CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy -- Canada's controversial men's team will have the curling power's last chance at Olympic gold at the Milan Cortina Games. With Canada already shut out of the mixed team event medals, the country's top-ranked women were upset by Anna Hasselborg's Sweden in Friday's semifinals. Sweden, ranked No. 12, will face Switzerland for gold on Sunday. Sweden, which has won the women's competition three times since curling returned to the Olympic program in 1998, beat Canada 6-3.
To kick off the latest edition of Leafs Morning Take, we discussed the Milan Games and what's ahead over the next few days. Just like the women, it really feels like Canada and the U.S. are on a collision course to clash in the Gold Medal game. Connor McDavid leads his squad with nine points, Auston Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk have five points apiece to top America's leaderboard.
Canada (no. 1 seed), USA (no. 2), Slovakia (no. 3), and Finland (no. 4) all earned byes to the quarterfinals, where they'll await the winners of Tuesday's play-in games. Canada and the United States were the only two teams to go undefeated in their three preliminary round games. Canada got the number one seed by winning their three games a combined 20-3, just edging out the USA's combined scores of 17-5.
Since 1979, there have been just two school shootings carried out by teenage females in the United States, claiming a total of four lives. There have been none in Canada. So the news, as reported by RTÉ's Morning ­Ireland last Wednesday, that a woman had shot dead eight people in a Canadian school was shockingly historic for two reasons.
If that's true," caveated Minneapolis native Taylor Anderson-Heide after the 9-8 nail-biter, "I think we just played a really good game. They're No. 1 in the world." Tara Peterson of Shoreview, Minnesota, chimed in: "It just always feels really good to beat [Canada skip] Rachel Homan. So any team to beat them, that's pretty impressive." Since 1998, when women's curling was introduced at the Olympics, teams from the U.S. and Canada have played at least once in each Games.
Policy stances from the Trump administration on everything from immigration to tariffs, along with currency swings and stricter border controls, have seemingly proved a turnoff to travelers from other countries, especially Canadians - the single largest source of foreign tourists for the United States. Canadian travel to the U.S. fell by close to 30% in 2025. But it is not just visitors from Canada who are choosing to avoid the United States.
Thursday marks the second day of the men's ice hockey tournament at the 2026 Olympics in Milan Cortina. On Wednesday, Slovakia stunned the hockey world by defeating Finland 4-1 in the first game of the tournament. Then, Sweden survived a spirited effort from the host Italians, winning 5-2 after allowing the opening goal in the first period. With four games on the schedule on Thursday, that means eight teams are in action, consisting of all four from Groups A and C.
Nathan MacKinnon knew he wouldn't make Canada's 2014 Olympic team as an 18-year-old NHL rookie, while Germany's Leon Draisaitl and Czechia's David Pastrnak were still a year away from being drafted. Canadian Connor McDavid and American Jack Eichel were just 17 and Auston Matthews 16 when the best hockey players in the world went to Sochi. They all figured they'd get their chance four years later, and it never came as the league chose not to go to Pyeongchang in 2018 and then a global pandemic wreaked havoc and wrecked the chance to play in Beijing in 2022.
While entrepreneurship can be challenging, Black founders often face additional barriers in accessing funding, mentorship, and networks, barriers that can also create psychological hurdles. In fact, a 2025 BDC study found that 72% of Black entrepreneurs shared that the fear of racial stereotypes almost stopped them from starting a business. To support founders on every stage of their journey, we've updated our guide to highlight programs, funding, mentorship, and community resources specifically for Black entrepreneurs across Canada!
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan initially defended the choice on X. YC-backed Canadian startups that reincorporated in the US had twice the average valuation as those that didn't, he wrote. "There are lots of reasons to build great companies in Canada, and there are lots of great YC and non-YC startups that thrive and are making the Canadian tech scene great," he wrote a few hours later. "Where you are incorporated increases your access to capital. That's it."
As the Detroit Three automakers have made fewer cars in Canada over the past decade, Japanese car makers have kept their Canadian footprint consistent, according to a new report. The findings by the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing, a non-profit think-tank at Western University that analyzes manufacturing in Ontario, show a decline in the overall number of cars made in Canada compared to a decade ago. In 2016, 2.3 million cars were assembled in the country; by 2025, that figure fell to 1.2 million.
To get the bad out of the way, its most important ally - the United States - has grown increasingly antagonistic, with renewed tariff threats and talk of annexation coming from the White House. On the upside, Canada is signaling it can stand more firmly on its own. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has identified a "rupture" in North American integration and is moving his country in a more self-sufficient direction - both economically and politically.
Many of us are riding the high of the recent major snowstorm wondering when the next big powder day will swing through. Unfortunately for most of North America, it looks like the snowy weather won't be returning anytime soon, or at least not for the next week. Meteorologist Chris Tomer 's Mountain Weather Update paints a rather sad picture for snowfall totals in North America between January 29th and February 5th.
"Canada cannot solve all the world's problems, but we can show that another way is possible: that the arc of history isn't destined to be warped towards authoritarianism and exclusion, it can still bend towards progress and justice, he said."
L ast September, nearly 6,500 people-including start-up founders, investors, and researchers-gathered at the Palais des congrès in Montreal for All In, Canada's largest artificial intelligence event. After passing through a security checkpoint, they lounged on plush furniture and posed in front of a luminous "ALL IN" sign. Everyone wore a lanyard with a QR code that could be scanned to connect through an app, a sort of modern-day business card. Kiosks showcased AI companies; smooth jazz flowed and so did coffee.
All three of the U.S.'s opponents are ranked 30th or higher, with Argentina at No. 30, Canada at No. 10, and Colombia at No. 20. The U.S. women are ranked second behind Spain. Colombia was a finalist at the 2025 Copa América Feminina, having beaten Argentina in the semifinals via a penalty shootout following an epic 4-4 draw.
T here's a running joke in one of my friend circles that, if we ever pooled our resources and lived together, we'd need a cat room. We daydream about what our space would be like beyond feline accommodations: Everyone would have their own bedroom with en suite bathroom, naturally. We'd have a communal kitchen and living space, so we could hang out and get some friend time in.
New estimates released on Wednesday by Statistics Canada showed that Canada's population fell by 0.2% in the third quarter to stand at 41.6 million, down from 41.65 million on 1 July. It was the only other quarterly decline on record came in 2020, and was attributed to Covid-19 border restrictions. The recent decline, however, is driven largely by a drop in the number of international students studying in Canada after Ottawa pledged to tamp down on the number of study permits issued.
A dramatic decline in international student numbers in Canada shows how internationalization globally is "evolving," with the concept of the "big four" recruitment destinations seen as increasingly outdated. The country is on track to issue about 80,000 new study permits this year, way below the cap of 437,000 its federal government set for 2025. This has not stopped the cap being reduced even more, with the budget announced earlier this month confirming that it will be set at 155,000 next year-although the country could struggle to reach even this revised figure on the latest projections.