This year could not have been more momentous for my two areas of responsibility at The Conversation Canada — Politics and Business/Economics. The COVID-19 pandemic had politicians the world over scrambling to effectively respond in order to both spare the lives of citizens and prevent their economies from completely collapsing — and it also likely cost Donald Trump the White House following a chaotic presidential election campaign, another big Politics story in 2020. The pandemic’s devastating economic impact on the global economy, employees and businesses worldwide — as well as how it accelerated the percolating work-from-home trend — kept me extremely busy editing stories for both sections as I myself worked from home.

Below, you’ll see the most widely read stories for both sections, but I’d also like to reflect on the stories that I found personally memorable.

Politics

When the world is in turmoil that feels unprecedented, I gravitate towards stories that reassure us that we’ve been here before, and we came out the other side all in one piece. For that reason, I loved this piece by Ronald Pruessen, a history professor at the University of Toronto, about past U.S. elections that descended into chaos. Another Trump story — this one on why the defeated president’s supporters believe his lies by Ron Stagg of Ryerson University — was equally compelling. In non-Trump news, I found this call by Robyn Bourgeois of Brock University in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Nova Scotia to call the carnage exactly what it was — white male terrorism — to be courageous and thought-provoking. And this analysis by Mary Anne Martin and Michael Classens of Trent University pointing out the flawed logic in enlisting Canada’s grocery giants to fight food insecurity instead of ensuring people earn enough money to afford to feed their families was a smart, insightful look at the general futility of food charity and the need for a guaranteed basic income.

Business

The rapid shift to remote work at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic changed how we do our jobs, possibly permanently. We had several well-researched stories on the trend almost from the very start of the pandemic. I found this analysis by Georges A. Tanguay and Ugo Lachapelle of the Université du Québec à Montréal on how the shift has primarily benefited high-income earners to be especially provocative as it implicitly paid tribute to those brave essential workers, many of them low-paid, who have not had the luxury of working from home. I loved this piece reminding us why we didn’t need to be hoarding toilet paper by Giovani J.C. da Silveira of the University of Calgary. And before any of us had imagined a pandemic would remove us for months from an office setting, this look in January at the myth of the workplace Queen Bee, by Sarah Kaplan of the University of Toronto and Isabel Fernandez-Mateo of London Business School, was a hit among the almost all-women team at The Conversation Canada — all of us genuine advocates for one another.

Happy New Year to all the loyal readers of the Business and Politics pages — and good riddance, 2020!