Thoughts and prayers. Those three words invariably follow the tragedy of gun violence in America. As soon as one hears an elected official utter these words, one can be certain there has been another shooting. Thoughts and prayers have become a synonym for indifference. They are meaningless words. They are words of inaction that simply…
From Market Lands to Treaty Lands; The Ghosts of the 1870’s
In 1875, a year after Winnipeg’s birth and a mere eight years after Canada appeared amongst the nations of the world, a generous settler family made a gift of land to the City of Winnipeg. The donors were members of the Ross family which included William Ross, Winnipeg’s first Postmaster, his wife Jemima and sister…
What Adder Nonsense!
Until recently, Michael de Adder was employed as a cartoonist with Brunswick News Inc. (BNI), a firm owned by the Irvings, one of Canada’s richest families. While de Adder’s art has yet to achieve the notoriety of an artist like Banksy, his work can pack a wallop. It seems de Adder’s efforts, particularly the latest,…
The Strike for Freedom: From 1919 to Here
It is human nature to want to be free. We may all want freedom, but paradoxically, freedom has never been free. It was hard earned with blood, sweat and lives – millions of lives. It was not so long ago that work and employment were questions of freedom. Throughout history, men and women who worked…
No Country for White Men
History is full of cruelty, oppression, war, conquest and colonization. As soon as humans learned to wield crude clubs and organized themselves into clans and tribes, they began using power and violence to assert their will over other humans. There really aren’t any humans who were immune from the infection of violence. Regardless of culture,…
Ford’s Quest for Absolute Power
“The glory of justice and the majesty of law are created not just by the constitution – nor by the courts – nor by the officers of the law – nor by the lawyers – but by the men and women who constitute our society – who are the protectors of the law as they…
Theresa May’s Ides of March
March 2019 has proven to be an interesting time to visit England. The political drama of Brexit is everywhere. I mean everywhere! Forget TV, newspapers and the radio, you can’t step into a pub or a restaurant without overhearing at least one discussion on the issue. For a political junkie from Canada, it has been…
The Silent Road to Christchurch
Hate and intolerance do not have a singular definition. They fall on a continuum. Harbouring hateful and intolerant ideas and feelings can reside subtly in the subconscious or they can take the form of extreme violence against those we may hate or are intolerant towards. The murder of fifty Muslim worshippers in Christchurch is the…
The Prime Minister vs the Attorney General
In 2015 Canadians handed Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party a comfortable majority. The electoral success was as much an acceptance of his positive messages for change as it was a repudiation of Stephen Harper’s secretive, fact and science suppressing, barbaric practice dog whistling and other cloistered governing practices over the previous decade. The Liberal government took…
The Third Opium War
One hundred and sixty years ago, the British flooded China with opium and profited while millions of Chinese suffered the painful consequences of addiction. Today, Canada and other nations are being flooded by opiates produced and shipped from China with equally painful consequences. In the early 1800’s China possessed the largest economy in the world.…