Where is the Real Disappointment?

Look at this picture of Putin for Prez. from http://secretdatabase.blogspot.ca/2014/04/putin-fair-haired-poster-boy-and.html

Are Americans nuts, or is this a Russian ploy to take over the world?

But it does seem that many Americans are disappointed with Obama.  Especially those who listen to Fox News, but the disappointment is spilling over to other outlets, such as the Washington Post and CNN. I saw part of a program on CNN titled "Is Obama the "Disappointer-in-Chief"?  And then I found an article on the Washington Post website titled "Barack Obama, disappointer in chief"  by Aaron David Miller.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-disappointer-in-chief/2014/10/10/eeb90022-48ac-11e4-b72e-d60a9229cc10_story.html

Speaking as a Canadian, who was relieved to see Obama win the 2008 election, I am not disappointed.  Well, at least I am not disappointed by Obama except for one thing, there should have been some major prison sentences for the Bank CEO's who instead got huge bonuses from the bailout.  But since I didn't pay for that bailout with my taxes, I guess I have nothing to complain about.

But I can understand why many Americans feel disappointment.  They look at presidents like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and JFK and they think that Obama simply doesn't measure up.  Washington was the military genius who defeated Britain in the war of independence, Lincoln freed the slaves, FDR ended the depression and won two wars (counting Germany and Japan separately), JFK was a very nice looking president who would have done more if they had not killed him.  Compared to those guys, Obama seems to be just a pretender to the title of Best. President. Ever.

But let me set the record straight.  Those other presidents are historical figures, while Obama is a current events kind of guy (for now).  If you move forward about 100 years, Obama will still be known as the first black president in US history.  And, if I guess right, there should be less racism in the US than there is today, so it is quite possible that history books will be very kind to Barack Obama, just as they were to those other guys.  And a lot kinder than Fox News, CNN and Aaron David Miller. History will remember Obama as the president who gave the USA decent health care.  Of course I am assuming (going by Canada's history) that health care will not bankrupt the United States.  And in 100 years, he will still be the president who got Osama Bin Laden. (If anyone asks)

My own interest was mainly in recovering the US (and Canadian) economy, which was teetering on the brink of collapse. Actually, I'm pretty sure that the Republicans under Palin and McCain would have recovered the economy too, as they were already involved in bailing out the banks under President Bush.

But now I'm starting to worry that the Republicans will gain power yet again, and start another war and crash the economy like they did last time.  Especially if they cannot learn any lessons from the Democrats who were able to steer the country away from disaster under Obama.

And P.S. for the Fox News announcers wailing that we need Mr. Putin as president of the U.S.A.   Are you nuts?  It's one thing to whine about everything Obama does, from mustard on a hamburger to his high(normal)-rise blue jeans.  But to wish for Putin as president?  Well, I'm sure he would "get things done", but he is now pretty much a dictator in his home country of Russia, and seems to have the same power as the Communist party did in the past.  Are you really willing to give up freedom so easily just to be able to scare a few Arab terrorists in the Middle East?  Now, that is disappointing.

Tracing my Family History on Anticosti Island

Anse Aux Fraises 1901

This picture is of a place called Anse Aux Fraises, on Anticosti Island.  Today it is uninhabited, but my Great grandfather lived there many years ago.  This is his story, which I pieced together from research on the internet, and some of my fathers stories.

My great-grandfather was Francois Bezeau, called "Frank".  He was born in Shippigan, New Brunswick, September 14,  1841.  The fourth child of Francois Bezeau and Amable Blais.

Frank Bezeau & Philomene Noel

Frank was married at the age of 26? in 1867? to Philomene Noel.  In the year 1873, He and Philomene had a baby (also named Francois who is my grandfather) and in the same year, moved to Anticosti island, together with his 5 year younger sister Elisabeth, and her husband Pierre Doucet, a Frenchman from St. Pierre and Miquelon.  Instead of moving to the established village of Baie Ste Claire (Or Baie des Anglais as it was called), they found an uninhabited cove, called Anse Aux Fraise about 10 km away on the south coast. Anse aux Fraises may have had some wild strawberries, but more importantly, had wild grasses that could feed a cow, while Baie Des Anglais on the other hand, did not allow "horned" animals. Frank was a fisherman, but fishing alone was not enough to survive on in the days before employment insurance, especially in the time of the "truck system" of payment for fish. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_system )

The family story is that Frank moved by using his fishing boat, loaded with his family, and all their possessions, including the house which I assume was at least taken apart for the trip.  I don't know if he had a cow or chickens, or how they were transported, if he had any.

The reasons for Frank wanting to move away from Gloucester county in New Brunswick, can be found in a report on the conditions of the residents of this county, presented to the New Brunswick Assembly in Frederickton in 1853 by M. H. Perley, Esquire, Her Majesty's Emigration Officer at Saint John, New Brunswick.  Here is an extract of the report from http://archive.org/stream/cihm_22313/cihm_22313_djvu.txt

"The settlers in Little Shippagan Harbour do not follow fishing but attend to the cultivation of the land, some of which is there tolerably good. The settlers at Point Miscou are all fishermen, who are employed every season at the fishing stations, to which they are more or less in debt. Their houses are built of logs and poles ; these are small, and very ill fitted to resist the severity of the climate. They cultivate little patches of ground, in a very imperfect manner; the manure used is generally cods heads. They are all squatters on Crown Lands, and appear very anxious to procure some title to occupy their several locations, either by licence of occupation or otherwise. While the writer was at Miscou they prepared the petition which is annexed to this Report, praying such licences of occupation, with privilege of the beaches in front of their locations; and also some arrangements with respect to the wild grass on the marshes and beaches of the Island.
The petitioners stated, as a great hardship, that the wild meadows in the County of Gloucester are sold every season at Bathurst, where they are unable to attend, at a nominal sum; that those on Miscou are purchased for a few shillings by one of the Jersey merchants, who charges them ten shillings per ton for the marsh hay, and five shillings per ton for the beach grass, which the fishermen themselves cut and cure. To these terms they must submit, or else they can make no provision for their cows, by which they endeavour to eke out a miserable subsistence during the winter. 

* The whole of the wild meadows in the County of Gloucester were told in 1848 for [illegible] pound only.— See Appendix to Journal of the Assembly for 1849.  

All the settlers at Point Miscou complained bitterly of their poverty, and state of bondage. They said they were completely in the hands of the Jersey merchants, to whom they were indebted, and who dictated their own prices and terms of dealing. They appeared to feel very much the want of a school; and they stated the surprising fact, that they had never been visited by priest or clergyman of any denomination. The children are growing up unbaptised, and in total ignorance; this state of things ought not longer to exist in a christian community which patronizes foreign missions. Their excellent health requires no aid from the physician; but they desire a resident magistrate to enforce the laws and maintain good order at all times, but more especially during the fishing season, when the Island is the resort of many lawless fishers from abroad.
The general voice indicated Mr. Wilson as a fit and proper person; he is highly respected, and if he accepted the office, would perform the duties of a magistrate fearlessly and faithfully.
The absolute state of serfdom of the fishermen of Point Miscou has been particularly described, because there are like bodies of fishermen at other localities in the northern part of the Province, who are held in nearly the same state of poverty and bondage. The more favoured inhabitants of New Brunswick, who dwell at a distance from its remote northern shores, will no doubt be surprised to learn, that there are any of their fellow subjects, dwelling in the same colony, who are even in a worse position than southern slaves, and of whose moral, physical, and spiritual wants, less care has been taken." 

Later on, a brother, Philias (about a year older than Frank) arrived and some others from the Baie des Chaleurs area, to add to the population of the new little village. Philias also had a son, and also named him Francois Bezeau, I suppose to confuse later family historians. On the 18th of July 1887, in Anticosti, this other Francis Bezeau (my great-grandfather's nephew), married Mathilde Duguay.

In Anse aux Fraises in1876, a chapel was built 36'x25'.  In 1880, it burned down and was replaced by a chapel 55'x30'.

In (about) 1892, Onezime Doucet,  Elisabeth Doucet (Bezeau)'s eldest child, aged 21 got lost hunting near Jupiter River, his frozen body was found on the shore of the island.

The following account was written around 1897? by a priest, l'Abbe Huard, while talking to a fisherman of Anse Aux Fraise.

"There are today 22 fishing boats at Anse Aux Fraises.  Just like the fishermen at Baie Des Anglais, each man fishes for himself.  When the cod is dried, they are free to sell to whomever they choose.  Ordinarily, it is Mr. de Courval, of Point aux Esquimaux (Today Havre St. Pierre), who buys all the fish.
Serious cod fishing begins here at the end of May, and continues until mid August.  As bait, Herring is used, and at the end of the season, squid.

"If we take more herring than we need for fishing, we salt it, and sell to the traders, to augment our revenues.
It happens occasionally that, in netting the bait, we find a few salmon in the bottom of the net. We take advantage of this bonus, even though we don't have a licence for fishing salmon."

 That day, the family treats itself famously, drinking tea, the terribly strong tea of the fishermen, to the health of the honorable minister of Oceans and Fisheries of Canada.

"And on the subject of salmon, let's admit immediately that we fish on a line at Jupiter River, about forty or fifty miles from here, on the south coast of the island." 

Jupiter River?  I was not able to find out from the fisherman why such a name was given to this water flow.  It would be absurd to figure that the ancient Romans had come as far as Anticosti."

In 1895 the entire Island was purchased from Canada and Quebec, without regard to the rights of the inhabitants, by Henri Menier.  He was a billionaire from France who inherited his vast wealth from the chocolate business.  Henri paid $125,000 for the entire island, and set about turning it into his personal feifdom.

Menier introduced 28 statutes or bylaws that restricted the rights of residents of his island, and were punishable by banishment, without resort to "due process". Actually, Henri Menier accorded himself full rights of lord of the island and had final say in all matters.  The first to be banished were the English speaking, Methodist settlers of Fox Bay.  They were were moved to Manitoba where some reportedly perished.  The resulting bad press encouraged Henri to be a little more generous with his financial settlements with the remaining French-speaking, Catholic settlers, such as the ones in Anse Aux Fraises.

In 1902, Francois "Frank" Bezeau (my great grandfather now 61 years old) sold the land he occupied in Anse Aux Fraises, 4 acres and a partially completed house, for $125 cash to Henri Menier and moved to Riviere au Tonnerre on the mainland north of Anticosti.

Anse Aux Fraises Today

Appendix:

SOME OF THE RULES LAID DOWN BY HENRI MENIER FOR THE INHABITANTS OF THE ISLAND, May 1, 1896 (Translated by me from French to English)"Whereas Anticosti Island is a private property, in the Province of Quebec, and ruled by the laws of Canada and this province.The inhabitants, who may only reside on the island by a lease, or the "regular permissions", must submit to these regulations, and all other regulations of the administration, or policies which may be dictated in the future."
1. It is forbidden to land (debark) on the island, to stay, live, engage in commerce, or industry, or profession without having obtained special authorization, signed by the administration.
2. Any permission to inhabit the island, or exercise a profession, is revocable at any time.
3. No one may give shelter, under his roof, to anyone who does not have a permit to live on the island.
4. No one may import to the island, nor transport, [unintelligible],  beverages, 
[unintelligible], seeds, plants, dogs, animals, or in general objects of any sort other than by the commercial services, or boats with the authorization of the administration.5. Alcohol and spirits and fermented beverages are prohibited.
6. It is forbidden to possess or hold firearms, except in special cases where temporary permits will be issued, which are revocable at any time.  The permits will be numbered to the firearm, which must also be stamped with an identifying number.
7. Hunting is forbidden, for any animal, in any manner. The same with the capture, concealment, destruction of any animals, its young, its homes, its nests or its eggs....
9. No one shall have a boat, except by special temporary, revocable permission.  The permission must state the size and tonnage of the boat, it's inventory, and its intended use.  Permits are always revocable
.....
13 Any mine or mineral discovery, must be immediately declared to the administration, not only by the person making the discovery, but by anyone else who has knowledge of it.
.....
?3.  Except in the case of a shipwreck, no-one may debark, no ship may load or unload merchandise without authorisation, as stated in article 1.
.......

Owning a Cat is Not A Type of Slavery

This may be an old question, but I only heard it recently.  Is a person who owns a cat the same as a slave owner?  I want to answer this question for two reasons.  I did own a cat, and second, slavery is the argument that fuelled the trend to extreme Bible Literalism.

I admit that I did not pay my cat any money for working for me.  On the other hand, he did very little "work" other than scratching up the furniture and barfing in surprising places. So that is the end of the similarity of pet owning to slavery, now I will give my reasons for supporting pet ownership, even though I oppose slavery.

Ironically, if all slaves were treated as well as the average pet cat, the institution of slavery might have survived till today.  But no, slaves were not treated as well as my cat.  Sad to say, human slaves were treated much worse than cat slaves.

If my cat runs away, I don't send dogs after it to tear it to shreds, then whip it or cut its legs off when I get it back.  Also, there is no law in the land that compels me to commit such barbaric acts to my cat.  Au contraire, I would be punished for "cruelty to animals" for doing it.  And there is no passage in the bible supporting such cruelty to cats.

The problem with slavery was not so much about paying slaves proper salary. Slavery simply was an evil governmental institution that also spawned an evil religious cult.  A cult that used the literal interpretation of the bible to justify such barbarity against fellow human beings, that today we would call it institutional terrorism.  Fundamentalist religion made slave owners feel that any evil they did would be forgiven, because the Bible itself told them that slavery was performed with God's blessing. And the Bible could never be wrong.

End of argument, but I still have more to say!

Post Script:
It is unfortunate that even to this day we have people indoctrinated on this old-time religion from the Slave States/Bible Belt, putting forward the same old arguments that make no more sense today than they did before the Civil War.

It's obvious to me that we must continue to argue about slavery with extreme Bible Believers.  We cannot allow Bible Fundamentalists to sabotage the public education system by changing the topic from slavery to an argument about evolution and "Darwinism".  Let's take the fundamentalist religious controversy back to slavery, where it started, instead of letting it spread its curse of ignorance to all aspects of our society.

Picture: Kitten jammed in a tight box on a slave ship to America.

The Harper Doctrine: A Talk at CIGI by John Ibbitson

Last night I attended a talk at CIGI in Waterloo by John Ibbitson http://www.cigionline.org/events/harper-doctrine-conservative-foreign-policy-revolution.

The title was The Harper Doctrine: A Conservative Foreign-Policy Revolution.  FYI: Harper is Canada's current Prime Minister, and the person responsible for changes in Canada's foreign policy in the last 7 years.

Although I consider John Ibbitson to be a conservative leaning  (http://withinacertaindistance.blogspot.ca/2012/06/someone-fire-john-ibbitson-please.html)  columnist, and it was -15c, I went anyway, as Mary Ann wanted to go.

My initial thought was that Harper has no original foreign policy.  He simply mimics the foreign policy of the right wing USA, especially Republicans, but to some extent the Democrats too.  For example, he matches the Republicans disdain for the UN, their dismantling of the Kyoto agreement, and their one-sided support for Israel.  He seems to want Canada to cease being a peacekeeper, and become a combat-hardened nation like the US, I assume to help them in  foreign wars.  He even uses the catch phrases of the Republicans like "we won't cut and run".

In his talk, Ibbitson started off by stating that he had come to the conclusion that there was no Harper doctrine and that anyway, doctrines are actually associated with superpowers.  Later on, he stated that Harper's love for Israel developed when he was a teenager, and was not simply a ploy to grab the Jewish vote.  And I assume he was trying to imply without actually coming out and saying it, that Harper was not necessarily copying US foreign policy. I still think that's debatable.

During the talk, Ibbitson took a big swipe at the Province of Quebec for it's newly proposed legislation banning religious garb while performing civil servant or government jobs.  According to Ibbitson, this is clearly a discriminatory practice, effectively banning religions from the teaching profession, hospitals, police etc.  I don't want to get onto a different track here, but I think there is a big difference between banning religions in government jobs and banning religious garb while on the job (and let's also remember religious garb in some cases includes the carrying of weapons).  I'm sure those religions, if they want to accommodate more secular, multicultural Canadian ways, can also find ways to modify their strict "dress codes" to allow their people to take government jobs. After all, look at the Catholic Church and how it finally allowed people to eat fish on Friday, after first making it optional on airplanes. Look at how some religions have abandoned the practice of honour killings (at least in Canada). Most of these religious dress codes are more cultural than a core religious values, but I can leave that for others to argue.  I'm not sure why Ibbitson thought he needed to bring it up, except to point out how Quebec was worse than the rest of Canada.

Ibbitson also talked about how the Conservatives had a strong and growing political coalition that now includes immigrants, the suburbs of most big Canadian cities, and the rural areas of Canada, with very strong support in the Western provinces (that are also still growing in population and influence).  He did not mention that most Canadian voters did not vote for Harper, and that in a true runoff election he would probably lose. From my own point of view, if not for the unfortunate left wing split between Liberals, Green, and NDP; the Conservatives would still be an opposition party.  And just because the west is growing does not mean that all westerners are extreme right wing conservatives like Harper.

In summary, Ibbitson referred to Canada's foreign policy from WW2 up to Harper in 2006, as "Laurentian" and Harper's foreign policy as "Conservative".  My own feeling is that the so-called "Laurentian" policy (a policy based on diplomacy, respect for the UN and world court, peacekeeping, and fairness to all) is more like a "Canadian" foreign policy, while Harper's policy is more like "mini-right wing USA" foreign policy, carried out by his puppet government supported by US oil companies and US evangelicals.  And an embarrassment to most Canadians.

So in the entire talk, which I will admit was fast paced, funny, and worth hearing, Ibbitson described Canada's political situation and foreign policy with the all the conservative assumptions and prejudices.  So it  was not necessarily a balanced view, and he never did mention how Harper's doctrine looks to be a copy of Bush's US foreign policy.  And none of the questions from the audience brought up the subject either. I suppose I shouldn't complain, as I had the opportunity to bring it up myself at the talk, but didn't.  I guess I prefer to write about it in a blog instead.

Are Cost of Living Subsidies for Northern Canada Too Expensive?

Do Canadian First Nations people in the north of Canada really have too high a cost of living?  Do we need to keep subsidizing them? I want to help answer this question.  Here is a comment to start us off.

Mike Zwarich Yesterday 11:00

You have to wonder whether it would help, just a bit, if they moved to a part of Canada where it didn't cost ridiculous amounts of money to ship things to them.
When it costs $20 for a jug of milk, you know you're not going to have the standard of living that we enjoy in most of Canada.

https://plus.google.com/+NationalPost/posts

(I cannot continue without addressing the Freudian slip calling the southern part of Canada "most of Canada".  It's not most of Canada.  Now I can go on.)

In answer not only to Mike Zwarich, but to everyone I know who is at a loss about why Indians and Eskimos (or First Nations people) continue to live in that part of Canada where milk is expensive, it is not because Canadians are a stupid people.  The answer is partly in the subject of  sovereignty. I may have to explain "sovereignty" later, in the meantime you could Google it if you didn't learn it in high school history.
Now, here is a quote from a government of Canada website about our sovereignty.

http://www.northernstrategy.gc.ca/sov/index-eng.asp

With 40% of our landmass in the territories, 162,000 kilometres of Arctic coastline and 25% of the global Arctic – Canada is undeniably an Arctic nation. The Government is firmly exercising our sovereignty over our Arctic lands and waters – sovereignty that is long-standing, well-established and based on historic title, international law and the presence of Inuit and other Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years.
At the same time, international interest in the Arctic region is growing, in part as a result of possibilities for resource development, climate change and new or longer access to transportation routes. Canada is demonstrating effective stewardship and leadership internationally, to promote a stable, rules-based Arctic region where the rights of sovereign states are respected in accordance with international law and diplomacy.

I think there are two problems some Canadians have in understanding the north of Canada.  First is, most Canadians do not live there, have never even visited there, never would want to visit there even if it was an all expenses paid trip.  Most Canadians are huddled close to the US border, and spend more time wishing they could get into the US than wondering about what goes on in 90% of Canada's land territory.  Second, never take "sovereignty" for granted, no matter how uninhabitable the land is, somebody always wants it.  See how Canada is already fighting Denmark over possession of some island nobody even knew existed?  We have fought most wars over sovereignty, believe it or not.

Yes, Canada is the second largest country in the world.  Most Canadians are aware of that fact, although they do not really understand it.  We often call the 49th parallel the border between Canada and the USA, and yet most Canadian cities are on the American (or southern) side of that imaginary line called the 49th parallel.  Feel free to look that one up on a map.  I will concede Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver are north.  Victoria BC is south of the line, so is Toronto, Montreal, Fredericton NB, Halifax NS,  St. John's NL, and Punkeydoodles Crns., ON.  And (I'm guessing) 80% of the population of the country, along with 3 entire provinces.

Canadians think they understand that Canada is really big, yet they do not understand how much of it they have not seen, how much is almost a wilderness.  That is a problem, when you remember that most Canadians do not really understand why Canada, with a population of only 35 million (now, it used to be less) has sovereignty over this huge land mass, larger than the entire United States of America.

One way to exercise sovereignty is to buy military equipment and train a large army, navy and air force. Canada with only 35 million people, does not actually have the economic ability to do that, and still maintain a high standard of living for it's masses huddled along the border. Russia can hold its territory with a population of 144 million and 17 million square km. (8.4 people/sq km) Canada's 35 million people claim 10 million sq. km. (3.5 people/sq km).  For the Russians, claiming all that territory involved shipping millions of prisoners in chains to Siberia, raising a huge army and keeping everyone's standard of living quite low.  Canada has had a relatively easy time of it, for various reasons that I don't really know right now, but I'm sure it'll come to me.  But part of our equation would have to be our hospitals, schools, airports, harbours, the extensive maps, and the Canadians who live in the far north, and most of them are still First Nations people.

In the end, it is much cheaper and more effective to claim land by treating the First Nations people as part of Canada than to bring them south to live in squalor in Saskatoon and spending a hundred times as much money on new jet fighters.  A ten dollar litre of milk doesn't seem so expensive now, does it?

Picture: From http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/battle-for-the-arctic-heats-up-1.796010

John F Kennedy Joins Ronald Reagan in Conservative Mythology

We have just had the 50th anniversary of John F Kennedy's death.  The memory is fuzzy now, I seem to recall that it was announced by the teacher while I was in school, but I don't remember which teacher or which grade.

Now we come to a modern headline attributed to Fox News.  "JFK posthumously joins the Republican Party".  That headline appeared as a text crawl in the Simpsons cartoon a few years ago, and resulted in the cartoonist Matt Groening receiving a warning from the Fox owners that he must stop putting fake Fox News crawls on his weekly TV animation.  Apparently, because people could not tell the difference between joke news and Fox news.

Now making it much harder to tell the difference between humour and fact:  On the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, Fox News joins a "growing body of thought" that JFK was more a conservative than a liberal.

This growing body of thought is backed up by a book by Ira Stoll  "JFK, Conservative".  Here are some quotes from Kennedy's life to back up the research.

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/11/22/jfk-a-conservative-12-quotes-from-the-liberal-icon-that-you-wont-believe/

I don't want to say these quotes are cherry-picked, or that they ignore famous quotes where Kennedy called himself a liberal, but let me take the worst of them for a closer look.

"5. I’d be very happy to tell them I’m not a liberal at all…I’m not comfortable with those people. Saturday Evening Post, June 1953 "

I don't actually have the book, I'm not sure if the "dot dot dot" was in the book or not.  But as a self-taught bullshit detector, I have learned to recognize telltale signs, and one of the easiest to spot for a novice is "..."


The full quote is actually

“I’m not a liberal at all. I never joined the Americans for Democratic Action—I’m not comfortable with those people.”
John F. Kennedy in the Saturday Evening Post, 1956"

from www.sonoma.edu/exed/olli/nkhandout1.pdf‎

Other than getting the wrong year, the missing "..." actually is about joining the ADA, a liberal organization that ranks politicians on a scale of 0 to 100 on their liberal views.  They were like a self appointed organization to define who was liberal and who was not, and how pure they were with the liberal agenda.  It seems to me that the "..." on this web page is being used to leave out important information rather than unimportant information.  If Kennedy refers to "being uncomfortable with those people", he is not referring to "liberals", he is referring to a specific sub-group, the ADA.  It's kind of like a conservative distancing themselves from the Tea Party.


What's next on the conservative agenda, now that JFK has joined their ranks?  I expect to see a Fox News crawl on the Simpsons "Lee Harvey Oswald posthumously joins Democratic Party".  Except, of course that the Simpsons can no longer do news crawls attributed to Fox News.

Picture: from http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/the_rights_jfk_myth_now_they_claim_he_was_conservative/

Remembrance Day Heats Up in Lucan

Just a few days before our annual war over Christmas gets into full swing, we have another annual war brewing, the war over Remembrance Day.  As you know, Remembrance Day is the day where we remember those who fought and died in the various wars that we participated in, which when I was in school meant mostly World Wars One and Two.  Now it also means the Afghan War, a war in which we tried to stamp out terrorism by invading Afghanistan, which had allowed Al Quaida terrorists to train openly in the years before 9/11.

So what is the war over Remembrance Day about, and more importantly, why must we have another war?

The opening shots were fired last year, in the tiny community of Lucan Ontario, where the local Public School did not say prayers as part of the Remembrance Day ceremonies.  The Principal decided, given that this was not a religious ceremony, and the school itself was not a religious school, that prayers were not necessary.

Now I must interrupt the story here, as my own experience is this:  When I was a kid, I do not remember saying prayers in school for Remembrance Day.  We sat in our seats in our own classrooms, and had two minutes of silence to remember the fallen soldiers.  I did not live in a big city, and this was back in the early sixties.  That was less than twenty years after the war, and many of our fathers had actually fought in the war, and I don't remember one peep of protest about it.  Not only that, but I attended a Christian Protestant school far from any cities.  To be fair, it was the province of Quebec which didn't have any non-religious schools at the time, and actually the Protestants were closer to being non-religious than the other public school system which was Roman Catholic.

Now to continue with my interruption by filling in a bit of theological background.  It was well known at the time in the Catholic schools that all Protestants went to hell, be they fallen soldiers or not.  And the Protestants were equally sure that dead Catholic soldiers were all in Hell.  So it seemed that by saying prayers, whether Catholic or Protestant, would only have the effect of increasing the suffering of many of the fallen soldiers, and do nothing for those who had already found heavenly bliss.  So I always assumed that the absence of religious overtones was a comfort for those of the wrong religion. (whichever it turned out to be).

Now to get back to the story in Lucan, which has a Catholic/Protestant connection too.  It seems that for over thirty years, the Catholic school and the Protestant (I mean non-religious public school, as this is Ontario) in Lucan have been holding joint ceremonies in the local Community Centre, presumably absorbing all the expenses of bussing in all their kids for the event.  Many parents also attend.  The schools alternate each year in organizing the ceremony.  And remarkably, (to me at least) the Catholics and Protestants have prayed together.  In one way, this is an admirable and much needed improvement on the religious discord between Protestants and Catholics that went on in my home town.  But it is a little late, as these days we have many other religions adding to the mix (Jews, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist etc) and we also have an increasing number of Atheists. So while the Catholics and Protestants in Lucan were finally getting their act together, other ideas were creeping in from the big cities, and last year the public school decided to stop saying prayers at school sponsored ceremonies.

But given the new situation, where Christians are starting to feel under fire from liberals, immigrants, and liberal atheists, the Catholics and Protestants banded together in Lucan to insist on prayer in the ceremony this year.  However, the Public school decided to skip the confrontation and have their ceremony in their own school instead.  Predictably, this did nothing to avoid a confrontation.

The London Free Press website (the closest big city) has a poll:

http://www.lfpress.com/2013/11/06/lucan-school-nixes-community-event

"Do prayers have a place in Remembrance Day ceremonies? " 

I don't like the question, as it seems to avoid the problem of how to let everyone have their own prayer, be it Protestant or Catholic, Jewish, or other, without offending anyone. My question is, Have any Canadian Soldiers who are also Jewish or Muslim, died in any Canadian war?  And if none have died, can we be sure none will ever die?  Maybe we should be at least be preparing for the eventuality by changing the immortal words "Between the crosses row on row", because Muslims and Jews do not use the cross as a grave marker.

Picture: Found on the Internet, could not find the credit for it.

A Traveller's Guide to Moral Relativism

You sometimes hear conservatives accuse liberals of "Moral Relativism".  In their accusation, they define "Moral Relativism" as this (according to Conservapedia):

http://www.conservapedia.com/Moral_relativism

Moral relativism is the theory that moral standards vary from society to society, and from time to time in history. Under this theory, ethical principles are not universal and are instead social products. This theory argues that there is no objective moral order or absolute truth.

Moral relativity is a philosophy that states there is no absolute Right or Wrong, and that anyone can freely use his own conscience to decide what is moral. A moral relativist will not say that theft or murder is wrong, because he believes it is up to the murderer or thief to decide whether his behavior is justified.

I don't believe these quotes from Conservapedia represent the views of most conservatives about "moral relativists", and certainly does not represent the views of moral relativists themselves.  There is a lot of BS out there, making it hard to find real information on moral relativism.  I will attempt to do so here.

All through history, people have noticed that there were different cultures with different values, and that each culture regarded the differences between them and the others as an indication of their own superiority. The concept of Moral Relativism has been known for thousands of years.  But it was popularized during the European colonial period. During the colonization period, where European countries attempted to dominate the rest of the world, this feeling of European superiority reached a peak.  I guess that never before had so many different cultures been touched by any other culture.

As this colonization progressed, a few European intellectuals began to deny that Europeans were superior to all other cultures on Earth.

Let me illustrate with one example.  In many Polynesian islands, and in Africa it was quite common for women to go topless.  Now at the same time, in Victorian England, it was scandalous for a woman to show an ankle, and the rumour was that even table legs were forced to cover up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_morality

So, when the missionaries first arrived in Polynesia, they had their hands full trying to convince the local women that their traditional way of life was scandalous.

The intellectuals who discussed cultural differences, theorized the following.  Since, at various times, different cultures had dominated other cultures, and even the method of dress within each culture changed with time, was it possible that there was no absolute definition of scandalous?  Could it simply be that one culture developed in cold climates where clothing was necessary,and other developed in hot places where clothing was neither necessary nor available?  And what about the institution of slavery, which was responsible for producing most of the cotton that made the clothing?  Was that not just as evil/scandalous as seeing a topless woman?

This argument was the core of the colonial era concept of "Moral Relativism".  On one hand you have religious zealots, insisting that their God was superior to all others and hence, their method of dress was also superior.  On the other hand, you have people who insist that there is nothing inherently evil about foreign cultures, and that their methods of dress and even their types of worship were as valid as European ones.

The moral absolutists (opposite of relativists) fought back, saying that many pagans and primitives engaged in cannibalism, which was evil under any circumstances.  I don't know about every nasty rumour started by conservatives or racists, but you can find plenty of evil in non-European societies if you care to look.  But then you can also find plenty of evil in our own society if you know where to look, and if you are allowed to make up stuff that sounds true.

I believe all cultures have their own ways of doing things, that generally make sense to them.  But these values also do evolve slowly with time, with contacting other cultures, and with changing circumstances.  I think some values are absolute, for example when it comes to killing and eating the still beating hearts of the victims, particularly when that victim is me.  But then some cultural norms I think are "morally relative", especially when they harm no-one.

Picture: Historical picture of native women in Hawaii. I found it on   http://1browngirl.blogspot.ca/2009/11/its-free-for-all-friday.html

Further reading: A novel "The Poisonwood Bible" By Barbara Kingsolver, a fictional account of an American missionary in the Congo, but  Barabara lived in the Congo for a while as a child, and so it gives the novel some authenticity.

http://www.kingsolver.com/books/the-poisonwood-bible.html

Who Won World War 2, Really?

It seems to me that in western countries like the USA (and Canada too) that we are not learning the true history of World War 2.  For example, we do not give the Russians enough credit for the win against Hitler.

To go back in history to World War 1, the Russians folded quickly when the Germans attacked, and Russian leaders signed a peace treaty surrendering huge parts of the Soviet Union to Germany.  The treaty was quickly repudiated by the Russians after the Allies defeated Germany and the war was over.  But to Hitler, that treaty was still valid, meaning he thought much of the Soviet Union was still German property, and he was going to reclaim it.

So with that little bit of background, it is easy to see why Hitler was intent on invading Russia. He was reclaiming "stolen" property.  And the Russians had already proven to be ineffective in war against the Germans.  Due to his racism, Hitler believed that Germans were racially superior to Russians, and therefore they would beat them again just as badly as they had in WW 1.

Credit must be given to many different countries for Germany's defeat.  It was kind of a team effort.  For example, at one point Britain  (and the Empire) was fighting alone against Germany.  If England had signed a peace treaty then, it's possible that the Germans would have won WW 2.  Or to be more accurate, they would have won "a war", because the World War 2 that we know today would not exist.  But whatever name that war would have been given, Germany would have been the clear winner, unless Canada and Australia/New Zealand carried on the fight with the Royal Navy sailing to Canada.  But I'm not sure I that scenario is likely.

So England gets the credit for keeping the war going until Hitler makes his first big mistake. That's like a goalie in sudden death overtime making a big save.  i.e. it doesn't win the game, but it prevents you from losing immediately.

In the end, it was Russia that made the big stand against Germany, and found ways to win.  They did get a lot of equipment from the USA, so credit is due there, too.  But sending over trucks to Russia is kind of like giving hockey sticks and pucks to the home team (continuing the hockey metaphor for winning.)  What wins the game is scoring that final goal in sudden death overtime, and there is no doubt that it was the Russians who surrounded Hitler and compelled him to commit suicide.  That is the puck going in the net, and it was the Russians who finally did it.

Of course, the Americans were not far behind in reaching Hitler.  If the Russians had decided to stop at the German Border, I'm sure the Americans could have finished Hitler off, hypothetically.  But there is a difference between "could have won the war" and "won the war".  There is also a difference between winning a war single handed, and doing it with the help of powerful allies.

Here is the question in the BBC website:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4508901.stm

I will take issue with one comment: Nathan Hatch, Farmington, UT, USA

"How would the world be if the powers that were would have used a little logic and stopped Hitler before he could trump all of Europe?"

The answer for Nathan from Utah, USA?  If we taught logic in schools, Nathan would know that you would not use "logic" to stop Hitler.  You would have to use the much more powerful form of human thinking called "hindsight". But the people before WW2 did not really know the history of WW2, as it was not taught in school.  That's because it had not happened yet.  The jury was still out on whether Hitler was a great leader, or the world's greatest arch villain.  Even in the USA, you had a lot of people who thought Hitler was a pretty decent guy.  For example Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. Also note that in the USA, in 1940, the war was not considered to be important enough to have any Americans get killed over.  But if we could have sent a message from today back in time to 1935, I'm sure the USA would have declared war on Germany before Hitler could trump all of Europe. Or would it?

Picture: An American propaganda poster.  It attracted my attention because I thought the guys in the white sheets were the KKK, but no, if you blow up the image it is white revolutionary war uniforms.

Were Humans Used in Nutritional Experiments in the1940's?

On the CBC news this morning, I heard a newscaster make some disturbing allegations.  Apparently, nutritional researchers withheld food from hungry aboriginal children in residential schools in Canada, in order to study the effects of malnutrition.

I had already heard about the previous scandal, an experiment where researchers apparently gave vitamin and mineral supplements to some, but not all aboriginal schoolchildren.  To me, that did not seem as bad as withholding food from starving children.

I am not trying to make excuses for things that were done a long time ago.  I understand there was a lot more racism back then, in fact there is still a lot today, but at least it is not as overt.  There was also a different attitude towards corporal punishment of children.  We don't have the death penalty in Canada today, but we did then.  Experiments used to be performed on human beings, not just aboriginals either.  Check out Donald Ewen Cameron on Wikipedia, doing experiments with shock therapy and drugs, resulting in death of human test subjects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron

So it seems the ethical aspect of human experiments has come a long way since the fifties, in that we are much more careful about obtaining "Consent" of the subjects, and when we finally do the experiments, it is done with proper procedures and documentation, ensuring that we actually get some scientific benefit from the experiment.

Here is what the "Idle No More" (an Aboriginal activist) website posted about the situation, as quoted from the Canadian Press, under the title "HUNGRY ABORIGINAL PEOPLE USED IN BUREAUCRATS' EXPERIMENTS".  This title appears also on the CBC website, and many others.

http://www.idlenomore.ca/hungry_aboriginal_people_used_in_bureaucrats_experiments

If they withheld food from half of a group of starving children do see if they would die faster than a control group that got the regular rations, then that was evil by any standard.

If they gave minerals and vitamin supplements unknowingly to half the group, to see if there were any benefits to their health or mental states, without cutting back in any way on the food they were getting already, then the bureacrats and researchers were not evil, they were simply not acting according to modern standards on human research.

From the article above:

"The first experiment began in 1942 on 300 Norway House Cree. Of that group, 125 were selected to receive vitamin supplements which were withheld from the rest.
At the time, researchers calculated the local people were living on less than 1,500 calories a day. Normal, healthy adults generally require at least 2,000."

According to this, all the natives in some communities were basically going hungry, not just the children in residential schools. Instead of providing more food to the communities, the researchers gave selected people vitamin supplements.  If all the natives were hungry, that brings up many other questions about how they were fed, who was responsible for feeding them, and why were they not hunting/fishing/gathering berries, or otherwise using traditional sources of food?  None of that was mentioned in the article, although it seems familiar, just from Canadian and US history, and movies.

Here is another quote:

"One school deliberately held milk rations for two years to less than half the recommended amount to get a 'baseline' reading for when the allowance was increased."

If true, it would surely be a criminal act, even by the loose standards of 1947. But, I notice it does not say the rations were "cut", only "held".  Does that mean it was already normal practice to give half the recommended amount of milk?  Why?  Who set the recommended amount in the first place?

"At another, children were divided into one group that received vitamin, iron and iodine supplements and one that didn't."

Sounds reasonable for 1947.

"One school depressed levels of vitamin B1 to create another baseline before levels were boosted."

Did people know what vitamin B1 was in 1947?  If so how was the level depressed, by withholding food?  Was it in pill form?

"A special enriched flour that couldn't legally be sold elsewhere in Canada under food adulteration laws was used on children at another school."

This actually doesn't sound too evil, as I think we now basically use enriched flour everywhere and think nothing of it. It is your basic white  "Wonder Bread".  Of course if the illegal enriched flour had proven fatal, that would have been a bad thing.

"Many dental services were withdrawn from participating schools during that time. Gum health was an important measuring tool for scientists and they didn't want treatments on children's teeth distorting results."

If true, that is a crime, unless the treatments that were being withheld were also experimental.  In which case it's the opposite of a crime.  The actual treatments that were withheld are not specified.

"They knew from the beginning that the real problem and the cause of malnutrition was underfunding. That was established before the studies even started and when the studies were completed that was still the problem."

Studies in nutrition are not simple, because even when people have enough money and access to food, they can still be malnourished.  You need to have a healthy balanced diet, and not all people understand what a healthy diet is, or want to eat it.  You can be obese and still  suffer from nutritional deficiencies.  You cannot drink Coke and eat potato chips your whole life without serious side effects, not that I am suggesting anyone in 1947 would do that.  But you also cannot easily force people to eat a healthy diet.

I Do Not Know Brian Mulroney, But I Voted For Him

Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada from 1983 to 1993, was born in Baie Comeau, Quebec.  Coincidentally so was I, but I was never Prime Minister of Canada.

I have said in my blog that I voted Conservative twice, both of those were for Brian Mulroney. (not in the same election, of course)  I used to be a lot more conservative back then, than I appear to be today.  Partly because I have changed a little, but more because of the extremism on the right in the USA, which spills over into Canada.

Although Brian Mulroney was elected democratically twice, by the time his last term was finished, Canadians hated the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada so much that the party no longer exists today. When I took a vacation in Saint Lucia in 1992, Mulroney's reputation had sunk very low.  A local street vendor approached me to buy some coconuts, and somehow it slipped out that I was Canadian.  He offered me his condolences, because we had such a horrible Prime Minister.

St Lucia was not the first time I had problems with Brian Mulroney's reputation.  When I was teaching in Sept-Iles QC, in 1973-75, Brian Mulroney was the CEO of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, and Sept Iles was a one-company town built by IOC.  The teachers on staff knew that both of us were from Baie Comeau, which was located not very far away.  Brian was in the process of shutting down the IOC's biggest iron mine, which did not sit well with the townspeople.  So I got several comments associating me with Brian, which was not true, as I never knew him or even attended the same school with him.  And anyway, he was ten years older than me.

When Brian became Prime Minister, all of a sudden Baie Comeau went from being a quiet unknown backwater town to being a well known town nationally.  Before this, if someone asked where I was from, I could say Baie Comeau, and generally receive blank stares in response.  When  Brian campaigned for prime minister, he made a very big deal being a "boy from Baie Comeau".  So after that successful campaign, whenever it came out where I was from, I was always asked if I knew Brian Mulroney.  And as time went on, and Brian became more and more hated, I felt a greater need to distance myself from him, pointing out that I always lived on Laval St. while Brian lived on Champlain St. The notoriety has died down a lot, but today I occasionally have this same reaction from people who find out where I live.  Canadians apparently have long memories.

Compared to today's conservatives, I think he was a good prime minister.  But there was the GST tax, that I suppose most people still blame him for.  I don't feel the GST was a bad tax, as it replaced a hidden tax. But many Canadians think differently.  On the other hand, he initiated the Acid Rain pact with the USA, that effectively put a stop to the acid rain pollution in the eighties.  Brian also spoke out against South Africa in the international campaign to stop apartheid.  Brian also brought in the Free Trade pact between Canada and the USA, which has given us prosperity even up to today.  Yes, I know Canadians love to complain about how poor we are, but that's because Canadians don't get out much, and half our brains, and all our asses are frozen in winter.  That's the simple excuse for our stupidity.

Long after Brian Mulroney left office, we found out that he had accepted bribes from an aircraft manufacturer to buy their merchandise.

Back when Brian was debating Liberal John Turner in the first election, it was all about appointing political friends to the senate (as it is again today).  During the debate, Brian pointed out all the recent dubious Liberal appointees to the senate (made by the previous leader Trudeau) and asked why John Turner did not cancel them.  Turner Replied that he had no option.

Brian replied

"You had an option, sir. You could have said, 'I am not going to do it. This is wrong for Canada, and I am not going to ask Canadians to pay the price.' You had an option, sir--to say 'no' — and you chose to say 'yes' to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal Party."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mulroney#Party_leader

Picture:  http://historyofthegreatwhitenorth.blogspot.ca/2011/05/brian-mulroney-boy-from-baie-comeau.html

Who Owned More Slaves, Grant or Lee?

The answer to the well known question about General Grant, which is "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb", is Grant. That question was more like a joke or a riddle than a real historical question.  But there is a real historical question: "Did General Grant own slaves?"  This is a very interesting question, given that Grant was the top General fighting for the Union in the US civil war, and that many people argue whether or not the war was mainly about slavery.  (and I assume everyone knows the Union was the side allegedly opposed to slavery)

The problem with trying to research questions like this is that there is no one source of "truth" in the U.S.A. (or maybe any country, but the distinction is really obvious in America)  So you may find in one book, that Grant did own slaves, thus proving that the Civil war was NOT about slavery.  And you may also come across this quote from Robert E. Lee, the top general of the Southern Confederate states (the ones who allegedly supported slavery)

"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." Robert E. Lee December 27, 1856

That quote, along with Grant's ownership of slaves seems to prove that the war  was not really about slavery.

But hold on just a minute.  If you are to learn anything about the "truth" it is that truth can be manipulated.

By doing some further research, you will find out that Grant bought a slave and set him free.  Does that mean that Grant "owned" slaves?  Of course it does.  From the moment a slave is bought, you own him until the moment you officially set him free, which will take at least a few days, or so I imagine.  It's true, Grant owned slaves.  Or one slave, anyway.  And you will also find out that this slave helped Grant build a log cabin, before being set free.  And that later on Grant hired him again on salary as a free man.  And you will also find out that Grant's wife inherited slaves, and that Grant did not set them free until the end of the war. From there you can dig deeper and deeper and never find the truth.

On the other hand, you can research Robert E. Lee's statement about slavery ("as an institution")  being evil.  And then find out that Lee had slaves and whipped them, and sold their children to break up the family units.  And that although Lee knew that slavery was evil, he also "knew" it was ordained by God, and God would forgive the evil (but necessary) deeds of the slave owners.  And that Lee hated abolitionists a lot more than he hated whipping his slave women.  And again the further you dig, the harder it becomes to root out the truth.

For every argument there is a counter argument.  For every interpretation, there is another interpretation.

Be careful when seeking the truth, it's easy to get lost and never find your way home.

REFERENCES

The Book on Amazon  "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" claims Grant owned slaves.
http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-American-History/dp/B006J3VA60

Book Review of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" by right wing Christians
http://veritasdomain.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/review-the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-american-history/

Wikipedia article on Grant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant#Historical_reputation

Another bash at Grant vs Lee, with lots of interesting comments at the end.
http://www.american-presidents.org/2007/02/grant-was-slave-owner.html

General Lee's views on slavery in a letter (The whole letter is on this page, not just a cherry picked quote)
http://www.civilwarhome.com/leepierce.htm

Picture: The house built by Grant and his slave from this page.  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94503889/

A Historical Question about the Waterloo Region, Ontario

Yesterday, "The Lost Motorcyclist" (me) had the opportunity to go on a historical walk around one of our local quaint villages, known as Blair, Ontario. Previously, my only knowledge of Blair was that it was a 50 kph s-bend with a few nice looking old buildings, and it was on the west side of the Grand River, opposite Cambridge. It also used to have a good bar for bikers, the Nicholson Tavern, which closed many years ago. But during the walk, I found out several things. Blair now has both a Krishna and a Hindu temple. (weird, but not really the subject of this story). And Blair was the first European settlement in Waterloo Region, with notably the first gravesite, cemetery and school. This discovery got me thinking, that today Waterloo region has three major cities: Waterloo, Kitchener, and Cambridge, all over 100,000 people. Blair is still practically a pioneer village, seeming to have hardly grown at all and the entire thing could almost be considered a living museum of the 1800's.

I decided to investigate on the Internet why Blair is so small, and why it has been overtaken in size by almost all the other settlements in Waterloo region. I suppose I could have asked the tour guide, but it's a complicated question, and it was kind of cold yesterday, and also a bit hard to hear the tour guide with all the traffic noise.

To follow the history, you need to know that community names have changed over the years. Kitchener used to be called Berlin until WW1. And when it was first settled, it was called Sand Hills. Cambridge city is made up of three previous towns of Galt, Hespeler, and Preston (of which Galt was the largest, and was originally called Shade's Mills). Blair was named Shingle Bridge, and Carlyle, before finally being named Blair.

So to begin with, Blair started off around 1809 as a Mennonite settlement for a few people coming up from the USA. Although it was the very first European settlement in Ontario that was not on the shore of the great lakes, its settlers had no grand vision of becoming anything more than a good place to live. The founders of Galt, about seven years later in 1816, had a big vision of bringing in many settlers from Scotland. They started with a very large tract of land, which they subdivided and then sold to settlers that they brought in from Scotland. They picked a site for a town to be the centre of all this activity, and in 1825 a post office was set up, which was called Galt. At the time the post office opened, Galt was the largest, and would remain the largest community in the Waterloo Area until about 1900. Blair would not get a post office for another 30 years after Galt's.

Then in about 1900, Galt was overtaken by Berlin in population and importance. The community of Sand Hills, which had taken the name Berlin in about 1833, had experienced an influx of immigrants from Germany between 1833 and 1900 that was big enough to overtake Galt. Why did so many Germans immigrate at that time, and why did they come to Berlin? The second question almost answers itself: Because it was named Berlin. But that's not the whole story. Most immigrants tend to go to the largest cities, but there was a problem with German immigrants going to Toronto that may have diverted the bulk of them to Berlin. In the 1800's Governor Simcoe attempted to get a large group of German immigrants to move to Markham, just north of Toronto. In this plan, he recruited William Berckzy whose biography is in the credits for this story. William Berczy brought in some Germans and began setting up the town of Markham, and extending Yonge Street from Toronto to Markham, but ran into some difficulties. I can't tell if it was because Torontonians were suspicious of Germans moving in so close, or just financial bad luck, but the deal fell through, and there was considerable ill will between Berczy and the establishment. Hence I assume Germans felt less welcome in Toronto than Berlin, Ontario. And the town of Waterloo, being next door to Berlin was equally welcoming to Germans. The name Waterloo, by the way, is not only named after the site of a great British victory over the French. We also sometimes forget that the Battle of Waterloo was a joint effort of Germans and British.

There were a lot of German immigrants to Canada because Germany is a very big country in Europe that did not really have it's own colonial destination for its people. So, many of the immigrants to Canada were Germans. Canada generally did not object to Germans because after all Queen Victoria was originally German. Also, many Germans had fought for England against the Americans in the revolution, so Germans were actually seen as being more loyal to Canada than Americans. (all that would change with the animosity of two world wars, but hopefully now is almost forgotten).

Picture: I found a picture postcard on the site below of one of the first power generating stations in the Waterloo area - it did not use electricity to transmit the power as we do today. We had a chance to walk around it yesterday in Blair on our historical tour.

Picture from: http://toughnut-street.blogspot.com/2010/07/blair-ontario-postcard.html

Historical material

William Berczy: http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=2261

German Immigration to Canada: http://www.whitepinepictures.com/seeds/i/9/history1.html

Blair history: http://www.cambridge.ca/city_clerk/city_archives/historical_information_evolution_of_blair

Galt history: http://www.cambridge.ca/city_clerk/city_archives/historical_information_evolution_of_galt

Bikers Guide to the Brampton Flying Club Open House

Today "The Lost Motorcyclist" visited the Annual Brampton Air Show. Actually, calling it an Air Show might give the wrong impression, because it is different from the well known Air Shows that are staged at the bigger airports all over Canada and the rest of the world.

The first difference is that this is more like a flying museum. Or should I say, like an aircraft museum where the airplanes actually fly. The Brampton Air show is an annual open house event at the Brampton Flying Club. For $5 per person, you can wander through their extensive museum, and also look at airplanes that have flown in for the event from other flying clubs.

The result is an extensive array of World War 1 (and I saw one WW2) air planes. Some are parked on the ground, some are flying, landing and taking off. Some of the planes are scaled down replicas (some are 7/8 or some may 3/4). Most have upgraded engines for flying purposes, meaning a modern Lycoming engine - however many have more authentic looking radial engines. Again, these may be more modern versions, but I was not able to tell exactly what had been done to get these birds to actually fly.

Some of the other interesting points: For $40 you could fly in an open cockpit biplane. There is also an informal antique bike and car show, I saw several interesting bikes - particularly an old Brough Superior. There was a power boat on a trailer that was being fired up, and I didn't get a chance to find out what kind of engine it had, but from the look and sound of the exhaust I'm guessing it was either a rocket or a gas turbine. There was a very small twin engine airplane. Each engine was a one cylinder, two stroke engine. The whole plane looked like an overblown radio controlled model, except that I was told it had a human pilot in the cockpit.

I didn't see this, but I was told that at previous shows they had staged such events as a biplane bombing a vintage motorcycle/sidecar with sacks of flour, while riding/flying across a field. I would not be surprised if it was cancelled because of ever-tightening insurance restrictions on these airshows.

I visited the show on my motorcycle, with a few friends also on motorcycles. Afterwards we went for a motorcycle ride on the very scenic roads near the airfield, including the Forks of the Credit road. That road is only about 10 km, but it has the sharpest corner "The Lost Motorcyclist" has ever seen. I suppose somewhere on Earth, somebody may have figured out how to make a corner sharper than that, but I can't believe they would do it on a regular width paved road, while climbing a fairly steep hill.

Next we went by the Cheltenham Badlands, or "Clay Hills", which looks a lot like the badlands of South Dakota except much smaller.
http://www.ontariotrails.on.ca/trails-a-z/cheltenham-hills/

So that was the end of the motorcycle trip. Except that we still had to drive back to Kitchener. Normally I would just hop on the 401 after a tiring day and get home in the shortest amount of time, but Mary Ann wanted to avoid the boring freeway, so we took about twice as long and were really tired when we got home. But this time at least I didn't get caught in a downpour.

Picture: From the club's website. They apparently had rain that year. We had sunshine all day long, while thunderstorms produced hail and rain to the southwest.
http://www.bramptonflightcentre.com

Teaching Patriotic History

Why do Americans not learn about other countries in school? OK Maybe I need to back up, because many Americans do not even realize that other countries have their own histories, nor do they understand what American history has to do with the histories of other countries, such as Canada for example.

Now this is going to seem a bit rambling, because I want to discuss why some maps should show neighbouring countries or states and some do not, and really don't need to. Then I will get back to why it is often necessary to study some of the history of neighbouring countries to understand your own history.

I am often amazed looking at US TV station weather maps, where the weather is shown on a map of the USA, but on the other side of the US borders, no weather is shown. Remember the stations we get here are from Detroit, Erie and Buffalo, all places either on the border or across the water from Canada. You would think they should be concerned about what the weather is only 40 km away. In my opinion, weather maps should not stop at any borders.

Road maps are the opposite, but for a good reason. If you are producing a road map of one state, you do not need to put all the roads in neighbouring states. This makes sense, because you are expected to buy the road map of any state you are travelling to, if you want to see all the roads up-to-date. Another situation I remember, I was in Mexico talking to some travelling motorcyclists from Texas about the best way to get into California from Ensenada, Mexico. I suggested Tecate as a border crossing that was easier than Tijuana, especially since they were heading home to Texas from there. They looked at their Mexican road map and said Tecate was no good because there were no roads leading from the border checkpoint into the USA. I told them that yes indeedy there were roads in California, and if they wanted to see the roads on the California side they should get a California road map. It is quite normal for any country or state to produce road maps that cover their own roads, but not all the roads in bordering states. When travelling in Ontario, for example, the 401 says "Windsor 250 km". It does not say "Detroit 252 km". That does not mean Detroit does not exist, nor does it mean Windsor is more important a city than Detroit. You are just expected to know that Windsor is the border city near Detroit and get a Michigan map to continue your journey. They do the opposite with road signs on the US side of the border.

Now back to history. What could Americans possibly learn about their own history by learning about the history of Canada? First they would learn that Canada has repelled several US invasions, especially if you count some of the fighting that went on before the USA got its independence from Britain. The second thing that you could learn is that many English speaking Canadians are descendants of refugees from the US war of Independence. At one time, just after the war of independence, the number of American refugees in Canada was so great that they became a majority of English speaking Canadians.

Here is the next question. Why do Americans not want to know about this part of Canadian history, which actually seems to be an integral part of their own history? Well, apparently some Americans did want to teach this part of American history. The part where Americans who were loyal to the British were forced out of the country after Independence. But other Americans decided that this part of their history should be buried, covered up, for the sake of national pride.

After WW1. Charles Grant Miller, a writer for Hearst Newspapers, (forerunner of Fox News), started a campaign to rid America of unpatriotic history books. In particular a book called "An American History" by David Saville Muzzey. The Muzzey book had its flaws, for example a quote from it about native Americans reads "a stolid stupidity that no white man could match". But that's not what caused the hoopla. It was the part of the book that suggested some Americans, before the war of independence, considered themselves as Englishmen, and supported the King's government. That was the part that was treasonous to America.

(Ref "History on Trial", Nash Crabtree and Dunn, p. 25-28.)

Further reference online
ebooksread.com

But once you remove the reference to loyal English-Americans from US history, how do you explain Canadian history? And how can you explain the American defeat in the war of 1812, in the attempted conquest of Canada? You can't, so you just better ignore that invasion altogether. And how do you explain that Canada started fighting Germany before the USA did? You can't, so you ignore the war before 1941. How do you ignore the part played by France in the US War of Independence? You can't so you just belittle the French generally to make yourself feel strong and brave. That's why teaching "patriotic" history requires large doses of ignorance.

History Is Controversial: Get Used to It

I have started reading "History on Trial" by Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn. It's about the controversy in the USA concerning the history curriculum. And I must confess I don't understand people who think they can teach history without controversy.

I have a personal experience that shows how controversial the teaching of history can be. Back in 2002, Mary Ann and I were touring out in the American West by motorcycle, and I wanted to visit the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn, where Custer's force was massacred by Indians. There was a National Historic Park, and historical interpretation centre there, and we dropped in to get the "story" (i.e. the interpretation of the events.) I was very surprised to see how balanced the interpretation was, giving the Indian's side of the story very sympathetically. I had expected a one sided condemnation of the Indians. But after about twenty minutes, I started looking around more and more, and came to realize we were not at the "Official" interpretive centre, we had been lured to an alternate interpretive centre set up by the Indians on their own land, which was kind of dressed up and signposted to look like the National Park Centre. Unfortunately, the National Park was closed by the time we got there, so I never got the other side of the story.

But one more thing I noticed, driving down the interstate highway, was a pickup truck flying the flag of the Seventh Cavalry, the very regiment that was massacred. I wish I knew why people were still flying those flags, but never had a chance to talk to the pickup truck driver.

So that is one anecdote of my impressions of American history. I have more, but they will wait till another day.

I have spent three years myself teaching Canadian history, and I enjoyed it more than teaching math, which was more my specialty. History is more fun than math because it is controversial, and as a teacher you have the opportunity to help students question what they are being taught. We had the text book, which was the curriculum, and it was the basis for all the "correct answers" on the exams. But instead of simply memorizing all the facts, I preferred to treat the facts as simply one side of the story in most cases, and we spent more time discussing than we did memorizing. The result, I thought, was that many of the students had more fun and actually remembered better.

I see two sides to the teaching of History. One side is the curriculum, the "correct version" that must be taught. The other part is learning to interpret, question, and see other points of view, which are optional and depend to a large degree on the teacher and the students themselves. And this second part is much less subject to control by the authorities. Although, I can well imagine teaching in some schools where the parents may find out that someone has questioned something that they hold sacred, and may complain to the principal. But in my three years of teaching Canadian history, no parent ever complained to me that I was forcing their children to think for themselves.

One of the reasons that history curriculum starts people fighting, is that some teachers and parents think that history must be taught without questioning. That means your curriculum has to be right from the start, then the students simply memorize everything and they get 100% if they know the material perfectly. That puts a lot more importance on the curriculum development than on the quality of the teachers.  And the fact is, the curriculum will never be "right". 

I don't really know that much about how Americans teach history, but this is the impression I have had over the years, from watching American TV and movies, reading American books, talking to Americans about their history. They memorize all the presidents, in the correct order. They focus on the positive, and their history is full of white American heroes. They tend to ignore world history (e.g Canada), and anything that could be called a "downer" or anything that may undermine the impression that Americans are not the smartest, bravest, most decent people on Earth.

Why is Canadian History not taught from such an extremely chauvinistic, one-sided point of view, like a mythical fable with very little questioning or interpretation? I can think of a few reasons. For one, Canada has two historical viewpoints that are taught in the classroom - the French and the English. (Although not usually in the same school system). And now, for all I know there may be more. Second, we have no reason to think that Canadians are a "special" people chosen by God, to lead the world. Third, we tend to not believe in the absolute truth of the Bible as much, meaning we are more accustomed to questioning the printed word.

Picture: That's Custer's Seventh Cavalry flag in case you are ever out West and see it flying from a pickup truck.

How We Would Have Been Better Off Without Slavery

This is the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, where slavery was officially abolished. This month is the 50th anniversary of Sierra Leone's independence.

But the effects of the slave trade across the Atlantic to America will continue to be felt long after this year, both in America and in Africa, and to some extent all over the world.

The Lost Motorcyclist has already seen a southern American on TV denying that the civil war was about slavery. Apparently, their argument goes, that very few Southerners actually owned slaves, therefore the war was not about slavery. So, what was it about? "Defending our country from invasion".

It saddens me to think that some people believe this, and worse yet that TV stations will run it on news programs.

Of course the civil war was about slavery, and it was not just the slave owners who were guilty. The vast majority of the white people in the south supported racist slavery. They had jobs supervising slaves, chasing after runaway slaves. And they voluntarily committed racial atrocities for no pay at all. For example, if any union soldiers surrendered, the black soldiers were killed, while the white soldiers were kept for later prisoner exchange. It could even be that some of the slave owners could have been kinder than many of the general southern population.

Slavery does not corrupt only the slave owners. It corrupts the people who benefit materially from slavery, it corrupts people who believe that slavery is just, it corrupts religion that uses the Bible to argue for slavery. And along with corrupt religion and unjust laws, the morals of an entire people become corrupt.

Even today, you can look at the morality and cultural values of the old slave states, and see that it is lower than the morality of places that did not rely too heavily on slavery. To see the lingering effects of slavery, one needs to look at the current culture of the southern USA, starting with their descent into primitive superstitious religion, in this case the religion is masquerading as born-again Christianity. Look at their distrust of science and education, their destructive attitude toward the environment, toward war, toward anyone but white people, toward guns. Look at their love of money and consumerism. Their hatred of other countries (including large parts of the rest of the USA). But they do love Israel, I suspect it is because Israel is the last modern officially racist state. Finally, their firm belief that they are the only real Americans and everyone else should get out.

Yes, I'm talking about the modern right wing fundamentalist, Republican voting conservatives. These warped ideas fuelled by Nazi style propaganda and lies do not spring naturally from a free civilized society. They are born of fear and terror. Fear of the terror they unleashed with the institution of slavery. Fear of what may become of them. Sadness at how they have ruined their country by importing slaves, but at the same time anger that they needed to have their asses kicked before they were forced to give up slavery forever.

But just the way slavery has corrupted American society, it has also had devastating effects on Africa. Although the Africans have been able to make up for the loss of population by birth rates, the African culture has also been perverted. We really do not know much about African history, or what actually went on there during the slave trade. We imagine that it was simply a matter of white people getting off a boat and chasing black people, and bringing them back to the boat in chains. It was not that simple.

The Europeans needed to first destroy African society in order to make the slave trade work on the large scale they needed. On the very simplest level, ancient Africa was made up of many tribes and social groupings. The Europeans devised a scheme of franchising certain tribes as their slave trade partners. The selected tribes were provided with guns. The tribes that were not selected were not allowed to have guns. That is all you need in your basic recipe for destroying a civilization, and destroying it for generations to come. It was so thoroughly destroyed, that even today, many Americans believe that there is something basically flawed about black people.

So we have a very sad situation for the USA, which might have been a better country without slavery and the civil war. More freedom, less violence, better relations with other countries, and better treatment of the native Americans. I'm not saying it would be perfect, just better than it turned out to be.

And the same could have been true for Africa without the slave trade. More democracy, more education, less corruption, more sustainable jobs. Again, I'm not saying it would be just like Europe (and I am also not saying our modern civilization is necessarily the best model), but much better than it has turned out, especially in places like Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Congo.

For a quick look at how slavery affected Africa:

http://www.shunpiking.com/bhs2007/200-BHS-EM-impactof.htm

Picture: Gallows built for war criminals after the US civil war. There were only two war criminals executed, must have been a very civil war compared to most. Anyway the alleged war crime was for the death by starvation of thousands of Union prisoners at Andersonville prison camp, which came about after the prisoner exchanges were halted, which came about because the south refused to treat black and white Union soldiers the same. Namely, the southern policy of killing the black prisoners of war, a war crime which came about because of slavery.

http://old-photos.blogspot.com/2008/02/execution-in-washington-dc.html