Do Something Different for Valentine's Day: Buy a Book

Yes, writers should be recognized in Canada and, earlier today, the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction made life a little easier for Tim Cook. The organization awarded Cook $25,000 for Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting The Great War, 1917-1918, Vol. 2.  Barring a mega hit, it is extremely difficult to make a living as a writer in Canada and it's getting worse. In his wonderful profile of Anne Michaels in the current Toronto Life, Don Gillmor describes the battleground of the publishng world, with mid-tier authors being "culled" and tossed out by big publishing houses. In earlier times, they might have been given a chance to grow and develop, but no longer. (Gillmor's piece highlights Michaels' soon-to-be-released, The Winter Vault.) There's also an ugly trend in the U.K. and U.S. for publishers to insist books be pre-edited (passing the costs on to authors) and, post-publishing, be publicized by the author. That's on top of swelling costs to the writer, which include the cost of the index, photo rights and any other rights involved. In an age of big box bookstores, Amazon and a generation less inclined, perhaps,  to sit down with a book, publishers prefer to publish "name-only" writers. It's always been like that for fiction and non-fiction, but not to this degree. Even the freelancing and speech-giving fields are drying up and they've been the money-makers for struggling writers who try to live without a full-time job (not that there are many of those anymore, either). It's scary out there.

The Charles Taylor Award recognizes writers need more than prestige sandwiches. In fact, Cook, curator of the Canadian War Museum and an adjunct professor at Carleton, is probably one of very few Canadian writers who actually has an job he loves that fits perfectly with his literary ambitions. Runners-up today (winning $2000) are Elizabeth Abbott's Sugar: A Bittersweet History and Ana Siljak's Angel of Vengeance: The "Girl Assassin," the Governor of St. Petersburg and Russia's Revolutionary War. 

So, for Valentine's Day, how about forgetting flowers and buying a book for that special someone. The thought involved in the purchase of a book is more romantic anyway.

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In the "Say What?" category. Or better, people have some nerve.

Robert's Picton's family is suing the RCMP for messing up their pig farm - where they found the dismembered bodies of six women. It was pretty messy when Picton murdered those poor women, crimes for which he was found guilty and sent to jail.

Please.

Will the Prime Minister change his mind about international aboriginal rights?

THE CANADIAN PRESS PHOTO

Chief Phil Fontaine and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, June 11, 2008.

The battle is on to push the Conservative government to redress its failure to recognize aborginal rights at the international level. In September, 2007, Canada stood with only the United States, Australia and New Zealand in opposition to 144 proud countries who overwhelmingly passed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. History was made on a day that ensured 370 million indigenous peoples in 70 countries have a comprehensive universal framework to address human rights violations.

In Australia, new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will soon change the country's position and officially endorse the General Assembly's Declaration, according to a recent report in The Australian. The Rudd government was lauded for its apology earlier this year to the "Stolen Generations" of its own residential school system.

So first Australia, can Canada be far behind?

There was a brief respite from this fight last week in Canada. There were tears, joy and celebration after Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in the House of Commons to Canada's First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples for the system of residential schools. The triumph belongs to the estimated 90,000 who still survive, among 150,000 aboriginal people who, as children, were snatched from their parents and sent to be educated in residential schools, under legislated federal policy now recognized as cruel and wrong-thinking.

Many waited last week for Harper to talk about human rights. "The issue of residential schools is primarily a human rights tragedy and atrocity," lawyer Paul Joffe told this blog. A 30-year veteran of cases involving the rights of indigenous peoples, he added: "Yet, in the Prime Minister's apology, no mention is made of 'human rights' or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."

The omission wasn't lost on Phil Fontaine. The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations underscored its importance, but recognized June 11, 2008, was the day to mark the official ending of the sad chapter in Canadian history.

That was last week.

Yesterday, in the House of Commons, Liberal MP Tina Keeper, an aborginal activist from the Manitoba riding of Churchill, introduced Bill C-569 to ensure the laws of Canada are consistent with the UN Declaration. Moreover, 101 of Canada's most respected academics, lawyers and social advocates, among them former cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats, recently sent an open letter urging the government to reverse its decision on the UN Declaration. Whatever their professions, all have been strong supporters of the tenets of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Signatories to the petition include Warren Allmand, Paul Copeland, Professor Shin Imai, Barbara Jackman, Chief Wilton Littlechild, Alex Neve, Allan Rock, Maxwell Yalden and many other illustrious names.

The letter pulls no punches:

"September 13 , 2007 was a shameful day for Canada, but a tremendous achievement for the world's indigenous peoples and the international system. It is time for the government of Canada to cease publicizing its misleading claims and, together with indigenous peoples, actively implement this new human rights instrument."

Read the full letter, with a fuller list of signatories.

Now that the number of UN nay-sayers appears to be being whittled down, Canadian activists hope Stephen Harper will rectify what they see as a tragic decision for Canada at the UN. In the spirit of optimism, they believe the day will come.

Last thoughts (for now) on Indian Affairs at its worst

Say What? No. 1

I blogged yesterday about genocide and its potential link to the history of residential schools in Canada. With the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set to begin hearings, I just wanted readers to understand it's not so unthinkable to link our own history ("to kill the Indian in the child") with the ignomy of genocide. However, punishment isn't the purpose of the commission and it doesn't look as if it's going to go in that direction, although there will be sworn testimony in these hearings to break the heart of a nation. As it should be. Broken hearts have been the special burden of aboriginal families for too long.

But last night I got home from Parliament Hill in time to catch the last few minutes of Stolen Children, the excellent documentary series on residential schools that's been running all week on CBC News. (Here's the link for the schedule.) The segment quoted a high-ranking Indian Affairs bureaucrat early in the last century talking about "the final solution" to what he and his contemporaries considered to be "the Indian problem." Their goal was assimilation until there wasn't an Indian left outside the context of mainstream Canadian society but this particular part dealt with a death rate of children in residential schools that was much higher than on reserves.

I turned cold to hear those words, the final solution, in a Canadian context - and filled with shame.

The final solution.

I don't know, maybe I was all wet yesterday to suggest it's for the best the commission's parameters appear to be narrow.

Say What? No. 2

The Assembly of First Nations has worked with Health Canada to set up a helpline for people requiring counselling over residential schools. I suppose the AFN knows what it's doing. Me, I'd want to stay as far away as possible from any agency, including Health Canada, that's any part of a government that caused the problem in the first place, however long ago.

An ugly word with an ugly connotation

Discussions of genocide have not been part of the national dialogue leading up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology in Parliament today to Canada's First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples for the travesty of residential schools. Beginning in the 1840s and lasting (unbelievably) until 1996, more than 150,000 children were taken from their families and shipped off to residential schools, most often under the auspices of the clergy, to be assimilated into the country's dominant culture.  They were robbed of their traditions and their identity, a tragedy that devastated them and their descendants in ways that will never be forgotten, as residential schools survivor Shirley Williams said in an interview earlier this week.

The story of these children - and it allegedly includes physical and sexual abuse, as well as accounts of bodies buried in unmarked graves - will be the subject of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools, headed by Justice Harry Laforme. Two weeks ago, I asked him if the commission's work would involve any research into whether this tyranny should be investigated as genocide and he said he honestly didn't know. It was too soon, he said, to know how the commission would function. Still, it's not likely there will be allegations of genocide in the final report in five years time, although it could come up in individual hearings.

It's not that the actions of Canadian authorities might not be considered to be genocide. Although it's a matter upon which criminal authorities and international tribunals of justice would rule, there certainly appear to be areas that could qualify under the definitions of "genocide" by the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights at the United Nations. The U.N. code is clear. In the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genoicde. Introduced in 1948 and ratified in 1951, the definition (linked above) establishes that "genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish." In Article 2, the convention says genocide means "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group:

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Nevertheless, the tradition over the past two decades has been for truth and reconciliation commissions  in other countries to seek the truth about what happened and to find ways for people - and countries - to heal. It has not been not to try to establish the existence of genocide and, therefore, to punish the guilty. Instead, the most well-known commissions in South Africa and Chile both offered freedom from prosecution for people who testified and, as a result, sought ways in which each nation could get past its own horrific histories. In South Africa, it was the abomination of apartheid and in Chile, the savage regime of the military junta after the 1973 overthrow of president Salvador Allende. It wasn't easy. During hearings in South Africa (leading to a 1998 report), Archbishop Desmund Tutu was in tears more than once and, during Chile's tribunal (reporting in 1991), relatives sobbed as they listened to accounts of the murder of mothers, fathers and children. Some died when they were thrown from helicopters into the Pacific Ocean.

It was the same for truth and justice commissions in Peru, Salvador and Bolivia.

This doesn't meant separate criminal proceedings haven't been launched. In Chile, the courts tried over several years in vain to bring General Augusto Pinochet to justice for his actions as a junta leader after the overthrow of Allende. Moreover, other international tribunals have attempted convictions for the crime of genocide, notably in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

These are very different endeavours than the truth and reconciliation commissions that have set a model Canada is likely to follow. Maybe it's a good thing.

Justice Harry LaForme: A man for our time

TONY BOCK/TORONTO STAR

Mr. Justice Harry LaForme, seen May 28, was recently appointed commissioner of the federal body set up to investigate the issue of alleged abuse in residential schools in Canada.

It's going to take courage; he understands that. Justice Harry LaForme expects this new appointment of his will take everything he has, and then some, as he embarks on what will likely be the most rewarding — and painful — period of his life. He is chair of the new Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Today was gorgeous in Toronto and, from a Star boardroom overlooking Lake Ontario, the painful realities of his undertaking seemed very far away indeed. But after talking about his life as a Mississauga Indian and his appointment as the first aboriginal appellate judge in Canada, LaForme , 61, came to the hard part. He expects to hear accounts to "sear" his very soul, and he doesn't expect ever to forget them.

It will be his difficult duty — as for others on the commission — to listen to accounts of aboriginal survivors (and their families) of a brutal system that took approximately 150,000 children from their homes, beginning in the 19th century and ending in 1996. He says the aim was "to kill the Indian" in these children or, put another way, "to remove the influence of the wigwam." There are survivors and, in the lexicon of international human rights, there are the "disappeared" — children who never came home and whose whereabouts are unknown.

He is at the very beginning of this endeavour. His team hasn't even worked out a schedule for cross-country hearings. He doesn't know how it will unfold — whether the term "genocide" will be used to describe long years of forced assimilation in Canada, or whether Canadians can expect to see images of forensic scientists down on their hands and knees shifting through dirt at remote sites, as they have in, say Guatemala. He knows only that he won't shy away from anything in seeking the truth.

LaForme, like many journalists, has heard stories of alleged assault and murder, with bodies tossed into unmarked graves, undiscovered to this day. Again, he stresses: he just doesn't know how this enterprise will unfold or what they will uncover.

Of one thing, however, he is certain. He wants to see reconciliation as well as truth, meaning there should be a cosmic shift in how First Nations people see themselves and their history and, less importantly, how they are seen by others. He believes Canadians are up to the task, no matter what occurs during the next five years. From his perspective: "I've never never been disappointed with Canadians when they've come face to face with the truth."

Let's hope he is not disappointed.