committing genocide.
“No records exist,” Amira Elghawaby’s office said in response to an Access To Information request seeking all communication with the Association following the event.
OTTAWA — The drubbing the country’s smaller political parties faced in the federal election not only bruised egos but damaged bank accounts, leaving the Liberals and Conservatives with a major advantage moving forward, a Star analysis of election rebate funding reveals.
Federal parties can receive a partial rebate of the money they spend during campaigns from Elections Canada. The money, which is doled out in the year following the election, can help parties build a war chest for the next campaign or repay loans they took on to fight the last one.
At the People’s Conference for Palestine, Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib appeared alongside convicted killers and speakers who glorified Hamas.
A strain of thought has gained popularity in progressive circles that’s fairly summarized by this post on X: “If there’s a Nazi at the table and ten other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with eleven Nazis.” The principle is that some views are so abhorrent that failing to challenge them on any given occasion is tantamount to accepting them.
This line of thinking should raise an uncomfortable question for Israel bashers. What does it mean when a sitting member of Congress speaks at a conference attended by hundreds of terrorism sympathizers?
