Bruce Dowbiggin
How Trudeau Media Skewed The Battle Of Bouncy Castle
“From a positive and unifying approach, a decision was made to wedge, to divide and to stigmatize. I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions. This is not a risk we ought to be taking lightly.”— Liberal MP Joel Lightbound
It’s perhaps fitting that Toronto Star publisher John Honderich passed away during the Battle of Bouncy Castle. The paper he and his family fashioned defined Canadian progressivism in the modern age. “With ink running through his veins and a bow tie ’round his collar, John Honderich was one of the titans of Canadian journalism” went the obit.
Give him props. He and his family defined the message in the post-war era, tilting Canada left. Enamoured by American liberal deities such as the Kennedys and Clintons— and welcoming to tens of thousands of Viet Nam deserters and draft dodgers— they (and CBC) created the Eugene McGovern state that Americans rejected in the 1970s.
Canadians now love feeling superior to Americans with their messy, tumultuous politics (even as Canadians took their free defence). Cheering on even the most embarrassing Democrats gave them a sense of identity versus their noisy neighbour. Canada’s worship of the American left drove right-wing competition out of business (Sun TV) or pushed others (The National Post and G&M) hard to the left. To say nothing of what they did to Conservative leaders Erin O’Toole, Doug Ford and Jason Kenney who defied the Star’s agenda.
Their slanting of the Convoy drama is a perfect example of Canada’s aversion to right-wing thought. The media, writes Jen Gerson, “is presenting a version of reality that is wildly at odds with the protesters’ own self conception. It’s also not in line with people who have attended protests in other cities, and have reported to me that the vibe of these things is in fact mostly positive and welcoming. This further erodes trust in media, pushing a faction of the public further into information bubbles and away from mainstream reporting.”
Thus the Globe & Mail, formerly the paper of record for business in Canada, is now the conscience of Avenue Road and Lawrence. In a florid editorial it vilified the mostly peaceful protesters destroying the NIMBY dreams of their Ottawa subscribers. “The Ottawa occupation is the October Crisis revisited. Justin Trudeau must be bold“.
Forget that the 1971 FLQ crisis involved two kidnappings, a murder, escape to Cuba, threats of insurrection and people stoning Trudeau’s father. To the Globe that’s just the same as Bouncy Castles, hot chocolate and some yahoos honking their truck horns in the Glebe and Sandy Hill. Besides there’s a narrative to maintain.
Ottawa’s mayor Jim Watson has seen to that. In one cringing example he linked the protesters to thugs trying to set a fire in an Ottawa condo building. Even when corrected by Ottawa police he has not apologized. Anything to protect the PM’s wobbly authority.
On his behalf Family Compact Media want you to hit the protesters. Hit them hard. Drive them off the streets. Get the law to take their fuel and hotel rooms. Because we can’t let these… things.. make light of us with their impertinence and flannel shirts! This is seasoned with overheated university professors writing tripe about “a dangerous fringe element terrorizing our capital” and not be laughed off the faculty.
While the Mop & Pail gaslights a Costa Gavras political thriller in the PM’s refusal to meet unkempt middle-class truckers, it memory-holes Trudeau taking a PMO meeting with Joshua Boyle— under investigation by the police on multiple criminal charges.
Or that while he calls tax-paying protesters merchants of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia” he bestowed $10.5 M big ones on a convicted ISIS terrorist when he came back to Canada. Which is more than unvaccinated Canadians are entitled to.
As Sun writer Lorrie Goldstein asked on Twitter, “As I understand it in Canada, there’s a ‘right’ and a ‘far right’, but there’s only a ‘left’ and not a ‘far left’. Why is that?”
It’s why a prime minister who hides from protesters is now pushing for more restrictive rules on social media content (read: censorship). Having bought off the floundering legacy media he means to move his control to the internet next. All the better to push climate change and gender dysphoria as top agenda items— even as Canadians’ heating bills double, their gas pushes toward $2/ litre and inflation erodes their life savings.
No, the enemy of the state is the Convoy. But as @jengerson points the majority of the participants are not politically sophisticated. “The Freedom Convoy is not setting up a tyrannical blockade by their own lights, but rather an extended street protest-ey party, complete with DJs, bouncy castles, BBQ pits and saunas. They’ve organized camps for themselves, cleared the roads of snow and, by their own reports, ejected racist elements.”
This clashes with the PM’s fever dreams. Liberal MP Lightbound says this dismissal of average citizens has been divisive. “I’ve heard from a lot of people wondering why just a year ago, we were all united, in this together. And now that we have one of the most vaccinated population in the world, we’ve never been so divided.”
Should we be surprised by left-wing victim media love? You probably have noticed that it’s Black History Month in Canada and the U.S. Our one-note media uses it to build a narrative about whites’ oppression of blacks. None of the Jimmy Olsens ever dare to ask the radicals, why it is that almost every murdered black person in Canada is killed by another black person?
Their bias on behalf of Trudeau is inescapable. In a testament to how liberal media have created a no-go zone for social-conservative issues, consider that a whopping 77 percent of Canadians are unaware there is no law governing abortion in the country.
But the Convoy’s persistence has threatened that security. The weakening of Omicron is running out Trudeau’s strategy. As the WSJ writes, “The lesson for the Covid-19 police is that when you’ve lost even Canadians, arguably the most law-abiding people on the planet, you’ve lost the political plot.”
For now it remains to be seen how far Trudeau will go to smash the Bouncy Castle people that he and his purchased press have demonized. Or whether the Liberals finally get off their power trip and move on from vaccine shaming.
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
It is a day that lives in infamy for Buffalo Bills fans. Jan. 27, 1991, with Buffalo against the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV. Behind 20-19 with eight seconds left, Scott Norwood, a former All-Pro, attempted a 47-yard game-winning field goal. The kick was, in the immortal words of Al Michaels, wide right.
In the days of the Bills’ four consecutive losing trips to the Super Bowl a 47-yard field goal was within the range of an All Pro kicker. Still it was considered anything but automatic. And kicks of over 50 yards were moon shots with a high degree of failure. Sixty yards? Please, don’t make us laugh.
But as anyone watching field goals in the NFL and CFL can attest the distance barrier has been shattered. NFL kickers are making 72.5 percent of field goals from at least 50 yards. Four kicks have been made from at least 60 yards — one shy of the single-season record. Tampa Bay’s Chase McLaughlin hit a 65 yarder against Philadelphia in Week 4, one yard short of Justin Tucker’s record set in 2021.
Last Sunday Evan McPherson of Baltimore hit a 67-yarder that was wiped out by a late timeout called by Green Bay’ HC Matt LaFleur. (Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Cam Little hit a 70-yard field goal, but it was in preseason and not an official record.)
What makes this onslaught more interesting is that the record for longest FG in the NFL had stood 43 years from Tom Dempsey’s game-winning 63-yarder in 1970 against Detroit for New Orleans. (Dempsey, who has no toes on his right foot wore a special kicking boot.) It took Matt Prater and the light air of Denver to establish a 64 yarder on December 8, 2013. Since then it’s been bombs away.
Dallas’ Brandon Aubrey is the current king of effortless distance, regularly pounding them through from over 60. Many expect him to break the 70-yard mark. (Airlines have movies on flights that long.) No wonder then that the NFL has set records in each of the last four seasons for 50-yard field goals. The total of 195 in 2024 was double the total from every NFL season until 2015.
The combination of distance training plus a few new rules has revolutionized game strategy in today’s game. With the so-called Dynamic kickoff rules forcing more returns, teams are regularly starting drives at the 35- or 40-yard line. In late-game situations top quarterbacks like Buffalo’s Josh Allen or Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes need to get only a couple of first downs to get in the range of their kickers.
Now, a TD with under a minute left is not the death sentence for teams with one of the better kickers— as Bills fans will remember from their crushing loss in the AFC championship game to the Chiefs in 2022. The game featured 25 points scored in the final two minutes of regulation. The Chiefs took just 11 seconds to get to Harrison’s Butker’s range for a tying 47-yard field goal, then won in overtime.
Once the kicker played another position. Today they are specialists. The science of kicking has also improved with a plethora of kicking camps and coaches springing up to train the latest generation of long-distance drivers of the ball. With only 30 jobs in the NFL the competition is fierce, and only the very best get even a look at the pros, let alone s job. But with the money paid to a steady kicker there are thousands each year refining their craft and strengthening their techniques to get a sniff.
Another innovation improving distance was the league allowing teams to prepare their own kicking balls for games. Now they receive a supply of 60 game balls before the season to use in games. 49ers kicker Eddy Pineiro estimates the broken-in balls add maybe three or four yards to the distance on kicks. The rules stipulate that no artificial heating, stretching or inflating are allowed but Jets kicker, veteran Nick Folk, says that it gives him. Comfort zone.
“We get to kind of do just like quarterbacks get whatever they want to do to the ball, as long as it looks like a football and the logo’s still there and all that stuff,” Folk told AP. “I think they’re pretty lenient with that. It’s a very welcoming thing to be able to kind of look at a ball and be like: ‘All right, I want to kick this one this week, I want to kick this one this week.’”
In the CFL the place-kicking game is about to get a big shock as the league moves goal posts from the goal line to the back of the new, smaller end zones. Kickers will now be forced to kick much further for three points, while offences will play on a smaller field that requires more emphasis on TDs.
Paul McCallum stroked a 63-yard to set the league’s record, and like the NFL, CFL kickers are constantly pushing their range in a league with only one indoor surface. Unlike the NFL, the CFL allows PKers to use a tee. Suffice to say the reconfigured field will take getting used to. (Already traditionalists are fuming.) At least we don’t have the rouge on missed FGs to kick around any more.
For now the quest for a 70-yard field goal continues. The question will be how does the NFL react to re-balance the field’s dynamics to protect the integrity of scoring.
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.
My friend and colleague Roy MacGregor used to talk about the “humility gene” in Canada’s hockey heroes. From Gordie Howe to Jean Beliveau to Wayne Gretzky it described the aw-shucks attitude of the top players in the game, who are as Canadian as Roy’s famous canoes.
The refusal to go Hollywood like the NFL, NBA or MLB stars was a defining characteristic of the hockey culture that once bound Canadians. For decades this “fear of flying high” was used by the NHL against the stars when it came to getting paid. Even when players belatedly started a union, their executive director Alan Eagleson did everything he could to suppress salaries and please his buddies in the owners’ box.
What Eagleson’s treachery didn’t accomplish the Tallest Wheat syndrome in Canada did . “You’re paid to play a child’s game. When is enough money enough? You should be grateful the owners let you wear their uniform.” For most players the fans’ withering guilt was the worst fear. In short, outsiders are not allowed to rip on Canada’s stars, but Canadians themselves are free to bring low their heroes.
In our obit for Bob Goodenow, Eagleson’s successor at the NHLPA, we described the slow, painful climb to final self determination in the 1990s. “It’s hard to understate the mentality he had to change… Goodenow convinced hockey players that to earn their worth in the market they had to stick together in negotiations.”
This is relevant this week as Canada’s star player Connor McDavid resurrected the humility gene in Edmonton. The greatest player in his generation McDavid held all the cards to negotiate a new contract with the Oilers or whomever he wanted. Everyone outside Edmonton— particularly his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs— wanted a piece of McDavid and was willing to pay a huge price for him.
As a hint at what McDavid might earn, Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov, who’s never won a major award or played past the first round of the playoffs, just received $136 million for eight years ($17M per year). The new CBA allows that soon the top players could earn as much as $20 M a year.
But this was humble time in a Canadian city mortified that its coolest kid was leaving. What to do? Being a self-deprecating Canadian and successor to the humility gene McDavid chose to halve the baby, taking a preposterously low $12.5 a year for two years in Edmonton while also making it obvious he’s gone should the Oil again fail to win the franchise’s sixth Stanley Cup.
It was the most Canadian solution to wanting to be a good guy for a city that, trying to being kind, isn’t Palm Beach or Brentwood. While hinting he will cash in later.
For certain the low-ball conclusion to what was to be a season of painful interviews about his future did nothing to endear McDavid to his fellow NHLPA members. Notwithstanding Kaprizov’s haul, McDavid’s cratering will put a chill on salaries for stars while putting a big smile on the face of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. He has players back in the barn, and he has Canada to thank for it.
We saw that same Canadian herd instinct in the election when the Liberals marshalled ex-pat Mike Myers to reinforce the suppressing instinct. Exposed by Trump for their handling of their economy the past 10 years the Laurentian elite recoiled in horror, preferring the sunny fairways of self delusion over the reality of a dysfunctional nation.
The best bookend to McDavid’s humility is the concurrent legal resolution to the Truckers Convoy of 2022, a non-violent event (okay, someone pissed on the Cenotaph) that convulsed the nation for three weeks. If a Covid mask obscured your view of the circus let’s just say it was a sit-in by truckers upset with the arbitrary virus/ vaccine actions inflicted by Justin Trudeau’s government.
While Trudeau hid beneath his desk the truckers frolicked next to Parliament Hill, honking horns and playing on Bouncy Castles while the Hill’s media entertained thoughts of Lenin seizing power in 1917. The reality of the demonstration— no guns, no breaking down the doors of Parliament, no firebombing Trudeau’s residence— was lost on locals inconvenienced by long lineups at Shoppers Drug Mart. There was no mention of regime change or insurrection. Except in the eager-to-please-Justin media.
The high-profile stunt from the West clearly Irritated Woke Canada clinging to rumours of MAGA invasion (still embraced by these spares ), firebombing and CBC suggestions of Putin espionage demanded the full weight of the law for organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.
So Trudeau sent in mounted police to bowl over grannies, and his justice droogs threw the book at the evil doers behind the convoy. Okay, they were charged with mischief. Remember. Not assault. Not destruction of property. Not subversive behaviour. Not overthrowing government. Not possession of weapons. All this performative justice applauded by Canada’s purchased media. Even when the OPP head of intelligence found no credible evidence of threats to national security, extremism, foreign influence (e.g., Russian or American sources, or Donald Trump), or plans for violence.
Because you can’t flaunt Canada’s Liberals and get away with it. So Lich and Barber were keel-hauled through the Canadian justice system and jails for three years. Huffy prosecutors and tendentious judges made the proceedings look like The Mikado, slapping the pair with criminal records and house arrest for not being sufficiently contrite to the Laurentian elites.
They still face civil charges from people whose bed times were upset by the truckers. And the judge hinted that they’ll be made to pay for the cost of cleaning up Wellington street after turning it into a party zone. But by God, they’ll think twice about challenging the federal liberals again.
And so, kids, our lesson? It’s okay to pretend humility in Canada. Just don’t dare get above your station.
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.
Canada’s birth rate plummets to an all-time low
Pierre Poilievre says Christians may be ‘number one’ target of hate violence in Canada
Jordan Peterson needs prayers as he battles serious health issues, daughter Mikhaila says
Devastating COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effect Confirmed by New Data: Study
-
Alberta1 day agoFact, fiction, and the pipeline that’s paying Canada’s rent
-
2025 Federal Election1 day agoProtestor Behind ‘Longest Ballot’ Chaos targeting Poilievre pontificates to Commons Committee
-
Business2 days agoUN, Gates Foundation push for digital ID across 50 nations by 2028
-
Brownstone Institute2 days agoTrump Covets the Nobel Peace Prize
-
International2 days agoHamas releases all living hostages under Trump peace plan
-
Business2 days agoTruckers see pay surge as ICE sweeps illegal drivers off U.S. highways
-
Business2 days agoNetherlands Seizes Chinese-Owned Chipmaker in Unprecedented Security Move
-
Energy17 hours agoIndigenous Communities Support Pipelines, Why No One Talks About That