Canada should shut up about Chinese violation of human rights, its government grumbles. On June 22, Zhao Lijian, a Chinese spokesperson, publicly told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “China urges the relevant Canadian leader to earnestly respect the rule of law, respect China’s judicial sovereignty and stop making irresponsible remarks.” I agree. It’s time to stop […]
Category: Law and order
Peasants find freedom in Canada but anarchy and doomed democracy forecast
A settlers’ homestead, cleared from the bush in Upper Canada, ca. 1800. Pen Pictures of Pioneer Life in Upper Canada, ElectricCanadian.com/pioneer/pen/Chapter 21.htm. Liberty, democracy, and freedom from want, hunger and an oppressive aristocracy were said to prevail among peasants from Europe in the Upper Canada of 1821, but anarchy and doomed democracy were widely predicted. […]
Toronto in great uproar as U.S. seeks fugitive slave
John Anderson, a proclaimed fugitive slave in Toronto who escaped from Missouri to Canada on the Underground Railway, was wanted by the Americans in 1860. English engraving, from “The Story of the Life of John Anderson,” 1863. “It was an anxious moment, as the Chief Justice produced his papers and began to read. The life […]
John Peters Humphrey, author of UN’s Declaration of Universal Rights
Three-and-a-half years after the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco, the nations of the world met in General Assembly in Paris to lay a foundation stone, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is “the international Magna Carta of all mankind,” in the words of U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. “One of […]
First World War conscription triggers riots and attempted murder
First World War As First World War military conscription became law on August 29, 1917, protesting rioters in Montreal smashed store windows. Arrests soon followed, including a group charged with attempting to murder Montreal Star publisher Hugh Graham, a strong conscription advocate, and his family, by dynamiting their summer home. The dynamiters also allegedly planned […]
Murder of 120 Chinese foiled
Canada’s festering racism, under which Chinese suffered for decades, came dangerously close to mass murder claiming 120 lives before an attempt to dynamite two railway cars at Vancouver was foiled, Canadian Press reported May 20, 1910. The Chinese had arrived on the SS Empress of China for a scheduled “trip across the continent.” “The plan […]
Whitecapping heroes of Wheatley
Those who misbehaved were once in danger of being “whitecapped” by their neighbours—dunked in a well, or walked in snow, and thrashed. When a group of vigilantes whitecapped a leading citizen in the town of Wheatley in southwestern Ontario, they were brought to trial in nearby Chatham. Penalties were urged. Instead, the whitecappers were […]
First woman lawyer trumps misogynists
Among the pantheon of leaders who crashed the doors and shattered the glass ceiling that held women back from the professions and business, few have done as much crashing and shattering as Clara Brett Martin (1874-1923) of Toronto. A member of a prominent Anglican-Irish family, Martin was an iconoclast even as a teenager. At […]
Bank robbers try to rope Canada in U.S. War
During the U.S. civil war (1861-1865), Canadians were divided about which side their sympathies—and sometimes covert support—lay. Those who supported the Confederate south thought that breaking up the United States would lessen the danger of a bigger, stronger neighbour responding to the American cry of “Manifest Destiny,” the doctrine that called for absorption of […]
Gold miners pine for preacher
The Hollywood image of the old west gold mining camps as lawless, lustful and licentious did not apply to peaceful, law-abiding Canada, judging by a report on September 19, 1864 in the Vancouver Times (Victoria, Vancouver Island). The biggest complaint of Vancouver Island miners appeared to be a lack of clergymen on Sundays. The editor […]