Canada Did What?!

Canada’s most startling political history podcast is back for another season, as host Tristin Hopper brings you the wildest Canadian stories you might think you remember and revealing what you haven’t been told.  We talk to the politicians, journalists and newsmakers who were right there when history happened — and have a lot of fun along the way.

It wasn’t that long ago that elective abortions were harder to get in Canada than anywhere in the U.S. What changed was one of the most actively forgotten political brawls in our history, sparked by one doctor, Henry Morgentaler, a Holocaust survivor who believed legal abortions could prevent future mass atrocities. The ordeal was so divisive, so heated and so unpleasant that an exhausted country gave up on finding a way through it, and instead just decided to never tackle the issue again.

The fashionable way to remember the October Crisis today is to tsk-tsk at a hysterical government overreaction to the FLQ movement and gross violations of civil liberties with the War Measures Act. But what if marching the army into Montreal in the fall of 1970 was … a fantastic idea? Listen in for the harrowing story of how a maniacally violent radical group with a mounting murder toll held the country at gunpoint, until leaders of all stripes brilliantly put a stop to it — forever.

He went out a weird, morbid old man, but John Diefenbaker was indisputably the biggest political sensation this country had ever produced. He won the biggest landslide in Canadian history. He walked through screaming, adoring crowds where tearful fans would kneel and kiss his coat. Sit back and listen to the heartbreaking tale of what it’s like to achieve the absolute pinnacle of political success … only to have it all stripped away, bit by excruciating bit. (Featuring special guests, diehard Diefenbaker buffs Jason Kenney and John Baird.)

Canadians measure weather in Celsius but cook using Fahrenheit. We drink alcohol by the ounce and soda by the litre. Why? This unholy amalgam of metric and imperial is the hard-won truce of a chaotic war between a technocracy-obsessed bureaucracy and a liberty-loving people who refused to submit to measurement tyranny. Get ready for a wild story featuring angry farmers, lawbreaking butchers, constitutional lawsuits, a “freedom” gallons-only gas station — and the unquenchable Canadian spirit of patriotic pragmatism.

He was an all-Canadian whiz kid, a celebrated rocket-engineering prodigy, who wanted to make this country a serious player in the 1960s space race. But when science sidestepped Gerald Bull’s plan to build gargantuan guns that could launch projectiles into orbit, he just … broke. He turned his brilliance in missile design to darker pursuits, building horrible weapons for sinister regimes. If it sounds like a spy novel, it ends like one too, with Bull meeting a violent, mysterious end of his own.

It’s lionized by politicians but, in the real world, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms has proved less a symbol of democratic liberty than an agent of destruction. Since becoming constitutional law, the Charter has run roughshod over Canadian democracy, weaponized in the courts to overturn popular and vital policies. In 1982, there were plenty of people on the left and the right who tried to warn us of the coming devastation before it happened. It ended up being worse than they imagined.

Where can you slaughter hundreds of people and get away with it? Only in Canada, where authorities bungled the chance to stop an obvious plot to bomb Air India Flight 182 and then failed to bring a single one of the brazen terrorists to justice. It was the most preventable horror in our history, and we seem eager to forget it ever happened — even as more violence brews from the extremists behind the worst Canadian terrorist attack ever.

We all know how close Quebec came to voting for independence in the 1995 referendum. What most people never knew is the extent of the trickery behind the separatists’ undisclosed plan for the day after they won. It would have taken a difference of just a few thousand votes to unleash utter chaos on the country that could very well have culminated in bloodshed and possibly civil war.

We shouldn’t have been too shocked when Parliament blundered into honouring a veteran of a Nazi SS unit in 2023. After the Holocaust, this country became a favoured destination for countless European war criminals. They were actually welcomed by the government. Despite their crimes, they were left to live peaceful, prosperous lives and even built monuments here to their wartime exploits. What is shocking is that almost none of them faced a single consequence for their atrocities.

Every democratic leader gets accused of being either a communist or a Nazi at some point. But Canada really did have a prime minister who was unashamed about his love for communist regimes, from China to the U.S.S.R. to Cuba. Pierre Trudeau regularly took their side during the Cold War and befriended their brutal dictators. He’s frequently voted one of Canada’s best prime ministers but we’re going to show you Pierre Trudeau’s little-known dark side. And boy is it dark.

Welcome to Canada Did What?! A Postmedia podcast that digs into the untold, surprising political stories of the last few decades with host Tristin Hopper. From the metric wars to Morgentaler, from the October Crisis to the abortion debate, we’re unpacking all the wildest political moments you might think you remember — and giving you the real story you never knew. We talk to the politicians, journalists and newsmakers who were right there when history happened. And we have a lot of fun doing it. Coming soon to your favourite podcast platform!