Canada Did What?!

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.

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.