Editor’s Picks: Our favourite stories from 2017

From risking life and limb to trek to Canada, to the peak of real estate madness and the death of a Canadian musical hero, here’s a look back at the year that was. Click your way through our favourite reads of 2017.

The new underground railroad

More and more refugees are making a dangerous trek north to Canada to escape a harsh new U.S. regime—risking life and limb

The American Dream has moved to Canada

By every measure, Canada is the true place to find ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ Let’s stop squandering our good fortune. By Scott Gilmore

The return of the czar

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, an emboldened Putin regime is embracing its czarist past. Could 1917 happen again?

How Canada completely lost its mind over real estate

Canada’s out-of-control real estate market has now gone totally mad­—and there’s no turning back.

At the Bill Cosby trial, ‘Canada’s Mom’ slays ‘America’s Dad’

The mother of Cosby’s Canadian accuser depicts the comedian at peak creepiness, while unleashing a wave of maternal fury at him and his lawyers. Part of Anne Kingston’s coverage of the 2017 Bill Cosby trial.

America’s mass delusion

Surprisingly, the strategy of praying to God is not stopping the mass shootings in the U.S., Scott Gilmore writes.

An epic quest to find the soul of a country

Allen Abel spent weeks criss-crossing the land—meeting hunters, nuns and one John A. MacDonald—to find the true meaning of this vast country.

Meet the great-great-great-great-granddaughters of Confederation

From a teen with a Céline Dion connection to a skiing daredevil, Meagan Campbell meets the descendants of Canada’s founders.

Waiting for death in Thunder Bay

A trailer hitch thrown from a passing car left Barb Kentner facing death, and her daughter contemplating life without her. Kentner sadly passed away a few days after the publication of this article by Nancy Macdonald.

Wooing America

Sixty-four cities, 44 states and 300 contacts. Inside Canada’s six-month mission to one-up the White House in the next NAFTA negotiations, one handshake at a time.

The Russian spies who raised us

The Vavilov brothers were born in Canada to deep-cover Soviet agents, so Ottawa stripped them of their citizenship. Inside their fight to finally come home.

How Jagmeet Singh hopes to win over the next generation of NDP voters

The Ontario New Democrat MPP and his circle of young Sikh activists are trying to build a national movement and win the NDP leadership

Lost and Broken

The inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women is crumbling amid defections, bureaucratic chaos and personal conflict. Inside the meltdown—and the desperate bid to turn things around.

Jagmeet Singh and the newest new NDP

The NDP was born from the hope that things can change and in Jagmeet Singh it has picked the young, optimistic outsider, writes Paul Wells

Throw another minister on the bonfire: the ballad of Bill Morneau

Paul Wells on the finance minister’s tax reform flub, and why it’s becoming an embarrassing pattern for the Trudeau government.

How a royal gift exposed sexual abuse at an elite Canadian school

Prince Andrew wanted to memorialize his friend and former chaplain at Lakefield College School. The resulting tribute prompted Father Keith Gleed’s victims to finally break their silence.

Inside the progressive think tank that really runs Canada

How a small think tank called Canada 2020 gave rise to Justin Trudeau and became the country’s new nexus of power

Gord Downie: 1964-2017

Remembering the life and legacy of The Tragically Hip frontman in this obituary by Michael Barclay.

Justin Trudeau’s mid-life crisis

After a series of stumbles and setbacks the Liberals have an ambitious but risky plan to break their slump and get back on track

What really happened at Wilfrid Laurier University

Inside Lindsay Shepherd’s heroic, insulting, brave, destructive, possibly naïve fight for free speech.