A number of regular readers (Darren, David et al.) let me know that a Trojan had somehow infiltrated wk.com this morning. The Ill-Logic Team got to work on it, and had to strip out more than 800 instances of malicious code.
This post will show us whether the Trojan is gone. Thanks to all for the suggestions and help.
And, while we are on the subject, this episode should make clear to one and all that APPLE PRODUCTS CAN BE INFECTED WITH VIRUSES AND MALWARE.
That’s how I described John Tory to the Star and the Globe. It was a bit of a paradox, I said to Kelly Grant of the Globe (who also owns a beautiful lab named Roxy, but that’s coincidence for another day): “The things that made him so attractive to Toronto voters – his decency and his honesty – are the things that persuaded him not to enter the race: he can’t fake it. He’s a honest guy. He had to have a burning passion for the job to run. You need that burning passion to win.”
And he would’ve won, too. Big time.
So the race is what it is. Rocco Rossi is a good candidate, but unfortunately no one knows who he is; a lot of them think he should have run to be a councillor first. Rob Ford is a joke, and his manifest unsuitability for office is going to be shortly revealed to the city, in forensic detail. George Smitherman has run a low-bridge campaign when he shouldn’t, and he doesn’t have anything resembling a vision; the “Furious George” appellation isn’t unfair, either – it’s a highly factual description of the person he has become.
Sarah Thompson is an impressive and interesting person, but she too should have run for council first. Like Rocco, not enough people know who she is. Joe Pantalone is evidence for the proposition that the Left is entirely sitting this one out – they couldn’t figure out what to do after Adam Giambrone beat a hasty retreat, and now they’ve given up on holding onto the mayoralty. (Adam shouldn’t have bowed out, by the way, but that’s a debate for another day.)
The Summer 2010 re-draft John Tory movement – like the Summer/Fall 2009 draft John Tory movement that preceded it – was partly about John, of course. He would have been the best mayor Toronto has ever had, hands down. But it was also a response to the lack of enthusiasm people have for the candidates now offering themselves for election. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs for Canada’s biggest city, but that’s how it is.
Canadian politics sure is weird, these days: people seemingly have more enthusiasm for who isn’t there, and not who is. I’m open to hearing about your theories as to why that might be.
In the meantime, pop by the SFH/Rockin’ Al/Kill For You gig at the Bovine gig tomorrow night: you might bump into a candidate (and a former candidate) or two. Maybe you can convince them in a way that I couldn’t.
The Rob Ford Campaign does not want this friendly handshake in any way misconstrued, said the Rob Ford Campaign.
The notion that this knuckle-dragger could become mayor of Canada’s biggest and most diverse city is beyond ludicrous. God help us all.
What do you think, Internet? Want to see the Clampetts running the show down at City Hall?
I like this. I think I’ll paint it.
How many minutes do you think will go by before the Reformatory war room issues an outraged and/or pious release on the absence of a life jacket on or near the Liberal MP in question? (Link here.)
Goar: Former residents of mental asylum seek justice
The time for apologies has passed. No words can right the wrongs the Huronia Regional Centre did to its residents. No expression of regret can change their blighted lives. No profession of contrition will excuse the five provincial governments that knew what was going on behind its doors and did little.
Last week an Ontario Superior Court judge authorized a $1 billion class action suit against the provincial government by former residents of the Huronia Centre, originally known as the Orillia Asylum for Idiots.
If this case goes to trial, it will set a legal precedent. The courts have never allowed a collective lawsuit against a government-operated psychiatric facility. Ontario ran 16 such institutions. (They are all closed now.)
It will reopen one of the ugliest chapters in Ontario’s history. For decades, retarded children, unmanageable adolescents and adults deemed insane — which could mean anything from homeless to paranoid schizophrenic — were locked up in mental asylums. Few outsiders were allowed in.
Stories got out, but policy-makers discounted or ignored them. Complaints were filed, but they were settled quietly.
It has taken nine years to bring about this class action suit. The two lead plaintiffs, Marie Slark and Pat Seth, are not the worst victims, but they have clear memories and the ability to articulate them. Slark, diagnosed as “mildly retarded,” was confined to the Huronia Centre at 1961 at 7 years of age. Seth followed in 1964 at 6 years of age. She was labelled “developmentally challenged.” Both were beaten and medicated against their will.
But the real force behind the litigation is a social worker named Marilyn Dolmage, who spent five years on staff at Huronia. She and her husband Jim, a phys-ed teacher, are acting as “litigation guardians” for the plaintiffs.
Marilyn Dolmage has three reasons for taking on this battle.
• The first is what she witnessed as a social worker. She saw residents tranquillized, kept in caged cots and disciplined with a heavy-duty hose.
• The second is her younger brother, Robert. Sent to Huronia at birth with Down’s syndrome, he died of untreated pneumonia at the age of 8.
• The third is her son, Matthew, born with severe cognitive and physical disabilities. She fought to keep him out of institutions like Huronia.
She and her husband found lawyers who would take the class-action suit, persuaded residents it was safe to talk and kept pressing ahead despite delays and setbacks.
The plaintiffs are seeking “justice and compensation for severe abuse they and other class members suffered while residing at the Huronia Centre.” They contend the Ontario government is guilty of “negligence and breach of its fiduciary duties to the residents and their families.”
Both women have filed affidavits chronicling their mistreatment at Huronia. Seth’s describes how she was hit with a radiator brush and held upside down in cold water for not eating. Slark’s recounts how she was medicated against her will and sexually abused.
The evidence also includes a 1960 article by Toronto Star columnist Pierre Berton, in which he described the “atrocities” he saw inside the psychiatric institute; a scathing 1971 report to the provincial health minister by Walton Williston; and sworn testimony by former staff and family members of residents.
The worst was over by the time Premier Dalton McGuinty took office. When it closed last year, in fact, Huronia had individual apartments, a canteen, a chapel and a therapeutic swimming pool.
But to generations of residents, it was a place of suffering. They were deprived of their rights, beaten or drugged into submission and punished for complaining.
The government cannot restore what they lost, but its can accept responsibility for this egregious injustice.
Carol Goar‘s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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Wonderfully written, wonderful tale. And another reason why good, solid writing still matters a lot.
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