The Globe and Mail attempts to identify Canadian dividend stocks poised to weather a market downturn in its Friday edition. The Globe's guest columnist Peter Ashton writes in the Number Cruncher column that markets have seen a turbulent summer with alternating periods of strong price appreciation followed by steep sell-offs owing to trade concerns or dire warnings of an imminent market collapse. With the current bull market now 114 months old, no one would be surprised by a 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent pullback in equity markets. Mr. Ashton says one strategy to protect against such a decline while remaining invested is to buy value stocks offering strong dividends. A high dividend yield makes it more tolerable to wait for stock markets to recover. In addition, a true bear market would be accompanied by falling interest rates, which would make dividend stocks more attractive. Mr. Ashton searched for Canadian stocks demonstrating reasonable valuations in terms of price-to-earnings and price-to-book ratios, along with strong and stable dividend yields. His picks are Enbridge Income Fund Holdings, Power Corp. of Canada, Power Financial, Great-West Lifeco, Bank of Nova Scotia, IGM Financial, Hydro One and TransCanada.