Seasonal Schulz double bill delivers plenty of Peanuts

The ‘Buy Canadian’ trade war challenge

“Buy Canadian,” they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. “Elbows up,” the pithy slogan advises again and again, in response to the latest daily affront from increasingly unbalanced U.S. President Donald Trump.

And there’s no question Canadians from coast to coast to coast have bought into the patriotic mindset that politicians, from Prime Minister Mark Carney right on down to elected officials at the municipal level, have implored us to adopt.

“We were attacked,” is how Carney described the Aug. 21 unraveling of trade talks, after U.S. negotiators reportedly inserted last-minute demands the Canadian side viewed as both unreasonable and unacceptable. “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”

The breakdown led to the immediate imposition by Trump of steep new tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods headed to south-of-the-border markets. A targeted, dollar-for-dollar Canadian tariff response will take effect after the Labour Day weekend. In the meantime, Canadians are more motivated than ever to stand firm against Trump’s tyrannical tactics.

Wryly funny essays chronicle rocky road to motherhood, postpartum anxiety

‘Motherhood is often oppressively touted as one of the most important things a woman can do, and yet that same oppressive force demands she never speak on the inherent realities of mothering.”

So begins Toronto sportswriter Stacey May Fowles in her touching memoir on becoming a mother after four years of infertility.

Fowles is best-known for her baseball reporting, including 2017’s Baseball Life Advice, a collection of essays celebrating baseball while challenging sexist attitudes towards female sports reporters.

She’s also published two novels, a children’s book and contributed to several literary anthologies, demonstrating gifts for reporting, research and prose.

Comic creator unleashes talent with book bound for festival

For Glenn Hares, comic books — specifically, superhero comics — have always been a refuge, a way to both understand and escape the world.

Now, he’s prepared to release his own into the world.

“When I was in high school, I started creating characters, like this guy here,” says Hares, 40, showing a reporter a copy of the self-published Tytanium No. 0.

“Originally, he was just named Jerry Wolfe. Recently, my aunt suggested I make him neurodivergent because I based him on myself. A lot of superheroes have extraordinary, fantastic, out-of-the-ordinary powers, but they’re also just people. They live imperfect lives.”

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions today. The moon is in Gemini.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Because your communication skills are so excellent, it’s a great day for those of you who teach, write, sell, market or act because your words will be like gold. You’ll have practical, doable ideas, and at the same time, you’ll be creative and optimistic about the future!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Watershed moment in the fight against misinformation

Alex Jones, arguably the world’s best known purveyor of toxic conspiracy theories, is in court this week facing a defamation lawsuit related to the vicious and inhumane lies he spread about the families who lost children in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The case could mark a turning point in the war against misinformation.

Explaining Canada’s superior employment rate

Donald Trump regularly makes outrageous claims. Fentanyl was pouring across the northern border from Canada and had to be stopped. Canada is nasty to deal with and has the highest tariffs in the world. Canada needs the U.S. but the U.S. doesn’t need Canada. Canadians want to become the 51st state. And so on.

In the latest trade dispute, after Mark Carney walked away from negotiations, Trump made a new claim that Canada’s unemployment rate was 10 per cent and climbing rapidly. Insofar as the unemployment rate is closely monitored, reported monthly, and given similar attention to the rates of inflation and economic growth, the comment was likely intended to signal Canada’s weakness. It fits Trump’s narrative that Canada needs the U.S. for its livelihood and protection and would be better off more directly under U.S. influence as a 51st state, or perhaps a protectorate like the Philippines or Panama in the past.

Fact checkers quickly reported that Canada’s unemployment rate is really 6.4 per cent for July, not 10 per cent, has fallen from 6.9 per cent in April, and is at its lowest rate since May 2024. Some astute observers pointed out that Canada’s method for the calculation of the unemployment rate leads to a higher rate than the U.S. by about one per cent. Under the American methodology, then, our unemployment rate would be 5.4 per cent, not that far off the U.S. July rate of 4.1 per cent.

Detection of unemployment is less straightforward that might appear, as it is sandwiched between the labour force statuses of employment and inactivity at a particular point in time. The internationally established standard for determination of unemployment is the notion of searching for work — you are unemployed if you do not have paid employment and you are looking for work without success. Surveys have been developed to categorize respondents as employed, unemployed or inactive, including the labour force survey (LFS) in Canada and the current population survey (CPS) in the U.S.