Editorials - Aug. 14, 2026
Catch Me If You Can
In a headline straight out of Catch Me If You Can, a Toronto man has pleaded guilty to wire-fraud after posing as an airline pilot for years. Why? The free flights. There is no evidence that he ever actually tried to work as an airline pilot, he just used fake identification to book hundreds of free flights, even requesting the jump seat - the spare in the cockpit.
Dallas Pokornik of Toronto had previously worked as a flight attendant for a Canadian airline. After leaving, prosecutors say he used fake employee credentials to convince others he was still crew - sometimes claiming to be a pilot. Pokornik’s escapades continued from 2020 to 2024, until a booking agent at an airline got suspicious and investigated. He has now pled guilty to wire fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and restitution.
His audacity actually outstrips Frank Abagnale Jr. as journalistic investigations and public records have since shown that he fabricated or grossly exaggerated most of the grand exploits in Catch Me If You Can, revealing that he had never posed as an airline pilot. Abagnale’s most successful and enduring con was manufacturing his own vibrant life story, selling the book, and letting Hollywood turn it into a legend.
Obviously, impersonating airline crew and using fake credentials is serious, but it begs the enormous question: How does one fool multiple airlines for years and get onto hundreds of flights? At some point, this stops being just a story about one guy committing fraud and becomes an unnerving story about airline security systems. – DS
Munich
On Tuesday, news outlets began reporting that trade officials on both sides of the border were poised to present the framework of a new deal to U.S. President Donald Trump before the Aug. 19 deadline.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has been imperfect since taking office and having to navigate among the most uncharted of waters with our neighbours to the south, but, as polls suggest, most Canadians approve of the job he’s doing. And yet, the criticism continues. Everyone from Pierre Poilievre to the average Facebook comment writer has said their piece and Carney’s harshest critics insist we should concede nothing.
In his now-famed Davos speech, Carney proclaimed that, “nostalgia is not a strategy.” This couldn’t be more true. If any Canadian thinks we should puff our chests out and offer Trump nothing, leading to Trump apologizing and returning everything to their pre-2025 places, this Canadian has been asleep since 2016. The very basis of a negotiation is give and take. The saying goes that a good compromise leaves everyone unhappy. A negotiation is not dissimilar.
That’s not to say that Canadians - or Americans - should view a deal, if any, with anger, but we need to face the reality of negotiation. Yes, it’s sounding like we will make concessions. We’re also hearing that the Americans will be making them too - concessions from the Trump-created world of tariffs, but concessions nonetheless in the new reality.
Carney and his team are working to protect Canadian interests. With the unpredictability on the other side of the negotiating table, this is no easy task. And when you hear about what we gave up, at the same time, ask yourself what we gained. Getting fleeced is unacceptable, but to enter a negotiation prepared to concede nothing is unrealistic. – SL
Jaws
Ten years ago, Canada watched a concert together. On Aug. 20, 2016, The Tragically Hip played their final show in Kingston. Gord Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and the farewell tour had become bigger than music. Canadians gathered in theatres, arenas, living rooms and backyards to watch a night of grief, but also generosity.
Downie’s illness and eventual death in 2017 can tempt one to view those performances chiefly as tragedy. But that would diminish what he gave us. He continued to write, perform and speak when he could have retreated. Through “Secret Path”, he confronted the history of Chanie Wenjack and residential schools, insisting that loving Canada also means having the courage to look honestly at it, which was always present in The Hip’s music. Downie wrote about Canada by not reducing it to a flag, slogan or postcard. His songs inhabited its highways, hockey rinks, lakes, small towns and peculiar corners. They captured our contra-dictions: pride and doubt, humour and loneliness, beauty and regret.
That matters now. In a fractured world, Canadian identity can feel like something we must defend, define or explain. The Hip offered something quieter and more enduring. Their Canada was imperfect, complicated and unfinished, but worth knowing, questioning and loving. Ten years later, the final concert is no longer a farewell. It is a memory we share.
Gord Downie is gone. The men in his band have grown older. But the songs remain alive in radios, record players, campfires, arenas and the voices of people who learned their words by heart. Perhaps that is the gentlest legacy of all. The man left us. The music stayed. And, in those songs, a piece of Canada stays quietly with us, too. – SBS