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From the archives

Dangerous Grounds

Coming soon to a democracy near you

The Collapse of Syria

The story of a nation’s unravelling, one neighbourhood at a time

Trompe Le Toil

The modern conundrum of overwork

John Cruickshank

John Cruickshank has worked as a newspaper editor and publisher, broadcasting executive, and Canadian consul general in Chicago.

Articles by
John Cruickshank

Paper Rout

Postmedia in the gutter October 2023
One morning in 1996, I got a call from David Radler, chief operating officer of Hollinger International, the company that had just taken control of my paper. He wanted to know why, as editor of the Vancouver Sun, I’d let our business columnist call one of his Howe Street stock-promoter pals a…

Talking Points

Dollars and sense March 2022
As a work of explanatory prose, The Professor and the Plumber is intelligent and accessible, providing a light-on-jargon, leftward-tilted introduction to the causes and consequences of the rise of extreme economic inequality in Canada and around the world since 1980. However smart, though, it’s a pamphlet trying to squirm free from the ­confines of undramatic…

In Some Measure

Unequal stories of Canada October 2021
Canadians tell two stories about equality: one with conviction, the other with ambivalence. The first story is about rights, recognition, and representation — and we are wholehearted about it. We still struggle with racism and sexism, and we have yet to register the full horror of this country’s maltreatment of Indigenous people, but we generally share a moral conviction that all citizens are entitled to the same human and civil rights and deserve respect — even if we don’t always treat everyone that…

Dept. of Misinformation

Daniel Levitan’s survival manual for the post-factual era September 2016
Whether or not he can bring America’s jobs home, Donald Trump is certainly keeping one group of workers gainfully employed: fact checkers. The cottage industry that has arisen as a result of Trump’s refusal to acknowledge error or prevarication in his campaign shows no sign of shrinking. Which is ostensibly a good thing. As Michael Kinsley wrote in Vanity Fair