Facts & Arguments essays have long been a favourite with Globe and Mail readers, but it's always interesting for editors to see what stories really strike a chord. Print readers send us e-mails and call in. But we're getting help from Sophi, an analytics tool created by The Globe to better understand the discerning tastes, needs and habits of our mobile and online readership. Sophi, named (and then shortened) from sophia, a Greek word for wisdom, combs through reams of computer data to help us understand what you are reading online, when you are reading it, how long you spend reading it, and if you're reading on your desktop or your phone. She keeps score, too, and ranks everything we post online with numbers – the bigger the number, the better we did at getting our story out.
Today, we're letting our readers peek behind the curtain by presenting the Top 5 most-shared Facts & Arguments essays from the past 12 months. These are stories that captured your hearts and minds, and prompted you to pass them around on social media (mostly Facebook) and mostly from your phone. Tina Petrick says her politics get in the way of finding a soulmate in Calgary; Toronto-hater Sophie Nadeau ends up falling in love with the city; a peek through a hospital doorway gets Justin Williams thinking about mortality; Marie Walden wishes she'd never complained on Facebook and coach Alison Belbin pleads with parents to leave their child's team alone.
#1. Lovesick leftie blues
When I moved to Calgary from Vancouver, the political climate turned my dating life into a minefield, Tina Petrick writes.
Dating is tough in Calgary when you're female, nearly 30 and a pipeline protestor.
Whereas I was once fluttering my eyelashes, preaching Naomi Klein over kombucha in an East Vancouver juice bar, I am now trying not to choke in a Calgary pub when my Tinder date breaks the news to me that climate change isn't real.
I'll begin with a disclaimer: I've fallen in love with Calgary since moving here 13 months ago from the West Coast. There's my favourite burger shop on 17th Avenue where the packaging is compostable; a vibrant start-up community supported by seasoned mentors; heck, I even work from a downtown co-working space where they play Arcade Fire and serve craft beer on tap in the lobby.
However, falling in love with someone in Calgary is a different matter. Ideologically, I am outnumbered. This is Cowtown, the mecca for the oil and gas industry, a sea of blue with a rare red island on the federal electoral map.
It's a stark change from life in the YVR with its weed-legalization demonstrations at the art gallery, its naked bike rides and its prevailing "green is sexy" mentality.
While I try to practise tolerance, my inner litigator/warrior princess (Ally McXena) takes over and I transform into a fiery defender of Mother Earth, Mary Jane, evidence-based policy making or whichever leftie cause is under attack by my right-leaning date.
Thanksgiving dinner in 2015, at an elegant lodge in the Rocky Mountains, is ruined when the holiday subject of what we are thankful for leads to a discussion on the systemic subjugation of Canada's aboriginal peoples. The conversation tenses up as our viewpoints on land claims and protests pour out.
Him: "Holding up important economic projects like the Kinder Morgan pipeline;" me: "A last defence against environmental doom."
Thanksgiving dinner in 2016, in a downtown penthouse, is ruined when I suggest we watch the U.S. presidential debate. Go figure, my oil-tycoon date is a Trump supporter. While Trump is a racist, sexist, fear-pandering tyrant, Hillary Clinton deleted a bunch of e-mails on her private server, my date reminds me. She only evaded jail time, he says, because two prosecutors involved in her case were found mysteriously dead (which, if only I could bring fact-checkers to my dates, I would have been able to confidently say: "That's as false as the Birther Conspiracy!").
I feign a stomach ache, leaving before we carve the bird. The next day, I receive a text: "I hope you're feeling better and it wasn't my cooking that made you sick."
I contemplate replying, "It wasn't your cooking, just your politics."
While my Trump-supporting date thinks Hillary's a criminal, another man I dated in Calgary believes she is a reptile, as in, part of the Alien Elite Race secretly controlling humankind.
I remember the summer season spent sleeping on his yacht under the ocean moonlight (which, according to David Icke, is actually the beams from an alien spaceship to keep humanity enslaved under an artificial projection, so let's not get too romantic, okay?).
If my dating life is a video game, then I met the final Boss last Friday night. A man with blood pure as blue: a provincial Conservative politician. His Bumble profile was harmless.
There was even a photo of him cuddling up next to a big dog! He asked me to meet him at one of those chain restaurants that forces its female servers to wear heels all night (Strike 1).
He showed up late unapologetically (Strike 2) because he'd decided to have another round with his buddies at a Reunite the Right gathering (Strike 3). I suppose that's who you end up with when your screening skills are demoted to swipe left or swipe right.
I tried to maintain polite discourse while munching on garlic fries ("extra garlicky," I ordered, as though warding off a vampire).
"Do you like nature?" I asked.
"No. I'm more of an indoors guy."
"How about pets?"
"It's gross how their hair and slobber gets everywhere."
Turns out, the dog on his Bumble profile picture isn't his own.
His face finally lit up when he described his autographed Ronald Reagan portrait and he assured me it's possible for anyone to achieve the same level of success he has if they try hard enough.
When I pointed out his white privilege – how someone from a different socioeconomic background or race may face more challenging barriers – he called me a racist.
Maybe I'm starting to understand why they say, "don't discuss politics or religion" when you're trying to get to know someone. But, when we're all too afraid to have a difficult discussion, doesn't that prevent change and progress?
One day, I know I'll meet my woke bae in YYC: my Justin Trudeau, my Bernie Sanders mind in James Franco's body in Jamie Oliver's kitchen.
We probably won't live in a downtown penthouse, be able to afford weekends away at mountain lodges or own yachts like the conservatives in my past.
But maybe we'll have a little garden on the rooftop of our one-bedroom condo. Maybe we can rent a rowboat.
Tina Petrick lives in Calgary. This essay first appeared online Nov. 18, 2016.
#2. Maybe Toronto isn't so bad?
I was the kind of Canadian who took digs at the biggest city in the country. But now I live in it, Sophie Nadeau writes.
Several months ago, my life exploded. The end of my 11-year relationship came as we moved to Toronto. It was as though we relocated on top of a landmine. The convergence of those details sound dramatic. We both wished they didn't but so it goes. Change is tough.
Now, I'm a single co-parent with an unexpected life and a lot of worried friends and family. I'm alone in Canada's big, expensive city. But, life has a way of giving you exactly what you need when you need it.
I'm the kind of Canadian who has lived in places where taking digs at Toronto was a sport. As a kid in New Brunswick, I remember the men in my life arguing over beer about whether cheering for the Maple Leafs might be a sign of insanity. The dislike often ran deeper. Toronto was a place to avoid with its noise, dirt and, most of all, its rude, obnoxious people who would avoid eye contact and bus-stop small talk.
As I moved through high school, and then university, in Saskatchewan, those ideas deepened with distance and open sky.
My best friend, who was born and raised in Toronto, would annoyingly insist there was nothing better. And, someday he was sure I would tell him he was right. While I had spent a year in a Toronto suburb, I was only 4 and felt ill equipped to evaluate his position. His superior tone, however, deepened my negative view.
While working in Ottawa at the beginning of our relationship, Toronto was a useful comparison to validate choices. Cheaper houses and child care. Better benefits and support.
I was visiting Toronto more and more for work and though I came home with great stories about how fun it was, it was rare to go a week without hearing from friends, "I could never move to Toronto."
But we did. Looking back on that decision, I think we leapt into the big city to escape whatever was suffocating us. The 11-year relationship, maybe. (That seems obvious now.) But, also, the idea that we each needed more. We both wanted to stretch. The strange seamless and painful transition fell upon us.
Instantly, I was treading the flow of the city that everyone I knew loved to hate. But, in the big city, there's no time for tears. The line between drowning and thriving in Toronto can be a thin one. I unexpectedly found comfort in other people who were working like hell to stay on the thriving side of that edge.
In Toronto, there is breathing room in the idea that you can't afford to stop moving. I needed to look for beauty and ideas everywhere to counter the effects of my exploding life. I've been to Paris and lived for the surprise of turning a corner and falling in love. Toronto is no different.
There is comfort in the unknown and in the flow of a vibrant, changing metropolis that drives life forward with or without us. The best part of my new life is my twice-a-day habit of climbing the stairs of the Wallace Avenue footbridge.
It is a rare steel-truss bridge, built in 1907 that will carry you over the train tracks dividing Junction Triangle, where I now live, and into High Park North. Hundreds of trains speed through this corridor. Thousands of humans moving through their lives. This is the daily spot where Toronto's history and future meet.
From that perch, Toronto is art. Inspiration. Depending on the day, the CN Tower is a sundial marking time for busy commuters heading downtown. At night, joined by shining skyscrapers, it is a beacon reminding me to keep moving forward after a long day.
The changing skyline is proof of our endless drive to chase our needs and never actually catch them. A tenacious reminder of our insignificance in an everchanging world. We live on a spinning planet that none of us control. And, gosh, that's a beautiful thing.
Underground, my heart finds solace. There is a soothing rhythm in the sound of the subway whooshing into Dundas West station. I love sharing nearly silent, packed subway cars with other humans. Together. Alone. With no WiFi, a forced contemplation. Where, if you pay attention, you can sort out who you really are and where you might want to go.
I've grown accustomed to settling into a meditative daze, waiting for the train to speed up and out of stations. I watch until the view fades to black and I'm faced with my reflection in the subway doors.
And, from the people, energy. Watching our kids boundlessly enjoy the day without any of the weight of life's complexity.
There is love here from every corner of the world. I am convinced that everything I ever believed about Toronto is fundamentally wrong. It makes me wonder what else I might be wrong about.
Toronto has taught me it is better to give yourself over to the truth rather than fight against the natural flow of things. In this city, I'm reminded that when you stop trying to make things different, you can appreciate life as it is. Joy in reality. Beauty in the everyday. And, hope in people. I don't know if everything's going to be okay. But, I know I'm where I'm supposed to be.
Sophie Nadeau lives in Toronto. This essay first appeared online April 27, 2017.
#3. A warm whisper in a cold room
As I crept down the hospital hall, my mind raced. What would I say to myself when it's my time to go, Justin Williams writes.
A few months back, I spent the better part of a week at Toronto General Hospital with a loved one (thankfully, all turned out well). The scenes there were familiar: nurses buzzed in and out of our shared room, discharging their duties with the stoic professionalism of fire crews during the Blitz. Beeping machines pierced the stillness of the midafternoon hush, punctuating hours of uninterrupted monotony with unwelcome excitement.
And an endless roster of doctors sporadically offered laconic decrees, leaving us to parse their every intonation for signs of improvement in my companion's condition: "He said your blood pressure is creeping back up to normal levels," we'd encourage each other after the doctor vanished once again – "last night it was only inching up."
The mild mercy of small victories, I suppose.
Late into our second night there, I set out down the neonlit hallway toward the kitchenette in search of some water; or, more honestly, as a respite from the makeshift "bed" I'd cobbled together with materials foraged from the common room.
I shuffled past the nurses' redoubt, now reinforced by a fresh shift hunkering down for the night and slipped around the corner into the servery on the far end of the hospital floor – the hum of the ice machine and the muffled incantation of medical equipment the only other interlopers in the silence.
All quiet on the western wing.
As I waited for the water to trickle from the leaky tap into my Styrofoam cup, my eyes scanned promiscuously for something – anything – to distract me from my own impatience. "Do not remove," a hand-written note above the plug-in kettle warned would-be recidivists; I smiled wondering if our own nurse, ever-irreverent, was the prior offender.
"Made in China," the label on the side of the stocky microwave confessed, winning me a bet with myself. Who was going to eat all of these leftovers, I thought, assessing the trolley beside me, bulging with trays of shrivelled, Saran-wrapped meals.
But then, from across the hallway and through the door I'd propped open, I made out some ever-so-slight movement: A middle-aged woman gently hovering over an elderly patient, the pair locking into a stilted, silent embrace.
I had seen these two earlier in our stay. Their appearance and familiarity with one another revealed that they were mother and daughter. The daughter had been there since before we arrived and, from what I could tell, was a fixture by her mother's side, at times reading and, occasionally, even laughing. This portrait of family contentment, though, was belied by the circumstances.
No stay in a hospital is ever a good sign, and the sullen parade of visitors that had trooped in and out during the day underscored the severity of what could only be the mother's deteriorating condition.
The interactions with medical staff I'd gleaned from afar, too, were ominous – the nurses increasingly subdued and the doctors progressively resigned.
Most telling of all, though, was the glimpse of the daughter's face I'd caught earlier in the evening: Racked with the raw emotions of anguish and fear, despondence and desperation; none of them dominant, but all unmistakable.
Even to the untrained eye, it was clear that the mother was nearing her end and that the daughter knew it.
Back in the darkness, the two merged into one: Their silhouette, framed by the shimmering moonlight behind them, sculpted a single, weary figure – like a mournful statue in a war memorial.
But for the laboured breathing of the mother, her chest faintly rising, now more mechanical than rhythmic, there was no movement.
I froze, heedless to the water cascading over the crest of my cup – my guilt in lingering decisively outmatched by the primal pangs of empathy coursing over me, demanding I stay.
But then, just as I was steeling myself to leave, I watched as the daughter gently lowered herself, easing the side of her head closer to the mother's mouth. I could just make out that, between pained breaths, the mother was faintly whispering.
I couldn't, of course, hear what words were spoken, but I could see them etched on the daughter's face: tender, warm and final.
I slipped out of the servery, easing the door behind me. As I crept down the hall, back to my companion's room, my mind raced with questions: When, in years to come, it's me on the hospital gurney, body languishing and soul slipping, what would I whisper, bedside, to my current self if I had the chance?
What would my weathered and wrinkled avatar implore of his time-travelling protegé, still equal measure self-assured and self-indulgent? What admonitions and exaltations – what questions – would old urge young, pleaded from promised to promise, and to living from lived?
I slunk past my slumbering roommates and clambered back onto my ersatz bed, fully alive to the fact that I wouldn't be getting any sleep that night.
I'll never know what the mother whispered to her daughter that night; but I think about it often.
Justin Williams lives in Toronto. This essay first appeared online Nov. 17, 2016.
#4. Flamed on Facebook
Surely my fellow Newfoundlanders wouldn't be so quick to judge? Boy, was I wrong, Marie Wadden writes
"It's winter in Canada!! Suck it up princess!"
"Sounds like she's just another self-entitled moron."
"I hope this lady reads all these comments."
What had I done to earn all this Facebook hate?
In mid-January, I slipped on the steep steps of a St. John's home where I'd been invited to attend a meeting. On the way back to my car, my feet went out from under me and the keys flew from my hands. Wooomp! The wide stone step made an imprint on my lower back.
At the hospital, WiFi gave me something to do during the 10 hours I waited for an X-ray. On Facebook, I described the busy scene at the emergency department, which was filled with people like me who had fallen victim to the freeze and thaw cycle of a St. John's winter.
I vented my anger over what I considered my hosts' callous disregard for their guests' safety, and concluded that I was feeling litigious. Severe pain will do that to you, especially in the hours between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Then CBC Radio and CBC online picked up the story and ran a Facebook poll asking, "Would you seek legal action if you slipped on someone's icy steps?" Most of the 334 respondents said no.
Not only did they disagree, they were surprisingly nasty.
"Guess she won't be getting any more invites anywhere."
"To be fair she looks like someone I'd never invite over anyway. And I'm really not that fussy!"
"Grow up! You don't sue your friends!"
My teenage daughter was the first to notice the response and tried to shield me from it. But I wanted to see what people were saying. I had nothing better to do since I was laid up at home on painkillers, every twist and turn driving sharp pain down my leg.
The reaction surprised me. Wasn't I the victim in all this?
The painkillers couldn't soothe the hurt from comments such as these: "I think you are looking for a quick buck, and you call yourself a friend. So glad you are not my friend."
"Give her a warm bottle of milk and her blankey, put her in the crib and let her sleep it off."
Beside each comment were photos of the people I came to think of as my virtual lynch mob. I found myself "creeping" them. Surely they weren't local. Maybe Trump supporters? My fellow Newfoundlanders are kind and compassionate, aren't they? Not so quick to judge?
"I don't know how people like this sleep at night … running to the news, threatening to sue over slipping on ice? She herself said there were no serious injuries. Get over yourself."
Most of my detractors were women.
"If she noticed that the stairs were dangerously slippery, why didn't she just refuse to enter?
"That's like saying I saw a shark in the water. … Now I have a shark bite and I want to sue even though I was aware of the dangers."
"Only a snake would sue over this, a money-hungry snake."
"If you knew the stairs were slippery, and knew they did nothing about it, why not take your time down the steps."
I don't know what I was thinking when I went back down those steps. Did I think the steps had been salted after I drew the homeowners' attention to the problem? It was only after I'd made my first tentative steps that I realized the danger I was in, especially since there was no rail to hold on to.
I wrote that I'd only sue if I was left with injuries that impaired my mobility, but the mob ignored this. Lucky for me, once the pain subsided (created by swelling pressing on nerves in my lumbar spine), I was fine and able to return to the winter activities I enjoy, such as skating and skiing.
"People are out there fighting for their lives and you get a couple bruises and talk about taking legal action. … Anything to get on the news these days."
I didn't seek the media attention. Facebook users beware. Reporters are reading our posts and you're a bull's eye if you have any kind of topical story to tell. The day I made the news, slipping and falling on ice was the top story.
"This is ridiculous! She should be ashamed of herself. I know one thing for sure, I'd never invite her back to my place ever again!"
"Next time, bring your own salt."
The homeowners I was visiting have been pretty silent about all this. Maybe they feel aggrieved, too, but at least they haven't been shamed in public because I never mentioned them by name.
"What a great way to lose friends."
"I bet she's fun at parties."
"Grow up, what a joke."
The few who supported my point of view were drowned out by the derision. One wrote: "Moral of the story: Have the decency to salt and sand, unless you don't want visitors until spring. It's the owner's responsibility to make sure your steps are safe."
There's another moral to the story: Be careful what you put on Facebook. Not everyone is your friend. In fact, there are a lot of people who don't want to be your friend. They'd like to make fun of you, and heap scorn – especially, it seems, if you've taken a fall.
Marie Wadden lives in St. John's. This essay first appeared online Feb. 28, 2017.
#5. A coach's plea to parents
Alison Belbin is passing on her love of the game. So why does she get so much interference from the sidelines?
I am here, on time.
My mortgage is two weeks late; my oldest child is suffering through a medication change and trouble at school; my youngest child begged me not to leave, and my husband and I haven't looked each other in the eye for days. I spent much of the day holding my aging dog as she recovered from a seizure.
But none of this matters now. I am here. I compose myself and prepare for the next 90 minutes on the field with your child. And mine; she has already leapt from the car and disappeared into the growing crowd of girls.
Sometimes you wave as you drive away, and sometimes you don't. It usually depends if we won the previous weekend and if you felt your child had been given an appropriate amount of play time.
Your daughter is funny and kind and thoughtful. And tonight your daughter had a great practice. She struggled with a new skill and shook off a solid smack to her ear from a ball. And, we laughed. She also told me something that has been bothering her, asking shyly that I not tell anyone.
I explained why she was subbed off last game. She nodded in agreement and asked how to get better. We hugged, she thanked me, and we moved on.
She likes a boy, she hates her thighs. Her best friend ignored her today and she still has difficult homework to get through after practice. She got her period in art class. And yet she's here with me in the freezing rain, our cleats rotting and our noses dripping. She is here because her team provides a safe shield from the outside world.
We sweat together, we celebrate together and we all feel the same sting of defeat when the bounce of the ball is not in our favour. We step on the field with the best intentions. We try.
I always leave the field a better person than when I arrived.
In the time it takes me to drive home, dry off and microwave my dinner, you have hastily typed an e-mail. My youngest has fallen asleep on the couch and my husband is cleaning the kitchen while I sit at the table alone, reading how you feel I've let your child down.
You believe last weekend's loss was due to my poor decisions. Your daughter would have scored the winning goal if I only had subbed her in earlier or let her play a different position. You believe they aren't playing as a team should. You watched a Premier League game and they seem so much more in tune with one another.
It's a shame, I think, that you missed the girls hugging and cheering each other on tonight while you were at the coffee shop around the corner.
If we win, I'll read that it's because the more talented girls got too much playing time; that I'm too competitive; that I'm pushing them too hard; that I've managed to crush the souls of the players on the bench.
If we lose, it's because I played the developing players too much; I am ruining the stronger players' chance at future glory; I'm not pushing them hard enough. What do we even do during practice anyway?
I know what you've told her about me and I know what you've said about her teammates. And yet, your daughter and I both keep showing up. We keep trying. I may not do it the way you would. I may not speak to your daughter the way you would, but she needs more than one voice in her head.
I am not a professional. I am a parent who loves the game and has the desire to pass that on. I accepted the role I was offered; not for a paycheque, not for status, certainly not for praise. I accepted this role because I have been where your daughter is now. I see myself in her missteps and in her triumphs. I have felt them all and I feel them all over again through her. I, too, have been bruised by a ball, pulled muscles in tough tackles and played with a broken heart. I also had coaches who believed in me, just as I believe in your daughter.
Knowing I had someone in my corner who challenged me and called out my excuses was the greatest reward of my years in sport. I vaguely remember the final scores of even the most important games, but I sure remember how I felt. Winning doesn't promise pride, just as losing doesn't guarantee disappointment.
One of my parents' great gifts to me was their unwavering support of my coaches. They never wrote a letter, made a complaint phone call or disrespected a coach – even when my eyes stung and I desperately needed it to be someone else's fault. It was my team, my game, my experience to have.
I learned early on that my coach was neither my parent nor my friend. I admired them and sought their praise. I hated them sometimes, too. If I thought I deserved a higher standing on that team, it was up to me to earn it. My parents sure weren't going to earn it for me.
Criticizing your child's coach might simply be a reflection of your insecurities or long-held regrets as a former player. That's okay. We all have them. As adults we can understand this, but as a child, your daughter does not. She is being pulled in opposing directions between her team and her parent's opinion of her team. On her team, she is finding her identity and her place among her peers. It is here she will decide if that place makes her feel whole and satisfied, or if it makes her edgy and hungry for more.
Let her discover this, on her own.
Let her play.
Alison Belbin lives in Nanaimo, B.C. This essay first appeared online March 28, 2017.