I write this as I fly west on Air Canada, to begin my Groovy West Coast Tour: Summer 2010. After being seated on the plane, I received a “free” copy of today’s Globe and Mail.

Mainstream media is never free for me.

Three articles stuck out for me, all having to do with Aboriginal rights and social status in Canada. Spoiler alert: I’m pissed off and the Globe is full of racist bullshit. I know, it’s no news flash.

One

Section A Editorial “Letting a monster go free”

The editorial is about Robert Picton, currently serving years in prison for 6 counts of second-degree murder, but suspected of killing at least 21 women over a period of years. It seems that in 1997 a woman was lured to his compound by him, and managed to escape by stabbing him (the Globe generously adds “in self-defence”) and in the course of escaping she lost three litres of blood and almost died herself. She and Picton were treated in the same hospital in Port Moody B.C. and he wasn’t charged by the Crown. With anything.

Why?

Because she wasn’t “credible”.

Feminists have heard this bullshit before many times. She had on a handcuff that Picton has used to try to restrain her still on one wrist when she was treated. The key that fit the handcuff to unlock it was in Picton’s possession. I’m not sure what more compelling physical evidence is required.

Oh right. She was a Native woman. And probably a sex worker. And perhaps a substance user.

Fucking hell fuck. The last time I checked, this is what systemic racism looks like.

Now that Picton has been safely convicted and demonized, the Globe has no problem saying that this was a very bad judgment call by the office of the Crown. Thanks for nothing, G & M.

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Tale of Two Summits by Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail

The best thing that ever happened to Huntsville was the G20 Summit.

Did you know that Tony Clement is the MP for the region including Huntsville?

Did you know that the Parry Sound (now Parry Sound-Muskoka) has flipped back and forth between the Liberals and the Conservatives before Clement won the riding by LESS THAN 100 VOTES in 2006, and by over 11,000 votes in 2008. Reference here. Yeah it’s wiki. The Harper minority governmentS sure have been good for Clement’s career.

MacGregor goes on to describe:

While they marched in the hundreds in Toronto this weekend to demand a full inquiry into the police conduct during the G20 that saw shops vandalized, police cars burned and more than 900 people – not all of them protesters – arrested, in Huntsville they were sitting down with their weeklyForester to read an open letter from Colonel Wayne Eyre, commander of CFB Petawawa’s 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group.

And if that wasn’t enough, they could go to the local radio station’s Web page and read similar words from outgoing Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino.

Wow. Talk about being blocked in by hegemony. When words of praise from the military, as well as the disgraced and scandal-ridden outgoing head of the OPP are words to be “proud” of, then we really are talking about two different worlds.

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Events of the past week have crystalized a number of feelings inside me, and rather than do another “Fuck Canada Day” post (see my post on July 1, 2009) I thought I’d do something that I’ve meant to do for a long time.

I seem to need containment these days, or my blogs will just be a long scream of inarticulate anger. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just doesn’t make very interesting reading.

Canada’s anthem.

Those of us born here are taught it in school. Those who come here from elsewhere learn it. Or else.  Those who are Aboriginal are probably offended by the whole thing. As is anyone who calls themselves an ally.

O Canada, our home and native land

Many people have taken this line to pieces, most popularly, “our home ON native land”. But I still have a problem with this. Who is “our”? Anglos? The broader category “white folks”? Are white folks still the centre of the fucking universe? For fuck’s sake. And “home”, such a loaded term. Ward Churchill talked about colonization in a very personal way. Someone comes to your house, sits down and then says “Hey I live here now. Get the fuck out.” And when you protest you’re either taken out of your home, or killed. Or both.

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Sunday June 27. Photo by Ariel Estulin

Queen and Spadina: protestors blocked in

VIDEO: Toronto Police Attack Peaceful Protesters and Journalists at G20 Protests by Brandon Jourdan

VIDEO: Saturday June 26: Unarmed protestors attacked by police

VIDEO: Eighteen-year-old detainee recounts experience of being held inside G8/20 police cage for 26 hours by Tor Sandberg

Photo above by Jonas Naimark

VIDEO Sunday June 28 Queen’s Park Protestors Attacked By Police, nowhere to go

VIDEO Police Open Fire on Protesters at the Eastern Ave Detention Centre

…….

And from the “OMG It Has to Be This Bad and Experienced By A Toronto Sun Reporter Personally Who Of Course is Also a White Guy For a Right Winger to Take It Seriously” files:

This Time, The Cops Were Out of Line, By Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun

…….

In other news, 25,000 marched. Nothing in the mainstream corporate news about this.

VIDEO: What the media ignored: 25,000 peacefully demonstrate against G20 policies in Toronto

……

The police out in full force

Prelude

I was born in Lachine, a suburb of Montreal in the province of Quebec. My family moved to west Etobicoke, Ontario in 1974 when I was 7 years old. I moved out when I was 20 years old, but it wasn’t until I was 23 that I moved downtown, where I’ve remained. For almost 20 years I lived within the boundaries of Bloor/Christie/St George and College, with a brief stint on Brunswick Avenue a few blocks north of Bloor. In 2007 I moved to Cabbagetown, east of Yonge for the first time. I fell in love with what’s known as West Riverdale, and I’m here to stay for a while.

This is my city. Especially the downtown. My various workplaces over the last 20 years, where I went to school (ah, OISE), my volunteer gigs, my credit union, all within this relatively small space in the larger city that I love so much.

Art, culture politics. In the late 1990s I read my written work for the first time in my life, to an audience as part of the Mayworks festival, at a venue on Church Street.

Why this preamble? Because today this was not my city. Today my city was taken over, today, I saw Toronto in a way that I have never seen it before, and it wasn’t good.

Saturday June 26, 2010

2pm

There are no streetcars running on my stretch of Carlton Street, so I walk to University Avenue. I pass Yonge Street and see my first set of police, standing around, not doing much, their riot helmuts dangling down one leg, and a large pouch strapped down their other leg. What’s in the pouch? Tear gas canisters? Extra rubber bullets? I will never know.

I arrive late to the march and rally, and join it in progress at University and College.

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