I was separately informed, by two different sources, that the deans of various Canadian universities had gotten together and agreed to stop hiring white men for the foreseeable future, and that in consequence I had no future in Canadian academia.

Before that, I had an experience in which I got to the top of the shortlist, to the point where I was fielding after-interview calls regarding funding package requirements, before it unaccountably went silent. Was later informed that what had happened was "politics", at which point I recalled the interview with the dean. She informed me at the very beginning that women in STEM was her top priority.

Before that, in another application I heard through the grapevine that the department was determined to hire a woman; the shortlist, remarkably, was all women.

Needless to say, in the aftermath of all of this my motivation more or less disappeared.