I’ve really enjoyed The Nations of Canada by Greg Koabel. it’s a linear narrative history of Canada that runs from pre-contact indigenous oral tradition and archeology to (so far) the mid 19th- century.
I’ve found it really expanded my understanding of Canadian history and culture, doing a much better job than any of the canadian history classes I took in school!
I’ve been using mullvad for a few years—since PIA got bought out—and would recommend it if you’re concerned about trust.
So, using a VPN doesn’t actually eliminate all possibility of being tracked. All you’re doing is replacing who can potentially see all of your data, from your ISP to the VPN provider, so trust is actually a pretty important factor.
When I switched the consensus at the time was that mullvad was the most true to its privacy statement, i.e. trustworthy. A lot of other vpns are cheaper or have more bells and whistles, but have histories of data breaches or scandals, are based in countries with weak privacy/strong surveillance laws, or are owned by companies that may have an interest in the customers data (like with the PIA acquisition I mentioned).
Mullvad too has had a few incidents where they were served court orders to provide data to the police, but iirc no data was ever actually given up. Plus, they allow a bunch of different privacy-centric payment methods, including just sending cash in an envelope.
I’d recommend taking a look at some more recent discussions comparing VPNs but I think considering mullvad is a good place to start.
I remember a little while back when the British museum was making headlines about the return of stolen artifacts, I was initially really surprised and pleased that they were making progress towards repatriating some of their collection.
Then I actually read the article and it turned out some artifacts had been stolen from the museum and they wanted them back. :l
Not surprised to see Manitoba has some of the longest wait times in the country, the provincial government has been gutting our health services for years.
Last time I went to the emergency center (pre-covid) I was with a friend who had broken his leg, and they had us waiting for more than 8 hours.
Canada only has a total land area of about 10 million square km. The amount of forest (10 million hectares, or 100k square km) that has burned so far this year already make up 1/100th of that total.
In other words, in just the first half of this year 1% of the world’s second largest country has gone up in flames.
I don’t think it’s a bad example in this case, since the US hasn’t lost it’s own cultural heritage much. For better or for worse, the US does a great job of assimilating people and making them “American”.
That’s pretty much exactly what Quebec is trying to accomplish, right? something like ‘if you want to live in Quebec, you have to become Quebecois’. So if US policy doesn’t blanket ban other languages in signage and social services and still manages to ‘americanize’ people, then Quebec could potentially do the same.
The US and Quebec are in pretty different situations, so it’s not a perfect example, but I think it is a pretty good basis for an argument against Quebec’s culturally protectionist policies.