With the cancellation of Frances Widdowson's lecture at the University of Lethbridge, that's what it amounts to. Widdowson, you'll remember, is the Mount Royal University professor fired in 2021 because she dared to say that residential schools did a lot of good for Indigenous students.
How dare she!! Off with her head!! Former senator Lynn Beyak's cranium was also put on a spike in the public square when she had the gall to say the same thing out loud a couple of years ago. She became a "former" pretty quickly after that outrageous comment.
Trouble is, both these women are correct. Residential schools -- although blighted by scandal and abuse -- educated thousands of natives who would otherwise have remained illiterate. I have blogged countless times about the smearing of the schools by vested interests, so I won't bang on about it here. But the truth of the matter is that every, single Indigenous leader and spokesman on the airwaves and in the ether today went to one.
Residential schools, or boarding schools as they are called by everyone other than a native "victim", turn out some of the most well-educated citizens around. Every British prime minister, for example, went to one, as did countless other prominent and successful leaders. But, for some reason, only residential schools -- and in particular the Catholic variety -- are singled out for condemnation.
Odd because recently I read about a Jewish rabbi charged with sexually abusing students in New York. And here I thought it was only Catholic priests who were guilty of such aberrations. Silly me! And did I mention the overly-enthusiastic male health teacher I had in grade school, who was a tad too keen on graphic, hands-on sex ed, if you get my drift? As as for my orthodontist, who sexually assaulted me when I was 12, well, we won't go into that here. I forget, did I mention that the abuse that took place in residential schools was principally perpetrated on younger students by older? No? Oh, well, let's not let that inconvenient truth get in the way of a good headline.
Suffice to say, perverted adults have always preyed on the vulnerable, but with so many being outed, fewer instances are occurring.
But back to Prof. Widdowson. Her topic was to have been, "How 'Woke-ism' Threatens Academic Freedom," but Lethbridge President Mahon chickened out and now refuses her a forum on university grounds because of the all-hell that broke loose from the "woke" mobs who screamed, marched and waved placards in protest. Yep, like University of Ottawa coward, President Alan Rock, who bowed to pressure from rabid Middle Eastern students who became hysterical when arch-conservative Ann Coulter was invited to speak, Mike Mahon too has folded.
Ms. Widdowson avows that the 'Black Lives Matter' movement has trampled all over free speech and academic freedom. "The open exchange of ideas and the ability to debate a wide range of topics are under threat in universities today," Widdowson wrote. "Promoting critical thinking has been gradually overtaken by identity politics and cancel culture that has become totalitarian, which is the focus of the de-Enlightenment agenda of 'woke-ism,' " she writes. This is exactly what the Indigenous leaders are doing here and we're sitting back letting it happen.
Queen Elizabeth II and Sir John A. Macdonald are also suffering from hysterical, book-burning blight, as statues of both have been torn down across Canada by marauding Indigenous gangs. It's unconscionable. But has anyone been charged? No because the people doing it are natives. Plain and simple.
So, if you don't think we're deep into book burning, google the plight of Prof. Widdowson. And while you're at it, look into the thousands of books officially banned and taken off school and university shelves in states like Florida and Texas. It's not only shameful, it's destructive and wrong.
A further clarification about the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. “For every black person killed by the police,” says Glenn Loury, a black professor at Brown University, "more than 25 other blacks meet their ends because of homicides committed by other blacks.”
According to Loury, "We need to put the police killings in perspective. There are about a thousand fatal shootings of people by police in the US every year, according to the documented database kept by 'The Washington Post'. Roughly, 300, or one-fourth, are African Americans, yet Blacks represent only 13 percent of the American population.
"Black people are over-represented among these fatalities, though they make up far less than a majority. The fact is that twice as many whites as blacks are killed by police in the US every year, but you wouldn't know that from the activists' rhetoric.
"Most of the public has no idea of these facts because mainstream media does not want to acknowledge them. Yet, it is all true. The media are fooling the public because they want to feed the narrative that racism is baked into law enforcement. Their deceit is appalling."
So, there you have it. Those annoying facts. Again.
As a former journalist, I did research on every column I wrote in the pre-internet era; it remains a habit I cannot write without. At Maclean Hunter, I had ruthless editors with sharp, red pencils who let me get away with nothing. "Where did you get that figure?" Mrs. Portugal (never Jean) would demand. I had to have a reliable source, or else she would scrap the copy. As you can imagine, I quickly learned to always have a reliable source -- something today's journalists don't bother with.
Footnote: A word about Maclean Hunter, back in the late sixties and early seventies -- actually, two words: Mad Men. That was the workplace culture in that wonderful, debauched and raucous world of journalism and publishing in Toronto. Everyone smoked all the time. Everyone drank all the time. And everyone had affairs all the time. For a young scribe in her early twenties, it was magnificent! So much fun -- something no one seems to be having today. But we can thank the "feminist movement" for that. I mean, a poor, young guy can't even tell a colleague she looks good, without being accused of sexual harassment. Who wouldn't have had fun with Don Draper?! He looks exactly like one of my editors, back in the day. Irresitible.
I must state that I am a true feminist, albeit not the bra-burning, barricade-crashing sort. My cohort invented feminism, but we didn't have to be man-haters to do it. We just did it.
The state of affairs today is all so sad and boring.
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