This is In Conversation with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

I travelled across Canada in October, ostensibly for a break, but really for complicated personal, and also political, reasons.

The first was to rediscover who I was before fate brought me to these shores. The lives of all migrants are split into a before and after. Just as with many adopted children, the new life is for most more secure and rewarding. Yet the head and heart keep returning to the old life. A close South African friend, an activist who fled from apartheid-era South Africa in 1985, goes back often to make sure, she says, “that I keep myself whole. Otherwise you are broken into half a person”. Wise words.

My past was available to me while my immediate birth family members were alive. Now they’re all gone – my father, mother, older brother, and, most recently, my older sister, who died of Covid. She was mentally ill, often closed off. But we still spoke in our home language, Kutchi, and loved looking at and talking about old family pictures.

Broken into half a person

Since she passed away I’ve felt profoundly alone and discombobulated, and yes, broken into half a person. Close cousins, my ex-husband’s family and childhood friends who have settled in Vancouver and Toronto put me back together again. I cried often, spoke to them in Kutchi, revived fading and lost memories. Mr Brown, surely the most patient and loving husband in the world, must have got so very bored. But he knew I needed to do this.

I also needed to get away from British politics for a while and go somewhere less fraught. Ever since Brexit, the country has been unsettled, hopelessly fragmented, perpetually ireful and, at times, like a developing state where politicians exercise power without responsibility making the population cynical, eventually ungovernable. My husband has felt the same, though he is not, like me, right in the fray, day in, day out. Time away in a beautiful, safe, sane country, we thought, would do us both good.

And it did. Canada is one of the world’s most advanced welfare states; since 2019, it has resettled more refugees and migrants than any other Western country, with little public backlash. Its patriotism seems wholesome, not bellicose as it is in the US and parts of the UK.

Locals become best friends

Vancouver and Whistler are among the most beautiful places on earth. Trees, in autumn, turn bright red, pink, yellow and orange as if they are dressed up for a final bash before dark winter arrives. You are surrounded by blue seas and lakes, imposing mountains, waterfalls and parks. Unforgettable. Quebec City, in French Canada, is like a sophisticated European conurbation. Those old, unyielding struggles for secession from Canada seem to be over. If you speak French, which my husband does, locals become your new best mates.

Toronto, when I was there 15 years ago, seemed like just another, nondescript, medium sized US city. It didn’t seem to have its own identity. Now, though more sprawling and overrun by cars, it does. Local estate agent Brynn Lackie confirmed that impression in a Toronto Sun column: “I have lived in this city my entire life and to be honest, it used to feel like a complete snooze. When travelling I would always be struck by the pace and vibrancy of pretty much everywhere else. My hometown, a city of almost endless neighbourhoods, was leafy and lovely, sure, but never felt like it had much going on.” Now it’s superdiverse and vibrant, cool, has dynamic financial and artistic sectors.

Under threat

All that may be under threat. The Liberal party, led by Justin Trudeau, in power since 2015, failed to win a majority in the last election. Pierre Poilievre, a populist, libertarian, charismatic figure, is the new, widely popular Conservative leader. Canadian political science professor, Jim Bickerton, believes Poilievre is “probably the most right-wing” leader of a main political party that Canada has ever seen. The Conservative messiah uses the language and messages of Trump’s Republican Party and Johnson’s Tories.

If Poilievre wins, Canada could turn reactionary, callous, stridently nationalistic and individualistic. After my restorative trip, I find that possibility unendurable.

Moving forward

Hamas is, undeniably, a violent, radical Islamist faction. But the babies and children killed by Israel’s bombs are not Hamas members, nor are the other Palestinian civilians being terrorised, maimed and killed.

Some of our media still defends Israel and besmirches Palestinians. I watched an interview on Good Morning Britain with a grieving Palestinian man who had just lost 21 family members – many of them children – and was critical of Western media coverage. Presenters, usually empathetic, are more focused on denouncing Hamas. That’s the ritual now for anyone who criticises Israel’s ferocious war tactics.

If they really want to expose Hamas, broadcasters should get Qatari reps in the studio and asked them why that country offers sanctuary to Hamas and Taliban leaders. These lethal guys live there in five-star luxury. They are not interrogated, I believe, because that kingdom owns vast properties and lands in the UK and are seen as our allies. Journalists show little interest in exploring its links with Hamas.

A conversation I had this week

Rupert Murdoch is blamed – rightly – for damaging the ecology of the British media landscape. Millions of us avidly watched Succession, the imagined, inside story of the media magnate’s family. In contrast, we know little about twins David and Fredrick Barclay, the owners of the Telegraph and Spectator, who have also spoilt the once varied and more politically balanced terrain.

Boris Johnson worked for both publications, and, according to testimony from the Covid inquiry, he was overly influenced by these bros. Why, even Dominic Cummings says this was concerning.

Jane Martinson, previously a Guardian media editor, now an academic, told me a while back that she was exploring the Barclays’ strange, closed world. I thought it couldn’t be done, that they would stop her. I was wrong. In her brave new book, You May Never See Us Again, she takes us through their hitherto hidden lives and their labyrinthine affairs fearlessly and assiduously.

The right wing ideologues and adamant Brexiteers lived in palatial properties on the Channel Island of Brecqhou and, according to Martinson, have been embroiled in terrible family betrayals and financial disputes.

David died in 2021. Many of the fissures and disputes remain unresolved. Unelected, unanswerable, ruthless media moguls, it seems, are masters of our universe. What a state we are in.

Yasmin’s pick

The Empress, a play by Tanika Gupta, premiered in the RSC’s Swan theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon and is now showing at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. It tells interwoven stories, based on historical records, of Indians who came to Britain in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s jubilees.

An ayah, abandoned by her memsahib after they arrive; pitifully low paid sailors; Abdul Kareem, who became the Queen’s confidante; and Dadabhai Naoroji, one of the first British MPs of colour. They endured racism and penury, but their spirit and the exuberant production filled me with optimism. And wild courage.

This is In Conversation with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.