The Trial of Joseph Trutch

THE CHARGES:

The accused

-- Did not sufficiently recognize aboriginal claims to land in B.C., believing that Governor James Douglas's system of reserves and treaties was “disproportionate to the numbers or requirements of Indian Tribes”, and that “good arable and grazing land” was being wasted.

-- Held the opinion that most of the aboriginal people he had met were “lazy”.

-- Kept sentimental ties to Great Britain, its culture and values.

-- Was friendly with other prominent professionals and landowners in the colonies of Vancouver Island and BC

-- Lived a gracious “colonial” and “privileged” lifestyle.

-- Schemed with Governor Musgrave in 1869 get BC into the Canadian Confederation.

-- Supported the Government of Canada's cross-Canada railway project.

-- Transferred lands to the federal government as an enabler of Canadian Pacific Railway in 1880, in a manner resulting from the fact that aboriginal tribes did not have Land Title Offices.

-- Doubted the likely success of James Douglas's policy of “assimilation” of aboriginal people – although paradoxically James Douglas is now himself judged guilty for promoting assimilation.

In retribution against Lieutenant-Governor Trutch, his views and career, the Crown asks the Court to change the name of the street named after him.

DEFENCE COUNSEL'S RESPONSE:

1 Mr. Trutch's enabling of both railways and land-transference amounted to a social good. Today, climate change activists support railways and oppose cars. Ironically, Trutch oversaw completion of the E & N Railway, now the darling of Vancouver Islanders who long for alternatives to car travel.

2  Privacy (from whence also the word and the concept of “privilege”) is not an illegal commodity.

3  Wealth is not an illegal commodity. (The Defence asks: Is this trial about wealth-envy, as bodied forth in land ownership?)

4  As an engineer and surveyor (before later political appointments) the accused favoured values around hard work, and laziness was an evil in his view. (Is it possible that some aboriginal individuals he met were lazy? How can we know now? It is beyond the ability of the Court to judge how many of the people known to Mr. Trutch might have been lazy.)

5  The Court is obliged to respect freedom of opinion. It was the opinion of the accused that “I am satisfied from my own observation that the claims of Indians over tracts of land, on which they assume to exercise ownership, but of which they make no real use, operate very materially to prevent settlement and cultivation.” Are freedom of opinion, observation and speech  what's on trial here?

6  Mr. Trutch's wealth rested on effort and ability. It is the opinion of his defenders that his accusers are engaged in slander and character assassination.

7  The career of the accused has benefited the public, who have inherited the resources, opportunities and civil freedoms provided in early British Columbia: for instance, the Canadian Pacific Railway, completed in 1885, the E&N Railway and the Esquimalt Graving Dock -- an enduring source of employment and positive legacy for energetic tradespeople of any and all races.

THE JUDGE'S RULING:

Mr. Trutch is guilty of being “controversial”. He stands accused and of necessity is convicted of being a colonial official in a then-colony, and afterwards an official in the new province of BC within the Confederation of Canada. He was a product of and shaper of his time.

In 1906 when the Trutch family property (named “Fairfield”) was subdivided, Trutch Street was named after Mr. (by then Sir Joseph) Trutch. The district of Fairfield, plus Fairfield Road were named after the property. It is the Court's finding that changing the name “Trutch Street” would logically mean also banning “Fairfield Road” and would lead to the banning of the names of a great many roads in BC's capital, such as Gonzales, McNeill, Wark, Douglas, Blanshard, Quadra, Cook, Vancouver, Pemberton ... all named for early explorers and colonial province-builders. 

The Court finds that nothing it says today can change the fact of a Fairfield estate having existed, a life-style having existed, and a parliamentary democracy having emerged from a British colony due partly to the exertions of Lieutenant-Governor Trutch and his colleagues.

It is the finding of the Court that there is no public benefit in denying the history of a heritage neighbourhood as recognized in street names, or denying the historic transformation of a jurisdiction from a primitocracy to a democracy to a victimocracy over a space of 170 years

SENTENCE: SUSPENDED.

Is a New Class of "Untouchables" Being Created?

Premier John Horgan of B.C. is suggesting that people who receive COVID vaccines will be rewarded with a certain “flexibility” not available to those who don't choose vaccination. He is “not prepared to speculate” on what limits to civil rights will be placed on the latter.

If there are limits at all as regards access to services, housing, employment and movement, it will create two classes of British Columbians: those with full rights and those without. Government-led ostracism of some will lead to full social ostracism, and a class of Untouchables will be created. A lot of very lonely people will be wandering around, shunned by neighbours. At a time when people are concerned about “marginalization”, Premier Horgan is proposing to create a new marginalized class. Marginalization on the basis of health choices is no better than that on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender identity and so on.

“Security of the person” under the Canadian Constitution includes freedom to choose what substances will be inserted into our bodies. Some people would consider no right more fundamental than that.

We also have the right, under the Personal Information Protection Act, to keep health information private. No one has the right to force anyone else to reveal whether they've been vaccinated or not: this is privileged information.

The Untouchables, under Horgan's proposed policy, will not have the same civil rights as everyone else, despite the fact that the cornerstone of civil rights in Canada is equality.

Where will those who avail themselves of their right to make their own health choices be put when they are barred from social life and public spaces, from earning an income, paying rent and shopping for food? Where will they be housed? In re-education camps?

Once we get post-COVID, let's change the lexicon

Once we've inoculated COVID away

there'll be no need for certain words to stay

Let's stop talking of “isolation”,

“plexiglass”, “meters” and “vaccination”

Don't say “lockdown” or mention a mask,

and whether you're vaccinated I won't ask

Don't say “challenged”, don't say “bubble”,

all reference to “distance” reminds us of trouble

Stop saying “tunnel”, with light at the end of,

or planks or curves we flattened the bend of

Don't say “essential” of services or workers,

or visitors, travel, or virtual shirkers

Don't say “needle” or even “arm”,

it reminds us of horror, it causes alarm

Doctors, don't say “herd immunity”

and talk of “respirators” with impunity

To skip all reference would be wiser,

to Moderna, Astrazeneca and Pfizer

When we hear “pivot”, “variant” and “surge”

covering our ears becomes an overwhelming urge

But if COVID ever ends, these words will melt away,

we'll choose other language, having other things to say

Maybe something eloquent, not said in rhyme,

we can change that too, in another place and … hour

The Cat in a Spat Comes Back

“Angry Cat” was in 2021 accused of terrorizing Ottawa – by going outdoors. Only an indoor cat is a respectable Canadian fur-baby, he was told, which made him howl so loudly that neighbourhood pit-bulls ran for cover. “You humans get to choose pronouns, and I can't even choose a better noun than 'fur-baby',” he asked. Exhibiting leash-hesitancy, he is accused of not caring about the health of fellow Canadians. At this, he spits and hisses as strenuously as a Member of the Opposition in the House of Commons -- but the Member of this Paw-liament doesn't do apologies. “Never explain,” is his motto, “let the fur fly where it will”. 

His human defends this angry black cat vigorously: “That's no off-leash stray, that's my Service Cat” she/he says. “Who are you to denigrate him? To denigrate means to 'blacken' someone, but he's already a black cat,” she points out, “and don't Black Lives Matter any more? And what about people experiencing disability, like me? Do we matter, we marginalized bi-polar neuro-variant PTSD-sufferers with agoraphobia? I can't go out without my Service Cat. I'm too vulnerable.” (Their voice trembles and tears trickle.)

A class action suit has been initiated by fellow Humans Dependent on Service Animals. Legal fees are high, but the Cat Liberation allyship has raised money along with hackles – just enough, by a whisker. The whole flapdoodle will be heard in court as soon as Angry Cat next butts his head through the flap of his cat-door, sharp of tongue. 

“What do you think I am, an elderly human imprisoned in solitary confinement in a long-term care home," he asks? "Cats have a history of freedom and a genetic Right To Roam."

On the other side of the country, cougars padding secretively through Vancouver's Stanley Park watch the debate carefully although, having that laid-back west coast attitude, they prefer the Silent Prowl to the Angry Growl.

What does it mean when normality triggers panic attacks?

Unilever, producer of skin and body care products, has announced that it will no longer market any look or form of body health as "normal". Some consumers, they explain, feel threatened and excluded by the concept of normality. There is henceforth no "normality" standard in hygiene, skin health, general health, or body weight. 

Although in the sales business the customer is considered right, it seems ironic that "normality" would feel threatening. The word was not originally value-laden, since it derives from "norm" as used in geometry and draughting tools (the carpenter's square). The norm stood at right angles, and in that sense was standard, since a right angle is always going to be the same: 90 degrees.

 

Teacher training colleges used to be called Normal School because they aimed to keep to a standard or norm of learning and achievement. Now, even hair can't be normal. Maybe they should market "GoldenLocks" -- not too dry or oily, or hot or cold, but "just right".

It seems odd that the level or average state from which normality is inferred should seem threatening. It feels more threatening to fail to measure standard norms and patterns. Would a certain level of chaos not ensue, if your 90 degrees was different from my 90 degrees?

Yet some groups say they feel sub-standard in the face of normality, because it's normal. These people even, they testify, have panic attacks just from hearing the word. How paradoxical that "panic disorder" is triggered by feeling there might be too much order. 

                                                                                                                                 I'm not dry or oily ...

 

Insensitivity Training

Some people could use some Insensitivity Training. Their sensitivities are a hazard to themselves and others. Not only do people with Multiple Sensitivities Disorder exhibit a huge range of symptoms, but the symptoms are contagious. Sensitivity to remarks about race, ethnicity, skin colour, gender identity, body weight and dis-ableism are catching. The afflicted suffer from self-appointed allyship with other Sensitive People and from an overwhelming urge to lodge Human Rights Complaints against anyone rational. Politicians and people in professional careers are particularly at risk from the Hypersensitiviy Disorder complaint industry.

Recognizing the threat which those with Hypersensitivity Disorder pose to themselves and others, the Government is funding an Institute For Insensitivity Training (IFIT) to help them get over their disorder.

The first graduates have shared positive experiences with the media:

"What a relief this program is," says one client. "My sensitivities were driving me crazy, but I've learned tools for becoming less of a snowflake and more of a hailstone."

"Yes," agreed another graduate, "I feel strong and bullet-like, and my career has taken off. At least, I'm about to think of maybe looking into working, and one day going off disability allowance."

"I'm thinking of going out without my publicly-funded Service Animal," said another client. "I'll wait for a good day, when my PTSD isn't flaring up and my horoscope doesn't show a Trigger-Forecast."

Some public figures (those fined for Insensitive Remarks Against Colleagues, Students, and Total Strangers) are cautiously optimistic about this program.

Others however object to IFIT as yet another example of privileged racialism. "We must continue to incentivize sensitivity," they argue, "if we want to reverse colonialist de-centering of the marginalized and the disproportionate promotion of level-headed, robust people to positions of responsibility."

Feminism and Free Speech on International Women's Day

What are you doing for International Women's Day this year?

Same as every year: being a woman.

But what is a woman? Is it about body parts?

Yes. (And mind parts.)

What do you mean “yes”?

I guess if “No Means No”, then Yes Means Yes.

But if it's about body parts, what about men who identify as women?

They aren't women, they're men experimenting with “identity”.

But they identify as women, they choose the female gender. 

I don't care if they identify as hippopotami, that doesn't make them hippopotami.

That sounds trans-phobic. 

I'm not saying they can't say how they feel.

What about hate?

(???) I'm against it. 

What about J.K. Rowling's attack on trans-folk?

Keeping them out of women's washrooms isn't “attacking” them. Stopping them from saying their piece would be attacking them, but they can and do say their piece.

You're just being triggering.

Indeed. Trigger warning: unsafe space ahead. It's called private thoughts.

SOME FEMINISTS WHO FOUGHT FOR OUR RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Nellie McClung -- Canadian novelist, columnist, MLA, reformer and delegate to the League of Nations

Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes -- persecuted by governments and churches for spreading information to women about birth control

Many brave women in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East today -- ditto

Catherine Dawson Scott -- launched PEN International in 1921 for the protection of writers everywhere

Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- wrote The Woman's Bible, and said "... in the sunset of life … I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear".

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

It is a mistake for feminists to assume, in contrast to these free-speaking thinkers, that speech must be censored because some women (black, indigenous, queer or otherwise called "marginalized") must be protected from ideas and open discussion. In fact, women have always been at the centre of the world. In Atlantic Monthly in 1864, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "women are the real architects of society". Ironically, some  today are being de-platformed by Critical Social Justice Theory. Far from marginalized, women actually made the world -- check out some examples of (centralized) women here: 

https://canadianteachermagazine.com/2020/10/01/who-is-marginalized/

The religious authorities of (philosopher-mathematician) Hypatia's day, they who felt it their mandate to control the speech of others ("nailing their tongues to the floor" as Antigone called it), had a gang of illiterate monks murder Hypatia in Alexandria, Egypt, in 415 AD. Her ideas were considered dangerous, evil, wrong-headed. Such judgements against open discussion need to be resisted repeatedly, since no era, including ours, is free of them.

For Hypatia's story as a dialogue, go to: 

“The Life and Death of Hypatia of Alexandria”, Sundial Magazine, January 2021. https://sites.google.com/view/sundial-magazine/curios/the-life-and-death-of-hypatia?authuser=0

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Six Books Down -- How many more to go?

According to Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company which publishes Dr. Seuss's rhyming punning uniquely eccentrically illustrated stories, some of them "center White-ness and White supremacy". So they've got to go (which to many a reader means they've got to be collected, as is usual for banned books. Thank you, censors!) Yet the assault on free speech is ominous. Which title's next? Which writer's next? Once Author is silenced, Reader is left holding the empty book bag. Will the world really be better without Dr. Seuss?

Horton heard nothing, and neither will you,

you won't see any Thing, neither One nor Two,

you won't go anywhere, oh me, oh my, oh no,

some thoughts you think might a Grinch-heart shrink,

and how you'd run a zoo, no one will ever know

When Mother gets home keep your gaze down low,

you had some funny fun with that odd cat you know,

but now's not the time for green eggs or ham,

nor fish one or two nor others red or blue,

or foxes in sockses or creatures named Sam

Cindy Lou Who's but a blond upstart,

she's so supremely White that to drop her would be smart,

the Lorax too's a loser, forget he ever spoke,

let your thoughts go to sleep and you can call yourself woke

The Owl and the Pussy-cat Sail the Censorship Sea

Free-lance writers have become aware that in the present political climate not everyone is welcome to submit work to publishers. Is being marginalized, racialized, POC, trans or disabled now a pre-requisite? Would an author like Edward Lear get anywhere today?

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

   In a leaky rainbow boat,

They took some honey and manuscripts

  Wrapped up like a package of hope.

The Owl looked up to the stars above

  And sang to a small guitar, 

"Oh stories and novels and lyrics and verse,

  What wonderful stories you are,

      You are,

What wonderful stories you are."

Pussy said to the owl "you elegant fowl,

  How charmingly sweet is your song,

Oh let us be published, too long we've been silenced

  by people who say we think Wrong." 

So they sailed away for a year and a day

  To the land where the Wrong-Tree grows,

And there in the wood a publisher stood

  And sternly wrinkled their nose,

      Their nose,

They sternly wrinkled their nose.

"Dear They, are you willing to read without killing

   The words of our cat-and-owl tale?"

"I'm not," said Them, "and your allyship's wrong,

   So back whence you came you must sail."

So they sailed away and self--published next day,

  Writing in freedom from fear,

Uncensored at last on the edge of the sands

  They danced with their pens in their hands,

      Their hands,

They danced with their pens in their hands.

Libraries abandon Freedom To Read, embrace Freedom To Ban

The Little Madhouse on the Prairie

How ironic that, as Freedom To Read Week winds up in Canada, and Read Across America Day is being celebrated in the U.S., libraries are celebrating by censoring children's literature. Even old favourites like Laura Ingalls Wilder aren't immune: because some groups didn't like her “portrayals of Native Americans” the American Library Association removed her name in 2018 from its lifetime achievement award list.

Meanwhile, there have been calls to “Burn Babar” (that terrible racist white-supremacist elephant), and six Dr. Seuss titles have just been de-published by their own publisher, Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The six books in question “align with Orientalism”, says the company. Whatever Orientalism may be, we know censorship when we see it, and see it selectively applied: “... because the majority of characters in Dr. Seuss books are White, his works ... center Whiteness and White supremacy”, says the publisher, without clarifying whether books with black characters center Black supremacy, and align with Occidentalism. 

Dr. Seuss books are language-teaching, literacy-inducing open-hearted comic rhymes of tolerance and universalism, presenting these things decades before the present “equity” movement of social justice warriors had even got started. 

Now, Horton Hears a “Who on Earth is running the libraries these days?” Certainly not anyone who values freedom of speech. Once banned, Will the Cat In the Hat Ever Come Back? 

Jab-berwockying our way around the pandemic

There's a lot of jabbering going on about the various COVID vaccines, in the sense both of  jabber on all sides, and of feeling threatened by a Jabberwocky monster of a vaccine -- "Jabberwocky" as in Lewis Carroll's entertaining poem within his Through the Looking-Glass, 1871. For some folks, this Jab is a beast to avoid.

Some people don't trust vaccines, never get 'flu shots and don't intend to get a corona jab -- at which point some commentators accuse them of being mass murderers. What the accusers need to remember is that we have certain Constitutional rights in this country, such as the right to Security of the Person and the right to Freedom of Speech -- meaning freedom to discuss scientific information, opinions around health, and personal choices. 

Not all vaccines are equal in character, efficacy, or safety. The COVID ones were designed in a hurry. It is the job of media to convey information about them to the lay person who wishes to decide as an individual whether to receive what is really something of a shot in the dark. Disconcertingly, the magazine of one prominant seniors' organization has attacked other media outlets for presenting all aspects of the debate and the science.

The word "vaccine" comes from "vacca", cow, because the original smallpox vaccine came from bovine (cow) viruses, and subsequent disease vaccines kept the same name. Similarly, the word inoculate means to inject the bud (or "eye", hence "ocular") of a virus into the body of a patient. How surprising is it that some people are leery of this impregnation, this invasion by a separate body? A jabberwock-ic threat indeed, to those who value "security of the person". What could be more personal than other people putting things into your body? What, if you didn't invite it, more like an assault?

It's enough to make some folks "frumious" -- to quote Carroll again -- and pretty "mimsy" about "galumphing" off to any clinic.

Some people think anything is preferable to a chance of catching this cruel sinister COVID virus, and they are perfectly entitled to think that. They have good reasons for their position. What they should not do (often with the best of healthcare-provider intentions) is bully and chivvy others into thinking the same, if others decide differently.

We have freedom to marry whom we like, smoke what we like, we have voting rights, reproductive rights, medically assisted dying rights and so on … but surely the most fundamental of all is the right to dominion over our own bodies. The final decision about what goes into them, is ours.

Seniors' organizations are particularly keen on chivvying seniors into taking the COVID jab. Don't bother your little grey heads with all that anti-science vaccine hesitancy, they're saying. But actually the science is all over the place as regards vaccine research, and plenty of seniors are quite capable of doing their own research.

This is the "Boomer" generation, practised fact-finders, the folks who invented critical thinking, doing-your-own-thing and not necessarily believing what "the establishment" says. We're still the same cussed folks we've always been, who think the concept of bodily integrity is important. 

Right now we only have slithy and uffish people waving "vorpal swords" (needles?) at us, but when the law starts to corrode our right to move freely about, to keep jobs and housing and go to the theatre without a "Vaccination Passport" -- then another kind of "shot" will be heard -- the one sent across the bow of anti-choice. Herd immunity may or may not be a possibility, but being herded is a definite hazard, and one which many will frumiously resist.