Categories for Musings

June 15, 2004

Dr. T. Douglas KINSELLA, CM, BA, MD, FACP, FRCPC.

Like some men, and as was the practice in some families, my brothers and I did not hug my father a lot. As we got older in places like Montreal, or Kingston, or Dallas or Calgary, we also did not tell him that we loved him as much as we did. With our artist Mom, there was always a lot of affection, to be sure; but in the case of my Dad, usually all that was exchanged with his four boys was a simple handshake, when it was time for hello or goodbye. It was just the way we did things.

There was, however, much to love about our father, and love him we did. He was, and remains, a giant in our lives – and he was a significant presence, too, for many of the patients whose lives he saved or bettered over the course a half-century of healing. We still cannot believe he is gone, with so little warning.

Thomas Douglas Kinsella was born on February, 15, 1932 in Montreal. His mother was a tiny but formidable force of nature named Mary; his father, a Northern Electric employee named Jimmy, was a stoic man whose parents came over from County Wexford, in Ireland. In their bustling homes, in and around Montreal’s Outremont, our father’s family comprised a younger sister, Juanita, and an older brother, Howard. Also there were assorted uncles – and foster siblings Bea, Ernie, Ellen and Jimmy.

When he was very young, Douglas was beset by rheumatic fever. Through his mother’s ministrations, Douglas beat back the potentially-crippling disease. But he was left with a burning desire to be a doctor.

Following a Jesuitical education at his beloved Loyola High School in Montreal, Douglas enrolled at Loyola College, and also joined the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps. It was around that time he met Lorna Emma Cleary, at a Montreal Legion dance in April 1950. She was 17 – a dark-haired, radiant beauty from the North End. He was 18 – and a handsome, aspiring medical student, destined for an officer’s rank and great things.

It was a love like you hear about, sometimes, but which you rarely see. Their love affair was to endure for 55 years – without an abatement in mutual love and respect.

On a hot, sunny day in June 1955, mid-way through his medical studies at McGill, Douglas and Lorna wed at Loyola Chapel. Then, three years after Douglas’ graduation from McGill with an MD, first son Warren was born.

In 1963, second son Kevin came along, while Douglas was a clinical fellow in rheumatism at the Royal Vic. Finally, son Lorne arrived in 1965, a few months before the young family moved to Dallas, Texas, to pursue a research fellowship. In the United States, Douglas’ belief in a liberal, publicly-funded health care system was greatly enhanced. So too his love of a tolerant, diverse Canada.

In 1968, Douglas and his family returned to Canada and an Assistant Professorship in Medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston. More than 35 years later, it was at Kingston General Hospital – in the very place where Douglas saved so many lives – that his own life would come to a painless end in the early hours of June 15, 2004, felled by a fast-moving lung cancer.

Kingston was followed in 1973 by a brief return to Montreal and a professorship at McGill. But an unstable political environment – and the promise of better research in prosperous Alberta – persuaded the family to journey West, to Calgary.

There Lorna and Douglas would happily remain for 25 years, raising three sons – and providing legal guardianship to grandson Troy, who was born in 1982. At the University of Calgary, and at Foothills Hospital, Douglas would achieve distinction for his work in rheumatology, immunology and – later – medical bioethics.

He raised his boys with one rule, which all remember, but none observed as closely as he did: “Love people, and be honest.” His commitment to ethics, and healing – and his love and honesty, perhaps – resulted in him being named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1995.

On the day that the letter arrived, bearing Governor-General Romeo LeBlanc’s vice-regal seal, Douglas came home from work early – an unprecedented occurence – to tell Lorna. It was the first time I can remember seeing him cry.

As I write this, I am in a chair beside my father’s bed in a tiny hospital room in Kingston, Ont.,where he and my mother returned in 2001 to retire. It is night, and he has finally fallen asleep.

My father will die in the next day or so, here in the very place where he saved lives. He has firmly but politely declined offers of special treatment – or even a room with a nicer view of Lake Ontario.

Before he fell asleep, tonight, I asked him if he was ready. “I am ready,” he said. “I am ready.”

When I leave him, tonight, this is what I will say to him, quietly: “We all love you, Daddy. We all love you forever.”

[Warren Kinsella is Douglas Kinsella’s eldest son. His father died two nights later.]

[From Globe’s Lives Lived, June 15, 2004.]


My latest: why israel had no choice

We were beside the border with Gaza, in Israel’s South, when the artillery shell hit. The explosion was pretty big, and it landed behind where I was standing.

I was there with a mostly-American film crew to shoot our documentary, The Campaign. It’s about the propaganda war against Israel and the West. At the moment the shell exploded, I had been relating how Hamas took out communications and warning systems on October 7, 2023.

The explosion shook the ground, and members of the crew dove for cover. I didn’t really think about what I did, until afterwards, when one of the film’s producers sent me the clip of the moment.

I didn’t move. I just stood there. Kind of dumb, I know, but I figure I had become an unofficial Israeli at that moment.

I know this from spending several weeks in Israel over the past year. When you are there, sirens go off pretty regularly, and everyone starts to hustle – or, increasingly, stroll – towards a bomb shelter. The shelters have lots of different names: mamad, miklat, merhav mugan, migunit, and quite a few others. Like, you know, the Inuit have many different words for “snow” – because there is so much of it.

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A documentary about the truth

What began as an investigation into antisemitism and bias led us to something much bigger:

coordinated, well-funded global effort to distort the truth about Gaza, demonize Israel, and push propaganda across the West — online, on campuses, and in our institutions.

We’ve traveled, filmed, and uncovered the real story — and you’ll get a glimpse of it in this trailer here.

But to finish the film and expose this disinformation machine, we need your help:

Please watch the trailer, back us on Kickstarter (every dollar counts), and share this campaign as far and wide as you can.

Your support gets us one step closer to our goal of ensuring this documentary is seen.

 


My latest: stop that policy thief!

“Pierre Poilievre, call 911.

A banker has broken into your place, and is stealing all of your ideas.”

It’s a bit of an exaggeration to make a point, of course – Liberal Mark Carney hasn’t stolen all of the Conservative leader’s ideas. But it’s mostly true.

Ascertaining Carney’s motive isn’t difficult: under Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party (and the government it led) had careened wildly to the Left. The Grits had become unmoored from their historic positions on a host of issues, and had devolved into a pious, preachy woke-ist cult, one that ceaselessly lectured everyone about how they should run their lives.

As predicted in this space, Trudeau left, Trump arrived, and Mark Carney appeared at precisely the right moment. He immediately commenced stealing Conservative policy planks.  Here’s a roundup of the top five stolen items.

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Mr. And Mr. Negative: my latest

Long, long ago, in the prehistoric times before the Internet, I was a reporter at a fine Postmedia paper, the Calgary Herald. I’d work there on weekends during law school, to keep myself in Kraft Dinner.

One of my jobs was listening to the police scanner.  Whenever there was a big car crash on some local roadway, I’d head out, occasionally with a photographer in tow. When merited, I’d write a few paragraphs about the crash, and the photographer would take some pictures.

Later on, people would inevitably call in to say we are ghouls and grave robbers and that they were sick of our negativity. They’d say they were cancelling their subscription (we checked, they never did).

But here’s the thing I’d observe when out at the scene of every car crash: everyone – and I mean everyone – would slow down to take a look. Sometimes, Grandma would even totter out of her car to snap a photo on her Kodak Instamatic.

That’s the thing about negative stuff: people say they don’t like it, but they’re fibbing. They pay attention to it, they remember it, they are motivated by it. Negative stuff sells. Every politico and reporter knows that. If it bleeds, it leads, etc.

Watching the bromance of Donald Trump and Elon Musk implode on social media this week, I was reminded of this collective fondness for nastiness. The entire world, pretty much, was glued to their devices, watching for the next instalment in the Donald and Elon Show. For many of us, it was better than the playoffs (go Oilers).

Trump threatened to cancel Musk’s government contracts. Musk agreed that Trump should be impeached. Trump suggested Musk was mentally ill. Musk said Trump was in the Epstein file. And so on and so on.

Trump’s White House staffers frantically convened meetings to figure out ways to get the boys to step away from the downward cycle of mutually-assured social media destruction. They knew that billions of people – leaders of nations included – were observing the spectacle. It was bad for business, they told media, anonymously. It needed to stop.

Predictably, Republican politicians became highly adverse to microphones pointed their way. My favourite riposte came from Senator John Kennedy (definitely no relation): “I have a rule, I never get between a dog and a fire hydrant.” (It is unknown if any reporters asked who was the dog, and who was the fire hydrant, in Kennedy’s top-rung use of metaphor.)

The commentariat was tut-tutting about it all, however. “Pathetic,” said The Guardian. “A broligarchy blowup of the highest order,” said The New York Times.  “Broooos please noooooo. We love you both so much,” said Kanye West, a Hitler fan and former celebrity.

Personally, I don’t think it hurts either guy, at all. Why? Because it’s on-brand for both.

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Barring someone because they’re from Israel? What?

An Ontario farm that has received federal funding is being taken to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario – for allegedly refusing to hire a man because he is an Israeli.

As revealed in the Sun last June, a self-described “regenerative farm” farm called Evermeadow near Cobourg was advertising online for what it called “home stays.” When Israeli Tal Nahum contacted Evermeadow co-owner Joshua Noiseux to apply, Noiseux wrote back.

According to the complaint, Noiseux’s message said: “We have a policy regarding requests of people from Israel. If you are against the current genocide and in favour of Palestinian liberation we would be happy to entertain your request to stay … if you are in support of militarist Zionism we will be unable to host you.”

Evermeadow has received thousands from the Government of Canada in between 2021 and 2024 for “creating jobs,” Employment and Social Development Canada documents confirm. The program’s own rules explicitly outlaw discrimination on prohibited grounds, such as sex, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation.

Refusing accommodation or employment because someone is a Jew is also contrary to provincial human rights codes, across Canada.

In his complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal, Nahum describes Evermeadow’s treatment as “a blatant act of discrimination” because he is a citizen of Israel and “of Jewish ancestry.” Nahum, who has worked on other farms in Canada, is interested in agriculture. Noiseux’s response shocked him, his complaint says, and injured his dignity, feelings and self-respect.

Noiseux was contacted for comment about the human rights action, as well as whether Evermeadow should have been eligible for federal funds. He did not reply before deadline. However, previously, he asked this writer to be “considerate of our family’s privacy as we endure this smear campaign.”

Despite that desire for privacy, word of Noiseux’s alleged refusal to employ a “Zionist” circulated widely online. The former mayor of Peterborough, Diane Therrien, even weighed in, writing to Noiseux: “Sounds like you avoided a real dangerous situation having that person around! Zios keep showing us how violent and unhinged they are. Sorry you are having to deal with this, your community appreciates you!”

The American Jewish Committee has said that “antisemites often use ‘Zionist’ or ‘Zio’ as shorthand for Jew.” The neologism “Zio” was reportedly first popularized by David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Contacted for comment about her use of that term, Therrien – now an executive with the Canadian Union of Public Employees – did not respond.

In his filed response to Nahum’s complaint, Noiseux acknowledges writing his message to the Nahum. “It was important… that any guest residing in [our] home be aware of [our] political views,” he states, and then goes on to claim that human rights law does not apply because he and his wife were only seeking “casual help” on their farm, and there was no discrimination.

A mediation hearing in the human rights case is scheduled for August, in which Nahum is seeking $50,000 in damages and a requirement that Evermeadow’s operators get human rights training. Nahum’s lawyer, Marty Gobin, declined further comment on the action, saying only: “The proceeding before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has not concluded and the applicant has no comment at this time.”