When I was a pre-teen, I spent a lot of summers at Camp Artaban. It was on a little island off the shore of North Vancouver. It was run by the Anglican church. (My mom was an Anglican priest so, you know. Free grape juice and a lifetime of guilt.)

When I hit 17, I decided to join staff. I chose Sports Director at the musical theatre camps because the campers at those weeks never did any sports and I could just goof off. 

A Smooth Lie

On my first day on staff, some of the older teens who’d been there before told us about the staff initiation ritual. It’s the called “Fairy Dance.” It happens at midnight on the last night, out on the dock, long after all the campers are put to bed. 

I’m not going to disclose much about what happens at the Fairy Dance because I swore a lifetime oath on Stan, the ceremonial dead fish. Frankly, I’ve already said too much.

But I will tell you that on that first day, when the older kids told us about the ritual, it came with a warning. Find a stick, they said. Sand it down so that you couldn’t possibly get a splinter. As smooth as you can. And it has to support your full weight. That’s all they’d say.

We were terrified. We spent days sanding those things. Like little beaver apprentices.

And then, we showed up to the dock on the last night at midnight.

And never used them. 

Whittled Trust

The stick was a decoy. A meaningless side quest to keep the newbies busy, second guessing, worrying about getting cut on slivers. 

It was kind of mean to do with the new staff, but once you got through it, you weren’t the new staff anymore. And next year, you got to warn the next batch of newbies about the stick. 

But while we were spending days sanding our useless sticks, we also made friends. We bonded over the threat. Built trust. Complained about why the big kids would do this to us. Thirty-five years later, some of them are the closest friends I have. The kind who’ll actually show up when you need help.

Trade as Theatre

The U.S. announced yesterday that it’s pulling out of trade talks. This time, it’s about the digital services tax. Or something.

For years, we’ve been showing up to these negotiations like responsible adults. We brought charts. Briefing papers. Chrystia Freeland, for god’s sake, who can negotiate a peace accord between raccoons and trash bins. We wasted time sanding the stick because the older people said we’d have to. 

But Trump was never planning to use it. He just wanted us busy. Focused. Distracted. These days in America, the announcement is the policy. 

He never wanted a better deal. He wanted a better headline. 

So now we’re standing around with our beautifully sanded trade stick, going, “Wait… that was it?”

And yeah. That was it. 

Friends that Stick

But while we were busy trying to smooth out a future with Trump, we were also hanging out with the other kids. The rich European kids. The nerdy British ones. The savvy Mexican ones.

Sometimes the ritual isn’t a tool, it’s a test.

And if we’re lucky, we learn to stop wasting time sanding down a stick, and discover something better: new friends who will actually show up when you need help. 

Good News Stories

• A Grade 9 class travelled 230 km to Halifax from P.E.I. to bring a grad party to their classmate who is undergoing treatment for leukemia at the children's hospital. 

• A $2M donation for a top Canadian immunotherapy scientist in Victoria will help expand clinical trials that are putting some end-stage cancer patients into remission.

• U.S. President Donald Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination has been withdrawn.

• 🌿 America's happiest workers sell weed: A new survey finds that workers in the U.S. marijuana industry are the happiest of any job sector.

• Idaho’s so-called "Hetero Awesome Fest" was an absolute bust, with videos and posts showing barely a soul at the anti-pride fest. This is “winning”?

• Jeff Bezos was forced to change his Venice wedding reception venue after activists threatened to flood the canals with inflatable crocodiles to block access.

Canadian Animals

• A Cape Breton lobster crew got the jaws-dropping surprise of a lifetime when a 4.5-metre great white shark circled their boat and took a quick bite out of the hull.

• Cougar sightings near Whistler have led to biking trail closures in the Sea-to-Sky region as authorities respond to increased aggressive behaviour.

• An orphaned black bear cub found alone is now in the care of Langley’s Critter Care Wildlife Society, where it’s getting a second chance at a wild life.

The Trade War That Won’t Go Away

• Nearly 10,000 pounds of live Newfoundland lobsters flew straight to Spain, a first for the province, signalling fresh hopes beyond U.S. trade hurdles.

• Canada’s untapped critical minerals could be a goldmine for jobs, with a new report suggesting their development could spark hundreds of thousands of positions and boost the economy amid U.S. trade tensions.

• The U.S. economy shrank 0.5% in Q1, missing forecasts as U.S. President Trump’s trade wars rattled businesses.

  • Consumer spend also slowed sharply in the first quarter.

• Trump’s proposed “revenge tax” targeting other countries could backfire, not only hitting Canadian businesses but costing the U.S. billions in revenue and investments.

• Most U.S.-made cars now come with a 25% Canadian tariff, turning an Ontario retiree’s dream 1969 Ford Shelby Mustang from Iowa into a $30,000 pricier ride.

SCIENCE!!!

• In Ontario, brain-computer tech is turning sci-fi into real life: giving kids with disabilities the power to control their environment using only their thoughts.

• Ontario parks will test Canada’s first beach-cleaning robot this summer, called BeBot, which is a Zamboni-style machine that removes plastic, glass, metal, and other debris from beaches. 

• Zero chill: Research shows glaciers in Western Canada are melting twice as fast as a decade ago.

The First Peoples

• Two firefighting sisters from Pinaymootang First Nation are working on the front lines of Manitoba's wildfires side-by-side.

• A new children's book, Celebrating Potlatches, shines a light on the vital ceremonies that were banned by the Canadian government for more than 65 years. 

• Nurses in First Nations communities in New Brunswick were left out of the province’s $10,000 retention payments aimed at addressing staffing shortages.

Across Canada

• Ontario's promised temporary Science Centre is still MIA, as the province now says no decision has been made on where, or if, it will appear before the new one opens at Ontario Place.

• Inflation held steady at 1.7% in May, in part due to slower rental price increases.

• Loblaw’s pledge to end property controls is being watched by Canada’s Competition Bureau, which sees the move as a win for shoppers and a potential way to lower grocery prices.

• A Canadian woman can’t sue her ex for sending “nearly nude” workplace photos to her bosses, as a tribunal ruled he acted in 'the public's interest.'

• Waterloo gaining serious XP: For the first time ever, the world’s biggest Call of Duty tournament is happening outside the U.S., and it's landing in Kitchener, Ontario. 

• New national health data shows overdose deaths in Canada dropped in 2024, but the numbers remain far above pre-pandemic levels.

The Dystopian Hellscape

• An Ontario senior lost more than $15K to a deepfake of Doug Ford on Facebook advertising a mutual fund account. 

• Florida outdoes itself, again: Florida is building a new detention centre dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ to hold migrants on an airstrip in the Everglades. 

• A 21-year-old tourist says U.S. border agents denied him entry, and strip searched him, after finding a meme of JD Vance bald on his phone.

• Some folks really want offline time: Internet company Spectrum confirmed that an Ohio woman lost her service connection due to "several shotgun blasts" to a cable line.

• The Golden Gate Bridge is too woke, its CEO warns, as the agency fears Trump will cut hundreds of millions in federal funds if DEI policies stay in place.

• RIP to the books that walked so AI could run: Court documents reveal Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to train its AI. 

Tap here to subscribe to my YouTube channel

FOLLOW TOD ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Let’s Be Friends!

I only post some of my content on the channels below, and I do not read comments or DMs: Facebook • Instagram • Threads • LinkedIn • Mastodon • TikTok 

In partnership with