Sir john makes history again

Image from Métis longing and belonging: book review -- "Belonging Métis"


Sir John makes history again.

There's a reason why some people sing, "O Canada, our home's on Native land."

No, McDonald's isn't his namesake (it's Macdonald), though Canada might have had a better start if he'd founded a hamburger franchise operation instead of leading (pushing?) a brand new country into chaos and infamy.

I think we need to feel a little less pride about how our country began -- and still operates, to a great extent. I don't know how anybody can sing the national anthem without feeling at least a little bit embarrassed. "The true north strong and free"?  Get real. Especially during this time of tyranny over our personal freedoms and our own bodies.

I'm recalling standing in a bus shelter in Ottawa watching a well-dressed young Native man marching up and down the sidewalk shouting, "You're on my land! This is MY land you're on!" I wasn't afraid of him; I was afraid for him. I feared the police would get their hands on him. I worried about him all the way home on the bus.

Riel was crazy too, so they love to say.  Crazy like a fox, maybe.  There's an old movie on YouTube about him. There's also an old review of it. I still prefer the travelling stage play that featured Bruno Gerussi as Riel, though it was never recorded as far as I know.  I saw it on a high school stage, in the 80's I think, and Gerussi was in his true element. He made Riel come alive and real. It was breath-taking! 
 
Related on YYC: Statue Sir John? Yep, that's you. Pigeon poop and all.

• No statue of Macdonald can make him anything other than a drunken tool of the monarchy.
• No statue of Riel is needed because he lives in people's hearts and minds.

Scroll to the bottom of that post and watch the video: "The History of Louis Riel".

And now into the present:

CTV: As statues topple around the world, thousands of Montrealers want Sir John A. Macdonald to be next

• "We have to remember that even in these moments when people were seen in the mainstream as heroes, there were Indigenous, Black and white people who said they are not heroes,” says Charmaine Nelson, a McGill University art historian.
• On Sunday, people in the U.K. city of Bristol pulled down a statue of a 17th-century slave trader and threw it in the river.
• Today, it was reported that people in Richmond, Virginia and St. Paul, Minnesota toppled statues of Christopher Columbus—with the one in Virginia also set on fire and thrown in a lake—while in Boston, another Columbus statue was beheaded.
• Montreal’s Sir John A. statue has been vandalized many times by protesters, including last Halloween, when self-described “anti-colonial zombies” covered much of it in red spray paint.
• But this week, the local protesters are sticking with a petition for now, though its writer says it’s just the beginning.
• “There are many monuments of racist white nationalists in Montréal—and one by one they will ALL see their fate,” the petition says.

Which, of course, would not, should not include the relatively new, improved statue of Métis hero Louis Riel in Manitoba. The original one made him appear to be a naked savage -- as Canada's First Peoples were characterized by the ignorant "white" immigrants whose descendants now cast the crude, alcoholic Macdonald in an august light.

Trudeau is literally pulling out his hair over this.

Call me ANTIFA or whatever you wish, I've never been a fan of monuments. They almost always laud death and destruction of one sort or another. If Remembrance Day, for instance, included anti-war sentiment, I might feel like attending. As it is, it's only a nod to the military's dead soldiers and a sop to their families, while ignoring the plights of living victims of war, including the soldiers who fought in them. Here's a museum piece about that.

You want to see injustice to a real live Canadian symbol?  I don't hear Trudeau expressing any type of chagrin over this:

CBC: Father moved into son's backyard coach house — then the city came knocking

• Coach houses illegal for residential use ...

Even property owners are not masters of their own domain in this "the True North Strong and Free".

A commenter to the CBC article said: "It is illegal to keep a human on your property but legal to keep a dog. Messed up society."  To which another commenter responded: "Why are you not basking-in the Sunnyways Justin has created for you??"

Not surprisingly: Pierre Trudeau's statue has been repeatedly defaced. Justin himself should forego being memorialized, including his "boyfriend" calendar, too easily tossed in a dumpster.

It's a clear sign of systemic brain-messing that many Canadians are not ashamed and embarrassed at the level of acuity and morality of the Federal and Provincial government leaders; mendacious whimps, cow-towing to big money, oblivious to the collateral damage to living beings.

The following needs to be embroidered on pillows everywhere in order to increase cognizance of the evil being perpetrated on what we used call "free societies":

Britannica - Brain Washing:

• A colloquial term, it is more generally applied to any technique designed to manipulate human thought or action against the desire, will, or knowledge of the individual. By controlling the physical and social environment an attempt is made to destroy loyalties to any unfavourable groups or individuals, to demonstrate to the individual that his attitudes and patterns of thinking are incorrect and must be changed, and to develop loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the ruling party.

• The term is most appropriately used in reference to a program of political or religious indoctrination or ideological remolding. The techniques of brainwashing typically involve isolation from former associates and sources of information; an exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation; physical and psychological punishments for non-cooperation ranging from social ostracism and criticism, deprivation of food, sleep, and social contacts, to bondage and torture; and continual reinforcement.

Now ponder this:

NatNews: Sites to be commemorated: Residential schools recognized as ‘historic event’

I saw the movie "Where the Spirit Lives" (1989) years ago, and it haunts me, though I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it since. I think everyone should give it a look at least once.
 
Also, check the comments below the video. One of them says, "My father's somewhere at 40:19".  This is not in the far distant past; this is in my lifetime -- in the Canada that Macdonald foresaw, overseen by a "white" monarch and people who thought it advisable to steal native children and force them to become as "white" as possible.

There's nothing worse in the world than an arrogant do-gooder. But who am I to say what should be done now with the school buildings? They could be a money-maker, like haunted castles. They could serve as a "never again" reminder of privileged humanity's dark side -- like a Holocaust Museum -- though it will never bring back the thousands of young disappeared native women the whereabouts and fates of which the celebrated RCMP profess to have not a clue about.

Not to mention that the United States reportedly have even greater numbers of missing Native girls and women, a travesty that purportedly stymies even the (in)famous CIA, though monuments are being erected in their memory.

Maybe I could see the sense of monuments if, for instance, a sign were hung around the neck of a Macdonald statue saying something like "this drunken fool hanged Riel and killed countless other Métis for the sake of his personal dream of a British monarchy from coast to coast, setting the standard of idiocy for all future Prime Ministers".

As it stands now, only pigeons find Macdonald statues useful.

I'm not a nationalist. I was born here so I live here; it's the place I know best. But, to me, monuments are mere hunks of rock and metal that don't have an ounce of value with regard to the present if they don't speak the truth about the past. I could tolerate a war monument if it truly were a relic of a distant past instead of names being continually added.

I think I could even tolerate an up-front central government for the entire world so that our local "leaders" would no longer have to pretend they aren't following orders from headquarters.

Especially since it would have to ban weapons of war to have any credibility at all. And it would have to place human similarities above differences. If a central government knew the whole world population could gang up on them, or sit down en masse and bring the whole system to a halt, they might be less arbitrary and more lenient. Maybe.

Or maybe there would be military stationed at every street corner in every city in the world. Let's face it: you have to be brave just to be an ordinary citizen. Like this guy: (thanks to reader M.R. for the video link). Here also is his Statement of Claim addressed to the "Queen of Australia".

Related on YYC: Canada's Eugenics Program: Sterilization of Indigenous Women ... and the difference between "encouraged" and "coerced".

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