The Sunday Editionwith Michael Enright

Volinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Tim Steeves teach music at Memorial University in St. John's and travel the world as Duo Concertante. They are also husband and wife.

She's from Prairie Canada, and her songs are a mixture of deep-down country, hot blues and cool jazz. But just to make it clear that she's a country girl at heart, Little Miss Higgins recorded one of her albums in a bison barn. Little Miss Higgins, a.k.a. Jolene Higgins, brought her guitar along to the studio for a live performance.

Canadian jazz pianist Thompson Egbo-Egbo was born in Nigeria and came to Canada at the age of four. He began playing the piano when he was just six. Today, he performs across the country and, through his arts foundation, helps Toronto kids transcend their social and economic circumstances.

Two musicians from the piano quartet Ensemble Made in Canada join Michael to talk about studying classical music from childhood, the laser-like focus required to succeed, and their joy in performing together as a group.

Listen to this week's episode with host Michael Enright.

“To the average North American male, the car is symbolic. It may indicate our social, economic, even our professional status. It is also a clear marker of our maturity. Getting a driver’s license at age 16 and a first car a couple of years later, was the dream of every teenage male I know.”

As the SNC-Lavalin scandal continues to fester, a growing number of influential commentators and opposition politicians are saying that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has lost his “moral authority to govern.” We look at the rhetoric around “the moral authority to govern”, what the phrase actually means, and whether it applies to the current scandal.

The award-winning poet died this week at the age of 79. In 2013, he gave a convocation address that blew away his audience at the University of Victoria.

When swan lover Beverly Kingdon and biologist Harry Lumsden joined forces, good things happened. The woman who loved swans and the Ontario wildlife scientist with a cause have worked tirelessly to bring the largest swans in the world back from the brink. Theirs is an environmental success story. Alisa Siegel’s documentary is called “A Village of Swans, A Village of People.”

Schadenfreude (from the German word "schaden" meaning harm and "freude" meaning joy) is a universal human flaw we must all face up to if we’re going to understand our world, argues British historian Tiffany Watt Smith in her book Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune.

For 36 years, the affable, supremely knowledgeable Jerry Howarth was the voice of the Blue Jays, broadcasting the story of each game as it unfolded. Now retired, Howarth has written about his life in baseball. The title of his new book is his signature greeting, "Hello Friends".

Listeners react to our tribute to "word jazz" pioneer Ken Nordine. Michael's interview with Jack Chambers about Nordine inspired listeners to write to us about other radio performers who were influenced by Nordine, such as Joe Frank, Arthur Prysock, Larry Thor, Al "Jazzbo" Collins, and Canada's own Robbie Robertson.

Listen to this week's episode with host Michael Enright.

"In the old growth forest of traditional Canadian journalism, the giants are falling one by one."

Brenda McPhail, Director of the Privacy, Surveillance and Technology Project at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, says it's likely that some of the biggest corporations in the world "probably know more about us than we know about ourselves."

Anti-vaccine sentiment was percolating in Canada long before a now-debunked article raising the question of a link between vaccines and autism was published in 1998. Historian Heather MacDougall lays out the cultural forces — from second-wave feminism to new parenting philosophies — that brought us to where we are now.

Young musicians are tapping into Quebec's folk tradition to create music that's equally concerned with the past and the future.

In episode four of The Backlist, a series about Canadian novels that have fallen out of public memory — or never got the attention they deserved in the first place — publisher Doug Gibson discusses Hugh MacLennan’s 1958 novel The Watch That Ends the Night.

For more than 40 years, Ken Nordine hosted a late-night public radio program that blended jazz, spoken word poetry and sound design.

Listen to this week's episode with guest host Peter Armstrong.

Multiculturalism in Canada has evolved from an ideal, to official policy, to a national article of faith; it's something that defines this country and, in the eyes of many, sets Canada apart at a time of rising xenophobia around the globe. But there has always been a diversity of opinion in this country about the virtues of diversity, and anti-immigrant sentiments seems to be on the rise. Guest host Peter Armstrong will talk to Queen's University professor Keith Banting about the history of Canadian multiculturalism, and where it's headed.