I wrote this on July 1, The residential school system, which operated from to , separated aboriginal children from their parents, and sequestered them in schools run by the Catholic Church or Canadian government. The aim was the forcible assimilation of indigenous peoples and the extermination of their cultures. Many children were subjected to abuse, rape, malnutrition, and unsanitary living conditions.
Searches are underway at other sites and it is expected that more bodies will be found. The city of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, has announced it will cancel upcoming Canada Day festivities.
Canada Day is an annual fete to honor the birth of the country. Canadians have been led to believe by the people who foster mindless patriotism that their country stands for peace, democracy, equality, and freedom. This is eye wash. A Canada that embraced the commitments of Norman Bethune, a talented surgeon who fought fascism in Spain, helped overcome feudalism and foreign tyranny in China, and pioneered the fight for universal healthcare in Canada, might provide a model of a world that humanity could look forward to, in contrast to a Canada that hammers out arms deals with medieval tyrannies, supports a racist settler state in the Levant, and whose military helps enforce the international dictatorship of the USA.
Diderot once remarked that humanity would never be free until the last monarch was strangled with the entrails of the last cleric, which may sound anachronistic, considering that Europe was delivered from the oppressions of aristocracy at the end of World War I, or soon after.
How could ostensibly democracy-loving Canada be so committed to such vigorously anti-democratic allies? To repeat: Ottawa plans to deepen its relationship with these vampires, not eschew them as affronts to humanity, as one might expect a country would which professes to be deeply devoted to progressive humanitarian values. And in Canada, as in all countries where wealthy investors, banks and corporations use their wealth to dominate politics and the state, the decisive organizing principle of the society is not peace-keeping, or democracy, or equality, or religious tolerance, but what matters to banks, wealthy investors, and major corporations: profits.
