Mark Carney reflects on the legacy of Isaac Brock in a video posted to the prime minister’s YouTube channel. [youtube.com/Mark Carney]

Speaking loud: In his first public update video, Carney channels Major-General Isaac Brock

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT​​​​​​​

Who knew that Prime Minister Mark Carney kept a tiny toy solider on his desk?

Canadians learned this last week in a remarkable video Carney released—the first in a series of occasional public updates he is promising to deliver from the Prime Minister’s Office via YouTube.

The inaugural video posted on Sunday, April 19 was an internet-era version of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous fireside chats, an effort to both comfort and energize the country through tough times ahead. In Carney’s case, he laid out the economic and security threats facing Canada and how his government plans to deal with them.

Sitting prominently in front of him during his chat was a small, red-coated figurine of Major-General Isaac Brock, the British commander whose heroics helped save Canada from American conquest in the War of 1812.

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Veterans Ombud Nishika Jardine. [Stephen J. Thorne/LM]

Veterans Ombud Nishika Jardine on defending veterans

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

“Being able to respond to individual complaints that come into us is the bread and butter of our office,” explained colonel (ret’d) Nishika Jardine, Canada’s veterans ombud. “That is the service we provide, a free and independent service for fairness for veterans and their families. That is our number one priority. It will always be our number one priority.”

Neither an advocate for Veterans Affairs Canada nor, strictly speaking, for veterans themselves, Jardine’s job—along with some 30 colleagues—is to determine what’s right and just. Whether the issues involve VAC’s benefit-related decisions, broader health-care provisions or fundamental support for former personnel, the veterans ombud strives to resolve disputes between the government and those in its care.

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Robert Prevost (right), now Pope Leo XIV, at a peace rally in Rome in 1983 with fellow Augustinians. [Pax Christi Italia Archives/Wikipedia]

A just war: The origins of Pope Leo XIV’s challenges to Trump’s war in Iran

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump opened a new unlikely front in his war with Iran, this time against a fellow American, Pope Leo XIV.

Beyond the extraordinary spectacle of a U.S. president attacking the leader of the Catholic Church, the quarrel shines a timely spotlight on the question of what is a just war?

The Pope has been condemning the moral conduct of the Trump administration for some time, first on immigration and now for its war on Iran. Leo described Trump’s April 7th threat to wipe Iran from the map— “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”—as “truly unacceptable.”

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Kathy Grant, historian and co-founder of Black Canadian Veterans Stories. [Kathy Grant]

Historian Kathy Grant on preserving Canada’s Black veteran stories

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

It’s inevitable, though no less tragic, that Canada’s Second World War generation is beginning to fade from living memory, a testament to the passage of time more than 80 years after the guns fell silent.

On March 26, 2026, Alvie Burden of Tisdale, Sask., died at age 104. Not only was he reportedly the oldest Black Canadian veteran—having first served as a home-front test subject for chemical agent trials before fighting overseas—but he was also one of the last of that community from WW II.

Among those striving to preserve his legacy, alongside the many thousands of other Black veterans who have donned a uniform throughout Canadian history, is historian Kathy Grant.

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Members of the CAF engineering training element as part of Operation UNIFIER in Poland on June 30, 2025. [Canadian Armed Forces Imagery Technician]

Answering the call: Has the time come for mandatory national service?

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

We live in a dangerous new world, with major conflicts in Europe and Asia, with NATO under strain from within, with Canada under threat from its once-trusted American ally and, in response, with Ottawa embarking on the largest military rebuilding effort since the 1950s.
Amid this ominous milieu, should Canada adopt mandatory national service?

Numerous countries—including several NATO members in Scandinavia and the Baltic, as well as Greece and Turkey—require citizens to undertake a period of national service, often with a military component.

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In her new book The Taking of Vimy Ridge, historian Carla-Jean Stokes explores the First World War photography of William Ivor Castle. [Wilfrid Laurier University Press]

Historian Carla-Jean Stokes on the man who photographed Vimy Ridge

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

The camera never lies, or so the saying goes. The reality, however, is in the eye of the beholder.

In the 1860s, U.S. Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, renowned for capturing scenes of carnage and despair, was hailed—alongside his team—as a pioneer of the medium. Yet some of his depictions were served with a side of deception when battlefield props, and even bodies, were shifted and staged.

With advances in technology came improved methods to manipulate, applied anew following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. When pictures could speak a thousand words, not to mention win hearts and minds, military authorities weren’t above sanctioning subterfuge in the name of propaganda.

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