Good morning, and welcome to the weekend.
Grab your cup of coffee or tea and sit down with a selection of this week’s great reads from The Globe and Mail. In this issue, we’ve crunched the numbers – mindful that different people look for different qualities in a home – to determine which cities in Canada offer the best mix of economic opportunity, public safety and affordable(-ish) housing. We have also created sub-rankings tailored to life stages to create an interactive guide for those on the move. Great Reads will avoid spoilers on which city leads the list; see for yourself!
Fans of Cree artist Kent Monkman know his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, well. He puts her, as his writing collaborator Gisèle Gordon explains, “right into the middle of the ‘authoritative’ colonial narrative” depicted in his paintings. In doing so, Gordon adds in her introduction to an excerpt from his new book, Monkman “flips the balance of power to reimagine history and create lush, often playfully seductive takes on history paintings that are layered with historical, cultural, queer, Cree and art history references.”
And, with gift-giving season nearly upon us, we’ve created something to make finding the perfect gift a lot easier. Our 2023 holiday gift guide has 60 suggestions with plenty of ways to filter and sort based on the people on your list, plus highlighting for Canadian brands. Also, our books gift guide returns with ideas for 16 different kinds of reader.
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Illustration by Kathleen Fu
Looking for the perfect place to call home is a profoundly personal journey influenced by countless factors. With that in mind, a new Globe and Mail data project, conducted with the help of data and analytics company Environics, lets readers filter our first most-livable-cities list to give added weight to specific categories such as transportation, access to health care and pleasant weather. But we also ranked them all on certain livability metrics with more universal appeal: safety, economy and housing affordability. In all, 100 cities made the list with six of the top 10 located in one province.
How Kent Monkman is fighting myth with myth to tell the true(r) history of Canada
Seeing Red, by Kent Monkman, features the striking form of his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.Courtesy of Kent Monkman/Handout
In an excerpt from The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Volume 2, Cree artist Kent Monkman channels his gender-fluid, shapeshifting, mythical alter ego (with the help of writer Gisèle Gordon) for a dramatic reframing of the 1885 North-West Resistance, a time remembered by Cree people as kâ-kî-mâyahkamikahk, “when the bad things happened.” The passage is emblematic of Monkman’s memoirs written in a voice that combines Cree oral history, European settler versions of history and Miss Chief’s own story for new first-hand account of those times.
Brad Stratford, a Canadian volunteer who was killed this week in Ukraine, trained snipers and was ‘loved by all’.International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine
In just the past 11 days, three Canadians have been killed on the front lines of the Ukraine-Russia war, victims of a fresh offensive by Russia that has blunted Ukraine’s gains in the eastern and southern regions of the country. Volunteer soldiers Brad Stratford of North Vancouver, B.C., Josh Mayers of Edmonton and Austin Lathlin-Bercier from Manitoba were killed in action as Ukraine’s positions along the 1,000-kilometre front have been increasingly overwhelmed by Russian forces in a Soviet-style strategy based on numerical superiority. Mark MacKinnon reports from Kyiv.
Canadian sports broadcasters brace as Amazon’s NFL shopapalooza hints at a global future
New York Jets quarterback Tim Boyle passes against the Miami Dolphins during a rare Friday NFL game yesterday in East Rutherford, N.J.Noah K. Murray/The Associated Press
This Black Friday, for the first time, the NFL scheduled a football game. Not because of a new foray into Friday programming, but specifically because it received US$100-million for the rights to broadcast it, and that broadcaster was Amazon Prime. The tie-ins with Prime’s online-shopping division were obvious, and intentional, even if Amazon took a loss despite charging for ads. But selling ads isn’t where it makes its money. Amazon just wants consumers to feel more positively toward the company by virtue of having a bunch of NFL games thrown in as part of their subscription. Can Canadian sports broadcasters – which have a pretty simple business model, buying up the rights to sports events and selling them to viewers and advertisers for a profit – compete with companies that don’t really care if they lose gobs of money on sports, as long as they can make up the difference in selling gadgets? It’s a question, Simon Houpt writes, that might be keeping executives up at night.
The road to the White House has early checkpoints in Michigan and, naturally, New Hampshire
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks to members of the United Auto Workers union during a rally in Detroit on Sept. 15, 2023.MATTHEW HATCHER/AFP/Getty Images
Politics in New Hampshire, site of the second Republican primary, are conducted more like a contest for county commissioner than for the White House, often in coffee-shop conversations and then in town meetings. Here, as Jan. 23 approaches, there is one challenger to Donald Trump whose popularity is spiking: Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina. Her intensive ground game has her emerging as a composite of the leading figures in U.S. politics – both combative (like Trump) and compassionate (like Joe Biden).
Over in Michigan, Democrats are quickly revamping the state government after the party won the state legislature and the governorship under Gretchen Whitmer, whose easy re-election showed her moderate, pragmatic attitude is winning over a usually divided state. This big-tent approach could either be a glimpse at the future of the Democratic Party – or a case study in internal contradictions as extensive auto-sector strikes and furious divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict threaten party cohesion.
We take the temperature on both parties this weekend, with David Shribman profiling Haley and Adrian Morrow reporting on Michigan’s Democrats.
Holiday gift guide 2023: Stylish and practical items for everyone in your life
Photo illustration by the globe and mail/Handout
In this year’s gift guide, we put our elves to work building a digital experience that lets you zero in on who you’re buying for and the kinds of things they like. Filter by gift category (such as food, fashion, outdoors and more), price point and your relationship with the giftee. With 60 ideas available at a variety of prices, there’s something for everybody.
How Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is fuelling Apple’s big-screen revolution
Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix on the set of Napoleon.Aidan Monaghan/Apple TV+
With legacy players such as Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Universal Pictures drifting away from financing anything that isn’t easily franchiseable, outside players such as Amazon and Apple have come to the rescue, tossing around hundreds of millions of dollars to make adult-oriented films that essentially act as loss-leaders. Ridley Scott’s new film, Napoleon, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as the power-hungry French tyrant, offers a perfect case study for how to make an “original” big-budget film in today’s marketplace. Barry Hertz reports its wide theatrical release might signal a shift in ambitions for Apple. Or it might be another tech-land experiment, with the entirety of Hollywood its test subject.
Finally, take this week’s arts quiz to test your knowledge of arts and culture news.
Sample question: In Dream Scenario, Nicolas Cage plays a university professor who begins appearing in everyone’s dreams. What Canadian actor co-stars in the film?
Mason Wright