Members of the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry reconnaissance platoon following a firefight on the Whale’s Back near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on March 14, 2002. From left rear: Pte. Shaun Cameron, from Duck Lake, Sask.; Cpl. Erik Kuerr of Edmonton; Sgt. Torry White; MCpl. Vic Mover of Thunder Bay, Ont.; and MCpl. Chuck Cote of Edmonton. In front are Pte. Francis McCann of Langley, B.C.; Capt. Ryan Latinovich of Welland, Ont., and MCpl. Jeff Whibbs of Peterborough, Ont. [Stephen J. Thorne]

Overwhelming majority of Americans oppose 51st state talk

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

With U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to tariff Canada into submission as the “51st state,” 92 per cent of Americans surveyed by the Angus Reid Institute said they had no, or only qualified, support for a merger.

Sixty per cent of 2,005 Americans questioned online between Feb. 27 and March 3, 2025, said they had no interest in Canada joining the United States, while another 32 per cent said they would support the idea only if Canadians wanted it.

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Clement Courtenay Ligoure, the first Black person to openly practice medicine in Nova Scotia. [Wikimedia]

Heroic Black doctor of the Halifax Explosion highlighted in new publication

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

The story of the Dec. 6, 1917, Halifax disaster has been told in print and on-screen innumerable times, usually detailing the same, or at least similar, narrative of what was the largest humanmade explosion until the United States dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in August 1945.

Few, of course, would deny it’s a story that deserves to be highlighted. To unearth forgotten or largely unknown aspects, however, is a far greater challenge. Despite this, historian and Halifax disaster expert Joel Zemel has achieved precisely that.

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