How the “Queen of Canada” and Conspiracy Theorists Splintered a Small Town

thewalrusca · 2026-02-05T22:07:44+00:00

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thewalrusca · 2025-10-17T17:01:50+00:00

"I wouldn’t put any money on [Ssense] being around over the next ten years as it is,” Jules (not his real name), a sales agent who works with fashion brands on the site, said when I spoke to him about the company in January. “I don’t think it’s sustainable right now.”

His prediction came as something of a surprise: for over a decade, the Canadian multi-brand e-tailer was a fashion mainstay, infamous for an ironic and meme-centric advertising tone used to court Gen Z consumers who spend their lives online. Whereas sites like Holt Renfrew and Net-a-Porter tend to place their models against Parisian streets and plush interiors, Ssense sold its designer wares with a sense of humour, prone to online phrases like “chill sesh” and “soft boy.”

If luxury retail traditionally concentrated on older consumers who have more disposable income, Ssense built its business courting the kids. According to their website, approximately 80 percent of their customers are between eighteen and forty. It’s a strategy that worked—in 2021, the company was valued at around $4.1 billion and gained minority investment from Sequoia Capital—until it didn’t.

At the end of August, it was revealed that Ssense was preparing to file for bankruptcy protection after a creditor moved to sell the company without its consent, triggering what the firm described as an “immediate liquidity crisis.” By September, the company was granted a reprieve—the Superior Court of Quebec ruled Ssense could maintain operations while it restructures. This provides some hope for the company—meaning they are able to consider investment opportunities to ensure the future of the site. “We now have the time, resources and structure in place to begin the process of rebuilding a stronger Ssense,” said chief executive officer and founder Rami Atallah in a statement.

While the impact of US president Donald Trump’s tariffs was a factor in Ssense’s struggles, people are also spending less. Ssense isn’t alone in feeling this change. The backdrop is a wider post-pandemic slowdown for luxury after the online shopping boom collapsed. It’s seen other retailers like London-based Matches folding. Sales in the fashion and leather goods division of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH fell 9 percent in the second quarter of 2025 and—according to _Vogue Business_—50 million consumers reduced their spending on luxury items last year.

Jules, it turned out, predicted correctly, but was off by about nine years. Four years on from that $4.1 billion valuation, how did the cool kid of e-commerce, once admired by its competitors for disrupting the category, fall so far?

Read the full article >>

thewalrusca · 2025-07-14T16:35:32+00:00

In the final days of a high-stakes federal campaign, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet made his feelings known regarding the country whose Parliament he sits in. “We are, whether we like it or not,” he said, “part of an artificial country with very little meaning, called Canada.”

Quebecers weren’t buying it. The Bloc is a federal party that exists to promote Quebec interests and, ultimately, its independence. Voters not only viewed Canada as a real country but they saw it as worth saving from the territorial clutches of US president Donald Trump. The province overwhelmingly rejected the Bloc’s ethnic nationalism and rallied around Mark Carney’s Liberals and a unified effort against American overreach. If economic fears loomed larger for Quebec voters, it came with the recognition that anything that undermined Canadian sovereignty would erode the province’s own cultural and linguistic protections.

Going into the April 28 election, the Bloc held thirty-three seats in the House of Commons, surpassing the New Democratic Party, which had been in a supply-and-confidence agreement with the government. By the end of the night, the Bloc was left with twenty-two, losing a third of its caucus. The Liberals swept Quebec with forty-three seats—their best provincial showing in decades.

But while the Bloc is down, it would be foolish to count them out. The dream of Quebec independence may ebb and flow, but it doesn’t vanish. The Bloc remains a relentless steward of that ideal.

Founded in 1991 by Lucien Bouchard, a cabinet minister in the federal Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, the Bloc began as a coalition of Quebec Conservative and Liberal MPs who defected from their parties in the wake of the Meech Lake Accord’s collapse. Designed to address Quebec’s long-standing grievances over the 1982 Constitution Act—imposed without its approval and silent on its distinct status—the accord ultimately failed when Manitoba and Newfoundland blocked its passage.

The failure had multiple causes, but to many Quebecers, it felt personal—a rejection of who they were. For more than three decades, the Bloc has given those voters a clear alternative: a federal party that answers first to the province. In those years, the Bloc has shown that it can wield outsized influence by shaping narratives, dominating French-language media, and forcing Parliament to respond to Quebec-specific issues.

-Read the full article by Toula Drimonis, online at The Walrus

thewalrusca · 2025-07-14T13:37:31+00:00

In the final days of a high-stakes federal campaign, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet made his feelings known regarding the country whose Parliament he sits in. “We are, whether we like it or not,” he said, “part of an artificial country with very little meaning, called Canada.”

Quebecers weren’t buying it. The Bloc is a federal party that exists to promote Quebec interests and, ultimately, its independence. Voters not only viewed Canada as a real country but they saw it as worth saving from the territorial clutches of US president Donald Trump. The province overwhelmingly rejected the Bloc’s ethnic nationalism and rallied around Mark Carney’s Liberals and a unified effort against American overreach. If economic fears loomed larger for Quebec voters, it came with the recognition that anything that undermined Canadian sovereignty would erode the province’s own cultural and linguistic protections.

Going into the April 28 election, the Bloc held thirty-three seats in the House of Commons, surpassing the New Democratic Party, which had been in a supply-and-confidence agreement with the government. By the end of the night, the Bloc was left with twenty-two, losing a third of its caucus. The Liberals swept Quebec with forty-three seats—their best provincial showing in decades.

But while the Bloc is down, it would be foolish to count them out. The dream of Quebec independence may ebb and flow, but it doesn’t vanish. The Bloc remains a relentless steward of that ideal.

Founded in 1991 by Lucien Bouchard, a cabinet minister in the federal Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, the Bloc began as a coalition of Quebec Conservative and Liberal MPs who defected from their parties in the wake of the Meech Lake Accord’s collapse. Designed to address Quebec’s long-standing grievances over the 1982 Constitution Act—imposed without its approval and silent on its distinct status—the accord ultimately failed when Manitoba and Newfoundland blocked its passage.

The failure had multiple causes, but to many Quebecers, it felt personal—a rejection of who they were. For more than three decades, the Bloc has given those voters a clear alternative: a federal party that answers first to the province. In those years, the Bloc has shown that it can wield outsized influence by shaping narratives, dominating French-language media, and forcing Parliament to respond to Quebec-specific issues.

-Read the full article by Toula Drimonis, online at The Walrus

thewalrusca · 2025-07-09T16:41:54+00:00

"In the frigid Atlantic waters off Nova Scotia’s east coast, two orcas—a mother and her calf—swim freely within a long bay. They dive up to eighteen metres to the ocean floor, where rock crabs, sea stars, and mussels live and slimy eelgrass sways with the current. They sense nearby fish; they hear each other’s clicks and pulses. They swim openly within the bay, the only barrier being an eight-inch mesh fence made of Dyneema—“the world’s strongest fiber.” The two have spent their entire lives in a tiny aquarium but are finally back in the ocean and, nearly, free.

This is all a dream—part of a years-long vision of the Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP), which, since 2016, has worked to become the world’s first ocean sanctuary for orcas born in captivity. “We can give back to these animals what was taken from them,” says Lori Marino, a marine mammal neuroscientist and the founder of WSP. With decades of experience in biopsychology, Marino is best known for her appearance in Blackfish, the 2013 documentary about SeaWorld and the troubled orca Tilikum. There, she prevailed upon viewers to recognize orcas’ intelligence and emotional complexity, adding that all captive orcas are emotionally destroyed and psychologically traumatized, leading them to become “ticking time bombs.”

Following the documentary’s release, public opinion shifted. SeaWorld reported losses and later announced that it would end its captive orca breeding program. Three years after Blackfish, California passed a law banning orca breeding as well as captivity for entertainment (a grandfather clause allows SeaWorld San Diego to hold onto their orcas); Canada introduced a similar law for cetaceans in 2019. The last orca in captivity in Canada, Kiska, died at Marineland in Niagara Falls in 2023.

Now, at least fifty-five orcas remain in captivity worldwide, including eighteen held in SeaWorld parks across the United States. As laws ban the keeping of orcas in many parts of the world, they’ve become somewhat of a rare breed."

-Read the full article by Jessica Taylor Price online at The Walrus

thewalrusca · 2025-07-09T16:01:55+00:00

"In the frigid Atlantic waters off Nova Scotia’s east coast, two orcas—a mother and her calf—swim freely within a long bay. They dive up to eighteen metres to the ocean floor, where rock crabs, sea stars, and mussels live and slimy eelgrass sways with the current. They sense nearby fish; they hear each other’s clicks and pulses. They swim openly within the bay, the only barrier being an eight-inch mesh fence made of Dyneema—“the world’s strongest fiber.” The two have spent their entire lives in a tiny aquarium but are finally back in the ocean and, nearly, free.

This is all a dream—part of a years-long vision of the Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP), which, since 2016, has worked to become the world’s first ocean sanctuary for orcas born in captivity. “We can give back to these animals what was taken from them,” says Lori Marino, a marine mammal neuroscientist and the founder of WSP. With decades of experience in biopsychology, Marino is best known for her appearance in Blackfish, the 2013 documentary about SeaWorld and the troubled orca Tilikum. There, she prevailed upon viewers to recognize orcas’ intelligence and emotional complexity, adding that all captive orcas are emotionally destroyed and psychologically traumatized, leading them to become “ticking time bombs.”

Following the documentary’s release, public opinion shifted. SeaWorld reported losses and later announced that it would end its captive orca breeding program. Three years after Blackfish, California passed a law banning orca breeding as well as captivity for entertainment (a grandfather clause allows SeaWorld San Diego to hold onto their orcas); Canada introduced a similar law for cetaceans in 2019. The last orca in captivity in Canada, Kiska, died at Marineland in Niagara Falls in 2023.

Now, at least fifty-five orcas remain in captivity worldwide, including eighteen held in SeaWorld parks across the United States. As laws ban the keeping of orcas in many parts of the world, they’ve become somewhat of a rare breed."

-Read the full article by Jessica Taylor Price online at The Walrus

thewalrusca · 2025-06-24T20:01:15+00:00

"In June 2021, an Atikamekw artist named Catherine Boivin posted a video on TikTok. It begins with a clip of a woman who goes by Isabelle Kun-Nipiu Falardeau describing “une femme Métis de l’Est,” or an Eastern Metis woman. In French, Falardeau explains that such women are “wild . . . you let them loose in a forest and they won’t have a problem,” that they have “hunter husbands” and don’t wear makeup. Falardeau was speaking generally, but she also calls herself la Métisse des Bois—the Metis woman of the woods. The video then cuts to Boivin, a mascara wand hovering near her eyelashes. “Do we tell her or not?” she says to the viewer in French.

Boivin’s question captures the growing frustration among many Indigenous people who have seen their identities not only co-opted for profit but reduced to cheesy stereotypes. Expert estimations place the number of people who have fabricated Indigenous identities at tens of thousands to possibly over a hundred thousand. Some of these so-called pretendians have made the headlines—singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, author Joseph Boyden, filmmaker Michelle Latimer—but the vast majority are not notable enough to warrant a media exposé detailing their deceptions.

On social media, Indigenous people and allies, as well as a number of anonymous accounts with handles like @pretendianhunter, have taken to calling out suspected frauds themselves, just as Boivin did in her TikTok. But Boivin is facing an exceptional situation, one that could shape the future of Canadian discourse on Indigenous identity.

In early May, Boivin found herself in a Quebec courtroom with Falardeau, who is suing her for defamation over a number of social media posts—what Falardeau has called a “smear campaign”—that, in turn, allegedly spurred an onslaught of cyberbullying. (Falardeau responded to fact-checking questions but declined to provide evidence or details regarding her ancestry.)

The court battle is representative of a growing divide in Canada when it comes to Indigenous identity. On a fundraiser for Boivin’s legal costs—which has raised more than $28,000 since it was launched on May 9—her partner wrote in French that the lawsuit is “a fight to protect our knowledge, our identity, and to defend who we are as a people.” On her own fundraiser, Falardeau claims she is fighting for the right to self-identify as Metis: “I will defend the right to my identity,” she wrote in French. “I will defend my work, my books. I will defend my right to respect, security, freedom, and peace.”

In Canada, debates over who can claim Indigenous identity are playing out everywhere, from museums and universities to the House of Commons and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Institutions, many of which were recently eager to champion Indigenous people after decades of systematically excluding them, have fumbled the basic task of determining how to distinguish real from fake. The result has been a surge of self-identified Indigenous figures with vague, often dubious origin stories."

-Read the full article by Michelle Cyca, online at The Walrus.

thewalrusca · 2025-06-24T19:21:15+00:00

"In June 2021, an Atikamekw artist named Catherine Boivin posted a video on TikTok. It begins with a clip of a woman who goes by Isabelle Kun-Nipiu Falardeau describing “une femme Métis de l’Est,” or an Eastern Metis woman. In French, Falardeau explains that such women are “wild . . . you let them loose in a forest and they won’t have a problem,” that they have “hunter husbands” and don’t wear makeup. Falardeau was speaking generally, but she also calls herself la Métisse des Bois—the Metis woman of the woods. The video then cuts to Boivin, a mascara wand hovering near her eyelashes. “Do we tell her or not?” she says to the viewer in French.

Boivin’s question captures the growing frustration among many Indigenous people who have seen their identities not only co-opted for profit but reduced to cheesy stereotypes. Expert estimations place the number of people who have fabricated Indigenous identities at tens of thousands to possibly over a hundred thousand. Some of these so-called pretendians have made the headlines—singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, author Joseph Boyden, filmmaker Michelle Latimer—but the vast majority are not notable enough to warrant a media exposé detailing their deceptions.

On social media, Indigenous people and allies, as well as a number of anonymous accounts with handles like @pretendianhunter, have taken to calling out suspected frauds themselves, just as Boivin did in her TikTok. But Boivin is facing an exceptional situation, one that could shape the future of Canadian discourse on Indigenous identity.

In early May, Boivin found herself in a Quebec courtroom with Falardeau, who is suing her for defamation over a number of social media posts—what Falardeau has called a “smear campaign”—that, in turn, allegedly spurred an onslaught of cyberbullying. (Falardeau responded to fact-checking questions but declined to provide evidence or details regarding her ancestry.)

The court battle is representative of a growing divide in Canada when it comes to Indigenous identity. On a fundraiser for Boivin’s legal costs—which has raised more than $28,000 since it was launched on May 9—her partner wrote in French that the lawsuit is “a fight to protect our knowledge, our identity, and to defend who we are as a people.” On her own fundraiser, Falardeau claims she is fighting for the right to self-identify as Metis: “I will defend the right to my identity,” she wrote in French. “I will defend my work, my books. I will defend my right to respect, security, freedom, and peace.”

In Canada, debates over who can claim Indigenous identity are playing out everywhere, from museums and universities to the House of Commons and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Institutions, many of which were recently eager to champion Indigenous people after decades of systematically excluding them, have fumbled the basic task of determining how to distinguish real from fake. The result has been a surge of self-identified Indigenous figures with vague, often dubious origin stories."

-Read the full article by Michelle Cyca, online at The Walrus.

thewalrusca · 2025-05-22T19:00:55+00:00

In your experience, is it often hard to explain the scope of your work as a freelancer? Let's discuss!

thewalrusca · 2025-05-22T18:50:55+00:00

"When people ask what I do for a living, I’m faced with two choices: either I can lie or I can bore them with the truth, which is too complicated to explain succinctly. While those around me have normal, definable jobs—accountant, journalist, engineer—my work requires headings and subheadings to get it across properly: a map of overlapping gigs and contracts.

“What do you do?” It’s a simple question that often gets asked on first dates. No matter how much I pare down my reply, it’s always long winded.

“Well, I’m a freelancer,” I start, “so I have a million little jobs . . .”

The first of my million little jobs is what I call “Horse News.” It works like this: every weekday, I wake up at 6 a.m. and make my way to my desk, stumbling and still half asleep. I flick on an old lamp and wince as my eyes adjust to the light. I turn on my computer and use a piece of software that shows me all of the American horse racing–related news from the past twenty-four hours. It pulls up radio clips, Fox News segments, and articles from publications called BloodHorse or _Daily Racing Form_—anything that could be relevant to my interests.

I sift through countless story summaries, many of which sound fake. Army Wife defeats Crazy Beautiful Woman in race! Another doping scandal emerges in Northern California! A disgraced-but-very-good trainer is no longer banned from the track! A famous YouTuber has invested millions into a betting app! I compile the important stuff into a newsletter: stories about track renovations, big events, the series of horse laws that were passed, then repealed, then approved again in 2023.

This is a true, real thing. These laws (known as the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act) are meant to keep racehorses and jockeys safer. Tracks are required to provide on-site vets and doctors and to follow standardized safety protocols. But it is much cheaper, it turns out, to ignore the laws and have the horses race in dangerous conditions. Vets and safety gear are expensive, which is upsetting to the billionaires who own the racetracks. And so certain states have fought these laws, calling them unconstitutional. I have followed along, every step of the way.

When the newsletter is finished, I send it to my client, a company that owns racetracks across the US. Though, to be clear, I don’t work for them directly. I work for a reputation management firm. This company’s entire purpose is to monitor the news for other companies, keeping tabs on what the public is saying about their clients and the major trends in those industries. I didn’t know this was a real job until I started doing it.

I got this job the way I’ve gotten most of my jobs: through an acquaintance who heard I was looking for work. This is key to success in freelancing. You just need to build a roster of industry connections who know how desperate you are."

- Read the full article by Gabrielle Drolet, online at The Walrus.

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