Click to reveal author's notes (with any spoilers!)
One clue that unfortunately didn't make it through was for 23-Across, ORC, where I'd hoped to have something along the lines of 'Horde member, perhaps, in World of Warcraft': for the uninitiated, players in World of Warcraft are divided between the Alliance, led by humans, and the Horde, led by orcs. An ORC, therefore, would be a member of the Horde. As much as it would have amused me to pay tribute to my teenage years, I didn't think it would be fair to both pin the answer to a video game (as popular as WoW has been) while also hiding the capital letter of H by making Horde the first word.
That said, the Lord of the Rings - even if I only saw the movies well into my twenties - are another very solid franchise, and so I don't regret the final clue.
This puzzle is also the base of the Centre's guide for making a crossword puzzle - if you've ever been curious about trying your hand at constructing crosswords, you now have a step-by-step guide! (Of course, we recommend completing this puzzle first - the guide is nothing but spoilers!)
The Centre is *for*, is in favour of, Canadian crosswords. It is a creative space where the default assumption is Canadian, from the references to the spelling.