How shall we describe 2024, the year just past? How about the Year the Fever Broke?

Entering 2024 the Western world was still under the social contagion launched by the election of Barack Obama as president of the U.S. Since 2008, when the African/Hawaiian become the first black president and the Nobel committee gave him the peace prize for his pigmentation, a fever of progressivism came over the institutions of the West. Woke World became your world.

Observes @feelsdesperate: “The big lib project, from Obama on… would partner with NGOs, media, and academia to create a new liberal economic order legitimized by the continuous generation of *Progress* (i.e. institutionally approved identity-narcissism and new liberatory adventures) while civil liberties… were continuously undermined.”

By January of 2024 the fever still raged in the body politic. “Instead of Obama’s virtuous rhetoric from 2008 they’re now in a far darker place. They are joined to the civilizational suicide of White Fragility promoter Robin DiAngelo. Or Ibrahim X. Kenji’s bilious racism. Or Hamas’ death cult. With no escape.”

Appropriately this fever had been spread by a Chinese-produced virus which, for almost three years, subdued the citizenry, suspended civil rights and forced many to die lonely deaths in the ICU. A dubious vaccine, forced on people who didn’t need it, harmed as many as it helped. As we wrote our 2024 look-forward, the spreading contagion carried fashionable labels. DEI, ESG, BLM, LGBTQ and IPCC. It demanded the deconstruction of pronouns, gender, energy, immigration, meritocracy. Science became settled. Men could have babies. Children could decide gender. White people were Nazis. The expert class was omnipotent.

In this cultural hallucination Hollywood figures were thrust into leadership positions (George Clooney, Will Ferrell, the cast of The View). Blue-check Disney was destroying classic films with Woke updates. Jay-Z and Diddy were black cultural icons. The demented Joe Biden was aimed toward a second term as POTUS.  Greta Thunberg was still a media go-to on climate. The Ukrainians were dutifully being slaughtered to protect the natural gas interests of the West.

Elon Musk was an upstart dictator about to bankrupt Twitter. Heroes were to be prosecuted . And Trump was yesterday’s man.

In Canada, virtue— slavishly supporting radical positions aimed at destroying western society— was all. The douche dauphin Justin Trudeau, held an iron grip on the PMO, ergo he controlled the nation’s politics. Quebec was still getting its usual billions in equalization from ROC. The Indigenous were entitled to claim Crown lands for the alleged sins of the past . The most noble position one could aspire to was having your eight-year-old chemically or physically castrated to satisfy the whims of teachers’ unions and mid-level bureaucrats.  .

It was worth your life to speak up against this corrupt ruling class. In Canada you were a racist/ fascist for supporting the Conservatives but praised for loving China. In England they put citizens in jail for Facebook tweets that offended protected groups. Saying you’d vote for Donald Trump again as president was tantamount to expulsion from social media.

Legacy media still ruled these narratives, even though they’d lost half their audience. (In Canada that was more like 75 percent of its audience.)

Then, as 2024 progressed, something remarkable happened. Almost as one, it occurred to the hapless middle class that they were the victims of an enormous practical joke fostered by the Marxist shills of “NGOs, media, and academia”. What caused the shift? Largely fatigue with people you wouldn’t hire to clean your pool. Aggravation with woke marketing. Discovering political insiders were suddenly obscenely rich.

Whatever the reason, the Fever broke. A new consensus saw the unrepentant Trudeau was an empty suit determined to achieve destruction of the Liberal party. And, with the NDP, to take down Canada. The fainting goats of elite Ottawa recognized with a start that their Trudeau lassitude the past decade had left the country wide open to outside forces such as Trump’s tariff threats.

By the end of 2024 it was clear that letting another nation pay for your defence was abdicating your sovereignty. That allowing a porous border and foreign money-laundering was bound to get you discovered. That unlimited social experimentation sapped a culture’s resistance. Trump certainly noticed.

Certain things became clear. Canada could not win a tariff war with Trump. Quebec understood that if swallowed by America their precious culture will be reduced to Louisiana with poutine. That a 50-cent dollar made Canada a third-world economy. No wonder Kevin O’Leary talked of economic merger with the U.S. The other options are going, going and gone.

South of the border the Fever broke harder. Biden was revealed to be non compus mentus, not “sharp as a tack” per the Left media. Someone else— no one knew who— was running the government. They noticed that Trump may be batshit crazy, but that wanting him dead seemed a tad excessive. That re-working every commercial or TV cast to represent 70-80 percent blue-check priorities was obnoxious to both traditional audiences and the groups it sough to promote.

That all the trillions spent so far on climate mediation hadn’t cleaned the air or water but had certainly enriched the political elite. That Ukraine was about natural gas, not Russian imperialism. That RFK, the iconoclast son of a Democratic dynasty, had made common cause with both Trump and Musk

Panicky progressives and their media shills sought to keep the fever alive. Sensing Trump might actually win re-election Obama induced Clooney to front a coup to replace Biden— who’d soiled himself in a June debate— with a fatuous black/ Indian woman who spent high school in Montreal. It worked about as well as you could have predicted.

Which was when “unknown parties” tried to assassinate Trump. Twice. They also produced a progression of fake polls that showed Kamala ahead of Trump when she was nowhere close. In short, they spent all their credibility on losing propositions, and now… heeere’s Donald!

Trump/ Trudeau is a fever all its own. Canadians fed a diet of MSNBC eye-rollers think it’s the end of our culture. Whether it’s better or worse we will find out in the next 12 months. But the reason Trump is here is that your friends who spread the Fever can no longer be trusted. Turning off the porch light doesn’t convince the dangerous opportunists not to ring your door bell.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

It’s a Xmas holiday thing. With nothing better to do over the extended break Canadians watch the World Junior Hockey Championships. Little things get big very quickly. So it’s probably a good idea to put team Canada’s 3-2 SO loss to Latvia into some perspective.

After beating plucky Latvia 10-0 in a game last year, the highly rated Canadians allowed Latvia to tie this game late in the third period. Then, after a scoreless overtime session, Latvia scored the only goal of the shootout on their eighth try at Canada’s goalie, 17-year old Jack Ivankovic.

Meanwhile, Linards Feldbergs stopped 55 shots over 65 minutes before adding eight more in the shootout. For Latvia it’s the pinnacle of their hockey year. For Canada it will be quickly forgotten if they pull things back together to make the final.

But for Canadian fans on holiday, unsettled by Donald Trump jibes about making them the 51st state, the loss portends something deeper and darker. Canada has owned the tournament for much of its being, winning five golds in the past decade. But now the U.S. is suddenly king-in-waiting, winners three times in that decade, including last year. They seem a lock to win again this year (despite losing to Finland).

Meanwhile some pundits are calling this edition of Team Canada its weakest in years. Realists point out that, were it not for playing in the NHL, Canada could still have Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini and Carter Yaremchuck, among others, in their lineup. And yes, the quality of all the nations in the tournament has risen. This is no longer shooting fish in the barrel.

And here there might be some traction for the argument that with all its hockey advantages, Canada is not developing its elite talent properly. Generally the U.S. (or that small portion of the country that likes hockey) has adopted a hothouse strategy, concentrating its best players in exclusive development silos.

That’s the typical European soccer model, too. Elite prospects as young as 14 are brought into development programs run by top-tier teams. Canada, meanwhile, spreads its elite players over 60-plus CHL teams, second-tier junior and the NCAA. Best-on-best occurs at tournaments, but most players are trained for the unique rigours of team play and travel at the NHL level. For all the spaghetti thrown at the wall too much doesn’t stick. Or so goes the theory.

But there’s also the new reality. As we wrote upon the death of Walter Gretzky in March of 2021, “The days of amiable Ab Howe, father of Gordie, smiling benignly as his son taught himself the game are over.” Walter taught Canada how to train seriously for the Soviets. Inadvertently, he created an expensive, elite training model favouring those with true cash to train prodigies.

“As a pioneer of more sophisticated training, Walter adapted a number of the practises used by the USSR team under Anatoli Tarasov in the 1960s, drills and strategies that stood Canadian conventional thinking on its head. As I wrote in my 1998 book “Of Ice And Men”, Gretzky was unsurprised when the 1972 Soviet team swamped Canada in the early going of their Super Series.

“People said, wow, this is incredible,” Wayne Gretzky remarked later. “Not to me it wasn’t. I’d been doing this drills since I was three years old. My dad was very smart.” Among the many innovations in his Brantford backyard rink were playing Wayne on defence as a tyke so he could learn to see the entire ice and how plays developed. It also increased Wayne’s peripheral vision.

There were many more drills and insights, as Walter’s many tributes have described. Wayne has always bridled when people attributed his success simply to instinct. He always said he trained for his craft in the same way a doctor or scientist might train. “I’ve put in almost as much time studying hockey as a medical student puts in studying medicine.” That training was often under Walter.”

Their success started a quest for the best techniques. “Power skating, off-ice training, ice rentals, new equipment, travel and coaching all became necessary to get a leg up on the competition. It was also very expensive. Having the resources to send your child to the top fitness gurus like Gary Roberts or to place them in a school like Shattuck St. Marys (as Sidney Crosby was) becomes a process costing tens— or hundreds— of thousands of dollars.

“Where the NHL was predominantly players from blue-collar backgrounds till the Euros arrived in the 1970s, today it is often constituted of young  men from families of means and education. The idea of the farming father of the six Sutter brothers affording his sons’ training today is highly improbable. Today’s NHL has a number of college-educated players and products of dedicated European training. 

“In that way, through no fault of Walter Gretzky, hockey has become a sport for families of means or friends with means. He taught parents that the proper training and equipment was imperative. And that doesn’t mean simply the rink in your backyard. With a new pair of skates costs $500, a stick costs $125  or a set of goalie equipment runs into a few thousand dollars you are losing a segment of the population to financial costs. And so Walter’s legacy of training development if forever tied to a big price tag.”

Players in other nations observed the same, too, and soon were applying intensive training methods from soccer and other sports. No wonder Canada is no longer gets walk-overs from the midrange nations.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.