From April Reimer's Twitter: "For those who were thinkin @happyelishas and I were rolling our eyes @ eachother. Was the jerk beside us #rudecomment"

If you didn’t hear, the Toronto Maple Leafs made the playoffs, a first since 2004. The last time they won the Stanley Cup was in 1967. This is all newsworthy stuff, history made with the youngest team in the playoffs.

But it was a look between two women that made the news for days. “DRAMA! Elisha Cuthbert and Leafs Goalie’s wife caught in a serious death stare,” tweets one sports journalist. A CBC web post showed six gifs of the non-verbal exchange, “Or stink eyes, or ‘bitch faces’ or whatever,” it reads (They managed to find three expressions for women looking at each other, but couldn’t get the team name right regarding the goalie). If sports journalists felt the need to cover this, of course Extra TV would chime in, too: “It looked like the making of a catfight.”

The media manufactured hockey wife feud did start out with the aforementioned sport. The Leafs lost to the Boston Bruins in game four, 4 to 3 in overtime. The Bruins scored on Leafs goaltender James Reimer after a bad play by defenceman Dion Phaneuf.

The cameras panned the audience section for the team’s family members’ reactions. April Reimer, married to James, and Elisha Cuthbert, engaged to Phaneuf, looked at each other and did not seem impressed. I’m willing to bet a lot of people watching that game looked unimpressed. But this happened between two women, thus, bitchcraft must have been involved. This “news” was talked about for days—even after the two women clarified the situation (Who asked them anyway?) and said they were reacting to a rude comment made by a nearby fan.

In case you didn’t know: Women can be friends and interact with each other. We don’t actually isolate ourselves until it’s time to fight to the delight of our audience. In response to all the speculation, Cuthbert tweeted, “Things are not always what they seem. I’m insulted and disappointed by a lot of these comments. That’s real. Not a 3 sec. Clip.”

Woman on woman hate is nothing new to television and film, “You don’t, as a woman, get to be in films with too many women,” says Susan Sarandon in an April interview with HuffPost Live. “And if you do, you hardly ever are in scenes together. You’re usually, naturally, pitted against each other.” We see this in The Real Housewives series where female “friends” do nothing more than scream at each other and shit-talk behind closed doors. Or in the modeling industry, like with Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks, where the media collectively decided two black women can not be successful in modeling at the same time, thus they must hate each other. In American politics we had bitch-labeled Hillary Clinton versus “ditzy” Sarah Palin.

This assumed inherent sexism between women further trivializes our existence. If we are taught from a young age, watching interchangeable Disney princesses fighting likewise evil step-mothers, we will grow to learn that fighting something that’s supposedly silly—like, say, earning less than our male counterparts—is less meaningful than figuring out who is and isn’t a slut. The alienation of friendships between women just means a further dependency on our male counterparts. Things will forever remain imbalanced.

Now, like a commentator said during game six of the Leafs-Bruins series, can we quit talking the lady stare down, and get back to hockey?

All the papers last week were abuzz about an op-ed written by now-backbench Conservative MP Maxime Bernier. Writing how climate change is an unsure thing indeed, he said his party was on the right track by playing it cool in Copenhagen.

He was roundly criticized by Canadian media and bloggers. Globe contributor Robert Silver called him Canada’s Sarah Palin. The National Post’s article on the matter began with Environment Minister Jim Prentice stating that the Harper government did not share Bernier’s skeptical position on the science. And Sun Media writer Lorrie Goldstein’s article, Mad Max makes sense on climate change, stated: “The good news is Harper is better on climate change than the opposition parties. The bad news is, that’s not saying much.”

Wait a minute. Harper not strong enough on climate change? Sounds like something we’ve been saying for a while.

Goldstein, however, thinks he hasn’t rejected climate change enough. Even believing in the evidence is too much.
But that’s okay, who reads the Sun anyway?

Oh right, lots of people.

Sun Media Corp. is Canada’s largest newspaper publisher, having eaten up dozens of mainstream dailies and hundreds of other community papers. It reaches over 10 million Canadians.

Bernier’s view was echoed by Conservative bloggers and comments in online articles. There was significant talk of Bernier setting up a future leadership run for the Conservative Party.

Move over to provincial politics and Ontario’s Conservatives have already chosen their Bernier. Leader Tim Hudak, elected last year, is a right-winger through and through. The Party’s environmental platform is perhaps yet to be hashed out for the next election, but there are rumours that the Green Energy Act—a new staple of support for renewable energy projects in the province—might be something Hudak would repeal.

This would be made politically salable by the unexpectedly strong pressure from supposed grassroots organization, Wind Concerns Ontario, which has branches in towns across the province. Hundreds come out to environmental assessment meetings to oppose wind establishment in their areas. These people are finding a friend in Tim Hudak.

Similarly, the Ontario Landowners Association is one to watch. The organization is another collection of rural groups from across the province with a membership 15,000 strong who support policies that may appear radical or American to their urban friends. And though some are good stewards of their land, they may not be interested in hearing about climate policy.

Although Randy Hillier, first president of the Association, lost soundly to Hudak in the Party’s leadership bid, its strong anti-Liberal message of rural land rights and ability to bus people to meetings may give Hudak the desire to lean on it in the next election. Having been in a room of rural Ontarians during a presentation by climate change skeptic Patrick Moore, I know that there is a widespread desire to hear and believe in the other side.

Drilling down one more level to municipal politics, Rocco Rossi, former National Director of the Liberal Party of Canada and inner-circle advisor to Michael Ignattieff has thrown his hat in the ring for Toronto Mayor, promising to ditch bike lanes and pause the city’s ambitious transit plan. After having taken Al Gore’s climate presentation training, this so-called “liberal” is looking to plan a city without the critical infrastructure necessary to support a safer method of travel for both cyclists and drivers, ditching a key urban carbon reduction measure.

But could it work for him? With commuting cyclists currently making up a very small proportion of residents, a move to make driving even appear more convenient, in a time when traffic jams clog Toronto morning streets, might be politically expedient in many Toronto neighbourhoods.

The United States is undergoing a strong movement of its far-right known as the Tea Party, described in a weekend article by Frank Rich. Rich warns to take the group seriously. The Tea Party has got people in the U.S. talking, and its mainstream conservative party getting nervous.

American writer Chris Hedges gives his answer to the movement and the weakness of Barack Obama (at Copenhagen and beyond), in a piece yesterday stating that the progressive left and the Democrats have succumbed to cowardice and have lost their energy. He urges a move back to third parties on the left, suggesting that a credible alternative to the state of the economy and society is what is most needed to bring the public onside, not liberals talking about policy all the time.

And so in the rural revolution and climate change deniers and their supportive media and blogs, Canadians may have our version of the Tea Party. While Americans, politics may be their hockey at the moment, we too may soon have an excited right which could pit itself against climate progress at a level that even Stephen Harper won’t touch. And whether that means bringing rural landowners in for climate consultation or starting a socialist revolution, it sounds like something worth planning for.