The big Canadian story of 2025 is an offshoot of the global one, namely the second Donald Trump presidency, from January onwards. Onwards into eternity, maybe. Constitutions can be amended or just tossed in bonfires.

No, Trump hasn’t annexed Canada, but he’s considered it, which is sufficient to make the Air Show days hit different, with those sounds of jets over Lake Ontario. There have been tariffs. Elbows have gone up, cross-border travel has gone down. Ask Canadian schoolchildren if they can name the U.S. president or the Canadian prime minister and the answers might disappoint. But in their defense, one of these leadership changes was the more momentous. Instead of Justin Trudeau, there’s a less Ken-doll-looking, stodgier Trudeau alternative. As versus in America where it’s been closer to regime-change than administration-change, in ways that may seem more obvious from outside the States than within.

The big Canadian Jewish story of the year has been the bifurcation of Canadian and American paths regarding the fight against antisemitism.

First, because it’s the more startling, the American path: The Trump administration has declared a war of sorts on Jew-hatred. There’s this ramped-up movement to deport foreigners and defund universities. Much of this is being done in the name of defending Jews. This despite (or, possibly, because of) the fact that most American Jews vote Democrat. This despite (or not) the fact that shutting out international students includes excluding Israelis, and that cracking down on universities isn’t great for Jewish studies programs or Jewish academics.

While the anti-antisemitism pretext appears to be losing steam in favour of an amorphous, target-shifting xenophobia, it spanned much of 2025 and hasn’t entirely dissipated, even as antisemitic nativist right-wing influencers gain ground. (More on that........

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