22 July 2026
Staples Theory Is Back
I picture Mel Watkins gazing out of his University of Toronto office window in 1962. Decades have passed since his mentor Harold Innis had published his theories on Canadian staples, and at this time
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Staples Theory Is Back
I picture Mel Watkins gazing out of his University of Toronto office window in 1962. Decades have passed since his mentor Harold Innis had published his theories on Canadian staples, and at this time in the midcentury Mel’s discipline of developmental economics was being reinvented by dependency theory. Like many good
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15 July 2026
The Art of Association
How a Toronto reading group revived a 300-year-old tradition of building community on purpose The church at the end of my street in the West End of Toronto is a very subdued
15 July 2026
Solidarity Needs a Room
Working-class politics wasn’t built by policy — it was built in halls, taverns, and union locals that mostly no longer exist. Since 2016, there has been a great deal of material written about
8 July 2026
Our Game Now?
What men’s soccer tells us about the challenges of building institutions and national identity in Canada I. A Better Kind of Defeat On Saturday afternoon in Houston, Morocco knocked Canada out of the
2 July 2026
Confederation as Useful History: Part I
Canada's young generation has been denied a usable relationship with its own founding. Recovering the political economy of Confederation, honestly, without hagiography or prosecution, is the first step toward rebuilding it. There
2 July 2026
Why McLuhan Matters
Marshall McLuhan's ideas were too advanced for the television age. In the era of social media and AI, they have become indispensable. Editors’ Preface: Marshall McLuhan’s mode of analysis was of
2 July 2026
The Scarcity Trap
How Canada Made Housing Too Valuable To Fix On a cold March 30th, I found myself pacing in circles beside Calgary’s city hall. I was holding a crinkled paper, practicing reading out loud
1 July 2026
The 2067 Journal: A Statement of Intent
I. Why a New Journal? To ponder Canada is to be perplexed. It is in many ways an entity that the tides of history, geography, and economics should have consigned to oblivion long ago.
