There is much talk about the Canadian identity in these days of mass immigration , diversity and refusal to integrate. The 1970s were a simpler time for such rumination on culture, however. Riding the new global identity of Pierre Trudeau (soon to be regretted), the times were fired by the 1972 hockey summit win by Canada over the Soviet Union.

The series contained many of the self-held perceptions of the nation. Plucky underdog. Tenacious competitor in global affairs. Limitless possibilities. All seemingly rolled up into two weeks 53 years ago this month. Many of these notions were still manifest in the 2025 federal election when Boomers had a conniption fit over Donald Trump and withdrew into their Elbows Up phase.

So it should come as no surprise that one of the stars of that 1972 team was goalie Ken Dryden. While not being dominant throughout against the shifty Soviets, Dryden peaked at  the right moments (in tandem with Tony Esposito) to snatch the eight-game series at absolutely the final possible moment.

It’s hardly an exaggeration that, while a number of the Canadian players lost their minds in the tense fortnight, Dryden carried himself with cool dignity. There were no Phil Esposito jeremiads. Not Jean Paul Parisé stick wielding. No Bobby Clare two-handers to the ankles of his opponents. Just the emerging figure of the lanky goalie resting his chin on his stick as he waited in the net for Kharlamov and Yakushev.

For the generation that watched him develop he was likely the quintessential modern Canadian. Son of a charitable community figure. Educated in the Ivy League. Obtained his law degree. Served as a federal cabinet minister. Author of several definitive hockey books (The Game is perhaps the best sports non-fiction in the English language). Executive of the Toronto Maple Leafs. And more.

He was on the American telecast of the 1980 U.S. Miracle On Ice at Lake Placid. And the radio broadcast of the 1976 Canada Cup. Ubiquitous media source. Loyal to Canada. And crucially, a son, husband, father and grandfather. If you’d created a model for the citizen of Canada of his times it was Ken.

He could be cranky and verbose, yes. His books often took issue with the state of the modern game. Concussions. The Trap. Excessive goalie pads. But his defining moment may have come in 1973 when, upset with Sam Pollock’s contract offer, he left the Montreal Canadiens to finish his law degree in Toronto. It’s important to note that his reputation at the time was a goalie carried by the Jean Beliveau super teams. Yet the Canadiens allowed 56 more goals in the 1973–74 season than they had the year before with Dryden. Plus they lost in the semifinals after winning the Cup the previous spring. Karma.

When he returned the Habs ripped off four consecutive Stanley Cups. Phil Esposito praised him as that “f’ing giraffe” who stole at least two Cups from the Bruins. He retired for good in 1979, and the Canadiens didn’t win another Cup till 1986. Which enhanced his reputation. His combination of tenacity, independence and integrity made him many fans. And launched a generation of goalies who broke the mould.

So his passing in the year that Boomers exercised their cultural privilege one last time is a fitting codicil to an era that held so much promise and has ended in a lost culture and renewed talk of separation in Quebec and Alberta. Many have emotional memories of Dryden, and social media has exploded with them on the news Friday of his death at 78.

For us, our quintessential Dryden moment came in 2001 at the NHL Draft. We were working for the Calgary Herald, he was an executive with the Maple Leafs. As we arrived at the Miami airport in a torrential rainstorm who was standing in the car rental lobby but the unmistakable No. 29? As fellow authors, we’d met many times, and we had quoted him so often we can’t count the times. So there was no fan-boy encounter.

This day he was a lost soul whose car rental had fallen through. Could we give him a ride to the media hotel? Sure. The company was welcome. As we rolled along though the pelting rain, searching for the right highway (this was pre-Waze) we talked about family and background. How were my kids? How was his wife now that he was hearing it from Maple Leafs fans?

Above the machine-gunning of the rain we then pivoted to hockey. He wanted to know what was going on with the Flames (they were mediocre at the time). And he wanted to talk about the state of trap hockey which was then choking the art of the game. Where was the beauty, the artistry in a league dumbed-down by clutch ‘n grab?

After chatting and squinting through the sheets of rain for 45 minutes we finally arrived at the hotel in Sunrise. As we walked into the lobby Ken thanked us for the ride and gave us $40 for gas. Media colleagues watching the scene were flabbergasted. Ken had a reputation as being frugal, and here he’d readily given me $40! U.S.! What could this mean? Did we get as scoop they’d have to chase. Ken blandly shooed them away, saying he had to check in.

We didn’t get a hot tip on a story. But we did get several gems to use in our next book Money Players, a finalist for the 2004 Canadian Business Book of the year. We meant to thank him for the material. Somehow the moment was never right. Now we won’t get that chance.

We might say the same for Canada. Somehow the moment was never right. Now we won’t get that chance. RIP Ken.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Graham Linehan, best known for co-creating genial British TV figure Father Ted, says he was arrested by five armed police officers the moment he landed at Heathrow Airport. The reason? Three tweets calling trans women “violent,” mocking a protest photo, and saying “I hate them.”

“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to the hospital because the stress nearly killed me.”

Comic freedom? Welcome to modern Britain where the mic-drop moment is at His Majesty’s pleasure.

The chilling 2024 U.S. movie Civil War shows a fictional documentary news team as it crosses a dystopian America in the aftermath of societal breakdown. The film makers take pains not to engage in contemporary political issues. The schism has happened, and all that remains is bloody, pitiless anarchy. It ends in the White House with a cowering president barely hanging onto his authority.

The scenes of murder and torture are unrelenting. (Viewers will be excused if they turn to Happy Gilmore II instead.) But what was conjecture about the future in the spring of 2024 has become too close for comfort as, around the Western world, ruling elites cling desperately to privilege in the face of populist movements fed up with unlimited immigration, gender bending, self dealing and, as Linehan discovered, draconian censorship to protect the above.

Large recent demonstrations against entrenched authority have grown larger as leftist governments try to entrench the noblesse oblige captured by British Labour MP Bridget Phillipson’s assertion that “Yes, asylum seekers’ rights come first.”  Here is the pushback in Ireland. Here is Australia. This is Britain. Here’s New Zealand. Even in rules-bound Japan the pushback is happening They are not outliers.

The issues vary, but at this point the demonstrations all have one common theme. It is the one Donald Trump currently exploits. It is not immigration, foreign wars, Ukraine, troops in the streets etc. It is the growing chasm between the privileged and the ordinary citizen. Between young and old. He took that anger all the way to the White House. Twice.

Civil War hints broadly at this anger without citing specific issues. In the non-cinematic world, the simmering rage created by the handling of Covid lockdowns (in 2022 CNN declared the vaccine 100 percent effective in 18-24 year olds ) and vaccines between 2019-2023 was the flashpoint for many apolitical citizens in the U.S. and other nations where the virus was used to render traditional rights and freedoms obsolete.

It stunningly moved Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to partner with the demon Trump. The U.S. mainstream media tried to ignore them, propping up a demented Joe Biden and fostering the performative Jussie Smollett to Hunter Biden’s laptop. It further established them as tools of the privileged. The smear impact was similar in other nations. As Linehan has learned Britain may be the closest to a civil conflict as its permanently Woke Labour government is greasing the skids for Sharia law in the near future.

But they’re hardly unique. The two sides of the West are beyond speaking terms. Here, leftist members of the French Parliament do the snob turn, refusing to shake hands with a member of Marine Le Pen’s party. Hollywood doesn’t miss a day without demonizing MAGA. But with populist right-wing governments now running Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Finland, Poland and Hungary plus electoral breakthroughs in Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Britain, the populist wave in Europe is undeniable.

Strangely immune from this looming trend is Canada’s ruling minority Liberals. Here’s Trudeau groomsman and cabinet place holder Sean Fraser. issuing the all-clear. “This isn’t the Wild West. It’s Canada.” All Canada needs apparently is more tender ministrations from Carney’s army.  Elbows mUp, dudes.

As we noted in the spring election campaign, the Liberals won by ignoring the under-50 demographic while placating white urban Boomers with the spectre of Orange Man Bad. Trump had made the mistake of telling Trudeau/ Carney that, after their efforts, the nation’s stock is so low internationally on multiple fronts that it would be better off as a U.S. state.

For Canadians still reading their 1980s copies of Macleans and watching Knowlton Nash this was a heresy. True, but a heresy. Led by vituperative cries of “fascism” from Andrew Coyne they’re still blaming POTUS 45/47 for the collapse of Canada under a tidal wave of immigration, money laundering and climate lunacy.

Reports Sam Cooper: “Trump and US law enforcement agencies know exactly what’s happening in Canada. So when the RCMP blocked the DEA from investigating fentanyl networks located here, it was just another nail in our coffin”  Others have, like Trump, noticed that the Canada of hockey and equalization payments is not the Canada of the present. Here’s Joe Rogan saying he’s now changed his mind about ever moving to Canada.

Some, like noted Canadian Malcolm Gladwell, are finally waking up to the pressure of his nation’s sanctimony. Gladwell is now recanting his support for trans athletes in women’s sports. He says he was cowed into saying so. In fact, you can be arrested for hate speech in Trudeau/ Carney Canada if you follow Gladwell’s example. He now lives in NYC.

It would be understandable if no one had warned that their infatuation with Woke would catch up. But Canadian writer Mark Steyn foretold today’s insanity. “It was “a decade this summer since I mused on the ill-advised masses eschewing the well-advised Jeb and Hillary for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The response of the ‘lunatic mainstream’ has been, in France, Germany, the United States and elsewhere, to attempt to criminalise its opposition… 

“… the history of our time is that the mainstream is lunatic, which is why, in any recognizable sense, both North America and western Europe are on the brink of the abyss.”

An abyss that the West’s elites— particularly in Canada— refuse to acknowledge, preferring the dewey dawn of the Clinton or Obama presidencies. They toss around terms like tyrant to distract from the cliff they’ve built.  They pose. They primp. As security expert Mike Benz notes, “The vast majority of stock leftists are not true believers, they have strong beliefs, loosely held.”

So batten the hatches. Sharia reality is at the door and it’s got a search warrant for your culture.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.