Guelph Politicast

This week on End Credits, you are here but we are not. What’s playing in a theatre near you? Don’t know. What’s streaming right now? Look it up yourself! These are the dog days of summer, and we don’t feel like working anymore. Not unusual, we do this every August, and now the time has come for you to review your own darn movies!!
Taking a Break from all Our Worries. Here on End Credits, we don’t like our jobs, and, uh, we don’t think we’re gonna do it anymore. For two weeks. Yes, it is time for the annual End Credits summer vacation break, we’re getting out of our cubicles – er, recording booths – and enjoying some exercise and being outside, or maybe watching some movies recreationally. So quit dealing with the TPS reports, stop listening to your eight bosses, and enjoy the bliss of doing nothing all day, at least for the next 14 days and then we’ll be back with a brand new edition!
Programming Note: End Credits will return with new episodes on August 26.
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Nominations for the 2026 municipal election close this Friday, and you know what that means: Things get serious! With the finalized list of candidates for mayor, city council, and all the school boards in place you will start to see the campaign really begin and that means signs, and that also means press coverage. Are you ready to hear from the candidates, because you will hear from two today!
This interview, and the ones that will follow in the coming weeks, are part of Guelph Politico’s municipal election coverage. These interviews will help you get to know the candidates, while the upcoming questionnaires will tell you what they think about the issues. With this election, one thing is clear: more than half of city council is going to turn over this November, including the mayor, so to make the best-informed decision you possibly can, Guelph Politico is going to do its part.
On this week's podcast, we will talk to a candidate who may be familiar to regular listeners of the show. We're going to have a conversation with Troy Bridgeman, who's running in Ward 2 and after years covering Guelph as a multimedia journalist now wants to make the news as a city councillor. He will talk about his work covering homelessness issues in Guelph and what he's learned, plus how he wants to look at how he can use local power to focus on the big issues, and how we can have less partisanship at city all. 
Let's get to know one of the council candidates on this week's Guelph Politicast!
To learn more about important election dates, and to see the list of candidates running so far in all the races, go to the City of Guelph website here. You can watch the videos of these and other interviews on the Guelph Politico YouTube channel @PoliticoOnVideo, and stay tuned to check out candidate questionnaires, which will start getting posted on Labour Day weekend.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we’re on vacation. No, seriously. Sure, someone once said that there’s no rest for the wicked, but here at OSG headquarters on Snake Mountain, we believe that a restful two-week summer vacation makes our biting political commentary even more biting. As we rest and recreate, we’re pleased to bring you some previously enjoyed episodes of the show, and you may still enjoy them indeed!
Proof of Life. Many you come here to learn what we’re talking about on Open Sources this week, or maybe you always come here when the podcast version of the episode is posted. You may now be concerned to learn that there is no episode these two weeks, and you maybe be concerned that something has happened to Adam and Scotty that now makes them unable to deliver a high-quality sardonic take on the news plus engaging interviews with local newsmakers, but take our word for it, we’ll be back!
*Programming Note: Open Sources Guelph will return with new episodes on Thursday August 20.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

As of this recording, The Odyssey has made over $1.1 billion at the worldwide box office, and that’s not bad for a movie based on a story that’s been told for thousands of years. A lot of people were excited about The Odyssey, many of them Christopher Nolan fans just excited about the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s next opus, but many people were excited to see a full-blown, big budget adaptation of the source material and we're talking to one of them!
Dr. John Walsh, who is the director of the U of G’s School of Languages and Literatures and a professor of classical studies, teaches first years the written version of The Odyssey, and as you will hear, he loved the story of Odysseus’ journey home since before he was old enough to go to school at all. Unlike other classical scholars you can think of, Walsh is a fan of the film even if it’s not the version of The Odyssey he would have made if were the director. 
So in this edition on End Credits Conversations, we will talk to Dr. Walsh about the origins of The Odyssey, whether there was a real Homer or not, the changes Nolan made to modernize the story, the thematic details he brought to the fore in this version, why adaptation means more than a strict re-telling of the story, and whether or not he sees The Odyssey in every movie or story he encounters. 
Let's head off into the unknown on this edition of End Credits Conversations!
The Odyssey is still in theatres everywhere, including the two Guelph Galaxy Cinemas. You can listen to the End Credits review of The Odyssey in episode #451, you just have to scroll down a little in this podcast feed to find it.
End Credits Conversations returns next month on the fourth Saturday. End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

This week on End Credits, you are here but we are not. What’s playing in a theatre near you? Don’t know. What’s streaming right now? Look it up yourself! These are the dog days of summer, and we don’t feel like working anymore. Not unusual, we do this every August, and now the time has come for you to review your own darn movies!!
Taking a Break from all Our Worries. Here on End Credits, we don’t like our jobs, and, uh, we don’t think we’re gonna do it anymore. For two weeks. Yes, it is time for the annual End Credits summer vacation break, we’re getting out of our cubicles – er, recording booths – and enjoying some exercise and being outside, or maybe watching some movies recreationally. So quit dealing with the TPS reports, stop listening to your eight bosses, and enjoy the bliss of doing nothing all day, at least for the next 14 days and then we’ll be back with a brand new edition!
Programming Note: End Credits will return with new episodes on August 26.
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

In 2006, there was a lot of momentum on tackling the climate crisis: Elizabeth May won the leadership promising to make electoral gains, An Inconvenient Truth was a critical and commercial movie hit, and even The Guardian noted it was “the year the world woke up” to the climate action, and then… Well, progress stalled. Now, 20 years later, the Greens are looking for a leader again, but in this political climate can the Greens still make gains?
After 13 years as leader, May announced her retirement in 2019, and the next year, after eight rounds of voting, Toronto lawyer Annamie Paul took over. Without re-litigating what happened next, let’s just say that there was a lot of internal strife in the party, and Paul quit. May returned to the leadership in 2021, and then tried a co-leadership arrangement with Jonathan Pedneault, but that too hit a snag when Pedneault finished fifth in Outremont in 2025.
But Pedneault wasn’t the only one to have a disappointing election night in 2025. Up the road in Kitchener Centre, Mike Morrice lost re-election as MP by a startlingly slim 375 votes. Morrice decided that he was too close to give up and pledged to run again in the next federal election but then he decided to take on a new opportunity: running for leader. Whether its with Morrice in the head office or not, can the Green Party regain their lost momentum?
Mike Morrice will join us this edition of the podcast to talk about the hard lessons learned from his election loss, and why he wants to be the leader of the Green Party beyond slogans. He will also talk about how the Greens won and lost confidence over the last 20 years, how the time may be ripe for a resurgence and how politicians can overcome voter cynicism to believe that change is possible. And finally, he will discuss why he will remain bound to the Kitchener area if ends up becoming party leader.
So let's talk about what it takes to lead a federal party on this week's Guelph Politicast! 
You can follow Morrice on Instagram, check out his Kitchener Centre campaign website here, and you can learn more about his bid to lead the Green Party here. The Green Party leadership campaign is now underway, and you learn about Morrice and the other candidate Nira Dookeran and get important dates at the Green Party of Canada website. The new Green leader will be announced after the close of voting on November 14.
You can also watch this interview on YouTube! 
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we’re on vacation. No, seriously. Sure, someone once said that there’s no rest for the wicked, but here at OSG headquarters on Snake Mountain, we believe that a restful two-week summer vacation makes our biting political commentary even more biting. As we rest and recreate, we’re pleased to bring you some previously enjoyed episodes of the show, and you may still enjoy them indeed!
Proof of Life. Many you come here to learn what we’re talking about on Open Sources this week, or maybe you always come here when the podcast version of the episode is posted. You may now be concerned to learn that there is no episode these two weeks, and you maybe be concerned that something has happened to Adam and Scotty that now makes them unable to deliver a high-quality sardonic take on the news plus engaging interviews with local newsmakers, but take our word for it, we’ll be back!
*Programming Note: Open Sources Guelph will return with new episodes on Thursday August 20.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits we say "goodbye"... for two weeks. Next week, we're taking our usual summer vacation, and we can think of no better way to leave things than to review the massive superhero sequel Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which you can now see in a theatre near you. We're also going to dig into a list of powerful directors, and the summer movies... of 2027!
This Wednesday, August 5, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Influence Peddling. Recently, Vulture published a list of the 100 most powerful directors in Hollywood, and - spoiler alert! - Christopher Nolan is number one! That was the least surprising part of the list. We will dig in and talk about some of the more surprising choices and placements.
Never Too Early For Next Summer. Although summer's not technically over till Labour Day, we're going to dedicate some of our time this week to looking forward to next summer. From a new Star Wars starring Ryan Gosling, a Minecraft sequel and a prequel for Rambo and Ocean's 11 respectively, we will draft some of the (currently) hottest picks.
REVIEW: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026). It's been nearly five years since Spider-Man defeated a rogues gallery of his villains (not to mention the Omicron wave of COVID) to save the world, but what it cost him was a magic spell that made everyone forget Peter Parker. Now, in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Peter confronts his isolation, his mutating powers, a deceitful government agency, and an antagonist from an entirely different Marvel franchise (?!). History shows us that you can never bet against a Spider-Man movie, but is there more to this than money?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.
*Programming Note: End Credits will be running previously enjoyed episodes on Wednesday August 12 and 19. We will be back with new episodes on Wednesday August 26.

This is a big year for Guelph. Our downtown landscape is changing, we have an election in the fall that will usher in a new mayor and council, and then we will mark the city's 200th birthday in the spring. Two centuries ago, it all began with one man from Scotland cutting down a tree near what we now call the Eramosa River, but how much about John Galt do we actually know? Well, as you will recall, one local academic knows a lot...
A lot of assumptions have been made about Galt, and the popular wisdom for years was that he was a failure as the head of the Canada Company, yet the city he created survives and thrives 200 years later. But what about Galt as a colonizer? It may surprise you to learn that Galt, ever the iconoclast, had some unusual ideas for how settlers and Indigenous people should get along as equals, and it was among the reasons why he was sent back to Scotland two years after founding Guelph.
This week, we’re joined by someone who might know Galt better than anyone (in the 21st century). Gil Stelter, a professor emeritus from the history department at the University of Guelph, has dedicated his life’s studious endeavours to the man who’s name is on the proverbial patent for Guelph. In his career, Stelter has amassed quite a number of insight into the man, his career as a businessman and author, and what his intentions were for Guelph, some of which actually came to pass.
Revisiting an interview from the podcast in August 2023, Stelter gives us a breakdown on who John Galt was, and his notoriety beyond the borders of Guelph. He will also talk about what Galt’s written works tell us about his thinking, how his relationship with John Brant informed his thinking when settling Guelph, and what Galt might think of Guelph now nearly 200 years later. Also, he will talk about how Galt might have been right at home among the celebrity businessmen of modern day.
So let’s talk again about the John Galt you don’t know on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
Learning the basics about the life of John Galt is relatively easy, but if you want to follow up on this particular discussion, you can consult Galt’s written works, including The Apostate or Atlantis Destroyed, which you can buy through Vocamus Press. You can also watch Stelter’s presentation to the Guelph Historical Society on Rogers’ YouTube channel.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're building bridges. And speaking of bridges, we will talk about a famous new bridge down in Windsor, which may now be a monument to the latest phase of the Canada/U.S. trade war. In other news, we will talk about a new study that paints a worrying picture of Canada's healthcare system (again!), and in the interview we will focus on local matters and the end of the council term with a member of Guelph city council.
This Thursday, July 30, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Howe You See Me. The Gordie Howe Bridge spanning Windsor and Detroit finally opened this week, but only after Canada capitulated to Trump administration demands, and in the midst of a renewed trade war no less with President Donald Trump seeking supposed payback for Canada's hard line on American alcohol, lumber and dairy products. Canadians, especially opposition Conservatives, are now wondering if Mark Carney has a plan to take on Trump and his cronies, but when, if ever, will we see it?
Emergency Care. A new report released this week shows that 1-in-10 emergency room doctors are thinking about quitting their specialty. Why? They feel like they're not being given the support they need to give patients the care they deserve. This comes a week after Canada's first ministers released a statement demanding more stable funding from the federal government, and yet it's the provinces that are in charge of healthcare spending. So is anyone listening to doctors or are they just passing the buck?
Term Limits. Guelph City Council is now on summer break, and when they return in September there will be only two more meetings before the election. So we're essentially at the end of the term, and who better to indulge in a little self-examination that Ward 3 Councillor Phil Allt? Allt will join us to talk about the ways this term of council will be remembered, plus he will wax on some of the breaking news this week including the sale of the Niska lands and the repeated appeals of police officer Corey McArthur.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.
Programming Note: Open Sources will be running previously enjoyed episodes on Thursday August 6 and 13. We will be back with new episodes on Thursday August 20.