Dispatch from the Front Line: A reckoning with the past
Also, on private parks, and swallowing the three-eyed fish
We like to start our dispatches with something pithy or casual, but it's been a heavy week. The discovery of what appears to be a burial site containing the bodies of more than 200 children at the site of a former residential school in B.C. has shaken Canadians. Of course it has. There are two outrages here — the outrageous reality of the generations of combined abuses inflicted on Indigenous Canadians, of which the residential school system was but a part. Also, the outrage that most Canadians are only learning about this now.
Your Line editors are not experts on Indigenous affairs or history, but we dare say we're better read than most on Canadian history in a general sense. We do not say this in any way with snark or derision, but to our fellow Canadians — this should not be surprising to you. The Catholics who ran most of these schools under the sanction of the state had a long history of trying to save souls at the expense of the bodies in which they inhabited. Religious institutions were slow to recognize and stop the spread of disease in their own institutions. Most disturbingly, their ideology glorified, even sanctified, physical suffering. It still does.
Mass graves have been uncovered in Ireland, at the site of Catholic-run homes once devoted to the care of unwed mothers and children. "Saint" Mother Teresa's hospitals in India were altars to the needless suffering of impoverished people who could not afford to die in peace and dignity. Her hospitals were dirty, poorly run facilities where children were reportedly tied to beds, and terminal patients were given little more than aspirin.
One of the great lessons of history that we consistently fail to accept is that many of our most evil actions are rooted not in self-evidently evil impulses, but rather in our desire to "save" others. Hubris and paternalism, these are the sins we cannot seem to shake. Residential schools, Catholic or otherwise, were the disastrous result of marrying a poisonous and righteous ideology with the authority and resources of a centralized state.
The Truth and Reconciliation report laid out much of this in detail in its final report in 2015, which also spelled out that graves like the ones we're now mourning in Kamloops are likely to be far more prevalent and common than we now understand. Everyone here deserves the truth.
We at The Line have a great respect for the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, which has been not only graceful in revealing its terrible discovery, but also very careful. The band has noted that the ground-penetrating radar used to unearth its discovery of more than 200 probable grave sites is not perfectly accurate. The discovery is preliminary. The band has also been cautious in its use of language.
The band has also said it has met with a UN special rapporteur. This is all appropriate. We need to understand how many bodies are buried at these sites, and how the children there died. Given the historic involvement of the RCMP in the residential schools effort, as much of this investigation as possible should be conducted by independent agents. If the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc demand it, the remains should be repatriated. Compensation is in order; and it is past time the Catholic church take full responsibility for its involvement by, at the very least, releasing all remaining records for these sites. We at The Line don't think it would be inappropriate for the faith’s tax-exempt status to be revoked in this country if it declines to cooperate with this, at least.
Finally, we should be giving more funding to searches into other potential grave sites.
Re-appraisals of history — and the national self-perception that accompanies that process — is nothing new, and is a healthy, natural part of any democracy. From this, new narratives that bind us as a society, and help us to understand ourselves better as a nation, can emerge. Canada is a country that has accomplished a tremendous amount of good, at home and abroad, that should be celebrated. But any sustained national effort and will to do better is going to depend on measured and fair understanding of what our history is. This doesn't just mean contextualizing the good with the bad — it will mean in many cases educating Canadians about the good and bad, because they know damn little of either.
This will be the work of generations. But we can do some things quickly. It is outrageous that dozens of Indigenous communities still don't have water. As we begin the task of learning our true history, we can get at least this much right in the present.
For a start, clean up the water.
Back to the “nature is healing” trope, Twitter was a-buzz this week with an epic op-ed ratio the likes of which we have not seen since the Before Times. National Post columnist Jesse Kline wrote a confused piece about privatizing parks, or so we think?
In all honesty, the piece was poorly argued and discursive. Kline rambled on about several topics, from raging against minimum wage teenagers overseeing splash pools, to complaints about rabbit infestations, and the fact that city parks are where dogs urinate. There’s even a de facto defence of the homeless camps taking over many urban public spaces, of late, if you care to look. There are hints of an intriguing idea at several spots in this thing, but it’s the kind of submission that really ought to have been sent back to the writer for a re-hash. We can’t be too hard on Kline, here. Every writer bashes out a miss on occasion. This week, it was Kline’s occasion.
However, it did get us at The Line thinking about private parks. If Kline were looking for a model to cite, well, one of your Line editors lives in a city with many such examples. Calgary has several suburban communities built around gated private lake parks that are only accessible to resident homeowners or their guests. The lakes offer swimming, boating, and fishing in the summer. When the water freezes over, they become havens of winter recreation, including skating, snowshoeing and even ice fishing — all within steps of the suburban homestead. Those who choose to live in these communities are required to pay a mandatory annual fee, usually around $300 per year, for facility upkeep.
Calgarians maintain an uncomfortable relationship with these communities, however. Those living in lake-less suburbs often deride the “fake lake” neighbourhoods as either elitist or déclassé, and sometimes both. In addition to the usual downtown vs. suburb mutual disdain, there’s a sense that it is inherently wrong to gate a park this way. That is anathema to the kind of classless Canadian society that we pretend to occupy. Further, lakes ought to be considered a public amenity.
This critique is mostly rooted in unacknowledged resentment, in our opinion. These suburban communities didn’t abscond with natural water beds. All of these lakes are dug out of the ground, and filled with water at the expense of the communities that pay for their upkeep. If there is nothing morally objectionable about a private pool in a condo development, then there ought not to be anything inherently wrong with a private lake shared by a suburban community.
These amenities don’t detract from the city, and homeowners are required to pay property taxes in addition to their community association fees. Further, because these communities have real budgets to work with, the lake parks and their facilities are often active neighbourhood hubs, complete with recreation facilities and fitness classes; they hold regular events for local children, and provide volunteer opportunities. In other words, they foster real community involvement.
Even the allegation of elitism rings hollow. Most lake communities are located near the edges of the city, and are thus home to some of Calgary’s more affordable houses. Further, they are usually zoned for both high-density and low-density housing. It is not uncommon to see lake-side estate lots next to low-rise condo developments. Renters who choose to live here can also use the lakes as long as owners transfer their access privileges. In short, Calgary’s private parks offer an example of a model that works very well to provide amenities that no city on earth could affordably offer every suburban block.
That said, no one in Calgary would argue that this is the only good model, either. It’s only one way to structure public and semi-public space. The city is also home to some of the largest urban parks in the country, all totally open to the public. Calgary is rife with public playgrounds, splashpads, and green spaces. Community associations provide recreation facilities, but so does the city itself. Private organizations offering pools and gyms are also plentiful.
If you were looking for an example of a city with a mixed private-public park model in Canada, Calgary is it. And it is nothing like the hellhole Kline describes.
Lastly, like Mr. Burns eating the Three-Eyed Fish, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that he will stay in one of the rap … ahem … we mean, “quarantine hotels” upon return from an in-person G7 meeting later this month. These facilities are the absolute height of absurdist pandemic theatre. They exist only to inconvenience and, thus, discourage international travellers. And they have been provably ineffective at protecting the populace from concerning strains of COVID-19 variants brewing abroad. Quarantine hotels are also currently subject to a judicial challenge.
Props to Trudeau for setting a good example by obediently submitting to the the very stupid idea that he is imposing on everyone else, we suppose. Although we can’t help but note that a hotel in Ottawa is currently being set up for him and his delegation, as that is the city to which he will return, and no such hotel exists in that location at present. We also presume Trudeau will have the luxury of telling Sophie and the kids exactly where he is, and that he will also retain the privilege of being able to lock his door.
Nicholas Kadysh poured some necessary cold water on those who continue to think that our pandemic response is about "fairness" — of course it's not, as the rich countries are putting their needs first. Nor is it particularly about "equity," another buzzword of late, as anyone who's been watching things unfold would know. Fairness and equity are nice things to aspire to. But when the chips were down, they were forgotten awfully quick aside from the press releases and talking points.
Senator Paula Simons followed up with a swift kick to the prone body of Bill S-225, which would, as the good senator explains, "compel designated digital platforms to pay royalties to Canadian journalism organizations for the news stories they share." Simons isn't buying it, noting, "Goodness knows, we need Canadian journalism. ... Yet, over the course of the last 15 years, we have laid off Canadian reporters by the thousands — and turned giant American platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple into the curators of our news. Their algorithms decide what we see and don’t — reshaping our vision of our own country, through American eyes. If Bill S-225 worked at all, it wouldn’t solve that problem. Indeed, it would only make Canadian journalism and Canadian readers more dependent than ever on American corporate gatekeepers."
Listen to the senator, people. She's smart.
Rishi Maharaj was back in action for us, noting that American cruise lines visit B.C. not for its glorious mountains and coastlines, but ... to save money, thanks to a loophole in a hundred-year-old law. "[The ships don't dock in Vancouver and Victoria] because Stanley Park and Butchart Gardens are so beautiful. It is because originating or stopping in Canada is the difference between operating out of a tax haven where the maritime safety regulations fit on the back of a Post-It note — as every major cruise line does — and operating out of the U.S. where you have to deal with such inconveniences as minimum wage and compensating workers injured on the job.
And Matt Gurney beamed down from his ship maintaining a standard orbit to talk about aliens, and why we should have a more open mind about what might be out there. "Our entire understanding of interstellar travel — voyaging between stars, across enormous distances — is limited by our very human worldview," he said. "What might seem impossible or impractical to us might be viewed very differently by, well, them. ... Consider the issue of lifespans, for example. A trip of a century or two is a massive barrier to us. But we only live about 100 years, at the outside. Imagine an alien race with a natural lifespan of 1,000 years. Spending a few decades or even a century or two crossing over to a nearby solar system might still strike them as a major hassle, but it wouldn’t be nearly the obstacle it is to us."
Well that’s it for us this week, friends. We can’t help but note the steady lengthening of the days, and the declining of the COVID-19, and we feel all the creeping effects of summer lethargy. A reminder that we will take a few weeks off in July to collect our thoughts and, also, to drink and BBQ like everyone else. Until then, keep smashing that subscribe button.
The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Follow us on Twitter @the_lineca. Fight with us on Facebook. Pitch us something: lineeditor@protonmail.com
This week’s round up is practically worth the annual subscription fee :-). Thank you.