Bruce Dowbiggin
Popes To Progressives: Crushing Dissent To Protect The Green Gospel

History records that when Johannes Gutenberg used his printing press to produce a copy of the bible in the 15th century it was a hinge of history. Printed in Europe using mass-produced metal movable type, Gutenberg’s bible made information accessible in something other than a manuscript or hand-written codex. Hosanna!
But the printing press freaked out the mitred heads at the Vatican. Why? Because it allowed common people to read the bible without an intermediary, a priest or bishop, censoring the uncomfortable bits. The printing press undermined their absolute authority and left people free to make their own “heretical” conclusions. What they read, in part, sparked the Reformation. And 500 years of war as the Church tried to reinforce its power.
Now, elites controlling the legacy media flow are freaked out because impertinent social media threatens their control over the high religion of climate change. Like the cardinals who tried to stop Gutenberg’s press, the high priests of climate have been lapped by technology. The formative years of the “crisis” occurred pre-social media sites such as Twitter (now X), Facebook and Tik Tok. Their fantastical climate modelling and doomsday predictions were made in the hermetically sealed world of purchased journalists, cloistered academics and progressive reporting.
Prince (now King) Charles and Al Gore could rattle off outlandish predictions about an ice-free Arctic and decimation of glaciers without fear of contradiction. Coca Cola’s claim of a polar bear wipeout became gospel. Cranks like authors Michael Chrichton or James Delingpole could be safely quarantined away from public opinion by the TV news departments.
Academics who dared demur were defunded and ridiculed. The DC court system created a kangaroo court so Michael Mann could successfully take over a decade to sue Mark Steyn for mocking his wonky science. Silence was golden for the priests of climate.
Soon, climate belief achieved a religious fervour among the secular progressive left, a default belief system to replace the religions of their youth. Like classic religions, climate worship required a “leap of faith” where converts transcended the rational and embraced the mystical. Armed with this faith, the gormless media proclaimed “hottest summer ever” and “rising ocean levels” wholeheartedly, declaring it would not print any material that might contradict the received wisdom of the IPCC or NAOO.
Governments complied totally. Hollywood? You need to ask? The people succumbed.
But by the late 1990s, social media raised its insubordinate head. First with cheeky new academic and research sources. Later, the modern equivalent of Gutenberg’s press allowed common people to access news— without the political and media intermediaries— and to make their own conclusions. The purchase of Twitter by iconoclast Elon Musk provided a further counter-argument to the hysterics in control at legacy media.
It sparked a Reformation, allying itself with populist movements across the West. When the usual suspects brayed about unprecedented heat in 2024 requiring government regulation, online voices countered, Not So Fast. It turns out that maximum U.S. summertime temps have not increased in 30 years and are cooler than 90 years ago.
Ditto the “loss” of the Great Barrier Reef, which has, during the lifetime of climate alarmism, gone from near-death to suddenly revived and restored. Even when climate cultists at BBC acknowledged the doomsday stuff was bogus, “The new coral is particularly vulnerable – meaning the progress could be quickly undone by climate change and other threats, officials say.” Officials say. (Translation: Someone chasing grant money is nervous).
It’s getting so the public ho-hums even when CNN’s Dana Bash grills the presidential candidates about their plans for the “climate crisis”. Polls show climate is down the list of items the public cares about, far behind the economy. They don’t see it in their own lives, so why worry? Adding to the panic among alarmists was the recent SCOTUS “Chevron decision” which transfers policy making back to elected officials and the courts, and away from the vast administrative bureaucracies in government created to protect the radical gospels. From now on unelected bureaucrats will not be deciding American scientific policies. A death blow to the Swamp’s power in the U.S.
Try as they might, the Apostles of Apocalypse can no loner count on exclusive ownership of “Science” (Translation: chasing grant money) or the U.S. Supreme Court. So friends of greening in government (see: Justin Trudeau) are now proposing draconian censorship laws in hopes of suppressing the “greenwashing” insubordination.
In February, NDP (read cultist) MP Charlie Angus tabled a federal private members bill that would ban “misleading fossil fuel advertising”, similar to the restrictions on tobacco advertising implemented in the 1990s. “The B.C. Greens tabled their own anti-greenwashing bill in the B.C. legislature in April. If passed, the law would prevent businesses from making misleading statements in advertising materials, about greenhouse gas emissions associated with their practices.
“It would also target claims about the effectiveness of their climate efforts and require them to back their sustainability claims on a public website. Corporations that fail to adhere to the measures could face fines of up to $1 million per day if the false representation continues to be published.” The defending The Science would carry no such burden.
In short, dispute the entrenched Greenist autocrats in government and media at your peril. Where this censorship battle to suppress independent thought leads is unknown. For instance, conservatives worried about the suburban female vote remain restrained in denying the green manifesto. (No one scares more easily than the suburban female demo.)
But it does explains the mania of elites to stifle anyone not approved by the powerful from having a voice. And how far they will go, having been exposed by the internet, to keep the whip hand over a disbelieving public.
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.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Eau Canada! Join Us In An Inclusive New National Anthem

This past week has seen (some) Canadians celebrating their heritage— now that Mike Myers has officially reinterpreted Canadian culture as a hockey sweater and Mr. Dressup. This quick-change was so popular that Canadian voters even forgot an entire decade of Justin Trudeau.
In the United States, the people who elected Donald Trump– and not Andrew Coyne– to run their nation celebrated Independence Day with stirring renditions off The Star Spangled Banner, although few could surpass the brilliant performance of the song by the late Whitney Houston at the 1991 Super Bowl.
The CDN equivalent is some flavour of the month changing the words to O Canada at the Grey Cup game. Canada’s national anthem has always been open to interpretation by people who may or may not have Canada in their hearts. At the 2023 NBA All Star Game Canadian chanteuse Jully Black became the latest singer to attempt a manicure to the English lyrics of O Canada, penned for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony ( Calixa Lavallée composed the music, after which words were written by the poet and judge Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. The English lyrics have “evolved” over the years, just like the dress code for the CDN PM..)

Black amended the first line from “our home and native land” to our home ON native land”. Because something-something. But this creative license is nothing new. Unlike Chris Stapleton, Marvin Gaye or Whitney Houston with the Star Spangled Banner, interpreters of O Canada have seen fit to amend the lyrics to their sensibilities. Roger Doucet, famed anthem singer of the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970-80s, tried to add the words “we stand on guard for truth and liberty” in place of the first “we stand on guard for thee”.
In 1990, having nothing better to do, Toronto City Council voted 12 to 7 in favour of recommending that the phrase “our home and native land” be changed to “our home and cherished land” and that “in all thy sons command” be partly reverted to “in all of us command”. (The latter was officially adapted.)
While those attempts had mixed outcomes it appears it’s just a matter of time till Ms. Black’s class-conscious culling of the words is accepted. Being generous we here at IDLM thought we’d short-circuit piecemeal attempts to create a throughly Woke version of the anthem that would last till the latest fad come along. Herewith our 2023 definitive O Canada that even— maybe only— Justin Trudeau could love:
“O Canada” (Ignores the French fact in our culture) Change to “Eau Canada”
“Our home on native land” (ignores indigenous land claims) Change to “Get off our land, settlers”
“True patriot love in all of us commands” (Only true patriot love? There were officially 78 kinds of relationships in Trudeaupia. And commanding love?) Change to “Love the one you’re with”.
“With glowing hearts we see thee rise” (rise suggests triumph of white triumphalist dogma) Change to “Non judgementally we oppose the crushing impacts of Euro-based autocracy”
“The true north strong and free” (How can anyone be strong or free when we support America’s killing fields?) Change to “Heteronormative thinking must be stamped out at our borders. If we even have borders anymore.”
“From far and wide” (Body shaming) Change to “Obesity is a disease that is not helped by putting it in the national anthem.”
“O Canada” (biased against A, B, AB blood types) change to “Science Must Be Believed”
“We stand on guard for thee” (Spreads hate against the non ableist community) Change to “Please remain seated.”
“God keep our land” (God? God? What is this, the Reformation) “Change to “It’s your thing”
”Glorious and free” (Glorious harkens to the bourgeois subjugation of Indigenous thought processes by white Christian priests) Change to “A genocidal state if there ever was one”.
“O Canada we stand on guard for thee/
O Canada we stand on guard for thee” The denial of trans rights is used twice here to emphasize the intolerable burdens faced by people of the LGBTQ2R community as they seek respect and compensation for the evils of the founding oppressors.) Change to “Eau Canada, after 6.5 hours of intensive lectures on the gender, race and dissociative application of class war on your citizens you may someday come to understand that this song is a manifestation of your bigotry and exploitation of minorities— and why rhyming lines like “thee and free” is the work of the devil or J.K. Rowling, whomever comes to mind first.”

There. That wasn’t so tough, was it? Flows trippingly off the tongue like Mark Carney refusing a special inquiry into China buying the electoral process. Or perhaps we should simply accept a literal translation of the original French lyrics:
“O Canada!
Land of our ancestors
Glorious deeds circle your brow
For your arm knows how to wield the sword
Your arm knows how to carry the cross;
Your history is an epic
Of brilliant deeds
And your valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights.”
Yikes. That’s downright fascistic. But it’s Quebec, and we have to allow them their peccadilloes. So circle your brow with glorious deeds, grab a cross and a sword and valour steeped in faith. And remember we must be adaptable in the new era.
Unless it’s Alberta using the adapting to fuel its CO2-belching machines. In which case it’s man the battlements and follow Mike Myers into the fight.
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
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.
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