It’s 2025. Donald Trump is president. And he is insisting that Canada is for sale. It feels disorienting, even existential, to watch a trade war escalate and to hear an American president vow to make Canada “the 51st state.” Amid this disorientation, there is an urgent question: how do we meet the moment?

CBC host Elamin Abdelmahmoud edited Elbows Up!, a collection of essays and reflections by leading cultural figures speaking candidly on America, on Canada, and on the malleable contours of a national narrative still taking hold.

Come hear Elamin chat with contributors Jesse Wente and Jessica Johnson about this pivotal moment in history, how we got here, and how we walk together into an uncertain future.

Elamin Abdelmahmoud is the host CBC Radio's pop culture show Commotion. He was a founding co-host of the CBC Politics podcast Party Lines, and he is a past contributor to The National’s At Issue panel. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Globe and Mail, and others. Elamin is also the author of the bestselling memoir, Son of Elsewhere. 

Jesse Wente is a husband and father, as well as a writer, broadcaster, speaker and arts administrator. Born and raised in Toronto, Jesse’s family comes from Chicago and Genaabaajing Anishinaabek, and he is a member of the Serpent River First Nation. His memoir, Unreconciled: Family, Truth and Indigenous Resistance, is a national bestseller and was picked as one of best books of 2021 by Chapters-Indigo, Apple Books and the Globe and Mail. Jesse also won the Rakuten-Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Nonfiction.

Jessica Johnson is a senior fellow at McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy, where she recently led “What Should the CBC Be?”, a national research project on the future of public media in Canada. She is the former editor-in-chief of The Walrus. Her reviews, columns and features have appeared in the Globe & Mail, the Guardian, the Toronto Star, and a wide range of other publications. Jessica teaches journalism and media studies at the University of Toronto and writes the Substack newsletter “Writing for People Who Hate Writing.”

Elbows Up! On Canadian Resistance