Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift

Dunkin' Donuts is coming back to Canada, a Canadian chain is bringing it in, and the team has thoughts on what this does to the Starbucks and Tim Hortons of the world. The opening question is what actually makes a great concert. The answer has less to do with the headliner than most people assume. One of the team's best concert memories cost $20, happened in a bar basement, and beat every high-pro...

Good news Tuesday comes from a simple observation: the bad is loud and the good needs to be found. Two stories this week prove the finding is worth the effort. The first: a pair of adult kids, 19 and 21, drove to Edmonton out of the blue to see their grandfather, who has not been doing well. No one asked them. They just figured it out. The second started badly: three hours and fifteen minutes on h...

Blue dot fever is the new term for half-empty arenas and cancelled concerts. The data behind it is specific and the team has the numbers.   Concert ticket prices for the top 100 global tours went up 37.2 percent between 2019 and 2025. Inflation over the same period was 21 percent. The prices never came back down after the post-pandemic surge. Post Malone, Kid Cudi, the Pussycat Dolls, and Meg...

What makes a good concert is a question Kelly Alexander answers with a specific recent example. The show felt, she says, like being taken to church. Nothing about that had to do with the lighting cues.   The artist was genuinely present, talked to the crowd, chose an intimate venue over a larger arena, and made everyone feel connected. Alexander calls the current alternative a cookie cutter m...

Star Wars trading cards were fun in 1977. One of them just sold at auction for $687,500. The seller did not have the Canadian bilingual version with nicks.   Kris Abel has the Luke Skywalker card, the first in the 1977 Topps series. His is the Canadian edition, printed with both English and French text, and has seen better days. The pristine American version that just cleared nearly seven hun...

Butterfly population decline is measurable, documented, and connected to something most people eat every day. Federico Riva of Carleton University helped lead a global analysis to figure out how bad it actually is.   The UK has been counting butterflies since 1976. North America and Europe show clear declining trends. The tropical world is largely unmapped. Riva's global collaboration, built...

FIFA World Cup 2026 is landing in Canada at a moment when ticket prices are disconnected from what fans are actually willing to pay. Bob Addison has been to Euro 2024. He knows the difference. Vancouver's cheapest group stage ticket opened at $777. Knockout games are $800 a seat in Seattle. Prices have gone up as the tournament approaches, not down. Addison, who is part of the Canadian supporters...

Stress and burnout start with a word. Dr. Sohan Mansingh says should is the word. It carries shame, it carries guilt, and it keeps people exactly where they don't want to be. The deeper issue is the nervous system. Mansingh points to hormesis, the kind of stress that produces positive health outcomes, things like exercise, sauna, and meditation. It requires rest afterwards to work. Most people nev...

Generational trend names are everywhere, and the argument on the table is whether they reflect real experiences or just make it easier to stop trying. Life stretching. Quiet quitting. Bare minimum Mondays. At some point, the label becomes the permission slip. The team digs into which ones hold up and which ones are just participation ribbons with better branding. Quiet quitting gets particular scr...

AI home projects are changing how people tackle everything from clogged sinks to room redesigns. The question of who controls the technology making that possible is a lot more complicated.   Your Wrench Now Has a Co-Pilot Gen Z and millennials are leading a shift away from YouTube tutorials and toward ChatGPT for home fixes. Baryer maps which jobs AI handles well, which ones still need a tick...

Relationship expectations are being shaped by a TikTok trend that tells you your partner should anticipate everything, no asking required. Tony Tedesco calls it emotional mind reading dressed up as romance. Jen Kirsch says the problem is simpler: people just want to feel seen. Tedesco's argument is that the expectation almost always falls on one person to initiate, plan, and pursue, while the othe...

Buying a home Canada feels impossible until someone sits down and actually runs the numbers with you. Jessica Moorhouse starts with the wishlist, then the mortgage broker, then the reality check.   The first trap she names is the forever home. The belief that the first place has to be permanent and perfect, Moorhouse says, puts too much pressure on a decision that doesn't have to carry that w...

Housing affordability has a policy blind spot, and second time home buyers are falling right through it. The assumption is that every young buyer is a first-time buyer. But that's not who's stuck. Mike Moffat points to people who bought a condo near the top of the market and can't make the jump to a bigger home. Their equity hasn't grown. In some cases, it's gone backward. And the relief programs...

Canadians living with parents in their 30s and 40s is now at generational highs, according to new Stats Canada data. The conversation digs into the numbers and whether giving it a name like life stretching is part of the problem.   Three reasons surface: student loan debt averaging $30,000 per millennial, entry-level salaries that make saving and renting simultaneously impossible, and a start...

Foreign interference in Canada is more complicated than the legal definition suggests. The gap between what's traceable and what's actually happening may explain more than anyone wants to say out loud.   The Habs, the PWHL, and Why Rome Is Worth the Chaos Jimmy Zoubris returned from Rome calling it beautifully chaotic. The Montreal Canadiens, built through the draft and not expected to be her...

Driverless cars are coming to Canada, and the safety numbers are making even longtime skeptics rethink their position. Lorraine Sommerfeld wrote the piece. She also used to tell autonomous cars to stay off her roads. Sommerfeld talked to a tech analyst who put it plainly: you eventually have to leave the lab. Waymo is already in 12 US cities. Ontario has had a framework for autonomous driving expe...

Toxic ex stories on a fourth date sound like a warning sign. Ryan O'Donnell says his became the most honest moment he had ever had with someone that early. He had one genuinely toxic relationship. When he and Laura were a few dates in and the subject came up, what emerged was not just shared frustration but matching patterns: the same behaviors they had each tolerated, the same red flags they now...

Toxic relationships and aging are directly connected, and Dr. Theresa Pauly says the mechanism is measurable in your saliva. The quality of your relationships is almost as important to your physical health as smoking, exercise, or body weight. Most people do not think about who they spend time with as a health behavior. Dr. Theresa Pauly's lab does. She measures cortisol, the body's primary stress...

Gordie Howe Bridge is ready. It has been under construction for eight years, funded entirely by Canada, and co-owned by Canada and Michigan. Patty Handysides says most people in Windsor believe what is holding up the opening has something to do with Donald Trump. The Ambassador Bridge, built in the 1920s and privately owned by one American family, is the only international bridge in North America...

What to watch this weekend spans a video game brawler that earns its cheese, a sheep murder mystery with a cast nobody predicted, and a 2008 film making its case as the greatest sports movie ever made. Two conversations. One list. When the Sheep Start Asking Questions Carl Urban steps into Mortal Kombat 2 as Johnny Cage and runs with it. The Sheep Detectives sends an animated flock after the kille...

Your toxic ex may be gone, but a clinical psychologist says the damage does not leave with them. Two segments. One conversation that gets into the questions most people are afraid to ask. What "Toxic" Actually Means and Whether You Are the Problem "Toxic" is not a clinical label, but a clinical psychologist says it describes patterns that chip away at your emotional safety and self-worth. Boundary...

AI retail technology is not a kiosk in the corner of the food court. Mohit Rajhans says it is the entire operating system of the store you are standing in. Something trends on a meme on Saturday and retailers can have it in stores by Monday. Employees inside stores are working with gamified systems that turn hot-commodity restocking into a competitive exercise. The front of the store can be reprog...

Digital sovereignty Canada does not fully have, and Vass Bednar says the Trump administration has made the vulnerabilities harder to ignore. The question she keeps returning to is simple: can you govern the economy you have? For a significant portion of Canada's digital infrastructure, the answer is no. The US Cloud Act reaches into Canadian data centres if the firm operating them has a meaningful...

OpenAI privacy violations in Canada have been confirmed by federal and provincial privacy commissioners in BC, Alberta, and Quebec. Carmi Levy says the response was a blog post and that is not going to change much. The findings are specific. OpenAI collected health information, political views, and data on children from the open internet without asking consent. It did not vet what it scraped, mean...

The Canada War Museum marks 20 years in its purpose-built home this week, and if you haven't walked through the hall with the jet and the tanks, it's time to change that. From a working Lancaster bomber in Hamilton to an entire museum dedicated to gophers in Torrington, Alberta, the country is packed with places that make history feel like something you're standing inside. The Canadian Museum of H...