Famously Toppled - Captain Cook & Company

What do these people have in common?

Presidents Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ulysses Grant (also General, who defeated the Confederate Army), Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt (also famed conservationist), royals Queen Victoria, Queen Isabella, King Leopold II and James II, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes, writer Miguel Cervantes, and in Canada PM John A Macdonald, Captain James Cook, journalist Egerton Ryerson ...

All have had their statues torn down or defaced over recent months. This partial list does not include slave traders, but rather presidents, royals, explorers, entrepreneurs, writers, priests -- even Jesus had his statue beheaded in a church. (But that's not as bad as the way he is said to have met his real end.) Even a tribute to elk herds of Oregon was attacked! Even one for “pioneer women” of the U.S. No one is safe from some ideologue's wrath (there will always be one … possibly on a City Council near you.)

Some recipients of the topple-treatment are relatively obscure. Do most people have a clue who Alexander Baranov, Junipero Serra, Matthew Maury or Robert Milligan were? Ironically, they have become better known after de-platforming than they were before. Being knocked down gave them a new platform. 

So now we know: Alexander Baranov was a Russian merchant who led settlements in what became Alaska, and fought  the Tlingit tribes who massacred the Russian settlers. (His statue was in Sitka, Alaska.) Matthew F. Maury was an oceanographer, astronomer and officer in the Confederate Navy. Junipero Serra, Spanish Roman Catholic priest, founded missions in California, and Robert Milligan was a West Indian trader and sugar producer who founded London's international trading hub, the West India Docks on the Thames. Having their statues toppled brought these folks renewed recognition.

The winner though of anti-popularity-that-brings-fame, is Christopher Columbus, who receives the “Most Statues Toppled” prize. Scrawling on one, someone helpfully assured us that “all colonizers must die”. Die?? So much for the peace movement. Remember the "Peace & Love" 1960s, when peace and civil rights seemed to go together? (Silly '60s folk -- so un-woke.) 

The owner of a sports team, the Carolina Panthers (Jerry Richardson), was attacked because he “allegedly made sexist and racist remarks” (The Federalist). So he's possibly unpleasant -- but hopefully he doesn't have to die.  

De-platforming can be intersectional though. A Cherokee general in the Confederate Army was included, as was the conquistador who founded the State of New Mexico despite opposition to his toppling from the American Hispanic community.  Certain contemporary artists who create the memorials also have a problem with the toppling fad.

Everybody is hated by somebody. It's interesting though that if you've done something notable you get a statue, but it's only when the statue's knocked down that you know you've really "arrived".

Captain James Cook holding exploration and navigation tools -- implements of crime? Included on his ship Endeavour were great artists and scientist Joseph Banks, who collected 17,000 plant specimens for scientific study (1771)

Some stats from thefederalist.com: of 183 statue vandalizing incidents 177 led to no arrests; most monuments taken down have been removed by city officials after threats from protesters, some for their safety; the whereabouts of most of the rescued sculptures are now unknown.  

Where has the City of Victoria put John A. Macdonald?!

Celebrating British Columbia's 150th Birthday As a Province

Why are we British Columbians so self-effacing? On our sesquicentennial anniversary (July 20, 2021), were we hiding our lamp under a bigleaf maple? Maybe we'll celebrate the BC Day holiday on August 2nd, at least.

The colony of British Columbia joined Canada 150 years ago (July 20, 1871), extending the federation to the Pacific Ocean. A sesquicentennial (150^th anniversary) is a significant milestone – but there was no official provincial celebration of it in 2021. Yet there's much to celebrate: when Canada absorbed British Columbia (so named to distinguish it from American Columbia, lying on the lower part of the Columbia River) it gained a bonanza – a cornucopia of natural resources, fertile landscape, environmental diversity, hundreds of miles of coastline and a population of hardworking, largely educated and feisty citizens descended from adventurous independent-minded explorers and settlers. 

Sometimes we seem to act as if the bonanza (based on the word “bonus” -- good) was more like a “malanza” (based on “malus” -- bad). We sink into a sea of dispute. We fling extremist terms like “genocide” into the conversation (although no “genus” has been killed, unless perhaps before recorded history when waves of “first peoples” arrived to eradicate even earlier peoples, through warfare and slavery). 

Of course, July 2021 is not a good moment for celebration, as we watch large tracks of BC burn in wildfires. People poised to flee homes and farms with whatever they can cram into their vehicles are not thinking about having a party. And many British Columbians are participating in the death struggle for the province's last precious old growth forest, logged almost to extinction. Many are worrying about global warming, and maybe with a global threat bearing down, a local celebration gets overshadowed. We've forgotten how to party anyway, only just emerging from the sixteen-month COVID lockdown. Now we're plagued by an infection of ethnic dispute. A lockdown seems to have been a petri dish for festering resentments between identity groups.

In 1871, BC's governance and finances were stabilized within the Dominion of Canada, yet 150 years later many people wish to de-stabilize, to fracture the province into separate “nations”. One thing history has taught us is that a nation can only have one government, otherwise it is merely a collection of feuding tribes. Some may be aiming for a kind of freedom for their identity group, but there is no freedom in the Politics of Resentment, and we are weary of resentment rhetoric, of competing visions of history, of “my trauma is bigger than your trauma”. It leads to what the media call “public acts of racism”, and it leaves us too disheartened even to celebrate the birth of our province. That is historically sad. 

Since provincial leaders seemed to have felt it unseemly to seem happy on our 150^th birthday, we have to commit Private Acts of Celebration. We British Columbians are good at performing private acts -- so let's have a Happy BC Day on August 2nd.

A Vancouver Island View

.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the frown

Remember Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks, which raised silliness to new heights of art? “Silly” means “innocent, simple, foolish, imprudent”, from Old English and Old German “seely” and “saeli”, which mean luck and happiness. During anxieties around wars and pandemics we need a Ministry of Silly Jokes. We need a Humour Boot Camp in which “these boots are made for silly walking”.

Because humans are built for laughter it's contagious: someone starts, another joins in, and soon everyone's doing it. Obviously there's some evolutionary advantage here, promoting social peace and mental health. The jolly news is that you can even do it at home alone, for private peace and health. Tell yourself a joke out loud and see whether you resist giggling. (Don't worry, no one's watching.)

Psychologists make serious studies of humour. There should be a special U.N. Institute for it. “He laughs at his own jokes” might seem like a put-down, but maybe he's a clown of genius. There should be a Nobel Prize for that. Jokes, jocosity and jests probably save more lives than mood medication does. They are mental vitamins.

Language seethes with inbuilt humour. Did we build it in, or is it one of the ways Nature keeps us evolving? Humour is pre-verbal, philosophical. Or maybe philosophy (“love of wisdom”) is laughable. How confusing. (Blame it on the scape-joke.)

It doesn't have to be a side-splitter, it could be a mere chuckle a day that keeps the Black Dog of depression away. We say “I had to laugh when …”: lucky you if you had to laugh. Sometimes you have to weep, but you can escape depression if you (drum-roll for the eye-roll ...) just o-pun your mind to silly ("seely") thinking.

    

(See also: https://justjests.blogspot.com)

.

Are we experiencing 'celebra-phobia' on BC's 150th birthday as a province?

To celebrate is to honour with ritual, also to praise and extol. Might there be such a thing as celebra-phobia? If so, British Columbians seem to have it, so reluctant are they to celebrate the anniversary of BC's graduation from a colony to a province of Canada exactly 150 years ago today.

Having been voted in 2021 by 20,000 polled folk from around the world as the world's best country (re. health, prosperity, opportunity, freedom, stable government etc.), Canada seems like a pretty good country to have become a province of. Yet British Columbians and their leaders decline to make an occasion of marking it.

When Canada acquired BC in July 1871 it gained a bonanza – a cornucopia of natural resources, fertile landscape, environmental diversity, hundreds of miles of coastline and a population of hardworking, largely educated and feisty citizens descended from adventurous independent-minded explorers and settlers.

Sometimes we seem to act as if the bonanza (based on the word “bonus” -- good) was more like a “malanza” (based on “malus” -- bad). We sink into a sea of dispute. It's become fashionable to fling extremist terms like “genocide” into public conversation (although no “genus” has been killed in BC, unless perhaps before recorded history when waves of “first peoples” arrived to eradicate even earlier peoples, through warfare and slavery). Some might conclude that the introduction of 18^th century European “Enlightenment values” was an improvement: maybe there is something to celebrate.

Of course, July 2021 is not a good moment, when frightened and dismayed we watch large tracks of BC burn in wildfires. People poised to flee homes with whatever they can cram into their vehicles are not thinking about having a party. And many British Columbians are participating in the death struggle for the province's last precious old growth forest, logged almost to extinction. Many are worrying about global warming, and maybe with a global threat bearing down, a local celebration gets overshadowed.

We've forgotten how to party anyway, only just emerging from the sixteen-month COVID lockdown. Now we're plagued by an infection of ethnic dispute. A lockdown seems to have been a petri dish for festering resentments between identity groups.

In 1871, BC's governance was secured within Canada (the Constitution of which eventually decentralized provinces into something more like separate jurisdictions than many actual countries are), yet 150 years later many people wish to de-stabilize it, to fracture the province into separate “nations”. One thing history has taught us is that a nation can only have one government, otherwise it is merely a collection of feuding tribes. Some may be aiming for a kind of freedom for their identity group, but there is no freedom in the Politics of Resentment, and we are weary of resentment rhetoric, of competing visions of history, of “my trauma is bigger than your trauma”. It leads to what the media call “public acts of racism”, and it leaves us too disheartened even to celebrate the birth of our province. That is historically sad.

With no "official" ceremony then, we must commit Private Acts of Celebration. We British Columbians are good at performing private acts even though we have a Canadian way of balancing them with a “live-and-let-live” attitude.

Here are some acts with which to celebrate BC every day: 

Raise a glass of wine (or whatever you drink), sit on a beach, a lakeside, or under a native tree, communing with whatever native birds are around, and gaze at the marvel of our landscape. Or walk in it, taking photos to leave your great-grandchildren: “Images of BC At Age 150”. 

Visit a gallery and contemplate art by past and current painters. Read a BC poet ... and also consider the words of two non-BC poets which come to mind in our fractured times. When W. B. Yeats wrote “the centre cannot hold / ... the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity”, he could have been foreseeing some aspects of contemporary Canada.

On the other hand we could just as well say with Robert Louis Stevenson: “the world is so full of a number of things / I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings”. Yes: let's go with that one, as we celebrate the milestone of BC's 150th birthday.

.

SMART is the Scariest Word

Nothing should strike fear in our hearts like the adjective “smart”. In the virtual world it describes things and situations which we permit when we are being exceedingly stupid. 

Apart from clever, “smart” used to mean well-dressed; now the smart-tech revolution has dressed a somnolent public in a clown suit. (Probably the healthiest thing to do is laugh.)

The “smart” things accumulate in our lives as one cancerous mass impairing freedom and privacy public and personal. First came the smart phone, which tracks and stalks us and spills personal data to all and sundry; then the smart car and house (run by robots much cleverer than us, with their impenetrably artificial intelligence) in the smart city, where residents are trapped by nets of surveillance. Now it's “smart borders and airports” to prevent free movement from one country to another without “proof of vaccination”. Oh great: we've transformed the world into a series of armed camps with borders bristling with police. We need to download an app to prove our vaccination. What next “proof” will be demanded, with the inevitability of function-creep?

Smart apps groom us for stupidity. How stupid, how over-policed, is the community that consents to apps that outwit self-interest? It's not a fashionable question, in a time of pandemics, but there always will be pandemics, and the question might be worth asking if we don't also want an epidemic of totalitarian social control.

See "Haunted House", 

.

The ALT-Olympics 2022

Because the 2022 Olympic Games cannot be safely held during a pandemic, officials are replacing them with olympian competitions already going on, world-wide. Events include the Vaccine Race (first prize to the drug company selling the most product), the Rat Race (winner is the country breeding the most rats for testing the products on), and the Race Race (winner is the country with the most "racialized" people). 

The Race Race will be hotly contested and will end with the final Marginalization Marathon at which the nation with the most marginalized groups in its rainbow wins gold.

Tickets are selling out for the "Icy Insult Hurl", which includes events in Hurling Accusations and Hurling Epithets (with extra points for teams who know what an epithet is).

Well-attended will be the ever-popular Statue Toppling Competition, at which nations compete to see who can toss the most historic figures into a snowy ravine in the shortest length of time. 

The Hundred-Thousand Meter Dash-Cam Ski Race will be won by the nation whose police surveillance goes the furthest the fastest. The Games will wind up with a Grand Intersectionality Finale, at which the audience will see who had "the most skin in the game" -- of the right colours.

The Arts won't be left out of this year's Winter Games. Dance-skating events will feature music by top bands -- The Reasonable Asks, The Fungible Tokenisms, and The Rage-Inducers.

Passes are purchasable only through the Smart Olympic Passport App. Or, you could give the whole thing a pass, and enjoy a winter hibernation.

There's a nap for that

 

Dem bones, dem bones -- and dem lies, dem lies

Two archaeologists who work in the area of underground radar surveying have written an interesting response to inflammatory non-fact-checked media reports of a "mass grave" found at a residential school in Kamloops, BC. See excerpts below from their article about these bones of contention (the contention being that these reports contain a lot of false "news": it seems that in media outlets we had thought were professional and mainstream, the backbone is connected to the TALE bone. 

This has proven dangerous, in that several churches have been burnt down as a result (in fire season!), and the culture-war temperature has risen dramatically.

"Despite sensationalized media coverage, there are reasons for skepticism concerning recent claims made of the “discovery” of unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools. Many experts are aware of discrepancies in these stories, but given a media climate that seems increasingly like mass hysteria, are reluctant to comment publicly. On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc published an article on their website stating that the remains of 215 children were “found” through the use of “a ground penetrating radar specialist.” The name of the company or specialist who performed the survey work was not specified, and few other details were included in the brief report, other than to stress that it was only 'preliminary findings.'

In spite of the preliminary and vague nature of the report, it immediately sparked lurid and sensationalized headlines worldwide, which went beyond anything contained in the press release. The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, The Toronto Star, and numerous other media outlets all ran stories claiming that a “mass grave” had been discovered, a term never used in the report. The Times ran the headline “‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada,” while the Toronto Star printed the headline 'Mass impact from discovery of mass grave.' ...

As archaeologists who have worked with ground-penetrating radar, we knew immediately that the media’s claims went far beyond the evidence, as ground-penetrating radar is quite limited in what it can reveal beneath the earth. … A little common sense and basic knowledge would have alerted anyone to the fact that the “mass grave” claim was highly improbable. A mass grave implies a single catastrophic event, in which all the dead were killed at the same time, and then unceremoniously dumped into a single pit and covered up. …

Ground-penetrating radar cannot determine the existence of a mass grave; although it can help determine the probable existence of individual graves by locating the suspected outlines of shafts and (depending on the exact technology used) possible coffin remains. But it cannot in any case determine the age, ethnicity, or cause of death, or how old the gravesites are. It was therefore obvious to us that the media headlines about a “mass grave” were false, a fact that was soon confirmed by the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir.

… the confirmation that there was no mass grave should have prompted a media reckoning over false and inflammatory coverage, but did nothing of sort. To date, the New York Times and other media, including the Toronto Star, have not issued corrections to their initial false reporting. … The Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc press release made plain that the burial site had actually already been known, but since it had not been maintained it was half-forgotten until the recent survey (a fact also ignored in most of the media coverage). The actual details then are not nearly as sensational as the false media headlines made it out to be, headlines which sparked even more extreme social media commentary, and the burning to the ground of at least five churches. …

The only means to determine the age of human remains is to excavate them and examine the bones. But this, according to all publicly released information, has not been done. So how then can Casimir claim to know that the remains of a three-year old are under the ground? Certainly ground-penetrating radar cannot determine such details. Curiously, the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc have declined to respond to media inquires about such details, or even to release the name of the private company that did the radar survey. Given the school’s long history (it was founded in 1890 and remained in operation until at least the late 1960s), it is entirely possible that the cemetery uncovered was used at an earlier date as a community cemetery, and that some of the graves may not be students.

But in any case, there is no real mystery over what the cause of death was in the majority of cases at residential schools. It is well-established that influenza and tuberculosis were responsible for the majority. … There is also the unacknowledged irony of much of the media trying to collectively blame all Canadians today for past pandemics and infectious disease outbreaks (even though most Canadians weren’t even alive at the time), while insisting that no one should be blamed for covid-19 (even if it originated from a lab leak). This obvious contradiction further highlights that much of the commentary on residential school graves are motivated by something other than a commitment to uncovering the facts. Even more telling is the complete absence of any acknowledgement that the infant mortality rate in Canada throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century was extremely high for children of all backgrounds. ...

Shortly after the Kamloops story, on June 24 in Saskatchewan the Cowessess First Nation held a press conference to claim that they had “found” 751 unmarked graves near the site of a former residential school, prompting similar lurid and patently false media stories across Canada and beyond. This time, the survey took place on the grounds of an actual cemetery, one that has been in use for well over a century, and which is still maintained as a cemetery today. In other words, this supposedly shocking discovery was actually nothing of the short — the survey literally found graves in a graveyard ... with no connection to any residential school. 

All subsequent residential school grave stories have followed a similar pattern: a sensational press conference announcing the “discovery” of graves through a ground-penetrating radar survey (technology which cannot distinguish between a child or adult grave) at sites that were already known cemeteries (and therefore contain plenty of adult graves). Any town or city in Canada, however, could do the exact same thing with ground-penetrating radar at unmarked cemetery sites. ...

The Population Reference Bureau estimated that as of 2015 approximately 108.2 billion people had been born in the history of the world, of which (as of 2015) 7.4 billion were alive. This means there are estimated 100.8 billion people who have died in Earth’s history, or put another way, the dead outnumber the living by more than 14 to 1. In Canada’s context, given our current population of over 38 million, even a conservative estimate would be that there are well over 50 million dead people buried somewhere in Canada (a number that takes into consideration cremation). … If we are really serious about surveying old graveyards, the final tally of bodies to be found in Canada will run into the tens of millions, including huge numbers of children’s remains (the vast majority of which will not be Indigenous).

Of course, many of the people commentating the loudest on historic graveyards aren’t actually interested in unearthing the past. They’re interested in pitting people against each other in the present."

*The authors are two archaeologists with experience working with ground-penetrating radar, including at burial grounds.

See the full article at: https://medium.com/@mountains95/a-skeptical-analysis