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: Social History
History of fierce free trade issue essential background for high-stakes NAFTA renegotiation with erratic Trump administration.
No Canadian political and economic issue is as contentious, persistent, and long-running as the struggle between free trade and protection. A concise account of that issue from 1840 to the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement provides essential historical background to the impending high-stakes renegotiation of NAFTA with the erratic Trump administration. The record clearly […]
Ukrainian settlers in sheepskin coats overcome rancid prejudice
They were called filthy, ignorant, lazy, immoral drunkards, a threat to the racial character and social stability of Canada. They were the peasants from Eastern Europe brought to Canada under Interior Minister Clifford Sifton’s aggressive quest for immigrants. To Sifton, they were “stalwart peasants in sheepskin coats,” precisely the type of good, hard-working farmers needed […]
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. […]
Short, short past time briefs
COMPULSORY SCHOOLING. There are five thousand children running around the streets of Montreal who never enter a school. It is now proposed that compulsory education shall be enforced in the great centre of mercantile life, and certainly the principle is necessary. These children are to be our future leaders, and they ought to know something. […]
Toronto Star spreads racism, sectarianism, bigotry and misogyny of evangelist Frank Norris
Evangelist Frank Norris, the most famous fundamentalist U.S. preacher in the 1920s. Wikimedia Commons. Early 20th-century naked bigotry, sectarianism and misogyny were on prominent display in the Toronto Star, August 30, 1924, with the reported teaching and preaching of U.S. evangelist and self-styled “Texas Tornado,” Frank Norris (1872-1952). “SAYS KU KLUX KLAN KEPT OUT […]
The failed life of Donald Trump
Donald Trump (presidential portrait, cropped). Intelligence is one thing. Wisdom is something else entirely. Saddest are those with a plethora of intelligence and a paucity of wisdom—or even common sense. They are doomed to failed, unhappy, and often destructive lives. The greatest and most destructive failures combine intelligence with unwisdom, wealth, and power. We are […]
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 […]
A walk across the Northwest Passage
It is September 1969 and I am aboard the SS Manhattan as it sits trapped in polar ice while attempting to complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage through McClure Strait, around the northern coast of Banks Island. The Manhattan is stuck in the polar ice grip for 34 hours before she is released […]
SS Manhattan signals an open Northwest Passage
All photos by author As the ice continues to shrink, the 2017 sailing season could see a record number of vessels transiting the fabled Canadian Northwest Passage. The first vessel has already left port. An ancient resuscitated icebreaker is on a 23,000-kilometre, 150-day voyage from Toronto to Victoria to help mark Canada’s 150th birthday. A giant […]