Archives

Comments (1)

Ah, 2021.

Like its immediate predecessor, the unlamented 2020, this year has been a real bastard.

Just when you think some degree of normalcy may return — just when you begin to hope that maybe, just maybe, things are going to get a tiny bit better — the merciless and relentless monster that is the virus throws us another curveball.

A happier Christmas at the tail end of 2021? Dream on. Choke on some Omicron, losers.

Oh, and here’s some extra Justin Trudeau, for dessert.

Misery loves company, goes the cliche, but the misery visited upon us by COVID isn’t in any way alleviated by the fact that all of us are experiencing it. We’re all kind of miserable, nowadays, and wondering if we are going to go through the entire Greek alphabet, naming the latest iteration of the virus. For years.

Well, not all is lost. Amidst the the death and destruction and despair, there are some tiny, shining lights. Like diamonds in the proverbial rough, or wheat in the chaff. Or whatever.

Last time out, we chronicled the losersof the year — in Canada, essentially our entire federal political class. This time, here’s some winners — the ones who, often unnoticed, are making our collective existence a bit better. A bit easier to hold onto.

Kudos to them, and to all!

Laurie Garrett, Journalist. Did you know there is a person who predicted everything we are going through, almost two decades ago? Did you know that she wrote a book called “The Coming Plague” that saw all of this coming and — like Cassandra, the prophet of Greek mythology — was kind of ignored? Well, not entirely.

American journalist Garrett won a Pulitzer Prize for her writings about epidemics and pandemics. But Garrett foresaw all of the current pandemic — although maybe not the name of it or Donald Trump (and who could’ve foreseen him, who Garrett correctly terms a “foolhardy buffoon”).

Having foretold exactly what happened to us, what does Garrett now say about the future? One, we will never go back to what was “normal” before. 9/11 changed everything, she says. COVID will, too. Two, the battle will go on for three years, minimum — and we haven’t even hit year two, yet. Three, the virus will never go away unless all of us are vaccinated — not just us solipsistic types outside the developing world. If all of us aren’t protected, then none of us are protected.

Anthony Fauci, Doctor. When the aforementioned foolhardy buffoon, a.k.a. Trump, is saying COVID will go away in the Spring of 2020 — and when he is counselling people to inject themselves with bleach, to kill the virus that didn’t go away — how does one keep one’s cool? Anthony Fauci, somehow, did. Must’ve been the Jesuitical education (which, um, this writer shares). The Brooklyn-born Fauci is chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden and, previously, served in that sort of role to many presidents. Including George W. Bush, who awarded Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Throughout the grim and grinding early days of the pandemic, Fauci was a voice of reason and calm — but he never sugarcoated the magnitude of the threat we were all facing, either. In my family, Fauci is regarded as a modern-day saint. Because he is.

Doug Ford, John Horgan and Francois Legault, Premiers. None of them are perfect — Legault, in particular, is presently presiding over a racist purge of Muslims, Jews and others who wear religious symbols while employed by his xenophobic government — but these three political leaders became popular, and mostly stayed popular, by being human. Not by getting right every pandemic-related decision. But by showing their heart, and mourning the loss of every one of their citizens. They’ll all be handily re-elected as a result.

You folks. It’s been hard. It’s been gruelling. Job losses, depleted savings, shredded futures — but you are still here, fighting, and I (for one) am grateful that you are. We need you around, you know? So keep on that mask, get vaccinated, get your booster, and look out for each other.

Because, whether you realize it or not, you’re a winner in 2021, too.

Comments (28)

Comments (0)

Pretend, for a moment, that you are a big wheel in the federal government. Prime Minister, even. Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, too.

Pretend you are running a government that styles itself as feminist.

Would you then permit someone to run for you, as a candidate, who said he was looking for a girlfriend to do his “cleaning, folding, cooking?”

Your government proclaims it is anti-racist, too. Would you take that same candidate after he’d mocked the way Chinese-Canadians speak?

Your federal political party says it’s against homophobia and sexual assault, too. Would you accept that guy into your caucus, after he joked that men’s tennis “sounds exactly like gay porn?”

How about after learning that he would like to “accidentally sexually assault” someone? How about then?

You’d still take him? Okay, let’s say you are considering which MP to give a big raise and make the Parliamentary Secretary for Crown-Indigenous Relations. Would you hire that same guy, after he wrote that “every skinny aboriginal girl is on crystal meth?”

You wouldn’t, would you? No. No decent, sane person would. When a man makes that many racist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-Indigenous remarks, you wouldn’t hire him for any task, would you?

But you’re not Justin Trudeau. And Justin Trudeau did indeed promote Jaime Battiste — the Liberal MP for Sydney-Victoria, N.S. — to what is a junior cabinet minister post. Gave him a big raise, too.

And made him one of the most powerful elected people in Ottawa — on the Indigenous file.

Now, governments don’t usually reveal themselves in grand, sweeping gestures. Sometimes they reveal themselves — their absence of a soul, say — in the little things. Like promoting someone like Jaime Battiste to help oversee Indigenous issues.

In a way, it isn’t really surprising.

I mean, this is the prime minister who solemnly promised to bring clean water to Indigenous reserves — and then just didn’t.

This is the prime minister who said he’d clean up the poison in the ground at places like Grassy Narrows — and then mocked a young woman who came to an exclusive Liberal event to talk to him about Grassy Narrows, telling her “thanks for your donation” as security men threw her out onto the sidewalk.

This is the prime minister who said he wanted a day for Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous people — and then lied about where he was on that very day, and jetted out to B.C. to hang out in a millionaire’s mansion. On a beach where he likes to surf.

This is the prime minister who pushed his minister of justice and attorney general to stop the prosecution of one of his party donors — a donor who was facing corruption charges on a massive scale.

And then, when that minister — a proud and respected Indigenous leader named Jody Wilson-Raybould — refused to obstruct justice, he kicked her out of the Liberal Party. And when another respected female cabinet minister named Jane Philpott spoke up to defend Wilson-Raybould, he kicked her out, too.

That’s who this prime minister is. That’s who he is, in his soul. In his essence.

A man who claims to be a feminist, but isn’t. A man who professes to oppose all racism and homophobia, but doesn’t. A man who says he wants reconciliation with Indigenous people — but will never attain it.

In his words and his deeds, we all know who Justin Trudeau is.

He’s the prime minister who recruited, and promoted, Jaime Battiste — a jerk, a creep, who says that “every skinny aboriginal girl is on crystal meth.”

That’s who Justin Trudeau really is.

No pretending.

— Warren Kinsella was a Ministerial Representative on Indigenous files across Canada under Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper

Comments (47)

Comments (2)

The CBC has gone insane. Truly.

Check this out.

Comments (28)