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Bruce Dowbiggin

Come For The Graduate Studies, Stay For The Revolution

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9 minute read

Just In: The Trudeau government intervenes at last minute to save a convicted climate agitator from deportation. The Pakistani co-founder of Save Old Growth— who first came to Canada in 2019 on a study permit— has been arrested at least 10 times and convicted of mischief. Zain Haq was due to be deported to Pakistan on Monday.

Despite a judge’s ruling denying his last hope of staying , Haq got a call from his Liberal MP’s office saying he gets to stay in B.C. after all. Good, because we’d hate for him to feel  oppressed by the country in which he’s squatting. The news thrilled the nepo babies who have B.C. by the throat.

So Haq goes from unrepentant jerk to Christ crucified. Naturally. Victim politics have become the animating impulse in Western society. Attaching yourself to a forlorn cause like Haq is grounds for beatification  And make no mistake, there are legions in identical little tents on campus quads who are cheering a non-Canadian defying The Man.

To generations brought up on the travails of feminist oppression, climate degradation, indigenous grievance and gender dysphoria there is nothing so sacred as a victim is all his purity, crushed by the Great White Satan of western culture.  Haq is just the latest in a police lineup of wobbly performance artists taking a rhapsodic bow before the Liberal/ NDP/Green clique. While thumbing his nose at Canadians.

That’s why the current fetish for Palestinian outrage has such legs as it spreads across campuses and governmental buildings in the West. Anyone (but a white, straight male) can apply for the designation of victim. Join the party! And what a model it is! While many have tried to emulate them, none have managed the nihilist hat trick of violence, obstinacy and craven guilt quite like the Palestinians who’ve been pushing this agenda since the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Having eschewed frontal military attacks on Israel and western targets as ineffective, the PLO and its successors discovered that the more grisly the attack, the more black their message — in Munich they massacred 11 Israeli athletes— there was a segment of leftist Western culture that couldn’t get enough of their heinous tactics. (Stephen Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich pitied his fellow Jews killed in Munich but concluded that all this revenge stuff was a dead end.)

Huh. Their Arab neighbours want nothing to do with Arafat’s Children. Egypt has a wall preventing Gazans from entering their county, Jordan has expelled them for counter-insurgency, Saudi Arabia ignores them. Only Qatar offers refuge. And then only to the billionaire kleptocrats who run Hamas from penthouses in Doha.

The Oct. 7 massacre is just the latest in this dance of death with western liberals. People of a certain age will recall the Marxist-besotted Vanessa Redgrave brandishing a Kalashnikov while dancing with the PLO and its rascally leader Yasser Arafat.  Her 1977 film The Palestinian was an orgy of guilt and hatred toward Israel. She’s had plenty of imitators in the media ever since.  In 2021 over 100 actors— including Richard Gere, Claire Foy, Tilda Swinton, and Susan Sarandon— slammed the terrorist designation of Palestinian “rights groups”.

The same apologists are now saying that, sure, Oct. 7 went a little too far, but Palestinian repatriation means a few eggs are going to get smashed in the making of a terror state. They want a cease fire with good taste.

Were the PLO successors in Hamas and Hezbollah able to articulate some coherent vision of the future beyond slaughter then these western struggle sessions might seem justified. It’s no surprise that Arafat was the epitome of “never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity” in negotiations. If there’s one constant in the multiple denials of treaties with Israel it is their unflinching demand that Palestinians  throw every Jew they encounter into the Mediterranean on a march from “the river to the sea”.

The implacable marriage with extreme violence and racial hatred is their one and only position. Non-negotiable. None of this has any effect on the hot-house Marxists and anarchists who’ve set up shop in the universities and colleges of the West. In their protected status among the leafy tendrils of the Ivy League, a little brush with terror seems to titillate them. Occupying the quad in identical tents suppled by unnamed international groups dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism is their bougie weekend of roughing it in the bush.

Most probably wish they could experience a little of the martyrdom like the Palestinians (a gentle martyrdom naturally) or at the very least a cinematic clash wth authority such as their parents experienced at the hands of Chicago mayor Richard Daley during the 1968 Democratic convention. A tender tussle covered by their parents Medicare.

Who will stand up to these playtime antisemites? Alas, the grownups in the schools administration and in governments are cut from the same cloth. Having created safe spaces from micro aggression on their campus , they excuse the youthful exuberance of their students. (If your politics are radical, that is.)   Like president Joe Biden they do the suck-and-blow of modern debate. They decry antisemitism while cautioning that we just don’t understand the depths of Palestinian oppression. Evan as students call for a new Holocaust.

Having it both ways with Hamas means a one-way invitation to more chaos. Because there is no agenda beyond the performative terror extolled by demonstrators against Israel there is no way to rationally critique Hezbollah or Hamas. At least the Nazis proposed some freakazoid homeland for their people as they heartlessly slaughtered anyone who got in their way.

So it all becomes mob mentality packaged for feckless media. The Hamas doctoral groupies don’t demand anything from Hamas beyond their faux-serious chants and designer kaffiyehs in the House of Commons. No doubt Zia Haq will be joining them again soon in the struggle. If Stephen Guilbeault can go from criminal to cabinet, Canada is wide open to him now.

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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. New from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin now for pre-order: Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching on paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week.

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BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Where To Draw The Line: Is Carney’s Daughter Off-Limits to Media?

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Have you heard the latest message-board trope from Team Liberal? As their polls allegedly soar in the wake of Donald Trump and his 51st state comments they are trying to censor social-media posts that PM Mark Carney’s 24-year-old is a gender radical.

Take It Down,” pleads one poster. “It’s his kids, we need to leave family alone, you can attack Carney all day long as hard as you want but please just leave his kids out of it. Carney decided to run, his family isn’t running. This is a mistake on many levels”.

So, using this logic we shouldn’t report on the Hunter Biden scandal? He wasn’t running for anything either. No? Where is the journalistic dividing line? Sasha is a 24-year-old public figure who was long-listed for a CBC poetry prize with some tortured pentameter about baking and dysphoria.  Sasha is a grownup who is not trying to escape the limelight. Quite the opposite. Sasha is pursuing it, and Daddy’s leap to PM is seen as good news back at the gender studies lab.

This Liberal pity party over protecting “the kids” is what happens when social media confuses journalism with safe spaces. To the hush puppies trying to censor this issue on public media, we offer a terse: You’re out of your lane.

There are times in journalism when it’s unethical to cite the children of famous people. When they are not used as props for a photo op in India. When they don’t trade on the family name to get the job as prime minister. When they spend weekends reading instead of calling Canada a genocidal nation. Leave them alone.

Just not this time. There is a compelling cultural story surrounding non-binary Carney, however. Sasha is just one of a dramatic spike of young middle- and upper-class women who are engaged in a mass psychosis over dysphoria. With or without the help of parents they are hacking themselves surgically or castrating themselves chemically. Radicals have taken them up as a cause célèbre.

(Which apparently includes domestic terrorism. Three of the four recent Tesla attacks in the U.S. are reported to be radical transgender groups. And a recent murder of a border patrol agent in Vermont has been attributer to another cell of radical trans activists. Police officials say they are a growing safety menace.)

From the outside this rejection of their birth identity is absurd. As one wit says, 98 percent of us wake up each morning and are unhappy with what we see in the mirror. This is why a fashion industry exists. But the Sasha Army  represents an enormous challenge to traditional society. It is no laughing matter till it blows over— as bulimia appears to have done.

Twenty years ago— when a similar demographic of young women was starving itself with bulimia— the transexual community in the U.S. and Canada counted about 0.01 percent of citizens. Now, bulimia has largely disappeared from public attention while these gender-obsessed young people from ages 6- 26 are counted in staggering numbers. They have a Marxist fanaticism about their unalterable identity decision in Grade One or Two. And a censoring media that bulldogs anyone trying to bring sunlight to little Tinkerbell.

As just one example we spoke to the parents of a recent female graduate of Queens University. She reports that four of the seven young women in her group are having gender re-assignment or becoming non-binary. These are not marginal people making these brutal decisions in a vacuum. They’re often the products of elite schools and loving, stable families. Surrounded by university-educated teachers.

Go ahead and ask your daughters, nieces and other young women their experiences in liberal-arts colleges and faculties. That 57 percent figure is likely consistent with other anecdotal reporting in the demo. Modern Woke women, allegedly freed from their chains by feminism, are struggling with self-image.

Pew Reports says that 80 percent of white liberal women have been diagnosed by a medical professional as having a mental-health condition in the past five years. Over 50 percent of liberal women under 30 of all races have sought help. Older white women account for 58 percent of people who’ve used anti-depressants the past five years.

Polling by the Washington Examiner during the 2024 election highlights the isolation of this demographic. It showed during the 2024 election that married men are 59 percent Republican. Married women are 55 percent Republican. Unmarried men are 52 percent Republican But a whopping 68 percent of unmarried women backed Kamala.

This imbalance is multiplied disproportionately by the Democrats media stenographers using propaganda such as The View to perpetuate the gap. In the words of Robert Tracinski in The Federalist, these women have immunized themselves against hostile messages. “(F)or years, the left has trained itself in the habit of assuming that the only reason anyone disagrees with them is because of racism.

“As a consequence, those who live in this bubble tend to reflexively dismiss anyone who brings them a contrary message from the outside world.”

While minute fluctuations in global climate are parsed intently, this exploding trans community goes largely unreported by the Media Party in Canada and the U.S. If it does get air time it is unfailingly worshipful. Parents, doctors and teachers who object  are faced with social scorn and loss of jobs— not unlike the shaming of Covid skeptics and vaxx deniers. The prospects of a majority of young white women opting out of childbearing will be catastrophic to society.

Much of this gender war can be traced back to the movements to “safe spaces” for young people having trouble coping in colleges and universities. Marxist academics— many of whom fled to Canada to avoid American conservative politics— employed the safe-space mentality to isolate vulnerable groups such as women and visible minorities from contrary messaging.

When they graduated this Red Guard transferred the safe space model to the general public. Factionalism by demography frayed the social contract. This new victimization trope was employed by Barack Obama and later Justin Trudeau to control voting blocs and criminalize Bad Think. For almost a generation they held sway.

With the election of Donald Trump America has finally begun pushing back against radical gender indoctrination.In other countries the reaction is the same. But Canada under dedicated EuroGlobalist Carney shows no sign of relenting on the insanity. If anything Carney would push DEI, LGBTQ+ and ESG ever further.

It’s not an exaggeration that given a Carney government, Canada may be the final nation clinging to this DEI/ LGBTQ construct in the future. As we were told by one dedicated follower of dysfunction, “Someone has to set an example”.  Maybe Sasha Carney can write a poem about it.

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 latest book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon and at http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca. 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.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

The National Freakout Over The 4 Nations Drama Still Resonates

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The recent 4 Nations Tournament Showdown left many people drained. On top of the best-on-best format was laid the bubbling Canada/ United States political drama.  As we wrote in the wake of the round-robin U.S. win over Canada any thoughts of friendship went out the window, Fast. It was a night few will forget. The 3-1 score of Team U.S. over Team Canada being secondary to other outcomes.

“Expecting a guys’ weekend like the concurrent NBA All Star game, the fraternal folks instead got a Pier Six brawl. It was the most stunning beginning to a game most could remember in 50 years. (Not least of all the rabid Canadian fanbase urging patriotism in the home of Quebec separation) Considering this Four Nations event was the NHL’s idea to replace the tame midseason All Star Game where players apologize for bumping into each other during a casual skate, the tumult as referees tried to start the game was shocking.

Despite public calls for mutual respect, the sustained booing of the American national anthem and the Team Canada invocation by MMA legend Georges St. Pierre was answered by the Tkachuck brothers, Matthew and Brady, with a series of fights in the first nine seconds of the game. Three fights to be exact when former Canuck J.T. Miller squared up with Brandon Hagel. (All three U.S. players have either played on or now play for Canadian NHL teams.)

Premeditated and nasty. To say nothing of the vicious mugging of Canada’s legend Sidney Crosby behind the U.S. net moments later by Charlie McEvoy.”

In the rematch for a title created just weeks before by the NHL  the boys stuck to hockey. Anthem booing was restrained. Outside of an ill-advised appearance by Wayne Gretzky— now loathed for his Trump support— the emphasis was on skill. Playing largely without injured Matthew and Brady Tkachuk and McAvoy, the U.S. forced the game to OT where beleaguered goalie Jordan Binnington held Canada in the game until Connor McDavid scored the game winner.

For Canadians invested in debunking Trump it was a delirious moment. For hockey fans starved for best-on-best it was a triumph.

But what about the less-appreciated aftermath of the brief tournament (held without Russians, Czechs or Slovaks)? Perhaps the most public outcome was the now-demonization of Gretzky in Canada. Just as they had with Bobby Orr, another Canadian superstar living in America, Canadians wiped their hands of No. 99 over politics. Despite appeals from Orr, Don Cherry and others, the chance to make Gretzky a Trump proxy was too tempting.

We have been in several arguments on the subject among friends: Does Gretzky owe Canada something after carrying its hockey burden for so long? Could he have worn a Team Canada jersey? Shouldn’t he have made a statement that he backs Canada in its showdown with Trump? For now 99 is 0 in his homeland.

More tangibly it seems that the stars of the Canadian and American teams are suffering from a hangover themselves from the emotional series. Toronto captain Auston Matthews— victimized on the OT goal against Canada— has been sluggish as his Leafs, hoping to avoid the play-in segment of the postseason, are a tepid 5-4-1 in their last ten. By his own admission he and his team have lacked a killer instinct since the 4 Nations.

McDavid and his Edmonton Oilers are sputtering, too. While Leon Draistaitl carries the freight (as a German he was out of 4 Nations), McDavid’s Oilers are an uncomfortable nine points up from missing the playoffs. Heading into a contract run, McDavid seems exhausted some nights as rumours swirl about his next deal. It’s hard to see how the tournament hasn’t taken a toll.

On the U.S. side, Florida has had to battle on with Tkachuk, its emotional leader, out for the regular season after the injury sustained in the 4 Nations. There’s more. As much as fans loved the great drama, NHL owners will be wary of losing their best players to injury in future tournaments. It’s a reason there has been so little best-on-best hockey the past generation.

Perhaps the least-appreciated backlash so far from the 4 Nations turmoil is the effect of Canadians, who have many Americans playing in their nation, booing the Star Spangled Banner. Under the heading of sin in haste/ repent at leisure, the impulsive show of bad sportsmanship may have felt good at the moment. Leftist Toronto Star scribbler Bruce Arthur, said “You’re damn right Canadians should boo the anthem.”

But what repercussions will Arthur’s temper tantrum have on Canadian teams in the NHL, NBA, MLB? Most Canadians we asked dismissed the impact, but imagine you are an American free agent or a player with a no-trade clause contemplating an offer to play in Canada. Having seen your national anthem disrespected will you let bygones be bygones?

It remains to be seen if a Canadian federal election held alongside the NHL playoffs will have any repercussions on the ice. But in the current manic mood of Canadians freaked out by Trump nothing is beyond possibility.

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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. 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.

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