Unpublished Newswire

Organizers of an artistic performance in Toronto allege that China’s communist government is behind a series of “non-credible” threats to the venue that forced the cancellation of a show on Sunday and led to all remaining shows being axed. Falun Dafa Association of Toronto (FDAT), the show presenter, also castigated the Four Seasons Centre, home to the Canadian Opera House Corporation, for its caving to the apparent hoaxes. “Cancelling the show under such circumstances sets a concerning precedent that foreign actors can disrupt Canadian business operation and society at will,”  FDAT...

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the colonies that would later become Canada were awash in a sea of rum. Millions of litres of that sugar-based liquor were imported every year to supply its comparatively small population of colonists and Indigenous people, while thousands of additional litres flowed from colonial distilleries. Why rum, and why so much of it? The simple answer is that it was cheap and plentiful in eighteenth-century North America. Thought to be good for the health, at least when imbibed in moderation, readily available liquor was generally seen as a good...