Guelph Politicast

This week on End Credits, things are going to get dangerous! For the movie this week, we get hardcore with ballerinas that kill as five young women have to take out a bar full of bad guys in Pretty Lethal on Amazon Prime. We will also mark Earth Day (or is it month now?) by talking about some of our favourite environmentally-themed movie... except for the obvious ones. This Wednesday, April 15, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: Green Movies. Earth Day is next Wednesday, and we are going to get you in the mood to save the Earth with some movies that focus on environmental themes. It would be easy to talk about flicks like The Day After Tomorrow, FernGully: The Last Rainforest, or the Avatar trilogy, but we will dig deep to find some real bangers including monster movies, action classics, hidden gems from the 70s, and political thrillers. REVIEW: Pretty Lethal (2026). Is there anyone tougher than a ballerina? That's the question in Pretty Lethal, which follows five ballerinas lost in Hungary who end up at a mob bar to wait for a ride only to end up having to fight their way out. From David Leitch, one of the creators of John Wick, and his production company 87North, which made Nobody, The Fall Guy and Love Hurts, can five skilled dancers apply their craft to beating a bar full of Euro-trash baddies and crime boss Uma Thurman (?!). Cue the "Swan Lake" suite! End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

It's an interesting time for someone new to take on the reins of this organization, and not just because of the housing crisis. This is the 25th birthday of Habitat for Humanity in Guelph and Wellington, so it's a time of celebration, along with a time of tremendous challenge. In the overwhelming crunch of the crisis, how does the brand name in affordable housing celebrate its silver anniversary? You can't say that when Habitat for Humanity became an officially registered charity in 2001 that Guelph didn't have any housing issues but that started changing in the last 25 years, slowly at first and then super accelerated though the pandemic and the immediate aftermath of it. With not just a lack of housing, but a lack of affordable and deeply affordable housing, the community was left scrambling, and that's put a lot of pressure on established non-profits, like Habitat for Humanity. Habitat has been busy for these last few years of the housing crisis with a stacked townhome development on Guelph's eastside on Cityview Drive, a 32-unit project called Garafraxa Village in Fergus and next a new 30-home community on Speedvale Avenue East. At this pivotal moment, Habitat now has a new CEO, and as you'll hear, she brings with her the experience of a business person and someone who's been a part of the fabric of Habitat as its been navigating these difficult times. So what comes next for the new CEO?  On this episode, we're joined by that new CEO, Sarah Spry, who will discuss her background and experience, how Habitat works and how they've been impacted by the housing crisis and the growing need. She will then talk about how the challenges of building non-profit housing are not that different from the for-profit ones, why the Habitat model works, and her vision for the organization. Also, you will learn how you can get involved, and what the next 25 years of Habitat will look like.  So let's celebrate affordable housing builders on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington, and all the ways you can take part in their efforts at their website, and you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram. You can also visit the two ReStore locations in the region, the one in Guelph is in the north end on Dawson Road and the other is in Fergus on Tower Street South. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we recover from the Easter weekend. See the guy in this picture with the Easter Bunny? He made it very hard to relax with some very vivid saber-rattling over the pointless war he started in the Middle East. Closer to home, we will talk about trains and plans for trains, plus the attack on the newest federal leader that might indicate a greater degree of confusion in the discourse. This Thursday, April 9, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: This is the End? If you didn't know what was going on with the War in Iran before the weekend, you're probably really confused now. U.S. President Donald Trump set an arbitrary Tuesday night deadline to end the war or "an entire civilization will die." Trump got a ceasefire instead, which he took, but the exact conditions of it were still unknown 24 hours later, and since no one really stopped shooting, it didn't matter. So does anything matter? Alto Railroaded? The federal government is in the process of developing a high speed rail corridor between Toronto and Quebec City. It's already been in the works for 10 years, and it will be other 20 before its finally finished, at least unless Pierre Poilievre has anything to say about it. As the Alto Train gets closer to finalizing its plans, opposition is consolidating its own plan to stop it, so will the Alto become just another train dream (so to speak)? The Problem with Avi? No sooner was Avi Lewis elected the new leader of the federal NDP, did a campaign begin to call him anti-Semitic. Interesting turn for someone from a prominent Jewish Canadian family, but his stands against Israel's genocide in Gaza and support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement hasn't won him many friends in Zionist circles. Is the smearing of Lewis a sign that we're confusing legitimate critiques of the secular Israeli government with very real hate crimes? Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

Wellington County's Ward 9 is the Town of Erin, the eastern most end of the county and it faces a number of issues that might sound kind of familiar to politically tuned in Guelphites. How much do we have in common with our friends from Erin? That is a one of the questions that will guide this first entry in a brand new side story of the Guelph Politicast adventure as we start digging into the politics our our next door neighbours... Erin is caught in the middle in a very real way. It's a rural cushion between the encroaching urbanity of Peel and Halton Regions and it represents the halfway point between Guelph and Orangeville. Like all the municipalities that make up Wellington County, Erin has its own mayor and town council, and it sends a separate councillor to represent them on county council along with the mayor, and since 2018 that person has been Jeff Duncan. In addition to his seat on council, Duncan also takes part in the Information, Heritage and Seniors Committee and the Economic Development Committee, which puts him in a pretty good position on a couple of key issues, like, for instance, the long shadow of water taking for botting purposes. Duncan has also been on top of a radical issue, at least radical so far as the county's concerned: live streaming of council meetings, which sounds easy but comes with a number of challenges that he'll get into.  On this inaugural edition Duncan will describe for us the unique political structure of the county, his own political background and navigating the intricacies of a two-tiered government system. He will also discuss protecting Erin's water from growth and profit, how Erin is sitting at a literal and figurative crossroads, what it's like dealing with Guelph from the county point of view, and trying to play catch-up on live streaming. So let's head out to the east side of the county on this first edition of the Wellington County Politicast!  You can learn about all things Wellington County on the their website, and you can send Councillor Duncan an email at jeffd [at] wellington.ca. Unfortunately you missed the Information, Heritage and Seniors Committee for this month, but the Economic Development Committee is on Tuesday April 21 at 10 am at the County administration building and County Council will hold its monthly meeting on Thursday April 30 at 10 am. The Wellington County Politicast will return next month!!  The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on End Credits, things get dramatic. We will skip the blockbuster of the week for the more nutritious meal in the form of the star-studded indie The Drama, which you can, and should, see in a theatre near you. We will also talk about the phenomenon of the video game movie, a kind of sequel itself from our last conversation on the subject nearly eight years ago! This Wednesday, April 8, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: Game On! Maybe you were one of the millions of people who spent part of the weekend seeing The Super Mario Bros. Galaxy Movie, probably in the company of your kids. For over 30 years Hollywood has tried to capture the youthful excitement and fun of video games in movie form, but are we getting any closer to making it a unique genre like comic book movies? This week, we will look at video game, and video game adjacent, movies. REVIEW: The Drama (2026). It's probably the most excellent counter-programing to The Super Mario Bros. Galaxy Movie, an A24 romantic dramedy starring two genuine movie stars with a *sick* twist at the beginning of the movie. Considering our spoiler adverse culture, we won't ruin the movie here, but in our review, we will dig into the spoiler-y goodness about seeing a couple played by Robert Pattinson and Zendaya fall apart on their wedding week. Does The Drama deliver on the promise of its name, or is it much ado about nothing? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Campus and community radio stations are under pressure from all sides: provincial governments, student governments, activists, advertisers and big tech. There's a growing spectre of doom for campus media, and the people charged with supporting radio stations across Canada are looking to bolster themselves with help from a newly fiscally prudent federal government. So has time run out for your campus radio station? The pressure is real. Last week, the student union of Memorial University in Newfoundland voted to end funding to CHMR, the campus radio station. Why? They determined after one poll that the station is “underutilized” by undergraduates. Last December at the University of Ottawa, the campus radio station CHUO finally stopped producing live broadcasts two years after students voted to cease the special levy through which the station got the lion's share of its funding. Stations at Fanshawe and Algonquin College have become casualties to the loss of funding to Ontario's colleges due the deep cuts in international student enrollment, which was doubly insulting since both radio stations were used as a training ground for students studying journalism and broadcasting. This fall, campus radio stations in Ontario that survived the Student Choice Initiative will face similar changes that were approved in Bill 33 last November. Can campus media survive these pressures?  Barry Rooke, executive director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association, believe it can with help, and he's going to talk about that on this week's show. He will discuss how the NCRA is trying to answer all the various challenges facing campus radio, how some stations are trying to pivot and why it's so hard for some stations to make a change in order to survive. He will also look at the importance of campus media, the plan to protect the stations still standing and his beginnings at CFRU. So let's save campus and community radio on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the National Campus and Community Radio Association at their website. The NCRC 44 RadioDays North America event, which is the annual conference hosted by the NCRA, runs from May 4 till 9 in Toronto, and you can also find information about that on their website. You can also find a link to the Canadian Press story here, and, of course, you can learn more about Guelph's campus and community radio station here! The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're trying to go for the under-reported stories. First, we will journey to Cuba where somehow things have gotten even worse for the people that live there even without a war (yet). Then, we will consider an important court case out of the United States that might start to generate some accountability for the harms of social media. For more physical harms, like hunger, we have a special guest to discuss those issues. This Thursday, April 2, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Crisis in Cuba. While the U.S. is focused on the War in Iran, it hasn't stopped President Donald Trump from pondering his next quagmire closer to home. Since January, Cuba has been facing a growing humanitarian crisis that the United Nations is now calling a catastrophe. Already embargoed for decades, Cuba is now running out of fuel as supplies from Venezuela have been cut off by Trump and there's no sign that the world wants to act. Why is Cuba's suffering being ignored? Social Media's Tobacco Moment. In courts in California and New Mexico last week, social media companies were found liable for getting users addicted to their platforms and refusing to accept responsibility for putting young people at risk. Insulated from consequences by their net worth and a Congress unwilling to regulate, are social media companies finally facing a reckoning in America's court rooms as more governments, attorneys general and school boards file suit? Easter Food Hunt. We know that over 1 million Ontarians now use food banks to fill their daily needs, and we know that more and more working people are accessing food banks for the first time. We also know that the high cost of housing and the ability to pay for one's groceries are tied together in the affordability crisis, but are the upper levels of government doing anything to close the gap this Easter week. Carolyn Stewart, CEO of Feed Ontario, will join us and offer an update on food insecurity issues in Ontario. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we're got hope and pessimism. The former comes from a new movie in theatres everywhere about a literal one-man quest to save the world, but with some alien help in the new sci-fi adventure Project Hail Mary. As for the latter, we head half-a-century into the past for the start of a new series about a big movie year and some of the most consequential releases.  This Wednesday, March 25, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: 6 For '76 Part 1: Taxi Driver. On this episode, we're kick off a new project. It's been 50 years since 1976, an important year for movies in an important decade for movies, and over the next several months we're going to consider six movies from 1976 starting with Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. The tale of a malcontent wallowing in the malaise and moral decay of 1970s New York has been many things to many people, but what does it mean in 2026? REVIEW: Project Hail Mary (2026). Based on another book by the author of The Martian, Project Hail Mary arrives at an opportune time. It's about humanity's best and brightest working to solve a world ending calamity, it's about putting hope in science and technology to help us find the answers, and it's about Ryan Gosling as a middle school teacher plus a rocky-looking alien creature on who our survival depends. Project Hail Mary has become the first big hit of 2026, but can it's hope-ium sustain a cynical movie audience going into the Easter long weekend? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

There's no escaping just how crushing the increasing cost of groceries is, and it's even been affecting the people we might consider affluent, so how tough is it for the organizations we depend on who are trying to level the playing field, and can they overcome those same economic pressures themselves? On this holiday week, we tackle the essential questions on local food security with two people who know about it. More people are feeling food insecure, and Feed Ontario's last Hunger Report said that over a million people in the province are now using food banks, with over one-third of them accessing those services for the first time. Some municipalities are declaring emergencies in food security, and the City of Toronto recently approved a pilot to open government-owned grocery stores, but how do we address the problem right here and right now in our own community? Such a big problem requires the assistance of two guests starting with Guelph Food Bank CEO Carolyn McLeod-McCarthy. She's going to talk about the logistics of their spring donation drive, the things that they need now and always need, and the ways they're struggling to keep up with demand in areas like distribution and access. We will also talk about how current economic conditions are impacting the amount of donations they're receiving. After that, we will talk to Dawn Wheeler, a support worker for the West Village Co-op neighbourhood group. She will discuss the unique challenges in the west end, the number of people they're helping out, and the ways they have to be creative to help as many people as possible. She will also talk about filling people's needs beyond food, and the ways they specifically need assistance when it comes to donations, and volunteer opportunities. So let's talk about local food insecurity on this week's Guelph Politicast!  The Guelph Food Bank's Spring Food Drive runs through April 22, and donating is as easy as dropping food off in the marked bins at your neighbourhood grocery store. You can also learn about other ways to give or give back at their website. You can also learn more about all the programs at the West Village Co-op on their website. For more discussion on food security, tune into Open Sources Guelph on Friday for an interview with Feed Ontario CEO Carolyn Stewart. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we go federal again. It's been a busy week for three of the country's main parties, and there are busy times to come in at least one case. On this edition of the show we will look ahead to this weekend and one party's crucial vote, we look back at a federal leader's busy itinerary abroad making new friends, and we will consider the last year under Canada's first-time politician turned first-term PM. This Thursday, March 26, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Orange Counting. This weekend, members of the federal New Democratic Party will gather in Winnipeg to decide who will succeed Jagmeet Singh as their leader. In a sense, this vote is just the end of the beginning of the struggle because the new leader has to rebuild the party, payoff debts, choose a direction and start recruiting future candidates, so are any of the five confirmed candidates up for the massive job ahead? Pierre Does America. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre went on his own world tour last week, or at least an American one. He made several requisite stops at various media outlets, including the biggest one of all, The Joe Rogan Experience! Perhaps to his credit, Poilievre didn't disgrace himself with Rogan or take any of his conspiracy claptrap bait, but can we say that Pierre looked prime ministerial fresh from his trip south of the border. Mark'ed For a Year. It's been one year since Mark Carney won the emergency Liberal leadership convention and became the prime minister, and what a difference a year makes! Once the Liberals were on a backfoot, accused of being out of touch and out to lunch, and then Carney comes in and Canada's natural governing party reclaims its place at the centre of the universe. How did he do it, and how long can Carney stay on top? Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits we get a-political, with the "a" standing for "apocalypse". Our movie of the week is now on PVOD after a brief theatrical run and given it's about the dangers of A.I. and social media, it's no wonder. We will review Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die, and in the same corner of streaming we will revisit a different dark future now 20 years later in V For Vendetta.  This Wednesday, March 25, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: V For Vendetta at 20! Two decades ago, a movie about a masked man taking on a totalitarian government in the United Kingdom was released in the wake of the War on Terror, 9/11 and a backlash against LGBTQ+ rights. Based on the graphic novel and produce by the Wachowskis, it seemed V's moment came and went, but in the Trump era, and a new war in the Middle East, maybe V For Vendetta's time has come again. This week, we will re-watch and render our judgement. REVIEW: Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die (2026). There's been a lot of concern about A.I. in narrative fiction for a while, and now it's everywhere! Too late for us? Not quite because Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell is here to save the day, and the future, from an A.I.pocalypse that destroys the world as humanity watches it all pass by doom scrolling on their phones. Gore Verbinski's (the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) first movie in 10 years has its finger on the pulse, but can he deliver on this bizarre and unique mix of sci-fi, adventure, comedy and cultural commentary? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Last Saturday, the group Resistance and Resilience Guelph gathered over 50 people on the fourth floor of 10C to cook up possible directions for a union to represent renters in the city. Over one-third of Guelph residents rent the place they live, and those residents are under incredible pressure with some of them under a very real threat of losing their homes. Is unionizing Guelph's renters the best way to fight back outside of government action? The stories in Guelph have become quite familiar. From Brant Avenue to Cedar Street, there have been numerous high-profile renovictions that have made the news, and many, many more that have not. The Guelph-Wellington Legal Clinic has report that there's been a 245 per cent increase in the use of N13s since 2020, translating into 500 people losing their housing in a combined 280 units, and that's just this one very specific type of landlord/tenant interaction. City of Guelph staff are now in the process of working on a renovicton bylaw, over their own objections, and are aiming to get it done by sometime later this year. There's also still a desire to press on the provincial government to take action, as it would be so much easier for them to make those changes. But in the wake of governments unwilling to act quickly, or just unwilling to act, a Guelph group is trying to build a new movement, and this week, we will check in on their progress. Janice Folk-Dawson, a long-time labour activist, former federal candidate and now one of the main orgainzers of Guelph's new, under construction tenant union joins us this week to share those details. She will tell us what a tenant union is, what it will do for renters in the city, and what their immediate priorities are. She will also talk about what came out of Saturday's meeting, what comes next, and the role of a tenant union in the political system and a coming municipal election.  So let's talk about building a tenant union on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!  You can find Resistance and Resilience Guelph on Facebook and Instagram, and you can send them an email at rrg [at] gmail.com. Save the date of Saturday May 2 for the next public portion of the tenant union's development, and you will find those details when they're released on RRG's social media feeds. In the meantime, if you need legal advise about your rental situation, you can reach out to the Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County at clinic [at] gw.clcj.ca or by calling 1-800-628-9205. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we let others do the talking. The news is just too damn busy, so we're going to double the number of special guests we usually have on this episode with one local politician and one labour organizer from Ottawa. First up, a member of city council will talk to us about a surprising development in the coming local elections, and after that we'll talk about the back and forth between the federal government and federal government workers. This Thursday, March 19, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: City Hall Pass. Guelph City Council is technically taking the week off, but there was big council news earlier this week when Mayor Cam Guthrie announced that he was not going to stand for re-election in this fall's Guelph municipal election. This week, we're joined by one of Guthrie's council colleagues, Ward 5 rep Leanne Caron, to talk about this leadership vacuum at city hall, her future plans, and what's immediately coming up at council. Public Service Inquiries. Meanwhile in Ottawa, federal government employees are under pressure as Mark Carney and his team are looking to save money by shrinking the work force. At the same time, workers are fighting return to office mandates so they're caught in a trap: They're too important to be allowed to work from home, but they're also not important enough to keep them all employed. We'll be joined by Sean O'Reilly, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), to talk about the issues and the conflict. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we've got true Hollywood stories! For the first half of the show, we will talk about our thoughts fresh from watching this year's Academy Awards and what we think of the winners and losers. For the review, we will tune in to AppleTV to check out a documentary about a young actress, which comes, in part, from a Guelph filmmaker. This Wednesday, March 18, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: One Oscar After Another. The awards season showdown between One Battle After Another and Sinners practically ended in a draw; OBAA got Best Picture, Best Director and four other trophies while Sinners scored Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay plus two more. There was a rare tie in the Best Short Film category, Frankenstein and KPop Demon Hunters got some love, and Baby Yoda put in a cameo mid-ceremony. We will recap those, and other highlights, from 98th Oscars! REVIEW: She Was Here (2026). Heather O'Rourke starred in three Poltergeist movies over the 1980s, but before finishing the third entry she suddenly passed away due to medical complications. It's hard when a young person dies, but Heather's death became ground zero for the "Poltergeist curse", the long-standing belief about how the series, and its stars, were seemingly besieged by tragedy. But in the new documentary She Was Here, director Nick Bailey focuses on the girl, and peels away the rumour to talk about a young and promising life that ended too soon. End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

It was something of a surprise last week when Niagara Region chair Bob Gale announced his sudden resignation less than four months after being appointed by the Ontario government, but it was even more surprising when we found out why: He purchased a signed original copy of Adolf Hitler's memoir and manifesto, Mein Kampf. Gale said he was a history buff, but anti-racism activists saw an entirely different explanation amidst the growing boldness of white supremacy in the region. From a fight at the Stampede Ranch last weekend where racial slurs were allegedly uttered to an Aggie pub night at the University of Guelph in January where some students were allegedly wearing t-shirts with hate symbols and discriminatory slurs, and from a demonstration by white nationalists on a London overpass last fall to a similar gathering outside Hamilton city hall last month, there's a startling trend of racist groups in Ontario feeling increasingly emboldened. Niagara Region seems particularly susceptible to these groups and this year alone there have been a pair of incidents in Grimsby, including one outside a Tim Hortons, and also last Labour Day when there was a gathering of Second Sons at Brock's Monument in Queenston Heights. Given what's going on in communities around Niagara Region, is it easier to understand why people were concerned that the regional chair was the proud owner of a signed copy of Hitler's book? To talk about it, we're joined by Saleh Wazirudden from the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association who will talk about the state of fighting white supremacy in Niagara Region, why these groups are feeling so emboldened and why so many of them seem to be operating in the area. We will also talk about why Gale can't hide behind his excuse of history enthusiasm, connecting the dots across Ontario, and what you should be on the look out for when it comes to white nationalist activity in your community. So let's get back into fighting white supremacy on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association at their website, or you can follow them on social media @TheNRARA on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. For other groups trying to raise awareness about white supremacy locally and in the rest of Canada you can check out No Hate in the Hammer out of Hamilton, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and, of course, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're still thinking about war and peace. There's a lot of the former, which makes the latter seem rather fleeting, but if you're confused about what you're seeing on the news, or in your social media feed, imagine how the leaders of American and Canada's governments are feeling. We will catch up on the situation in Iran, and then we will catch up on the situation coming to Queen's Park with our special guest! This Thursday, March 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Trump's War. Nearly two weeks into the war he started, U.S. President Donald Trump is still struggling to explain why he launched a war with Iran, how long he will keep fighting it, and what he wants aside from "unconditional surrender". In the meantime, a new Supreme Leader has been chosen, the U.S. may have committed a war crime, and the region is sinking further into a conflict with no end in sight. We'll recap this week's insanity from the Middle East. Carney's Struggle. The confusion about the Iran conflict doesn't end in the halls of the White House or the Pentagon. In the House of Commons it seems like there's a great deal of uncertainty about what our own prime minister is thinking about the war, or Canada's role in it. After skipping out on an emergency House debate, and submitting at least three different takes on the subject, what exactly does Mark Carney think about the U.S. War in Iran? Schreiner's View. After nearly 100 days off, Ontario's elected representatives will return to Queen's Park a week from Monday and there will be a lot to talk about. From building new islands in the middle of Lake Ontario, to the changing face of education, to the still monumental challenges of housing and homelessness, there will be a lot to chew on and this week we will be joined by Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner to feast at the all-you-can-eat political buffet! Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we won't say “It's alive!” Our movie this week is ambitious, and it clearly has a lot to say, but how well it says it has been a matter of taste, and opinion. Regardless, on this show we will give our own thoughts on The Bride! and we will also talk about who we think should score one of those little gold men at a certain awards show… This Wednesday, March 4, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: If We Picked the Winners! This coming Sunday is Oscar night! The 98th annual Academy Awards has been a battle between Sinners and One Battle After Another for Best Picture, and a pitched battle between various different categories among other nominees, and while we don't know the future, we can certainly talk about who we think should win in all the various categories Just like Siskel & Ebert used to do, we will pick the winners we'd vote for. REVIEW: The Bride (2026). Released in the 1930s, The Bride of Frankenstein is iconic, but would you be surprised to learn that The Bride herself is basically in only the last five minutes of the movie? Director Maggie Gyllenhaal makes The Bride her central focus in the movie of the same name, this time played by likely Oscar-winner Jessie Buckley as a gangster's moll turned feminist revolutionary and icon in 1930s Chicago. With Christian Bale as The Monster by her side, can this Bride! write her own story, and can Gyllenhaal cash her first blank cheque? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

On Open Sources Guelph, we try our best to condense a week's worth of news into a couple of topics to allow for some in-depth discussion, but when it comes to the work of covering the provincial government, sometimes that almost needs its own weekly show. As we gear up for the return of Ontario's MPPs to Queen's Park in a couple of weeks for the spring sitting, we will tee up the issues that await Premier Doug Ford, his cabinet, caucus and opposition. In the last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has made news about wanting to build new artificial islands along the Toronto waterfront on which a new convention centre will be built, and he's floated the idea of taking over the Billy Bishop Airport, a move that would be pretty unusual because the province plays no role in airports. In both cases, Ford has not kept the City of Toronto looped in on these initiatives. It's been observed before that Ford is acting like the Mayor of Toronto, but he's actually been elected three times to be the premier for the entire province of Ontario, and at the Ontario PC convention last month, he announced his intention to serve as premier into a fourth term and beyond. Right now though, he's facing an exhaustive list or issues, and it has some people wondering if maybe he's losing sight of the forest for the trees, including the ones he's planting? Scotty Hertz, co-host of Open Sources Guelph, will join us this week to offer his take on the Top 10 issues we think are facing the Ford government. From maximizing Toronto's waterfront, to the further crushing of our conservation authorities, and from the still unknown fate of school boards and to the use of private devices and accounts for government business, let's dig into all the things that should be keeping Doug Ford up at night during the last few weeks of his winter break. So let's countdown Doug Ford's problems on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can listen to Open Sources Guelph every Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca, and on this feed every Monday. This week, we will have an interview with Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner. The Ontario legislature will return for its spring sitting on Monday March 23, and on Tuesday it was announced that they will release the budget on Thursday March 26. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we get déjà vu. Once again, the United States is at war with a country whose name begins with I-R-A, and so much has happened on this file in the last few days we have to dedicate half a show to it. In the other half, we go local to talk to a Guelph business owner about the issues facing your favourite local restaurants and how using a popular app on your phone might be doing them more harm than good. This Thursday, March 5, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: This Again?! It was a surprise to all us waking up last Saturday morning that the United States and Israel had launched a full-scale war on Iran, which in the opening hours killed the Cleric and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the days that followed, we've received a confusing mix of reasons and rationales about the goal of the attacks, how long they've been planned, and what their ultimate reason it started in the first place. So why has the so-called "Peace President" Donald Trump plunged his country into another Middle East forever war, and what comes next? Gaffe Priced Apps. A recent report from Restaurants Canada painted a dire picture of the economics at the nation's restaurants: 4,000 of them cross-country are at risk of shutting down for good at the end of this year. There are many reasons for that including the increasing price of food and rent, but there's also pressure from third party apps like Skip the Dishes and Door Dash who take a big portion of the profit but take on none of the risk. This week, we're joined by Guelph restaurateur Hitesh Jagad, co-owner of Kirtida's Kitchen, to talk about the need to rethink the use of these apps and how they're more hindrance than benefit to local businesses. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, March comes in like its Halloween! To kick off the third month of the year, we will dig into an all-horror episode by marking an important birthday for the Scream franchise! Before digging into the latest entry in the series, which you can now see in a theatre near you, we will talk about Scream's legacy, and that of the franchise's creator.  This Wednesday, March 4, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: I Scream, You Scream... This year marks the 30th anniversary release of the first Scream movie. An instant sensation, the movie awoken the horror genre from its 90s malaise, led to a dozen imitators, and has still managed to innovate for new generations of horror fans to new levels of success. Before digging into the next chapter, we will look at the ongoing influence of the Scream franchise and the career of its creator Kevin Williamson. REVIEW: Scream 7 (2006). $64 million at the box office can't be wrong, right? The opening weekend haul of Scream 7 indicates that the franchise still has its fans, and so does the returning final girl Neve Campbell. After sitting out Scream VI, Campbell's Sidney Prescott takes centre stage again as her quiet family life in a small town is shattered when Ghostface re-enters the chat, and this time Sidney's daughter Tatem will learn what it takes to be a Scream Queen too. Intriguing, but can Scream still slay in its seventh outing? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

In this space and others, we've talked a lot about the effect of misinformation and conspiracy theories on our political culture, but there's a growing and pronounced impact on our legal system as well. From local missing person's cases to crimes so heinous that they capture the consciousness of a country, can our online culture be trusted with their role in law and order matters? Last week in Guelph, a photo of a father and his daughter at a local coffee shop was shared on social media as part of a human trafficking inquiry, and a few months ago, CTV News Kitchener reported that the search for a missing Kitchener man was being hampered by online sleuths who had some very peculiar ideas of what happened to the man. Both of these cases are local, and so are their impacts, but what happens when online detectives focus their fire on a national tragedy? This happened last month in the case of the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. In the immediate aftermath, people scoured the internet and social media to find information about the shooter, and as fate would have it, an Ontario woman with the same last name as the shooter's mother was misidentified as Jesse Van Rootselaar. How does something like this happen? Are we overlooking how conspiracy theories and online detectives with an agenda are affecting crime coverage? If anyone might have some insight into this issue it's Dr. Ahmed al-Rawi, who is an associate professor of News, Social Media, and Public Communication and the director of the Disinformation Project at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. He will talk to us about the current state of the information ecosystem when it comes to crime reporting, why context matters in any reporting, and whether our obsessions with true crime primed the pump for all these amateur detectives online. So let's talk about the dangers of crime and conspiracies on this week's Guelph Politicast! You can learn more about The Disinformation Project at the Simon Fraser University website. You can also visit Dr. al-Rawi's personal website. You can check out the straightforward, community reporting at their website. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're feasting on news as we leave much of Canada to its own devices for a week. In the United States the continued revelations of a certain dead criminal's emails are having global implications, and one of the places feeling the heat is inside Westminster, seat of power for the government of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. As for that criminal's best friend who's now President of the United States, he's got problems too. This Thursday, February 26, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Jeffed Up. Revelations from the Epstein Files continue to reverberate around the world, from former prime ministers in Norway to advisors to the current prime minister in the U.K. to one of the co-founders of the Perimeter Institute up the road in Waterloo. But you know who hasn't been feeling the burn from these revelations? This week, we will talk about the latest insights from Jeffrey Epstein's emails and whether everyone mentioned in them will face accountability. State of the Furious. U.S. President Donald Trump delivered the State of the Union on Tuesday and essentially turned it into an awards show. It was about the only highlight in a week that included bad economic numbers, a Supreme Court verdict that went against him, and a potential war against Iran to obliterate the nuclear program that had already been obliterated. We're used to the proverbial fire hose when it comes to Trump news, but is the act finally wearing thin? Keirs of a Clown. One of the big takedowns of the Epstein Files is Peter Mandelson, former ambassador to the U.S. and an advisor to several U.K. governments, including the present one under Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. The scandal has galvanized a growing malaise in a government that's not even two years old, and there are rising challenges from both within Labour and inside the rising racist Reform Party. Is it time to get out the lettuce for Keir? Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits we go back in time, figuratively and literally! In the review, we will go back to 2008 with two Canadian boys in the sure-to-be classic Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, and we will take one last ride through Black Heritage Month by honouring a director who is no longer with us (although his films always will be).  This Wednesday, February 25, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of John Singleton. In 1991, John Singleton released his first film Boyz in the Hood, and he became the first Black person to get nominated for the Best Director Oscar and the youngest. It was the start of a promising career, one that was cut short when Singleton passed away at the age of 51 in 2019. This week, we wrap up Black Heritage Month by paying tribute to two of Singleton's movies, Poetic Justice and Shaft. REVIEW: Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (2026). For years, Matt and Jay have done everything possible to get a show at Toronto's legendary Rivoli venue, except for the most obvious. In Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie they hatch their most daring scheme yet as the popular webseries makes the jump to the big screen with big ambitions, and the most faithful homage to Back the Future you've even seen, but can the director of BlackBerry make his cult favourite show (band?) a CanCon blockbuster for the ages? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Breezy Breakfast has been one of the primary venues for local political discussion and information for the last 10 years. Now, not everyone can take time out first thing in their busy day to have a sit down breakfast and chew the fat about the doings at city hall, so presented here thanks to the miracle of digital recording tech is all the hot goss and chit chat that you missed when maybe you were on your way to work, or were maybe already there... To put this succinctly, the guest of last week's Breezy Breakfast was some guy named Adam A. Donaldson. The point was to offer some thoughts on Mayor Cam Guthrie's recent State of the City speech, but that was only the beginning of the conversation. In the course of about 60 minutes, we touched on the State of the City, the state of the coming election slate, trying to go behind the curtain of closed meetings of council, the water capacity issues in Waterloo and what it means for Guelph, and the still lingering questions about what went down with the daytime shelter issue over the holidays.  So let's grab some breakfast, and politics, on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!  There will be another edition of Breezy Breakfast this Thursday at 8 am at the Uptown Grill, and the special guest will be Guelph MPP Mike Schreniner. You can learn more about Breezy Breakfast by following them on Facebook, where you can find a link to sign up for the newsletter. You can also get more information by email at breezybullhorn [at] gmail.com.  The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph there's tragedy and triumph. First we will head out to B.C. to separate fact from fiction when it comes to events in Tumbler Ridge, which is something we can do thanks to a liberal arts education that the Ontario government is now making more difficult to attain. As for triumph, that's a local matter. We will talk to the newest member of Guelph City Council about some good news stories. This Thursday, February 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Tumbler Ridge. There was tragedy in northern B.C. last week when 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed nine people and injured 25 others in the worst school shooting in Canadian history. A lot of the controversy has focused on Van Rootselaar's gender orientation, but there's been little focus on her deeply rooted mental health issues, or the limited resources to deal with such things in small communities like Tumbler Ridge. Are we missing the so-called forest for the trees here? Taking the 'Fun' Out of Funding. You can't say that the provincial government isn't working because still over a month before their inevitable return to Queen's Park, they announced changes to funding for post-secondary institutions in Ontario. Say "Hello" to more money and "Goodbye" to the tuition freeze and an OSAP formula were students get more in grants than loans. Doug Ford says you'll be fine if you don't major in "basket weaving", but will we? Waterfowl Play. Last week at Guelph City Council tackled two big deals, one was the re-designation of the old Kortright Waterfowl Park on Niska Road and the other was the final vote to designation the Ontario Reformatory Lands as a heritage district. One of the people trying to make sense of it all was Ward 6 City Councillor Katherine Hauser, and in her Open Sources Guelph debut she will talk about deliberating on these difficult files, and the questions about how much city councillors should be paid. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we find a good Rip. In fact, it's a Rip of a Rip, one of the greatest Rips you will ever see. Boy howdy, are we using the word "Rip" a lot in the new Netflix movie The Rip, which is the title were reviewing today. In other news, we will continue with our celebration of Black Heritage Month by doing a deep dive on another great Black director.  This Wednesday, February 18, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of Antoine Fuqua. We've done the legend, we've done the indie darling, and now we're doing the populist. Antoine Fuqua started in music videos and graduated to features with the little-seen The Replacement Killers, but his breakthrough was Training Day, which scored Denzel Washington his second Oscar. Washington, one of Fuqua's regular contributors. also led the other move we'll talk about, The Magnificent Seven. REVIEW: The Rip (2026). Based on a true store about Miami cops that found $20 million in drug money hidden in the walls of a home, The Rip takes things in a decidedly dingy direction, a morality play in the best tradition of Narc filmmaker Joe Carnahan. In this one, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon lead of a team of overworked, underpaid cops who find $20 million in a wall, and then all hell breaks loose. Who can they trust? Can they trust each other? A low stakes, high drama crime movie is the epitome of a "Dumpuary" classic, but can The Rip get us there? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Last week's discussion at city council about the City of Guelph buying a portion of the old Kortright Waterfowl Park lands on Niska Road captured a lot of attention from the community and community activists. No one's going to debate the need for more parks and open space, but it's hard to get a full sense of the history of *this* because it goes back before the internet, so can we ever really have a firm sense of that background and the stakes? We're going to try harder this week with a Real Audio News segment. In this one, you will first hear delegations from the September 22, 2023 and June 28, 2024 Grand River Conservation Authority board meetings where they discussed the Niska Land Management plan. After that, you will hear the delegations from the July 16, 2025 special meeting of Guelph City Council where the land management plan was discussed in connection to the Strategic Plan. And finally, to wrap up, you will hear a portion of this week's Open Sources Guelph interview with Ward 6 Councillor Katherine Hauser about where the work to protect the waterfowl park goes next.  For some supplementary reading, you might also want to check these links out:  Niska Land Holdings 2023 Draft Management Plan Dr. Hugh Whiteley's timeline of the site A 2016 community editorial piece by Susan Radcliffe. Let's get into the Wayback Machine on Niska on this episode of the Guelph Politicast!  You can hear the whole interview with Councillor Hauser on Open Sources Guelph on Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU. You are encouraged to check out the further reading linked to above, and a final decision about the rezoning of the property as open space/parkland should come back to council sometime in June or possibly July. You can also hear the two part Policticast pods about the Niska lands by clicking here and here. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're walking our beat. To begin with we've got eyes on potential corruption in Toronto-area police services, and then we'll be taking a couple of our biggest political leaders aside to see how much they're colluding together to get us back to the polls. And speaking of polls, we will talk to someone presently running for office, in fact, you might say that they want to be a leader. This Thursday, February 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Cop Rocked. Last week, York Regional Police announced a massive bust that included charges against seven current and one retired officer in the Toronto Police Service. The alleged crimes are numerous and quite concerning in their implications, and now Ontario's new inspector general on policing is looking at every police service in the province to make sure their officers are acting above board. Will this lead to any real changes in policing? Marked for Election? A Globe & Mail article painted a picture of an interesting political alliance: Ontario Premier Doug Ford is advising Prime Minister Mark Carney to call an early election and secure the majority he needs to bring economic stability to a trouble land. The polls say that fortune may be in Carney's favour, but it does raise some questions about why Ontario's Conservative premier is making strange bedfellows with the Liberal PM. What's the political calculation? Pick Heather? While some people are getting ready for another national election, the NDP are looking to elect a new leader, and one of the candidates in that race is Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson. With less than two months to go before the membership make their final decision, McPherson will tell us how the NDP needs to rebuild for tomorrow, and the next election, and why their next leader has to lead from inside the House of Commons. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits we will hear the call... of death! What a movie choice for Valentine's Day week as we blow a whistle calling for a painful and excruciating end in the new horror movie Whistle, which you can now see in a theatre near you. Also, we will talk about our latest entry in marking great Black directors for this Black Heritage Month!  This Wednesday, February 11, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of Kasi Lemmons. Black Heritage Month marches on, and this week we get to our indie pick. Kasi Lemmons started her career as an actress, usually as the white female protagonist's best friend, and then transitioned to a career behind the camera. This week, we will look at two of her films, the one that started her directorial career, Eve's Bayou, and a recent historical epic she made, Harriet. REVIEW: Whistle (2026). If you found a creepy Aztec whistle in your locker - which used to belong to a dead boy - on your first day of school, would you blow it? If you would, you might be in a horror movie! In Corin Hardy's Whistle, five photogenic high schoolers find themselves in just such a predicament, unaware that whoever hears the whistle blows will end up being hunted down and killed by their own death. Creepy? Absolutely. Whistle is the kind of 80s-style crowd-pleaser horror that they just don't make anymore. Is it good, or does it blow? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

This time last year, we were in the middle of a provincial election, and that made a lot of things complicated, not the least of which was a delay in funding for the Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment, or HART Hub. But almost one year later, and after a recent announcement about funding for expanded service, do we need to ask the question: Is the HART Hub actually working? To recap, let's talk about what the HART Hub is. The goal is to provide care, housing, and treatment for people in the community with the most complex needs including people experiencing complex mental health and/or addiction challenges, housing instability or homelessness. For Guelph and Wellington area Community Health teamed up with CMHA Waterloo Wellington, Stonehenge, Wyndham House and Homewood and despite provincial disarray, they opened on time last April. How did they do it? As you will hear, a lot of the work at the CTS that went beyond the provision of a safe space to use substances, made it easy to convert to the HART Hub model. Then last week there was news that might definitely indicate its working when the Hub received funding to support an additional 150 people through enhanced housing stability and clinical supports. So is the HART Hub experiment a success, or is it still too soon to tell? Melissa Kwiatkowski, the CEO of Guelph Community Health Centre, will joins us to discuss the progress made in the last year, pivoting to prevention, and how the additional funding will complement the current services offered at the Hub. She will also talk about the ongoing effects from the closure of the CTS, the difficulty in measuring success of its programs, how the HART Hub will grow next, and whether they're able to do any long-term planning so far as provincial funding is concerned. So let's take the pulse of the HART Hub on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about Guelph Community Health Centre at their website, or you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram. You can learn more about the HART Hub specifically here, and if you're looking for help for yourself, a friend, or family member you can call Here 24/7 at 1-844-HERE247 (437-3247), or call the Wyndham Street office directly at 519-821-6638, and press option #3. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph we have doubts. In Alberta, we're really skeptical about the ability of the ones that want to separate, and in the U.S. we're have regret about writing off some people as cranks in the wake of some very scandalous revelations. For the interview, we have doubts that anyone is thinking about the most vulnerable students in Ontario and our guest this week thinks so too. This Thursday, February 5, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: #Wexit By the Grift Shop. Since last summer, there's been a growing separation movement in Alberta, and it got mega-charged last weekend with the federal Conservative policy convention in Calgary and news that political organizers are meeting with the Trump administration for support. There are still an awful lot of hoops to jump through, including an actually referendum, so is the Wexit movement getting ahead of their skis or is it all just a show? Was QAnon Right All Along? The release of over three million emails by the U.S. Department of Justice in the case of deceased serial human trafficker and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein show a man with all kinds of relationships and liaisons among business leaders, academics and politicians, some of which looked innocent and some of which very much not so innocent. Have we been too hard on those conspiracy theorists this whole time? Not Cool In Your School. The recent move by the Ontario government to take over schools boards is having an impact on students, but some students are feeling the impact more than others. David Lepofsky of the AODA Alliance was already in a fight about the lack of action at Queen's Park over a report to improve accessibility, but now the school board takeovers might exacerbate those problems. Lepofsky will join us to talk about why disabled students are getting left behind even more than before. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we get a little sun and surf... At the movies of course. For the review, we're going to a not-so-tropical paradise with some old friends in the new hit Send Help, which you can now see in a theatre near you. Also on this episode, February means more than just Valentine's as we dig into some of the greatest hits from great Black filmmakers! This Wednesday, February 4, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of Spike Lee. To mark Black Heritage Month, End Credits is going to dedicate a portion of our February episodes to highlighting two movies from talented Black directors and we will begin with the legend himself, Spike Lee! For nearly 40 years, Lee has been challenging audiences across many genres and on this episode we will talk about two of his most underappreciated entries, He Got Game and Miracle at St. Anna.  REVIEW: Send Help (2026). "We're not in the office anymore, Bradley"; a statement of unambiguous fact or a tacit threat? Director Sam Raimi is back and he's talking a trip to the tropics with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien, but don't you call it a vacation! In the new dark comedy thriller, McAdams is a woman with exceptional survival skills and O'Brien is her affluent nepo baby boss, and when the two of them end up on a deserted island in the Pacific you have no idea where it's going to go. We will try and sell you on Send Help spoiler-free. End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Fascism, have you heard of it? It's certainly been hard not to see it, especially over the last few weeks with images from the United States. The problem is that it's hard to recognize fascism until it gets to this point, so as people in the U.S. try and figure out how to get out of this mess, many Canadians are trying to stop us from joining them. Where can you begin? There's a symposium for that! In 2018, Crawford Killian posted a piece in The Tyee called “Fourteen Steps to Fascism”. Among the steps are many of them will sound familiar and while they may make you think about the fiefdom of Donald Trump and MAGA, be honest, we've seen a lot of that up here in Canada too. Nobody wants to call it fascism because people so closely associate that with a war that ended almost a hundred years ago, but as we're seeing in front of our eyes, fascism is a process. Seems like a good time to try and educate yourself, so enter an annual appointment in the local activism calendar, the Rebel Knowledge Symposium hosted by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group, or OPIRG. This year marks OPIRG's 50th birthday, and what better way to celebrate (?) than organizing people on how best to identify fascism at home and abroad and fight it. If you think “Everything sucks right now!” you might be ready for Rebel Knowledge, but how does it all come together? Illyria Volcansek, the external outreach co-ordinator of this year's Rebel Knowledge Symposium, joins us on this edition of podcast to talk about how she ended up co-organizing this year's symposium, and how OPIRG decided to centre the theme on fighting fascism. She will also talk about finding fascistic tendencies in our own backyard, how to push back when people think that describing things as fascist is a bridge too far, and the greatness of OPIRG as a Guelph community institution. So let's talk about fight fascism and rebel knowledge on this week's Guelph Politicast! The 2026 Rebel Knowledge Symposium, “Here We Go Again: Fighting Fascism Then & Now”, kicks off this Friday February 6 with a live taping of "Sandy and Nora Do Politics" in Peter Clark Hall. The symposium goes all weekend in the University Centre at the University of Guelph with all kinds of talks and workshops and activities - and it's all free! You can learn more and see the full schedule here. You can also learn more about OPIRG at their main website. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we catch up with old friends. While Mark Carney was hugging it out with a Canadian celebrity, MPs were returning to Ottawa for another session or where else detoured by bad winter weather. We will also detour, but to the United States where there's another kind of chill in the air, plus we will keep winter matters front of mind with our special guest from Guelph city council. This Thursday, January 22, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: They Killed a Nurse This Time. Last weekend, immigration and border enforcement agents upped the ante in Minneapolis by killing nurse Alex Pretti as he was coming to the aid of a woman being assaulted with pepper spray. The cold-blooded execution of Pretti in front of a dozen witnesses and their iPhones has further ratcheted up tensions on American streets as even unexpected sources like the NRA are calling out ICE's Gestapo tactics. What happens next? Bonhomme and Badness. The House of Commons returned this week... Well, some of them. Many MPs were snowed in  and unable to make it Monday, while Mark Carney met Ontario Premier Doug Ford for a slice of pizza in Toronto and to hopefully talk him off the proverbial ledge over all this China trade talk. Meanwhile Pierre Poilievre faces the music this weekend in a leadership review and Avi Lewis looks more and more like the next NDP leader. We'll catch with the latest from Ottawa. Goller Back. Guelph City Council has a busy week ahead with the budget for the seven shared services and, just in time for all the complaining, a review of winter road maintenance. But what about those lingering questions about daytime shelter arrangements, not to mention the winter response on these very cold nights?  Also, how much work does one councillor expect to get done in this election year? We will seek all these answers from Ward 2 rep Rodrigo Goller who is our returning guest this week. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we're feeling the chill. But if the weather outside is cold, wait until you take another wild ride through the high drama of being a modern mom in the new movie If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which you can now rent on video-on-demand. Speaking of the cold, we will salute the movies made by the coldest film festival (weather-wise) on the calendar! This Wednesday, January 28, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: One Last Ride... In Park City. Currently underway is the Sundance Film Festival, but this year it's different because this is the last year the festival is taking place in Park City, Utah and it's the first year without prominent co-founder Robert Redford. We will do our part to mark Sundance's impact on the culture by talking about some of their biggest success stories from genre fare, to blockbusters, Oscar winners and the first timers that went on to massive success! REVIEW: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025). Coming out of last year's Sundance is the entry in the "motherhood is hell" subgenre, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. The film from Mary Bronstein tells the story of a woman besieged by sick child, a hole in her ceiling, a dispassionate therapist, and too many clients as dysfunctional as she is, in what may be a career best (and Oscar nominated) performance by Rose Byrne. As Oscar season begins, we will catch up with one of the race's sleeper successes because motherhood may be hell, but does it make for great cinema? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

What if I told you that for a fraction of the price of building all the highway projects currently planned by the Ontario government - Highway 413, the Brantford Bypass, and the tunnel under the 401 - you could fund all the major transit projects on the province-wide wishlist? Don't take my word for it, this is all part of an analysis recently published by Environmental Defence. The numbers are stark. The economic impact of traffic congestion is $10 billion per year, but the estimated impact to the quality of life is about $35 billion, and according to worldwide surveys the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area has some of the worst traffic congestion. To combat this, the Ontario government has proposed $80 billion in new highway projects and all of them controversial and now all branded as projects of significant economic interest.  So is there another way? Obviously, Environmental Defence is proposing that instead of $80 billion on highways, not to mention the extra $100 billion for a tunnel under the 401, the provincial government should take $14 billion and fund all the GTA-West Rapid Transit projects, including the $1.5 billion for the work on the Kitchener Line that will make two-way, all-day GO train service possible. But is there an audience will to pursue these ideas at Queen's Park?  Mike Marcolongo, the associate director of Environmental Defence, believes there might be, and he's going to tell us about the intentions of this report, and why transit improvement has to be a non-partisan project of multiple levels of government. He will also talk about the lack of co-ordination across transit systems in the GTHA, looking at rapid bus transit as an option, and whether the difficulties building the Finch and Eglinton LRTs dissuade people from supporting the investment in others like them. So let's talk again about building better transit on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the group at their website, or follow them at social media at Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can also learn more about Transport Action Ontario at their website. As for the report itself, you can find “Transit Over Traffic: Hard Truths for Addressing Gricklock in the GTA” on Environmental Defence's website under the “reports” section. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, it's Blew Thursday. You've heard of Blue Monday, the saddest day of the year, well this is the dumbest day of the year, and we're talking about the people who blew it, or are blowing it. First, the Quebec premier once thought invincible has quit, and then our PM is shaking and baking again on the world stage but not necessarily to the satisfaction of his constituents. For the interview, an old friend with housing concerns. This Thursday, January 22, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Should He Stay or Should He Legault Now. Quebec Premier and Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) leader François Legault announced suddenly last week that he was quitting. He's the second provincial leader to step down in the last couple of months, and with less than a year till the next provincial election, but Legault has long had the goal of trying to be the first Quebec premier to get more than two majority governments in a row in nearly 70 years. So what went wrong? Mark Carney Vs The World Part 3. Prime Minister Mark Carney is back collecting Air Miles and in the last week he's made stops in China and the United Arab Emirates, where he announced new trade deals, and then he pulled up to the World Economic Forum in Davos where he brought down the house with a speech declaring that "The old order is not coming back." Tough talk from Carney, and the Davos crowd ate it up, but does this do anything for Canadians? The Realtor World. So housing is expensive in Canada. This is known, but will 2026 be the year that we finally get back to something resembling affordability? Some people think so, but friend of the show David-Alexandre Brassard, chief economist of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, is not so sure, and he joins us this week to talk about his thoughts about Canada's housing market and to remind us why it's so much more complicated than we think it is. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, it's back to two of our favourite topics: Awards and the undead! On this episode we're heading back to the land of fast zombies for the latest entry in the 28 Years Later saga, which is called The Bone Temple, and before that we're going to talk about something else that won't die: The desire to make Oscar predictions! This Wednesday, January 21, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: We Pick Some Oscars. This week, the nominees will be announced for the 97th annual Awards for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or as you might otherwise know them, The Oscars. Before the Academy offers their official nominations, we will use the first part of this week's show to offer our unofficial picks for Best Picture, Director, the acting categories, and a dealer's choice option, including (perhaps) the newest category. REVIEW: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026). Picking up where last summer's 28 Years Later left off, we re-enter the zombie infested U.K. and catch up with Dr. Ian of the titular Bone Temple, who may have stumbled onto something that might change the game. Meanwhile, our young lad Spike has fallen into a rough crowd called the Jimmies, who are making the most of the post-apocalyptic landscape by being as bad as they want to be. These two stories are on a collision course in this (supposedly) middle chapter. but does this movie have - ahem - bite? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

It's been quite a year so far, and it's only been about three weeks long. Unfortunately, there's no guest on this week's show, nobody seems to want to talk about the biggest issue in town, but that doesn't mean we can't chat about it on our own. For this peculiar episode of the podcast, we will talk about the questions left over from the daytime shelter story, how we've been trying to cover it, and what's going on at Politico HQ as we look to an even busier year ahead! So let's not beat around the bush and get down to this solo edition of the Guelph Politicast!  The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, it's non-stop controversy only two weeks into the new year. From the United States, just when you thought there was nothing new to get angry about, more state-sponsored violence, and then the international situation is getting even more dicey with new drama in Iran. More locally, we've got drama right here in our own backyard concerning daytime shelter services that may or may not be coming. This Thursday, January 15, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Renee For Good. Last week in Minneapolis, a woman named Renee Nicole Good was killed by an agent of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Why? That depends on who you ask. The killing of Good has become a flashpoint, people who've been warning about the use of ICE as Donald Trump's personal brute squad now have someone to rally around, a dead mother of three who seemed to be killed because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Has the tide turned? Iran For Change. Over the last several weeks, small gatherings of merchants upset about the loss of value on the Rial, Iran's national currency, have became a full-blown national demonstration against the ruling regime, and they're feeling the pressure. Thousands of protestors have been maimed or killed, but as Iranians abroad now push for western intervention is there a way we can do it that doesn't repeat regime change mistakes of the past? Gimme (Daytime) Shelter. So local controversy arose to start the year in Guelph! A new daytime shelter run by Stepping Stone and Royal City Mission approved in November was supposed to be a done deal and ready to open this week, and then there was the surprise announcement last week that that there was no deal in the end. What happened? Here to help us sort that out is Ward 5 City Councillor Cathy Downer who will talk about how we got here and where we might go next? Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we're heading back to space, where no one can hear you sigh. Yup, we're going back to Pandora and all it's imaginative creatures and landscapes in James Cameron's newest, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and while we're on the subject of Cameron, we will take time out to rank all 10 of the director's movies so far, up to, but not including, the latest one! This Wednesday, January 14, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: Ranking James Cameron. Since emerging as a talent in the 80s, there has been no one like James Cameron working in movies. Technically sophisticated, meticulous in detail and always working on the biggest possible canvas, Cameron has bet big on himself every time and has almost always beaten the odds and the house. So to begin this show, we're going to rank his 10 (official) movies from Terminator to Titanic and his two deep sea documentaries. REVIEW: Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025). It's time to go back to Pandora. Since the last time we were on this mysterious world, the Sully clan were irreparably changed in the wake of a family tragedy and the growing war between humans and Na'vi for the planet's precious resources. Avatar: Fire and Ash though introduces us to a new tribe of Na'vi, ones that may like to buy what the human invaders are selling. In this third entry in his highly complex, and highly lucrative, franchise, is there still space for James Cameron's epic sci-fi parable or shall we call it a trilogy? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

The State of the City is a key event on the annual political calendar as it gives some insight into the mind of the mayor; what do they value, what do they consider accomplishments, and what do they see as the biggest challenges? It's also a look inside the mind of the mayor and how they see the big picture outside the day-to-day issues and crises that come up. So let's look inside the mayor's head from one year ago. In his speech, Mayor Cam Guthrie called Guelph a “city of resilience”; our challenges are many but the will of people to overcome and their willingness to embrace innovation is strong. The housing picture is rough, but Guelph is not unique in that issue, and there's also a lot going in the city that is worth noting beyond those tough conditions. Yes, there are some good news stories in Guelph!   In the end, the mayor said that the city is strong, and united, and was sitting on a solid foundation at the beginning of 2025 to deliver more great things in the 12 months that would follow, so let us remind ourselves where we once sat. For this week's podcast, Cam Guthrie will take the microphone to talk about the State of the City, as he saw it, around this time in 2025.  In this flashback, you will hear Guthrie discuss Guelph's economic big picture, the accomplishments achieved in 2024, the new positive directions he foresaw, and the opportunities and warning signs that he believed were coming for the city in 2025. As we approach the State of the City for 2026 in a couple of weeks, we pause today, as we do at this time every year, to look back at the mayor's agenda for the year that just ended.  So let's revisit the 2025 State of the City on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can revisit coverage of the State of the City last year and every year in the archives of Guelph Politico. Or, if you would rather look forward, the next State of the City event will be on Thursday February 12 at 7 am at the Delta Guelph Hotel and Conference Centre. You can get more information and buy tickets at the Guelph Chamber of Commerce's website.  The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we enter the new year like we left the old year: chaotically. For this first episode of the year, we will catch you up with all the news you might have missed either intentionally or on purpose during the holidays, and split into three distinct areas. We will tackle the latest drama south of the border, the travel plans of Canada's prime minister, and whatever the heck in going on with the leader of Ontario. This Thursday, January 8, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Don-roe They Didn't! What a way to start the second year of his second term! U.S. military forces dropped into Venezuela in the dead of night, and kidnapped Nicolás Maduro and his wife and arrested them. There's no doubt that Maduro is, to borrow a phase, a bad hombre, but why him and why now? From the direction to seize Venezuela's oil wealth to renewed speculation about regime change in Cuba, we'll talk about Donald Trump's latest mad man move. Mark Carney Vs. The World (2026 Edition). New year, more Air Miles. In this first week of 2026 Prime Minister Mark Carney went to Europe to stand with Ukraine and Greenland as they face two very different aggressors, and next week he heads to China to further the project of selling Canada to the world. Carney's globetrotting comes as his old rival Chrystia Freeland takes a job with Ukraine and new questions about ensuring Canadian sovereignty arise, so how will Carney respond? The Doug Phone. Technically, the Ontario government will continue to be on winter break until sometime around the beginning of spring. As school board trustees wait for the other shoe to drop, as conservation authorities face a loss of autonomy, and as people continue to be concerned about the high cost of living, Doug Ford is focused on what's important: cancelling Crown Royal and protecting the use of his private phone for government business. We'll catch up with what Doug's been up to. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we're back with the first new episode of 2026 and what might be the best movie of 2025...? We will dig into Marty Supreme, which you can now see in a theatre near you, and we will let you know if it matches the hype, and we're also going to go into the vault and talk about another acclaimed film that has perhaps even gotten better with time. This Wednesday, January 7, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: Heat at 30. Somewhere in Hollywood, Michael Mann is toiling on a sequel to what might be his masterpiece: Heat. The crime thriller was notable for many reasons, not the least of which was the first on-screen face-off between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as career criminal Neil McCauley and LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna respectively. So three decades later, how does Heat hold up and, frankly, do we even need a sequel? REVIEW: Marty Supreme (2025). In the competitive world of table tennis in the 1950s, no one is more competitive than Marty Mauser. From director Josh Safdie, and starring the man of the moment Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme has the urgency of the Safdies past efforts like Uncut Gems, while having the underdog qualities of all great sports dramas and also being centered around a character whose own self-determination borders on reckless and self-destructive. So is Marty Supreme the movie of our times, and is Timmy finally achieved the greatness he's striving for? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm

Guelph City Council is taking an extended holiday (but not as extended at the Ontario government), so as we wait for their inevitable return, it seems fitting to pause here at the start of the year and to look back at all the action last fall in the council chambers. Before we unlock the future we must first find the keys to the past so join us in this search for the keys... It was a busy fall at city council on the planning side. There was a major proposal to redevelop a plaza at the corner of Gordon and Clair, and there was the rollout of the block plan for the first two phases of the Guelph Innovation District lands. The consequences of those decisions may take decades to unfold, certainly beyond the time and space of this current council (who term out this November). In terms of policy, council looked at making it easier to build more accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, and considered five or more units as-of-right on certain low residential properties. They also strongly endorsed the creation of a renoviction bylaw and a vacant home tax in order to stop the loss of affordable housing before it happened. There was also some weird thing with parking restrictions in one section of the Ward that caused some controversy. There were also some city building projects on the agendas. Redeveloping the area around the Macdonell Bridge took up a lot of bandwidth, especially when it comes to keeping portions of the Allan Dam, or not keeping them as the case may be. Council also looked at the final design of St. George's Square after advising staff to ratchet up that "wow factor", and as they do almost every fall, there was the passage of the budget and all the drama there. So let's get into events at city council last fall in this week's Guelph Politicast! The next council meeting is the January planning meeting on Tuesday January 20 at 4 pm in the council chambers at city hall. The agenda will be posted on the City of Guelph website sometime this coming Thursday. As usual, stay tuned to Guelph Politico for all the latest developments before, during and after every city council meeting! The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we kick off 2026 by kicking out 2025. As usual on New Year's Week, we will hand out the annual awards in the four categories we mark at this time every year. We cover the good, the bad and ugly as we look at the people who made us hopeful, the people who made us weep, and the issues that keep us warm because the fire from the rage burns so bright! This Thursday, January 1, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Worst Politician of 2024. Always an embarrassment of riches, there were a lot of nominees for the Worst Person in Politics in 2025, and that's with two of the most obvious candidates sidelined due to their status as lifetime honourees. As usual, we will kick off the awards show with the person or persons that exemplified the worst of our politics, from leaders who failed to politicians in Canada trying to copy Ugly Americanism. Good News Story of the Year. There was good news this year? That's always the joke, isn't it? But yes, there was good news and it was not so hard to find after all. In this category we will reach for some light at the end of the tunnel, and it perhaps should be unsurprising that it involves the young people (not that fixing all out our problems should be put on their heads, of course). For this year's good news, we will look to the youth. Dumpster Fire of the Year. Is 2025 the most dumpster or fires? Well, there was no shortage of fuel in any event. From the loss of momentum on climate action, to the return of the Trump circus to Washington D.C., to far right hooliganism there were more dumpsters on fire than ever before! (Or maybe it just felt that way.) Somehow, we managed to get that big list down to pair of fires, and they may be the worst of all. Best Politician of 2024. If there is a worst, then there must also be a best. The nominees were not as numerous in this category, but like the Good News Story of the Year section they are there if you're willing to look for them. To wrap up the show, we will have a ray of hope about what comes next, or make that who comes next. Whether that's a Gen Zeer who's now a party leader on Canada's west coast to the (possible) next President of the United States. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits it's the end... of the year! As usual when we get to the end of the year, we will talk about our favourites from the last 12 months, the movies that we will always remember when we think about the ones that mattered in 2025. The gang's all here for the only New Year's Eve party that matters, at least if you're a local movie fan! This Wednesday, December 31, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Peter Salmon, and Candice Lepage will discuss: The Top 5 of 2025. We survived till '25, and it was a wild year at the movies indeed. As the industry shifts under massive changes in how people watch movies and rich pricks fight over who ends up running studios, we're focusing on what's important this New Year's Eve: Quality! As usual when it comes around to the turning of the year, we will pause and reflect about the best movies of the year, which in 2025 includes revolutionaries, bootleggers, playwrights, and Aunt Gladys! End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Thirty years. That's how long it's taken to get the new main library this far, and it still won't open for several more months. The ambitions of multiple library boards, library CEOs, city councils, and patrons will finally be realized this year after three decades of debate, negotiation and preparation, but at the end of this long road, can the new main library deliver on the hype and will it be the good news story downtown Guelph needs exactly when it needs it the most? Back at the turn of the century,  the plan was to buy the old post office on upper Wyndham and renovate that. The whole project was going to cost $10.5 million for a 80,000 square foot building, and it was well on it's way to becoming reality when a more conservative mayor and council put the kibosh on all that progress and it was back to the drawing board. (If you're interested in the full timeline, it's an 88-page document on the Library's website.) More recently, the $67.1 million library project was approved in 2019 for the Baker District Redevelopment, but there was some further fiddling in the fall of 2020 that solidified the project as it exists now. Despite all the wonderful aspects of the project though there's still questions about whether it will meet all the expectations put upon it. So as we enter this pivotal year, is the library staff ready to meet the challenges that come after the building is open?  For this first pod of the year, we're joined by two of those staff members, CEO Dan Atkins and manager of public services Meg Forestell-Page. They will talk about the progress on the new building's construction, and the progress on planning for all the new programs that will take place there. They will also talk about the impact on the other library branches, the fate of the current main library, and how the new building will continue to serve as a community hub for the people most in need.  So let's look forward again to the new library on this additional episode of the Guelph Politicast!   The new main library is scheduled to open sometime later this year in the fall. To learn more about what to expect and review the progress so far, you can go to the library's website. and you can learn more about the entire Baker District Redevelopment at the City of Guelph's website. If you missed it yesterday, you can still listen to the first What's Next ‘26 podcast about the South End Community Centre.  The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

 It's the start of a new year, but more than that it's the start of a big year for Guelph, and not just because there's a municipal election in October. To end 2025, and to start 2026, this podcast will be airing back-to-back episodes that will mark the pending completion of two major construction projects by this time next year: Today we're talking all about the South End Community Centre! Drive down Clair Road West and you can see it peaking over the hills on the left hand side: The South End Community Centre. Construction began in 2023, but like most massive construction projects in Guelph it's a story that goes back decades. A June 2014 report recommended that a nearly $60 million facility be built on lands south of Bishop MacDonell Secondary School, but it took three years to get to detailed design and it took another three years to get it ready to start construction.  The SECC will feature twin ice pads, an aquatic centre with a lap and teaching pool, a double gymnasium, walking track and multi-purpose rooms, all connected by a central lobby covering a total of 160,000 square feet. But then there are the expectations. Guelph is presently underserviced by rec facilities, the pool at Centennial had to close early, and there's a whole Parks and Rec Master Plan approved a few years ago banking on new opportunities at the new centre. So is city staff ready to deliver? The people who can answer that are today's guests, the City of Guelph's general manager of culture and recreation Danna Evans, and the general manager of facilities and energy management Ian Scott. They will talk about the current state of construction, what work is left to be done and if there are any issues that might prevent it from opening on time. Plus, they will talk about staffing the centre, planning for the programming, and whether or not the South End Community Centre will have a proper name!  So let's look forward to the South End Community Centre on this week's Guelph Politicast!  The South End Community Centre is currently scheduled to open sometime in the fall of 2026. You can follow the progress on construction on the City of Guelph's website here, and you learn more about the facility itself here. Come back to this feed tomorrow for a podcast about the other big construction project that will be opening in the fall of 2026, the new main library downtown. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph we ask, "What day is this?" And we answer, "Why it's Christmas Day, sir." And since it's Christmas Day, or there abouts, the time has come for our annual entry the political movies special. As usual at this time of year, we've lined up four new politically-themed movies to discuss including two comedies, a French movie in black and white and an Academy Award-winning documentary! This Thursday, December 25, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Adam's Pick #1: Canadian Bacon (1995). "In a desperate bid to revive his abysmal peacetime approval rating, the President of the United States (Alan Alda) agrees to launch a top-secret propaganda campaign to vilify Canada. As U.S. citizens get caught up in a xenophobic hysteria, a group of residents of Niagara, N.Y., wielding machine guns, organize a vigilante invasion that could trigger a real war with America's gentle neighbor to the north." Scotty's Pick #1: Hate/La Haine (1995). "When a young Arab is arrested and beaten unconscious by police, a riot erupts in the notoriously violent suburbs outside of Paris. Three of the victim's peers, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Said (Said Taghmaoui) and Hubert (Hubert Koundé), wander aimlessly about their home turf in the aftermath of the violence as they try to come to grips with their outrage over the brutal incident." Adam's Pick #2: Burn After Reading (2008). "The misplaced memoirs of a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), are found by a pair of dimwitted gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). When they mistake the memoirs for classified government documents, they undergo a series of misadventures in an attempt to profit from their find." Scotty's Pick #2: No Other Land (2025). "This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval." Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, Christmas is almost here. To celebrate, and to take a holiday break, we depart from our usual format to come at Christmas movies from three different angles with the assistance of some special guests. We will cover all your holiday favourites from the classics, to the new classics, and the ones that are so bad they're good. This Wednesday, December 24, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Peter Salmon, Candice Lepage, and special guests Phil Allt and Mike Ashkewe will discuss: Phil's Christmas Story. Guelph Ward 3 City Councillor Phil Allt has long been associated with A Christmas Story after he was gifted a replica leg lamp from that movie by his wife. So how does Phil feel about being so closely linked to this classic for years? Adam A. Donaldson talks to Allt about the things that keep us coming back to A Christmas Story, and the role of nostalgia in Christmas movies. The Best Christmas Movies of the 21st Century So Far... Do we make classic Christmas movies anymore? Tough to say. A lot of the movies we watch and enjoy every December tend to be from the 20th century. So where are the new classics? Peter Salmon and Mike Ashkewe might have some ideas about that, from comedies about one special Santa's helper, to action movies where Santa gets violent. The Best Worst Christmas Movies. Christmas movies are typically quite formulaic, and sometimes we confuse how filmmakers using something that works as them just being lazy. But even the most formulaic of movies can get you in the feels, or maybe just surprise you with how bad that bad can get. Candice Lepage and Tim Phillips will look at some of their favourite so-called Worst Christmas movies, and what makes them not so bad. End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.