Bruce Dowbiggin
Trump Effect: No One Gretz Off Easy Backing The Donald

It hasn’t been the greatest month for Wayne Gretzky. One one hand he has a Putin pal, Alex Ovechkin, systematically stalking his record for the most regular-season goals in an NHL career. After a slow start The Great Eight is now tracking Wayne like Carey Price tracking a mule deer (more on that later). When this is over he could have only 60 NHL records left!
On the other hand, his secret about supporting Donald Trump got out in the wake of Orange Man Bad re-possessing the White House. Yes, Gretz is a MAGA man, right down to the hat. While his son-in-law, LIV golfer Dustin Johnson, tees it up regularly with The Donald (they’re neighbours in the Palm Beaches) most of the hockey sweats were unaware that No. 99 votes for Trump. (In Wayne’s defence he votes GOP in the Hollywood congressional district which is like using a hair blower to melt the Columba Ice Field.)
Then, after Trump’s stunning (to some) win on Tuesday, pictures emerged on the Great One with his family at Mar A Lago celebrating the win. Janet Gretzky cooed, “Congratulations Mr. President Donald J Trump ♥️🤍💙🇺🇸 You did it, You deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world is a better place to have you as our Leader. Proud to be an American. Thank you for being such a great friend . May God keep watching over you ♥️🙏🏻♥️ Love our family to yours !”
The secret (to some) was out. Then hero of the Great White North, which has elected Justin Trudeau three times, melted down. Like this. “People should burn all their old hockey jersey and cards of this guy. A shame”. And those were the nice ones.
University of Alberta professor Robert Summers @RJSCity: “He’s been a pretty unlikable guy for a long time, this just further solidifies it. He was an amazing hockey player.” @ktownkeith: “Gretzky is disgusting and pathetic. I will celebrate when Ovechkin breaks his record. Also FYI, Mario was the best hockey player ever, not Whine Gretzky.”
Dave MacIntyre @dave_macattack: “Wayne Gretzky being at Cheeto’s inauguration party is disappointing in ways I can’t properly express in a tweet. And no, I don’t care that hockey culture is conservative. Being fiercely opposed to a fascist dictator should be the absolute floor for anyone with a conscience….He ain’t the GOAT for me anymore.”
“Not sure this guy is the Canadian icon and encapsulation of Canadian values that many think he is. The first red flag was his very partisan support for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives starting in the mid-2000s. No thanks, Wayne!”
Globe & Mail columnist Andrew Coyne, who was on an 0-50 heater during the election weighed in. @acoyne: “I have no problem with Gretzky being a conservative. I do have a problem with him hanging with Trump. Who, for starters, is not a conservative.”

There were some who defended him. My pal Ted Bird chirped back. @manofbird: “The pissants complaining about Wayne Gretzky attending Trump’s victory party are the same people who would’ve snitched on their own kids for playing road hockey during COVID.”
But it’s safe to say that as Canada prepares to defenestrate Trudeau in the next federal election, Gretz will not be invited to Rideau Hall for beaver tails with Justin. It’s likely he’ll experience the Bobby Orr blackout, becoming a non-person in Canada for getting too close to Trump.
In Orr’s case it was his published endorsement of Trump’s losing 2020 campaign that led to the shade being drawn over the greatest defenceman (IMO player) ever. “He’s the kind of teammate I want”.

Much like the Gretzky tsunami of condemnation, Orr took it in the cup, especially in liberal New England where he made his bones. “Not that Bobby Orr will care, but his endorsement of Donald Trump is one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever read in my life. I guess all I can say is that he seems to have a weak spot for conmen/future convicted criminals.”
In Canada it was no better for Orr. Here was Vancouver columnist Daniel Wagner: “In other words, Orr faces no harm from a Trump administration and is likely insulated from the harm that others have experienced. That doesn’t excuse his endorsement, but goes a long way towards explaining it.” In the Hockey News Ken Campbell tied Orr to the Jan. 6 riots. “Bobby Orr Was Part of the Problem. Now He Can Be Part of the Solution”.
In our column of Nov. 8, 2020, we pointed the wee hypocrisy of the liberal-left press box. “Just weeks after giving LeBron James’ political activism a tongue bath, the Globe & Mail sent in the goons for Orr. “Neither Bobby Orr nor any other athletes should be leading the political conversation” thundered Cathal Kelly.
Sure. Leave it to us. Other Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out. Others swore to sell off their precious Orr memorabilia as if Orr had been accused of throwing a Stanley Cup Final.”
A bitter Orr has taken a low profile since as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”
Longtime fans in Parry Sound dumped on him. “I just assumed that he was a good guy. Honestly it was heartbreaking for me to learn this about him. It just shattered my impression – I guess it was an illusion – it just shattered it… It kind of now, makes me rethink a lot of my hockey heroes … it’s just disappointing.”
The message is that in progressive Canada it doesn’t pay for even the greatest hockey heroes to diverge from their Trudeaupian orthodoxy. As Canadiens star goalie Carey Price learned when he dared to disagree with Trudeau’s plans to seize guns.

“I love my family, I love my country, and I care for my neighbour,” Price wrote in a published post. “I am not a criminal or a threat to society. What @justinpjtrudeau is trying to do is unjust… Thank you for listening to my opinion.”
We commiserated with him in our column at the time. “Good luck with that, Carey. Coming in the week when Quebec commemorates the 2014 École Polytechnique massacre, the political message backfired. Quebec’s media exploded against the man who was so recently their hero. Price tried to clarify his stand.
“My views are my own, and I do believe in them,” he tweeted. “The only reason I bring up this issue is because it is what’s being brought up now and not out of disrespect to anyone.” That brought the Habs belatedly to protect him. “Carey was not aware of the unfortunate timing on his statement. The Montreal Canadiens wish to express their sincere apology to any and all who have been offended or upset by the discourse that has arisen over this matter in recent days.”
But the message is clear. Whether you’re Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr or Carey Price, Canada’s Woke chorus will not abide insubordination to their cause. That includes much of the media. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men , they can’t handle the truth. So shut up and pass the puck.
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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. 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 . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
2025 Federal Election
Trump Has Driven Canadians Crazy. This Is How Crazy.

“Liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler than saying something like, ‘Please lower my taxes.’”— Greg Gutfeld
Having lived 25 years in the West after 45+ years in the East we can now generalize on the state of the nation. In the West the attitude is to grasp the future. Not fear it. Accept risk and loss as partners. In the East the default sentiment is to fear the future. Think of every reason why it might fail.
Quebec fears losing its culture. Ontario fears losing its power. The Maritimes fear losing equalization money. Hence Danielle Smith and Doug Ford as contrasting symbols of leadership. But 2025 is something new.
Donald Trump’s unsparing assessments of modern Canada— “We don’t really want Canada to make cars for us, to put it bluntly. We want to make our own cars — and we’re now equipped to do that”— have exposed this fissure in the country. Is it him or is it us? Families and friendships are being destroyed by the response. As Canadians head to the polls it’s obvious that persuasion is not going to apply in this climate. Arguments are falling on deaf ears.
With a large segment of the population doubling down on a failed past it’s time to make an I-told-you list of the implications of letting Donald Trump scare you into voting for a re-run of the Liberal Party. Double this dread if the Liberals get a majority.
To those Boomers living off the equity in their paid-off homes, get ready to be taxed on the appreciation in your homes. While you cherish your stand-alone private residence, get ready for the neighbours to sell out to someone who will erect a six-storey, 36-unit condo on the property right next to you because “sustainable growth”.
Got someone under 50 in your life? The Carney Reflex is bad news. Adding debt and embracing the destructive Trudeau social positions is a killer for those looking to commit to a future in Canada. Should Poilievre lose the election and his seat expect a brain drain away from the failed state. And the prosperity they create to vacate as well.
To those who cherish free expression expect hate-speech laws like those in UK where police will arrest you in your homes for social-media comment hostile to the ruling Party. And even if you shut down your posts watch out for neighbours who will exploit snitch lines to get you out of the hood.

Buttressing the party line, Carney will restore CBC’s funding— and then some— to drown out any social media pointing out the indelicate facts about his Trudeau-sourced cabinet members. He’ll also keep propping up failing private media, preventing them from bankruptcy so long as they spew DEI 24/7/365.
For those who cried fake tears over the Rez school graves scandal, watch Liberals pass legislation that gives unelected leaders of indigenous communities veto power over development of Crown Lands. Expect the Liberals, trying to maintain the NDP vote they assumed this year, to resurrect the “genocide” label against Canadians and fly flags at half mast again.

If you hoped to get to the bottom of innumerable scandals on the Liberals watch— ranging from eco-theft to China infiltration— Carney will put the clamps on any inquiry. The steady stream of Canada’s wealth to third-world kleptocrats will become a flood.
To those who thought Mark Carney had cancelled the consumer carbon tax, prepare yourself to find out that he just reduced it and will come back full-throttle as soon as the Conservatives fire Pierre Poilievre. While Carney plays the Housing Saviour he will also use the Carbon Tax to make concrete and fertilizer way more expensive, thus boosting the cost of the 50,000 homes he will never build and farm land will go fallow.
With CPC out of the way, expect no significant moves to end Canada as the money laundering capital of the world, the global fentanyl hub, international home to organized crime heads and a reported 1 in 7,800 residents as members of organized crime.
Batten down the hatches as Carney’s Liberals use their mandate to maintain the immigration deluge, thereby destroying Canada’s support systems for health, infrastructure and burying western values.

Get set for all your fossil-fuelled vehicles and heating to be taxed into oblivion with the proceeds going to more bike lanes, clogged public transportation on unreliable electric vehicles. Expect listening to obnoxious Quebec politicians brag on their “clean” hydro power.
Speaking of vehicles, the Sheila Copps set mocked Poilievre’s vision of urban hell where cops tell you not to protect your goods in a home smash-and-grab or car-jacking. With police ceding the field to organized gangs it will be open season as courts and the Liberals abandon the middle class to obey DEI imperatives.
And most of all, welcome to a full-fledged constitutional crisis sparked by Alberta and Quebec that will make the 1980s federal/ provincial rumbles look like Sunday school. Both will seek referendums from their voters on sovereignty or some equivalent. As we suggested last month the best case could be the UK model of regional parliaments. Saskatchewan and Alberta could join with indigenous communities to demand a regional say on how their revenues are distributed. Expect purchased media to humble brag for the ruling Liberals.

The worst outcome of Carney as PM is Alberta gaining independence or, gasp, joining America. Because Quebec can never get a better deal outside Canada expect them to use any momentum on sovereignty to extort further concessions from what’s left of Canada.
But why believe us? According to the report released in early 2025 by Policy Horizons Canada — the Government of Canada’s in-house think tank— upward social mobility could become a relic of the past, with wealth and opportunity increasingly inherited rather than earned. Their scenario outlines a country where rising inequality, inaccessible housing, and a broken promise of meritocracy leave younger generations disillusioned, disconnected, and doubtful that effort alone can improve their lives.
So with scant days left in the campaign the problem for Conservatives is not that the Liberal base believes Carney and their heroes. They’ve seen enough to know Mr. Burns is a fraud. But with their #TDS the true believers will never admit to backing a lying, losing hype train. That would be like death to them. So they’re closing their eyes and hoping it will all be over soon and they can go back to Mr. Dressup. Just know their kids will never forgive them.
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.
2025 Federal Election
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

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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