Saskatchewan preparing for first step in its provincial reopening plan this weekend

Family account spiced with magic realism, geopolitical intrigue and a ghost story

Tom Lin’s second novel Babylon, South Dakota moves beyond a historical account of an immigrant family’s struggle, delightfully blending and bending genres.

Lin is a Chinese-born novelist whose family emigrated to the U.S. when he was four years old. His debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making him the youngest ever recipient of that award. He earned a PhD in English from the University of California Davis and is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

Babylon, South Dakota takes place in an unspecified time period that can be understood to be during the Mao era — likely the 1950s or ’60s. A young Chinese couple, the Hsuis, immigrate to the rural community that gives the book its title. They take the names Saul and Mei and settle on a 160-acre homestead left to them by a distant relative.

Saul’s dream is to breed and sell chrysanthemums from seeds he brought from China, while Mei wants to raise livestock. They speak no English, know nothing of life in the United States, are unprepared for the harshness of winter and the isolation of the farm and bring nothing with them except some gold, which Mei hides around the house for emergencies. Their only link to the outside world is a discarded and marginally functioning TV set, which Saul rescues and rigs up.

Can Brazil’s Lula best Bolsonaro’s backers?

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is in search of his fourth non-consecutive presidential term since 2002 (and after a stint in prison for corruption) as the Workers’ Party spear-carrier, had once pledged that he would not seek a second term this time around.

But time in office and a fondness for political power have a way of changing minds.

Many prognosticators had predicted that Lula would win easily in any head-on contest with hard right Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro — the eldest son of former disgraced president Jair Bolsonaro, who was given a 27-year sentence of house arrest for plotting a failed coup attempt in 2023.

Not so fast. (The first round of the Oct. 4 presidential election, unless one candidate can eke out a majority, will most likely require a second run-off vote on Oct. 25.)

Canadian politicians speaking with one voice

It was something that seems unusual in politics in recent years: politicians of different stripes taking the same side and together supporting what Canada needs to do, and is doing, to address U.S. trade attacks.

Take former prime minister Stephen Harper, closing out a major Toronto investment meeting set up by Prime Minister Mark Carney with a speech where Harper said he not only supported Carney’s decision to walk away from trade talks with the U.S., but that he would have done the same thing.

The deal the Americans were demanding “leaves no choice but for Canada to pursue diminished reliance on the U.S.,” Mr. Harper said. “There will be significant costs to this effort, but those are costs that I hope and believe Canadians are able and prepared to accept.”

And, Harper said, Canada has plenty to offer to other countries that want to trade with us: integrity.

Une nouvelle oeuvre pour raconter l’histoire autrement

Pendant des décennies, le parc La Vérendrye, situé sur l’avenue Taché, au cœur de Saint-Boniface, a raconté l’histoire de l’explorateur français du même nom à travers une seule statue. La Compagnie de La Vérendrye, un groupe de reconstitution historique, a piloté un projet de conception d’une nouvelle œuvre d’art qui pourrait raconter une autre partie de l’histoire.

Around the NSL: Keilty-Dilling’s hot hands; Rise rumble standings; Tides in must-win territory

Let’s start off this week’s edition with the Week 21 matchup between the Montreal Roses and AFC Toronto that had already taken place before last week’s column was written.

It was, arguably, the heavyweight matchup of that week, with the Roses attempting to place a three-game buffer between itself and the surging Mighty Maroons while Toronto was trying to gain some breathing room between itself and the Ottawa Rapid.

Instead? A 2-2 draw thwarted any progress from either team.

Making way for the Rapid to leapfrog back into second place over Toronto… right? Well, buckle up for the riveting answer to that question and the jostling for fourth place in this column’s latest edition.