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Bruce Dowbiggin

Vaccine Coercion: But Everyone Wears The Ribbon!

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“Despite being double vaccinated, wearing a mask, and taking all the precautions I could…  I tested positive for COVID.  I don’t have any symptoms, but am staying in until I get the green light from the Docs.  I will be ready to go for @49ers on 9/12 @Lions @NFL .” Barry Sanders greatest NFL running back ever

“Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) has announced they will require proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test result in order to enter any of their arenas, stadiums or restaurants.”  https://www.si.com/nba/raptors/news/toronto-raptors-covid19-vaccine-test-scotiabank-arena-mandate-mlse

From the bureau of WTF?: You can take the juice, wear the mask, not really feel sick— but still test positive for Covid-19? Barry Sanders is sadly unique. Yet the company owning the Raptors, Maple Leafs, Toronto FC etc (and now the Blue Jays) won’t let you in their building if you don’t show that you’ve taken the same jab?

Anyone reading these stories two years ago would have been shocked to learn that Sanders’ story doesn’t disqualify the overreach by MLSE. Or that Sanders’ story doesn’t at least lend some credibility to people with doubts about the various vaccines being pumped into people on pain of social ostracization.

But to today’s vaccine virtue squad, it’s more important to stigmatize people than to develop a coherent response to Covid, its origins and treatments (other than vaccines) to stop this social catastrophe. Wear the ribbon!

Pop quiz: Have you seen anyone in leadership— from PM to local doctors— come out and talk about preventive steps to avoid the worst of #COVID19? Lose weight. Be exercising outdoors. Take vitamin D3. Consult about early treatment cocktail options. Me neither. Instead it’s all death, lockdown and gagging with masks as if you can eradicate a virus.

People in 2019 would also be shocked to learn that this draconian banning of fellow citizens comes when the seven-day moving average of deaths from Covid in Canada the past month is in single digits per day. Saturday there was just one death reported— in a nation of 36 million. (Sunday there were 2) Heads to the bunkers, everyone! Variants are a-coming.

In addition 1.4 million Canadians who caught the virus and recovered have antibodies as strong— or stronger— than the vaccines. Millions more have immunity from exposure and don’t know it because we don’t test for antibodies. Only the PCR’s random strands of virus that can neither make us sick nor be transmitted.  But we insist they need to “wear the ribbon”.

Yes, yes… the vaunted PCR cases are exploding again. (For how worthless they are read here and here and here .) After shutting down the hospitals and clinics in 2020 the system is now overflowing with Covid and many other urgent patients. You can lie on a gurney for three days to get a room. (When two people die of Covid in a day in Canada.)

Politicians are reaching for hyperbole to distract from the utter mess they’ve fashioned.  They call those rejecting the same vaccine that Barry Sanders received social pariahs, death-bringers, a menace to the healthcare system.  Note that in all this blame game no Panic Porn purveyor has thought to bring similar sanctions against others who are wilfully putting healthcare in peril. Morbidly obese COVID-19 patients are 60 percent more likely to die or require intubation, compared with people of normal weight. In many cases their condition is a lifestyle choice.

You going to deny them services and freedom of movement till they lose weight? I mean, they’re a drag on health system, right? Smokers too. Why not a passport to stigmatize smokers and drug abusers? Or people with hepatitis, herpes, STDs, AIDS and a raft of other infectious conditions that the healthcare system treats no-questions-asked? Why not a passport for mental patients? They all cost healthcare a fortune.

Why stigmatize only non-vaxxers who’ve seen the Barry Sanders story and gone, “Hmm?” Because sweeping up the obese and people with co-morbidities would involve sweeping up friends of the Church Ladies. That might stigmatize their pals who can’t get control one or many conditions, diseases or habits. Can’t have that. Better target people we don’t know.

Plus, snitching on the skeptical allows those in control to pretend their policies still have a shred of credibility left. Passports and banning are about erasing the failed WHO/ CDC/ HealthCanada promises of the past.

  1. Nothing to worry about

  2. 15 days to flatten curve w/ lockdown

  3. Masks, hand sanitizers mandatory

  4. 6-foot distance mandatory

  5. PCR tests/ tracing will find the virus

  6. Defeat Trump

  7. More lockdowns.

  8. Vaccine will stop virus

  9. 2 Vaccines will stop virus

  10. 2 Vaccines w/ mask will stop virus

  11. First booster 8 months later will stop virus

  12. Vaccine passport option

  13. Vaccine passport mandatory

  14. Snitch on your neighbours

  15. Lockdowns again

All of which citizens complied with, sacrificing family life, career and mental stress to make their wish list come true. But now, thanks to the Barry Sanders and others, the gullible are saying the PM who called an election in the midst if this has no vaccine clothes. That makes them subversives who need to be punished.

So go all-out against the people who defy authority. Who question your brilliance and insight. They must be denied their rights to satisfy our cloying fear that the virus might strike us in our prime (although this never occurred to you in previous pandemics) . So if you are unvaccinated, you will soon not be able to:

Have a federal job

Be employed in a federally regulated industry

Travel by plane or train

Go to a restaurant or bar

Go to the gym

Go to a concert or sports event

The scolds have a ready answer for all this overreach. As one Twitter voice said, “I’m good with that list. But then, I believe that your “freedom” stops when you can infect me, old people, children who can’t get vaccinated yet, and immunocompromised. #VaccinesSaveLives

You see. My freedom extends to the world. Yours is killing people. It’s all about me in my masked, locked-down safe space. Believing masks work (Not really ). Believing vaccines are the solution. Believing my neighbour is a quasi-killer. Believing children are spreaders. Believing Theresa Tam and the provincial health poobahs. Slopping up the agitprop of CBC and the Toronto Star as truth. Barry Sanders? Who he?

The election of a Conservative government might apply a gentle tap on the brakes, but Erin O’Toole still loves him some Ottawa approval. So expect him to go the route of Doug Ford and Jason Kenney, not Ron DeSantis, if he’s elected. Wetting himself at his own shadow if CBC hammers him.

The real question, one we’ve asked since April of 2022, is how does this all end ? Does it end? With the flu season coming in about six weeks are we about to do hourly play-by-play on another virus— something we never did before Covid-19? Scare the bejabbers out of everyone again? Extrapolate every full ICU into a national crisis? Promote unicorn cases into coming trends? Urge masks, lockdowns and vaccines for all?

It would appear hard for the people in government, media and healthcare now proposing fatwas on the vaccine skeptical to take a backward step. Their power over the sheeple has been reinforced. Why give it up?  Those who submitted willingly since April 2020 will soon discover that reining in their betters is about as difficult as tackling Barry Sanders in the open field.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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2025 Federal Election

How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

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Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.

Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.

Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.

The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.

Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.

It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.

The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status.  As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.

This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.

Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.

What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.

A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.

Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.

For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.

It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.

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.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Is HNIC Ready For The Winnipeg Jets To Be Canada’s Heroes?

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It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).

Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.

The  question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.

But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.

Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.

But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.

But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?

In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.

It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.

Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?

As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.

So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.

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.

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