Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ekaterina Rhodes, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria

Fossil fuel-dependent communities in Western Canada sit at the centre of Canada’s energy decisions. A just and inclusive clean energy transition will depend on how well governments listen to these communities and how fast they deal with the forces working to slow down energy decarbonization.

When it comes to the energy transition, public discussion tends to focus on emissions targets and policies to achieve them. These are important, but they’re just one aspect of the issue. In the oil- and gas-producing regions of Western Canada, conversations and concerns centre on livelihoods, identity and a nagging doubt: does anyone in power grasp rural realities?

Our ongoing research across the region — based on large citizen surveys to focus groups with municipal leaders and analysis of disinformation — highlights that emotions, narratives and perspectives of communities at the heart of Canada’s energy transition politics. As we mark the United Nation’s International Day of Clean Energy today, these voices demand attention before divides deepen further.

Focus groups with municipal staff from 10 oil- and gas-producing communities in British Columbia and Alberta revealed a delicate balancing act. They’re actively pursuing diversification — geothermal projects, hydrogen pilots, tourism expansion, data centres, manufacturing hubs, even rare-earth mineral processing — but most of these efforts build around, rather than beyond, oil and gas.

For many communities, the industry isn’t just jobs. It’s the economic engine funding hospitals, schools, arenas, roads and the very existence of their towns. Abstract talk of an energy transition can feel threatening when it overlooks this.

An Alberta official captured the fear bluntly:

“If you took oil and gas out of our community, I would suggest that there would be no hospital. There would be no schools. There would be no town. The only reason our community exists is to service the oil and gas industry.”

Deep emotional divides

Our 2025 survey of 3,400 residents in non-metropolitan communities across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba helps explains why climate policy ignites public backlash.

Affective climate polarization, which describes the emotional distance between those who support and oppose climate policy, rivals partisan left-right divides in intensity. These emotional climate identities help explain differences in support for climate policy that ideology alone can’t capture — particularly on the political right, where views on climate action are more diverse.

Policy design nuances are critical but complicated by affective polarization. Clean technology mandates and renewable electricity requirements tend to draw broader backing than carbon taxes, which are generally less popular and spark fierce resistance from right-leaning citizens.

Bundling climate policies with just transition measures, such as government-funded training for new jobs, community-owned energy, low-carbon incentives and public transit, can boost support for carbon pricing among the less polarized. However, for those with stronger emotional commitments, these just transition supports are often ineffective and can even trigger backlash.

Climate policy details matter less to people who score high on affective climate polarization. This helps explain why climate policy debates remain so deeply politicized: when emotional attachments to climate identities are strong, people respond more to elite cues and identity-based judgments than to policy design itself.

Municipalities grapple with limitations

Municipal officials battle structural voids. Officials in northeastern B.C. and Alberta juggle economic ambitions and governance limitations. They craft economic strategies and chase low-carbon investments, while being hamstrung by thin staffing and permitting delays stalling projects for years.

The sharpest barrier to the clean energy transition is the absence of coherent, regionally tailored visions from other levels of government. Federal clean growth plans promote critical minerals and hydrogen. Provincial strategies mix liquefied natural gas with renewables.

Locally, these strategies ring hollow — they seem contradictory and urban-centric. A municipal official in B.C. we spoke to decried a “one-size-fits- all” approach, citing propane-powered electric vehicle chargers in -40 C winters: “How do you gain the support … when even the province isn’t actually addressing” regional realities?

We’ve found that public attitudes differ by age, with youth embracing climate sustainability but veterans of oil-tied lives viewing transition as a “hard sell.” Without a common vision recognizing municipal governance limitations, community leaders hesitate on bold plans, wary of backlash in towns deeply connected to the promise and precarity of oil’s boom–bust cycles.

These tensions are being wilfully intensified by the fossil-fuel industry’s propaganda machine, which uses bad-faith arguments to suggest that climate policies and fossil-fuel communities are at odds.

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Read more:
Fossil-fuel propaganda is stalling climate action. Here’s what we can do about it

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These arguments often ignore the potential for a well-managed energy transition to improve public health, foster regional development and increase community resilience in these regions.

These are not the only narratives the fossil-fuel industry is using to slow climate action. Our research on Canada’s climate delays shows that fossil-fuel propaganda is being used to falsely portray Canadian oil as low-emissions, to urge Canada to wait for others to act first and to claim that climate policies are more detrimental to workers more than climate change.

Fostering a just energy transition

Governments must engage in genuine listening. Fossil-fuel communities aren’t barriers, but key participants in all energy transition risks and benefits. Co-creating policies with them rather than imposing top-down visions can help grow jobs, revenues and services in Western Canada.

Engagement with communities must also be emotionally attuned. Overcoming climate polarization means restoring trust via local messengers, consistent follow-through and deliberative forums like public assemblies.

At the same time, governments must confront misinformation and propaganda. They can can step in with policies that challenge disinformation legally, regulate ads and fund community energy transformations beyond fossil fuel extraction.

The International Day of Clean Energy spotlights promise. In Western Canada, it also spotlights peril. The energy transition’s success hinges on centring fossil fuel communities as protagonists, not peripherals — turning the transition into a shared opportunity.

Ekaterina Rhodes receives funding from Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Megan Egler received funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Rowan Hargreaves received funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Samuel Lloyd receives funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative. He also received funding from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions for a research project that inspired one of the papers included in this article.

– ref. How to include fossil fuel communities in Canada’s clean energy transition – https://theconversation.com/how-to-include-fossil-fuel-communities-in-canadas-clean-energy-transition-273331

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Hyounjeong Yoo, Instructor, School of Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University

When I was a child in South Korea, the New Year often began with a familiar song: “Kkachi Kkachi Seollal.” Seollal refers to the Lunar New Year, one of Korea’s most important family holidays, and kkachi means “magpie,” a bird associated with good fortune and joyful beginnings.

Singing the song, we believed, would invite pleasant guests into the home. For my siblings and me, those guests were usually our grandparents — and their arrival marked warmth, continuity and belonging.

Decades later, I now live in Canada, where distance has made such visits from my home country rare. Yet it feels as though the magpie has arrived again — this time on a global screen.

Netflix’s animated film KPop Demon Hunters, which follows adventures of a fictional Kpop girl group (Huntrix) whose members hunts demons by night, now has an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. This follows recent Golden Globe wins.

The film, created by Korean Canadian Maggie Kang, has musical production by Teddy Park and is voiced by Korean American actors such as Arden Cho, Ji-young Yoo and Audrey Nuna.

I’m interested in how KPop Demon Hunters marks a new phase of the Korean Wave. In this phase, folklore and women’s musical labour come together to challenge how Asian stories have long been sidelined in western media.

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Read more:
In music and film, a new Korean wave is challenging Asian stereotypes

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KPop Demon Hunters, like the success of some other recent popular Korean cultural production in the West, reflects diasporic creativity, notes scholar Michelle Cho, whose research focuses on on Korean film, media and popular culture.

Folklore as cultural authority

One of KPop Demon Hunters’s most striking features is its unapologetic use of Korean symbols. The demon hunters wear gat — traditional horsehair hats associated with scholars during Korea’s Joseon dynasty — while battling demons alongside the tiger, long regarded as a guardian spirit of Korea. These elements function as assertions of cultural authority.

Historically, western film and animation have often relegated Asian characters to stereotypes or erased them altogether through whitewashing.

By contrast, KPop Demon Hunters places Korean folklore at its narrative centre. The gat evokes dignity and discipline; the tiger represents protection and resilience. Together, they counter the lingering assumption that mainstream entertainment led by Asian characters is somehow niche or inferior.

By using distinctly Korean imagery — such as the satirical minhwa art style of the film’s Derpy Tiger — the movie firmly anchors itself in a specific Korean context that cannot be generalized or mistaken for a broad, pan-Asian esthetic.

For many in the Korean diaspora — including myself, who grew up rarely seeing people like me centred in mainstream media — this visibility carries emotional weight.

Research in media and cultural studies shows that representation matters not only for how groups are seen by others, but also for how people understand their own place in society. Seeing Korean symbols treated with respect offers a quiet but powerful form of cultural validation.

A matrilineal line of survival

One of the film’s powerful moments is the opening montage. Through a rapid succession of shamanic figures, flappers and disco-era performers, the sequence offers what can be read as matrilineal homage to female Korean musicians across generations.

As writer Iris (Yi Youn) Kim notes, citing a lecture by Asian American studies scholar Elaine Andres, this lineage echoes the real-life story of the Kim Sisters, often described as Korea’s first internationally successful female pop group. After losing their father during the Korean War, the sisters were trained by their mother, the renowned singer Lee Nan-young — best known for the anti-colonial song “Tears of Mokpo” — to perform at U.S. military bases as a means of survival.

The Kim Sisters later became regular performers on The Ed Sullivan Show, captivating American audiences while navigating racist expectations that framed Asian women as approachable, non-threatening and exotic.

Symbolic labour of representing a nation

The fictional group Huntrix inherits this legacy. Like the Kim Sisters, they are expected to embody discipline, professionalism and national representation.

For example, the film shows the group grappling with perfectionism and the intense discipline demanded of them, often maintaining polished public performances while suppressing personal vulnerability to fulfil their dual roles as idols and protectors. On a meta-narrative level, Huntrix is framed as a cultural representative through the use of Korean folklore imagery, like the gat and the tiger.

As “cultural diplomats” both on and off the screen, Huntrix carry not only entertainment value but also the symbolic labour of representing a nation to a global audience.

By embedding this lineage into a mainstream animated film, KPop Demon Hunters acknowledges that KPop’s global success rests on decades of women’s labour, sacrifice and negotiation with western power structures.

Beyond soft power

The film’s success arrives amid the continued expansion of the Korean Wave across global media.

South Korean cinema and television have already reshaped international perceptions through landmark works such as Parasite and globally streamed series like Squid Game. Netflix has publicly committed hundreds of millions of dollars to Korean content, signalling that this cultural shift is structural rather than fleeting.

KPop Demon Hunters demonstrates how Korean popular culture now moves fluidly across media forms — music, animation, film and streaming — while retaining cultural specificity. Its reception challenges the persistent assumption that stories rooted in Asian experiences lack universal resonance.

Recognition alone does not erase inequality, nor does it dismantle the racialized hierarchies built into global media industries either. But sustained visibility can matter. Studies suggest that repeated exposure to multidimensional, humanized portrayals of marginalized groups helps reduce racial bias by normalizing difference rather than exoticizing it.

Holding the sword and the microphone

While the film grows out of cultural histories shaped by U.S. military presence and Cold War politics, it reshapes those influences through diasporic storytelling that centres Korean voices and perspectives.

The magpie’s promise has finally been kept. Korean characters are no longer merely “pleasant guests” or supporting figures in someone else’s narrative. They are protagonists — holding the sword, the microphone and perhaps, one day, an Oscar.

Recently, I found myself rewatching KPop Demon Hunters while eating kimbap and instant noodles, the same comfort foods the characters share on screen. The moment felt small, but meaningful.

It reminded me of something one of my students once said: seeing this level of representation allows those who have long felt wounded by exclusion to finally feel seen.

Hyounjeong Yoo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. With ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ Korean women hold the sword, the microphone — and possibly an Oscar – https://theconversation.com/with-kpop-demon-hunters-korean-women-hold-the-sword-the-microphone-and-possibly-an-oscar-273443

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lei Yu, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, Western University

Our contemporary lives are saturated with vibes. You buy an ambient lamp to set a vibe, scroll through shopping sites selling “Tuscan vibes” or walk into a room and instantly sense this party has a buzzing vibe.

Yet when someone asks where the vibe comes from, the answer gets slippery. Is it in the light? Not quite. The light blends into the room, mixing with voices, colours and furniture. It’s not just one thing. Vibe is elusive. It spreads, permeates and connects. It’s in the relationship between things — how people, sounds and materials work together to create a shared feeling.

This is where literary and philosophical thinkers come in. For decades, they’ve explored such elusive sensations — the collective moods that organize everyday life even when we can’t quite name them.

Thinking seriously about vibe reveals something crucial: feeling is a shared form of knowledge shaped by environments — a human experience that may matter more as technology advances.

Long before vibes had a name

The word itself is quite recent. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, vibe appeared in the 1960s as U.S. slang shortened from vibration as a way of describing the emotional charge a person or place gives off.

To say something “has a vibe” is to say your body has vibrated to it in a particular way. It’s not just a thought but a physical adjustment: the space, sound or presence around you has moved you, subtly shifting how you feel.

Philosophers, of course, have long been interested in this same experience, though they called it by a different name. Long before vibe entered everyday speech, thinkers used words like atmosphere or ambience to describe the shared feeling that fills a space and shapes our response to it.

Vibe, in this sense, updates an old philosophical question: how does the world around us make itself felt, not just known?

One of the first modern critics to take this question seriously was Welsh cultural theorist Raymond Williams, who coined the phrase “structure of feeling” in 1954. Williams argued that every historical moment has its own emotional texture; the felt sense of what it’s like to live in that time.

It isn’t a single mood but the background hum of experience that connects people before they can describe it. Think of the buoyant optimism of the 1950s or the political turmoil of the 1960s, similar to what we’re experiencing now. We can sense the mood immediately.

For Williams, this “structure of feeling” made art and culture matter. They recorded not just what people thought but what life felt like.

The business of engineered feeling

A few decades later, German philosopher Gernot Böhme gave this idea a physical body. In The Aesthetics of Atmospheres, he argued that atmosphere is something we encounter, not imagine.

Walk into a cathedral, a café or a store, and the air itself feels different. Your senses are triggered and combine to shape how you experience the ambience. Atmosphere, as Böhme sees it, exists in the space between object and subject, sound and listener, light and body.

Companies and marketers understand this better than anyone. They don’t simply sell objects, they sell worlds of feeling.

Step into a boutique and you’re greeted not by bright displays but by a carefully tuned vibe. The air swirls with fragrance as a salesperson asks if you’d like to sample one. By answering, you fall into the illusion that the perfume alone produces your feeling, when in fact it’s the entire composition — soft jazz, the scent of citrus wood — that moves you.

We are enveloped in these designed environments, and we know that the same scent wouldn’t move us the same way elsewhere.

Brands no longer sell perfume or soap so much as an atmosphere of belonging. They offer a shared world we learn to recognize and desire through our senses. This commercial atmosphere reminds us that our emotional lives are increasingly shaped by design.

Why sensing atmosphere remains human

As artificial intelligence grows ever more capable of performing the tasks we once called creative — writing, composing, painting — it also changes how we think about perception itself.

If machines can analyze patterns and generate words or images, what remains distinctly human may not be our ability to produce things but to feel them. Catching the tone of a voice, noticing how light shifts across a face or sensing the vibe of a room are forms of knowledge no algorithm yet replicates.

That doesn’t mean AI and feeling must be opposites. As we outsource more of our labour to artificial systems, the art of cultivating and interpreting atmosphere may become even more essential.

Learning to name a mood, to notice how spaces and technologies shape emotion, could be one way we stay alert to what connects us as human beings. If AI teaches us efficiency, vibe-thinking teaches us sensitivity. It reminds us that meaning doesn’t live only in data or design but in the air between us — the moods we co-create, the atmospheres we learn to share, the vibe.

Lei Yu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. #GoodVibesOnly: The shared emotions we don’t quite name – https://theconversation.com/goodvibesonly-the-shared-emotions-we-dont-quite-name-269996

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Paul Yachnin, Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies, McGill University

When I teach Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, many students love the character Ophelia, and so do I. But the play seems to silence her just when readers need to know more about how she sees the world and her place in it — especially the young women in my classes.

After all, as Shakespeare critics have noted, Ophelia is a young woman who is bossed around by her brother and her father and slut-shamed and violently rejected by Hamlet — the prince who said he loved her.

Over the centuries, Ophelia appears frequently in popular western culture — recently in the Taylor Swift song of the same name, just as Ophelia imagery is referenced on Swift’s Life of a Showgirl album cover.

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The pre-Raphaelite muse who inspired Taylor Swift’s The Fate of Ophelia

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Hamlet‘s Ophelia goes mad in the wake of her father’s murder. She ends up falling into a brook and drowning, according to the weirdly poetic account delivered by Queen Gertrude:

“There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

There with fantastic garlands did she come

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples …”

Finally, Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, and the Hamnet movie that she wrote with director Chloé Zhao — now nominated for eight Academy Awards — have given me something important to share about Ophelia the next time I teach Hamlet.

Hamnet imagines origins of ‘Hamlet’

Hamnet, novel and movie, tells a compelling story about the origins of the play Hamlet in Shakespeare’s life as O’Farrell and Zhao imagine it, focused on the passionate relationship between Shakespeare and his wife and the tragedy of their son Hamnet’s death from plague at age 11.

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After the plague, Shakespeare imagined a world saved from poison, slander and the evil eye

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The film draws on sparse historical details, such as the name of Shakespeare’s wife Agnes (aka Anne Hathaway) and the known death of one of their children.

The film shows us the shattering grief they felt — and envisions Hamlet as a gift of remembrance for the dead Hamnet, a gift that seems strong enough to begin to heal the broken love between Agnes and William.

But in the book and the movie, the potential healing a work of art can catalyze has roots eleswhere: Agnes’s art of natural healing. From her late mother, a woman said by the locals to have been a “forest witch,” Agnes learned how to gather the flowers and herbs that grow in the forests near Stratford and how to concoct them into medicines able to heal the sick and broken bodies of her neighbours.

Regardless of the historical plausibility of Hamnet, could it possibly tell us something about Hamlet that we don’t already know?

In my analysis as a Shakespeare scholar, the film can open up a new way of seeing, loving and standing up for Ophelia, precisely by seeing Ophelia in dialogue with Hamnet’s Agnes.

Face to face with Ophelia

To understand that story, let’s consider that the theatre Shakespeare and his company made in London around the turn of the 16th century is
what I am calling a “thinking machine.”

This idea emerges from collaborative interdisciplinary research I’m doing that brings Shakespeare into conversation about social, environmental and political upheaval and explores the convergence of art, science, technology and human experience.

Why a machine? Like large language models (LLMs) today that train on huge archives of digital data, Shakespeare’s play-making didn’t just draw on previous plays, but also on literary, political and legal language, street talk, sermons, songs — the whole textual and spoken ecosystem of his time and the textual works of earlier ages.

However, unlike LLMs, which use predictive logic to generate what word should follow what word to generate a text, Shakespeare’s plays are human-made mechanisms with meanings that grow larger over time and more complex by way of the creative, networked intelligence of actors and many other interpreters.

Hamlet, itself drawing on a vast trove of literary and cultural works, has generated a multitude of different performances, different critical accounts and thousands of other works of art. The works Hamlet has inspired have also been able to loop back and bring to light aspects of the play that have passed unremarked in earlier interpretations.

Ophelia as healer

Eighteenth and 19th-century Germans, for example, took up Hamlet as a play about their own struggles toward nationhood. Ferdinand Freiligrath wrote a poem “Hamlet” (1844) with the line “Deutschland ist Hamlet.”

That new way of thinking about the play took root across many European nations. It even ended up giving voice to 20th-century Québecois aspirations toward nationhood in Hubert Aquin’s novel Prochain Épisode.

Hamnet, like other interpretations of Shakespeare’s work, can help advance our understanding of Ophelia, a character who has been at the centre of much feminist scholarship across fields for at least the past 40 years and has been a central concern in theatrical, literary and visual art for far longer.

Maggie O’Farrell’s Agnes, brought to life on-screen by Zhao in Hamnet, can begin to bring forward stronger readings of the role of Ophelia.

Building on earlier readings that amplify studies of corruption and governance, we might consider how Ophelia, like Zhao’s Agnes, also sets out to be a healer, but a healer of souls and of the nation itself.

In the play’s Act 4, Opelia’s “mad” talk, heard by ordinary people in the streets, is already stirring the people up against the corrupt monarchy.

Fighting moral disease

The “mad” Ophelia uses herbs and flowers to get at the moral disease that has infected Denmark. Like Hamlet, she is bent on bringing healthy nationhood back to Claudius’s “rotten” state.

The flowers and herbs she offers to the king and queen and to her brother Laertes, or simply imagines she is offering, include, among others, rosemary “for remembrance,” pansies “for thoughts,” and rue, “herb of grace.” They are medicinal drivers of reflection and repentance and offer rich opportunities for symbolic analysis.

But the king and queen don’t heed what the poor “mad” girl has to say, and the play ends with spectacular show of killing and dying. Both Ophelia and Hamlet fail to save Denmark from corruption and death. It is a tragedy, after all.

Let’s consider then that Gertrude’s weird poetic narrative about how Ophelia died was only the first attempt to tell her story.

It falls to me, my students and you to tell it more truthfully for our time — and Hamnet offers a pathway forward.

Paul Yachnin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Academy Awards 2026: How ‘Hamnet’ will help me lead Shakespeare classes about ‘Hamlet’s’ Ophelia – https://theconversation.com/academy-awards-2026-how-hamnet-will-help-me-lead-shakespeare-classes-about-hamlets-ophelia-273444

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Darryn DiFrancesco, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Human and Health Sciences, University of Northern British Columbia

Following the recent shooting of Renee Good by an agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States, the Donald Trump administration’s latest narrative suggests that “deluded wine moms” are to blame for the violence in ICE-related demonstrations in Minneapolis and across the country.

This mother-blaming is nothing more than an old trick with a new spin.

Organized gangs of ‘wine moms’

Earlier this week, a Fox News columnist wrote that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “antifa tactics” to “harass and impede” ICE activity. In the opinion piece, he claimed that “confusion” over the what constitutes civil disobedience is what “got 37-year-old Renee Good killed.”

Similarly, Vice-President J.D. Vance called Good a “deranged leftist” while a new acronym, AWFUL — Affluent White Female Urban Liberal — has appeared on social media.

In framing protesters like Good, a mother of three, as confused, aggressive and “delusional,” this narrative delegitimizes and pathologizes maternal activism. This strategy aims to divert blame from the U.S. government and its heavy-handed approach to immigration while also drawing on a centuries-old strategy of blaming mothers for social problems.

What makes a ‘wine mom?’

The term “wine mom” emerged over the last two decades as a cultural symbol of the contemporary white, suburban mother who turns to a nightly glass of wine (or two) to cope with the stresses of daily life.

The archetype goes back much further, reflected in literature, film and television characters, such as the wily Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development.

Yet, this motif is less light-hearted than assumed: a recent systematic review reveals a strong link between maternal drinking and stress, especially for working mothers.

While it would be easy to view problematic drinking as another example of maternal failure, it is important not to. Here’s why.

Mother-blame in history

Throughout history, mothers have found themselves in the midst of what American sociologist Linda Blum calls a “mother-valor/mother-blame binary.”

When behaving in accordance with socially acceptable and desirable parameters — that is with warmth, femininity and selflessness — mothers are viewed as “good.” When mothers violate these norms, whether by choice, circumstance or by virtue of their race or class position, they’re “bad mothers.”

Mother-blame ultimately reflects the belief that mothers are solely responsible for their children’s behaviour and outcomes, along with the cultural tendency to blame them when things go wrong. Yet, as Blum points out, “mother-blame also serves as a metaphor for a range of political fears.”

Perhaps the most striking example of this is the suffrage movement, which represented a direct challenge to patriarchal notions that women belonged in the domestic sphere and lacked the intelligence to engage in political discourse.

Suffragettes in the United Kingdom — many of them mothers — occasionally used extreme tactics, such as window-smashing and arson, while women in the U.S. obstructed traffic and waged hunger strikes.

These activists were framed as threatening to not only the establishment, but also to families and the moral fabric of society.

Ironically, despite the fact that women’s entry into politics led to increased spending and improved outcomes related to women, children, families and health care, scholars have found that mother-blaming was as common after the women’s movement as it was before.

Contemporary mother-blame

Beyond political matters, contemporary mother-blame is rampant in other domains.

Mothers have been blamed for a wide variety of their children’s psychological problems, including anxiety, depression and inherited trauma. In media and literature, mothers are often blamed for criminality and violence, reflecting the notion that “mothers make monsters.”
When children struggle in school, educators and administrators may blame the mother. Mothers risk being called “too passive” if they don’t advocate for their children or “too aggressive” when they do.

Similarly, the “crazy woman” or “hysterical mother” is a well-known trope in custody law, and mothers may be blamed even when their children are abused by others. Mass shootings? Mom’s failure. The list goes on.

By setting up mothering as a high-stakes endeavour, the cultural norm of mother-blame also serves to “divide and conquer.”

In my sociology research, I found that mothers on Facebook worked to align themselves with like-minded “superior” mothers, while distancing themselves from perceived “inferior” mothers. This feeds into the cultural norm of “combative mothering,” which pits mothers against each other.

An old trick with a new spin

The “wine mom” narrative builds on this historical pattern of mother-blame. It is meant to trivialize, delegitimize, divide and denigrate mothers who are, in fact, well-organized and motivated activists concerned for their communities.

While there are legitimate concerns around maternal drinking as a coping mechanism, the “wine mom” label has begun to represent something different. Mothers are reclaiming the title to expand their cause.

As @sara_wiles, promoting the activist group @redwineblueusa stated on Instagram: “They meant to scare us back into the kitchen, but our actual response is, ‘Oh, I want to join!’”

We should acknowledge that rather than causing societal problems, mothers have a long history of trying to fix them, even if imperfectly. Mothers like Renee Good are no exception.

Darryn DiFrancesco does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Blaming ‘wine moms’ for ICE protest violence is another baseless, misogynist myth – https://theconversation.com/blaming-wine-moms-for-ice-protest-violence-is-another-baseless-misogynist-myth-273786

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ronald W. Pruessen, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Toronto

One year into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, questions about his health and competence are as pervasive as the gilt sprawling through the Oval Office.

These questions grew even louder following his rambling speech this week at Davos, where he repeatedly referred to Greenland as Iceland, falsely claimed the United States gave the island back to Denmark during the Second World War and boasted that only recently, NATO leaders had been lauding his leadership (“They called me ‘daddy,’ right?”).

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Trump’s annexation of Greenland seemed imminent. Now it’s on much shakier ground.

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Do swollen ankles and whopping hand bruises signal other serious problems? Do other Davos-like distortions and ramblings — plus a tendency to fall asleep during meetings — reveal mental decline even more startling than Joe Biden’s in the final couple of years of his presidency?

This is not the first time in White House history that American citizens have had concerns about the health of their president — nor the first time that historians like me have raised questions.

The experiences of Trump’s predecessors remind us of the dangers inherent in the inevitable human frailty of the very powerful.

Presidents with physical health issues

Frailty can entail crises in physical health like William Henry Harrison’s 1841 death from pneumonia 32 days after his inauguration or Warren G. Harding’s heart attack and death in 1923.

Frailty can also involve weaknesses in brain function, which impact the capacity for analysis and problem-solving.

Bodily trauma can have obvious effects on presidential competence. Sometimes it’s a temporary impact, as with Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack and recovery. But sometimes it’s permanent: Woodrow Wilson never recovered his capacities after an October 1919 stroke, with White House leadership languishing for 18 months under his wife’s gatekeeping until his death.

In other cases, the effect of physical ailments on competence was less clear — and therefore debatable. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s heart problems during the Second World War grew serious enough to contribute to his April 1945 death. Did they also compromise his mental capacities during the controversial Yalta Conference?

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Did John F. Kennedy’s undisclosed Addison’s disease and medication regimes affect his ability to navigate major challenges like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Vietnam?

Mental health concerns

There have also been debates about the possible competence consequences of the behavioural tendencies and mental health conditions of several American presidents:

• Did Abraham Lincoln’s bouts of deep depression affect leadership capacities during multiple Civil War crises, including the Union defeat at Chancellorsville in May 1863 or during cabinet conflicts?

• Did Theodore Roosevelt’s impulsivity help shape what even his secretary of state once privately called the “rape” of Colombia in order to build the Panama Canal? (Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James said Roosevelt was “still mentally in the Sturm und Drang period of early adolescence”).

• Did Richard Nixon’s periodically high stress levels and alcohol consumption influence his decision-making on the Cambodian incursion of 1970 or the Watergate crisis?

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Read more:
Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States would have given Nixon immunity for Watergate crimes — but 50 years ago he needed a presidential pardon to avoid prison

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Questions and concerns about Trump’s physical and mental health, then, aren’t unique — even if the causes for concern are far more numerous than they were for previous presidents.

The impact of physical health on competence seems the less urgent of worrisome issues. While the Trump presidency as a whole has been notoriously prone to dishonesty, exaggeration and avoidance, the current medical team seems to be offering reasonable transparency.

Tests have been identified — for example, an October 2025 CT scan to assess potential heart issues — and relatively non-alarming diagnoses have been offered (“perfectly normal” CT scan results; common “chronic venous insufficiency” is responsible for swollen ankles).

More troubling is Trump’s mental health — both his full cognitive capacities and his psychological profile.

Cognitive issues?

In 2018 and 2025, Trump was given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) a screening tool for possible dementia. Despite the president’s claim to having “aced” the test, his score has not been revealed.

Numbers matter here. Out of a maximum 30 points, scores below 25 suggest mild to severe cognitive issues.

Of equal importance, the MoCA provides no insight into markers of mental competence, like reasoning and problem-solving. Well-established test batteries cover such ground (the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is widely used), but Trump has not likely worked through any. (Neither, to be sure, have any predecessors — though none have raised the concerns so evident in 2026.)

Unofficial diagnoses of personality characteristics also fuel debate about Trump’s competence and mental health. The scale of the president’s ego is a prime example of concern.

Psychological issues?

On one hand, in the absence of intensive in-person assessment, psychiatrists are understandably reluctant to apply the label of “narcissistic personality disorder” (NPD) as defined by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). On the other hand, many observers are also understandably struck by how Trump’s behaviour matches the DSM’s checklist of symptoms for the disorder.

The president clearly displays the grandiose sense of self-importance seen as a primary marker. Trump’s “I alone” and “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” boasts of earlier years have grown exponentially by 2025-26. He’s depicted himself as pope or “King Trump” bombing protesters.

More serious are his endless and false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, that he has the right to torch constitutional norms like “due process” that are enabling ICE abuses in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and that he can disregard the need for congressional approval on policies like reducing cancer research and other health programs.

Trump’s declaration that only “my morality” will determine his defiance of international laws and standards (as in threats to Greenland and Canada and his actual invasion of Venezuela) are also deeply troubling, especially given serious questions about that morality in terms of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Psychiatrists also associate NPD with a sense of open-ended entitlement. Comic examples emerge: rebranding the (now) “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center,” his lack of embarrassment in relishing the absurd FIFA Peace Prize or María Corina Machado’s surrender of her Nobel Peace Prize.

Brazenness

Trump’s willingness to trample upon rights within the U.S. and his apparent eagerness to disrupt and dismantle the building blocks of the post-Second World War international order are also possible signs of psychological problems.

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Read more:
Venezuela attack, Greenland threats and Gaza assault mark the collapse of international legal order

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He is equally brazen in fostering the wealth of his family and friends: for example, accepting emoluments like multi-million dollar donations for a White House ballroom that will surely be given Trump branding (to compete with the Lincoln Bedroom?) and using Oval Office prestige to turbo-charge massive real estate and financial ventures.

The Trump family’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency enterprise “earned” more than $1 billion in 2025, after all.

Against the backdrop of the looming mid-term elections, Trump’s ever-compounding ego and appetites remain of burning concern — along with his overall physical health and mental competence. Other presidents faced similar questions even without the current storm of scandals and extremes.

Will Trump relish the distinction of leaving his predecessors in the dust on this front too?

In the past, Ronald W. Pruessen has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Health and competence are shaping Trump’s presidency. What about his predecessors? – https://theconversation.com/health-and-competence-are-shaping-trumps-presidency-what-about-his-predecessors-273880

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Qian Liu, Assistant Professor of Law and Society, University of Calgary

I met Lufang Chen, a 30-year-old bank clerk based in the Fujian province of China, in 2016, after she had married a man she initially turned down years earlier. Although she preferred to remain single, and he was not her type anyway, she gave in to avoid the label “leftover woman.”

The derogatory and stigmatizing term “leftover woman” — or Sheng nü in Chinese — is used to describe one’s social status and refers to women in their late 20s and beyond who have never married. The label suggests these women have failed to “sell” themselves on the marriage market at the “best” time and have therefore become leftover products that are depreciating rapidly.

At the time I was conducting interviews for my book on the lived experiences of these women — Leftover Women in China: Understanding Legal Consciousness through Intergenerational Relationships — released last August, Chen told me she married out of an obligation to live up to parental expectations:

“I only got married to free my parents from the pressure imposed on them by gossipy, nosy relatives, as well as to ease their worries about my future. After all, my parents have sacrificed so much and are always ready to do everything for me.”

Chen was especially grateful to her parents for buying her an apartment when she could barely cover her living expenses. Her parents were also prepared to provide child care once, not if, she had a child.

What this story reveals is not simply a cultural expectation around marriage, but how parental financial support can reshape the autonomy of young adults.

Structural forces and family dynamics in China

In recent decades, the extreme unaffordability of housing in urban China has made it almost impossible for young adults to purchase a home without financial support from their parents. Meanwhile, as inflexible work schedules and overtime have become the norm, grandparenting has become crucial to ensuring young adults can focus on their careers.

Leftover Women in China demonstrates how the downflow of family resources — from the older generation to the young, including housing and child care support — results in a sense of guilt and provides the justification for parental intervention in marital decisions.

This phenomenon ultimately reduces effective communication among family members and marginalizes the desires of young adults.

Many of these so-called “leftover women” don’t feel it’s appropriate to openly discuss or negotiate marital choices and childbearing with their parents. Instead, a sense of guilt prompts these daughters to focus on perceptions of parental expectations that prioritize their parents’ desires and often go even beyond what their parents explicitly request.

Canadian classrooms reveal family pressure

Eventually, as a university professor, I noticed this type of parent-child interaction also appears in the West, including Canadian society.

Take students’ academic performance and career decisions, for example. I observed a strong sense of guilt and desire to repay parents, especially among students of mine whose parents have endured hardship or offered unconditional support.

Students from immigrant families have frequently mentioned pressure to succeed academically. When I asked about their motivations, they often responded by saying they want to live up to parental expectations. This sense of duty seemed especially strong among students whose parents were highly qualified professionals in their home countries and now work long hours in manual or unskilled labour to provide for their families.

As Vivian Louie, professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College, suggests, immigrant parents’ sacrifices often motivate their children to excel academically. This is also supported by a socio-legal study on responsibility, love and guilt in Latino mixed-status families.

Over the years, many students have told me their parents don’t need to explicitly ask them to pursue a lucrative career, nor have they necessarily discussed it with them. Instead, students pick up cues from societal and community perceptions of success to make their parents proud.

When parental support becomes essential

This phenomenon, however, is not limited to students with immigrant backgrounds. A sociological study on career decisions of Harvard law students reveals that students from low-income or working-class backgrounds frequently felt that failure to obtain a lucrative position would let their families down due to the financial sacrifices their family members have made for them.

The more I spoke with my students, the more I realized that Canadian young adults are facing increasing parental intervention in particular due to the persistence of inflation and housing unaffordability.

More of them than ever before are living with their parents well into their 20s to reduce costs. For many, this has become a necessity rather than a choice.

According to a 2025 Statistics Canada report, financial support from parents for down payments has become both crucial and widespread among young homeowners. In British Columbia, for example, average parental financial support for a first-home down payment exceeds $200,000.

It’s true that collectivist culture in Chinese society contributes to the desire for “leftover women” to meet parental expectations and prioritize their needs and interests. But my observations in Canadian classrooms suggest that parental financial support — combined with the sacrifices they make for their children — can also cultivate guilt among young adults in individualist cultures like Canada.

Qian Liu receives funding from the International Development Research Centre and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. When young adults can’t afford independence, family expectations fill the gap — from China’s ‘leftover women’ to Canada’s pressured youth – https://theconversation.com/when-young-adults-cant-afford-independence-family-expectations-fill-the-gap-from-chinas-leftover-women-to-canadas-pressured-youth-270013

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Long Li, Professor, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta

Our planet is unique for its ability to sustain abundant life. From studies of the rock record, scientists believe life had already emerged on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably much earlier.

But how a habitable environment developed, and how the very first life emerged on the early Earth, remain puzzling. One of the big challenges for Earth to be habitable in its infancy was the weak solar energy it received.

Astrophysical models indicate that the sun had only about 70 per cent of its current luminosity when the Earth was born around 4.5 billion years ago. That would have resulted in Earth’s surface being frozen until around two billion years ago.

Nonetheless, scientific investigations indicate the Earth had warm oceans and habitable environments as early as 4.4 billion years ago. This contradiction is known as the faint young sun paradox.

Solving this paradox and the generation of the first life both involve a key chemical compound — ammonia. But the source of ammonia on the early Earth before biological nitrogen processing emerged remains unknown.

Colleagues in China and my research group at the University of Alberta recently published our study of minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids in oceanic crusts drilled from the South China Sea basin. We discovered that mineral-catalyzed chemical reactions in underwater hydrothermal systems can produce the necessary ingredients for a habitable world and life on Earth.

Hypothesis of the origin of life

Earth’s first life is hypothesized to be generated by a series of abiotic processes, also known as abiogenesis. Under this hypothesis, the building blocks of the first life were synthezised on Earth from basic inorganic compounds by abiotic reactions, or were brought to here by meteorites.

In 1953, American chemist Stanley Miller, then a graduate student working with Nobel Prize laureate Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, discovered production of amino acids in his experiments simulating lightning in an early-Earth atmosphere composed of water moisture and several gases (methane, ammonia and hydrogen molecules).

These life-building blocks could subsequently deposit into the ocean for life development. This ground-breaking discovery by Miller implied that abiogenesis of life on Earth is possible.

Gases like methane, ammonia and hydrogen were not only essential compounds for synthesis of organic matter in Miller’s experiments. They are also key ingredients to establishing a habitable environment on early Earth.

They have all been proposed as potential contributors, either directly as greenhouse gases or indirectly as amplifiers of other greenhouse gases, to warm up early Earth’s surface under the faint young sun.

Where did these gases come from?

A problem, though, is that these gases were not the primary components on early Earth’s surface in the first place. Instead, the dominant forms of carbon and nitrogen were carbon dioxide and dinitrogen.

That means the very first step toward making Earth habitable and generating the first life had to be inorganic reactions to turn carbon dioxide into methane and dinitrogen into ammonia, also known as abiotic carbon and nitrogen reduction reactions.

Where and how did these reduction reactions take place?

The world’s ocean floors contain abundant hydrothermal systems where cold seawater flows into deep oceanic crust and subsequently mixes with ascending magmatic fluids. The mixed hot fluids are emitted back through hydrothermal vents such as black smokers or white smokers.

Along this pathway, water and dissolved components can react with primary minerals in the oceanic crust to produce secondary minerals and other byproducts. Methane and dihydrogen, formed by mineral-catalyzed abiotic reduction reactions during this process, have been widely observed in the emitted hydrothermal fluids.

Therefore, underwater hydrothermal systems have been considered as the most likely incubator for habitable environment and the origin of life.

Searching for evidence

Yet there still exists a missing piece in this picture: the abiotic reduction of dinitrogen has not been confirmed to occur in hydrothermal systems. Scientists have searched hard for evidence of this reaction, abiotic ammonia, but have had no luck so far.

The ammonia (mostly in its dissolved form, ammonium ion) that has been detected in hydrothermal fluids collected from active vent mouths turned out to be mainly biological and not abiotic in origin.

The relatively small amount of abiotic ammonium there might be can easily be concealed by the large amount of biological ammonium in seawater. It is impossible to avoid seawater contamination while collecting submarine hydrothermal fluid samples.

However, secondary minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids can lock some ammonium into their internal structures and protect it from being contaminated by shallow seawater and mixing with biological ammonium. Therefore, studying secondary minerals in the deep oceanic crust can better unravel the ammonium source and producing mechanism in the deep hydrothermal systems.

However, such samples are not easily to collect. The International Ocean Discovery Program has made tremendous efforts to drill deep into the oceanic crust to collect samples. Luckily, a set of secondary mineral samples were discovered in a 200-metre drill core from the South China Sea.

A missing piece of the puzzle

For our study, we looked into a specific chemical feature, namely nitrogen isotopes, for the ammonium locked in the hydrothermal minerals.

Nitrogen has two isotopes with atomic mass 14 and 15, respectively. Mineral-catalyzed abiotic dinitrogen reduction strongly prefers to use the one with an atomic mass of 14. That results in a unique nitrogen isotope signature in the ammonium it produces.

Our results are consistent with this isotopic signature. This demonstrates production of ammonia or ammonium by abiotic dinitrogen reduction in underwater hydrothermal systems.

This discovery adds a missing piece of puzzle to our theories about the origins of life on Earth. These underwater hydrothermal systems at the bottom of the ocean enabled the first-step reactions of all life-constituting elements on our planet.

Long Li receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

– ref. How the ocean’s hydrothermal systems made the first life on Earth possible – https://theconversation.com/how-the-oceans-hydrothermal-systems-made-the-first-life-on-earth-possible-271920

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Stewart Prest, Lecturer, Political Science, University of British Columbia

It was a moment of global clarity. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to the world’s political and economic elite gathered in Davos this week described global realities, past and present, with a candour and nuance rarely heard from a serving politician.

The message was twofold.

First, Carney made clear that the world has changed, and the old comfortable ways of global politics are not coming back. Those who wait for sanity to return are waiting in vain. We are in a world increasingly shaped by the threat and the use of hard power. All states must accept that reality.

Despite this, Carney’s second and more hopeful message was that while the globally powerful may act unilaterally, others — notably “middle powers” like Canada — are not helpless.

By finding ways to co-operate on areas of shared interest, states like Canada can pool their limited resources to build what amounts to a flexible network of co-operative ties. Taken together they can provide an alternative to simply rolling over and taking whatever great powers like the United States dole out.

There’s also little choice in the matter if countries want to remain independent. As he eloquently put it: “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

From ‘elbows up’ to capitulation, and back

The speech represented a remarkable departure from Canada’s usual approach to its relationship its neighbour to the south.

For all the talk of “elbows up” during the 2025 federal election campaign, the Carney government has been somewhat ambivalent since then. It’s placed its hopes in achieving a renewed trading relationship and normalized relations with the U.S. through a combination of good faith negotiations and a steady stream of conciliatory gestures on issues that seemed to matter most to U.S. President Donald Trump.

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Mark Carney’s apology to Donald Trump: Far from ‘elbows up,’ it seems Canada has no elbows at all

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That resulted in Canada committing significant funds to combat a largely non-existent fentanyl trafficking problem and to meet American demands for increased military funding. At times the conciliation verged on placation, as when Canada unilaterally ended relatiatory tariffs on American goods to no discernible effect.

This strategy clearly was not working, however, as Carney made clear in Davos.

While neither America, nor Trump, were mentioned by name, there’s no doubt who’s driving the dramatic global changes Carney was describing. At times the veneer became very thin as Carney reiterated Canada’s support for the sovereignty of Greenland as a territory of Denmark.

In fact, the speech was remarkably blunt in its rebuke of America’s foreign policy during Trump’s second term, drawing attention, as others have, to how U.S. actions leave almost everyone, including Americans, worse off.

Trump’s response

That not-so-subtle barb was not lost on the audience, either in the room or across the Atlantic in the White House.

Trump wasted little time in firing back in the manner and style the world has become accustomed to. During his own address to the World Economic Forum the next day, Trump delivered a rambling and at times confusing speech.

He reiterated his intent to annex Greenland while confusing the island multiple times with neighbouring and also sovereign Iceland, and he took time to single out Carney by name.

“Canada lives because of the United States,” he said. “Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”

The comments provided helpful proof of Carney’s argument, demonstrating the naked threat of power by the American president to coerce its neighbour and ostensible ally. It revealed the kind of “gangster” mindset we see often from Trump, as he effectively said: “Nice country, Mark. Be a shame if something happened to it.”

Critique of past

As blunt as Carney’s assessment of the present was — that the rules-based, liberal international order has faded away — in some ways his critique of the past was even more remarkable. The prime minister spoke with a candour one wouldn’t expect to find at the podium at Davos.

Effectively, Carney correctly characterized the old order as one defined as much by its hypocrisy as by its rules. He acknowledged that countries like Canada benefited from a system in which rules are applied unevenly, and superpowers continue to shape outcomes.

This idea, along with the the need to look ahead in order to survive a new order, appeared to underpin Carney’s exhortation not to mourn the rapidly vanishing old order.

Carney clearly hopes a new system may emerge that is not only more resilient to diverse and unpredictable threats, but is more honest and just.

By finding common ground on shared issues, middle powers can act in accordance with their own values and interests, instead of deferring to the proclaimed values of global power that are frequently violated in practice. Power will always matter, but it doesn’t have to be all that matters.

History in the making?

Carney’s Davos remarks were powerful by any measure. But will he back up his words with action in the months and years ahead?

His speech was met with a rousing standing ovation, and has justly received plaudits from around the world for its clear-eyed description of a less forgiving world order and its vision for how states like Canada can continue to thrive within it.

Whether it proves a speech for the ages, however, depends on what happens next. If Canada is serious about charting a new path, distinct from the great powers of the world, it must do more than talk. Acts like deploying symbolic forces to Greenland if necessary will show a seriousness of purpose. Canada cannot expect others to stand with it if it doesn’t stand with them.

Similarly, Canada must reject schemes like Trump’s “board of peace,” a thinly disguised attempt to replace institutions of global governance with a body composed by and serving at the president’s whim.

Carney has captured the world’s attention with this speech. There’s a lot hanging on what he does with that attention.

Stewart Prest does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Mark Carney’s Davos speech marks a major departure from Canada’s usual approach to the U.S. – https://theconversation.com/mark-carneys-davos-speech-marks-a-major-departure-from-canadas-usual-approach-to-the-u-s-274090

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Saskia Sivananthan, Affiliate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University

At a recent party, another guest, a nurse, asked what I do for a living. I explained that as a health policy researcher, my work focuses on helping health-care systems co-ordinate care for dementia as effectively as for major conditions like cancer, diabetes or stroke. She stopped me mid-sentence.

“I don’t think you should use cancer as a comparison,” she said. “Cancer doesn’t have the stigma that dementia has. Most cancers can be treated and cured. Dementia can’t. You just can’t compare the two.”

The conversation brought to the forefront that dementia today occupies the same stigmatized, system-neglected space that cancer did half a century ago. And history shows us that stigma, not simply the absence of cures, delays progress.

Dementia taboos mirror cancer

Before the 1970s, a cancer diagnosis was widely considered a death sentence. Most physicians did not disclose the diagnosis, despite surveys showing the majority of patients wanted to know. Doctors said they concealed the truth to avoid “taking away hope” and because families preferred that patients remain unaware.

The word cancer itself was taboo. Euphemisms like “a growth” or “the Big C” were used, if the illness was discussed at all. Cancer carried the stain of shame, seen by some as a sign of personal weakness, and still does, particularly in the case of certain types of cancers like lung or liver cancer. Others viewed it as karma or divine punishment. People with cancer were quietly excluded, so much so that obituaries rarely listed cancer as the cause of death.

Sound familiar? It should.

A 2022 Canadian survey of family physicians found that 75 per cent provided care to a patient with cognitive impairment whom they had not yet informed of a diagnosis. The reasons varied: families or patients preferred not to know; clinicians felt they had no meaningful treatment to offer; or they feared “labelling” patients.

We still use dismissive expressions like “senior moment” in reference to symptoms of dementia. The word dementia itself literally translates to “out of one’s mind.” In many cultures, dementia is considered shameful and thought to be the result of witchcraft or punishment for a previous wrongdoing.

And the social exclusion is real. Dementia advocate Kate Swaffer calls it “prescribed disengagement,” the sense that society quietly ushers people with dementia out of public life.

Cancer did not change its stigma entirely because it became curable. It became curable faster because stigma was specifically being addressed and advocacy co-ordinated to push for funding and system change.

Stigma and system gaps preceded cancer breakthrough era

In fact, the first class of cancer treatments — options like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and early hormonal therapies — were introduced as far back as the 1940s, but their survival benefits were modest, much like the first generation of Alzheimer’s drugs today.

Because stigma around cancer was so entrenched, people avoided screening, delayed seeking help or refused treatment altogether, reinforcing poor outcomes and deepening the stigma.

Subsequent breakthroughs, like targeted therapies and other transformative drugs of the 1990s and 2010s, did change survival dramatically. But they landed in a landscape that had already been reshaped by something else: system co-ordination, focused, public stigma-reducing campaigns and a dramatic shift in cancer research funding.

Advocacy built the foundation for cancer system change

Starting in the 1970s, through co-ordinated advocacy led by advocates like Mary Lasker, governments began large-scale injections of research funds for cancer, built organized screening programs, launched public awareness campaigns, created standardized care pathways and invested in co-ordinating care infrastructure .

Moving cancer out of silence and into public conversations also altered clinical behaviour. Physicians increasingly disclosed diagnoses and encouraged early diagnosis, enabling earlier intervention. Survivorship became part of the narrative. Anti-discrimination frameworks strengthened. Cancer came to be understood through a public health lens rather than a moral one.

By the time highly effective therapies emerged, the system and society was far more ready for them.

Building conditions for change in dementia care

If we want the same for dementia, we need the same foundations: Co-ordinated care pathways with the infrastructure to support it, disclosure norms, national and provincial leadership bodies and ongoing public education campaigns with government backing.

I am an optimist at heart. The fact that my dinner companion now sees cancer as relatively destigmatized is, paradoxically, a sign of hope. It shows how profoundly public understanding can change within a generation.

To shift the stigma means a shift in access to care and the system itself.
Cancer shows us that stigma reduction isn’t accidental. It is created through leadership, investment and system design. Dementia deserves nothing less.

Saskia Sivananthan is affiliated with the Brainwell Institute, a dementia focused policy think tank

– ref. Ending dementia stigma could change its trajectory: Cancer’s history shows why – https://theconversation.com/ending-dementia-stigma-could-change-its-trajectory-cancers-history-shows-why-273674