First off, welcome in advance, enjoy your trip!

Bad news: Toronto traffic is nuts, and accoms are expensive. Good news: transit is good. Assuming you’re landing at pearson, the UP Express train takes you straight into downtown & it’s like $10. Anywhere you could want to go in the city centre is walkable or easy to get to on transit, no reason to drive, really. In certain spots during rush hour, it’s actually faster to walk than drive. But, that’s a good thing for exploring.

Don’t be afraid to ask people for help or directions while you’re here. People in Toronto and Vancouver have a lot of pride in their cities, and want visitors to have a good time, especially if they’re coming from overseas. Canadians are typically kind, and helpful!

I got this wrong a while back - I think it’s ‘medias’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res

Firearm laws in Canada are very strict, and not comparable to the American system. No serious Canadian politician is advocating for lax gun laws or an American-style system in terms of firearm ownership.

Under Trudeau, the first major Liberal movement on banning so-called assault style firearms came after the tragedy in Portapique. The gunman in that massacre used firearms smuggled from the States, and a pistol stolen off of an RCMP officer. The shooter was reported to the RCMP for having illegal firearms repeatedly, and months/years before the shooting occurred. So, I think it’s important to point out that no measure that the Liberals have moved on since 2020 would have changed the outcome in Portapique. That’s why law abiding firearm owners are pushing for increased enforcement, instead of new measures that uniquely target them.

Counterpoint - we’re all going to die. There’s no good reason to feel guilt or shame for filling our lives with things that enrich our short time on this rock.

Almost anything we choose to do that is fun or interesting shortens our lifespan. So does worry, and boredom.

People who want to min-max and optimize their life and health, I guess, why not. But that’s not the only way to live a meaningful life.

SNC Lavalin, We charity scand, ethics violations, going back on his marquee promise of electoral reform and thereby salting the earth on the topic for a generation, weak response on foreign interference, Indigenous people’s life expectancy going down instead of up during his tenure despite the tone of the party’s messaging, inappropriate response to the Portapique shooting, their handling of protests and strike busting, there are more. A person doesn’t need to dip very deep to find reasons to not like Trudeau and his tenure.

I think even Liberals have good reason to dislike Trudeau, for hanging on as long as he did when it was obvious he was polling as low as he was, leaving a leadership vacuum during a critical political transition to the South.

I think the people who ‘hate’ him seem irrational. Unfortunately, that small minority of people obscure what should be proper criticism of his policies and choices.

It’s sad that we’ve come to expect Liberals to be corrupt and self-dealing, and seeing that expectation used as an excuse for their leaders is fucking depressing.

This is the first article I’ve seen mention that the plan for interprovincial liquor sales is about direct-to-consumer sales.

It’s a good thing, but I’m not sure how transformative it would be. The cost of shipping would easily exceed the price of beer or wine. Spirits would maybe be the product category that direct-to-consumer sales would make the most sense on. But even a $50 bottle of gin would cost nearly that much to ship from BC to Ontario.

I understand that. And I guess I’m not convincing anyone in this thread, but, things like this, and how the article gushes about Elizabeth’s ‘brooch warfare’, I fail to see how these are things that Canadians ought to feel good about or empowered by. They don’t benefit us in any way.

Canada needs allies now probably more than ever in its history. What we see here coming from the monarchy is not a meaningful gesture of alliance. That’s what I’m bitter about. It’s monarchs doing what monarchs do after they’ve squeezed all the benefit from colonial conquest - they bandy meaningless symbols about. That benefits them, because conveniently, it costs them nothing to ‘stay out of politics’.

As a Canadian, it’s truly frightening to see world leaders reluctant to simply say the words ‘we stand behind Canada’.

What does the word ‘Commonwealth’ even mean if the British monarchy can’t say that and mean it.

Yes, planting trees, playing dress up, and giving ceremonial swords will fix this.

I’ll uncross my arms when they do something that makes a material difference.

I’m really surprised by this development. The fact that provinces sat down with Ottawa and agreed on something related to liquor makes me think whatever the proposed plan is, it’s probably not transformative…

Devil is in the details of course, but I’m interested to see what this actually looks like.