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Hopeful
It will be a good year. I make this bold prediction of 2026, fully acknowledging that my prediction powers are feeble. Unreliable. Unworthy of the ink being spilt to print these words onto 6,000 pages. Yet, I feel a duty—a primal compulsion—to be hopeful on the threshold of a new year.
And thankful. Grateful for the blessings of family, friends and the affection (perhaps irritation too) of readers. We are worried people (with good and justifiable reasons). But our anxiety, if unchecked, risks blotting out the graces and goodness that flow through our lives— the things that propel us from day to day.
And yes, I am sufficiently selfaware to know that my writing—for some— contributes to this looming anxiety. (For which I make no apology. It is cliché to point out that a functioning liberal democracy requires a well-informed populace. Further, our reliance on TikTok, Facebook and Google to do this job is its own well of worry. That these platforms understand that many of us seek only to be entertained or sedated compounds the risks.)
Yet it is against a blizzard of disheartening news that we must strive to discern the good. The hopeful. The inspiring. And keep it close. It may be all we have.
Now, before this prophecy slips into the warm embrace of banality, I must turn to the specific reasons why I am hopeful for 2026.
Globally, the year is likely to start poorly. Depending on what the American president does in Venezuela, or chooses not to do in Ukraine, the world may edge closer to the precipice of a dark chasm. Workers in Canada will endure more pain as Trump’s tariffs take a deeper bite.
But in 2026, the grip the orange toddler holds over that nation will further erode and recede. Sclerotic and craven as they have been in the shadow of Trump, the institutions erected to check a rogue president show signs of stiffening.
Spines may even be forming among some GOP leaders ready to gamble toward decency— away from the carnival. By the end of next year, the corruption and disaster of Trump’s presidency will become too grotesque for all but the hardest of die-hard MAGA folk to stomach. More bad things will happen in 2026 under Trump, but fewer than this year and against greater resistance.
In Canada, Mark Carney will continue to gently poke the Conservatives, daring them to bring his government down—that is, if the prime minister hasn’t secured a majority by then. Pierre Poilievre, under ongoing internal attacks—even after surviving a leadership review in January—will blink. Canadians won’t go to the polls again next year. Not federally, anyway. Quebeckers seem ready to elect another Parti Québécois government next fall. That will spur plenty of renewed talk of separatism. (We can never be free from some anxiety.)
Canada’s economy will prove more resilient than economists predict. We will open new markets. We will secure talent and expertise from the US and beyond. We will innovate better and learn to build things again. Debt will remain a burden, but rising productivity will reveal a pathway to a more manageable place.
Finally, we turn to Prince Edward County. Much was accomplished in 2025. The era of build-it-and-they-will-come collapsed under the weight of wishful thinking, breathtaking arrogance and “astonishing recklessness”.
A year ago, Shire Hall imagined plans to expropriate and bulldoze private homes along Sandy Hook, in part, to accommodate “8,000 new homes in the next 10 years”. New homebuilding was going to explode—800 homes by the end of 2025 (as of November, Shire Hall is on track to issue just 78 new homebuilding permits for single detached dwellings in Prince Edward County this year).
As the anticipated housing surge crumbled to dust and drifted away, so too went plans to spend $300 million on waterworks. The improbable became the implausible before skidding into, “what on earth were we thinking?’
When the smug hallucination turned to smoke, many of the municipal officials who promoted it moved on. A new group of practical and Countyminded individuals is starting to make its mark at Shire Hall.
The place won’t be fixed overnight. The spending hemorrhage won’t be stanched in 2026. But for the first time in more than a decade, there is a plan to examine the business—to find better and less expensive ways of doing things.
There remain deep wounds on the landscape. We will remember the values traded away at Waring’s Creek and elsewhere. We will not forget how easy it was for some folks to walk away from the principles we believed our leaders shared.
And finally, there will be an election next year—an opportunity to reassert those values and ideals. A chance to welcome fresh thinking, a new perspective, tempered by a healthy respect for the history and traditions of the place. After a decade of giddy get-rich-quick scheming, there is an opportunity for prudent governance.
2026 is shaping up as a turnaround year in the County. At least we can hope.
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