Joan Cavanagh

Federal Cuts, Immigration Raids and a Slowing Economy Hit Rural Libraries Like many rural small towns, Tieton, Wash., is facing a confluence of circumstances that has made keeping its one-room library, a “civic symbol” for the town, untenable.

“A library is in a lot of ways a kind of civic symbol, a demonstration of a community’s commitment to itself. So what does it mean if that goes away?” said one librarian in Tieton, Washington, one of the rural small towns in the U.S. where keeping its library is untenable.

Annex businesses tell Ford to back off Bloor bike lanes Stores in the Annex say the Bloor bike lanes have been a big boost to business. As Michelle Mackey reports, the neighborhood's BIA wants the province to back off its new bill that could see the lanes ...

WATCH: Seriously, if you’re following ANY bike-lane debate, you HAVE TO WATCH this news story. You actually can’t make this up. Ford claims without evidence that bike-lanes are bad for small business, and THE ACTUAL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION obliterates him with data.

Safe bike-lanes mean business.

Are American tourists easily distinguishable from Canadians? Let the debate begin | CNN Travel pros weigh in on the differences between travelers from the United States and Canada. There are definitely distinctions, they say.

I certainly look intrigued in the photo in this article, eh.
Great article by Vivian Song
✌️❤️🇨🇦
edition.cnn.com/2025/10/27/t...

More Information Ottawa Residents Deserve Better

My comments on Lansdowne 2.0

The total cost, the so called ‘cost of doing nothing’, the engineer reports on building conditions, and the alternative are all discussed. www.betterlansdowne.ca/more_info?ac...

"nearly half..." ???

it's an open book test.

www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...

Though Mike Harris claimed it was done in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency, amalgamation has effectively gerrymandered municipal politics in Ottawa and Toronto and diluted the power of local residents over their cities and communities

“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”

Diary of Anne Frank
January 13, 1943

Along a Narrow Third Path: How Jeff Leiper Becomes Ottawa's Next Mayor Part 1: Do We Forget Conventional Wisdom?

cityofottawapolitics.substack.com/p/along-a-na...

There was no meeting scheduled today. The first meeting of this committee this week is on Thursday. This is bullshit theatre designed to make people angry, and we used to shame MPs who engaged in it. Quoting MP Larry Brock: UNBELIEVABLE. Parliament is back, but Liberal members of the Justice Committee are MISSING IN ACTION.

Over in the Bad Place, Conservative MPs are faking committee meetings to make people angry.
I wish I were making this up.

Interested in diving into Ottawa's property tax data?

@strongtownsottawa.ca has got you. New article and link to data at strongtownsottawa.ca/2025/09/04/p...
@strongtowns.org #dothemath

Atwood, Laurence, Munro and Angelou are all on this list.

If the Carney government really does just grandfather provinces that signed agreements with the Trudeau government, this could blow up quite spectacularly in its face.

Women in Manitoba will have access to free contraceptives but women in Ontario won't?

This...is not gonna work for the government.

Someone who wants to be PM is currently running in a by election. Maybe the media want to ask him if this is still his position.

The president of the United States is threatening to strip the citizenship away from an American who says things he does not like.

And our media will invariably present this not as a major crisis, an impeachable offense that must lead to his immediate removal, but as “a spat” between Don & Rosie

Alberta goes through with banning ‘sexually explicit’ books under new school library standards Students in Grade 9 and below can no longer access literature that references menstruation, puberty or romantic relationships at school

Danielle Smith is Making Alberta America Again

www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alber...

Cremieux’s real name is Jordan Lasker. I put his name in the newspaper. He’s a scientific racist www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

It's almost as if Alberta is billions in debt because its government refuses to use basic economic levers (like a sales tax, which every other province has) to actually fund the money it spends.

A shadow war on libraries Some Canadian politicians and influencers, inspired by an American-born movement, are trying to roll back 2SLGBTQ+ rights in Canada — one book at a time.

"The hostility toward 2SLGBTQ+ materials and programs in libraries in schools is explicit in Take Back Alberta events and rallies. There are similar efforts in other provinces...from groups such as 'Vote Against The Woke' and 'ParentsVoice B.C'."
www.cbc.ca/newsinteract...

I’m getting more and more emails from residents complaining about @oc-transpo.bsky.social New Ways to Bus. I got a new category of concern today: the impact these changes are having on health care system. 1/

Opinion: It's time for a centralization movement in Canada Canada is the most decentralized federation in the world.

NEW POST: It's time for a centralization movement in Canada emmettmacfarlane.substack.com/p/opinion-it...

Trump needs to insert himself into everything. It’s the narcissism. But is he endorsing himself? Poilievre? Or just doing his chaos thing?

Poilievre's actual announcement today:

he'd amend the Criminal Code to give police power to charge people for living in a homeless encampment or a tent city

He said these are places where "half-dead, contorted bodies lie on the ground on the verge of overdose from fentanyl"

Compassionate!! /s

'He Wants to Take a Blowtorch to the Welfare State' | The Tyee Martin Lukacs’s new book takes a hard look at Poilievre’s agenda, how Liberals shaped the current moment and what the left needs to do next. A Tyee Q&A.

“One thing he’s done so well – until, of course, this Trumpian curveball — is to dress up this hard-right, corporate empowerment agenda as an anti-establishment rebuke to the system.”

#CdnElxn2025 #cdnpoli

Poilievre says he won't attack a woman's right to choose.
56 of his hand-picked candidates are endorsed by Campaign for Life. #cdnpoli

European Spa Company Therme Misrepresented Itself in an Effort to Expand Into Canada A Times investigation shows Therme, a European firm, exaggerated its track record in securing a deal with Ontario, and government auditors found that the process had been unfair and opaque.

Our investigation found that Therme — a European firm that runs a spa and water park in Romania and plans to develop similar facilities around the world — misrepresented itself, misleading the Ontario government and exaggerating its experience in its bid to secure a contract in Toronto.

Was looking forward to taking the O-train from downtown Ottawa to the new station at the Ottawa airport. Turns out you have to change trains twice and it takes more than an hour. Quite the slog. Why is public transit so often inconvenient in the nation’s capital?

Mississippi libraries ordered to delete academic research in response to state laws - Mississippi Today The two research collections state officials ordered for deletion included material from professional journals, conference papers, books, student dissertations, periodicals and newspaper articles.

"The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law, a memo obtained by Mississippi Today shows.

"One of the now deleted collections focused on 'race relations' and the other on 'gender studies'...”

mississippitoday.org/2025/04/08/m...