Bruce Dowbiggin
Elon Musk Takes On The Safe Space Empire

Elon Musk blew up the world this week. Okay, the liberal/ progressive world. Why so mad?
First, remember just a few years back when the news media were saturated with stories about the “campus rape crisis”? You couldn’t open a news site without stories of how one in four women was being sexually assaulted beneath the ivy-coveted walls of academia? It was ghastly.
Remember the pictures of the distraught woman carrying a mattress on her back to highlight the epidemic? The now-debunked Rolling Stone UVA clunker? And how the only protection was “safe spaces” where co-eds could avoid these beasts— and the traumatic messages buffeting their world view?
Good times, good times. For the Woke revolution, that is. Using statistics that bore no relation to the reality of drunken post-secondary hook-ups , they enlisted media to intimidate college administrators into extending control of thought and deed over both student body and teaching staff. They called it safe spaces.
The U.S. Department of Education under Barack Obama warned schools to reduce the standard of evidence to find an accused rapist guilty or lose their federal funding. Kangaroo courts were started to boot men from the schools. The Trudeau junta did likewise. It worked. The intimidation part. Safe spaces were now an accepted form of modern discourse.
This lowered threshold for hurt sent complaints up like a Musk Space-X rocket. Questioning the validity of the “crisis” invited being culture cancelled. As we wrote back in April 2019 :
Modern education has become TikTok, an accumulator of all things that amuse or distract young people. The ability to block or (be still my restless heart) censor messages that disturb the quiet lily pond of the young mind completes the bliss. And the bonding of like-minded woke folk stokes each other’s prejudices.
It is why late-night TV viewing is also imperative in the formation of the non-critical mind. Stephen Colbert’s daily dose of sarcasm in place of critical thinking guides hapless students in the ways of consensus… while bonding them with kids like you who just want to belong in an unquestioning environment.
There’s no indication that the sexual dynamic of student life have changed much. But that’s yesterday’s news. The media shape-shifters have moved their safe spaces on to the suddenly red-hot issue of the transgendered right to compete in swim meets against women. Where the same combination of media derangement/government overreach aims to create a safe space for the 0.01 percent of the population identifying as transgendered. Everyone else gets to shut up.
As a technique for subversion this mission creep would make Saul Alinsky blush. One by one, the pillars of Western society have succumbed to the pressure tactics from safe-space zanies. Corporations, media, entertainment and education have surrendered to the hurt feelings of radicals on critical race theory, gender fluidity, white privilege, cultural appropriation and 1984-style socialism in their organizations.
The latest example being Disney Corp, where an inside group of LGBTQI provocateurs forced their CEO into a disastrous conflict with the state of Florida over teaching sex to kids from JK to Grade 3. As a result, Disney has had their privileged tax status in the state revoked. But that’s a rare setback for HR radicals, as we wrote in this column on Michelle Obama’s lasting impact.
More typical of the safe-space incursion was the media-led campaign to eliminate the name of Egerton Ryerson from the downtown Toronto university for having some role in residential schooling in the 19th century. In his day Ryerson was considered “the paragon of the forward-looking, progressive, inclusive, worldly intellectual. He was a beacon of educational reform, a fighter against injustice of all sorts, and a kind and generous man”.
No more. The school’s “enlightened” board of directors announced he’s a non-person. Ryerson will now be named Toronto Metropolitan University to placate those sensitive to hundred-year-old re-evaluations of history. (No word on purging anything named after famed feminists/eugenicists.)
Where does Musk fit into this? The final horizon, and perhaps the greatest prize in the safe-space advance, was social media. From its initial vision as the Town Square, sites such as Twitter and Facebook have devolved into the Silicon Valley Square, home to censorship and disinformation campaigns against anyone who invaded the white liberal-guilt safe space. Read: Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Alex Berenson.
While there are a multitude of examples of this hubris, none is more illustrative than the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal during the last weeks of the 2020 election. The censors at all the major outlets— Twitter, Facebook, Instagram— suspended the accounts of the New York Post and other outlets for reporting that the future POTUS was selling influence to him in China, Ukraine and other hot spots.
They were joined by all the major broadcast and print outlets (except FOX News) who denounced the stories as Russian disinformation. A large percentage of voters cast their votes having been denied a story that may have changed their choice. So Joe Biden won. Institutionalized bias in social media was now weaponized by the Left— much to its smug satisfaction.
That’s why this week’s sale of Twitter to Musk sent panic through the halls of the Rachel Maddow Finishing School. The Tesla guy had noticed the funny business: “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.” Musk has promised to re-institute the mission statement of Twitter. Free and open exchange of comment. Removal of bots. Authentication of human sources. (An end to 98 percent of employees donating to the Democratic Party.)
Those employees are panicked about secret internal emails being revealed and their share options being cut. Politicians like Adam Schiff see hate on the march. Others see uncharted speech as only a benefit to “white males”. @AnandWrites: “This future in which there would actually be more abundant and equitable speech terrifies the crap out of people like Elon Musk.”
“Make no mistake: Musk’s ownership of the company will likely make the platform into even more of a hellscape,” penned HuffPost heavy breather Ja’han Jones. MSNBC’s Ari Melber, who’s apparently been in a coma the past five years, shrieked, “You could secretly ban one party’s candidate…secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it until AFTER the election.” Self-awareness alert in Aisle three.
Predictably the same poseurs who vowed to go to Canada after Trump won in 2016 are now vowing to leave Twitter. As if. When there is so much hurt to weaponize against your enemies it would seem foolish to leave the party now.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
Canada Day 2025: It’s Time For Boomers To Let The Kids Lead

So how did you spend your first Canada Day under new PM Mark Carney? If you’re CBC, freed from the clutches of Pierre Poilievere, you do a fawning interview with ex-pat comedian Mike Myers, whose Elbows Up appearance on Saturday Night Live and whose partisan hockey sweater appearance with Carney were pivotal moments in the recent election. (Saving CBC from drastic budget cuts— not that they mentioned it.)
After Donald Trump’s bellicose 51st state comments, Myers’ nostalgic harkening to the days of Gordie Howe and Mr. Dressup pivoted Boomers’ voter preferences in Canada. Soft Quebec sovereigntists petrified by Trump abandoned the Bloc for the Liberals. Progressives ditched the NDP for the Grits. And some wobbly Conservatives moved to Carney’s side, too, after the charm offensive by Myers, who hasn’t lived in Canada since the 1980s.

The result? Liberals vaulted 20 points in the polls and barely missed a majority in their fourth consecutive election win. Boomers were exultant. Their subsidized media was joyous. And the rest of the world asked if Canada was a serious country after the Libs naked substitution of Carney for the loathed Justin Trudeau. After all, hadn’t the U.S. Democrats tried the same thing and been summarily spanked by voters?
More to the point, had Canadian voters missed a great opportunity by sticking their heads in the ground on Chinese gangs using Canada as a drug launch pad, Canadian banks being fined billons for money laundering, immigration flooding social services, cratering GDP and Palestinian protests clogging the streets?
This at a time when the under-50 generation has lost faith in its destiny within Canada. As we wrote in March why are 43 percent of 18-36 male CDNs telling pollsters they would accept U.S. citizenship if they were guaranteed full rights and financial protections? Where upper-class products of liberal education— the future professional class— have taken to wearing keffiyehs to the convocations and demonstrations. Where housing is an unattainable goal in most major Canadian urban centres.
It’s not hard to see them looking at the Mike Myers obsession with a long-gone Canada and saying let’s get out of here. The signs are there. Recently former TVOntario host Steve Pakin attended two convocations. The first at the former Ryerson University, which switched its name to Toronto Metropolitan University in a fit of settler colonizer guilt. The second at Queens University, traditionally one of the elite schools in the nation. Here’s what he saw.
“At the end of the (TMU) convocation, when Charles Falzon, on his final day as dean of TMU’s Creative School, asked students to stand and sing the national anthem, many refused. They remained seated. Then, when the singing began, it was abundantly noticeable that almost none of the students sang along. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the words, which were projected on a big screen. The unhappy looks on their faces clearly indicated a different, more political, explanation.

“I asked some of the TMU staff about it after the ceremony was over, and they confirmed what I saw happens all the time at convocations. Then I texted the president of another Ontario university who agreed: this is a common phenomenon among this generation at post-secondary institutions.”
At Queens, where Canadian flags were almost non-existent, O Canada was sung, but the message of unrest was clear: “Convocation sends a message of social stability,” Queen’s principal Patrick Deane began in his speech. “It is a ceremony shaped in history. You should value your connection to the past, but question that inheritance. Focus on the kind of society you’d like to inhabit.”
You can bet Deane is not telling them to question climate change and trans rights. As Paikin observes, “if we fail to create a more perfect union, we shouldn’t be surprised when a vast swath of young people don’t sing our anthem the way so many of the rest of us do.” So why are the best and brightest so reluctant to see as future in becoming the new professional class that runs society?
In the Free Press River Page searched the source of their discontent. “If the Great Recession, Covid-19, and the spectre of an artificial intelligence-assisted ‘white collar bloodbath’ has taught the professional class anything, it is that their credentials cannot save them. This insecurity, compounded by the outrageous cost of living in many large cities, has pushed the PMC’s anxieties to the breaking point.
“Add that to the triumph of identity politics in professional class institutions like universities, corporate C-suites, non-governmental organizations, and media—itself a byproduct of inter-elite competition as many have observed—and what you have is the modern left.
“… they’ve already come to the baffling conclusion that there’s no difference between class struggle and child sex changes. More to the point, the socialist mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” has only ever stood the test of time in Anabaptist sects. It requires a religious devotion to self-sacrifice that is not characteristic of this anxious and hyper-competitive class—as many actual socialists have spent the last decade warning.”

As we wrote in March Boomer nostalgia is a dead end. “It’s time that Canada’s aging elite ceded a greater voice in the national debate to younger voices. They need an intervention of the type Trump is now performing on Canadians addicted to sitting in first class but paying economy. He brought them into a room with the chairs and levelled with them about getting the free stuff they assumed was their right. Defence, security, trade, medical access. He’s the first president to do this in half a century.
And like all people addicted, CDN Boomers don’t want the truth. They want performance theatre, T-shirts and hockey games. They blame Trump for their predicament, caught between grim realities. Will they take the 12 steps? Or will their kids have to tell them the facts as they escort them to the home?” Because we’re now seeing the likely answer to that question everywhere in Canadian society.
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.
Bruce Dowbiggin
The Game That Let Canadians Forgive The Liberals — Again

With the Americans winning the first game 3-1, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact.
“It’s also more political than the (1972) Summit Series was, because Canada’s existence wasn’t on the line then, and it may be now. You’re damn right Canadians should boo the (U.S.) anthem.” Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur before Gm. 1 of USA/ Canada in The 4 Nations Cup.
The year 2025 is barely half over on Canada Day. There is much to go before we start assembling Best Of Lists for the year. But as Palestinian flags duel with the Maple Leaf for prominence on the 158th anniversary of Canada’s becoming a sovereign country it’s a fair guess that we will settle on Febuary 21 as the pivotal date of the year— and Canada’s destiny as well.
That was the date of Game 2 in the U.S./Canada rivalry at the Four Nations Tournament. Ostensibly created by the NHL to replace the moribund All Star format, the showdown of hockey nations in Boston became much more. Jolted by non-sports factors it became a pivotal moment in modern Canadian history.
Set against U.S. president Donald Trump’s bellicose talk of Canada as a U.S. state and the Mike Myers/ Mark Carney Elbows Up ad campaign, the gold-medal game evoked, for those of a certain age, memories of the famous 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. And somehow produced an unprecedented political reversal in Canadian elections.
As we wrote on Feb. 16 after Gm. 1 in Montreal, the Four Nations had been meant to be something far less incendiary. “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.”
With the Americans winning the game 3-1 on Feb. 15, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact. As we wrote in the aftermath, a slaughter was avoided.

“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 Craig Binnington held Canada in the game until Connor McDavid scored the game winner. “
The stunning turnaround in the series produced a similar turnaround in the Canadian federal election. Galvanized by Trump’s 51st State disrespect and exhilarated by the hockey team’s comeback, voters switched their votes in huge numbers to Carney, ignoring the abysmal record of the Liberals and their pathetic polling. From Pierre Poilievre having a 20-point lead in polls, hockey-besotted Canada flipped to award Carney a near-majority in the April 28 election.
The result stunned the Canadian political class and international critics who questioned how a single sporting event could have miraculously rescued the Liberals from themselves in such a short time.

While Canada soared because of the four Nations, a Canadian icon crashed to earth. “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.”
Even now, months later, the events of late February have an air of disbelief around them, a shift so dramatic and so impactful on the nation that many still shake their heads. Sure, hockey wasn’t the device that blew up Canada’s politics. But it was the fuse that created a crater in the country.
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.
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