B.C. Conservative candidate claims to have new evidence of misconduct in 2024 provincial election
Defeated Conservative candidate Honveer Randhawa will discuss what he calls new developments regarding the alleged 2024 provincial election misconduct.
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CBC
21 minutes ago
- CBC
How a coastal Maine town almost became part of Canada
Social Sharing When U.S. President Donald Trump started talking about annexing Canada to make it the 51st state, people in Castine, Maine, took notice. The town, after all, was twice occupied by Great Britain two centuries ago. The British wanted to carve out a new colony that would be part of British North America — in effect doing the opposite of what Trump has been musing about. "When I do walking tours, I jokingly tell people that this could have been Canada very easily," said Lisa Lutts, the recently retired executive director of the Castine Historical Society. "If the War of 1812, if the Treaty of Paris had been different, this would have been Canada. And I always joke and say, well, I would have had better health care. That's my joke, and people love it." Castine's history of occupation is visible in the historical markers and remnants of British forts that dot its small grid of streets overlooking Penobscot Bay. Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump here by 47 percentage points in the presidential election last fall, and the president's aggressive comments about Canada were deeply unpopular in Castine and nearby coastal communities. "This isn't how you treat your allies," said Pete O'Brien, a resident of nearby Rockland who was showing relatives from California the earthworks of Fort George, built by British troops in 1779. "We're about as close as it gets to you politically, culturally, geographically." Liam Riordan, a historian at the University of Maine at Orono and an expert on the revolutionary period, said Trump's rhetoric represents "a failure to understand the close ties and close relationships that we share." "I think in Maine, the reaction to that has really been one of being appalled and embarrassed." WATCH | 'I see us as a borderland': Occupied Maine then and now: The Maine town that almost became a Canadian border community 1 hour ago Duration 4:58 The British occupied eastern Maine twice. Americans who live there have thoughts on U.S. President Donald Trump's annexation talk. Castine's elevated geographical location at the tip of a peninsula on the eastern side of Penobscot Bay made it a strategic location for colonial powers fighting over North America. A newspaper correspondent referred to its capture in 1814 as "perhaps one of the most admirable military positions in the world." In the 1600s, present-day Castine was the western edge of the French colony of Acadia, with the British-held Massachusetts Bay Colony on the other side of the bay. France gave up all its North American territory in 1763, but when it backed the rebels in the American Revolution, the British seized Castine in case the French decided to take it back. A revolutionary fleet sailed to Castine to push out the British but failed miserably. "A lot of Americans have no idea about the Penobscot expedition and the battle that took place here, because we lost," Lutts said. "We remember the ones that we won." When the revolution ended and the British recognized U.S. independence, "any reasonable person during the treaty negotiations … would have said almost certainly the Penobscot River would be the border," Riordan said. But John Adams, one of the negotiators, pushed for the St. Croix River to be the border because he recognized how Castine would give the Americans better access to lucrative fish stocks and trade routes. Four hundred loyalists who had come to Castine during the Revolution to remain under the British Crown moved again, this time settling what would become Saint Andrews, N.B. Several even moved their houses there on boats and placed them on a street grid similar to Castine's, the reason the two towns resemble each other. Three decades later, during the War of 1812, the British returned to capture Castine again. The story goes that American troops at Fort Madison knew they were outnumbered, fired one perfunctory cannon shot for honour's sake and quickly fled. A local pastor, William Mason, grabbed a white table cloth from his dining room and headed down to the harbour to wave it as a signal of surrender. Castine was a boomtown under British occupation thanks to trade with other British ports such as Halifax and Saint John. "Business is brisk and speculators are daily flocking in from every quarter," the Hartford Courant reported in November 1814. "The war, or rather peace, with the British is becoming very popular here." But the treaty that ended the War of 1812 returned Castine to the U.S. again. Thousands of pounds collected by the British customs house in Castine remained with the British and was used by Nova Scotia's governor, Lord Dalhousie, to establish a college that later became Dalhousie University. "Another reason why we feel very close to Canada is that our money is up there at that university," Lutts joked. "They're not letting us in for free though. They should let Castiners in for free, don't you think?" The end of that war also marked the end of Castine changing hands, but the town's history remains a touchstone for residents to this day. "We understand ourselves by thinking about our relationship with the past," Riordan said. "And Castine really leans into this more than many other local towns." Some local residents aren't sure life would be that different here if history had taken a different turn. "If the Canadian border had been here, I don't think a lot would have changed, because when I look at Maine, I see us as a borderland between Canada and the United States anyway," O'Brien said. "I think there's also a lot of understanding and acceptance and appreciation of the Canadians down here as well. And so it would have just pushed all of that a little farther south, right?"
National Post
31 minutes ago
- National Post
Geoff Russ: Ordinary Canadians shouldn't have to pay to educate people who hate them
An 'Anti-Canada Day' barbeque and fundraiser will be hosted in Montreal on July 1 by the McGill students' union, a group called the 'Palestinian Feminist Collective' and other equally worthy student activist groups. Article content They form one of many cancerous cells of post-secondary students who spend most of their energy trying to undermine and demoralize everyone around them. Article content To McGill's credit, it moved to cut ties with the students' union in April after it helped to lead a storming of the campus to protest the Israeli government and western support for it. Nonetheless, academia has much to answer for after spending years fostering this toxic political climate. Article content Article content Universities are packed with derision and outright slander for those who make higher education possible. Businessmen are portrayed as greedy, exploitative capitalists, while blue-collar labourers are portrayed as akin to racist zoo animals that must be studied as such. Article content Those same people help ensure that public university tuition in Canada is generously affordable by covering the lion's share of the costs through taxpayer subsidies. Article content At McGill, for example, a four-year undergraduate degree will set a young Canadian student or their family back by C$22,000 from Quebec, or C$48,000 if they come from outside the province. Even paying international student fees, an American who attends the University of Victoria will pay C$150,000, far less than they would fork over at the University of Oregon, which would cost C$188,000 for state residents or C$349,000 for anyone else. Article content Article content Canadian students who go abroad for their education will fare far worse. A three-year undergraduate degree at Bangor University in Wales, equivalent to a four-year degree here, for non-British students costs about £60,000, or about C$111,000. The University of Florida projects that out-of-state students will pay a little more than US$183,000 for their four-year degrees, which is roughly $250,000 in Canadian dollars. Article content Article content Earning an undergraduate degree in Canada is a bargain, but those who make that possible only get scorn and humiliation in return. Article content The generations that arrived in the colonial era laid the bricks of places like Trinity College in Toronto and Dalhousie in Halifax, which were foundational to the growth of Canadian higher education. Today, their memory is filed under the category of 'settler.' Article content 'Settlers' can never be a positive force in the asinine racial theories of decolonial ideology, which have infiltrated public discourse everywhere. The existence of Canada has been a good thing for the world, however, and nothing will change the fact that it is a colonial country founded by settlers.
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Tech leaders ready launch of Canadian social-media platform Gander to buck U.S. dominance
A new social-media platform built by Canadians, for Canadians, and operated in Canada, will publicly launch in October with support from some of the most prominent names in the Canadian innovation sector. Titled Gander Social Inc., the app was created by five Canadian co-founders who grew frustrated with the torrent of trolls, disinformation and divisive content they experienced on other platforms, largely owned by American tech giants. When Donald Trump was elected president for a second term, co-founder and CEO Ben Waldman said this frustration morphed into fear, as conversations around data sovereignty – ensuring Canadian control over access, usage and storage – became more pervasive. 'What it came down to was the fear that, without firing a shot, we could easily be annexed by Trump issuing an executive order that all of his friends would immediately adhere to and shut down all of the cloud services that we use every day in business and government, and we would just simply be offline,' he said. 'And that was a scary moment.' Gander will feature written posts and videos, giving users the choice to tailor their feed to the types of content they most enjoy. Just like the social-media platform Bluesky, Gander is built on AT Protocol, which means it's part of an open, decentralized network and not controlled by a billionaire. To ensure data sovereignty for Canadian users, Mr. Waldman said Gander is working with Canadian cloud-service provider ThinkOn to build a parallel network of servers entirely in Canada. Therefore, users will have the option to toggle between having their posts appear on the larger, open network or the Canada-only network. This will also enable Gander on the domestic network to control its own privacy and moderation rules, which will adhere to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Changing U.S. relationship has thrust Canada's data sovereignty into the spotlight With the rise of dad influencers, a more equal version of parenting goes viral Among the app's strategic advisers and investors is Arlene Dickinson, Dragon's Den star and founder and general partner at District Capital Ventures. Ms. Dickinson said she reached out to the platform's founders earlier this year after seeing something about it online. She thought it was a smart, timely idea, given the deterioration of safe, online spaces and growing emphasis on data sovereignty. The world doesn't need another social-media platform, she said, but it could stand to replace some of the ones it already has. This is where Gander comes in, with its Canadian approach, she said. 'My belief is that people will come to this network, to see if it's as different as we can build it to be, and they will stay because it is,' Ms. Dickinson said. The parallel, local network design is also what makes Gander a feasible business model, Ms. Dickinson said, because it can translate this model to other countries or communities who want to set up their own sovereign network. Providing the option to switch off of the larger, decentralized network may be contentious among some users, Mr. Waldman said, since it creates a closed door in an otherwise open space. But he said it comes down to protecting Canadians. 'At the end of the day, when your President isn't exactly being the nicest to us, we have to be in a position where we can communicate, hopefully, in the event of something going wrong,' he said. Other strategic advisers include Blaine Cook, an original Twitter architect; Taylor Owen, director at McGill's Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy; Peter Dinsdale, CEO of YMCA Canada and former CEO of the Assembly of First Nations; and Amber Mac, a Canadian tech journalist and media personality. Ms. Mac said Gander's dedication to verification and moderation will be key in avoiding the steady decline that other online platforms have succumbed to. How underground brokers use their connections inside Meta to profit from hacked accounts 'In the age of social media, it's difficult to compete against some of the forces online that pollute our online spaces. But I don't think it's impossible,' she said. To ensure Gander is solely humans interacting with humans, Mr. Waldman said they're considering working with Toronto-based digital ID verifier GoConfirm to check users' identities upon signing up. Since opening Gander's early access program in April, Mr. Waldman said more than 9,000 people have signed up, giving them benefits such as username priority and the chance to participate in beta testing. At launch, the app will be available in French, English and three Indigenous languages. Mr. Waldman said Gander's monetization models are still being fine-tuned, but he expects subscription plans for content creators and small businesses, and ads to be a part of the company's strategy. However, he said if ads are included on the platform, it will be done mindfully and in a way that allows users to opt in to what they see. For example, they might choose to see ads about their favourite band's coming shows. 'It's all exploratory. Right now, we're just happy to get a platform up that makes people feel better.'
