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Source: National Post (Politics)

Nova Scotia's top judges say their peers were in the right to ban court staff from wearing poppies in the courtroom.

Nova Scotia’s top judges are defending their peers’ decision to ask that staff not wear poppies in provincial courtrooms, a move

slammed by Premier Tim Houston

and others late last week.

In a

statement

issued Sunday, Deborah Smith, chief justice of the province’s Supreme Court, and Perry Borden, chief judge of the provincial court, said the judges’ request was not about disrespecting veterans or denying remembrance, but rather about maintaining courtrooms as “unbiased and neutral” spaces.

They cited the Canadian Judicial Council’s Ethical Principles for Judges, which warns that even seemingly harmless symbols, like the poppy, “may be interpreted as reflecting a lack of impartiality or the use of the position of the judge to make a political or other statement.”

The judges provided an example of a non-veteran individual charged with assaulting their partner, “a highly respected veteran of the Canadian military,” showing up to trial the day before Remembrance Day.

“The accused walks into the courtroom and sees the judge, the court clerk, and the sheriff all wearing a poppy,” they wrote. “That individual will likely have some discomfort or doubt about the neutrality of the proceeding.”

The courtroom poppy controversy erupted last week when Halifax-based

Frank Magazine reported

that two judges in Kentville — Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Jean Dewolfe and Nova Scotia Provincial Court associate chief judge Judge Ronda van der Hoek — had requested that the Sheriff’s Services Manager tell his deputies that

poppies must be removed before they step into the courtroom.

In a

post to X

, Houston said politicizing the poppy is “disgusting.”

“The poppy is not a political statement,” he wrote. “It is a symbol of remembrance and respect for the fallen and those who served and continue to serve our country.”

He said the “very rights freedoms” upheld by the courts exist because of sacrifices made by veterans, which is why he finds “it impossible to believe any judge would ban a symbol of respect for the fallen, our veterans and their families.”

Houston finished by threatening to introduce legislation enshrining everyone’s right to wear a poppy in the workplace through the first 11 days of November, “Because of the actions of these judges.”

In a statement to National Post last week, a spokesperson for the N.S. courts could not confirm the courthouse or specific judges to which Houston was referring, but did say that conversations about wearing poppies did not occur in the courtroom.

“Nor did a judge ban poppies from the courtroom,” Andrew Preeper said in an email, explaining that members of the public can still do so freely and staff who wanted to wear one should speak with the presiding judge.

He, too, explained the importance of courtrooms remaining neutral to “ensure the fair administration of justice.”

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney said on X that he was “dumbfounded and disgusted” by the judges’ decision and also accused them of politicizing the symbol. He said it reflects a deeper cultural problem of the tendency of some, “particularly (but not exclusively) on the left,” to see everything through a political lens.

“For such people, politics has become a secular substitute for religion, a place where some people seek transcendence and ultimate meaning, bound up with totalizing claims,” he wrote.

Citing T.S. Elliot, Czech novelist Milan Kundera and Ecclesiasticus, he said wearing a poppy remains a civic ritual that unites Canadians around the shared “virtues of duty, honour, and love of country.”

“So the duty to remember is pre-political. It is one of the things that bind us together in community, and through time to previous generations.”

The subject of poppies in courtrooms also arose in Saskatchewan last week, where a Crown prosecutor who wore one on her gown later received an email informing her it wasn’t permitted because of a court “practice directive,” as reported by

CBC.

“We have freedom of speech because of what these brave men and women have done for our country,” Lana Morelli said.

“And not being able to honour them by wearing poppies while I’m arguing for freedom and protection tugs at my heartstrings.”

Saskatchewan introduced legislation in 2013

enshrining the provincially regulated employees’ right to wear a Royal Canadian Legion-recognized poppy in their workplace from Nov. 1 to 11 annually, so long as it doesn’t pose “a danger to health, safety, or welfare of the worker or others.”

Ontario

and

Manitoba

also have similar laws and the same caveats, though theirs covers the period from Nov. 5-12.

— With files from Chris Lambie.

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A nurse demonstrates how to put on a mask at a measles screening point at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario on July 9, 2025.

Canada no longer can claim it has eliminated the most infectious virus known to medicine after the Pan American Health Organization announced Monday it has removed the country’s measles elimination status.

The decision comes after a special PAHO committee has confirmed sustained transmission of the same measles virus in Canada for more than one year, the Public Health Agency of Canada said in a news release.

“While transmission has slowed recently, the outbreak has persisted over 12 months, primarily within under-vaccinated communities,” the agency said.

“Canada can re-establish its measles elimination status once transmission of the measles strain associated with the current outbreak is interrupted for at least 12 months,” it added.

The country has been at the centre of a large outbreak that began in October 2024, with a total of 5,138 cases reported as of October 25 — more than twice as many recorded in the past 25 years combined.

A public health official holds a box of the combined vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella Friday, March 22, 2019 at Hastings Prince Edward Public Health in Belleville.

Two deaths have been reported, one from Alberta, the other from Ontario, in babies born prematurely after their mothers contracted measles while pregnant. At least 375 people have been hospitalized. Among those infected, 88 per cent were unvaccinated; two per cent had one dose of the two-dose vaccine, five per cent had two or more doses. The vaccine status was unknown for the remaining five per cent.

Canada had held its measles elimination status since 1998, though cases continued to occur sporadically, mostly involving travel to regions where measles is circulating.

From 1998 to 2024, there were an average of 91 measles cases reported in Canada each year, with between zero and 752 cases reported annually.

Earlier this month,  the PAHO, a regional office of the World Health Organization, convened a meeting of its measles and rubella elimination regional monitoring and re-verification commission to review Canada’s status in the wake of the outbreak that began in New Brunswick in October 2024.

Canada is “collaborating with the PAHO and working with federal, provincial, territorial and community partners to implement coordinated actions — focused on improving vaccination coverage, strengthening data sharing, enabling overall surveillance efforts and providing evidence-based guidance,” the public health agency said.

With 2,392 reported cases, Ontario’s outbreak was declared over on Oct. 6.

Measles symptoms, which typically appear seven to 21 days after exposure and include high fever, runny nose and cough, red, watery eyes and a distinctive rash that begins on the face and spreads to the rest of the body. Stock Photo

“Measles is one of the few infections we should have been able to eradicate entirely, so to have it circulating in Canada is an indicator of how strained our public health and tracking systems have been,” McMaster University immunologist Dawn Bowdish said in an email to National Post.

“It should be a national embarrassment to join a list of countries whose public health systems have been torn apart by war or civil unrest, but the more immediate tragedy is that we will see more lost pregnancies, more premature babies and more children who won’t ever grow to their full potential due to the terrible and short and long-term effects of measles.”

Other infectious diseases may once again take a foothold in Canada, Bowdish added.

“The vaccine for measles also includes vaccines for rubella and mumps. Measles is the most contagious so it makes sense that outbreaks for measles started first, but rubella — a major cause of birth defects — and mumps, a cause of infertility, will come next unless we make changes.”

More coming

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Bruce Moncur carries a C9 machine gun near the hatch of a light armoured vehicle on patrol in Kandahar Province in August 2006.

Remembrance Day has been commemorated in Canada since Parliament

passed legislation

in 1931 to change the name of

Armistice Day

and establish Nov. 11 as the date to mark the occasion. Today, the government

describes

Remembrance Day as “the most unforgettable day” and

suggests

veterans are “passing the torch” to the Canadian population “so the memory of their sacrifices will continue.”

However, many veterans of the war in Afghanistan now feel their sacrifice in service to their country is forgotten. One main reason for this sentiment, according to retired corporal Bruce Moncur, is that no veterans of this conflict have ever been awarded Canada’s highest military decoration for valour.

Retired lieutenant-general Omer Lavoie told National Post that eight service members throughout the Commonwealth have received Victoria Cross medals for their service in Afghanistan. Four have been awarded by Australia, three by the U.K., and one by New Zealand.

That no Victoria Cross decorations were received throughout a 12-year commitment during which more than 40,000 Canadian military members deployed for the mission does not sit well with many Afghanistan veterans, Moncur said.

“Yes, we feel forgotten,” he said.

He is part of a campaign to have certain valour awards reviewed and potentially upgraded to the Victoria Cross in response to this prevalent sense of forgotten sacrifice.

Moncur, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2006, says he has advocated for military veterans for about 15 years. As founder of the non-profit

Valour in the Presence of the Enemy

, he has spearheaded a campaign since September 2021 to have Afghanistan veteran Private Jess Larochelle’s valour decoration upgraded to the Victoria Cross.

“Ever since I heard Jess’s story,” Moncur told National Post, the issue “has always been in the back of my mind.”

Then Lt.-Col. Lavoie commanded 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group in southern Afghanistan in 2006 when a substantial contingent of Taliban insurgents ambushed the strongpoint manned by Larochelle and his unit. Lavoie recalls that he happened to be in the area on battlefield circulation that day.

Omer Lavoie mans a .50 calibre heavy machine gun on Aug 14, 2006 at Patrol Base Wilson, a few kilometres north of where Strong Point Centre would later be constructed. Damage to the machine gun visible on the barrel was sustained during a mortar attack that day. Large scale combat action known as Operation Medusa initiated soon after, which encompassed the coordinated attack on Strong Point Centre that led to Pte. Larochelle receiving the Star of Military Valour.

As he was writing the recommendation for Larochelle’s military valour decoration in Afghanistan after the incident, he remembers thinking to himself, “This may turn out to be the first Victoria Cross awarded in the Canadian military since the Second World War.”

But it was not to be. Instead, Larochelle was one of twenty recipients of Canada’s second-highest military decoration awarded for service in Afghanistan.

The

citation

for the Star of Military Valour Larochelle received recalls, “Although he was alone, severely injured, and under sustained enemy fire in his exposed position at the ruined observation post,” he “aggressively provided covering fire over the otherwise undefended flank of his company’s position.”

Moncur is adamant that Larochelle’s actions that day in October 2006 at Strong Point Centre in Kandahar warrant the Victoria Cross. He also believes the issue is about more than just one medal.

Jess Larochelle, front row middle, with fellow members of 33 Bravo team, nicknamed The Black Sheep.

Upgrading Larochelle’s Star of Military Valour, he says, “would be for all of us.”

Lavoie echoed Moncur’s sentiment. He suggests upgrading select existing decorations, like Larochelle’s, would bring “a sense of accomplishment for all Afghanistan veterans.”

He said this is especially the case because the highest award for valour has

never been awarded

since this decoration was

redesignated

as the Canadian Victoria Cross in 1993. Its predecessor, the British Victoria Cross, was

awarded

to 81 Canadians for acts of valour in combat from the South African (Boer) War (1899-1902) to the Second World War (1939-45).

The most recent recipient for Canada was Lieutenant Robert (Hammy) Hampton Gray, who was

awarded

the British Victoria Cross posthumously for combat action that occurred in August 1945. The Canadian version of the highest military award for valour has never been awarded — including for nearly 15 years of combat action in Afghanistan.

Master Warrant Officer William “Willy” MacDonald said that many veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan still grapple with the abrupt end to coalition operations due to the

disastrous withdrawal

from the country by the U.S. in 2021.

With the Taliban

reestablishing

its rule and meeting little resistance as it

chased away

security forces the NATO coalition spent years training, many veterans of the conflict in Canada and beyond now struggle with doubts regarding what was accomplished after nearly two decades of service and sacrifice.

Those emotional “wounds are still healing for many of us,” said MacDonald. He suggests that upgrading one or more valour awards to the Victoria Cross would “would do a lot to bring the Afghanistan mission back to the public spotlight.”

Willy MacDonald leads the way on point position during a foot patrol in June 2006 near Khakrez village in Kandahar Province.

Moncur agrees. He highlighted the experience of Victoria Cross recipients in other Commonwealth countries as well as more than a dozen recipients of the Medal of Honor in the United States.

“What we’re asking for is the respect and honour that other countries give to their soldiers,” Moncur said. “Victoria Cross and Medal of Honor recipients are revered in their countries. But that hasn’t happened in Canada for Afghanistan veterans.”

This is why Larochelle’s Star of Military Valour has become a particular point of emphasis for the organization Moncur founded as well as the broader movement to upgrade certain decorations. “If what Jess did doesn’t merit the Victoria Cross,” Moncur said, “it’s hard to know what does.”

Although Larochelle

died in August 2023

due to medical complications from injuries he sustained on deployment, reevaluating and upgrading his award is, according to Moncur, “one thing the government can do” to honour his memory and the service of thousands of other Canadian military members who served in Afghanistan.

Despite widespread support for the movement to have certain individual decorations reconsidered and potentially upgraded, some veterans remain concerned about attempts to override determinations that were made long ago by senior military officials.

Col. Ryan Jurkowski retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 2023 after 30 years of service, including multiple deployments to Afghanistan. Now a PhD war studies candidate at the Royal Military College, focusing on civilian-military relations, he said, “you can’t rewrite history” when evaluating decisions from the past.

Jurkowski is also concerned about setting a precedent that could lead to more red tape that ultimately distracts from the warfighting mission of the military. This movement to upgrade certain awards might be “for all the right reasons,” Jurkowski said, but we should be concerned about the possibility of “increasing the bureaucracy of the (Canadian Armed Forces).”

Even so, Jurkowski wonders whether factors not directly related to individual citations and decorations impacted decisions by honours and awards committees and caused the sacrifice of some to be undervalued.

Canada’s overall mission in Afghanistan, which lasted from 2001 to 2014, was divided into

three main operations

: Apollo (2001-03), Athena (2003-11), and Attention (2011-14). The first was marked by intense but sporadic combat operations, while the last focused primarily on training Afghan security forces in Kabul.

The bulk of the heavy and sustained fighting occurred during Operation Athena, including 2006 when Larochelle deployed as part of the battle group commanded by Lavoie.

The observation post Private Jess Larochelle manned alone during the attack on Strong Point Centre on October 14, 2006 in Kandahar Province was reinforced with sandbags and overhead cover.

According to Jurkowski, troops encountered “completely different perspectives and completely different experiences in different phases” of the mission in Afghanistan. Both his combat deployments were during Operation Athena, with the renowned

Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry

.

“There has never been anything like the intensity of combat operations” during early in Operation Athena since Korea, according to Jurkowski. Heroic actions such as Larochelle’s solo stand at Strong Point Centre were relatively early in the Afghanistan mission.

This may have led senior leaders to be reluctant to approve a Victoria Cross, even if it was warranted on an individual basis, since it was impossible to know then what would happen in theatre later.

Lavoie also expressed concern regarding revisiting past decisions for valour decorations. He said at first, he felt “conflicted.” He served on honours and awards committees during his time as a military officer and said that “no one believes in the sanctity of the chain of command” more than he does.

An internal committee appointed by Department of National Defence

has already determined

that none of the 20 awards reviewed from the Afghanistan mission “should have received a different decoration, and that all awards respected the intent and criteria for the Star of Military Valour.”

Although deference to previous determinations is certainly warranted, Lavoie now supports the idea of appointing a commission. This is, at least in part, because he believes “there was a bit of reticence” to approve a Victoria Cross among senior leaders within the ranks during the early phase of combat operations.

Memorial crosses were posted for the 2 soldiers, Sergeant Darcy Tedford and Private Blake Williamson, killed during the attack on Strong Point Centre. A third memorial cross was posted for Joshua James Klukie, who was killed on patrol by an IED days earlier.

He also points out there is precedent for revaluating military decorations among Canada’s closest allies. According to Lavoie, awarding a Victoria Cross to Larochelle or other potential recipients would bring “a sense of pride and accomplishment for all Afghanistan veterans.”

Moncur also emphasized during an interview the precedent of allied militaries appointing review commissions like the one he is currently proposing here in Canada. A

petition

he initiated in July calls on the government to establish an independent board “to review Afghanistan veterans’ cases where evidence suggests Victoria Cross criteria were met.”

The parliamentary petition, which is sponsored by Liberal MP Pauline Rochefort and closes for signatures on Nov. 20, states that “Afghanistan veterans feel their sacrifice has been forgotten, despite Canada’s significant commitment and casualties.”

With so many Afghanistan veterans expressing a sense that their service and sacrifice to Canada has been forgotten, Moncur believes the government must establish an independent review to consider whether certain valour decorations should be upgraded to the Victorica Cross.

“If you can’t do this” for Afghanistan veterans, Moncur said, “then you can’t do anything for us.”

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From the left, Alain Haim and Raquel Look, the mother and father of Alexandre Look, a 33-year-old Montrealer killed by Hamas terrorists while defending others at the Nova music festival, and Jacqui Rivers-Vital, the mother of Adi Vital-Kaploun, a 33-year-old Canadian-Israeli murdered in her Israel home while protecting her two small sons, met with Prime Minister Mark Carney last week.

The families of Canadians killed by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, are urging Ottawa to leverage its diplomatic and economic weight to lead a global campaign to sanction and dismantle the terrorist organization and to pursue justice against Iranian officials accused of sponsoring it.

In a statement released after a meeting between Prime Minister Mark Carney and family members from the Association of Canadian Families of the Victims of October 7th, the group described its two proposals as steps “not only toward justice, but toward preventing future atrocities.”

The first call to action asks Canada to spearhead an international effort at the United Nations to formally sanction Hamas, similar to the blacklisting of ISIS and al-Qaeda. The Association said Carney’s experience “as an international economic authority” positions him to coordinate sanctions disrupting the terrorists’ financial and logistical networks and to rally “like-minded nations” to join the effort.

The second request urges Ottawa to launch a structural investigation into Iranian officials involved in arming, training, and funding Hamas, and to prosecute them under Canada’s War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Act. Such action, the families said, would “demonstrate Canada’s leadership in the global fight against impunity.”

Beyond foreign policy, the families connected their demands to growing domestic concern about antisemitism and foreign-inspired hate. Statistics Canada data show hate crimes have doubled in the past five years, with Jewish Canadians remaining the most targeted religious group.

The families said action equals memory.

“We honour those we lost by working together to combat antisemitism, hold perpetrators accountable, and build a safer, more just world.”

Seated with Carney last week were Raquel Look and Alain Haim, the mother and father of Alexandre Look, a 33-year-old Montrealer killed while defending others at the Nova music festival, and Jacqui Rivers-Vital, the mother of Adi Vital-Kaploun, a 33-year-old Canadian-Israeli murdered in her home while protecting her two small sons. After she was slain in front of them, her children — four-year-old Negev and six-month-old Eshel — were kidnapped but later released.

Look and Vital-Kaploun were among eight Canadians murdered that day.

Clockwise from top left, Adi Vital-Kaploun, Alexandre Look, Netta Epstein, Ben Mizrachi, Tiferet Lapidot and Shir Georgy — six of the eight Canadians killed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023.

The group thanked Carney for meeting with the families and for his “clear and unequivocal statement of solidarity with victims of Hamas terrorism.”

“We are grateful to the Prime Minister for taking the time to listen to our stories and for recognizing the humanity and heroism of our loved ones,” the group said.

Following the meeting, Carney shared an image of himself and the parents on X, writing:

“Their remarkable strength in the face of unimaginable grief is a testament to the resilience of the Jewish people,” he wrote. “My message to Jacqui, Raquel, and Alain: Adi and Alexandre will not be forgotten. Not by me, not by our government, and not by our country.”

The meeting comes as Carney’s government adjusts its approach in the Middle East, balancing firm condemnations of Hamas with support for humanitarian efforts in Gaza and criticism of Israeli leadership. In July, Carney said Canada would formally recognize the State of Palestine, conditional on democratic reforms, a move

opposed by the families at the time. 

Carney has also been critical of Iran’s destabilizing role

in the region by sponsoring terrorism.

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Artificial intelligence “is the asbestos we are shovelling into the walls of our society,” says Cory Doctorow.

Author and activist Cory Doctorow wants you to understand why online digital platforms are failing users, and he’s fighting for a better internet. “Enshittification” — a word he coined to describe the degradation of online platforms and services — is the slightly profane albeit funny title of his latest book.

Outspoken, prescient and very clever, Cory has spent a quarter of a century explaining abstract digital concepts to non-geeks like me. And now he’s whipping heads across North America, the U.K. and Portugal, in a fast-paced book tour.

When we connect online for this conversation, Cory appears on my computer screen, game for a deep-dive into the state of the digital world, but visibly weary. He’s just landed in Seattle for an event; the next day, he’s off to the Vancouver Writer’s Festival. From there, it’s the red-eye flight to Montreal to deliver a keynote for The Attention Forum: Govern or be Governed conference, hosted by Montreal’s Centre for Media, Tech and Democracy. Evan Solomon, a creature of legacy broadcasting and now Canada’s minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, features large at the Montreal confab.

Despite the fatigue, this 54-year-old defender of freedoms in the electronic frontier is laser-focused and remarkably witty. Born in Toronto, and now living in Los Angeles, Cory isn’t just spewing stories of digital woe. He’s paying close attention to what’s unfolding in Canada in the tech and AI sectors, knows what’s not working and why, and has ideas on what can be done to not just fix the bugs but re-imagine digital public infrastructure.

First question from me: “What does enshittification look like in Canada?” (Try saying that word without chuckling). The country had several opportunities to lead as a global digital force to be reckoned with, Cory agrees, and in his view, “we dropped the ball on market concentration.”

“The Competition Bureau has, through almost all of its history, until last year when we got a new bill out of Parliament, been, I think, the weakest competition bureau in the world,” Cory declares, emphatically. It’s hard to refute his assessment: The merger of Shaw and Rogers, two very large telecoms in Canada, was made official in 2023, the year before Canada’s competition law was modernized.

“Wouldn’t you think, at the very least, Canada would have a robust domestic network platform available by now?” I ask. Gander Social, a made-in-Canada social media platform, designed as an alternative to large U.S.-based companies, is only now being beta tested.

“There are any number of people who would like very, very much to host a few thousand of their friends on a little Mastodon or Blue Sky server that can talk to all the other ones, and everyone can be in a conversation,” Cory counters.

“We don’t all have to be on the same server,” Cory continues. “If there’s one thing we learned from the Amazon outage, it’s that putting everyone on the same server is an incredibly bad idea, right? So we can all be on different servers in the same way we’re all on different email servers, drive on different roads. We have to live in different cities; we don’t all have to be in the same place to all talk to each other and be part of a single digital network. That’s what networks are, right?

“You know, what we don’t have, the lacuna in this plan, the thing that we need public investment in, is not the bicycles on the road, it’s the bike lanes, it’s the infrastructure, and it’s the kind of thing the private sector can’t do well,” he asserts. The pain points for small businesses, communities, large businesses, cooperatives or any entity wanting to host a social media platform, Cory suggests, include things like security audits and content moderation tools.

He also recommends “some mechanism to ease people’s passage off (existing) social media and onto a new platform.” Right now, Cory explains, “you have people building these new platforms and wondering how the people on the old platforms are going to get there. This is like West Germans building housing for East Germans in West Germany, without thinking about how they’re going to get over the wall. Except that, we built the wall. We are the ones maintaining the wall. The wall is made entirely of law. The wall could be torn down with an act of Parliament at the stroke of a pen.”

In the recent federal budget, funds were allocated to support large-scale sovereign public artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, made-in-Canada AI tools and an office of digital transformation.

Cory has other suggestions — very bold ideas — for Ottawa to shore up our nation’s sovereignty in the digital world. “We just have to legalize reverse engineering,” he pitches, “so that we can modify these products, right?” without having to get permission from the people who make the tech. Then, he proceeds to enumerate the many ways American tech companies use digital blocks to rig the game.

My lawyer-brain is being triggered here. I believe in rule of law; the last thing I want to do is endorse theft. Some people believe that’s how Huawei killed Nortel, but I keep that thought to myself.

“You cannot make an ad blocker for an app. You cannot modify your phone so it uses a third-party app store,” he continues. “When Facebook takes the news out of your feed, you can’t modify that app so it puts the news back in your feed. When American printer companies mark the price of ink up to $10,000 a gallon, you can’t modify your printer to use generic ink.”

“If you really want to get back at Elon Musk, don’t bitch about the Nazi salute,” he chuckles, “Make it legal for Canadian mechanics to jailbreak Teslas so that all the software upgrades, all the subscription features, can be had for one price that is between you and a mechanic in Canada without one dime going to America.”

“Make it legal…to jailbreak Teslas!” My brain is throbbing.

Cory’s exploding with facts and figures and ideas; at times, he speaks so quickly, I ask him to repeat himself. “In CUSMA (Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement),” he reiterates, “there’s a rule that says it is an unfair trade practice to add to your procurement RFP a provision that says you have to disclose source code, algorithmic details.” He’s recommending that Ottawa renegotiate that rule.

“Twenty years ago today,” he reports, “we saw the first filing in a Florida court by someone who wanted to see the source code for the breathalyzer that he said falsely claimed he was driving drunk, right? And I think that’s a perfectly fair thing to do, right? If they did a blood test, you’d be able to audit the results, right? If there’s software involved, you should be able to audit the software. Otherwise, there is no legitimacy to that process.”

Cory’s also saying very provocative things about AI. His most-memorable quip: “AI is the asbestos we are shovelling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations.” While he sees the merits of AI to support the work of radiologists or lawyers or software engineers — or nearly anyone — he doesn’t believe AI can do the job. “But,” he warns, “an AI salesman can 100 per cent convince your boss to fire you and replace you with AI.”

Cory’s mastered the art of communicating big, complex ideas in entertaining ways. Although his ideas are jarring, I recognize, with all his banter, he’s challenging us to understand the facts about the digital world and ask tougher questions, including, perhaps most significantly: If we comprehend the extent of the rent extraction by Big Tech, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”

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Canadian actor Alan Thicke died in 2016 from a ruptured aorta three hours after experiencing an aortic dissection.

For emergency doctors, the fear of missing a potentially lethal diagnosis “fluctuates between healthy and practice-altering paranoia,” Calgary emergency doctors Eddy Lang and Niklas Bobrovitz recently wrote.

Aortic dissection — a tear in the body’s main artery — would qualify for the latter. Death can happen fast.

A

new study

documenting 43 cases of delayed or missed diagnoses of aortic dissection in Canadian emergency departments over a 10-year span that resulted in medical-legal action is highlighting how such a catastrophic medical emergency can be missed.

Thirty-six people died of their aortic dissection. Thirty were only diagnosed after their death. Forty per cent of missed dissection deaths occurred after the person was sent home from emergency — “perhaps the most feared outcome for patients and providers alike,” Lang and Bobrovitz wrote in an accompanying editorial in the

Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Aortic dissection is a vascular emergency “with a fairly high mortality rate,” Bobrovitz, an emergency medicine resident at the University of Calgary and health services researcher, said in an interview with National Post.

“If you think about your heart, the main vessel that comes off your heart that feeds blood to all your organs and tissues is called your aorta. It kind of curves up towards the head in your upper chest and then goes down into your abdomen — your abdominal aorta.” From there it descends into the pelvis, branching off “into a bunch of different vessels.”

The wall of the aorta is composed of multiple layers. Aorta dissection happens when there’s a tear on the inner wall. “When blood gets diverted through that tear in the inner wall, and the inner wall separates from the outer wall, you can get decreased flow to your vital organs,” Bobrovitz said, including reduced blood flow to the heart, brain and lungs, causing serious organ damage and death.

“It can happen fast, depending on where the tear is,” he said. The closer it is to the heart, the higher the risk of blocking flow to the coronary vessels. “You’d have a heart attack very, very quickly, like within seconds to minutes, and potentially die.”

A tear can lead to a full aortic rupture from the pressure from the pooled, leaking blood. Canadian actor Alan Thicke died in 2016, age 69, from a ruptured aorta three hours after experiencing an aortic dissection. Thicke collapsed while playing ice hockey with his son.

In 2003, American actor John Ritter died suddenly from a misdiagnosed thoracic aortic dissection.

Aortic dissection is considered the “great imitator” because symptoms can mimic other conditions. Not everyone experiences textbook symptoms like sudden severe tearing or ripping pain in the chest, back or abdomen.

“It’s very similar to a kidney stone: people can’t get comfortable,” Bobrovitz said. “They have constant pain. No position feels good. It doesn’t change when they sit up, or when they lie down. They can be sweaty.”

Chest pain is the most common complaint seen in an emergency department — it can be tricky to tease out what’s serious and what isn’t. As well, “a surprising number of diagnostic tests are normal, even if you have a dissection,” Bobrovitz said.

Risks include untreated high blood pressure, connective tissue diseases like Marfan syndrome that put people at higher risk of tears, people who’ve undergone recent heart valve surgery or those with heart abnormalities.

It’s relatively rare. Of 3,531 medico-legal cases involving an emergency department that closed between January 2014 through to the end of December 2023, just 43 were related to aortic dissection. “It’s not a super common diagnosis,” Bobrovitz said. An ED doctor might see one aortic dissection a year. However, the new study is important, he said, “because the mortality rate is very high, and they

are

missed in emergency.” Without treatment, like surgery to repair the damaged artery,

the death rate approaches 50 per cent

within the first 48 hours after symptoms start.

The new study assessing the “diagnostic pitfalls” that lead to missed dissections is based on an analysis of cases handled by the Canadian Medical Protective Association, the powerful body that provides legal support to doctors facing a civil lawsuit or complaints to their licensing college.

“Recurring themes” included inadequate physical exams, failing to perform a test to rule out a dissection, “anchoring” or locking on symptoms that seem like harmless indigestion or muscle pain, misinterpreted chest X-rays, overcrowded emergency rooms, no radiologists available overnight, no hospital willing to accept a transfer for urgent heart surgery and other, often system-level, failures.

With the worst tears, the highest risk of death is in the first few hours. “Deterioration and death in these patients can occur rapidly, even in patients who appear initially stable,” the research team wrote.

One Ontario study found that the dissection “miss rate” is 12.5 per cent, “far above the less than one per cent rate most Canadian physicians would tolerate,” Lang and Bobrovitz wrote.

In the new study, the average age of patients was 52.5; fourteen were women. Most were treated in large, urban emergency departments. For Bobrovitz, most alarming were cases where the person had atypical, meaning none of the usual, symptoms. In one case, a patient arrived in emergency with shoulder pain. The pain resolved, vital signs were stable and, after a normal exam, the patient was discharged home — only to die the next morning of an aortic rupture.

“It’s those really atypical symptoms that make me nervous, because dissection is not the first thing I think about,” Bobrovitz said.

In another case, a patient arrived in emergency complaining of sudden onset chest pain after heavy lifting.

An ECG (electrocardiogram) was performed. Pain medication was prescribed. But no chest X-ray or blood work was ordered, the researchers reported.

“The patient was discharged within a few hours with a diagnosis of chest wall pain and subsequently died of an aortic dissection.”

Other cases included a person with sudden pain in the upper left flank, and difficulty breathing. “Due to volume and crowding, the patient was given pain medication and not assessed for several hours,” the study found. When finally assessed, the doctor documented no signs of respiratory distress, the pain seemed better and the patient was sent home with a diagnosis of back pain. The patient returned to ED later that same day with severe chest pain, was diagnosed with aortic dissection and died before getting surgery.

“Atypical features such as younger patient age, transient symptoms or seemingly benign causes of pain … frequently led clinicians astray,” the researchers wrote.

In 21 cases, “the outcome was decided against the physician.”

Not all complaints involving missed dissections are captured. Doctors “reach out to CMPA for support at their own discretion,” the researchers noted. And the high rate of misdiagnosis in Ontario

hasn’t budged in over a decade.

A Canadian-developed tool called the RIPP Score can help emergency staff evaluate people with a suspected dissection. “It’s the most sensitive tool out there, meaning it catches most cases of dissection,” Bobrovitz said.

“It can really help with patients where it’s not super obvious but you’re thinking about maybe dissection.”

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Go-Jo representing Australia performs during the Semi Final Round 2 of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest Opening Ceremony at Messe Basel on May 15, 2025 in Basel, Switzerland.

Ottawa is exploring a Canadian entry in the famously popular Eurovision song contest, suggesting cultural participation would help deepen our commercial relationship with the Europeans.

The item in question was all the way down on page 182 in the federal budget. Under the heading “Protecting Our National Broadcaster,” is the following recommendation:

“Budget 2025 proposes to provide $150 million in 2025-26 for CBC/Radio-Canada to strengthen its mandate to serve the public and to better reflect the needs of Canadians. The government will explore modernising CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate to strengthen independence, and is working with CBC/Radio Canada to explore participation in Eurovision.”

The press secretary to the Office of the Minister of Finance and National Revenue told National Post in an email: “We are actively exploring Canada’s inclusion at this time.”

He added: “Eurovision, as you know, commands a global audience — and would give Canada a venue to share its proud cultural and musical talents with the world at a time when deepening relations with European partners is imperative.”

Dr. Karen Fricker, an adjunct professor at Brock University and Canada’s preeminent expert in the Eurovision Song Contest — “My phone is ringing off the hook,” she said when National Post finally reached her Friday afternoon — says there could be something in that.

“I think that there’s a broader context for this in the current kind of destabilization of the global order, and the U.S.’s aggressive behaviours and dismissive attitudes towards European entities like NATO,” she said. “Canada has an opportunity here to really flex this idea of being European, whatever that means. And not the U.S.”

National Post has reached out to CBC for more information but did not receive a reply by press time.

A spokesperson for the Department of Finance Canada told National Post after the budget announcement: “Further details will be announced in due course.”

“Several government sources have confirmed to the CBC that this is coming from the Prime Minister,” Fricker said. “And he indicated through a tweet in May that he knows the contest.” Mark Carney’s years spent living in Britain would have given him greater exposure to the annual contest.

In an

interview

with Global News on budget day, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the Eurovision proposal was at the behest of “the people who participate,” suggesting that the European organizers may have reached out. He added that Eurovision is “a platform for Canada to shine. This is about protecting, also, our identity.”

Fricker said participation in the contest wouldn’t be a moneymaker — for one thing, there is no cash prize for the winner — but it needn’t break the bank, either.

“Ireland disclosed how much it spent this year on Eurovision, and it adds up to about $575,000,” she said. “You have to pay fees to the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) to join, and then there’s the money to get an act together and get your delegation to where the contest is going to be. And next May it’s going to be in Vienna.”

Cost and geopolitical considerations aside, Fricker is all in for Canada taking part, for a simple reason. “I think it would fun!”

Her biggest concern has to do with perception: “Is it well known enough for the Canadian public to get behind it?”

Australia, one of the other non-European participants,

joined in 2015

as a special guest of the contest, and then kept coming back, though it has never won. But Fricker notes that the contest was already popular there.

“We haven’t been showing it for decades here, as was the case in Australia,” she said. “People who come from European immigrant backgrounds might know it. I feel like youth culture kind of discovered it during the pandemic. But to average Canadians … do they know about this thing? Do they care?”

Either way, participation would seem to be Canada’s for the taking. Australia’s inclusion 10 years ago raised some eyebrows. “There was a lot of talk about it at the time,” Fricker said. “Like, this was completely bizarre. It’s the other side of the world.”

She continued: “But it’s become a regular contender, and has done very well, come very close to winning a few times. So if Australia is doing it as an associate member, it would seem that Canada could too, if the EBU welcomes them to come.”

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Yasir Baig, leaves the courthouse in Brampton, Ont. on Thursday February 8, 2018. Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

A Pakistani immigrant ordered deported 17 months ago for causing a deadly five-vehicle crash on a major highway in Mississauga, Ont., and then fleeing the scene, has won another chance to stay in Canada.

The “tragic” Jan. 27, 2018, crash on the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) resulted “in the death of one person and severe injuries to various other individuals,” according to a recent Federal Court decision.

Yasir Baig “fled the scene of the accident but surrendered to the police” a dozen days later.

In October 2022, the married father of three pled guilty to dangerous driving causing death. Baig, a permanent resident of Canada, was sentenced to six months less a day in jail and a 32-month driving prohibition.

“As a result of his criminal conviction,” Canada’s Immigration Division conducted a hearing that concluded Baig was inadmissible to this country “for serious criminality. A removal order was issued against (him) on May 17, 2024,” said the Federal Court decision, dated Nov. 3.

Baig took his case to the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD), seeking “special relief” on “humanitarian and compassionate grounds so that he could maintain his permanent resident status and remain in Canada.”

When that panel turned him down, Baig took his case to Federal Court, asking for a judicial review.

“In my view, the IAD fell into error in two ways,” said Justice Anne Turley.

In finding that Baig had “shown minimal potential for rehabilitation,” the IAD “did not engage,” Turley said, with the Ontario Parole Board’s “determination that he posed a very low risk to public safety.”

The judge noted the parole board, using “a tool designed to assess an offender’s risk of recidivism, rated (Baig) as a very low risk to reoffend.”

According to Turley, “in assessing the best interests of the children, the IAD did not consider (Baig’s) evidence that his wife and children would return to Pakistan with him if he was removed from Canada, nor the resulting hardship on the children due to the language barriers and the lack of educational accommodations.”

The crash Baig caused occurred in the Toronto-bound lanes of the QEW near Cawthra Road around 10 p.m.

According to the judge who sentenced him, Baig got angry that night because someone flashed their high beams at him and honked.

That caused a chain reaction involving five vehicles, Superior Court Justice Bruce Durno said in June 2023.

His court heard Baig was driving in the eastbound lanes of the QEW in Mississauga, when Baig suddenly cut in front of traffic in the left passing lane. Baig slowed his Honda Civic to about 50 km/h, causing the vehicle immediately behind him to abruptly slow down.
When the driver behind him flashed his high beams twice, Baig responded by bringing his car to a complete stop on the busy highway.

Seven people were rushed to hospital from the crash scene, including two women who suffered critical injuries.

One of the women, Nicole Turcotte, 22, of Niagara Falls, later died in hospital.

Baig, who was 32 at the time of the crash, was charged with dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death, dangerous operation of a vehicle causing harm, failing to remain at the scene of a collision causing death, and failing to remain at the scene of a collision causing harm.

“At the preliminary inquiry, the two charges of failing to stop at the scene were dismissed,” said the Federal Court decision.

“In October 2022, (Baig) pled guilty to dangerous driving causing death, and the dangerous driving causing bodily harm charge was withdrawn.”

Baig became a permanent resident of Canada in 2008 through a spousal sponsorship, the decision said. “He and his wife have three children, all Canadian citizens, twin boys who were born in 2009 and a younger son born in 2019.”

When Baig appeared before the Ontario Parole Board in August 2023, it found his risk was “manageable in the community” and that he was “a very low risk of re-offending,” according to Turley’s decision.

Baig cited “his remorse, his establishment in Canada, the lack of appropriate medical care in Pakistan, his children’s best interests, and the hardship he and his family would suffer if he were removed,” in support of his request for special relief on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, said the Federal Court decision.

In a decision this past January, the IAD found those were insufficient grounds “to allow the appeal or to stay (his) removal from Canada.”

In the same decision, the IAD also determined that Baig’s “continued threat to public safety” outweighed the best interests of his children. 

According to the IAD, the threshold for humanitarian and compassionate relief is high.

Baig “has shown minimal potential for rehabilitation,” said the IAD.

“These considerations weigh significantly against special relief.”

Baig’s wife “testified (in front of the IAD) about the significant hardship their children would experience if they had to live in Pakistan, due to both language barriers and educational needs.”

“None of the children speak either Urdu or Punjabi. Further, the twin boys (who were 15 at the time of the IAD hearing) require education accommodations, including special laptops that assist them with reading. Additionally, (Baig’s) wife testified that she feared her sons would be judged in Pakistan for their learning disabilities.”

The IAD determined Baig’s “children’s interests would be best served” if he remained in Canada.

“However, the continued threat (Baig) poses to the safety of the Canadian public given his minimal possibility for rehabilitation outweighs the best interests of the appellant in this case,” said the IAD.

Turley determined the IAD’s decision was “unreasonable” and “must be set aside.”

She granted Baig’s application for judicial review and sent his case back to the IAD for “redetermination.”

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May Mackie, who died in 2024 in Qualicum, B.C., at age 99, wears the silver wings of missing British Second World War pilot Hubert (Hugh) Smith. He was her first fiance.

I had looked at that picture of my mother hundreds of times as it sat on her dresser in the nursing home where she spent the last 18 months of her life in Qualicum, British Columbia — a beautiful Scottish 19-year-old with dark long curls framing her face and silver wings adorning her dress. A young woman who would eventually immigrate to Canada to Clarkson, Ontario, now Mississauga, with her husband and young family.

But it was only after her death on May 29, 2024, at age 99, that I noticed the flyer’s wings on her dress. How was it possible that I had never registered them before?

My father had served in the British Army during the Second World War, but the wings were emblematic of an air force flyer. Things just weren’t adding up, so I asked my older sister Dianne about them. She responded, “Oh, those belonged to her first fiancé Hubert Smith. He was killed after the war.”

The silver wings of long-lost British naval flyer Hubert (Hugh) Smith, who was killed in a plane crash in Australia on March 7, 1946, his body never recovered. The wings were kept for 80 years by May Mackie, his fiance, who died in B.C. in 2024, age 99. Mackie’s family reunited the wings with the Smith family, which are now on display at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, in Hamilton, Ont.

Her first fiancé? I was stunned. I believed my mother, May Mackie, was only ever engaged to my father, Bill Mackie.

Time has a way of marching on, but memories of the Second World War still live on. I decided I needed to find out more about the wings and her former fiancé and began my hunt for answers. Here was a young woman of many facets — a violinist, a passable golfer and an expert baker. Her shortbread was legendary. But I knew nothing of this aspect of her life and my sister only had vague memories of her discussions about Hubert Smith. Several of her close friends in Qualicum Beach knew further details.

One evening in 1944, she decided to go to a dance, rather unwillingly, with her best girlfriend. When the girls arrived at the dance there were service men standing around smiling and trying to approach the girls for a dance. Hubert Smith was one of those young men. But the girls decided to ignore them and went to find their friends instead.

Later it was revealed that Hubert Smith (Hugh) said to one of his friends, “See that girl in the green coat? I’m going to marry her.” My mother was that girl. Hugh did get a dance in with my mother but when he asked if he could see her again, she brushed him off saying she was seeing someone at the time. But she wasn’t, and on the bus ride home she regretted her decision, telling her friends how nice, polite and wonderful he was. At the time it seemed like a missed opportunity never to be seized again.

But after days of thinking about him, and how perhaps she had made a mistake, she looked out the second-floor window of her office building where she worked and there he was, looking up at her. According to my mother, she flew down the stairs where she reunited with Hugh.

Hubert Smith, British Second World War pilot. He was posted to the HMS Implacable, and fought in the Sea of Japan. He survived the war but was killed when his plane crashed in Australia on a training exercise after the war.

They were pretty much inseparable after that and soon became engaged.

Then came the declaration of the war and Hugh was posted to the HMS Implacable, a British aircraft carrier — a 20-year-old pilot who left behind the love of his life, May Stirton. Hugh Smith fought in the Sea of Japan, towards the end of the Second World War, and survived his tour of duty. In another “Canadian Moment”, the HMS Implacable was involved in returning Canadian, Australian and British former prisoners-of-war, arriving in Vancouver harbour in early 1946 before returning to Melbourne, Australia.

On March 7, 1946, Hugh and other pilots set out on a training mission, flying along the Bass Strait that separates Tasmania from the Australian mainland. His plane crashed. His body was never recovered.

There are some discrepancies about how he really died, which my mother would disclose to a close friend named Jennie Homer some seven or eight years before her death.

“While watching the Australian Open from Melbourne, ads to ‘Come Visit Victoria’ kept playing and May became very agitated, pounding her thighs with her fists. One of those commercials showed the coastline outside Port Philip Bay with a series of shots of the Great Ocean Road and the rock formations known as the Twelve Apostles visible out to sea.”

As Jennie recalls, my mother said, “Why do they keep showing those damned rocks!” Jennie pushed on inquiring why the rocks were annoying her so much, but my mother just sat there quietly with tears in her eyes and replied, “There’s a lot you don’t know.” Obviously, the love of her first fiancé still rested with heaviness on her heart.

She explained that a co-pilot friend of Hugh Smith had come to Scotland to tell her about Hugh’s death. He told my mother that Hugh had not died on a training mission due to engine failure but rather a flying accident caused by target practice and a piece of rock hitting the plane and the cockpit, killing him. His plane likely would have been flying at high speed, so being struck by a rock would have caused instantaneous death.

Hubert Smith, a 20-year-old British naval flyer, in his trainer cockpit.

It’s not hard to imagine a testosterone-driven young man flying a fighter armed with machine guns and cannons, flying dangerously close to those rocks.

This discrepancy in his death began our family’s quest to return those golden wings to any surviving relatives of Hubert Smith. The coincidences that would reveal themselves were utterly surprising.

In early December 2024, I asked my cousin Philip Mackie who lived in Devizes, England, to help in the search. He was a bit of an amateur historian and tech savvy. As Philip began his search he came upon a war memorial in Portsmouth that bore Hugh’s name, and a search of military war grave sites led to some rudimentary information.

Hubert Fuller Smith was born to Henry and Chrystabel Smith of Bournemouth, England, close to where my cousin grew up. He was born in the summer of 1925, but his full date of birth is unknown. His date of death was confirmed to be March 7, 1946, as we already knew.

Naval records revealed much about the HMS Implacable, but no mention of Hugh could be found. My cousin Philip’s search led him to a Commonwealth war graves site on which a man named Alan Smith has posted about his lost relative, Hubert Smith. This was the connection we were looking for.

The site gave us Alan’s email and I sent out feelers with trepidation, sharing the story of my mother’s involvement with his long-lost relative.

With great surprise, Alan’s positive response opened the world of Hugh Smith, for Alan was a military historian and had extensively researched Hugh’s history. But there was one part missing. He knew nothing of the part my mother had played in his life.

And then other coincidences in our lives came to the surface. Alan Smith and his family lived in Hamilton, Ont., 50 kilometres from my sister Dianne’s home in Guelph, Ont. So, our two families had lived only a brief distance away.

We also found out from one of Hugh’s uncles in Hamilton that the young pilot had visited the city between his posting to Scotland and deployment on the HMS Implacable. It seemed unimaginable that we all moved in such small circles.

My mother eventually married a lithe Scottish man named Bill Mackie in Dundee, Scotland, after the war, in 1947. My father never spoke of the war, despite our prodding. He was perhaps too traumatized to revisit what so many young men experienced.

To us, my mother and father seemed to have a happy and long marriage with my father passing away at the age of 79 in 1998. However, my father and my sister were rummaging through some old photos in the 1960s and they came across a picture of Hugh and he confronted my mother with it. My mother explained that Hugh was now deceased and couldn’t hurt my father anymore.

The extent of what my father knew about Hugh remains a mystery. Perhaps he had sketchy details but my mother decided to keep the details to a minimum, not to hurt my father, but to keep the love to herself. This is only speculation on my part.

On Nov. 6, 2025, at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ont., Dianne Mackie (left) presented Alan Smith (right), with the pilots wings insignia given to May Mackie 80 years ago by her fiancé Hubert (Hugh) Smith, a British naval flyer, who was killed in a plane crash off the coast of Australia in 1946.

When war breaks out it separates us but also binds us in the stories and histories that live on. My sister Dianne asked recently if our mother would want this story told publicly. My mother’s good friend Jennie Homer responded: “You know the close relationship I had with May — and I have to say that I am very confident that she’d be happy to know that their story is being shared.  She wouldn’t have wanted it out there while she was still living, mind you. I am also positive that she’d have been very grateful to Alan (Smith) for having taken such an interest in Hubert’s life, time and sad end. That would have meant a lot to her.”

Gustav Mahler’s 6th Symphony, The Heroic, has been playing as I write this. In the last movement, a mighty hammer blow strikes three times to signal the three mighty blows of fate, the third of which “fells the hero of the piece like a tree”.  Hugh Smith’s tragic story was one such mighty blow, the hammer falling on his young life off the coast of Australia. My mother appeared to have carried the pain of his loss for her entire life, only recounting the story of her relationship with him in detail when a memory was triggered by the sight of those sea stacks off the coast of Australia.

We returned the wings to the Smith family in Hamilton on Nov. 6, 2025, at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, in time for Remembrance Day. A memorial will be set up in the museum documenting the relationship and will display the wings. We hope the Smith family found solace in their return after nearly 80 years.

Iain Mackie is a retired physician living in Vancouver B.C., and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Ruta Pocius is a published journalist.

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The Florentine Diamond has a storied history going back to the Medici family. It was thought to be lost after the Second World War, but descendants of the former ruling family of Austria, the Hapsburgs, have revealed that it has sat for over 100 years in a Canadian bank vault. (WikiMedia Commons)

Quebec would like the storied Florentine Diamond, as well as other jewels deposited secretly in a Quebec bank vault by the last Empress of Austria, to be on permanent display in the Quebec National Museum of Fine Arts.

One of the Empress’s descendants expressed gratitude to Quebec in an interview with the

New York Times

published Thursday, saying the province took her and her eight children in when they fled the Nazis.

“We thought it was very nice (of the family) to say they were grateful for Quebec adopting them as they ran away from the war,” Catherine Boucher, attachée de presse in the office of Mathieu Lacombe, Quebec’s minister of culture, told National Post.

Boucher also shared a statement from Lacombe.

“This is a truly unique story that connects Quebec to the Habsburg family. We can all be proud of the recognition and trust that the family places in us. We are therefore working with the Quebec National Museum of Fine Arts to find a way for these jewels to be displayed and accessible to the public,” says Lacombe.

The ministry has begun discussions with the museum about exhibiting the jewels. But Boucher says it’s far too soon to provide any details.

Meanwhile, the family has not made a final decision about where the jewels will be displayed, according to a spokesperson for the family.

“The family has committed to public display of the collection in Canada,” Tom Becker, senior managing director of strategic communications with FTI Consulting in Toronto said in an email to NP late Friday.

However, he notes that at this time “no specific location has been selected and the plans for how best to display the collection is in its earliest stages.”

Few gemstones have been laden with the history carried by the Florentine Diamond, according to

gemmary.com

, a website that curates stories about antique and vintage jewelry. The pale yellow, 137.27-carat diamond was once one of Europe’s largest gems, adorning the crowns of emperors and kings.

It was among the Austrian Crown Jewels until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. Soon after, it became shrouded in mystery, with its whereabouts unknown for more than a century.

However, reports

The New York Times

, the real story was recently told by three Habsburg descendants. It turns out the precious gem has been in a bank vault in Canada since the family fled here during the Second World War.

Austrian Empress Zita (Habsburg) escaped the Nazi onslaught with her eight children, arriving in the United States in 1940. The Empress carried the jewels with her in a small cardboard suitcase, family members told the Times.

With American help, the family then travelled to Canada, where they settled in a modest house in Quebec. Eighty-five years later, the family says it wants to display the Florentine Diamond and other jewels in Canada to thank the country for taking in the Empress and her children.

“It should be part of a trust here in Canada,” Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen told the Times. “It should be on exhibition in Canada sometimes, so that people can actually see those pieces.”

The story of the Florentine Diamond goes back to the powerful Medici family of Italy, according to

langantiques.com

, an antique jewelry website run by a San Francisco jewelry firm. Despite the Medici family’s best efforts to keep their jewels in Florence, the Florentine Diamond became part of the Austrian Crown Jewels by 1743.

The diamond remained a part of those Crown Jewels until the Hapsburg Empire came to an end after the First World War. 

Then, as tensions built across Europe again, former Austrian Empress, Zita, wife of the last Emperor, Karl I (who died in 1922), opposed the growing Nazi threat. Her son, Prince Otto, offered his services to the Austrian First Republic, which was struggling to remain independent of the Third Reich. When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Otto was declared an enemy of the state.

Zita fled with her eight children, arriving in the United States in 1940. The Empress carried the jewels with her in a small cardboard suitcase.

The family then traveled to Canada where it settled in Quebec.

“My grandmother felt very safe — she could breathe finally,” Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen told the Times about the arrival of the royal family in Quebec. “I assume that, at that stage, the little suitcase went into a bank safe, and that was it. And in that bank safe, it just stayed.”

In 1953, Zita returned to Europe but she left the jewels in the care of the Quebec bank.

This is where the story picks up today.

Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, 64, a grandson of Karl I, said in an interview with the Times that the secret of the diamond was kept for decades, respecting Empress Zita’s wishes. She told only her sons Robert and Rodolphe about the diamond’s location, asking them to keep it undisclosed for 100 years after her husband’s death.

Before the sons died, reports the Times, they passed the information to their own sons. But for years afterward, the family says it declined to respond to queries about the diamond out of a desire to guard it.

von Habsburg-Lothringen only recently learned about the existence of the jewels from two cousins — Robert’s son, Lorenz von Habsburg-Lothringen, 70, and Rodolphe’s son, Simeon von Habsburg-Lothringen, 67.

All three met at the Quebec bank where the diamond and other precious jewels have resided in a vault. As they live in Europe, this was the first time they viewed the diamond.

The Florentine Diamond was wrapped separately from the other jewels, but it could have been set in a large, jewelled brooch, which was among the items. The family says there is no plan to sell the diamond. It has declined to speculate on the jewel’s value.

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