Mark Bonokoski

LATEST STORIES BY MARK BONOKOSKI

BONOKOSKI: Holding children for ransom is teachers’ go-to shakedown

As certain as I am of being even uglier when wearing a toque, Ontario’s teachers have been playing us for dupes for as long as I can remember.

January 22, 2020 Columnists

High school teachers employed by the Durham District School Board are pictured during a one-day strike on Jan. 15, 2020. (Veronica Henri, Toronto Sun)

BONOKOSKI: The first rule of military command is covering butt

It was unsettling Monday to be reminded that it was 25 years ago that Master Cpl. Clayton Matchee, then of our military’s elite airborne unit, went rogue with others in Somalia and beat to death a 16-year-old Somali kid named Shidane Arone for suspected petty thievery.

January 21, 2020 Columnists

Master Cpl. Clayton Matchee holds a semi-automatic gun to the head of 16-year-old Shidane Abukar Arone as he was tied up and bleeding inside a bunker on March 16, 1993 inside the Canadian Airborne Regiment (CAR) base in Belet Huen, Somalia. Arone later died from his injuries. (Somalia Commission of Inquiry Released Photo)

BONOKOSKI: Ticking of Doomsday Clock all about our extinction

Will the Doomsday Clock be inching us closer to the apocalypse?

January 18, 2020 Columnists

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveil the 2018 "Doomsday Clock" on Jan. 25, 2018 in Washington, DC. Citing growing nuclear risks and unchecked climate dangers, the group moved the clock to two minutes before midnight, 30 seconds closer and the closest it has been since the height of the Cold War in 1953. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

BONOKOSKI: A very costly penalty for dirty play in beer-league hockey

When my illustrious beer-league hockey career ended in Ottawa after being slew-footed by one of the league’s dirtier players — my rotator cuff muscle painfully ripped when my left shoulder impacted the ice — I should have sued.

January 17, 2020 Columnists

BONOKOSKI: Maple Leaf Foods vs. Indiana and America’s No. 1 Hoosier

Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain could still pay a significant price for using his publicly-traded company’s official Twitter platform to personally slag U.S. President Donald Trump.

January 16, 2020 Columnists

Maple Leaf Foods Inc. CEO Michael McCain speaks during the annual general meeting of shareholders in Toronto on April 28, 2011. REUTERS

BONOKOSKI: Maple Leaf's Michael McCain slices and dices Trump

Newsweek magazine and other top news agencies couldn’t care less if you or I are livid over Iran’s admitted mistake in its missile downing of Ukraine Flight 752, even if you had family aboard.

January 14, 2020 Columnists

Maple Leafs Foods president and CEO Michael H. McCain held a press conference at the Canadian Centre For Product Validation in London, Ont. on Tuesday November 27, 2018. (Postmedia file photo)

BONOKOSKI: Feds must ‘follow the money’ to combat organized crime

The Trudeau Liberals, as well as the previous Harper Conservatives, have been laggards in chasing down the slippery high-level criminal profiteers who have cost Canadians billions.

January 11, 2020 Columnists

Some of the roughly $1 million in cash seized by police in an illegal gaming investigation named Project Sindacato is pictured in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada July 15, 2019. Picture taken July 15, 2019. (York Regional Police handout)

BONOKOSKI: Uncertain contenders kicking the tires to replace Scheer

Out of all the potential contenders who might enter the race to replace Andrew Scheer as Conservative leader, the one the Trudeau Liberals truly can’t stand is the pesky Pierre Poilievre, who looks more like a kid still in college than a veteran MP.

January 10, 2020 Columnists

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre (Reuters)

BONOKOSKI: Both sides boast, an airliner crashes in Tehran, and all’s well

U.S. President Donald Trump, surrounded by Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top military commanders, indicated Wednesday that Iran is “standing down” in its retaliation for the cruise missile assassination of its terror-loving general, Qassem Soleimani.

January 8, 2020 Columnists

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a statement about Iran flanked by U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Army Chief of Staff General James McConville, Chiarman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Mark Milley, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the Grand Foyer at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 8, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

BONOKOSKI: How will mad mullahs retaliate now that terror leader is dead?

On Friday, as ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, a faceless air force officer in Creech, Nev., with gamer-like toggle switches in hand, launched the guided drone missile from 11,963 km away that blew up the vehicle whose main passenger was Iran’s ruthless military leader, Qassem Soleimani.

January 6, 2020 Columnists

Members of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force chant anti-U.S. slogans during a protest over the killings of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, on January 6, 2020 in Karrada in central Baghdad. (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP)