Sutherland Quarterly

A portion of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the Jasper Community Team Society, a long-running local non-profit operated by community volunteers. On a brilliant sunny day at the height of the season, July 2024, residents and visitors to the picturesque tourist town of Jasper, Alberta, learned that fast-moving forest fires were burning both south and north of town. That left only one westward road out of harm's way. Over three frantic days, 5,000 residents and 20,000 tourists were evacuated from Jasper as firefighters used helicopters to battle flames reaching 100-feet high and leaping from tree top to tree top behind 100-kilometre-per-hour winds. The 25,000-hectare fire was so intense it likely created its own weather system and lightning. Despite heroic efforts, a third of the town was lost. In this gripping narrative, Calgary Herald reporter Matthew Scace talks to the emergency managers who organized the evacuation, the woman who was preparing to go into labour when the fires started, the firefighters who fought through the night to save what they could of the town, and the recovery team leaders travelling the long, painful road to recovery. Jasper on Fire also takes a hard look at why the blaze happened and what can be done to prevent future disasters in our increasingly volatile climate.

Infuriating customer service. Chequing accounts that demand exorbitant fees. Credit cards that charge outrageous rates of interest. Mutual fund expenses that torpedo your investments. Loans departments that refuse to support Canada's small businesses. These are just a few of the many ways chartered banks abuse their dominant position in the Canadian financial system. Fleeced: Canadians Versus Their Banks is a stunning exposé of the inner workings of our six major banks, demonstrating how they are set up to avoid competing with one another, squeeze their customers, evade risk, stifle innovation, and produce staggering profits that enrich bank executives and shareholders-all to the detriment of the broader Canadian economy. With clarity and wit, Andrew Spence, a veteran financial services executive, excoriates not only the banks, but the regulators and politicians who refuse to stand up for consumers and initiate urgently needed reforms of Canada's costly banking system.

The worst decade in the history of the Liberal Party of Canada came to an end on October 19, 2015. Justin Trudeau swept to power, ending the ten-year rule of Stephen Harper's Conservatives. Trudeau's vision was relentlessly optimistic: the word "positive" was heard eight times in his victory speech, along with references to "sunny ways" and "hope and hard work." But the fates decreed that he would govern in darker times. His rookie government, itself mainly staffed by rookies in federal politics, had to learn on the job in an age of polarization, misinformation, and pandemic, while dealing with the rise of Trump and Brexit, a newly belligerent China, and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The moment needed more than a young PM's abundant charm. And almost from the outset, Trudeau struggled to rise to the occasion. A decade after he published The Longer I'm Prime Minister, the definitive portrait of Stephen Harper in power, Paul Wells, one of Canada's all-time great political writers, turns his attention to Justin Trudeau, a man of talent, ambition, and trust issues in a time of mistrust.

On February 14, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made what might be the most controversial decision of his tenure, invoking the Emergencies Act to end a three-week occupation of downtown Ottawa by truckers protesting mandatory COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Proclaimed in 1988, the Emergencies Act is designed to give federal officials extraordinary powers in the event of threats to Canada's national security that can't be managed under existing laws. Trudeau used it to make the protest illegal, freeze the accounts and cancel the vehicle insurance of participants, requisition tow trucks to clear protestors from the streets, among other measures. The government defended the first-ever invocation of the act as just and necessary; several premiers and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association called it an assault on democratic rights and civil liberties. As required by the act, Trudeau appointed a commission of inquiry into its use. Last November, justice Paul Rouleau held three weeks of riveting hearings that included testimony by so-called Freedom Convoy organizers, police officials, cabinet ministers, and Trudeau himself. Award-winning author Paul Wells was a regular visitor to the inquiry. Witnesses described layer on layer of dysfunction and acrimony in every organization that converged on Parliament Hill -- three levels of government, three police forces, and the protesters themselves. How does a society make crucial decisions when everyone is exhausted, nothing works, and the noise from the truck horns and the shouting is deafening? And how do the protagonists regroup to make their case in the sterile, weird environment of a public inquiry? That's the story-inside-a-story of the Emergency in Ottawa.

Canadian Edition: We used to go to court to enforce our rights. Now we do it at the office. Workplace investigations are everywhere. From complaints at Fox, BBC, TVO, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show to sports teams like the Seattle Mariners, the Boston Celtics, and the Dallas Mavericks, as well as Fortune 500 companies, governments, universities, and schools, seemingly every week brings a new announcement of another workplace under scrutiny. As conflicts increase in a new era of behavioral expectations, offices are being transformed into forums of informal justice. Investigators are summoned to adjudicate and peers become witnesses in poorly understood, often opaque proceedings. The shift is fraught for all involved: complainants often feel the investigations fail to right wrongs; respondents regularly decry them as exercises in shunning; employers wonder how they fell into this role.

COVID-19 made almost five million Canadians sick, put hundreds of thousands in hospital, and claimed over 50,000 lives. The numbers are startling yet they don't begin to capture the enormity of what we endured in our three-year ordeal, nor the fact that it's not over. Many people are still grieving loved ones, many survivors are still grappling with long covid, and many continue to experience the pandemic as never-ending trauma. General healthcare has deteriorated and waiting lists have swelled even for urgent surgeries. Rates of respiratory and heart disease and strokes are up. Years of involuntary confinement, isolation, and boredom have contributed to a "shadow pandemic" of alcohol, cannabis, and opioid abuse, especially among the young. Rage is everywhere, the number of hate crimes has spiked, along with fears of civil disorder. Three million workers lost their jobs and a majority of small businesses either failed or weathered near-death experiences. Our workplaces, schools, and downtowns were hollowed out and may never entirely recover. As year four begins, people are still dying at alarming rates and we are just beginning to learn of the myriad knock-on effects of the pandemic. In this important and galvanizing book, Dr. Elaine Chin argues that a full audit of the personal and social consequences of COVID-19 is the indispensable first step to a full recovery for individuals, families, and communities.