The Sunday Editionwith Michael Enright

Where we sit on a bus and how we behave says a lot about us: Public transit is an ideal venue to study what sociologists call “civil inattention.” UBC Professor Amy Hanser is doing just that.

Thomas Dowd heard rumours that a priest named Brian Boucher had sexually abused children in Montreal. He investigated, found victims, brought evidence to police and was instrumental in Boucher being convicted and sentenced earlier this year to eight years in prison. What’s most notable about Thomas Dowd is that he, himself, is a Catholic Church bishop — an authority figure in a church that has long been accused of hushing up the crimes of its clergy, protecting the institution at the expense of its flock.

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David Frum, senior editor for The Atlantic and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, on why he thinks the fight for impeachment could be a road to ruin for the Democratic Party and the health of American politics.

ICUs can be terrifying places, where patients are desperately ill, the medical staff is under pressure and families feel overwhelmed. In Montreal, a group of university students won an award for a new initiative that is designed to help.

One of the most influential columnists at The Guardian, George Monbiot says we have to find a new economic system because our survival depends on it.

She received many honours around the world for standing up for human rights and democracy. Now, Myanmar’s foreign minister Aung San Suu Kyi is defending her country against a charge of genocide in the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the genocide of the Rohingya people. Bob Rae, Canada’s Special Envoy to Myanmar talks about this apparent paradox and about Canada's role in making Myanmar accountable for its treatment of the Rohingya.

The sound it produces is beautiful, unsettling, haunting, unmistakable, resembling as one critic famously said, "A cello lost in a dense fog, crying because it does not know how to get home." He was talking about the theremin, that mysterious electronic instrument, whose Bolshevik and Cold War history is as fascinating as the music it makes.

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Harold Johnson is a Cree man from Saskatchewan. He's a Harvard law graduate, and he's a former crown prosecutor. He walked away from his career in law because he became convinced the justice system is only doing harm to Indigenous people. Michael Enright speaks with him about his life, how the killing of Colten Boushie and the Gerald Stanley case shook him to the core, and his new book: Peace and Good Order: the Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada.

Young women are increasingly freezing their eggs and storing them for a chance to become pregnant later in life. But experts say it's not an airtight solution.

This forester says it’s better to cut down a real tree at Christmas than to assemble one from a box: people tend to believe artificial Christmas trees are environmentally friendlier because, after all, we are not supposed to cut down real trees. However, Marie-Paule Godin, a forester with the non-profit group Tree Canada, says that needs a rethink.

Many eminent literary critics say yes. Rohan Maitzen, who teaches English at Dalhousie University in Halifax, readily agrees. She talks to Michael about Eliot’s legacy, and how there are new treasures to be found in Middlemarch with each reading. Professor Maitzen has read it dozens of times.

Clive James and Sir Jonathan Miller can best be described as true polymaths. Among their many achievements, they were writers, humorists, scholars and cultural commentators. We remember two intellectual giants.

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"In less than four weeks it will be a full year since Chinese authorities arrested two Canadians and threw them in jail. On December 18 last year, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested on charges of ‘endangering state security.’ A full year, and it is as though they have ceased to exist. Or have been transported to some remote island beyond the reach of humans.”

The veteran labour leader talks about his life in the labour movement and the future of unions in an age of globalized trade, a collapsing manufacturing sector and precarious employment.