I hate to post another comment, but another great tool for media reading in general is RSS feed aggregators. Yes they can be janky, but it is the easiest way to explicitly choose what media you receive, rather than relying on algorithms in news apps / social media to dictate all that you read.

NetNewsWire is a great option for Apple devices Feedbro integrates into your web browser And Feeder is the one I use on my Android phone.

Here is a general comparison list on Wikipedia of different feed aggregators.

If you are a bit more technically inclined, I highly recommend hosting your own feed aggregator online (allowing you to sync your saved articles / read articles between devices, and better battery life on mobile devices). The two apps I usually see recommended for this are tt-rss “Tiny Tiny RSS” as well as FreshRSS.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien was a great read. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize, won the Governor General’s award and won the Giller prize that year.

I also can highly recommend Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, which was a finalist for CBCs “Canada Reads”.

Overall I’d highly recommend looking at the GG and Giller for authors, as well as CBCs “Canada Reads”. For Canada Reads, we also have the shortlisted books for this year’s edition already!

That is a really fascinating blog post! Thank you for sharing it :)

As with any map app, when the app is in the foreground it uses location data to position you on the map. Most of the transit authorities also have public APIs for locating their vehicles which the app uses in conjunction with user location data to provide more accurate transit arrival time (and inherently is how they can know if you’re taking transit)

They do state in their privacy policy that location data isn’t linked to your personal information, nor is it sold to third parties. Their model solely relies on user / transit authority subscriptions. Of course, this still requires you to trust their data processing, but I feel like they adequately provide useful transit features with said location data.

Edit: I should also add you don’t need to make an account, in which case location data cannot be tied to any personal user data and you are still admissible for the free subscription offered by select transit authorities.

I am not entirely sure, for me there’s an option to email them if I believe I am admissible and haven’t been added. I don’t take transit enough to be admissible however, I usually just walk. I will have to ask some of my friends who have it if it was a fully automatic process for them or if it was manual (in my case, OC Transpo / STO)

Edit: I just opened the app to check and I am now a Royale member, so it is automatic. I take transit only once a week I’d say.

I’m saying this as a coffee fanatic myself, you don’t need to be educated on what is “good or bad”, what matters is what you like :)

I haven’t tried Muskoka myself but I’ll likely give it a shot at some point!

Some other Canadian ones I like are Hatch (out of Markham) and Equator (near Ottawa)

If you’re francophone (or just a francophile) I highly recommend La Presse and Le Devoir. The former is a non-profit and considered a “newspaper of record”, the latter isn’t non-profit but is still an independent publication and is also often considered a newspaper of record.

And of course there’s Radio-Canada, the French language publication of the CBC.

The French avoid list for me mostly revolves around Québecor — but this is more of a journalistic integrity issue rather than an American media problem. I find it important from a moral and ethical perspective to avoid media megacorp conglomerates (and this is also yet another reason to avoid Postmedia).

One more thing on franco media, reading the news is a great way of developing vocabulary in your second language. Give it a shot, it’s really fulfilling and in this case unlocks some great independent / non-profit options :)

I agree with the other comment – buy from other retailers.

In a pinch however, usually you can find the same thing that people sell on Amazon, cheaper, from AliExpress. I’d personally avoid them when you can, but sometimes they are the only option for getting obscure parts etc.

For ebooks, you can go to Kobo (Canadian company, owned by the Japanese company Rakuten) OR you can borrow them from your local library (they can be synced to your phone or kobo ereader). Otherwise support a local new or used bookstore!

Spotify, Dezeer, SoundCloud and Quobuz are all European alternatives to Amazon Music (and Apple Music for that matter)

I haven’t fact checked it myself, but I have seen a few people comment that the Shopify CEO believes Canada needs it’s own equivalent to America’s DOGE.

Which I feel is reason enough for someone to boycott them as well “by proxy”.