SALLY BARNES

It’s Halloween and my neighbour is putting up her Christmas lights. If I had any happy pills I’d take them. My thoughts today are especially with young kids and their parents. On top of everything else they’ve experienced these past many months—home schooling, closed schools and playgrounds, online learning, separation from friends— Halloween is especially nightmarish this year. Scrooge may have stolen Christmas and now COVID and its wicked variants are trying to take the fun

One of the stupidest things Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ever done is brag about “gender parity” and proclaim that at least 50 per cent of his cabinet ministers will be women. Well-intentioned as he usually is, this “hey, look at me” position on cabinet making has won him international attention but has questionable benefits for the government or advancing the cause of women. There, I said it. Let the abuse begin. This comes from someone who served for 18 months as head

If stories about residential schools break your heart but you don’t feel you and your family are personally involved in indigenous issues, think again. We are all paying a high price for our mistreatment of first nations people and these costs will only continue to soar and weaken us as a nation. Mercifully, the residential schools are long gone but their legacy remains in the poverty, high rates of crime, suicide and addiction, substandard housing, healthcare and education a