Two years.
Two years of offending the correct people, surviving the wrong ones, and gathering a rag-tag congregation of readers who still believe wit, truth, and freedom belong in the same bloody sentence.
Let’s begin with a toast — though not the kind served with cucumber sandwiches.
To my paid subscribers, that noble aristocracy of rebellion: you don’t buy comfort; you buy conscience. You’re the patrons of mischief, the investors in heresy, the small-donor class of dissent.
To my unpaid readers — those stoic pilgrims of “I don’t have to pay if I open it the day it’s published” land — I salute you, too. You are the balcony cheap-seaters in the colosseum of ideas, jeering and cheering in equal measure.
Cheap bastards, yes — but with style. And it’s six dollars a month, for heaven’s sake. Freedom should cost at least that much.
I launched Freedom to Offend in the smouldering aftermath of October 7, 2023 — a day when civilisation split cleanly in two. Twitter had cancelled me for irony, TikTok for blasphemy, and Facebook for tone.
The world mourned; the other half reached for its thesaurus to find excuses for mass murder. While the bodies were still warm, the apologists were already at their keyboards, writing moral footnotes to atrocity.
I said then, and I say it now with redoubled conviction: I stand with Israel — the lone democracy in a region where barbarism has learned to spell “resistance.”
Every passing month, every slogan screamed by the unwashed clerisy of the West, every academic hiding cowardice behind conditional clauses, has only confirmed that I was right to do so.
There is no moral symmetry between civilisation and savagery, between those who build and those who bomb. And if saying so offends, then good. It means the words are still doing their job.
But the real cancellation came from the hallowed hallways of Canadian academia, that bureaucratic hospice where courage goes to die in triplicate.
At the University of Guelph-Humber — a sort of moral daycare for administrators — I was suspended for the crime of accuracy. A Hamas sympathiser had posted his solidarity online; I replied that if he stood with Hamas, he stood with Nazis. The logic was bulletproof. The administration was not.
I regret nothing.
Within hours, I was gagged, slandered, and defamed to hundreds of students by officials who couldn’t spell due process if you spotted them the D and the P.
For twenty-one months, I was treated as if I’d strangled a kitten on livestream. They lied, they leaked, and they congratulated themselves on their “values.” Bureaucrats love values — they’re cheaper than ethics.
Their “investigation” was Kafka rewritten by the HR department: no charges, no evidence, no hearing, no appeal.
A report duly appeared — half gossip, half guesswork, and entirely unburdened by evidence; a bureaucratic artefact so feeble it should have been stamped Do Not Resuscitate. It accused me of “misconduct,” though the term was never defined —just as cowards prefer their definitions.
And now, they plan one last conjuring trick — the gag order dressed up as a settlement. It’s the bureaucrat’s sleight of hand: “We’ll buy your silence, call it resolution, and bill the taxpayer for closure.”
It won’t work.
I’ve been offending authority since grade two, when I was exiled from polite company for “mouthing off” to Miss Pickering at St. Nicholas Reformatory for Wayward Youth in Kenilworth, England — or, as the school board preferred to call it, an ordinary classroom.
She smoked in class, chain-lit like a post-war artillery line, and took to striking me with a stick whenever my curiosity exceeded her patience, which was often.
The woman, to her credit, had the zeal of the Inquisition and the breath of an ashtray. But she did not shut me up.
And neither will the University of Guelph.
They want to buy my silence, erase the record, and call it “restorative.” I am to trade my speech for hush money and the privilege of pretending they didn’t destroy my career.
They can keep their cheque. I’ll keep my tongue.
Because this publication — Freedomtoffend.com — is my sovereign territory.
No HR commissar edits my adjectives.
No diversity officer audits my irony.
Here, words still mean something. Here, sarcasm is still legal tender — the coin of thought in a bankrupt age.
But inside — here — the words march free.
No trigger warnings. No tone police. No one peering over my shoulder with a ruler of righteousness, checking that every syllable aligns with the latest orthodoxy.
This is not a “safe space.” It’s a free one.
And that makes all the difference.
Twitter banned me for sarcasm. TikTok exiled me for irony. Instagram throttles me for insufficient repentance.
Apparently, algorithms now issue moral judgments.
My favourite offence remains replying to a “Free Palestine” post with: “Perhaps start by spelling it correctly.”
That, apparently, was hate speech — though only toward vowels.
Even my classroom supplied its own fable. While teaching entrepreneurship, one enterprising dullard couldn’t find a company to analyse and tried to turn his laziness into my problem. I told him to analyse my Substack — a doomed start-up, perhaps, but still a start-up.
He mocked my fourteen subscribers. I smiled and swore I’d have a thousand within a year. It took eleven months. Since then, I’ve doubled it.
Some writers charge $14 a month. I charge six Canadian dollars — less than a bad cappuccino in Toronto and infinitely more stimulating.
Even the name Freedom to Offend was an act of thrift: the full two-O domain cost nearly $100,000; I bought the one-O version for $29.99.
Orwell said, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
I’d add that the great friend of liberty is thrift — and a strong Wi-Fi signal.
Substack, for all its eccentricities, remains one of the last functioning republics of speech.
No editor to nag, no committee to appease, no corporate flak whispering about “tone.”
Several lawyers have tried to threaten me with defamation suits, but most don’t practise law so much as perform it. They are psychological arsonists in tailored suits, setting fires in the name of civility.
As Churchill said in 1941, “We shall not flag or fail.” And Maggie warned us about going wobbly. I will try to take a hard pass on all three.
And though I’ve flagged plenty, I haven’t failed yet.
Freedom to Offend has been ranked as high as #16 in humour and #80 in world politics — proof that irony and outrage can share a bed, even if they don’t get much sleep.
I’ve become less funny lately, they tell me. Possibly true. These aren’t funny years. But they are righteous ones, and that will do.
The principle remains: in an age of cowardice, mere speech is an act of resistance.
To speak plainly is to stand upright.
To all who read, comment, argue, and occasionally correct my spelling: thank you.
To those who pay: bless you.
To those who don’t: repent — it’s cheaper than confession and more fun.
Two books of essays are coming early next year. Editing them feels like duelling with myself — slicing fat, sharpening edges, and refusing to neuter ideas for the sake of the perpetually wounded. Editing, for me, is not submission. It’s a counterattack.
So here’s to another year of offending the right people — not for sport, but for civilisation.
To provoke thought before breakfast, outrage before lunch, and clarity before bed.
And if one day they finally drag me, warm and rapidly cooling, through some back exit muttering about “policy violations,” I hope to have one last sentence still flickering on the screen:
“Freedom to Offend — still offending the right bastards, to the very end.”
Because, as Churchill said, when London burned and tyrants cheered:
“We shall never surrender.”
But I will stop writing for tonight. The dogs need a walk, and Malibu — the more imperious of the two — is already pacing by the door, sighing like a disappointed aristocrat. Toby, ever the stoic, waits beside her. Their moral clarity is enviable: food, affection, and loyalty — no hypocrisy in sight.
My thanks, before I go, to a few indispensable souls.
To Dave Gordon, whose pen seems increasingly to find the front page of the National Post, and whose wit, like good whiskey, improves with time and slight provocation.
To my wife — whose name I cannot print, since the same small-souled conspirators who ended my university career would gladly turn their malice toward her — you are my anchor in this storm of vainglorious fools.
To Anita and Jacki, my lawyers, who daily demonstrate that patience is not only a virtue but a professional hazard. To Danielle, a friend of unshakable loyalty — the kind that cannot be taught because it is carved into the bone.
To Sophia and Vanya, my children, who endure my tirades and remind me, by merely existing, why the truth is worth the bruises. To my mother-in-law, who has never read a word of this yet continues to insist that I read more Chekhov — a fair trade, I think.
To Jack, a man of brilliance and sorrow, whose courage lies not in agreement but in candour. To Jim McMurtry, a man of principle and lover of truth, whose spirit emboldens me.
To Rory, for our long, circuitous conversations that so often tumble into print — proof that friendship is the finest incubator of ideas.
To the Jewish Grandmother who first told me, “You’ll need a thick hide and a clean conscience.” I’ve managed at least one of the two.
And to the woman on the corner of Sheppard and Bathurst, who, amid the din of protestors shrieking “pedophile” at my Jewish friends, placed her hand on my arm and said, “Paul, have faith.”
I will, dear friend.
And lastly — at least when it comes to thanking those who still walk upright — I thank God, or whatever divine editor still tolerates me, for my father, H.C. Finlayson.
He left this world just before I began this strange chapter. When I attended what I thought was to be a meeting about bereavement leave, I was instead greeted with the cheerful news of my suspension.
Bureaucracy never misses an opportunity to prove that it is the perfect fusion of stupidity and cruelty.
I miss Dad every day. Every hour. When I was a boy, my noble professor father would sit on that battered orange chesterfield in our Winnipeg basement and read aloud to us— Coleridge, Chaucer, Wordsworth — until their cadences carved themselves into my bones. From him I inherited two incurable afflictions: the love of words, and the refusal to lie.
If I possess any measure of courage or conscience, it was lit by that lamp — his voice in the half-dark, reading beauty into a world already inclined toward barbarism.
Thank you, Father. May the Wi-Fi in heaven be faster than Bell’s, and may they never suspend you for speaking the truth.
And finally, to Toby and Malibu, the silent philosophers of this house — my loyal Westies, who, for non-shedding dogs, have managed to upholster half my study in white fur. You have stood beside me through nights of fury and absurdity, and never once asked for an editor’s note.
See below, they must stop tormenting Vika, our new kitten.
To all of you — and yes, to God, whose sense of irony must be boundless — may the coming year, and the looming 2026, bring more light than heat, more laughter than litigation, and the courage, above all, to keep speaking freely.
For in the end, silence is the only true heresy.
🔥 “From the Embers”
Verse 1
A spark broke the silence — I heard it all so well,
A glowing twig, a seed of fire, hunger in the air.
The flames were small, a shadow’s breath; they lingered in the gloom,
And when whispers lit the tinder, the fire began to bloom.
Pre-Chorus 1
They built a story brick by brick,
A castle made of spite and tricks.
They whispered in the hollow halls,
Till my name was smeared across the walls.
The gavel fell without a sound,
Though no true charge was ever found.
Chorus 1
Now I stand in the silence, where my laughter used to be,
The flames have long since faded; there’s nothing left of me.
A forest turned to ashes, a sky that’s painted grey,
I trace the ruins of my name, and watch it blow away.
Verse 2
They spoke of crimes I never knew,
Slander in the class — the stories grew.
The fires roared, and memory wept,
Inventions cruel, their lies well kept.
Their voices louder than the truth,
A ghost erased before their eyes,
Stripped of all my colours, left with only night.
Pre-Chorus 2
They wrote their verdict with no proof,
The judgment passed, the gavel fell.
A story scorched, yet never true,
The fire took its course,
And left me standing with remorse.
Chorus 2
Now I stand in the silence, where my laughter used to be,
The flames have long since faded, but there’s nothing left of me.
A forest turned to ashes, a sky that’s painted grey,
The ruins of my name — I watch them blow away.
Bridge
I tried to speak, but they stole my voice,
Turned my pain into their noise.
Echoes cold, so cold and cruel,
A shadowed world where lies still rule.
The gavel falls in hollow halls,
But truth still waits beyond their walls.
Final Chorus (Victorious)
But I rise from the embers — I will not fade away,
They burned my world to blackened soot, but I will find the day.
This isn’t my ending, I won’t bow, I won’t break,
Through the smoke and through the ruin, with God I will remake.
No gavel’s weight can seal my fate,
The light will set it straight.
Through the pain and the fire —
He will remake.
Great ironic humour and truth in your discourses. I enjoy reading and keep it up. Sadly, your story is too common these days but I see light slowly seeping into the darkness. The only alternative is a war that nobody wants.
How I’d love to see Paul Finlayson’s father’s response, if he were sitting in Heaven and awake to our world, to this golden testimony of his fatherhood: “I miss Dad every day. Every hour. When I was a boy, my noble professor father would sit on that battered orange chesterfield in our Winnipeg basement and read aloud to us— Coleridge, Chaucer, Wordsworth — until their cadences carved themselves into my bones. From him I inherited two incurable afflictions: the love of words, and the refusal to lie.”