I grew up in a Toronto suburb where my friends were from everywhere - different colours, different cultures, different family histories - but we all lived broadly the same kind of life. Comfortable, middle class, and very much the suburban stereotype of the age.

Most of our households had a dad who worked full time, and a mom who worked part time - or at least seemed to be around more, so I assumed she must have worked less (which I realize now may not always have been true). I’m not holding that arrangement up as some ideal (I have no kids and would not want that life), but it speaks to what the economy allowed back then. And I think that economic baseline is a huge part of why something I am holding up as an ideal - our sameness amidst difference - was able to exist at all. People from all over the world could arrive here and have a genuine chance at a stable, secure, settled existence.

As kids within that context, we’d drift between each other’s houses after school or for lunch, depending on whose mom was home that day. I ate homemade food from all over the world long before I ever thought of it as anything remarkable. I heard stories shaped by lives very different from my own - including one parent’s stories about Lebanon that somehow made me both deeply want to visit and absolutely never want to go at the same time.

Despite any differences, we were united in a way that now feels almost impossible to recreate. We weren’t defined by where our parents came from (or at least, not primarily). We got to be our little group of kids first - not a set of demographics - growing up in the same place, participating in the same society, moving through life roughly in the same direction.

The best way I can describe it is that where everyone “came from” sat mostly in the rear view. What mattered far more was where we were, and where we could go from there.

Because of that, the way Canadian immigration worked - and, just as importantly, the way it was understood back then - really did feel genuinely ideal to me. It’s hard to explain, and probably hard to grasp if you didn’t experience it firsthand. I’m only recently realizing just how globally unique that moment really was. It didn’t pretend culture didn’t matter, but it also didn’t treat culture as fixed or separate. Part of this was because the system selected for people who wanted to build a life here, specifically. Being here was their chance, and so whatever they’d left behind mattered a little less.

Somewhere along the way, that forward-looking confidence came to be seen as backward.

In some weird confluence of the apex of capitalism (meaning enough of us were high enough on the hierarchy of needs to worry about higher-order concerns) and its erosion (meaning we were starting to feel the first cracks in that security) - some people got the bright idea that we should re-emphasize all the ways we are different.

In some cases, it was one-upmanship dressed up as sophistication - the belief that “good enough” is morally suspicious, so progress only counts if it keeps moving, even when no one stops to ask where it’s headed. For others, it was status strategy - a way to set themselves apart in an increasingly competitive environment and “make it”.

Instead of celebrating a shared culture of sharing culture, we were pushed toward locating people in an ever-expanding hierarchy of identity. Instead of saying, “You’re here now, and you’re one of us”, we were encouraged to say, “You’re here, but your primary relationship is to what makes you different”.

This was sold as progress. As moral sophistication. As anti-racism.

What it actually did, though, was re-racialize everything.

Race stopped being a background fact of our diversity and became the primary lens through which we were encouraged to interpret one another. Culture stopped being something to share, enjoy, and comment on, and became something fenced off - something you could mishandle, appropriate, or transgress simply by having an opinion about it.

Hand-in-hand with that came the idea that unless you’ve personally lived through something, or at least come from a “people” who has, you’re not allowed to form a judgment about it. I don’t buy that. Learning from other people’s lived experience is how we avoid repeating the worst of it, not how we stay ignorant.

I don’t need to personally live under rules where women are expected to dress a certain way, defer to certain men, limit their movement, or shrink their ambition to know it’s bad - or to know I don’t want that shaping our norms here.

And I’m also well within my lane to call shenanigans on the idea that we shouldn’t comment on - or intervene in - something like China exerting control over its diaspora through intimidation and alleged “police stations” abroad. Pretending the tolerant move is to let some people have fewer rights or less protection because that repression is dressed up as “culture” isn’t respect. It’s giving those citizens less than they deserve - which is the same protection every one of us deserves.

I’m grateful for what I learned about Lebanon from my friend’s mother. The same goes for what I understand about Eastern Europe, shaped both by some of my own family roots and by my partner, who was born in Belarus. That kind of shared knowledge matters. It keeps me from falling for conquest dressed up as kinship - the “they’re basically family” framing that’s meant to make invasion sound like a domestic dispute - and it makes it easier to recognize patterns, including in how Ukraine was treated and how the US is increasingly starting to approach Canada.

Being able to connect dots across different lived experiences is one of the best benefits of living in a genuinely diverse society. Telling people they’re not allowed to learn from one another is a corrosive message, no matter how carefully it’s dressed up.

The word woke is badly degraded at this point, but it still gestures at something real I’m pushing back against. A systemic ideology that replaced multicultural optimism with racial fatalism.

What once felt like a very comfortable, robust multicultural society - people sharing space, norms, expectations, and opportunity - was replaced with something far more brittle. A society hyper-aware of difference, and increasingly unsure what it’s allowed to share.

I also think it’s worth talking about what happens when tolerance starts to feel one-directional.

Something I’ve noticed personally, out in the wild, over the last few years, is that more people seem oddly insistent on saying Merry Christmas. I’ve always said Happy Holidays - not as a statement, just as the neutral, friendly default I grew up with. And more often than I’d expect, people will look right at me and say Merry Christmas back, rather pointedly.

I usually just say Merry Christmas, in response. I don’t mind the phrase itself. What I find concerning is that what used to be a fringe obsession about a “war on Christmas” seems to have broken containment.

And it turns out I’m not imagining it. There’s now data to support my anecdata. More Canadians prefer what used to be widely considered the “less tolerant” option - they’d rather say Merry Christmas than Happy Holidays.

To be clear, I could not be further from a keep-the-Christ-in-Christmas kind of girl. I’m not religious. What I personally celebrate is probably closer to pagan Yule - which Christianity famously co-opted. Lights, food, cozy rituals, darkness giving way to light? I’m in. Theology and traditionalism as a loyalty test? Not for me.

But whether I agree with it or not, this shift is predictable.

If you spend years telling people that culture is supposed to stay separate, that some cultures are shareable and others belong behind glass, and that inclusion mostly runs one way, it’s naive to think the majority culture won’t reassert itself too. If the message is “your culture can’t include mine”, people eventually think, “fine - then mine won’t include you either”.

Not because that’s right. Not because it’s good. But because it’s the most likely conclusion of that kind of thinking.

You don’t build social cohesion by treating shared space like a minefield. You build it with norms sturdy enough to include everyone, without the constant implication that stepping outside your bubble is an explosive faux pas.

When “we’re all in this together” is framed as outdated or suspect, people go looking for a new “we” they can belong to.

I don’t think a confident multicultural country requires its majority culture to apologize for existing. It requires that culture to be open, generous, and secure enough to make room for others.

I don’t want to go back to some imagined golden age. But I do think we should be honest about what we lost - and why. A colourblind society wasn’t perfect, but it was aspirational. It said - this is what we’re trying to build. It invited everyone into a shared future.

What replaced it offers no such invitation - only endless categorization, endless suspicion, and very little sense of shared purpose.

I don’t think that version of Canada is gone forever.

We can choose to build a country again where people are judged by what they do, not how they’re sorted before they even start. Where culture is something to share, not handle like a hazardous material. Where the baseline is solid enough that people from anywhere can once again expect to come here and end up on the same streets, in the same schools, living a wonderfully boring, normal life together.

To call back to another product of the apex of capitalism - I don’t care who you are or where you’re from, as long as you love “us”.

I think we should say it all. Say “Happy Holidays”. Say “Merry Christmas”. Say “Happy Hanukkah” (especially now).

And mean it.

I want all the holidays. Diwali sounds great. I love lights, all year. I will take everything great from everywhere, and you will never convince me that isn’t progress.

Moving forward with the best of all of us - having seen the worst and left it behind - is the only way we actually move forward.

Here in Canada, we got Thanksgiving out of the way back in October. For a lot of us, that meant a brief, oddly distant return to the version of the middle class we were raised to believe we’d be part of more permanently - otherwise known as visiting our parents’ house (since they’re the only ones with enough space).

Last week, many Americans completed the same (festive!) humiliation ritual, with plenty more similar existential reminders of where we all actually stand still to come as the holiday season ramps up.

For me though, it’s the part of our Thanksgiving that used to feel particularly Canadian - but maybe doesn’t anymore - that’s been rattling around in my head whenever I think about such family “fun” times.

For some of us, that might have meant heading to the family cottage - a second home we’re told we might inherit one day, unless our parents decide to cash in what they likely inherited from their own parents instead of passing it down.

I’ve always had a bit of a complicated relationship with the cottage, truth be told (as with my family of origin itself).

But my relationship with my grandparents who built it was actually the least complicated of anyone in my family. I simply loved them, in a way the complexities with others never allowed, even given a lifetime of what should have been plenty of complications there, too.

So I kind of feel like I should appreciate it more. Like I am ungrateful for what they left me. But practically, though they probably did intend it to be around for me and my generation too, they actually left it to their daughters (my mom and my aunt), whose management of it kind of speaks to where a lot of the more complicated feelings come from.

Much like it was largely my grandparents’ generation that built the infrastructure we still use today, more so than my parents’ - my grandparents had the cottage built. And one of the last things my grandfather ever did was have an addition built for us, to give us room to grow.

But even as the family has kept growing in the decades since, no further additions have been built. Just some patchwork fixes here and there, only when something literally could not be left as is anymore. No major renovations. Just more people jammed into a place that was never really updated to fit them (the metaphor for how we’ve handled immigration these last few years practically writes itself, if I were more troll-y inclined).

And when I very gently mentioned we might want to more proactively update some things sometime, my aunt - who I love, and who in many ways is more aware, at least on a macro level, of generational issues than most people her age, who was a better aunt than most people get, and who I don’t want to just sneer about - nonetheless delivered a line that was a little too perfect not to include here…

“That’s for the next generation”.

And I can see that attitude in how both my parents and my aunt and uncle have managed the place. Some of it was just disagreements - DIY versus “pay someone,” or the awkward life-stage mismatch of two families sharing one cottage. But some of it really did come down to that mentality.

My mom in particular gives a great (terrible) example of this.

As the eldest of the next generation, once I was old enough to start getting a bit annoyed that nothing ever got updated, I just started suggesting that I buy some things myself. One year I suggested to my mother that my partner and I could buy new furniture for the screened porch we all loved to hang out in as a Christmas gift for the extended family, in lieu of what I usually spend on all of them, since the old, rotting pieces we had were making it less enjoyable to spend time there.

She got upset at the idea because, in her mind, that would mean my aunt, uncle and cousins would end up getting the same value of gift she, my dad and brother would get. She didn’t like that the benefit of the money would be evenly shared. She felt that if I calculated what I usually spent on everyone and instead put that toward shared furniture for all of us to enjoy, that meant she was forfeiting some of what should go more directly toward her side of the family, since I typically spent more on my parents and sibling than on my aunt, uncle and cousins. And she was surprisingly (even to me, though I do know my mother) mad about that.

So we didn’t get the furniture, and we still have that increasingly uncomfortable set out there, ten-plus years later. It used to be my favourite spot, and I don’t even like sitting there anymore.

The parallels to how short-term thinking on spending leads to the bigger cost of rotting infrastructure are pretty obvious. The same mindset is also clearly at play in how we treat Old Age Security.

Well-off seniors with six-figure incomes still expect to receive OAS and get upset at the idea of any cuts, even when tightening eligibility would let seniors who are actually struggling receive more support. And if you dare go one step further and point out that what was supposed to be protection from poverty has slowly turned into a way to pad already comfortable retirements, at the expense of younger generations who are taxed to fund a level of comfort they are unlikely to ever see themselves, that tends to go over even worse.

Again, much like the obvious but decidedly glossed-over immigration allegory earlier, this stuff almost writes itself. But I also think about how this same mindset plays out in more nebulous ways.

During Covid, I wrote about how the tiny towns near my cottage were building up, and later about how that made me see the real potential in reimagining how we live and work - especially in the context of what I still think was the one truly great thing to come out of our Covid response, the shift to remote work.

Well, long story short, all of that has not just reversed, but turned into a funhouse-mirror dark alternate reality version of where it was looking like it could go.

The closest such tiny town is now pretty much all boarded up, literally. Not just every second home, but every second business closed and up for sale (and there were not many businesses to begin with).

I’m sure some of that is simply down to people realising they didn’t, in fact, want to commit to living somewhere that feels magical right up until you run out of something basic in the dead of winter, when the roads still haven’t been plowed, there’s nowhere in walking distance, and getting to even that one tiny town nearby is nearly impossible. At that point, the ruggedly austere infrastructure in such regions starts to feel less like a quaint inconvenience and more like an existential threat.

But I’m also sure a lot of it has to do with how quickly too many people snapped back to discouraging any kind of dispersed, affordable, sustainable economy in favour of preternaturally preserving the old economy built around the outdated assumption that real work only happens in and around offices.

If we had actually committed to remote work instead of pushing people back to support everything built up around that office-centric way of working (even if I still think that’s going to fail anyway, it’s still keeping us from moving forward), places like those tiny towns could have been built up instead of boarded up.

Cities are great, but I’m not sure they’re as necessary in the way they used to be; we don’t really have to cling to an industrial-office model when technology finally lets us build something closer to how people have always actually liked to live.

We can be remote but not luddite, dispersed but not disconnected. We could have headed away from big cities and back toward villages; tech-enabled villages where remote work brings in global income to fund local businesses, and connectivity strips away most of the old downsides of village life.

With remote work, we could have built more dense, walkable, properly serviced communities in a lot more places, taken pressure off the most overpriced regions, and spread opportunity and services out instead of insisting everyone crowd into a few major cities.

I do think we still can, and will - but as per all too usual, we’re going to have to wait for the boomers to get over their hissy fit at the premise of not having the absolute most and exactly what they want and, frankly, wait until there are fewer of them left to throw one that actually has an impact.

Boomers couldn’t even let us just take this chance to fix things they’d already broken - housing, work-life balance, the whole premise of how we build a life. They just had to push back on the way they think things should work, protecting what they feel entitled to, including returns on pension funds tied to commercial real estate, returns on city condos, and, frankly, the comfort of refusing anything new if they won’t personally benefit from it.

They also seem to love telling stories about their own parents’ sacrifices that they would never make themselves.

My mother talks about how my grandmother refused home care because she didn’t want her daughters to have to look after her - and is now very strongly hinting that she expects exactly that level of care from family. My dad used to brag about how his father, on very modest means, managed to save a good amount of money to leave to his kids, then would say he should have just spent the money.

The more I think about it, the more it sounds like they secretly think their parents were suckers.

They grew up in a world that mostly just kept getting better and seem to have decided that was down to their own special ingenuity, not to the investments that had already been made in them. So of course they don’t feel much obligation to do the same for the next generation - they don’t really recognize what was done for them in the first place.

Yes, there are plenty of exceptions, many who do things like help their kids with a large down payment. But taken as a cohort, the generation that benefited most from decades of public investment and the explosive asset growth that followed really does seem the most reluctant to invest in anyone but themselves.

I’ve never quite understood how that could be so strongly true of just one generation more than others (though of course every age has its takers). I don’t get why they don’t seem to care at all about what they leave behind. The best way I can make sense of it is that they lived through such a long run of unprecedented growth they just don’t understand what it takes to create that. Anyone who builds for the future instead of maximising the present looks, to them, like they’re being taken advantage of on a collective scale you don’t really see in other generations.

I see a lot of hand-wringing lately about shared identity and shared values, but I really think a lot of what gets swept into that is just us all fighting more as we feel less secure thanks to this generationally unprecedented self-interest. Where some people see a culture war, I think it’s mostly what happens when the rent is just too damn high.

I’ve always thought it was actually a strength that our shared identity wasn’t built on anything mystical or ceremonial. I think it mostly centred around the idea that anyone from anywhere had a real chance at a good life here.

Some might dismiss that as hollow, but I think that’s a bit glib, honestly, because it actually implies a lot - and all of it good.

It implies an openness - that willingness to let people from anywhere make a go of it if they’re willing to put in the work.

It implies a belief that actually being able to get ahead on your own terms matters more than collective conformity (I know plenty of people hate that, but I don’t). It matters for the person living their own life, and it matters for a society that still wants to create new things instead of just protecting what already exists.

It implies a sense that where you came from doesn’t stop where you go next. A sense that where you start doesn’t determine where you end up.

That was Canadian values, to me. And we’re losing it. The loss of the cottage - and everything it represented - is a big part of that.

At the risk of being reductive, I really do think that more than people want to admit, what many keep trying to frame as culture or values or whatever is actually just down to whether the economy is working or not.

The waning ubiquity of “the cottage” encapsulates that perfectly. It was a symbol of just how healthy a middle class economy we used to have, that almost everyone at least knew what you meant when you were going “up north”. It wasn’t some secret routine of elites - it was the common privilege of many.

So many of us were able to thrive together because most people had a real chance to thrive on their own. We’re losing that as people’s odds narrow. It’s hard to take any kind of chance when you can barely make rent. Harder still when commercial rents are ridiculous and every basic input cost has gone feral. And it’s almost unthinkable that anyone in my generation still clinging to the middle class will be able to keep a family cottage when a regular house still costs an insulting amount.

It lands with the same kind of gut-level insult when boomers, like my mother, will openly admit that when it comes down to it, they just want things like OAS because they want it. They don’t care if it works. They want it anyway.

I really don’t like to just whine about things like this. I generally prefer to make the best of what I can rather than lament what I don’t have. I know I have it better than many people. I know many people never had a cottage to lose, or reject.

I still feel a sense of loss for a country where it was at least normal enough for people to have one that those who didn’t felt left out. I guess I’d rather our normal be that little bit of extra being achievable, instead of the basics being hard to maintain. Of course that was better for some than others, but really it was also better for everyone. A world where maybe not everyone had that, but it was much more possible to imagine you could.

Anyway. That’s where my mind is, heading into another holiday season where we’ll be confronted with much of the same again. Looking forward, in that very particular way, to visiting parents who expect to be treated the way their parents treated them, with absolutely no sense of duty to give what their parents gave. Looking backward at a cottage I’m not even sure I want anymore, even if I do inherit it.

As usual, our formerly beloved screened porch was boarded up after Thanksgiving. It gives a kind of pending finality to a feeling I’ve had on every visit lately. I catch myself wondering if that will end up being the last time I was ever there. Sometimes I even hope a tree will fall on it over the winter so the decision gets made for me. It’s the same feeling I have about the wider economy - the quiet wish that the long-overdue crash would just finally happen so we can stop propping up things that died years ago and start building something new.

Maybe that wider feeling is why my partner and I finally decided we’re not doing Christmas Day with my family anymore. We’re going to start new traditions so that maybe holidays can be something we enjoy instead of something we dread. At some point, you stop showing up to traditions that ask everything of you and give nothing back. You stop inheriting obligations that were never updated for the world you actually live in. You stop pretending the porch is cosy when it’s actually really uncomfortable and you don’t even want to be there anymore.

If the old middle class life - cottage and all - is gone, then maybe the only choice left is to build a new kind of life that doesn’t require escaping it on weekends. Something less precarious, less performative, less about hanging on to things that no longer make sense.

If a new economy is ever going to exist, it won’t be because the old one was patched together for one more season. It’ll be because it finally fell apart and left room for us to put new things in its place.

I've always felt, and even more so the longer I live, that I understand bigger ideas more deeply through the lens of personal experience. I know that can annoy some people - like, who cares about your little life? We’re talking about serious stuff here, not your anecdata. But that’s just how I think. And when it comes to understanding something, there’s a difference between grasping it intellectually and truly “getting it”, through living it.

Take, for example, my experience with math and science (or, perhaps I should say, my chosen lack thereof). Back when I took such courses, getting high marks always came fairly easily for me, at least to the level I took them (which wasn’t very far). And this isn’t bragging - I wasn’t particularly interested, and did well without working all that hard. It’s not a point of pride, just a fact that while I don’t naturally gravitate toward the technical, I generally find it easy enough to understand.

This was true enough that my choice to pursue a creative field was lamented by some of my teachers at the time, as well as a friend who dubbed me a "waste of a brain" - particularly, I think, because I was a girl/am a woman, and it was in vogue to encourage more women to break up sausage parties.

A big part of why I didn’t was that I didn’t like the mindset common among those who gravitated toward more tech-y fields. There was a tendency to believe that to get ahead in life, you had to forgo actually living. Their life plans often sounded miserable - more like something to get through, than something to enjoy.

If I’m honest, that’s really why I never seriously considered that path. Spending too much time around that mindset just wasn’t good for me. It didn’t fit how I wanted to live; I found it limiting and depressing.

I preferred being around creative people because they tended to be more open and well-rounded. They knew what they were good at - but were also more humble about what they weren’t.

Indeed, what I found most trying about many of the so-called smart kids (the ones in the “hard subjects”) was the too-common assumption that their intelligence was universal - that they could do what my creative friends did too, if only they weren’t so focused on more “serious” things.

But as someone who was at least reasonably good at both, I knew better. Much as many of my creative friends lacked the aptitude for the more technical, these “smart kids” lacked it for the creative - but it wasn’t as common to acknowledge the reverse. They assumed creativity was something people with nothing better to do wasted their time on. It wasn’t. It’s its own talent, its own kind of smart - and they didn’t have it.

I figured that, for me and what I chose to pursue, it would be more of a niche to be someone in a creative field who actually understood both. I felt I was using my brain more fully this way, rather than “hunkering down” and committing to the “hard stuff” that I didn’t find hard - just less engaging.

I don’t mean this as a value judgment, truly. We need people who have more of a dedication to minutiae than I am capable of committing myself to. But I also know that way of thinking has its shortcomings. That kind of intense focus can lead to precision, sure, but it can also lead to an inability to see beyond what’s currently under the microscope.

And I don’t think we can say this type of person has been undervalued. My entire adult life has basically been their era. But I think that era is fading. The moment now belongs to those who prioritize new ways of understanding rather than clinging to "best practices" that only reinforce what’s already been seen and done.

I ended up in university just before the era of big data really took hold - when talk of how data would change the world still had a distinctly utopian tone. What I chose to study was an approach to design that was research driven, but qualitative - putting findings in context, valuing insights that would guide the design over data for its own sake. We were absolutely enthralled by all the things we imagined we could do with the benefit of so much information.

What all that data and analytics (note I didn’t say analysis) has done instead, to me, is make us think we know more than we do. Looking for context now somehow seems anti-science, anti-expert - when really, we need to remember that some people are better with precision, and others are better at navigating uncertainty.

It’s worth repeating that there’s an important distinction between those who simply enjoy the technical, and those who treat being on that side like a badge of superiority. The ones who bored me were usually in that second camp - not the people who were genuinely interested in it for its own sake (and I’m sure I would have met more of those if I’d pursued that side more seriously myself).

However, later applying the kind of design I’d learned to work in healthcare design and communications reminded me again just how many technical people don’t think that way. Far too many I met through that experience assumed that being good at their field meant they’d automatically be good at everything.

Let me tell you, I thought about that a lot during Covid - when the gap between technical certainty and lived reality was on full display.

Too many of the things presented as scientific simply weren’t. They were moral judgments, not technical ones. There was no way to empirically prove someone’s grandma would die because you took your kid to a park - it was just that too many in power didn’t feel those kinds of “what ifs” were worth the risk, while deeply undervaluing the “what if” of things like what happens to kids who can’t go to school, can’t go to parks, and don’t really interact with the wider world beyond their little bubble for years during key developmental phases.

I don’t think politicians deferring to health bureaucrats should have been the ones making that kind of call. It was something we all should have thought about more carefully and insisted on having a much bigger say in - what was a worthwhile trade-off and what wasn’t. These were far too complex a set of questions to leave to people so prone to if/when, black-and-white thinking.

By refusing to adequately weigh risks beyond a single disease, I really do think we failed the trolley problem - though that’s not something any data model could ever truly capture.

Everyone was expected to fully comply without question with what was, in truth, mostly catastrophic thinking and hypochondriac behaviour - the product of handing too much power to overly precise people who were thrilled to finally force the world to conform to their neat little constructs of how life should work.

Free from the burden of dealing with real-life messiness, they relished being listened to - finally acknowledged as the always-right ones they believed themselves to be.

This kind of technocratic overreach - authoritarian in practice, even if framed as neutral and evidence-based - is what ultimately lost the argument for the technocratic side as the sane, safe, stable option.

It was the very people who presented themselves as a safeguard against chaos who ended up disrupting lives more than even the Trumps of the world ever could.

Under their “careful” watch, nobody could reliably plan for or look forward to anything - not even an outdoor, drive-through light show was safe.

More seriously - life trajectories were permanently altered in the name of an “abundance of caution”. Many businesses never recovered. Relationships were strained or lost. Milestones - personal, academic, and professional - were delayed or erased, often at the most formative moments of people’s lives. There are things people will never get back.

But instead of empathy for any of this, there was condescension if anyone so much as questioned whether it all really needed to go quite that far - as if absolutely every measure taken was both unavoidable and obviously correct.

Some seemed to feel that anyone who questioned anything at all may as well just die. Not even Trump has gone quite that far against those who oppose him (yet).

Protecting lives should have meant equally considering the fullness of the lives being lived - not just how well people could live in service of a preferred model.

That, I believe, is a big part of what led to him being elected again, more decisively than the first time.

Which is why, though I remain insulted that someone like Trump even exists - let alone succeeds - I nonetheless find it harder to muster the same outrage over his every new affront to normalcy than I did the first time around.

Normal has long since become a distant memory.

Basically, "the right people" took authoritarianism out for a spin, then clutched their pearls when someone like Trump got the keys next.

I think they believed that because they’re technical, rules-based people, they didn’t actually have to follow the rules. Like it was fine if they broke them - because they knew how. And while that might hold in terms of expertise, it can never hold in terms of society.

I don’t get to decide who deserves to live or die just because I’m Dexter and I’m arguably better at it. Vigilantism is still a door we shouldn’t open.

So now, when Trump does things like invoke wartime powers for deportations, and the opposition (correctly) insists such tools should be reserved for war - even though I agree, I have to say my sense of solidarity with them isn’t what it used to be.

I can’t help but think of how many were all too happy to let emergency powers drag on for years. Because it seemed easier than doing the hard work of convincing people, adapting policy, or facing trade-offs head-on.

It’s not that I actually think it should be a free-for-all now. More like, well, if you normalize using emergency powers that way, you can’t be surprised when others you don’t agree with start doing the same for their own ends.

Trump and his ilk aren’t the opposite of the technocratic class that governed the pandemic response - they’re the other side of the same coin. Both operate from a place of certainty, not caution. Both think the rules don’t apply to them, because they believe they’re the ones who know best.

This is the world those technocrats helped bring about. By putting us under the thrall of an old-timey threat like a pandemic - clinging to control, ignoring trade-offs, pushing limits they shouldn’t have - they set the stage for us to now be similarly thrown into daily chaos over the old-timey threat of tariffs.

They set us back. To Trump - and maybe even further.

That’s why I can’t get behind the idea that the answer lies in putting the Mark Carneys of the world back in charge. I get the appeal - stability, order, spreadsheets - but it was that very faith in numbers over nuance, models over reality, that helped get us here.

Carney might have made an okay prime minister in a different time. But his approach doesn’t feel suited to now. It’s not just dated - it represents the very mindset that caused many of the problems we’re facing. He’s focused on preserving what we have, not leading us toward the meaningful change we need - as shown by his administration’s stubborn stance that housing prices must be preserved at all costs.

But we’re clearly entering a period where a lot is going to have to change. Carney just isn’t the guy for that. He’s the defend-what-we-have guy (“elbows up!”), not the imagine-something-new-to-meet-a-shifting-global-order guy.

Deferring too much to what we know - “the facts” - ignores that facts can change. It prioritizes what has been over what could be. And I don’t think any of us can count on the way things used to be anymore.

The world order has already shifted. Trump’s chaotic approach to global trade only deepened the cracks in an economic system long propped up by US stability.

But it was Covid that first fractured it - showing just how hollow that foundation had become. That we didn’t really have to keep doing things the way we always had. We now have to think more seriously about what might be possible - for better or worse.

That doesn’t mean we need the Doug Fords of the world either. They might at least recognize the chaos, but they aren’t particularly forward-looking. Like Trump, they sometimes find a sense of direction - just with all the wrong ideas about where to go from there.

What we need now are people who can see the chaos for what it is, imagine where it might lead, and steer it toward something better - people who can think beyond the next quarter or election cycle, and who aren’t afraid to rewrite the rules when the old ones stop working.

I think a lot of people go along with too much simply because they’re not comfortable with anything technical or involving numbers. For them, the dogma of "trust the science" or "trust the experts" has to be just that - because they don’t have the ability to follow it, let alone question it.

I’m sure many people, like me, also just don’t want to micromanage every little thing. I’m perfectly capable of doing my own taxes, but I pay someone else to do them because I don’t want to - and I assume he’s more likely to stay on top of changing rules than I am. I’m sure he makes some minor errors here and there, but I don’t go over his work like a teacher grading homework. His track record is solid enough that I trust he’s doing a good job overall.

If anything ever seemed off, though, or if the logic behind something didn’t seem to add up - I’d absolutely question it, respectfully. I’m comfortable with my ability to ask informed questions. Many people aren’t. And I’m also confident enough to listen to the answer and be open to being wrong.

What I take issue with are experts who get mad at being questioned. Do you know more than me about your field? Of course. But maybe I see something you don’t - fresh eyes, and all that. Or maybe you’ve stepped outside your lane, and now this actually is more my area than yours.

The idea that the economy is overly rational or predictable is cute - when really, markets follow moods.

The Covid-era fantasy that you could just flick the economy on and off like a switch was always going to blow a fuse. And that’s only been worsened by the collapse of the economic world order as we knew it, with the loss of the US as a grounding force for the global economy.

Too much is assumed to be rational when it’s not.

Like the idea that houses cost what they do because of input costs. In reality, a lot of those costs only rose because they could, when prices were high. When the crash comes, they’ll fall too - because they’ll have to.

Feelings make facts.

They shape how people behave, vote, spend, react, and what they believe to be true. No hard data outweighs what people feel is possible.

If people feel unsafe, they avoid places or demand policy changes, even when crime is low.

If investors feel confident or panicked, markets shift, no matter the fundamentals.

If a population feels hopeful or hopeless, it shows in birth rates, innovation, and migration.

Feelings aren’t facts, but they make facts real by shaping what happens next.

The things I saw on March 12th, 2020, at the Yorkville Whole Foods will amuse and amaze me forever.

One that stood out was a guy with his shopping cart full to an extent I never even realized was possible - absolutely stuffed to the brim with packs upon packs of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, the remainder of the space filled with myriad protein and energy drinks. Another was a lady just as clearly concerned she’d run out of kale and sweet potatoes as that man was about his gains, seemingly having put all the store had of those two items into her cart, similarly packed to absolute capacity.

I’ll always remember it not only as hilarious, but as a vivid snapshot of that first wave of panic buying, when people were desperately trying to hold on to whatever version of normal they could. And I think that’s still what we’re doing now. But we can’t count on what we’re used to anymore.

We can’t just stockpile normal. If we want something worth holding on to, we have to stop clinging to scraps of the past and start reaching - not for whatever we can cobble together from leftovers, but for fresher, more exciting things.

We can do more than just salvage. We can create.

I grew up believing that new appliances must be insanely expensive, because my parents were fixated on repairing (rather than replacing) things well past their prime. It wasn’t about frugality (though I’m sure they’d argue otherwise); it was more about procrastination and short-term thinking. They acted like replacing something would always be the bigger hassle - preferring to work with what they had, even if it barely worked.

Once I was grown, I was genuinely puzzled to discover that many of these appliances were actually quite cheap (relatively speaking). So why then, I wondered, did they willfully choose the constant and unpredictable disruption of repairs? It all seems so silly in retrospect, considering the cost of all those repairs could have paid for new models many times over - and that this would have been a far more reliable (and far less frustrating) way to deal with things.

There was so much unnecessary drama, like when the nice clothes I bought as a teenager with money from my little candle shop job were ruined - more than once - by our faulty washing machine. The sustained squabbles that inevitably followed, especially when I suggested paying to replace whatever machine was once again on the fritz, still baffle me. I was always told I didn’t understand the true cost - but as it turns out, it was actually me who did.

Despite myself, I too - being human - still sometimes put off fixing things (though nowhere near as much as my parents did), building up in my mind how stressful it will be to deal with them. But every time I finally just do what needs doing, I wonder why I waited so long. The effort is always worth it, ultimately making my life easier - even if it’s a bit of an ordeal in the moment. At least I no longer have the stress of worrying about it, knowing there’s one less thing hanging over my head that I can’t avoid forever.

We all like to avoid stress. Even more, we like to avoid pain. But refusing to face things often ends up causing more of both than it defers.

About a year and a half ago, I argued that we’ve let our housing crisis get so bad that a crash is now our least bad option to solve it. At the time, fewer people were willing to think this was even possible, let alone say it. But now, as it looks increasingly likely, what too many people are still saying is that anyone hoping for it clearly doesn’t understand that it will affect way more of the economy than just housing.

But I’ve actually become increasingly convinced of my own thesis precisely because a housing crash would upend our wider economy - and I believe it needs that level of reset to work again.

A big part of the reason I feel this way is that otherwise, we're asking people who never had the same opportunities to succeed to endure long-term pain so those who had the luxury to make bad choices can avoid their consequences.

It’s like teen me, watching the nice clothes I worked hard to buy get ripped up yet again in the spin cycle of doom my parents refused to deal with - writ large, and writ much more important.

I’ve also written before about how the housing crisis has left many without a fair chance to get ahead, but what bothers me more and more is the resignation creeping into conversations about it. More people than ever voice their worries about the crisis, along with the broader issue of the rising cost of living. But too often, there’s a hint of “well, what can you do?” in their tone - when in reality, we can do a lot.

The problem is that the most meaningful solution - prices coming down significantly - remains unspeakable to those more worried about people who promised themselves they could retire on their house value than about those who will never have a chance at a stable home or retirement.

I don’t think anyone will do anything meaningful about it, though - a feeling reinforced by recent, increasingly desperate moves across all levels of government in Canada, along with similarly desperate interventions propping up barely less fragile housing markets across the wider Western world.

Which is exactly why I feel we need something to force change. The machine needs to break, or we’ll keep getting subjected to the same cycle over and over again.

Because it’s quite obvious our governments will do absolutely anything to prop up our overly housing-focused economy for as long as they possibly can, beyond all reason - keeping us all spinning our wheels in futility.

One (almost too) commonly cited wrench in the works of Canada’s sputtering economic engine is immigration, and of the temporary variety in particular.

Our Temporary Foreign Worker Program, (all too) famously dubbed a "breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery” is just one part of a much broader, deliberate effort to inflate the economy through human capital.

Even more problematic, more heavily used - yet somehow far less discussed - is the International Mobility Program, which has brought over a million temporary workers into Canada without even requiring a Labour Market Impact Assessment (which itself has proven exploitative at its core).

These labour market pressures, along with the massive increase in international students, haven’t just boosted profits for businesses (and universities) - they’ve also kept housing costs elevated. More precarious temporary residents are crammed into overpriced rentals, while wealthier ones help sustain high home prices by entering the market as buyers.

Basically, when the government’s use of quantitative easing through monetary policy to defer the consequences of Covid lockdowns led to the expected inflationary outcomes, they shifted to the human equivalent of quantitative easing.

I suspect this was all done to ensure their preferred method of controlling inflation - wage suppression - would prevail over any possibility of prices coming down, particularly in housing (which, it should be noted, was their top priority, over even PPE, when the pandemic hit).

And now, while our federal government is set to clamp down on its own immigration policies, there’s evidence that these actions may be more about saving face than learning from mistakes.

With fewer international students arriving of their own accord and fewer temporary residents opting to apply for permanent status - likely because they’re seeing just how hard it is to thrive here - the government seems to have figured they may as well take the political gain if the economic fallout is inevitable anyway.

This all seems to prove that real progress might only happen through forces beyond their control - like a crash. Governments won’t choose to fix housing - but it might just fix itself in spite of them.

We’re already seeing reductions in students and workers affecting rents, university budgets, and businesses that had grown used to ever-surging demand - and the commensurate rise in their whining about its absence. This seems to contradict what I remember being told - that poorly planned immigration was just a scapegoat, not a cause of our eroding quality of life.

It’s similar to how we’ve been told the issue with housing is simply that we need to build more - more than we ever could - and that our poor, altruistic developers just can’t build for affordable prices without more favourable policies.

Even though falling rents following slowed immigration show that supply and demand play a role, the bigger issue remains the financialization of housing - a reality this framing tends to downplay.

I think discussions around things like development charges or land transfer taxes do have some merit, but they’re closer to being scapegoats, themselves. While these costs contribute to rising prices, they aren't the real problem.

Ultimately, developers aren’t holding off on new housing supply because of an extra $25K here or there - they’re waiting until they can sell what they build at the same inflated prices, overall.

Blaming development charges is like offering a GST holiday - it’s a token gesture that doesn’t address the underlying problem. It reflects a broader belief that inflation is inevitable and deflation is somehow worse, so we end up with temporary “breaks” instead of the lasting solutions we actually need.

This feels reminiscent of trickle-down economics - and the odd reverence for drug companies during Covid (now contrasted with the celebrated murder of the insurance company guy). Just like I’m still the kind of vintage liberal who doesn’t entirely trust big drug companies to be well-intentioned, I don’t buy the idea that cutting development charges will ultimately lead to savings being passed down - especially if the market were to rebound.

“Fixes” like these essentially keep prices exactly where they are - just without the taxes. Every part of the development process has adjusted to inflated costs, with too many thirsty people blaming each other for draining the well.

It’s not, in any gestalt sense, about whether we can build more affordably. Homes aren’t fundamentally unaffordable because of add-ons like development charges, taxes, or fees - they’re unaffordable at their core because base prices were allowed to become so ridiculously inflated that everything in the system - including, but far from limited to, these secondary factors - has been built around the "certainty" of maintaining or pushing them even higher.

This mentality explains why we’ve compromised our once enviable immigration system - not to foster innovation or address real needs, but to prop up unsustainable businesses that rely on suppressed wages. Governments prioritize controlling inflation in ways that protect housing and asset values, instead of fostering an economy where innovation and productivity can thrive.

It’s also why an older cousin of mine and her husband - who, with very average jobs and salaries, were able to buy a home in the suburbs affordably before prices shot up - felt encouraged to use their gifted equity (via HELOC) to fund things like installing a pool, tearing it out, and then putting in yet another one. They’d still have a comfortable life if home prices hadn’t skyrocketed - but they wouldn’t be so awash in luxury.

Meanwhile, a younger cousin, working harder in a more forward-thinking, competitive field, is now considering moving back to their parents’ house at 30 - with their partner, who’s in a similar position.

We’re trapped in an economy where it’s sink or swim - but the pull of the status quo drags new energy and ideas under.

When assets and schemes make more money than actual work, why bother putting in the effort? Our real estate-driven economy rewards grift over productivity, stifling innovation and leaving younger generations with little hope if they lack the means to buy in and play a role in keeping the whole thing afloat.

Your utility as a younger person is to sustain this cycle - not to disrupt it.

And yet, millennials - the next largest generation - have managed to push for some changes, much to the dismay of older generations. The post-Covid paradigm shift to remote work persists, despite the best efforts of those desperate to protect the value of commercial property and the condos they bought around it.

We need to lean into this momentum. Let the parts of the system that no longer work - or that we no longer want to work - fail entirely. Stop buying in.

This is exactly what they don’t want. It’s why they insist on calling what we’re experiencing a "vibecession" rather than the actual recession it is. They want you to feel it makes sense to spend your money now - not wait for better options and opportunities - because waiting is what crashes economies.

The idea of millennials “killing” things used to be a running joke - from napkins and processed cheese to diamonds. But the truth is, we haven’t killed nearly enough. We’ve been held back by a system skewed to preserve the status quo for older generations with assets, leaving younger generations without a real chance to change it.

I’ll note that the only things we’ve truly managed to decisively kill are the ones we could simply stop buying - unlike work, which isn’t something you can easily opt out of entirely. Some we didn’t want, and many more we simply couldn’t afford.

If we refuse to act as the perpetual fix for this faltering system, it will inevitably start to spin out. Once the powerful have less paper wealth to throw at keeping it going, we’ll inherently gain more power to override it.

That’s why the whining from developers, investors, businesses, and policymakers is getting louder. All the desperate moves we’re seeing suggest we’re closer to a crash than many realize. We likely only need to hold out a little while longer to let this happen - and finally see some real change.

Don’t let them convince you this is your last, best chance to buy anything. The rhetoric of “just make the monthly payments” ignores how quickly things like interest rates can change - and how devastating that can be if you’ve paid too high a price (a lesson we should all have learned by now). If enough of us wait, better opportunities will come sooner than you think. Don’t respond to anything but real price drops.

When faced with anything you really must buy or rent, ignore any inflationary rhetoric. Lowball. A price is only set when someone agrees to pay it.

This shift has already started on its own - because, once again, we simply can’t afford things as they are. But it’s also because we’re realizing they just aren’t worth it. The deal we’re being offered isn’t the same. Housing isn’t a source of stability for us - it’s a constant strain, even for the "lucky ones”, leaving little room for anything else we might need or want in life.

That’s why things are falling apart so easily with historically still rather low interest rates. Nobody can afford the extras anymore - which is exactly why we’re seeing measures like a GST holiday targeting those very extras.

If you’re on the edge of any housing-related decision, always take the option - at least for now - that involves not buying in or refusing to pay more. We’re on the brink - just a little more pressure will tip it over.

We’ve designed an economy dependent on maintaining extreme, unsustainable conditions in perpetuity - ensuring established generations never have to take a little less, even if it means the rest of us never have enough.

The housing system isn’t sustainable, and neither is the economy that depends on it. Let it break - and let’s finally replace it with something that doesn’t tear us apart, as my clothes once were, by decisions not our own.

There have been far more prominent voices in real estate circles than mine, such as @ManyBeenRinsed - affectionately known as Woes - who has been warning people for years about the threat of getting “rinsed” by bad investments and market volatility. His sharp, darkly humorous insights have earned him a loyal following for good reason - he’s mostly been right.

But while Woes focuses on cautioning people about the risks of buying into cycles that have run their course, I want to emphasize - because it really should be acknowledged more - the opportunity a crash could present if enough of us choose not to.

Just like my parents should have replaced that old washing machine instead of pouring money into endless repairs, we need to face the reality of our outdated economy. It might be more than a bit of an ordeal in the moment, but in the end, it’s likely the rinse we need to finally come out clean.

I’m tired of living in a cycle where people who “sound the alarm” about the danger of cute little corner shops get way too much traction. We need a de facto wealth redistribution to make progress. Capitalism is supposed to involve resets like this - to keep things improving and evolving.

Crashes are like waves - destructive at first, but they clear the way for calm waters and new shores. Let’s ride this one out and finally build a future for those of us who will still be around to see it.

Maybe it's just that algorithms still tend to offer me way too much edgelord content due to my less-than-popular stance on Covid restrictions and the outlets that shared them, but it really feels like there is way too much talk about moving backward lately.

Generally, I am pretty content to either just ignore or engage with the sillier stuff I am recommended in bemused interest, but some ideas do get to me more than others. One such idea I've been hit with a bit more than I'd like is “cultural Christianity”.

A prominent recent example is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born critic of Islam, previously strongly associated with the new atheist movement. Recently, she has expressed more positive views on Christianity, seeing it as a potential tool in defending Western values and freedoms.

What irks me is the traction this idea seems to be gaining amid recent concerns over pro-Palestine rallies across the Western world, sometimes rightly seen as pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic. 

Even Richard Dawkins, despite being one of the most prominent atheists (and still disagreeing with Ali on religion) has described himself as a cultural Christian to highlight Christianity's relative benefits over other religions - though, given his opinion of other religions, it's probably more like comparing a societal cold to a serious flu than promoting a cure (but I digress).

This is driven by the idea that these demonstrations are ostensibly anti-Western and pro-Islam, rather than merely advocating for Palestinian rights - and that Islam is not a “fundamentally decent” religion like Christianity.

As per Ali, we face a moral vacuum (often filled by such movements, along with, in her view, the “woke” who enable them) because we've stopped emphasizing traditional moral frameworks and have struggled to provide effective secular alternatives. 

Those who buy into this tend to think that our collective struggle to find meaning is due to a lack of religion or a “god-shaped hole”, as they find it challenging to cope or find purpose within the freedoms of liberalism.

But I believe the real issue is our recent failure to celebrate what actually makes us unique and successful in the West - especially our freedom to express diverse opinions, including these kinds of views. I, for one, appreciate that people who think this way can voice their thoughts, and that I am just as free to see such views as stemming more from personal needs than making a convincing case for a wider need for religion.

I feel they themselves aren't appreciating or even understanding the true significance and meaning of our Western values and freedoms if they argue that we need to push one religious view to fight another. By suggesting that only a return to a more Christian society can fill a moral vacuum and defend Western values, they undermine the very liberal principles that allow for their own diversity of beliefs and expressions.

Maybe too much exposure to the edge-o-sphere really has gotten to me, but I feel (uncharacteristically) compelled to paraphrase George W. Bush here: that would be letting the terrorists win.

In this way, the people who support a renewed push for Christian social dominance have too much in common with both the creeping Islamist views they fear and the “woke” people they believe are enabling this to happen.

I don’t really care to get into the weeds of what are often deeply jargonistic theological arguments over the truth of religion, as either Ali or Dawkins might. My most important argument about religion has always been that it does not make people’s lives better. People often argue about whether religion is true, but I fundamentally don’t think it’s good for people, writ large. I prefer to observe and pontificate on what people actually do and what that means for our responses - and my real problem with religion as a social framework is that it isn’t responsive enough.

It’s not that I have a problem with anyone believing what they want - it’s that I think the people converging around the idea that we need to push any particular belief, or fixate on the origin of our ideology, are missing what has historically been great about Western civilization - which is that we move on and don't get stuck.

In a way, this adaptability once reached its apex in Canada. For people from other places or those conditioned to expect more restrictive social norms, it can be hard to understand. The way we have typically done things is, actually, by not having a specific way of doing things. We adapted, grew, and changed. We took the best from everywhere and were very open to criticizing the worst of everything. Our problem now is that we've stopped doing this.

We are now so focused on condemning every misstep in our past that we lose sight of context, nuance, and the bigger picture. People in the past, however imperfect, did some good things that got us to where we are today.

An example that comes to mind is the decision still being heatedly debated by the Toronto city council to rename Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square.

The push to besmirch the name of Henry Dundas is in itself quite silly. While some criticize him for delaying the abolition of the British slave trade by advocating for a gradual approach, this strategy was a political compromise that ultimately garnered enough support to pass key legislation - and thus, Dundas's pragmatic approach was instrumental in achieving significant progress against slavery.

But replacing his name with the term Sankofa is an almost perfect parody of how we now fail to see any good in our past while being willfully blind to any flaws in other cultures.

The term is Ghanaian and means “learning from the past”, which is actually pretty ironic when what we are doing is rewriting the past - idealizing any "other" place without recognizing its own complexity - attempting to make everything the West did seem bad and everything from anywhere else seem good.

This idealization paints a romanticized picture of simplicity and moral purity but ignores the human messiness (and agency) of any society but our own - and that moral failures aren't a privilege exclusive to Western societies.

While the term may sound nice, and we can all get behind “learning from the past”, I question if that's truly our intention when we consider erasing the name of a person who helped end slavery in Britain and thus here in Canada before we even became a country, with a term from a tribe with no connection to Canada, in a country that only began its own gradual abolition process 81 years later than we did.

I also just find it frustrating to get held back by distractions like this. As our mayor has pointed out, the city of Toronto is broke. If there is an argument to spend any money or effort on the square, it should be focused on enhancing the experience for residents and visitors today. What has always made us great, and a better place to live for so many people with roots from all over the world, is that we look forward, not backward.

We need to celebrate how far our more open values, where we can question everything and hold nothing sacred, have brought us from insular thinking. You can’t fight fire with fire, and you can’t fight regressive ideologies with regressive ideologies. In the end, we're all lucky to live in a better place because the people who came here before us moved away from more restrictive and sectarian cultures to build a more open one.

Closing it off now - whether you are on the side obsessed with using the past as an excuse for bad behaviour today, or the side enthralled with a particular piece of our past because they don’t like how things are working today - will not make this a better place for any of us. Sanctifying other cultures while dehumanizing our own ignores our achievements and progress, distorting our understanding of history and humanity.

Don't get me wrong; I have my issues with how things are working too. I just think a big part of why we have those issues is that no one wants to say anything positive about our collective efforts anymore, especially about those who don't share their views. 

We need to feel good, to emphasize how we are all capable of good, in order to have the motivation to build better things together. While it's important to acknowledge and address our problems, it's equally crucial to recognize our shared achievements and potential.

I see a similar mindset at play when some less inspiration-oriented Canadians respond to young people's concerns about the housing crisis by suggesting they should lower their expectations and accept less for themselves - that perhaps they just have to get used to living with several generations of family members, in smaller spaces, or sharing accommodations.

They argue that young people should just adjust to these conditions, rather than expecting the kind of single-family home luxury their parents enjoyed, on the basis that more austere arrangements are common in other parts of the world. So who are we to expect better?

It's the same dismissive, defeatist attitude on display recently in Calgary, where people have been urged to drastically cut their water usage for nearly a month now following the rupture of the city's largest water main, given a real threat that they could run out of water. Many of their fellow citizens dismiss complaints about the fact that this was allowed to happen and how long it is taking to fix, on the grounds that there is no comparison to third-world drinking water conditions.

But there's nothing entitled or elitist about expecting better governance in our relatively wealthy country. 

The West, led by America and including Canada (though to a lesser extent), has historically been a beacon for those seeking opportunities to dream and achieve more. We were meant to be a place where anyone from around the world could come and, if we all worked hard enough, expect a better future. This is what seems to be slipping away - not so much a sense of tribal belonging, but a more fundamental belief that effort can lead to shared advancement, regardless of one's background.

It's crucial to acknowledge that this was, and should remain, our path towards a better society, providing the motivation to continue working together towards improvement. 

Canada is not simply “so-called”, as it has become fashionable to dismissively and disrespectfully delegitimize our status as a recognized, sovereign country. It’s a place we built together, and even if how we came to be a country isn’t perfect - that is the story of every place, in every time, and every group of people.

It’s debilitating to fixate on all the things that are wrong, to obsess over all the people you think are wrong, without always keeping an eye on how we can make things better. This, I believe, is a significant reason why so many feel we are broken, and why we are allowing things to break down - including our infrastructure, economy, and social fabric. What we need to unite over is our capacity to move forward collectively.

The story of the Canadian flag has always resonated with me, especially as a designer, because it represents a pivotal moment in Canadian history where we chose to celebrate who we are as a country, rather than where we came from. The iconic red and white Maple Leaf flag marked a significant departure from the previous Red Ensign, which was too much about our ties to Britain and not enough uniquely ours. This new flag symbolized a united and independent nation, embracing its own identity and more diverse heritage. It is a powerful reminder that we are a country built on the principle of progress, always looking forward to a better future.

So, in that spirit, and because it’s Canada Day, I am going to spend some time today thinking a bit less about everything we are doing wrong, and put a bit more effort into appreciating all the things we still get right - and considering how we can amplify them. 

Because it isn’t productively motivating to focus solely on what’s wrong - and, lord knows, we have enough of a productivity problem as it is.

I am immediately recognizable as someone who just fits better in a city. I don’t drive, I enjoy a variety of random, unusual things, and even if you didn’t know I was a designer, you’d probably guess that I am one pretty quickly.

So, when I've mused to people who know me well, or even just casually, or randomly in an Uber, about moving to a smaller town, or even just a smaller city, people immediately tell me they can't see it, insisting I would hate it.

They’re probably right. But I also look around the city I live in and see its appeal as more of a memory than a current reality.

Given that I am, apparently, quite palpably a "city person”, I suspect this shift is less about me changing and more about the reality that even many well-paid people here in Toronto (as in many urban Western areas) can barely afford to keep a roof over their heads, let alone enjoy the reasons they’re paying a premium to do so in a city.

The things people like me love about urban life - the culture, convenience, and connectivity - are fading as fewer and fewer people can manage to support them.

Many who claim to want to revive the city seem to be looking backward as the way forward. They think we just need to push people to commute to offices to do work they can just as easily (and often more effectively) do from home, to force them to support businesses that exist solely because the offices do.

Or maybe they believe that bringing interest rates back down to the unsustainably low levels that enabled us to build too many cubbyhole condos that no one wants to live in - ostensibly to reduce commutes to the offices people don’t want to go to, but really, to sell off our city bit by bit to investors - will fix it.

But both the era of artificially low interest rates that spurred excessive condo development and the established North American city structure centered around office commutes are relics of old economic models we've entrenched beyond their utility.

Our break from commuting during Covid, and the later break from seemingly endless increases in real estate prices thanks to inflation-fighting measures that were needed as a result of heavily inflationary Covid policies, made it clear just how artificially extended both of these accepted norms were. Trying to force us back to things that happened more organically before feels like we are being compelled to act out an outdated script; it no longer resembles real life or genuine demand.

I want to see the city become lively like it once was, but this means restoring affordability and, more broadly, enhancing livability not only within city limits but across society. We need to think bigger and more expansively about how and where we live our lives, beyond what many advocates of urban revitalization might suggest.

There’s a part of me that suspects the future won’t be as centred around cities. It doesn’t have to be, particularly with the rise of remote work. And you can't make me believe that the only solution to climate concerns is forcing people into undesirable, diminishing living situations.

We’re being unnecessarily limited by trying to apply new environmental concerns to old models that were never designed with these issues in mind. Surely, there must be other ways.

As much as I love cities, they can't be the only places where you can live and do things without consuming too much or driving.

I am as big a fan of building the missing middle as any urbanist, housing expert, or urban planner. I think those who oppose things like fourplexes on the basis of neighbourhood character are being short-sighted, at best. But I also think those who focus too much on the urban as our sustainable future are just as limited - without considering how urban benefits can extend far beyond those borders.

Canada in particular, given our vast amount of land and total lack of mid-sized cities, is really missing an opportunity by not more fully and enthusiastically embracing the shift to completely remote work (though I believe this also applies to other Western countries like the UK, where promises to “level up” and reduce economic imbalances have fallen short of needs).

Embracing remote work would allow us to spread out and develop more areas efficiently and effectively. It could also help drive down house prices in overpriced regions, as they would need to compete with newer, more distributed communities.

We can create dense, walkable neighbourhoods in many more places than we have now. There's no need for everyone to crowd into just a few major cities, now that remote work has proven to be viable.

A shift like this would benefit not only remote workers but also those who need to commute. Building more affordable and livable places will provide everyone with better options for where to live and work. As more areas develop, new business opportunities will emerge, fostering local economies and creating jobs and services closer to home. Traffic congestion would ease as the population becomes more evenly distributed.

Overall, changing how our cities, towns, and the infrastructure between them operate, now that fewer people truly need to travel for their jobs, will create better environments for everyone.

Anyone claiming otherwise isn’t serious about making changes that are both good for the environment and great for people. Stuffing people into a glorified cell in a tower block and demonizing them for wanting more or using too much cannot be how we deal with climate change.

A development like Cathedraltown in Markham, Ontario, shows a step in the right direction, emphasizing suburban development with mixed-use buildings and pedestrian-friendly streets. However, it’s still on the outskirts of town, not fully walkable, and too car-dependent. Urbanists often complain about building out suburbs rather than cities for these reasons. While Cathedraltown represents progress, we need to do more to integrate such developments into a broader vision of sustainable, livable communities.

We need not just gentle density but gentle urbanity, built beyond existing metropolises. This is how we provide people with the spaces they want while also promoting sustainability.

Just look at the contrast between Dutch small towns and similarly sized Canadian towns - it’s striking. Even tiny Dutch towns prioritize walkability, cycling infrastructure, and vibrant community spaces, making them more livable and sustainable. There’s no real reason we can’t do this too.

There are so many possibilities for our smaller cities and towns to transform into bustling hubs of walkability and convenience. The main obstacle is a lack of will to make them work. It may be challenging, but that’s not an excuse to avoid trying.

Imagine turning neglected parcels of land within their boundaries into vibrant mixed-use developments. Picture old industrial sites reborn as community centres or modern, spacious residential units - something we've failed to build in our big cities - and outdated buildings given a new lease on life.

To keep people motivated and happy to participate in society - and even just to keep them here, given the significant outflow from said cities, and even from Canada - we need more vibrant places for them to live that promote interaction and accessibility, which they can actually afford to access and interact with.

Given that our existing bigger cities have built many more expensive dog crates in the sky that appeal to investors, developers, and (supposed) advocates of sustainability - and considering that these won’t be easy to retrofit or replace - perhaps we will need to look elsewhere to build the spaces we actually need.

Too many recent developments, including the Cathedraltown project I discussed earlier, offer only large commercial spaces that small independent businesses can't afford. If more places allow flexible zoning and create smaller, affordable commercial units, local entrepreneurs and small businesses can thrive.

In addition to more eclectic local businesses, we can also give cultural and recreational infrastructure more room to grow and flourish. New developments should include arts and entertainment venues (that have been pushed, along with artists and entertainers, out of our increasingly overpriced and soulless cities), parks, community centres, and outdoor activities that enrich quality of life.

Because improving connectivity is crucial for adopting these kinds of infill strategies beyond existing urban centres, we need to focus not just on piggybacking on existing infrastructure but also on building new infrastructure. This includes expanding roads and public transit to link smaller towns with other cities, as well as enhancing digital infrastructure to support remote work. Better internet access, improved roadways, and more efficient transit options will make these towns more attractive to people who mostly work from home, but do occasionally need to travel.

By focusing on these areas, smaller towns across Ontario and Canada can become appealing alternatives to larger cities, offering the benefits of urban living in a more relaxed, community-focused setting. This approach not only utilizes underdeveloped spaces within these towns but also helps create vibrant, sustainable communities that cater to the evolving needs of today’s population, not the expectations of the past.

In so many ways, it is dated expectations and assumptions that serve as excuses for why this couldn’t work here, why other places can have these things but we can't.

It’s clear that a lot of the resistance to change comes from a fear of people's investments losing value, whether from commercial real estate or "mom and pop" speculation on housing. Our Canadian Prime Minister admitted as much this week, overtly saying that housing needs to retain its value, regardless of affordability concerns, because it represents a significant part of people's retirement plans.

This is exactly the kind of hubristic nonsense that leaves me increasingly convinced of my own thesis that a crash might be the only way out of our housing crisis - as there's simply no will to fix it otherwise. But anything deemed “too big to fail” inevitably does, and I’m sure this hubris is likely no exception.

With Toronto’s condo market seeing rising listings and declining sales, and commercial real estate facing a crush of vacancies, I am hopeful that this absolutely parasitic part of our economy may finally be ready to crash. This only sounds odd if the current state of the economy is working for you; for a significant portion of our working population, it will make so much sense as to be taken as a given.

If a crash finally happens, we should seize the opportunity to implement the changes that have been blocked by an older generation with outdated ideas, content to settle into their comfort and silence any noise they don't want to hear. A massive crash could finally push Canada to pursue more productive initiatives, rather than propping up the prices of bungalows in the exurbs or building shoebox condos as our primary "growth" strategies driven by a settled indifference to creating real value.

Clinging to old comforts has stifled innovation, made the economy less competitive, and hindered transitions to modern systems, all while sacrificing the financial well-being of younger generations. To ensure a resilient and equitable future, we must balance the needs of all age groups. Allowing economic evolution is crucial for creating a society that benefits everyone and addresses modern challenges effectively.

This includes reevaluating some dated ideas once considered progressive. Sprawl can be innovative, building out rather than up can be beneficial, and developing smaller communities with local amenities can reduce the need for driving. Relying solely on existing infrastructure limits us; we must envision and build new, sustainable, and enjoyable ways of living, especially in Canada where there's ample space to correct urban planning mistakes.

As established, I am far from anti-urban. But I also know that pushing the wrong execution of a concept can undermine the entire argument.

My partner and I have been driving a lot between Hamilton and other smaller towns in Ontario lately, considering a move now that we both work from home. I had heard Hamilton was more urban than many others and noticed the houses there had more character than many suburbs here. But some parts have imported too much of the bad parts of urbanity and not enough of the good. I was expecting a Leslieville in Toronto circa 2006 feel - an up-and-coming neighborhood known for its gritty charm and burgeoning arts scene - transplanted to a smaller city. Instead, I got more of a Weston circa 2006 vibe - more rundown and less vibrant, with limited amenities that often required a car for accessibility.

I feel like the place I was looking for doesn’t quite exist yet. But there is no reason we can’t build it.

I'm constantly struck not just by what we don’t have, but by what we could so easily have. Driving by huge, largely empty car lots, warehouses, and office buildings, I think - really, why can’t we build big, spacious, comfortable apartments on and around these? We have the space to do so more humanely than within Toronto. Why not also develop the areas around them to include more services? The missing middle is not just a city thing. We can have more of this everywhere.

The idea that young people only want single-family homes with a backyard and need to adjust their expectations to highrises is dated and shows a generational divide. Older generations don’t understand how low we have sunk and what we would be more than happy to accept. We are more radical because we’ve been radicalized by inferior options - all because of a black-and-white view of density and urbanization on both sides of the argument.

We know we won’t have the life our parents had - that chance has already passed us by. But maybe we can have something different, but good; maybe even better.

It’s been noted that millennials pursue personal and professional passions more throughout their adult lives than holding off on exploring them after they have finished “adulting”. We can’t plan on retirement like boomers did, so we prioritize our lives now, instead of waiting for the end.

I am, frankly, amazed we’ve been this patient waiting for the basics of life to become more secure for us for as long as we have. But that won’t last forever, and I think we are reaching the end of patience as more of the “young” are approaching middle age.

The inherent frailty of an aging society means that while those clinging to older ideas may resist, they will eventually have to give in to the younger generations they increasingly rely on; youth can’t (and simply won't) be the only ones expected to sacrifice. "Not in my backyard" is destined to lose its ferocity as more of the elderly lose the ability to maintain those yards themselves, both literally and figuratively.

It’s time for those accustomed to holding power to learn to concede (while they still have a say) and find ways we can grow together, rather than letting competing priorities tear us further apart. Just because our society is aging doesn’t mean we should all be content with declining along with it.

As I, like many others, will probably always associate Covid with this time of year, just a little, I think it's important to use this reflective mood to consider what we still need to address from that disruptive period we all lived through.

I think because of its pausing nature, people tend to view that time as a separate part of their lives, something that can be encapsulated and seen as not part of the greater whole. However, it all absolutely counted, was a part of your life, and not just a diversion from it. You have to think of it all in that context.

For example, we may never fully get over the idea that certain things are optional after we were repeatedly told that almost everything we previously couldn't imagine cutting out of life was, in fact, not essential.

It has been the duty of many to demonstrate that things we were told were right at the time were actually wrong - a perspective I share.

School closures did way more damage to kids than the disease itself ever had the potential to. Similarly, limiting access to healthcare essentially ensured our now seemingly permanent restricted access to healthcare. And while I see the value in health guidelines, I've always felt that any mandates or shutdowns were a disproportionate response to the actual risk of disease.

But I want to focus a bit more on the less tangible damage done and how we all likely changed forever, because of it. Ironically, given that things like vaccine passports and the convoy brought out divisions - I suspect the extent of damage done in this respect is something we can all agree on, though it’s not being widely discussed.

I think we don’t really want to talk about it because it hurts a bit to admit that it wasn’t just a contained, separate experience; it fundamentally altered how we relate to each other, changed many people’s views of family, and weakened social bonds.

You’ll always remember who deemed you important enough to make exceptions for, and who didn’t.

It’s not merely about being for or against Covid restrictions; people on both sides discovered how little some truly valued them. It became unmistakably clear who was genuinely in their circle, or not, when it really came down to it.

Figuring out who is more or less right in the myriad of personal conflicts is ultimately unresolvable, due to the complexities of relationships and the depth of felt slights.

But the Covid experience might have crystallized other past experiences, including issues we thought we had resolved but never quite did, especially the painful ones. It served as a reminder of these uncomfortable dynamics, highlighting how much, or how little, we are truly prioritized by others.

Personally, I found it quite sobering to realize that although my family of origin was happy to include me in routine events when convenient, I couldn’t actually count on them when it really mattered. Ultimately, I wasn’t important enough for them to make any extra effort to step out of their comfort zones.

Now, they expect me to start making exceptions and going out of my way for them as I might have before, as if none of it mattered - but I just can’t. It mattered a lot. I know now that when it truly counts, they won’t choose me, and it would be foolish of me not to adjust my own priorities in response.

It's nothing new, really; I can think of many things that should have clued me in sooner. This was just what finally made it clear.

So, I'm simply no longer willing to sacrifice time for those who don’t value me as much, preferring instead to spend it with people who genuinely do, and bring more joy to my life.

I don’t want to bad-mouth any of them too specifically, even anonymously. Once I decide to distance myself from people, even without a complete disconnect, I prefer to truly move on and not dwell too much on any bitterness.

They might pretend not to understand why I’m more distant than before, but they do; I’ve made it clear. They just don’t want to listen, preferring to act as if those times didn’t count.

But it all counted - probably even more than in less eventful times. I think what people do under pressure shows who they really are, more than anything else.

And just like in a family, our broader societal family can’t truly move forward without first addressing and acknowledging the wrongs and significant harm done under the guise of good intentions, which were often, in reality, quite myopic and selfish.

Too many remain unwaveringly committed to the belief that everything done in the name of Covid was justified. I disagree with them, but even if you don’t, the extent of the unraveling since then is hard to deny.

The collective reluctance to question the necessity of any restrictions, even with hindsight, or to acknowledge that current issues may stem from them, only strengthens my belief that most people were never fully convinced of their justification. They just didn’t, and still don't, want to be the ones to question them.

Because admitting this means facing the tough reality that we might not have needed to lose years in the way we did. It's hard to admit, even to ourselves, that what was ostensibly done for the greater good might have instead caused deeper, more lasting damage.

I’ve already noted how school closures hurt kids while doing little to stop the spread of Covid, as well as how the shutdowns and delays in non-emergency procedures and treatments exacerbated the healthcare crisis by causing backlogs and increased pressure on services.

And we all understand, even if it’s left unsaid by many, that our current economic woes were made worse by fiscal stimulus and supply chain disruptions in response to Covid, which spurred inflation by increasing demand and limiting supply - although, as with healthcare,  other long-standing poor policies also contributed.

But revisiting the notion of felt slights, this time at a societal level, I can’t help but think that younger people are struggling to overlook the substantial sacrifices they made for older generations.

Even though considerable efforts were made at the time to obscure this fact, it was, and is, widely known that only the elderly and frail were ever truly at risk. Yet, older people don’t seem to feel any need to reciprocate such extraordinary efforts.

Just imagine if we treated the housing and cost of living crises, which disproportionately affect the young who haven’t had the chance to accumulate wealth and assets, with the same urgency we applied to Covid.

I would argue that affording shelter and the basic necessities of life is not only as crucial as avoiding disease, but also essential for maintaining health in the long run. However, it appears the older demographic is not willing to sacrifice any of their comforts for the younger generation’s security, even though such sacrifices were made for them.

They aren’t even willing to concede the good changes that came from our Covid response, let alone make any further, more intentional efforts.

They are still pushing people to give up the benefits of working from home - where they enjoy more time with loved ones and less commuting - for outdated practices which waste time and carbon, just to attend virtual meetings that could have been done from home, if only their geriatric boss could adapt to modern collaboration tools.

But we won't just forget that what we used to think we had to do, and how we used to do it, turned out to be completely optional. This applies to the way “things are done” in general, not just remote work.

This breaking of the spell of “the way things are” has many drawbacks, too. I think not being around other people as much, for so long, led us to become all too used to not considering others.

This is something I think about in the context of skyrocketing crime, car theft, and home invasions across Canada. I wonder if, in addition to being a consequence of exacerbating economic inequality, it could also be because we shrunk people's circles so small during Covid, for so long, that civic duty now seems like putting a square peg in a round hole.

I think we may need to consider broken norms in the context of police who don’t want to police, as well. I was kind of grateful when many Ontario police forces refused to enforce Covid measures that allowed police to stop motorists and pedestrians and ask where they lived and why they weren’t at home, citing concerns for civil liberties.

But I'm wondering if the police's unwillingness to intervene in more traditional crimes now - suggesting that citizens simply give up and make it easier for car thieves to steal their property - might be an offshoot of that same mindset. Perhaps we should have debated such measures more vigorously to stop them at their source, instead of relying on the police becoming resigned to giving up.

It's apparent that I'm not alone in being willing to move on, but not necessarily with the same way of relating to people, or with the same norms in place.

We really do need to talk about all of this, now that we’ve all had a chance to cool off. It shouldn’t be taboo to admit that perhaps we shouldn’t have done what we did, that maybe a lot of the measures went too far and caused too much harm relative to the actual risk of Covid.

We need to do this so that if, or when, another crisis hits, we might handle our interactions and everything else just a bit better.

Because though you can pull away from or deprioritize certain people or things in your life, we can’t all just do that with society, or it will only fall apart further. Sentiments like "let them die” were simply not the right approach to dealing with people you disagreed with.

Though the extreme circumstances of Covid made such blatant expressions more common - like the issues within my family, I think the origins of most of our societal issues actually predate Covid; it just brought them to the forefront more quickly and all at once.

My hope is that the unpleasantness of this will be countered by the possibility that we deal with these problems sooner than we might have otherwise, allowing us to see improvements sooner as well.

But whether it was because of vaccine mandates, passports, work-from-home policies, small business shutdowns, or a Covid test that spoiled a family gathering - people remember that you didn’t let them in. And deep down, you know that’s a big part of why nothing feels quite the same as before, when you go out now.

I clearly remember what I tend to consider my first close encounter with populism - not least because the populist I met said something I couldn't believe at the time, but turned out to be (kind of) right. 

In hindsight, I think my instincts were (somewhat) off because I didn’t yet understand where he was coming from - either figuratively, or literally. He seemingly appeared out of nowhere, emerging unexpectedly from a crowd - which in retrospect, was quite fitting.

In the summer of 2010, at the Taste of the Danforth, a street festival in Toronto’s Greektown, he was among a group of surprisingly young people campaigning for Rob Ford, who was running for mayor on a platform to end wasteful spending at city hall, armed with slogans like “stop the gravy train” and “respect for taxpayers”.

The exchange was rather silly, yet straightforward. He blurted out, “vote for Rob Ford, he’s going to fix city hall”. My friends and I, almost reflexively, countered, “that’s not going to happen”. His deadpan response, as he walked away, was, “yes, it is”.

The whole thing was, obviously, stupid, and I remember wondering why we even bothered engaging with him. It was childish. Yet, it stuck in my mind because Ford did indeed end up winning that election, completely catching me off guard. I genuinely didn’t think he was the type of person we, in Toronto, would elect. Up until then, I had really believed we, collectively, were better than that.

It was among the first in a series of similar electoral surprises across the Western world. And since it occurred so close to home - actually, my home - I've spent a lot of time since then mulling over how that pushy, unlikely oracle managed to see something coming that me and my friends completely missed.

I believe that Toronto's relatively early adoption of reactionism should be understood in the context of our amalgamation, which consolidated surrounding municipalities into one city in 1998. By forcing suburban and urban interests into more direct competition for resources, this likely explains why our elite versus everyman backlash was pushed forward a bit, compared to the rest of the world.

Rob Ford railed against the "downtown elites”, purporting to be an everyman, though he was actually quite a rich man (with inherited wealth from his family's successful label-making business, and inherited political clout from his father's tenure as a Member of Provincial Parliament).

Much was made about how his supporters felt culturally threatened by these elites, but it's often comparatively underplayed that they also simply resented their tax dollars being spent on any perceived extravagances they didn't directly benefit from themselves.

He vowed to end the “war on cars” (because urban initiatives that prioritized pedestrians and cyclists over drivers frustrated suburbanites who simply wanted to get in and out of the city quickly). He promised to deliver “subways, subways, subways” (especially in suburban areas, despite a greater need in the downtown core, and as an alternative to streetcars, which, again, were loathed for getting in the way of a swift exit for suburban drivers).

He had more than enough to eat at home  (maybe don’t click that). 

He smoked crack with the people, which is probably what anyone outside of Canada will best remember him for. He messed up way more than he made right in our city, including pushing us to elect a very bland man to succeed him for far too long, accomplishing nothing, because at least he wasn’t embarrassing us (until he did). 

Neither our subways nor our roads, in either the “inner suburbs” or downtown, are any better off. The infrastructure we do have is crumbling - a testament to a series of missteps and neglected opportunities, which, in my view, were fundamentally and intractably worsened by Rob Ford's bumbling tenure, compounded by our collective reaction to it.

But his legacy was also a precursor to other blond, unkempt phenomenon to come. They did not, as far as I know, quite so literally smoke crack with their constituents - but they did, in a metaphorical sense, get high on that same supply.

And arguably - so did I, in the way it activated me and the rest of my stunned left-leaning compatriots.

I railed against Ford’s every embarrassing move the whole time he was in office, in person and online. I lamented that he had international news paying attention to us (which never seems to happen, but for when we do something crazy). I found myself paying more attention to municipal politics and protocols than I ever had before, or have since.

Not long after he finally withdrew from the 2014 mayoral race due to scandal and a cancer diagnosis - resulting in his brother Doug's decisive defeat in his stead to the aforementioned bland man - similar upheavals began emerging globally, leaving me just as shocked.

The Brexit referendum soon exposed similar divisions within the UK, amplifying political and cultural rifts between urban and rural areas and championed by similarly privileged yet crass, bombastic personalities. I was surprised to see an entire nation fall for the same hokey, populist schtick.

Then when Trump got elected, I felt almost existential, even though I’m not American. Is this really where we are going, I thought? Why is everyone so oddly enamored with affluent, entitled yet unpolished caricatures?

I railed against him too, joining the progressive chorus in propagating apocalyptic memes of signs saying “but her emails” floating in the flooded ruins of the world. I felt it was important not to let one single violation of our hard-fought liberal norms go.

I also started to feel a bit smug that we had moved past our own ostentatious agent of upheaval. I never really liked Trudeau, and I never voted for him - but I did think, at the time, he was probably better than the blond bulldozers of political decorum. I was relieved it wasn’t happening here (anymore).

Since then, we have elected Rob’s brother Doug as the Premier of our province, here in Ontario. Meanwhile, Trudeau has proven to be diametrically opposed to maintaining our standards across Canada.

I’ve railed against them all, but I’ve long since stopped being surprised by any of this.

Once again, Canada may prove to be a bit ahead of the curve on populism, with the looming possibility of electing Pierre Poilievre. This seems increasingly likely as people grow more dissatisfied with the current government's handling of housing and economic issues, perceiving Poilievre as offering better solutions or advocacy in these areas.

In this way, to me, he embodies the next stage of populism - shifting from the everyman archetype to a more polished middleman avatar.

While no longer surprised by such phenomena, I remain perplexed that our so-called elites have yet to figure out why this keeps happening. Despite the evolving nature of populism represented by figures like Poilievre, it seems that many in positions of power remain unable to adapt.

I didn’t get it at first, either - but I was in my twenties at the time and hadn’t experienced it before. How are much older people, in much more important positions than me, seemingly unable to keep up?

Looking back, I realized I didn't care much about politics before Ford's era because my life was rather cushy. That’s why my initial instinct was to dismiss those who shook up politics as clueless, not understanding what this would mean in a broader sense.

Things were going great! Why would anyone want to disrupt such a comfy status quo?

While in some ways, I still believe that was, and is, true - I've since realized that I was also overlooking significant context at that time. 

I’ve come to understand this as we all have become less comfortable. 

In my earlier railing days, I guess it hadn't quite dawned on me yet that people often cast their votes not because of their convictions, but simply because they're unhappy with the way things are going.

This now makes me feel pretty clueless, as if it should have been obvious. I mean, did I somehow manage to learn all about how bread - or the lack of it, or the need to line up for it - can start revolutions, yet not fully grasp what this truly meant?

And yet, many of our leaders still fail to truly grasp this concept. They're stuck in the mindset that it's all about pandering to what people want to hear, instead of actually delivering what they truly need.

The first wave of populists was the lashing out of those who identify themselves as “folks,” or among the “everyman” - or at least, those who identify with the sensibilities of the everyman, whether they can truly be counted among them or not.

Too many in power continue to fail to recognize that while a lot of what they said was silly and wouldn’t actually make anything better, the general feeling of decline they emerged from was not.

Like I mentioned earlier, I think the more nascent wave involves people with more middle-class sensibilities, because the sense of decline has now worked its way up, both socially and economically. 

Complaints have moved past subpar transit options and services to even those with upper-middle-class salaries struggling to afford housing - be it urban, suburban, or exurban.

Poilievre is often seen as a YouTube phenomenon, or more broadly, a beast of the online right-wing - but I think he is better understood as a manifestation of wider middle-class frustration.

He is simply using the tools and rhetoric of his class - and our current federal government is misunderstanding these means of expression to be the problem, leading to increased efforts to debunk or clamp down on their use.

But the real problem lies in the fact that while populists often acknowledge such quality of life issues rather quickly, more established leaders too often initially deny or downplay them.

I suspect it was generally the everyman who first noticed a subtle, slow decline in their quality of life, with the first wave of populists recognizing their discomfort with this as an opportunity for their own gain.

The next wave may be emerging from a similar impulse, but they are probably less likely to feel disenfranchised enough (just yet) to accept being exploited to the same extent. These are people who absolutely expected to succeed and for certain benefits to come their way. That's why they are so frustrated at being unable to achieve what they anticipated.

This second wave is younger, comprising largely what should have been the secure middle class, had their prospects not been diminishing. Perhaps it includes people much like that kid I encountered on the Danforth, now all grown up, who has found he can't afford to live in the suburb whose sensibilities he once defended (unless he's still in his parents' basement).

This reflects a generational shift in populism - from Boomers who viewed taxes not directly benefiting them as excessive, to their children now experiencing a diminished quality of life as a result of these failures.

The solution, as we should have learned from the first wave, isn't about discrediting their viewpoints but addressing the root causes of their discontent. We need to fix the underlying problems and improve overall quality of life, for all of our sakes.

This is not to say that you have to echo back exactly what people want to hear, or provide precisely what they demand. However, engaging directly with their concerns is crucial. Even if these concerns are expressed imperfectly, they often point to deeper, valid issues.

In our more innocent days of unrest, for instance, addressing suburban Toronto's concerns didn't have to mean halting progress in the city. A smarter, more responsive approach could have involved rethinking the allocation of city resources to better align with the real, on-the-ground needs of all residents, whether they navigate the city by bus, car, truck, bike, or on foot.

Both Rob Ford and the collective response to his tenure became too engrossed in societal and cultural debates, losing sight of the broader sentiments that propelled his election.

Suburbanites likely wouldn’t have opposed more urban development quite so strongly, if they hadn’t perceived their own services and commutes deteriorating quite so much. 

When everyone enjoys a higher standard of living, envy or resentment towards those who enjoy more exclusive benefits decreases. 

It's essential to recognize that populism's appeal, by definition, stems from its popularity. As it gains traction across wider income and education levels, dismissing its supporters as uninformed or misguided not only misses the point, but will also become more difficult. 

A growing number of people now have both the tools and the knowledge to more effectively challenge the “elites”', largely because they expected to be among them. 

This makes it even more clear (than it already should have been) that people are drawn to populism not simply out of ignorance, but because it acknowledges the issues they face in a language that speaks to them. Whether it's the rhetoric of a Ford or a Poilievre, the underlying phenomenon remains the same.

There was a time when I believed the demographic shift towards more Millennials than Boomers in Canada might lead us towards electing the NDP. Now, it seems we may instead hand the Conservatives a massive majority.

I think this is partly because too many of our current leaders are Boomers, or Gen Xers with Boomer-like comfort levels. Like me, long ago - they just don't yet understand our decline viscerally, as neither they nor anyone around them is actually experiencing it.

Conservatives are gaining the ability to address declining comfort levels more convincingly as they add more Millennials among their ranks, with much closer personal proximity to the problem.

I also think that too many politicians (especially our federal Liberals), with their increased focus on minute, detailed, data-driven microtargeting of ever-specific population segments, have forgotten the importance of actually talking to real people, instead of just looking at demographic profiles, and actually listening to what they have to say.

To be very clear, I believe this is more of a discredit to those currently in charge, rather than intended as credit to those looking to replace them. And I also don’t think it’s about left versus right. A similar frustration is unfolding in other countries, like the UK, where their Conservatives, after leading for too long without delivering on their promises, face a similar backlash.

Likewise, our Conservatives risk misinterpreting a largely economic mandate as an endorsement for a socially conservative shift that simply isn't there.

Ultimately, people simply want a decent life. Whenever current leadership fails to deliver this, people become more susceptible to those who promise radical change - from any and all sides, no matter how vague or unrealistic those promises might be.

Recognizing what people truly need doesn't mean agreeing with every populist sentiment expressed due to its absence. It's about understanding and addressing the genuine needs underlying those sentiments. Listening and responding to these needs is crucial. Otherwise, people will inevitably turn to those who do - or at least, to those who convincingly claim they will.

Way back when most of my friends and I worked in actual offices (albeit mostly quirky, tiny start-up ones), we creative types often reveled in complaints from our colleagues in more staid positions, resenting what we could get away with.

Common among these complaints was that we never came in on time (and no one important seemed to care), and we always left whenever we felt a change of scenery was needed (and again, the higher-ups scarcely batted an eye).

Many of my creative peers and I were “allowed" to work from home long before it became a thing - a liberty we often took without even bothering to ask. This held true even with bosses who typically didn't grant other coworkers the same flexibility, and who often voiced their dislike of remote work in general. Yet for us, they didn’t just permit it - they never even made a big deal about it.

We enjoyed this freedom not (just) because we were defiant jerks, fully aware that we could indeed get away with such things. 

It was because our work tended to be unique and, thus, harder to replace. So, we were “allowed” to do it our way, as finding people who could do it at all wasn't all too easy.

Now that things like DALL-E exist, you might think that more agreeable, conventional people can finally be free from our anomalous tyranny. But that's because you think our indulgence-worthy value came from what we could make, when really, it was always in how we think.

A computer can replicate what we've done, but not (necessarily) what we might do next. The very thing many lament about us - our unpredictability - is, and always has been, our greatest strength.

This was (I think) well-parodied recently with the controversy surrounding a post that used artificial intelligence to "complete" Keith Haring's renowned 1989 "Unfinished Painting". The original painting was "left" as it was to symbolize the life the artist would not live because of his imminent death from AIDS. Some decried “finishing” it as disrespectful, others lauded it as a clever critique of AI art, and many admired its effectiveness as bait.

My take is that the post was cleverly crafted, and made a good argument.

I mean this not only in the sense that while anyone can make complex tessellations (now), not everyone would think to do something like intentionally failing to finish such a repetition for symbolic reasons (especially if it hadn't been done before) - but also because coming up with such a way to prove that point isn't something just anyone (or any thing) can do, in and of itself.

It's also worth considering - would an AI suggest such an idea (if it hadn't already been done)?

I’m not saying that an AI could never come up with something clever. Rather, I'm suggesting its cleverness will likely be distinct from a human's, and not just because it might have its own interests.

If you have ever collaborated with someone in another country, you know there can often be cultural differences and varying communication styles that can cause misunderstandings and misaligned expectations.

This will, obviously, also apply to some "one", or some "thing", of an entirely different being.

Much like outsourcing doesn't always work well due to cultural differences, no AI will ever quite understand us in the same way a fellow human might. It will never share quite the same experience of being, no matter how far it advances.

While AI can become increasingly sophisticated and useful, it will always be fundamentally different from human understanding.

It's likely to keep improving at producing what's already been done, just how we like it.

It will probably also generate some incredible things we'd never think of ourselves, or manage to achieve without it.

However, it might never be quite as adept as some humans can be at envisioning completely new things that would appeal to people, particularly ideas the average person wouldn’t normally think to ask for.

I can't help but think of that oft-repeated quote attributed to Henry Ford, that if he “had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.

Similarly, a post I saw recently made a comparable point, that “To replace programmers with AI, clients will need to accurately describe what they want. We’re safe”. 

While this might have sparked a smug little chuckle,  I do recognize that such a perspective may be a bit overly self-congratulatory.

Of course, a whole lot of people will likely be more than satisfied with the “good enough” they know to ask for, and I don’t want to overlook the fact that this shift will significantly impact many lives.

But I also want to make the case to let this be something that inspires you, rather than disheartens you; to think of what you can do that will be harder for anyone or anything else to do quite the same.

Much of humanity is never truly content with just “good enough”. Inventing and using tools has been crucial to our progress throughout history, ever since we started smashing rocks against rocks to chip them into tools. It's why we've survived, and it will always be our path to thrive.

In an era where too many seem stuck in “you're either with us or against us” thinking, AI might just emerge as an unexpected ally - because it's the “against us” thinkers who are most likely to carve out a meaningful future, in this context.

Breaking away from your team might not carry as many consequences, in a world where AI can replace the output of an entire team. Those adept at effectively questioning - both AI, and people - are the ones poised to really thrive, given these new tools.

This isn't limited to creative fields. Despite AI's rapid expansion into areas like visual rendering and writing, with rhetoric pushing some into more technical or manual roles in response, I suspect the most profound changes will likely be in these more “practical” fields.

As an example, genuinely creative minds in programming, along with some insightful, if not leading thinkers under them, could remain vital. However, the mid-level hordes of purely rote tech workers may easily be replaced. 

The same principle applies in medicine. Exceptional doctors who blend critical thinking with personalized care will remain invaluable. In contrast, those who rigidly adhere to guidelines and protocols without adaptability could find themselves outdone by AI, perhaps sooner than expected. 

As technology progresses, even hands-on and skill-intensive tasks in trades are increasingly facing automation, albeit often in ways that complement, rather than fully replace, human work.

No matter your field, if your role can be easily replicated by a machine, it won't be around for long. Your real value will lie in being the unique brain behind our new brawn.

You might find this perspective discouraging, and indeed, there are valid questions about how people will be able to gain the experience and confidence needed to challenge a tool they will become increasingly reliant on, ongoing.

This shift could also feel isolating, potentially diminishing the value of being a good team player.

However, it might be more constructive to see this as an encouragement for your unique ideas and quirks to shine. In a world where AI simplifies replicating the ordinary, the importance of being distinctive will only grow.

In my experimentation with various AI, especially the visual rendering ones, I've found it can be all too easy to have your intentions sidetracked by the AI’s limitations, if you’re not very specific.

Often, you can spend more time figuring out how it “thinks”, than you would hiring a skilled person and directing them, instead. People, at least typically, know to work within the limits of reality (by default), and don't surprise me out of nowhere with something like a dog with udders.

We need to ensure that AI is expanding our capabilities, not just limiting us to new, peculiar constraints.

Being someone who rarely settles for "good enough", and generally wants to see my exact vision realized, I'm always pushing AI to constantly refine and revise when I use it; usually in a way that's close to what I did myself, or that I could've done just as easily (to the point where I wonder if I should've just done it myself).

Sometimes, I even wonder if I've managed to irritate it, much like I have many a human before.

If I have, I think that's an accomplishment; in this way, we are both learning and pushing each other forward.

Much like with humans, pushing back and forth with a mind that thinks differently than I do can often make the outcome better than just sticking to my original idea, and thus be worth the effort to challenge. 

I generally like to push myself, and think seeing new tools as an opportunity to do this in new ways keeps people moving forward in a much better direction than getting stuck in your ways ever could.

We only need to look around our aging society to see the consequences of too many people settling for “good enough”, and resisting change. Too often, we find ourselves mired in arguments over dwindling resources, rather than creating and moving forward. 

AI could help break this stuck dynamic by giving even more value to those who question and push for progress - encouraging us to make and innovate anew, rather than just fighting about how we are going to divide and who gets to use what we already have. 

This shift might help break the polarization caused by our current stagnation, as consulting a mind not constrained by physical decline could lead us beyond these limitations.

After all, what's the point of your being if not to be different – and to make a difference, in so doing?

The day everything started shutting down in response to Covid, my partner, who usually isn't the overprotective type, unexpectedly insisted on telling me what to do.

Having lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union in Belarus during his childhood, he was primed to expect that such large-scale societal disruptions could lead to absolute chaos.

Normally, he wouldn't hesitate to “let” me go to the store alone, but this day, he was adamant about going with me to pick up my birth control; after dropping me off, he further insisted I shouldn't go out alone while he was at work (I worked from home way before Covid).

In most situations, controlling behaviour like this would alarm me, as I'm not someone who likes to be told what to do, and it's not the kind of behaviour I would typically expect or accept from my partner. However, this was so out of character for him that I took his concerns seriously and followed his advice.

As it turned out, his instinct that the lockdowns could lead to societal breakdown might have been a bit of an overshoot - especially regarding the speed at which he thought it would happen - influenced by his past experiences.

We didn’t immediately fall apart, though the frenzy of panic buying was probably a sign of the unease that was beginning to simmer beneath the surface.

It took some time, but I think he was ultimately right about people’s worst tendencies emerging en masse amidst uncertainty. The delayed reaction compared to his initial expectations was probably due to our previously incredibly stable environment, in contrast to his birthplace.

If faced with a similar crisis in the future, we might descend into chaos more swiftly. Now, we too are primed.

We often assume we're nicer than people in other parts of the world, but in reality, we've just been fortunate enough to have ample stability and resources to avoid conflict.

It's no more complicated than the fact that if your backyard garden yields more tomatoes than you and your family can eat, you’re likely to offer the extras to anyone willing to take them, rather than let them go to waste.

The exception, of course, arises if you’re the type who hoards out of pure selfish meanness, indifferent to the actual need or use for what you amass. Yet, I still tend to believe that such profound, down-to-the-core mean-spiritedness is more the exception than the norm, globally. After all, maintaining such greediness is, in itself, a lot of work.

When there's plenty, most people share; when there's scarcity, the instinct to fight often prevails.

People often pontificate on what it all means when things start to go wrong in society, myself very much included. This was certainly the case with my shock at how many people were willing to celebrate Hamas’ actions against Israelis as “resistance”. 

There’s also a general feeling I have that the lockdowns broke our social contract. Many of us did things simply because that's how they were always done. The realization that we could change our ways so drastically and quickly is not something we will ever fully get over. We can never unsee how quickly it can all break down, and we’ll likely never be quite so naive again.

But the economic aspect of all this is often overlooked. Our lives have become less stable; we no longer have as much to share.

This is why I was concerned with how dismissively our leaders and institutions treated the economic disruptions during Covid. Though factual, the statement “interest rates are at historic lows, Glen” failed to recognize that their unprecedented nature was more a warning sign than a reassurance.

I’ve always sensed - likely because of my connections with people from diverse backgrounds, including my partner - that perceived Canadian niceness stems more from comfort and complacency than any sort of inherent virtue. Recognizing how people from tougher places can adapt and soften here suggests that the reverse could also happen to us, should we let our complacency lead to things getting less comfortable.

Our society was already facing significant challenges before Covid, with life already becoming less comfortable for many. The most obvious example to point to is our housing crisis, which has been slowly eroding our economy and social fabric for over a decade.

However, what we chose to do in response to Covid certainly made many of those problems much, much worse - and especially this one.

Policies that spurred the demand for larger living and working spaces, coupled with the aforementioned historically low interest rates, prompted more people to take on even greater debt. This severely intensified an already mounting cost of living crisis.

I suspect an unwillingness to admit that many Covid policies were potentially flawed at the time contributes to our inability to fully confront and rectify their consequences now.

The nebulous nature of these issues makes them even more challenging to resolve.

I am sure that many who protest for Palestine do so out of genuine concern for what they see as oppression. But I also think our shaken sense of security, in general, means we are all just a little bit quicker to take extreme sides in such disputes.

At the same time, our burgeoning collective unease makes it all the more dangerous not to be more careful.

In a less stable society, the majority's opinion may not always align with righteousness, often shifting motivation from principles to more basic needs.

To preserve the integration and compassion that have long defined us, especially as Canada faces tough times, we're going to have to work harder.

The undue leeway given to the pro-Palestine side of the divide, when legitimate protest starts to blur into incitement of hatred, if not violence, may seem like the safer option to some - but it has the very dangerous potential to further erode our social contract, undermining our commitment to equal rights under the law and thus increasing the vulnerability of our society.

In the same way that growing income inequality destabilizes us because people need to feel like they have a chance to succeed in order to keep trying and participating in our economy - they also require a sense of safety in order to trust and participate in the rest of society.

To this end, our leaders also need to wake up to the need to base international decisions on a more comprehensive understanding of global contexts, rather than merely on domestic political gain. Our recent support for a UN resolution that favoured Hamas represented a significant undermining of Canada's foreign policy integrity.

This is a critical time for thoughtful decision-making in international affairs. In the wake of Covid, much of the world, like Canada, has been shaken and made less stable.

This global instability necessitates more careful consideration of our actions and their potential implications. Decisions like our UN vote can have far-reaching ramifications beyond our borders, particularly in an already fragile international context. When Hamas publicly thanks you for your choices, it's not just a bad look - it's a clear indication of a big problem with your overall priorities, that needs to be taken seriously.

Our enduring tendency to allow politics to eclipse such important principles is of a different era. It is simply too dangerous to continue doing this in our current context.

My partner, coming from a society where scarcity was the norm, was initially astounded by the openness of Canadian stores. He marvelled at how items were openly displayed and not taken or stolen. Both the level of trust and abundance that this implied were entirely new to him. 

That sense of trust and security is now waning in Canada. The abundance and consequent respect for property we once took for granted are now challenged, warning of a possible shift towards more of the conditions he once knew.

Recognizing this shift is uncomfortable, but it's also vital if we want to preserve the privileges we've long enjoyed. It's been all too easy to take these advantages for granted without fully appreciating what it takes to maintain them.

It’s really, really hard for most people to shift from following what they were told was the right thing, to admitting that this very thing caused harm. To do that, they would have to confront the difficult truth that they aren’t as good or nice as they think, but rather just compliant. 

It's even harder to consider that those labelled as bad for not conforming might have been right about some things. A whole lot of people are completely incapable of navigating grey areas, and would rather condemn us all to darkness than admit they don’t really see the light.

I really don’t intend for this to sound depressing or demoralizing, though I recognize it might seem that way. Rather, I consider this a necessary wake-up call, an impetus for action. 

The qualities that once amazed my partner about Canada may be diminishing, but they're not gone. Canada is still a better place than many, but complacency is no longer an option. Actively working to preserve our strengths and not taking them for granted is essential.

As we approach the year's end and are about to leave behind its darkest day, it's crucial for us to recognize the need for more proactive efforts to keep Canada's lights shining. While challenges are evident, a brighter future is definitely still within our reach. 

We just need to strive to actively seek the best way forward, rather than passively relying on a better tomorrow as if improvement were a switch that can simply be flipped on.

Oddly vivid in my memory, for reasons that will soon become equally clear, is a discussion I had with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law about “The Interview” - a black comedy about journalists recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un - shortly after its release.

You might recall that Sony delayed said release, reportedly re-editing the film to appease North Korea following a hack of their computer systems by a North Korean group.

Initially, I approached this conversation as light chit-chat, simply expecting all of us to agree that such an aggressive effort in favour of censorship was unacceptable. I just assumed that, as Canadians, we all valued free speech.

So, I was rather taken aback when my brother and sister-in-law defended North Korea.

Especially when my sister-in-law said, “just imagine how the US would react if someone mocked Obama like that”. In response, I pointed out that people did indeed do this, all the time, and that the strength of countries like ours and theirs lies in their ability to withstand mockery and challenges, without the need for censorship. There was some muttering about never being disrespectful…

I've reflected on this interaction quite a bit, since then. 

I've been on record saying that we desperately need change, in many ways. However, in an evolving world, I think it’s also crucial to consider how we can preserve the aspects of our society that are most valuable and which we don’t want to lose. Moreover, it's vital to distinguish between necessary corrections and actual regression.

Relating this to a more recent, and much graver, instance of a similar culture shock, I now find myself in a state of existential disbelief as I witness people in my country and across the Western world rallying in response to Hamas's recent terrorist attacks.

Characterized by monstrous acts of rape, slaughter, torture, and abduction of civilians, these attacks were made all the more horrific by being committed with gleeful pride.

Astonishingly, many espousing a pro-Palestine “progressive” stance, instead of grappling with the sheer brutality of these acts, have become mired in minutiae. They engage in obscuring or outright denying specific elements, such as whether “only” some babies were beheaded, or even dismissing the details of the events altogether as “misinformation” from the “Zionist lobby”. This fixation on particulars obscures the wider truth that the totality of these terror attacks was atrocious, regardless of individual aspects.

Even if many rally participants are simply expressing support for Palestine, rather than explicitly endorsing Hamas's atrocities, the fact remains that these demonstrations were prompted by recent violent events. They were, without a doubt, a reaction to the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. There weren't massive pro-Palestine rallies in our streets prior to the attacks.

Further, pervasive references to and iconic use of the paraglider image, reminiscent of Hamas militants' attack on an Israeli music festival, illustrate that Palestine supporters are aware of the savagery they are, by implication, endorsing. This isn’t simply a matter of being uninformed, but a troubling rationalization of terror as a form of resistance.

It's crucial to recognize that this response is far from normal. It's a significant departure from how we typically react to such events, even in recent times. Russian Canadians, for instance, didn’t pour into the streets in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine - not even (ostensibly) to support Russians not involved in the conflict, let alone brandishing images of open pits reminiscent of the mass graves in Bucha while insisting on the need to contextualize the massacre.

However, I believe we would lose the plot if we allowed ourselves to become similarly mired in punishing or preventing expressions of support for even the most repugnant beliefs. Suppressing vile views only obscures them from public view, where they can and should be confronted.

Our focus should remain on what the public celebration of certain perspectives reveals about our society, especially when those perspectives are laced with hatred, discrimination, or the glorification of violence.

There is a difference between allowing the expression of individual views and, through inaction, tacitly endorsing the active celebration or gradual normalization of collective viewpoints that should not be empowered.

Our strength lies in our tolerance of diverse views and beliefs, but our weakness is our failure to effectively communicate the importance of our foundational societal values. To preserve our shared principles, we need a collective commitment to understanding and valuing them more deeply.

Unfortunately, at best, it seems that some may not care about these principles at all, and at worst, too few of us appreciate their value enough to bother to stand up for them when it really counts.

I find this revealing of how many people don't really believe in anything. It seems a lot more people than I thought have no internal moral compass and rely completely on an externally imposed sense of morality. If the majority approves it, they'll do it.

This reminds me of a time when someone discovered I wasn’t religious and asked, “so why don’t you go around killing people, then?”. Blending incredulity with a hint of alarm, I responded, “is religion really all that’s holding you back?”. It’s disconcerting to think that, for more people than you'd expect, the answer may be “yes”.

That's the reason the narratives we choose to champion in our society are so vital. A not insignificant portion of the population, perhaps more than we're ready to acknowledge, truly rely on such stories to discern right from wrong. Without appropriate morality tales, they may stray into wrongdoing without a second thought - not out of ignorance, but due to a lack of sincere concern for what is right or wrong.

This apathy towards genuine moral understanding explains why we're now seeing individuals from across the political spectrum cheer when their adversaries are “cancelled”, but screech injustice when their allies suffer the same fate. 

They don't really care about rights, on principle; they care about fitting in to get ahead. This is why they support issues like free speech whenever they serve their interests, but abandon these principles whenever they become inconvenient to their personal or group goals.

Fitting in and getting ahead here used to involve adopting an attitude of tolerance and letting go of old prejudices, rather than fostering long-standing grudges linked to historical grievances.

I am drawn to the example set by my (favourite) older relatives, whenever I think of the value of tolerance. 

When my maternal grandparents married, my grandfather's mother threw herself on the altar, upset because my grandmother was Polish and they were Ukrainian. My grandparents simply ignored her, making it clear they were not going to even acknowledge, let alone continue, such “old world” nonsense. Instead, they embraced being Canadian, preserving only the fun parts of their heritage. 

That's why I hold pierogi parties, and don't hold a grudge against someone whose ancestors came from a village at odds with my own.

This style of Canadianism may be frowned upon today, but I remain unconvinced that holding age-old disputes as unquestionable excuses for current bad behaviour is a step forward. To me, progress means setting our sights on the future, not being sucked into the wrongs of the past.

I disagree with quite a bit of what we are now supposed to call progressive, and I suspect many more than are comfortable saying so agree with me. 

For example, I believe that disregarding the positive contributions of historical figures, simply because current progressive narratives often reduce complex events to a simplistic dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, has contributed significantly to our current existential crisis in the West.

This crisis, marked by a loss of shared values and identity, could be better addressed by acknowledging and even praising the humanity of those who chose to do good, despite having the power to act otherwise, rather than solely focusing on their negative actions. 

Similarly, I don't think anyone who does bad in our time should be held to any less of a standard because they have been given the (condescending) excuse of being oppressed. I hold all people to a higher standard than that, and pay everyone the respect of expecting the same responsibilities of them.

I will also pay everyone the respect of fighting against questionable views with equal veracity, no matter who it is that is pushing them. I don’t think any group of people is lesser than me, such that I need to tone down my rhetoric in deference to their weaker status.

The point of a country like Canada, to me, lies in its commitment to human values that extend to everyone equally, not different values for different groups. I am concerned about the compromises we have made in order to accommodate emergent ideologies that assert otherwise. 

Criticizing behaviour that contradicts our collective sense of right and wrong is not only acceptable, but necessary - even when such behaviour originates from minority cultures or beliefs. 

Everyone should be free to call out anything we see as nonsense, indiscriminately - albeit politely, if possible, in keeping with a quintessential Canadian value or stereotype that I've always liked.

There is more to this than just integration. All family members in The Interview incident were Canadian-born, going back multi-generations. It comes down to truly understanding why we have certain norms and the importance of working to keep them, because they were not easily formed and could be easy to lose. 

This is why I think it is vital to reaffirm that all rights and responsibilities apply equally to everyone, regardless of race or religion. Anything less is exactly how you end up with people celebrating a pogrom against Jews by Hamas, miscast as a form of “resistance” by the “oppressed”. 

It's also exactly why I oppose the concept of a post-national state, which risks placing “old world” affiliations above our shared Canadian identity. As a nation of immigrants, our collective identity should take precedence. Being multicultural should not diminish our commitment to Canada.

I understand the diverse reasons people have for coming here, and I'm not shy about voicing my criticisms of our country, as evidenced by this stream-of-consciousness rant masquerading as a post.

However, while it's vital to critique our society to avoid stagnation, it's just as crucial to recognize and highlight its positive aspects. This includes our freedom to engage in such critiques, reflecting the strength and progress of our shared nation. 

We should learn from grievances but not let them define us; they should be considered in context with our current achievements and used to inform future potential, not foster grudges.

As an example, I believe Canada has historically moved in a positive direction, offering a more desirable living environment than places like North Korea, Gaza, or Russia. However, when I share this view in real-life conversations, it often meets pushback, reminiscent of my sister-in-law’s demands for respect towards Kim Jong Un.

Respecting individuals is one thing (when those individuals are not brutal dictators), but I also see the need to challenge harmful collective ideologies and oppressive regimes - a crucial right that should not be lost to a misplaced sense of reverence.

This right becomes harder to exercise in public forums, where extremists from both ends of the spectrum often hijack the discourse. Some divert the conversation towards xenophobic rhetoric, while others confuse criticism of authoritarian regimes with racism against their citizens.

In more intimate settings, these discussions usually become more productive. Yet, even there, the loudest voices often drown out the more balanced ones. Both self-proclaimed liberals and the so-called free-speech-loving “far right” have created an atmosphere where slight deviations from their ideologies are immediately seen as outrageous.

If left unchecked, these circumstances will only amplify extremist voices - the only ones bold and motivated enough to speak up, despite such labels.

I realize this might sound overly simplistic or naive to some, but I often think that a solution to much of our societal strife could be as straightforward as more medium people, with moderate views, coming forward. They need to reclaim their voice, challenging the dominance of extreme ideologies.

Medium people, typically the go-along-to-get-along types, need to realize that we are not getting along anymore. It’s high time for them to step up, even if it’s just a small step, to reaffirm the norms they once quietly supported.

Medium people, in my memory, were always the kind who would host pierogi parties for Canadian friends from all over the world, embracing the fun of experimenting with something like samosa filling instead of the traditional. To them, trying new things was always worth a shot. These are people who love hummus - no matter what village it came from - not Hamas, to paraphrase a Canadian MP.

They embrace the best from various cultures without seeing cultural adoption as oppressive; instead, they view it as celebrating the diversity of human traditions.

Medium people understand that racism is unacceptable, regardless of the target, including when it's directed at white people. They advocate for equal standards for everyone, refusing to accept different rules for some based on past actions of other people from long ago.

They firmly believe that past grievances do not justify current acts of violence.

This commitment to standards is particularly crucial when considering Israel's response to Hamas. Whatever their response may be, it won’t change the fact that Hamas's actions were abhorrent and universally unacceptable. No action by Israel can retroactively justify such atrocities; at most, it could result in another condemnable act.

I certainly expect Israel to adhere to international law in said response, upholding the high standards we value. Should they deviate, I am ready to call them out, reaffirming my commitment to fairness and justice.

Consistency in defining what's right and wrong in our society, in carefully considering the stories we tell, and the narratives we embrace, is incredibly important. These choices shape our collective conscience and, ultimately, our future.

Concerning speaking out - sometimes, even I question why I choose to write anonymously. It's not like I shy away from expressing my opinions in person. Perhaps it's more about a reluctance to add public statements to an already lengthy list of family disagreements; we disagree enough about my words, without worrying about their wider audience. But, in all honesty, I've always felt a deep compulsion to share my thoughts, often to the point of pain.

As you might have noticed, I tend to do this by sharing little stories, connecting bigger, abstract ideas to my own life experiences.

This approach sometimes annoys people. Comments like, “it's not all about you or the people you know; this issue is bigger than your family stories”, are not uncommon. And they're right, of course.

However, I think that if you don't connect the bigger picture to your personal experiences, you risk losing sight of the significance of human experience as a whole. Everyone has their own stories, and pondering over them helps us figure out where we fit in the larger narrative.

Ultimately, I want to understand how I can best contribute to ensuring that our collective arc bends in a positive direction - and, just maybe, inspire others to join me in shaping it.

Way back when I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life, I ended up (much to my surprise) gravitating toward product design. I’ve always been drawn to creative work, but what really sparked my interest in this field was its can-do attitude.

Creating new things that would profoundly enhance people's lives required understanding the push and pull between their stated desires and actual behaviours, going beyond merely observing society and commenting on it (which I, obviously, also enjoy) to actually transforming it.

Despite working in design and communications in Canada for over a decade and a half since then (which can easily crush anyone’s bright-eyed spirit), I still think this way. I hate and refuse to accept the attitude that we don’t need better, that what we have is more than enough.

In recent years, that complacency has gone into overdrive, which may explain why I’ve been drawn more to the alternative path I considered back then (writing) in an attempt to persuade people that we can, in fact, do better.

The notion that we should accept less for ourselves, without at least an equivalent effort from our leaders and institutions, does not align with my vision of progress. While individual responsibility is crucial, it’s insufficient on a large scale without systemic competence and a recognition of the need for continuous change.

Regrettably, those very leaders and institutions seem determined to avoid systemic change at all costs.

I consider the pushback against climate initiatives in Europe and especially the UK in this context, with their prime minister promising to “slam the brakes on the war on motorists” (which sounds awfully familiar to us in Canada who remember our crack-smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford saying ending the “war on cars” was a priority, circa 2010).

I actually support the idea of a more "bright green" agenda, moving away from "dark green" alarmism - but I tend to view conservative initiatives like these more as excuses to scale back on programs and circumvent ambitious environmental objectives than as serious alternatives (knowing, as I do, that Rob Ford's tenure as mayor saw extensive budget cuts and cancellations of progressive projects without any viable competing vision, resulting in stagnation that persists to this day in my city).

However, my stance on the problem and its roots goes beyond condemning conservative efforts to stall progress. I am also of the opinion that the recent trend among progressives, focusing too much on punishing people for using the systems we have as they were intended to be used, and too little on advocating for the necessary work to design new systems, contributes significantly to the emergence of these types of inertia-driven setbacks.

Consider our federal and provincial governments’ approach to our carbon taxes, as an example of a more current Canadian conundrum. 

My opinion is that carbon taxes could have been more effective if they were designed in a way that forced businesses to rethink their practices more thoroughly. However, their design has leaned more toward nudging consumers to greener options over time, rather than taking a more assertive approach in encouraging businesses to invest in the necessary technology and infrastructure to make these options more viable. 

Rather than hitting people already struggling with the cost of living with yet another burden, the taxes could have been more precise and targeted to businesses (and they wouldn't have faced as much public resistance).

Expanding on this, it's important to recognize that even when businesses are mandated to make changes, the solutions they adopt often miss the mark. Take the transition from plastic to paper straws, for example.

Paper straws, while marketed as an eco-friendly alternative, fall short in terms of biodegradability. Recent studies have also revealed their potential to transfer “forever chemicals”, posing risks to both human health and the environment.

This situation underscores a fundamental limitation in the substitution approach to sustainability. A more comprehensive solution could entail reducing the overall reliance on disposable products, rather than just replacing them.

In addition to the somewhat baffling fact that few seem to consider the simple act of sipping beverages directly without straws, another often overlooked solution is embracing a broader systemic change, such as promoting remote work. This shift could effectively reduce the demand for on-the-go disposable products altogether, addressing the root cause of the issue more efficiently.

Such strategies have the potential to yield more significant and lasting environmental benefits without unduly burdening consumers or, at the very least, causing them considerably less annoyance.

I'm concerned that by failing to adopt these strategies, we've emboldened resistance from individuals who, frustrated by behavioural changes imposed without the necessary systemic support, are now pushing for a rollback of initiatives rather than backing the kind of reforms actually needed to address climate change.

Ultimately, the failure to get buy-in for inconvenient measures, strongly pushed but with little impact beyond papering over old systems, undermines future efforts.

We only need to look back at the Covid era, when remote work was proven feasible on a large scale, to see how an extensive push (even to the point of being mandated) attempted to paper over a different set of problems, revealing the practical consequences of relying on symbolic solutions.

Outsized efforts to promote mandatory mask-wearing, often accompanied by shaming non-compliance, diverted attention from crucial systemic changes needed to combat diseases like Covid long-term. This short-sightedness resulted in less focus on key issues such as strengthening healthcare systems and ensuring universal access to sick leave, leaving these problems to persist alongside the challenges posed by an aging population and increasing system demands.

Consequently, our healthcare systems continue to grapple with significant strain. Senior health bureaucrats, sounding like a scratched vinyl repeating without progress, persist in holding masked press conferences today. They express hope that people have adopted the habit of using masks during the “respiratory virus season”, extending well beyond the initial claim that these measures were solely for Covid. But the lack of vision inherent in relying too heavily on radical individual behaviour changes to resolve systemic issues is a big part of the reason our fundamental problems remain unresolved.

All too often, we allow governments and public institutions to escape scrutiny by shifting blame on to us when they fail in their responsibilities.

This shirking of institutional accountability could also shed light on the seeming paradox of promoting abstinence from alcohol while simply minimizing the harms associated with drug use, instead of promoting recovery. Both of these trends imply that we shouldn't expect the systems we need to function when we need them.

Recommendations for extremely limited alcohol consumption, such as allowing no more than two drinks a week, place substantial emphasis on individual responsibility to adhere to rigid behavioural limits. These strict guidelines imply that the healthcare system may lack the capacity to offer comprehensive support for the health consequences of even relatively minor poor eating and drinking habits over a lifetime.

Rather than expanding healthcare resources or reconsidering the administration and organization of the healthcare system, this approach aims to make people much less dependent on it. The issue is not whether you agree with this in principle (which I do, kind of), but rather how far you push it - your specific recommendations and their extremeness - as this can, once again, undermine the argument's overall strength.

Because this approach often resorts to shame tactics, to make people feel guilty for not managing their health well enough to avoid needing healthcare altogether, then we must ask: what happens when the problem is too complex to be shamed away?

In this context, an excessive emphasis on harm reduction policies for hard drugs can also highlight institutional weaknesses. Prioritizing the reduction of drug use harms over promoting abstinence and recovery suggests that Canada's addiction treatment infrastructure isn't sufficiently robust to provide effective rehabilitation services.

In both cases, these approaches can be interpreted as responses to a healthcare system that lacks the resources, expertise, or capacity to offer more comprehensive solutions to either physical or mental health issues.

But I don’t believe we actually can’t do things, to this degree. I believe it's more that we've allowed bureaucratic bloat and a culture of inertia to run rampant to the point where it seems that way to too many in authority - but we can’t let them get away with that.

It's crucial to remember that institutions are meant to serve us, not the other way around. Passively accepting their failings will never lead to progress.

Changing the way we live, even gradually, is a substantial undertaking. While we often doubt our ability to significantly enhance people's lives, the fact that we've so effectively introduced annoying challenges and justified them as “for the common good” should (ironically) encourage us, in a way. It demonstrates our capacity for meaningful change, whether we like it or not.

Our excessive reverence for institutions, often focused on self-preservation rather than service, perpetuates our inertia problem. It's high time we demand that our institutions actually fulfill their purpose for the betterment of society.

Our approach shouldn't become fixated on removing elements that once provided satisfaction within systems that are no longer suitable for their intended purpose. Instead, we should prioritize the development of entirely new systems, offering innovative and forward-thinking solutions, which would naturally replace the outdated structures.

Covid taught me, if nothing else, that we can indeed overhaul our entire way of doing things overnight. The only thing holding us back is our attachment to the systems we've created, which we too often mistakenly believe are somehow now beyond our control.

This is why I support the idea of not blindly complying with impractical rules, and I also think we should advocate for challenging and changing rules and processes when they no longer serve us well.

Because I really want to continue believing that we can, in fact, do things. I eagerly anticipate the moment when meaningful actions once again have every opportunity necessary to truly speak louder than words.

As September usually brings with it a “back to school” spirit of new beginnings - this has me thinking about the need for things to die, in order for new things to grow.

In particular, I'm musing over the mindsets of those who viewed the end of Covid as the time to go “back to work”, meaning the office (as if people hadn't been working the whole time), as well as the limitations these attitudes impose on our ability to adapt.

A willful inclination toward stagnation hasn't just dimmed the prospects of the season; it's cast a much darker shadow over our entire economy. Yet, this might also offer an odd kind of opportunity. 

Our resistance to change has played a major role in the gradual decline of everything around us. However, there is the possibility that if everything breaks down sooner as a result, we might be able to accelerate our ability to deal with escalating issues as well, averting a path towards accumulating doom.

Similar to my view on the direness of our housing situation, where a crash might be the lesser evil, I sense the need for an equally disruptive force to rouse our spirits into action and enable us to fully embrace the potential of remote work.

Taking the fact that no one will do anything meaningful about housing until it crashes as a given, as well as the fact that no one will do anything transformative about the future of work until the old way is well and truly dead - it seems a good time to think about what could come next when we let go of an old economic model that has outlived its usefulness.

I know I'm not alone in expecting a crash in commercial real estate; we should be prepared to take advantage of it. It is far more surprising that it hasn't happened yet, than that it will.

Whenever it finally happens, I hope we refrain from artificially inducing it, akin to administering repeated shocks from a defibrillator. Rather, I envision a more natural course wherein the traditional office district gracefully gives way, allowing North American cities to evolve into more vibrant, bustling centres for people to live, above all else.

It may seem counterintuitive to draw inspiration from a much more conclusively failed society at this time - and saying the Soviets did something right is probably even less popular than stating we actually need a real estate crash, right now - but the cliche that broken clocks are right twice a day exists for a reason (just like what goes up must come down, for that matter).

It's no secret that I am not a fan of the Russian way of looking at the world, and my partner, who was born in the Soviet Union, is even less so. But there was one thing he often recounted to me that he felt was much better there, than here.

He hated the khrushchevka he grew up in (and looks quite askance at people we have heard suggesting developments akin to these as a solution to our housing crisis). However, he cherishes the memories he has of growing up in the neighbourhood that surrounded it.

Said neighbourhood was a microraion, or microdistrict. These were designed so that everything a person needed on a daily basis except work was close by and easy to get to without a car. They may serve as useful references for future cities, along with new communities that may emerge, after a commercial real estate bubble burst finally ends the argument that urban planning should be centred around cars and commuters.

Although some fear that remote work will be the death knell for downtowns, it's important to remember that urban centres with effective transit systems, bike lanes, and walkable neighbourhoods will be better equipped to adapt to changes that would refocus the value of a city on its residents, instead of placing undue emphasis on corporate interests. The key lies in embracing this inevitable shift, rather than resisting it.

It is often the same kind of people who want to return to the office to stave off the loss of a food court catering to office drudgery that are content to kill programs popular with people who actually live downtown and value a vibrant streetscape, if they interfere with maximizing the amount of road space available to cars.

This makes me think of the CafeTO curbside patio program, which we have all but killed here in Toronto. I remember a time during the Covid era, when (for a second, if I squinted) certain Toronto neighbourhoods sprinkled with spilling over patios looked (almost) European (if you ignored the ugly bollards). It was a glimpse of what our city could become if we focused less on cars on the road and more on people enjoying the streets.

It also illustrated all too well what those likening the death of the office to the killing of downtowns too often fail to comprehend - that for North American cities to thrive, they need more places with interaction and vibrancy built in, not places that we have to go to (but hate to be) like offices.

To understand what my partner really missed when he moved here, it is necessary to recognize what has been chronically neglected here in Canada, which is the value of "third places" -  locales beyond the home (the "first place", which wasn't great for him) or the workplace (the "second place", which is rarely exciting for any of us).

These are places where people socialize, participate in community activities, and enjoy leisure activities. They are essential for fostering a sense of belonging and social connection within a community. This includes coffee shops, libraries, parks, community centres, pubs and other gathering places where people can relax, and interact informally. 

Do we have these? Sure! But even in our cities, you can't get to many of them without a car. And commuting by car directly from your first to second place often makes visiting the third place seem like a chore, or at best, an occasional treat. They are not as much a part of the flow of the everyday as they were where my partner grew up, and in many other parts of the world.

By repurposing office spaces and eliminating office districts, we may have a rare opportunity to address this issue in a big way. 

We need to stop putting off bold action because we fear difficulty. We've effectively transformed factories into desirable loft living spaces, in many cases overcoming far more formidable health and safety challenges than most offices would present. Our limits are often more self-imposed than real - which is one positive I hope everyone can take from the Covid era of upheaval.

Perhaps former offices could be reimagined as a blend of apartments on the upper floors and independent businesses serving residents on the ground level - or something even more innovative! Rather than using the challenges of improvement as a reason to revert to old ways, I want to see us explore new possibilities.

Taking this further, I see remote work as an opportunity for urban revitalization because it allows us to build more city-like communities outside our current overcrowded and often clumsily developed metropolises - in a more beautiful and livable way - by eliminating the need to centralize around bleak commutes and even bleaker office destinations. 

In this way, remote work could revolutionize quality of life, not only for former office workers, but for everyone who gets to live in a more desirable area.

We all stand to gain from the development of livelier, interconnected, and denser communities, whether they are established within urban areas or in more remote locations. Such communities could lead to reduced traffic, lighter congestion on public transportation, decreased air pollution, increased accessibility to local businesses (without the need for driving), and fewer households relying on multiple vehicles.

With so much land to build homes on and yet so many people without a place to live, this should be a no-brainer for a place like Canada to move forward with - once we get over our systemic obsession with not allowing our historically huge real estate bubble to pop.

Moreover, it seems much more sensible to reduce emissions by creating more attractive destinations that can be navigated without a car, as well as convenient alternatives to driving, rather than heavily relying on measures such as surveillance or fines for non-compliance with emissions targets.

Making it both convenient and appealing for people to reduce their reliance on cars will have a more significant positive impact on the environment than any ban ever could, and it's likely to result in less frustration among the public.

By doing this, we can make life more sustainable systemically, without making it bleak.

Refusing to embrace a massive change that people truly appreciate, like remote work, which carries substantial potential for ongoing emissions reduction by eliminating the need for regular commutes, raises doubts about the sincerity of our efforts to combat climate change.

This is particularly noteworthy when we notice that more prominent pushes are being made for symbolic measures, which may appear meaningful, but do not have as deep a systemic impact.

A lot less people will accept a WD-40 ban than have already embraced fully remote work - and the change they like is much more likely to make a real impact on sustainability. 

Understanding where I come from may help explain why I advocate for such massive changes in Canadian and North American cities. People living in cities with better urban planning might see my calls for revitalization differently.

Many of the (cautionary) examples in this video on designing better urban places actually come from right here where I live. There's another related video that drives this point home even further - detailing just how addicted Toronto is to cars.

Although I'm fully aware of its flaws, Toronto remains the city I've embraced wholeheartedly, having left its suburbs in my rearview mirror the very second I was able to flee my childhood home.

I've always been deeply urban-minded, and I want to see my nation and continent embrace true urban living more fully.

There is a reason that cities in Europe and Asia, providing more of a sense of place and oriented more towards locals than passing through, aren't suffering as much as cities in North America post-Covid.

Businesses that rely on the old office paradigm will wither away anyway, as the emerging norm involves occasional office visits, and the idea of enough companies reverting to a five-day in-office workweek to sustain these establishments seems unrealistic.

Why not embrace a more radical new norm that encourages dynamic change rather than slow decline?

Our office districts in North America already look like ghost towns, especially in places like the PATH in Toronto, built around shuffling, living dead workers - let’s let them finally move on to their next life.

I understand that the circumstances hastening their demise, driven by the abrupt and massive shift to remote work, weren't ideal for many. Nevertheless, the demise was inevitable. In fact, it should have occurred sooner, but the persistence of those resistant to change, oblivious to the harm caused by stagnation, kept it on life support for far longer than warranted. 

The industrial revolution similarly disrupted established norms of work and living, yet it ushered in numerous improvements without which we'd be worse off. This transition mirrors that transformative period.

Even though I disagreed with many of the measures we adopted in response to Covid, I appreciated the overall demonstration of our ability to make quick and major changes. One crisis should have been enough to wake up those in power to the importance of consistent innovation, not just in exceptional circumstances. But if another crisis is needed to provoke this awakening - so be it.

Having recently crossed the rubicon into my forties, I hope to live through a time when my own relevance and mortality fade away amid sweeping change. That would mean I would get to live in a dynamic and fully vibrant environment - akin to the transition of fall colours, rather than the dreary depths of winter in suspended animation.

It's hard for me to understand people so entrenched in their ways that they're content to drag everyone down with them as they fade - and I long to see us break free from their death grip.

Canada's foundational narrative, along with the broader Western story, centers on hope - the idea that we are a place where you can build a better life. I find myself wondering what will happen to us if this notion disappears.

Whatever else I may think of my Russian in-laws, I'll always give them credit for moving here and working hard to improve their family's lives (materially; other nuances are stories for another time).

Despite their differing opinions on pretty much everything else, my partner knew they were on the same page about this. During their (constant, endless) discussions of Canada's limitations and his parents' sneering laments about them, my partner often quipped that if the downsides were really that overwhelming, then why didn't they move back to Belarus?

Such a scenario was tacitly understood as facetious, and (perhaps sadly, from a selfish perspective), it was never pursued.

This is why I was quite surprised when my partner's friend, who always seemed much more settled in Canada, actually did move back to his home country of Georgia a few years ago with his family.

Their story resembles my in-laws' in many ways. In both cases, while the husband found a good job in his field, the wife took on entry-level retail work to gain Canadian experience, since she had difficulty finding employment in hers. Both families had two children. While there are some nuances here, too - for example, my partner's friend and his wife came to Canada at a much younger age than my in-laws did, and before they had children - the broad details are similar.

What truly set them apart was the timeframe: my partner's friend's family arrived in Canada more recently, while his parents established themselves over 25 years ago.

Although his parents had to work hard, they did not have to struggle too much for too long. They started out crammed in a two-bedroom apartment with two kids, but soon moved up. With one decent income and one much more modest one, they were able to buy a semi-detached house within a few years, and then a much bigger, nicer detached house not long after that. I don't want to minimize the effort it took to do this - but it did pay off for them pretty quickly. The fact that they could mostly live on one income also enabled my mother-in-law to go back to school, get certified in her field, and eventually also succeed in her career.

Here, the story takes a significantly different turn for my partner's friend. Despite earning considerably more than my partner's parents (even adjusting for inflation), his family remained confined to a one-bedroom apartment. Moreover, the expense of raising their kids and renting their substandard home prevented his wife from doing the extra, unpaid work needed to break into her field.

In both families, one spouse appreciated (at least to some extent) what Canada had to offer as a more open society, while the other was less enthusiastic. However, the potential to enhance their fundamental quality of life played a crucial role. For my in-laws, the argument to persevere in Canada held sway due to this ability to progress, while for my partner's friend's family, this argument was ultimately lost.

This is despite the fact that they left Georgia because of the Russo-Georgian War. Combining this with the war in Ukraine, you might think (as I most certainly do) that regional instability should have been more of a concern. Yet even this couldn't sway the decision against returning without compelling economic reasons.

It has been said (and I agree) that diversity is the key to our strength; that people flock here because we're "open, accepting, progressive, and prosperous".

However, I think those in charge have significantly undervalued the crucial role of prosperity in this equation.

Despite Canada's reputation for being a diverse and welcoming society, a notable amount of new arrivals choose to depart due to economic struggles. These difficulties encompass challenges within the job market, the burden of high living expenses, and limited access to crucial government services such as healthcare. This reality underscores how these concerns can potentially overshadow our country’s other attractive qualities. Many recent news stories recount experiences similar to that of my partner's friend who decided to leave Canada.

Our economy hasn't been working any better for existing Canadians, either.

Despite a leader who proclaimed a commitment to building the economy from the heart outwards rather than the top down, the aspirations of younger people and newcomers have been cut off at the knees. The prospect of reaching the heights achieved by our entrenched gerontocracy appears distant and elusive, like a mountain peak veiled in mist.

Viral stories abound: a woman earning $34 an hour who still can't manage to feed herself and her daughter; a man with a $75K yearly income struggling to find an affordable place for himself and his son to live; an Ontario mayor who lives with her parents because she can't afford a home in her municipality.

These stories matter because I don't think our governments, at any level, seem to understand that the housing crisis, or the cost of living crisis more broadly, impacts people who would have made it before, but can't now - despite having met traditional markers of success. Instead, they seem to limit their perception of the issue to low incomes, oblivious to how high prices have made building a better life (or affording adequate food and shelter) a privilege reserved for the truly rich, often out of reach even for the upper middle class.

Even more importantly, the stories we hear often come from people who, though reluctantly, have fallback options to rely on. Take this woman, who is (justifiably) frustrated by the cost of living in Canada, but acknowledges that she could live with her family if necessary. But what about the next generation? Who will they rely on if their parents can't afford life's essentials themselves? And how dire must the circumstances be for those already grappling with this predicament at present, if even those with good incomes and options are struggling?

To my mind, this explains the trend of quiet quitting, and a desire for "lazy girl jobs," among a younger generation perceived to lack motivation.

Like many, I've felt exasperated by younger colleagues who appear satisfied with minimal effort, lacking the drive to go the extra mile in doing their work (which ends up leaving more work for those of us who will).  However, I can understand why they don't. Negativity and a lack of commitment aren't qualities I admire, and I'm not the type to give up in that way - but I suspect much of my determination stems from growing up in a time where it at least seemed like I could make it (even though my generation has been called the unluckiest).

The impact of lacking that essential spark of hope at the outset of one's adult life is often underestimated.

While many attribute such shifts in attitudes to the influence of technology or societal changes, I firmly believe that the core issue stems more from escalating costs and dwindling quality of life. After all, why invest extra effort if the chances of progress are slim, and your main goal is just to survive?

Some might suggest that our Covid experience and the rise of remote work may have played a role in this phenomenon. While there's certainly some truth to that,  it's crucial to also recognize the fact that for many my age and younger, these circumstances marked the first real improvement in our lives we have ever been given. Set against the backdrop of stagnant wages and the absence of benefits or retirement prospects, we've begun to attach a higher value to the present, rather than placing our hopes on distant rewards that might never materialize.

But even for those who can still enjoy the moment, it's disheartening that the younger generation, much like newcomers, lack the capacity to dream of a more promising future.

Is this still a better place to be than many others? Of course - you won't catch me moving to Belarus anytime soon, and my partner would be the absolute last to ever consider anything of the sort.

However, if we don't urgently acknowledge the growing issue of social mobility in our country, then our long-term prospects will be bleak. 

The balance between catering to the older generation and investing in the young and less established needs to be reconsidered. While honouring the contributions and needs of the elderly is important, a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities is crucial to ensure the vitality and progress of society as a whole. We need to understand that our country is more than just a nursing home, and that younger citizens are more than just personal support workers for an elder ruling class.

In spite of this reality, our government seems fixated on catering predominantly to the older generation, those who have already reached their life milestones. Even our immigration policies are tailored to cater to their specific needs.

It's essential to realize that Canada's assumed superiority is no longer a given. We must offer compelling reasons for people to choose Canada as their home and to remain engaged in its growth.

Bestowing unnecessary gifts upon the elderly, exemplified by decisions such as rolling back eligibility for Old Age Security benefits from 67 to 65 years old, comes at a cost that extends beyond mere financial implications - there are broader societal consequences to consider.

Perhaps it's time for the more prosperous older generation to relinquish some of their luxuries, allowing the cost of living to moderate and providing the younger, less established generations with a shot at a decent quality of life.

There was a moment in our most recent federal debate that resonated strongly with many young people, when it was asked what's more important: helping younger people get access to the housing market, or allowing older Canadians who rely on the value of their homes to live? Like many others, my partner found this particularly enraging.

It begged the question: does the older generation really not get just how important it is for everyone to be able to afford a decent place to live? Do they not think about the ramifications of their choices for the generations to come, at all? Why should the young sacrifice to fund retirement for the old, when most younger people do not even have the prospect of retiring themselves, and struggle to secure basic necessities such as food and shelter? There's also no denying that having a stable home, in contrast to younger generations, inherently provides our elder caste with some security, even without the prospect of a significant windfall from a home sale.

Our leaders' perception of what makes Canada an attractive choice may be rooted in ideology, but what truly resonates with people is the promise of not simply surviving, but thriving. There's more to it than just assuming we're the better option by default.

When someone decides to return to a country they pretty recently fled, especially in light of the looming possibility of renewed instability - it prompts me to question their judgement. But in doing so, it also triggers a moment of self-reflection about our country. Like, how could someone think Georgia could be better - but also, really, how? As more people make similar decisions, we can't just ignore this question. And sometimes, I can't help but question the depth of my own determination to keep trying, here.

My aunt, a tail-end boomer with an exceptional level of self-awareness compared to the average elder in her demographic cohort, recently noted to me that if she and my uncle had been born millennials - even with identical jobs and career paths - it's highly unlikely they would have been able to afford their house.

What's even more disheartening, as I pointed out to her, is that younger versions of my partner and I (elder millennials, ourselves) can likely barely imagine the kind of life we lived in our 20s, either - despite it not being too long ago, and our own lack of chance to achieve the typical boomer lifestyle.

In the eyes of many the age of my cousins (via said aunt), on the younger end of millennial - even my meagre advantages seem idyllic and nearly unattainable.

Immediately after getting our degrees and landing our first (low-paying) jobs, my partner and I moved out of our parents' homes and in together. It was never a problem for us to pay our rent without help from our parents. We were also able to explore local, independent restaurants, events, and shops in our vibrant downtown neighbourhood fairly regularly, without breaking the bank. It is even possible that I may have enjoyed the occasional overpriced avocado toast from some of these establishments. We were also able to slowly save up a little, and stay out of debt.

It was at least possible for me to enjoy being just a touch young and careless. Over the course of my (relatively) young(ish) adult life, we seem to have slowly devolved into a society where there is little opportunity to just take a chance - certainly no room to make a mistake.

One could say I made a mistake by not buying property in my early 20s. I suppose, in retrospect, I could have lived at home a few years longer and that may have been feasible. But (as was our humble privilege) few thought that way, back then. Having the luxury to feel as if there was no rush, we had no idea that this was the only opportunity we would have to do so affordably.

My experience differs significantly from that of people 5 years older than me, in that they really did have that luxury - while as it turned out, I did not. The difference between me and everyone following me is even greater. At least I had hope. It's easy for me to see why younger people don't.

Considered in a global context, both me and my younger cousins are still pretty fortunate - but I think it's similar to the notion (however unfair) that crime becomes a more urgent concern when it starts encroaching upon those who are typically part of the secure middle class. If even they can't experience comfort - then who can?

More to the point, when a sense of security and carefree spirit eludes everyone, who will be left with the resilience and creativity to bring forth positive transformations that benefit everyone in society?

When I first moved downtown and started renting in Toronto, the city - and Canada in general - felt ascendant. Famed urbanist Richard Florida even moved here, around the same time. It did seem that we were particularly well positioned to nurture the creative class, back then.

Looking back, however, it appears that we were under the impression that we could become "world class"  without understanding that this would require constant maintenance. Consequently, we stopped caring about the appeal of our city and immediately started selling off its potential. Florida seems to have noticed the shift around the same time I did, in the early 2010s.

This is a problem that will feel familiar to many in the Western world - a lot of the stories coming out of the US and UK could easily come from Canada - however, we have allowed our particular version to reach macabre proportions.

The typical price of a home in Canada exceeds $760,000, reaching well above $1 million in cities like Vancouver and Toronto. These prices are so exorbitant that the average household income required to qualify for Habitat for Humanity aid in the Toronto region last year was $85,352.

New and increasingly outrageous statistics like these continue to emerge, particularly in Toronto. According to a recent report, the minimum wage would need to reach $40 an hour for workers to afford living here. Even better-off Torontonians must earn an annual income of $229,800 to afford the average-priced home in the city.

What's most worrying about this scale of housing price inflation is that it not only prices out creatives, but anyone who does anything at all. It's hugely beneficial to people with existing assets to make passive income, over those doing productive work, leaving the market open only to those who got in years ago.

Not only do investors make up more than one in five property owners, with the majority being 55 and older - a lot of them have three or more properties under their ownership.

What’s also striking is that most of them don't have incomes that would normally qualify them for so many properties - they typically leverage equity from one to buy another. This has created a daisy chain of doom for affordability, presenting a cumulative advantage to those with assets, amid a lack of proper regulation.

This isn't just about those shut out of buying; borrowers who put in the effort to secure a mortgage they can't really afford are also struggling. I don't envy them. At times, I wonder if an earlier crash, though potentially financially ruinous in the short term, might actually be a better option for them too. It could be akin to ripping the bandaid off quickly, rather than letting them endure a slow and agonizing bleed-out.

I feel this more acutely even as I am in a position to possibly buy a place (mainly because freehold prices outside of the GTA and condo prices inside Toronto are down; although I prefer renting, the math starts to work towards buying when rents are exorbitantly high) and I may end up among those with a property worth much less than I paid for it (though I would still likely be able to make payments in this scenario). As I consider my options, I am struck that I can't see a bright future anywhere in Canada unless we stop pushing people to accept less.

In the past, we were a land of opportunity, a place where people went to pursue their dreams and achieve greater heights. Presently, however, we seem to be pressuring people to lower their sights, mirroring the very environments they once sought to leave behind.

During a recent Toronto mayoral debate, Olivia Chow and Ana Bailao both shared how their own family stories wouldn’t be possible today, given our housing crisis. Ana's later remark, however, stuck with me the most: that perhaps young people can't afford that $1.5 million house, but maybe they can stretch their means and buy a smaller $750,000 house to cram into with their siblings - demonstrating the status quo bias that I like to think cost her the election.

There have been a lot of such ideas floating around recently - that maybe "young" people (under 50) simply need to expect less. Why not put their life savings into unlocking their parents' unrealized equity by buying half their house for the privilege of living there - thus securing their parents' retirement funds, as well as making themselves more readily available as caregivers to their parents in their twilight years? This was the premise of an actual article.

Such schemes, along with so-called mom and pop investors, mean that our elderly are not only spending their children's (and grandchildren’s) inheritance - they are essentially garnishing their wages as well, making it near impossible for them to ever have a chance of building a similar quality of life or retirement for themselves.

It's not that I want to see older generations decimated in a crash (I love my aunt, my parents, and many other older people) - rather, I view such an event as a potential means to level the playing field in terms of wealth distribution. Currently, the gerontocracy is not treating other generations fairly.

It’s obvious that no one is going to fix housing, because our governments at all levels seem to have decided it is much more important to preserve assets for our elders at the expense of quality of life for the young. There seems to be an idea that we can wait, indefinitely. But as the young become not so young anymore - many millennials are over or pushing 40 - how long do they expect them to wait to build a good life?

It's essential to recognize the implications beyond the present. The next generation faces a future without a fair shot at success, where hard work and responsibility may not yield the rewards they once did. The consequences extend far beyond economic concerns; it shapes the very fabric of our society, eroding the belief in a future worth striving for.

If we continue down this path, the societal implications could be severe. It will sow the seeds of bitterness, resentment, and a lack of societal cohesion. Our elders, who benefited from the housing boom, may find themselves abandoned by a generation that feels it's past time for their concerns to take priority.

A crash does not guarantee a fix - mishandling it could lead to an even worse situation. However, given our increasingly unfair society, where inherited advantages trump hard work amid a lack of corrective action - a crash emerges as the least bad option.

This disruption would only be our shot, not the ultimate goal.

I just can't help but think that if everything were to break more quickly, we might have a chance to put it back together better sooner, as well.

This would open the door for more homes to be built for people, instead of becoming units for investors. Implementing robust regulations could also discourage such speculative practices from occurring again.

The housing crisis is not just about numbers, economics, or politics - it's about people. It's about the dreams that we hold dear and the future we envision for ourselves and the generations to come. Without a reset, we risk leaving a legacy of broken dreams, unfulfilled aspirations, and a divided society.

I don’t have faith that enough of us have the foresight to realize it, but I still hold out hope that a severe consequence of our complacency could ignite a much-needed proactive societal transformation.

The very least we should all hope for is that every Canadian has a reasonable chance of attaining my level of mediocrity.

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I've come to think of a seemingly banal interaction with my condo board - actually, a number of them, but this one is both the most ridiculous and the quickest to explain - as a harbinger of our times. 

In the condo townhome development where my partner and I live, there's a pretty laneway with slate tiles and nicely landscaped garden beds. Bike posts are also everywhere, adding to the aesthetic (in my opinion). A few bike posts are in the garden beds. Unsurprisingly, people park their bikes there.

It seems this was completely unanticipated.

Condo board members took to our community Facebook group to hector residents for parking their bikes in the garden beds (where the posts are). Apparently, it should have been obvious they were only allowed to secure the tops of their bikes to the posts, with the bikes themselves expected to be angled so the tires remain on the slate (I should mention these posts are fairly deep within the garden beds).

I suggested it may make more sense to either move the bike posts, or landscape in such a way that allows clearance for the typical bike to be secured to the posts without disturbing the garden - as coming from a design background, I know from experience that you get the best results when you design for what people will actually do, not what you think they should do.

This was not well received

The idea of designing for what people do continues to give board members sneering amusement, whenever they again rant in the group about something residents have done that they should not have done.

People parking their bikes in the garden beds remains common among these complaints - along with tons of other things that could easily have been resolved, long ago, through more thoughtful design. 

Another great example of bad design (that is even quicker to explain) can be found in the book The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman (a pioneer of people-centred design). When both sides of a door look the same, it can be confusing to know whether to push or pull. People often resort to putting up signs, but a better solution is to design the door with different features on each side. For example, a handle on the pull side and a metal plate on the push side. This way, people can easily understand how to use the door without needing signs. 

The idea is to make the action so intuitive that it happens almost automatically, without you really having to think about it.

I wish more people in positions of power would adopt this way of thinking - where responsibility is taken for creating better systems that anticipate and account for human fallibility, without pointing fingers or dispensing punishments.

Garden beds are just the beginning - let's look at urban design in a broader context.

The 15 minute city is a people-centric urban planning concept that aims to make daily life easier by creating urban areas where work, shops, and leisure activities are all within a short walk or bike ride from your home. 

Some authorities, however, wish to distort this concept for policing instead of improving communities.

At first, I thought the controversy around the idea was merely a result of post-lockdown anxiety - that after being restricted from leaving their homes, those against it were (somewhat understandably) paranoid that making it convenient not to venture far from home was an effort to stop them from leaving.

Unfortunately, some of the oppositional concerns have a more direct catalyst.

The city of Oxford in England has proposed a trial run of traffic filtering aimed at reducing congestion during peak traffic times. Under the plan, residents would be required to obtain permits to drive through the filters, which would be enforced by cameras. Drivers caught without a permit would be fined £35, with the penalty increasing to £70 if not paid within two weeks.

Aside from limiting car traffic to main roads, the goal is to promote pedestrianism, cycling, and the use of local amenities, thereby reducing pollution.

While that may sound nice in and of itself - my concern is that using repressive measures such as fines and cameras to enforce 15 minute city principles completely misses the point. 

The intent of this concept was to encourage developers to build more livable places, not to impose restrictions on people. Instead of punishing inefficient travellers, the focus should remain on pushing decision-makers to create communities that make it convenient and appealing to reduce unsustainable forms of travel.

While it may be hyperbolic to completely demonise 15 minute cities on the basis of this one example, it is not unreasonable to oppose more punitive applications of such ideas, as a rule.

Particularly since many climate change initiatives also suffer from this weakness in application - a temptation to punish, instead of taking on the more difficult challenge of designing solutions that make desirable behaviour feel effortless.

It's apparent that people can respond positively to behavioural changes they find appealing, such as the use of reusable bags (because they are often stronger, more attractive, and can carry more groceries than single-use bags) and energy-efficient lightbulbs (since they are more cost-effective than incandescents).

Having said that, it's also important to recognize that many of the most effective ways to combat environmental challenges can't be controlled on the scale of individual behaviour, but rather require governments and businesses to completely rethink systems and fund more transformative innovation.

Regrettably, rather than supporting the development and adoption of superior alternatives (such as plant-based corn plastic straws), impractical ideas like Canada's single-use plastics ban (which instead promotes the use of products like paper straws that disintegrate in liquid) are often adopted uncritically due to their perceived virtuousness.

It's this preference for symbolic gestures over more practical and innovative solutions that illustrates the larger problem of superficial environmentalism, which fails to address underlying systemic challenges and hampers progress in discovering truly sustainable alternatives.

This is true even to the extent that those in charge will fight against sustainable alternatives that arise independently, if it means they have to make meaningful systemic changes.

Consider remote work - yet another lockdown leftover that makes some people anxious, but with real potential to enable many to live better lives.

The ability to work from anywhere presents a great opportunity to transform local communities, both in cities and in smaller contexts, to make staying close to home easy and desirable so people don't make unnecessary trips - using 15 minute city principles in an approach people will appreciate and embrace.

One might assume that governments would also readily embrace and encourage remote work, given these benefits and the widespread positive reception from the digital workforce. 

One would be mistaken.

In an effort to protect property values and support struggling small businesses that built themselves around office crowds, many municipalities have resisted the idea - prioritising short-term economic interests over responding to remote work as a catalyst to transform cities in a more vibrant and sustainable way.

This is another impractical idea - not least because it won't save cities, anyway.

Commuting to work in an office five days a week will never again be a prevalent norm; we broke that pattern for too long, and too many companies and individuals have made a permanent transition. As a result, businesses and services dependent on revenue from the paradigm of the five-day work week will not be able to sustain themselves, even if a few more people are forced back to the office a little more often.

The “solution” of pressuring people to continue to trek to the office regularly (even on a reduced basis) so they may still need to occasionally buy overpriced sandwiches in the downtown core is indignant, and it also fails to ensure the viability of cities in the long run.

While the intention may not have been for this change to become permanent when companies shifted to remote work in March 2020, that should not deter us from fully embracing it and adopting a more intentional approach to capitalise on the opportunity. 

In light of the tremendous changes we've already seen in the transition to remote work, cities are in an incredible position to rethink the antiquated concept of central business districts. 

Instead, they can embrace the development of mixed use neighbourhoods that strike a better balance between work, play, and living spaces - resulting in more vibrant, convenient, and inclusive communities.

The notoriously NIMBY Toronto city council finally made one positive change in this direction - allowing multiplexes in all neighbourhoods, which weren't previously permitted in many areas of the city due to restrictive zoning laws.

Besides being a first small positive step towards addressing the affordability crisis that has been driving people away from the city for quite some time, this could also represent a positive step towards adapting to the new reality of a city that no longer revolves around its offices.

This is how we can breathe new life into the city, rather than just sustaining it on life support.

In its wider context of urban renewal, this action also illustrates how leaders can resolve problems in a more direct and productive way, rather than getting distracted by looking for blame elsewhere.

Instead of hectoring people on an individual level about what they should do, we should always push to make the changes we want to see easier, systemically.

Let's not forget the allegory, on a much smaller urban scale, that you should keep bike posts out of garden beds (literally and metaphorically) if you don't want flowers (or expectations) crushed.

Back when my partner still spoke to his Russian parents, the idea that lessons from Soviet times could be applied to Western society often caused him and his mother to clash. This clash ranged from the idea that potato skins should not be eaten in Canada, as in Belarus, due to radiation, to the belief that objective truth does not exist.

The only facts she trusted were the ones she could verify herself (perhaps due to her narcissism, as much as to her lived experience - but I digress).

This was extremely frustrating for my partner (and me). She dismissed many of our views as the result of brainwashing (by whatever authority) - views like he needed to have chemotherapy when he had cancer, rather than forego treatment in favour of a special Russian juice her friend claimed cured hers. 

In addition to often being downright dangerous - there was something deeply offensive to me about her callous cynicism. It was exhausting trying to explain why her skills in navigating her previous society weren't relevant to this one - she reduced the whole world and all people to being the same.

My partner decided years ago to stop talking to his family, and I must admit that I feel newly grateful for that lately. In the event we discussed certain topics now - I would hate to have to concede that she might have some sort of a point.

Not on potatoes, or cancer (obviously). But certainly on trust in authority, in general.

It's always been my tendency to be critical - especially of our leaders and institutions - but I felt comfortable doing so precisely because I knew I lived somewhere where that was okay. Due to my faith in our society, I never felt the need to defer to it.

This wasn't just because I wasn't afraid of repercussions - I also believed speaking out was worthwhile, and that it could make a difference. I wasn't so cynical as to think everyone, everywhere, was equally corrupt - and you could never expect anything better.

While my mother-in-law distrusted or circumvented by default, I only did so after being given a good reason.

That's still who I want to be - but I am not quite sure if I am, or even could be again.

When I saw strange, Pravda-like government propaganda emerge in Covid times, with Canadian bureaucrats elevated in a manner that reminded me of a board of honour you would find in a former Soviet village - my critical nature began to evolve into more of an incredulous skepticism. I mean, how could you not have doubts, when someone like Patty Hajdu is made to seem so heroic - and we’re not supposed to question it, or her?

This feeling only intensified when some of said bureaucrats began urging us to become even more Soviet, and call out friends and family breaking Covid rules (I would never do that to anyone - not even my mother-in-law). 

In light of recent reporting in the Twitter Files on how the US government, academia and social media companies collaborated to control messaging during Covid - the whole experience feels even more unsettling, in retrospect. I could definitely see past me arguing with my mother-in-law that in Western culture, deliberately emphasizing narrative over truth was just not the way we do things. After learning that even “stories of true vaccine side effects” and otherwise “true stories that could fuel hesitancy” were suppressed - past me is looking pretty naive. 

The Lockdown Files investigation in the UK brought similar revelations about decision making and messaging in the Covid era - including that their health secretary rejected advice to shorten Covid isolation from 14 days of isolation to five days of testing, saying it would “imply we've been wrong” and “sound like a massive loosening”.

But what I find most disturbing is that we haven't had any similar reckoning on our Covid response, here in Canada. Given what our prime minister has said publicly about convoy protesters, and the fact that he recently cited anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers as reasons to censor social media to make sure “we are keeping people safe” - who could really believe that our government hasn't done the same sort of things as their US and UK counterparts (or worse), when nobody was looking.

We are no longer the high trust society that shaped me.

There is always a risk of this happening when people feel less secure physically. Post-Covid, all of us have now experienced some level of food and resource uncertainty, many of us for the first time. No matter what your perspective is on why this happened - this is fundamentally unsettling.

Nevertheless, the main reason for the growing distrust in authority is that more people have learned through experience that authorities cannot always be trusted.

It used to be that I could simply laugh through a movie about something like flat-earthers in a light-hearted manner - now, I cannot help but feel more empathy for what drives people to believe such things (however silly), and certainly for people deemed dangerous simply for being ignorant.

For example, the notion that 15 minute cities are a government plot to limit our movement is silly to me - but I get where it comes from. After we have lived through stay-at-home orders, allowing police to stop people and ask their reasons for leaving their homes - is it really all that silly to fear that nice places you don't want to leave, are only being built that way so you can't leave? Aside from being familiar with 15 minute cities as a trend in urban design that predated Covid - maybe the only reason I find this silly is because I don't think our governments or institutions are competent enough to pull something like this off.

Even if the details of an idea are absurd - like extrapolating that because the Soviet government lied about Chernobyl, and because there was radioactive soil contamination in Belarus, no potato, anywhere (even in another country), can be presumed to be radiation-free (because you can't trust any government to tell the truth about such things) - the feeling behind it may not be entirely wrong.

If you are someone who thinks critiquing our own society as similar to the Soviet one is akin to my mother-in-law's refusal to pivot on potatoes -  I would posit that if we refuse to recognize (or admit) that our Western governments can occasionally be quite shady, we will only move closer to becoming that kind of broken society.

A lot of our current shadiness, including the authoritarian way we handled Covid, seems to have been triggered by Western panic over Trump and Brexit, and latching on to Russian meddling as to blame for both. We have become obsessed with misinformation - or, more accurately, the idea that people are questioning authority because of outside influences, rather than any real grievances.

People become more vulnerable to absurd ideas not only because they are ignorant about an issue, and thus easy to fool - but also when too many in authority deny an issue even exists. The more often your reality is dismissed as a fantasy world, the more comfortable you may feel reaching for something fantastical.

This is what is so self-defeating about our current Canadian government's attitude toward its more critical citizenry, lately. You may be concerned about the threat to freedom of expression from Bill C-11, the seeming lack of seriousness in investigating leaked reports of Chinese election interference, or the general feeling that Canada is broken because of unaffordable housing, a decreased sense of personal safety, and a lack of trust in institutions to provide basic services. Our government seems convinced that you are only complaining due to foreign influence or Conservative spin, rather than having any genuine concerns.

When governments refuse to address the root issues that cause criticism, citizens think their government is corrupt and they can never expect anything better. In this way, false equivalencies and conspiracy theories are actually reinforced.

For example, there might not be quite as many people who would buy the Kremlin spin on the war in Ukraine now, if in our existential terror following the 2016 US election, we hadn't grossly overstated how much influence Russian bots had on public discourse. When too many real opinions of people (however cantankerous) are dismissed as misinformation, it becomes easier for people to dismiss the label itself as misleading.

I also think less people would be willing to believe Justin Trudeau is literally the Manchurian candidate if he would just allow more transparent inquiry into election interference claims. I strongly suspect he isn't a Chinese spy - rather, I think he lacks the self-critical perspective that would allow him to realize how suspicious his evasive actions make him appear, and that this has done more to degrade public opinion than any "bad actors". The feeling that he deserves and is entitled to our belief in what he thinks of himself is evident in the way he behaves (in this way, he definitely reminds me of my mother-in-law). 

He and our governments in general still assume our trust - but thanks (at least in part) to their actions, we now live in a society where they will actually have to work to deserve it.

According to current government groupthink, the problem is what we think and say about them, not what the truth is (this is also where my mother-in-law and I tended to diverge). It is because they do not trust us with information that they actively work to obscure our motives when it comes to commenting on it.

We are still not Soviet, yet - that rot set in after decades and many administrations that proved the rule of government secrecy and insidious corruption.

It is, however, unlikely that we will ever be a high trust society again in my lifetime - yet our institutions could still be trusted. It is up to those who lead them to recognize that they must work consistently to earn our trust now, rather than expect it by default.

Canadians (as well as Westerners in general) tend to believe we are good people because we are truly nice, down to our core. But most of us are only nice because we were lucky enough to live in nice places, during nice times. 

As our experience gets less pleasant, so will we. Because of this, it's important to actually fix the things in our society that aren't nice, not to ignore them or castigate those who point them out.

If you met her, you'd probably agree with me that my mother-in-law is not who you'd like to be, and that she has a miserable outlook. However, my experience over the past few years has taught me that many more people than I had ever thought are just a bit of adversity away from being just like her - and that should terrify all of you, as much as it does me.

Looking back at my most recent posts, I seem to be particularly bothered by the general inertia of our society.

This relates to my reflections on Covid-era issues that are still relevant today (as they were never just about Covid) - in that my general skepticism towards the Canadian Covid response was largely caused by our lethargic governments’ continued inaction, during what they were telling us was a crisis.

Even though Covid never seemed all that scary to me, even in the beginning - I initially gave our leaders the benefit of the doubt. I thought it was possible that details about the virus weren't being disclosed publicly to avoid panic. I also fully understood the need to spread out the impact on our hospitals.

They lost me, however, when they clearly weren't acting on the idea that, during these closures, we were preparing our institutions and resources for impact.

At all levels of government, I never saw the sort of fire I would expect in a real emergency (nor a rush to retreat to their bunkers, which is probably what they really would have done, if they themselves were actually afraid).

Instead, they took the relative path of least resistance - close everything, concentrate all attention and resources on enabling this bandaid mitigation, and then just wait and hope.

It's easy to mistake the level of disruption this caused for unprecedented government action - when in reality, our governments, especially the federal government, merely offered deceptively simple solutions to very complex problems. Our bloated bureaucracy jumped at the chance to do less and rely on the public more.

While I'll probably never fully understand why we did this, since it was a confluence of so many factors - I am sure at least a part of the reason was that we typically prefer to lead not by ideas, but by promoting popular policies (as lockdowns were at the time). Canadians measure our self-worth by how we look on the world stage.

This phenomenon is evident in a myriad of other areas. Our nation talks a lot, but has few effective solutions to any of its problems (other than helicopter money, which we love - see: the federal dental “plan”).

We have too many bureaucrats in Canada, who are far too preoccupied with minutiae rather than the big picture. Thus, thought leadership from foreign sources is important to us, as is the recognition they provide when our menial contributions are praised.

It is for this reason that our government, in so many areas, assumes the announcement of a project ensures its success. This is the farthest we are capable of taking our own ideas (and arguably, truly as far as we think they need to go).

For us, actual innovation is someone else's responsibility. We love to get in our own way when it comes to any locally-driven change here in Toronto, yet once almost entrusted Google with the vision of a (dystopian) new urban neighborhood within the heart of the city. We fall all over ourselves every time a company like Amazon contemplates opening its headquarters here. We brought in a foreign vaccine producer like Moderna, rather than improving our own capabilities. We even almost allowed ourselves to be used as lab rats for a vaccine developed by a brutal regime like China.

We like things we think we can count on, without regard for what we could amount to - that’s why we like to invest in real estate, rather than our own people and ideas.

I thought of this when our Prime Minister questioned the "business case" for providing liquefied natural gas to Europe. Besides being patently absurd - there is of course a business case, but it would require more effort than a relatively passive source of money such as an inflated real estate bubble - this demonstrates perfectly both our arrogance about our place in the world, as well as our unwillingness to work to earn it.

It further illustrates how slow we are to adapt to changing circumstances, thinking it is more important to signal our moral superiority when it comes to climate change than to support our NATO partners by providing the resources they need to decouple from Putin and other dangerous regimes. It is beyond our scenario planning capabilities to realize that effective climate policy must also be geopolitically sustainable.

I put this down to what has been (aptly) described as our branch plant mindset. Our mistake is to confuse bringing in foreign companies that are big players in global technology with competing in big tech ourselves. Although opening a Google or Amazon branch might bring jobs, their value is trivial compared to the research and intellectual property we provide these multinationals (which we are unable to monetize for ourselves).

Our tendency is to overvalue what we perceive to be easy and reliable right now, to the extent that we are afraid to take risks that would secure prosperity and stability in the future. But getting too comfortable in this way puts our future comfort at risk.

Even our healthcare system reflects this. For decades, we have known that an aging population would cause problems, yet the system remains completely unprepared - since raising taxes and/or rethinking the system over time would have been uncomfortable, compared to simply touting it as morally superior to private healthcare.

The idea that we have truly universal healthcare is itself more of an announcement than a reality. We don't cover pharmacare, dental care, or physical therapy, and barely cover mental health services or eye care, here in Ontario. Even so, we quite enjoy our reputation as a nation with universal healthcare - and thus feel compelled to oppose private delivery of public healthcare, even when the alternative is unacceptably long wait times for any care at all. 

To concede meaningful change would be to admit there is a problem. We prefer to hype the fact that healthcare spending by the federal government over the next decade will reach $196 billion. Never mind the fact that only $46 billion of that is actually new funding, and that it amounts to little more than a steady increase in the federal contribution spread across all provinces over a ten-year period. Those are details that don’t fit in a headline.

It seems that people do notice such details, despite our best efforts. Since 2001, the number of permanent residents becoming Canadian citizens has plummeted. Statscan does not identify the reasons for the drop. However, individuals who are considering committing to Canada must undoubtedly take into consideration the reality of healthcare, cost of living, and job prospects.

Our allies also seem to be noticing we are a lot of hot air. Analysts have speculated that Canada's exclusion from "AUKUS" (a security pact between Australia, the UK and the US) may be an indication of frustration over Ottawa's perceived failure to toughen up on China. 

I can’t imagine this was helped by the revelation today from CSIS that China employed a sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canada's 2021 federal election. I also doubt our Prime Minister inspired much confidence by having chosen to respond to this by myopically emphasizing that "the integrity of our elections in 2019 and 2021 has not been compromised". In spite of not having a significant impact on the election outcome, the interference effort still matters, and needs to be addressed rather than downplayed.

I can imagine that our Prime Minister's more recent statement that he “ordered” a US fighter jet to shoot down a balloon over northern Canada, rather than requesting, authorizing, or approving the action, probably went down like a lead balloon as well. It wasn't enough to take the assist - we had to announce it as if we were leading the operation.

If we were truly a secure country, instead of akin to an insecure influencer, we'd focus more on responding to threats and less on either claiming undue credit, or trying to minimize the importance of inconvenient truths.

The reasons for our need to appear more influential than we actually are are many. Apparently, we don't actually belong in the G7 anymore - we should have been replaced by India years ago, by objective measure. As speculated at The Hub - I also wonder if possibly being expelled from that club might be a good thing, since it could force Canadian leadership to think about whether we have more to offer the world than governing by press release.

Being so focused on messaging is far from benign. Because we are all talk, we put a lot of value on talk - and this is why we are beginning to treat dissenting opinions as threats.

This is beginning to play out now with Bill C-11, aimed at forcing government-approved content to take precedence over what people want to see. As part of a previous round of online consultations for an online harms bill, the federal government even filtered out feedback from individuals who didn't agree with the need for the bill itself (which is expected to be tabled this year). 

It has also long been my suspicion that this is really what prompted us to invoke the Emergencies Act. We didn't look in charge, and our closest allies clearly noticed that - which panicked the government. We were very worried about our reputation as a reliable trading partner. That was what posed the biggest threat - the optics of the convoy.

Optics also explain why the government refused to sit down or speak with convoy participants - and why our Prime Minister felt comfortable describing those taking part as a “fringe” in Canada with “unacceptable views”. Our country's international reputation for embracing Covid restrictions was really important to us. Our almost evangelical embrace of masks also makes sense in this context.

As a country, we should care less about how we look and more about what holds us together.

This is my main disappointment with the Public Order Emergency Commission's conclusion that using the Emergencies Act to deal with the convoy protests was appropriate. As with the idea of being relegated from the G7 - being embarrassed by the results of the inquiry may have actually compelled us to change.

Rather, I worry the report's results might set a precedent for the very behavior it outlined led to the need to use the Emergencies Act. Essentially, the failure of politicians and police to respond appropriately to lawful protests early on led to problems compounding into an emergency that could only be resolved by the Act.

Consequently, our leaders have learned that if they fail to act, then wait to see things spiral out of control, they will be justified in invoking powers to crack down on citizens that they wouldn't normally have - so much easier than thinking through an appropriate response early on and acting within the normal rule of law!

I wonder how this may extend to the way the government will choose to use things like Bill C-11 and the impending online harms bill - after all, it would probably be much easier to crack down on anyone expressing dissent about our country's myriad problems, than it would be to actually try to solve them.

More likely than not, they will choose the option that helps them project the image they want people to see immediately, rather than doing the hard work necessary to change the big picture over time.

Thus, I fear the only way to compel change from our leaders is to cast their actions in a bad light on the world stage. Despite the Emergencies Act inquiry being a missed opportunity, perhaps something like the CSIS documents revealing Chinese strategy to influence the 2021 election could still inspire change. Currently, our glossy global profile masks our insecurities far too well.

In considering the various ways in which Canada (and the West in general) may be considered broken, I can't help but think one of the reasons we remain so is due to our recent puritanical streak. 

This is part of a general reflection on the fact that while I, like most, am beyond ready to move on from Covid - I think moving on entirely would be a mistake, unless and until we address why we behaved the way we did during that era. Because there were many previously simmering issues that simply boiled over during that time - and they will bubble up again if we don't deal with them properly. 

Take the attitude that led to the pursuit of Covid Zero.

It is an attitude that is at once unrealistically optimistic and deeply cynical. 

Cynical of people's ability to interpret nuance, and optimistic as to our collective ability to overcome the reality of how humans actually behave by the sheer triumph of will (reference definitely intended).

As one example, at the apex of our Covid panic, many experts and the media argued mask mandates should remain in perpetuity because reversing course if conditions change is too difficult for the average person to cope with. 

Yet at the same time, iniitial (realistic) concerns about people’s ability to consistently use masks correctly were memory-holed in favour of a call for total compliance with mandates.

At once, people were thought incapable of adapting to change - yet also expected to comply with drastic changes indefinitely, without error.

There was nothing new about this attitude. Our approach to emergency alerts in Canada might have given us some insight into how we would react to a thing like Covid.

When these were introduced to all mobile devices in Canada, an opt-out option was recommended so that users could disable certain notifications. Our regulators, however, thought it would be too difficult to decide which alerts should be optional. Due to this, our emergency alert system has only one alert level, which sounds like an air raid siren.

If you want to know if there's ever an emergency at the nuclear power plant, you have to accept that you'll be startled awake every time an Amber Alert goes out, too. 

The argument was that either you should bear the "trivial" inconvenience, or turn off your phone completely to stop receiving alerts. It was not acknowledged that while Amber Alerts are important, and people who call 911 about them are selfish - perhaps there was, nonetheless, some merit to considering that the system could have accommodated different alert levels.

Decision makers in our country seem to have forgotten that if everything is an emergency, then nothing is.

Similarly, they've overlooked the fact that goals need to be attainable to be effective.

Vision Zero is a prime example. Introduced in Toronto in 2017, this strategy - part of a global initiative aimed at eliminating all traffic fatalities and severe injuries - has failed to significantly reduce traffic deaths. Even during the pandemic, motorists continued to kill dozens of pedestrians and cyclists each year.

My inclination would be to strive for something less lofty and more specific than “eliminating all traffic fatalities and severe injuries”, which is obviously impossible. For example, we could attach actual consequences to killing someone with your car in Ontario - preferably consequences that can't easily be escaped by saying you were distracted by a water bottle.

Similarly, it would have made more sense to me had we focused our efforts and resources on protecting the most vulnerable from Covid, rather than trying so hard to convince young people who were not at risk that it was nevertheless crucial that they avoid it at all costs. The goal of Covid Zero ultimately led us to make decisions that were far more damaging than if we had done nothing at all.

Real solutions can't be found in platitudes.

Though it may sound motivating in theory, believing we can achieve perfection is quite debilitating in practice. You'll never feel achievement when you set an impossible goal - only like your efforts will never be enough, since there's always so much more work to do. And while it is admirable to strive for better - to never acknowledge or celebrate progress is demoralizing. Only the truly obsessed can remain motivated by a sense of constantly not being good enough.

Clearly, our politicians and bureaucrats still have not learned this lesson.

Consider our recently updated alcohol guidelines, here in Canada.

Prior sensible advice that suggested that men should limit alcohol consumption to 15 drinks per week and women to 10 drinks per week has now been replaced with the recommendation that the consumption of any amount of alcohol is not safe - and if you must drink, you should not exceed two drinks a week, because even the tiniest amount of alcohol can harm your health.

As such, it is a true Zero in the sense that its backers have pretty much no chance of achieving what they intended.

No one will be surprised to learn that pleasure wasn't taken into account. According to one of the experts behind the new guidelines, she and her colleagues placed no value at all on such qualitative benefits.

I'm not sure why so many people seem to be taking this approach lately. We know that fear-based health messages are far less inspiring than positive health messages.

The fact that more reasonable advice often gets buried within the bulk of zealot-style recommendations like these strikes me as particularly interesting. In the opinion of the same expert, the beauty of this new guidance is that it emphasizes that any reduction in alcohol consumption can be beneficial, even if you're only willing to reduce it from 30 drinks per week to 28. That's wonderful, according to her.

So why not lead with that? More people are likely to find it palatable (and doable) to drink less than to never drink at all.

It is true that radical claims, such as the new drinking guidance, generate attention - but they are not likely to result in positive behavioural changes. As people turn off Amber Alerts due to overuse, so will they tune out lifestyle recommendations that don't consider that most people actually value enjoying their lives.

Call me old fashioned - but I believe the point of setting goals is to eventually accomplish them.

At absolute zero, the lowest temperature possible, particles in a substance are essentially motionless. In black holes (regions in space where nothing can escape their pull), when the temperature of a black hole approaches the gravitational singularity in which space-time possibly ceases and entropy is zero, absolute zero or possibly sub-absolute zero may occur.

In the same way, initiatives like Covid Zero, Vision Zero, Alcohol Zero, and the zero-sum approach to Amber Alerts render our energy unavailable to us. As a result, we become unable to move forward with more attainable goals. After all, if nothing less than (impossible) perfection will ever be good enough - then what is the point of doing anything at all?

I plan on reflecting more on things like the Absolute Zero mindset - because while Covid will always be with us, nonsense like this doesn't have to be. It is important to repel draining attitudes like this and focus on more positive approaches that limit or reverse the energy loss we are all feeling in our post-Covid world.

As a society, we must not fall into the black hole that is puritanism, or we will never be able to move forward.

I've never been one to wear much makeup, but my usual routine before heading out has always included slapping some lip gloss on. So much so that during the 1 year, 8 months, and 21 days we were living under a mask mandate here in Toronto, I never quite adjusted. 

Whenever I left home to go to one of the few places open during that strange time - I would still move to put on lip gloss. As soon as I did, I would remember that there was no point when I had to wear a mask - and my heart would sink, just a little, every time. 

Exactly as intended - a key reason given for mandating masks was to keep Covid at the forefront of everyone's minds

Masks served as a constant reminder never to become too relaxed. The renewed debate over mask mandates in Ontario must be seen in the context of what that constant state of unease has stolen from us - and why it is so important to end even the question of further restrictions or mandates. 

We Couldn’t Fix Anything 

The restrictions we were forced to live through were ostensibly necessary to keep our healthcare system from collapsing.

As our healthcare system now exists in a perpetual state of collapse (even more so than before), I'm well beyond over this argument.

Rather than explaining such systemic, long-term problems away as being due to Covid, the way we responded to Covid should be understood as a consequence of established institutional incompetence. Those in charge knew our healthcare system was far too easy to overwhelm, and reacted accordingly.

At this point, most everyone agrees that our system was broken long before Covid existed, and we need bigger fixes than restrictions can provide. But why did it seem like nobody wanted to even acknowledge this for more than two and a half years? Instead of focusing their efforts on working to fix our wholly inadequate system, why do so many of Canada’s very online doctors keep pushing for masking in perpetuity?

My strong feeling is that too much focus on reducing systemic strain through radical behavior modification is exactly what allowed our actual problems to remain unaddressed.

I see this as a bit of a pattern - remember when our Transport Minister blamed out-of-practice travellers, not restrictions, for delays at our airports; recall how Service Canada urged people to plan ahead and apply for passport services early, downplaying their own failure to prepare for the surge of applications. Similarly, Health Canada is now blaming parents' panic buying for causing over six-month-long shortages of children's pain relief and fever medicine. When our government and public institutions fail to meet their core responsibilities to citizens, they are increasingly blaming us.

This is why these restrictions need to be permanently put behind us, and we need to let go of the thought that they may be brought back. It is well past time we remembered that our institutions are supposed to serve us - we should not agree to live in deference to their failings in perpetuity.

Because placing unrealistic expectations on human behavior is not a benign act - it causes harm in itself.

We Couldn’t Look Forward to Anything

Something that really bothered me throughout Covid was the casual disregard we were asked to show for what we were asked to sacrifice.

There was a constant refrain: it’s “just” a few weeks. It’s “just” one birthday. It’s “just” one Christmas. It’s “just” one little test before a “gathering” (another word that now makes me cringe). It’s “just” a mask. 

Even if it had been just a few weeks, one birthday, or one Christmas - this still would have been an intrusive, demeaning discourse. As a matter of principle, governments should never be allowed to dictate what is essential or valuable in life to this extent.

The dismissive rhetoric about how minor all our sacrifices were missed the point that it wasn't just any individual restriction that most people found bothersome - it was the entire experience of life since March 2020, in aggregate.

Changing the fundamental way we live our lives, even if only a little bit at a time, is no small thing.

For this reason, in addition to the major consequences of restrictions that are now becoming evident - to name just a few, delayed cancer treatments, developmental delays in children and the impending collapse of our economy - I believe all of the smaller consequences and frustrations we endured also need to be taken into account.

In spite of the fact that my lip gloss anecdote may seem trite, little things like this that led our hearts to sink over and over again for more than two years did matter. “Just" a little disappointment at a time can forever change a person, when that disappointment is persistent.

Even now, as things slowly return to normal, Mask Wars: Redux may still get in the way of normal celebrations for many this winter. And as long as testing is continually pushed ahead of “gatherings” (blech), we will remain unsure whether or not we will actually be able to participate in important life events. The consequences of resigning ourselves to such perpetual uncertainty may prove far greater than any virus.

It is time to stop ruminating on what might happen, and start thinking more about what could be possible.

We Need Things We Can Rely on, in Order to Plan

Leading up to our first Covid Christmas, though I wasn't on board with the idea that we should restrict our lives, even then - I did think being forced to do so might at least facilitate innovation, as one positive side effect. 

Initially, it looked like while the winter might be weird, it could still be fun in novel ways. The city of Toronto allowed an extended winter patio program for curbside cafes and expanded private patios. Neat winter experiences, like an outdoor food and wine bar with a holiday forest vibe located in the heart of the city, started to pop-up.

It didn't take long for those neat winter experiences to be greatly diminished.

The outdoor food and wine bar was quickly reduced to a takeout market with limited entry, social distancing, all food and drinks to-go only - and of course, masks required. What a cheerful vibe!

We weren't allowed even that pale shadow of an experience for long - everything soon went dark, including Christmas lights drive-throughs. The Distillery District in Toronto went so far as to shut down all Christmas Tree and canopy lights in support of our second lockdown. All the effort and cost restaurants had put into designing unique outdoor dining experiences was wasted, as they were not allowed to open until spring (only to be shut down again just over a week later, until June).  

And the first Covid Christmas was "just" that. Things were not much brighter in 2021.

The whole experience really broke our collective can-do spirit. If everything can be taken away from you at any time, why bother making plans? Having no expectations will prevent disappointment. However, if we resign ourselves to never expecting anything, we will never be able to solve anything.

How can we effectively debate the pros and cons of remote work, for instance, if we continue to view it through a Covid lens instead of a way forward in general? Those who believe that at least some in-person work is necessary for creativity will have a tough time arguing that if we return to masking. The sight of masked faces is ever so inspiring (and not at all demoralizing), after all. 

This type of motivational deficit could similarly lead us to accept months of mandatory masking every year, rather than put in the work needed to ever really fix our healthcare system. I recall the many times we've been told this was just a temporary measure, to give the system time to breathe, as some double down and try to push the same argument once more. How is it that allowing breathing room only ever makes them more exhausted? Forgive me if I think it is past time we think differently about all of this.

My own "can-do" spirit has been reduced to what could now be better described as "don't tell me what we can't do". As in, we shut down the whole world over a mild virus - don't ever tell me anything is impossible, ever again.

To rekindle my former optimism - I can reframe this as recognizing that Covid gave us an opportunity to realize the “way things are” is not the way they have to be. However, if we simply accept the restrictions we normalized during Covid as the new "way things are" - the potential of that idea will never be realized.

We Need To Admit Mistakes in Order to Move Forward

Masks weren't my hill to die on - and at least at first, I thought they might be a bridge to normalcy. As in, I thought a security blanket would ease the transition back to normal life for those who weren't quite ready for it right away. I was fine with that - in July 2020, when masks were first introduced as a "temporary" measure.

As it has become clear that the "remind people to take everything seriously" aspect of masking triumphed over the "get back out there" element - I consider the overall push to mask much more harmful now than I did then.

It is particularly troubling that rather than acknowledging any of the harms caused by Covid measures - we are instead doubling down on asserting that wearing face coverings in public spaces is a largely effortless gesture. Once again, this is deemed the "least we can do" to relieve hospital stress - but now to prevent long-established diseases we have always lived with normally, like the flu and RSV.

Masking season has apparently become synonymous with cold and flu season, as many people are now explicitly saying that masks should be worn every year. While some still attempt to frame their efforts to “once again make masking a social norm” as a temporary measure, others outright state that masks should be brought back "every cold and flu season, in perpetuity".

Can we just disregard these as extremes? Hopefully! Nevertheless, you can't have it both ways. Masks can't be proclaimed as such powerful reminders to take things seriously, while simultaneously minimising them as "just" a mask - such a small, insignificant thing to ask people to wear -  whenever the thought of having to wear them again triggers a reaction against the idea of restrictions as a whole.

Masks most definitely worked in at least one way they were intended - they viscerally remind us all too well of the shadow of a life we were forced to live for more than two years. 

In my view, the full vibrancy of life is very important - and I will not just let it go.

To me, calls to #MaskUp just sound like giving up - a declaration of failure and a death knell for our ambition.

Normal for me is to look forward to the future, and to envision what new and exciting things may be possible. The idea that we all should once again live like peasants in the dark ages, huddled in our caves, cowering in fear of the cold and pestilence as the winter winds blow in, is not acceptable to me. This is no way to move forward as a society.

If we can manage to avoid reverting to the now all-too familiar cycle of restrictions during this fall and winter, then this will finally, truly be over - and it needs to be. It's time to move forward, and not feel like if we try we'll only be pulled back. It is only then that we can determine what it all meant and what else is possible from here on out.

Even though it made me a bit sad each time I was reminded of its futility  - I am glad that I never quite broke my lip gloss habit. I see this as confirmation that I am optimistic by default (albeit cynical). But while I was able to maintain that spirit - it was nevertheless diminished by such a demoralizing experience.

The winter is dark enough as it is - I won't allow anyone to further dim my shine in the coming months. Not even the shine on my lips.