TORONTO—His first target was a group of teenage girls eating ice cream. They stood in their summer dresses and spiked heels at the edge of a parkette, hub to the lively Greektown bar-and-restaurant strip on Danforth Avenue.
The shooter spotted them. Moving briskly along the south sidewalk, opposite the parkette, he passed the Logo Bar, Brass Taps, Mocha Mocha and a Tim Hortons coffee shop, then crossed the street and opened fire.
He shot one girl through the hip, another in the stomach, a third twice in the stomach and kidney, and a fourth, Reese Fallon, three times in the left arm. The first three victims crumpled to the pavement. Fallon staggered away from the street, stunned, and asked a man for help. “Please call 911,” she said, and as the man fumbled with his phone the shooter clicked a fresh magazine into his 40-calibre Smith & Wesson handgun. “Run!” cried a bystander, and when Fallon tripped, the shooter pumped 10 more rounds into the prone 18-year-old girl. “He went back and finished her off,” a witness said.
Reese Fallon
Many details of that Sunday night two years ago, on July 22, were never made public. Police never disclosed that Fallon sustained 13 bullets, most of them fired point-blank. News reporters never put together that eight high-school friends stood at the parkette, seven girls and one guy, and that half of them were shot.
Worse, crucial details of the mass shooting went unexplored or were deliberately suppressed, possibly out of political correctness. The next day, police reported a total of fifteen people shot, including two dead, but the civilian Special Investigations Unit ordered the shooter’s name withheld. Late in the day, when the unit relented and announced the name — a Muslim name — police and politicians warned against jumping to conclusions.
“I am certainly not going to invite any type of speculation,” Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters. “At this stage,” said federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, “there is no connection between that individual and national security.”
Goodale knew, however, that a connection might eventually be made. Police cited possible Islamic terrorism when they applied for search warrants, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) began a six-month probe into potential terrorist ties. Authorities also knew that the shooter’s brother was linked to the discovery of a chemical-weapons cache with serious national-security implications.
On the second anniversary of the shootings, the Covid-19 pandemic prevents a large memorial gathering, but no virus can stop a review of the known facts and uncomfortable loose ends.
The shooter was Faisal Hussain. He was 29 years old, a skinny man with a long face, heavy eyebrows, and a close-cropped black beard. He still lived with his parents, devout Muslims from Pakistan. The three shared a two-bedroom high-rise apartment in Thorncliffe Park, north of the Danforth neighbourhood across a bend in the Don River Valley.
Faisal Hussain
Faisal held two part-time jobs. He stocked shelves at Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart. On Sunday, July 22, 2018, he returned home from the grocery, ate dinner, chatted with his fraternal twin brother, who was visiting, and at 9:10 p.m. walked into the warm, humid night toward the popular strip everybody calls “the Danforth.”
At 9:56 p.m., at the bustling parkette, he started shooting. He used a stolen gun and shot expertly, standing with legs apart and arms outstretched in a two-handed grip. In dark clothing and a black cap, carrying extra ammunition in a shoulder bag, he continued westward for another 400 metres, changing magazines on the fly and sending people screaming.
He shot one waiter through the hand and another through the thigh. On the sidewalk, he yelled at a mother and son, “Get out of my way,” and shot them both. On a restaurant patio, he severed the spinal cord of nursing student Danielle Kane, paralysing her from the waist down, and at a dessert café he shot Donny Kozis and his 10-year-old daughter, Julianna. Separate ambulances took them to St. Michael’s and Sick Kids hospitals, respectively, then one ambulance rushed the father to Sick Kids in time to be with Julianna when she died. Ten minutes after the shooting started, as police closed in, Hussain shot himself in the head.
Julianna Kozis
“Our son had severe mental health challenges, struggling with psychosis and depression his entire life,” a press statement attributed to Hussain’s family said, but it would prove to be misleading.
Faisal Hussain on Danforth Ave.
Politicians blamed gun availability. “The city has a gun problem,” Toronto Mayor John Tory said. The federal government is “prepared to consider” tightening handgun laws, said Goodale, a position since supported by a coalition of Danforth victims and families, who have also taken legal action against Smith & Wesson.
Islamic terrorism dropped from the conversation. Heavily redacted documents later obtained by the Toronto Sun’s Anthony Furey revealed nothing of the CSIS probe. The Toronto Police Service, after one year, issued a 23-page report saying Hussain suffered from depression and was diagnosed in high school with “antisocial personality disorder” but not “psychosis.”
Elsewhere, the report raised more questions than it answered. In the shooter’s bedroom, officers found an iPad, two laptops and three cell phones. They found heroin and M.D.A. packaged for trafficking and hundreds of rounds of ammunition for a Glock handgun, Ruger pistol, Winchester rifle and an AK-47 assault rifle. “Given the amount of ammunition on hand, it is reasonable to believe this occurrence was planned,” search-warrant request said, although no matching guns were found.
Police also reported seizing an “Islamic head dress,” without explaining what that meant, and digital files that included material about the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. In 2001, Hussain’s family left Canada for two years, the report also said, without making clear whether they were in Pakistan on 9/11 or during the subsequent U.S.-led war in neighbouring Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
“Two or three years” before the shooting, Hussain’s father told police, he and his son visited Islamabad and his son was “happy” and “did not want to return” to Canada. Two receipts found in his room showed that, in Pakistan, Faisal paid nearly $10,000 cash to an Islamic centre.
The ammunition, 9/11 material, recent Pakistan trip and cash to unknown recipients apparently drew no serious investigation. Police did not establish how long Hussain spent in Pakistan, where he went, whom he met, what he did, or why he paid the money. “Little information was located due to the challenge of obtaining records from foreign non-digital databases,” the report said, suggesting police confined their inquiry to a data search.
“Final Conclusion,” the report ended lamely, “there is no evidence that Faisal Hussain was directed or assisted in the crimes he committed.”
Hussain’s possible link to a chemical weapons cache went entirely unaddressed. All that is known so far is that his older brother, Fahad, was charged with trafficking crack cocaine in Saskatoon in 2015. He was returned to Toronto to await trail and shared a room with Faisal, but in early 2017 Fahad moved to a Pickering house owned by their childhood friend, Maisum Ansari.
At the Pickering apartment Fahad overdosed. He became a vegetable. A short time later, in September 2017, firefighters responding to a carbon-monoxide alarm at the apartment discovered 33 illegal guns and a massive quantity of carfentanil, cousin to the killer opioid fentanyl and far more toxic.
The U.S. Defense Department ranks carfentanil as a dangerous weapon, and the international Chemical Weapons Convention bans it. A couple of grains can kill a person. A single kilogram, doled out in two-grain portions, could kill millions of people. In Pickering, police seized 42 kilograms of the drug, the biggest ever such bust in North America.
Ansari and an associate, Babar Ali, each face 337 charges. When their trial begins this winter, The National Telegraph will be there.
No Longer a Conspiracy? Democrat Senator Dick Durbin Brags About How Mass Immigration Is Replacing White People, Disenfranchising Republican Voters in the Process
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin on Monday boasted that “the demographics of America are not on the side of the Republican Party” and predicted that an ongoing influx of “new voters” will ensure the GOP is doomed.
“The demographics of America are not on the side of the Republican Party,” Durbin said. “The new voters in this country are moving away from them, away from Donald Trump, away from their party creed that they preach.”
Meanwhile, the GOP is looking for the next non-white to promote as their avatar for minority outreach, while The Great Replacement ensures the Republican opportunity for capturing state and national elections is as likely as their party winning the mayoral election if nearly 95 perce
Archaeologists very skeptical of conclusions being drawn about residential school graves
Posted on July 11, 2021
A Skeptical Analysis of the Reports of “Unmarked Graves” on Residential Schools Grounds
Abstract: Unmarked graves, including children’s graves, are commonplace and exist in virtually every town and city in Canada and around the world. This reflects the reality that in the history of the Earth the dead outnumber the living 14 to 1; that most graves over time are gradually not maintained, and that mortality rates among children were extremely high historically.
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. Some of these inconsistencies and contradictions are so obvious that anyone who reads this analysis will surely concede that aspects of the “mass grave” stories are highly misleading.
On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwe´pemc 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. But one need not be a specialist to suspect that some aspects of the story were far-fetched. 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. Understandably, if such a thing did happen at Kamloops it would indeed be shocking, though fortunately, it is now known beyond doubt that no such thing happened.
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 Tk?emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir.
In her first public appearance since the May 27 press release which sparked global headlines, at a June 4 press conference Chief Rosanne Casimir stated: “this is not a mass grave. These are preliminary findings. We will be sharing the written report in the middle of the month.” No other new details were provided, but the confirmation that there was no mass grave should have prompted a media reckoning other 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.
It is doubtful that the story would have sparked headlines worldwide if it had been reportedly more accurately, as the shift from a “mass grave” to individual unmarked graves completely alters the story. A mass grave full of children conjures up images of the worse kind of horror, possibly involving murder. Unmarked graves, in contrast, indicate deaths that occurred gradually over a longer period of time, and which likely did once have burial markers (wooden crosses), but which over time were not maintained. Indeed, the Tk?emlúps 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 so far.
Moreover, there are still major unanswered questions about the claims, some of which at this time cannot be reconciled with the known facts. Tk?emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir claimed in her initial May 27 release that some of the 215 remains included children as “young as three years old.” Leaving aside that children that young did not attend residential schools, 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 Tk?emlúps 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 of deaths. Tuberculosis predates European settlement in the Western Hemisphere, and has caused periodic outbreaks that killed large numbers of people (especially children). Also during the residential school era were four deadly influenza pandemics that reached Canada from overseas, mostly notably Spanish flu in 1918–1919. Besides this, there were also deadly influenza pandemics in Canada in 1890, 1957, and 1968. Each of these pandemics killed thousands of people in Canada. The Spanish flu alone killed an estimated 50,000 Canadians, most of them young people. It was these influenza pandemics and tuberculosis outbreaks that caused the vast majority of deaths at residential schools, which medical treatments of the time were mostly powerless to prevent.
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. Every graveyard of that era contains a large percentage of children’s graves. Indeed, CBC’s Canada: A People’s History (Volume II) states that in early 20th century, “Montreal…had the highest infant mortality rate in North America, a rate that was on par with Calcutta’s.” To this day thousands of unmarked children’s graves are buried in and around Montreal.
Although the errors the media made concerning the initial report about the Kamloops site should have led to a more measured response in subsequent reporting, instead it seems to have only sparked even more outlandish claims about the alleged “discovery” of other graves elsewhere. 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 sort — the survey literally found graves in a graveyard, most of which are likely adult graves with no connection to any residential school. Not only was this burial site already known to exist, it has been in use since the 1800s. It also happened to be the only Roman Catholic cemetery in the area, meaning for generations local people from all over were buried there.
Even more bizarrely, there had already been news stories as early as 2019 about the planned survey work on the site, and at that time, the local people interviewed had made plain that the primary purpose was to locate old graves of relatives, some of them elderly. It must be presumed then that of the 751 possible graves identified by the survey, the majority are not children’s graves or even related to the residential school, and at least a few might not even be Indigenous.
But irresponsible media reporting has repeatedly implied that all 751 graves were both unknown and that they are children’s graves. Moreover, the removal of some of the headstones or crosses from the graveyard over the years was, according to local reports, due to erosion and lack of maintenance, not some sort of sinister plan. The site has also been under the control of the Cowessess First Nation since 1987, without any effort to re-mark the old graves, despite it being known that such graves had existed.
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.
Some demographic data might help journalists and activists contextualize just how commonplace unmarked graves actually are. Carl Haub, a senior demographer at 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).
Obviously, the vast majority don’t have maintained gravesites. As the relatives of the deceased age, inevitably gravesites are in many cases no longer maintained, and are eventually forgotten. Virtually every town and city (in) Canada has graveyards that are no longer maintained and now forgotten. This is easily confirmed simply by looking at old maps of municipalities, which denote graveyards in many locations that today are no longer cemeteries but just overgrown fields (or even shopping malls and parking lots). To our personal knowledge, in recent years unmarked graves were accidentally uncovered adjacent to Roman Catholic churches in both Hamilton and Guelph by construction crews, some of which were not even particularly old, but still had managed to become unmarked. It is therefore quite obvious that finding 215 or 751 graves in a graveyard (and those numbers are just preliminary estimates) is hardly shocking. Indeed, as recently as 2020 CBC News reported that there an estimated 20,000 unmarked graves buried underneath downtown Halifax alone! Other cities, such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, have even larger numbers of unmarked graves, including children’s graves, which do not have any connection to residential schools. 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). Indeed, every graveyard of that era contains a large percentage of children’s graves.
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.
Photo of Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops in 1918 (Above)
Nationalists Celebrate Dominion Day With Paul Fromm
Fantastic Dominion Day. I attended a noon NO MORE LOCKDOWN Rally in Niagara Falls. Later, a great group of nationalists met. Not a guilt-ridden soul in the lot. You could hear English, French, German, Italian, Romanian, Czech & Slovenian. My grilled burgers were found delicious
There are strong calls across the country to cancel Canada Day. It’s shocking, even to someone like myself who has been paying attention to the attack on Canadian history and heritage for years. I’m amazed that things have gotten to this point so quickly! Cancelling our national holiday, or more aptly turning it into a festival of shame where Canadians think about historical injustice rather than love of nation, is the natural culmination of the anti-Canadian, anti-white, decolonial ideology spread by the government, the universities, the media, the primary and secondary schools, the corporations, the banks, and even some churches.
These are some of the places where “Cancelling” has already happened: Victoria, Port Hardy, Penticton, Durham, Port Hawkesbury, Burnaby, Wilmot Township, St. Albert, Fredericton, Bathurst, Saint John, Cap-Pele, Grand Bay-Westfield, Churchill, and Truro.
Some have replaced it, suggesting that on July 1st citizens instead reckon with Canada’s historical injustices. Naheed Nenshi has said that fireworks will go ahead but there will be a moment of silence before they start. “Rather than the fireworks being, ‘Woohoo, celebrate,’ we’re starting as a moment of silence, and those fireworks are a way for us to really think about where we go from here while honouring those kids” Nenshi explained.
Some of this sentiment is expressed on a popular social media hashtag:
Everyone should go check that out and see the vile, poisonous, anti-Canadian rhetoric produced by our opponents. One tweet with 310 likes celebrated a couple of thugs burning a Canadian flag. Another, with 1300 likes, charmingly proclaimed “#FuckCanada”. Another tweet celebrated an occasion when a group of radical leftist militants disrupted a Canada Day event, burning a flag and holding a banner proclaiming “Unsettle Canada”.
This isn’t just about July 1st of this year, even if some advocates of the Cancel Canada Day movement will tell you that it is. This is about every July 1st going forward. I guarantee you that every June from now on, there will be calls to not celebrate Canada Day. Cities will slowly scale down celebrations; some will phase them out for good. Militant anti-Canadian groups like Idle No More and Black Lives Matter will disrupt celebrations or create their own events to ritualistically recite the sins committed by Canada. The mainstream media will host panels where professors, activists, and prominent immigrants discuss whether celebrations are really warranted on July 1st. CBC recently posted an article which featured the opinions of different experts on whether to celebrate Canada Day, but if you read it you will see that they don’t include a single one who actually thinks July 1st should be celebrated. They introduce a bunch of experts who only slightly disagree with each other; some think Canada Day should be cancelled; others think it should remain only so Canadians can ponder all the terrible things we or our ancestors have done.
In fact, this anti-Canada Day sentiment is seeping into the general society. Today I saw on Facebook that a bakery nearby will no longer be selling Canada Day themed cupcakes and instead will be thinking about “reconciliation” on that day. They will be selling orange cookies instead with the proceeds going to charity.
The Haters and Losers
In a recent Toronto Star article, Shira Lurie called on Canadians to “Make Canada Day a national day of reckoning”. Only nominally a Canadian citizen, Lurie is an academic who is more interested in American history and politics than our own. A University College Fellow in Early American History at the University of Toronto with a PhD in history from the University of Virginia, she often writes articles about American politics. George Grant warned us of the danger of not resisting the cultural and economic influence of the United States in his Lament for a Nation, and clearly one of the results of not heeding his warnings is academics whose chief concern is with America.
Perhaps it is the Americanization of Lurie’s brain that has caused her to include, in a list of groups that Canada has sinned against, “the people of African descent who laboured in bondage and suffered decades of repression”. Involuntary servitude of Africans in Canada was such a miniscule part of Canadian history that only Canadians obsessed with American racial politics would count this as a part of Canadian history worth mentioning at all. She also lists aboriginals, Asian immigrants, and “LGBTQ+” as other groups that we should feel bad about having hurt in the past. When it comes to the present, Lurie claims that the presence of black and aboriginal criminals in Canadian jails and the very reasonable and mild legislation banning Islamic regalia for public servants in Quebec are signs that Canada is a thoroughly racist and anti-Muslim country. Lurie concludes by stating that we should abolish Canada Day and replace it with a day when we feel ashamed that we aren’t a leftist utopia:
Add New Post
Add titleCancel Canada Day? No Way: Make It Euro-Canadian Resistance Day!
There are strong calls across the country to cancel Canada Day. It’s shocking, even to someone like myself who has been paying attention to the attack on Canadian history and heritage for years. I’m amazed that things have gotten to this point so quickly! Cancelling our national holiday, or more aptly turning it into a festival of shame where Canadians think about historical injustice rather than love of nation, is the natural culmination of the anti-Canadian, anti-white, decolonial ideology spread by the government, the universities, the media, the primary and secondary schools, the corporations, the banks, and even some churches.
These are some of the places where “Cancelling” has already happened: Victoria, Port Hardy, Penticton, Durham, Port Hawkesbury, Burnaby, Wilmot Township, St. Albert, Fredericton, Bathurst, Saint John, Cap-Pele, Grand Bay-Westfield, Churchill, and Truro.
Some have replaced it, suggesting that on July 1st citizens instead reckon with Canada’s historical injustices. Naheed Nenshi has said that fireworks will go ahead but there will be a moment of silence before they start. “Rather than the fireworks being, ‘Woohoo, celebrate,’ we’re starting as a moment of silence, and those fireworks are a way for us to really think about where we go from here while honouring those kids” Nenshi explained.
Some of this sentiment is expressed on a popular social media hashtag:
Everyone should go check that out and see the vile, poisonous, anti-Canadian rhetoric produced by our opponents. One tweet with 310 likes celebrated a couple of thugs burning a Canadian flag. Another, with 1300 likes, charmingly proclaimed “#FuckCanada”. Another tweet celebrated an occasion when a group of radical leftist militants disrupted a Canada Day event, burning a flag and holding a banner proclaiming “Unsettle Canada”.
This isn’t just about July 1st of this year, even if some advocates of the Cancel Canada Day movement will tell you that it is. This is about every July 1st going forward. I guarantee you that every June from now on, there will be calls to not celebrate Canada Day. Cities will slowly scale down celebrations; some will phase them out for good. Militant anti-Canadian groups like Idle No More and Black Lives Matter will disrupt celebrations or create their own events to ritualistically recite the sins committed by Canada. The mainstream media will host panels where professors, activists, and prominent immigrants discuss whether celebrations are really warranted on July 1st. CBC recently posted an article which featured the opinions of different experts on whether to celebrate Canada Day, but if you read it you will see that they don’t include a single one who actually thinks July 1st should be celebrated. They introduce a bunch of experts who only slightly disagree with each other; some think Canada Day should be cancelled; others think it should remain only so Canadians can ponder all the terrible things we or our ancestors have done.
In fact, this anti-Canada Day sentiment is seeping into the general society. Today I saw on Facebook that a bakery nearby will no longer be selling Canada Day themed cupcakes and instead will be thinking about “reconciliation” on that day. They will be selling orange cookies instead with the proceeds going to charity.
The Haters and Losers
In a recent Toronto Star article, Shira Lurie called on Canadians to “Make Canada Day a national day of reckoning”. Only nominally a Canadian citizen, Lurie is an academic who is more interested in American history and politics than our own. A University College Fellow in Early American History at the University of Toronto with a PhD in history from the University of Virginia, she often writes articles about American politics. George Grant warned us of the danger of not resisting the cultural and economic influence of the United States in his Lament for a Nation, and clearly one of the results of not heeding his warnings is academics whose chief concern is with America.
Perhaps it is the Americanization of Lurie’s brain that has caused her to include, in a list of groups that Canada has sinned against, “the people of African descent who laboured in bondage and suffered decades of repression”. Involuntary servitude of Africans in Canada was such a miniscule part of Canadian history that only Canadians obsessed with American racial politics would count this as a part of Canadian history worth mentioning at all. She also lists aboriginals, Asian immigrants, and “LGBTQ+” as other groups that we should feel bad about having hurt in the past. When it comes to the present, Lurie claims that the presence of black and aboriginal criminals in Canadian jails and the very reasonable and mild legislation banning Islamic regalia for public servants in Quebec are signs that Canada is a thoroughly racist and anti-Muslim country. Lurie concludes by stating that we should abolish Canada Day and replace it with a day when we feel ashamed that we aren’t a leftist utopia:
Instead of singing the national anthem, let’s pause and reflect on the many lives that the building of the Canadian state has cost. No fireworks. No flags. Let’s make July 1 a day of reckoning. Perhaps then we might create a Canada worthy of our celebration.
This isn’t just one anti-Canadian academic, this is the symbol of a rising tide of anti-Canadian sentiment. But perhaps worse than the overt radicalism of Shira Lurie and the bowing to this radicalism by the many Canadian cities who have cancelled Canada Day celebrations, is the pathetic apathy of many normal Canadians. Chris Selley’s recent National Post column advanced his opinion that “Now is a strange time for ‘rah-rah’ Canadian patriotism”.
“Patriotism is the admission that people who share a land, a place, and a history have a special obligation to that place and to each other” – David Ehrenfeld
Referring indifferently to our beloved national day of celebration as “a summer stat holiday”, Selley admits that even before the discovery of the residential school graves he wouldn’t have wanted to celebrate because of Canada’s bad handling of the pandemic. He also complains about Toronto’s poor control over civic issues such as anti-lockdown protests. I suppose for Chris Selley, whether he celebrates Canada Day or not is based on how well the government provides services to him. Maybe one July the city hasn’t fixed the pothole outside his house, so he doesn’t celebrate, but then the next year they’ve paved it over, so he gets out the flag and fireworks.
At the end of his article, he says that there “is much to appreciate about being Canadian, albeit little that’s really unique to Canada. Impressive as our suite of rights and freedoms might be, they are nothing less than all human beings should demand from their governments.” And so, in a stroke of a columnist’s pen, the interest and value of a fascinating and unique centuries-old culture is summarily dismissed. Sadly, this is the view of many Canadian columnists and cultural influencers, even so-called conservative ones; uninterested in Canada’s culture, the only interest they show in our country is a concern that the managerial state performs the functions of government in a smooth and calm fashion.
Christopher Lasch aptly describes the complete lack of attachment to place and identity among the cosmopolitan professional classes in his 1994 book Revolt of the Elites:
Patriotism, certainly, does not rank very high in their hierarchy of virtues. ‘Multiculturalism’, on the other hand, suits them to perfection, conjuring up the agreeable image of a global bazaar in which exotic cuisines, exotic styles of dress, exotic music, exotic tribal customs can be savored indiscriminately, with no questions asked and no commitments required. The new elites are at home only in transit, en route to a high-level conference, to the grand opening of a new franchise, to an international film festival, to an undiscovered resort. Theirs is essentially a tourist’s view of the world…(p.6).
Canada finds itself in a situation in which the academic, media and political classes don’t have the deep positive psychic attachment to Canada that the core of the country still retains. Any manifestation of pride in Canada, even one as mild-mannered as Don Cherry’s plea that immigrants wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, is viewed by these classes as an outburst of parochial, outdated, uneducated xenophobia and national particularism. Why would anyone wear a poppy or wave a flag in a global bazaar?
EURO-CANADIAN RESISTANCE DAY
I’m not proud of Canada because of the benefits I get from it; I’m proud of Canada because it’s my country. Being proud doesn’t mean you’re proud of our government, it means you’re proud of your people. Being proud means you feel love for our homeland; a visceral attachment, a feeling of belonging, and a willingness to fight for it and contribute to it in your everyday life. I live in the countryside, and there’s a lot of people out here who are poor and working-class. In a lot of ways, some of them might feel let down by the Canadian government or institutions. But they don’t let that translate into a lack of pride in their country. Sometimes I drive by a particular shabby old wooden house that looks like it has seen better days. Their proud display of the Canadian flag on the porch shows a nobility of spirit lacking in our cultural and political elites (whether on the left or right) who seem to feel that they are too sophisticated for patriotism. Throughout my life I have visited a particular valley in the British Columbia interior. The farmers and ranchers are by and large proud to be Canadian and often display the flag year-round, even if by the sweat of the brow they barely get by. Have our moral betters in the media, academia, and government considered that this simple pride reveals a more sophisticated and philosophical sense of love and humanity than their vague cosmopolitan “citizen of the world” ethic?
I hereby christen July 1st not only as Canada Day, but as Euro-Canadian Resistance Day. All patriots who are attached to the true unique culture of our country, which is Anglo-Protestant, French-Catholic, and more broadly European Canadian, are invited to celebrate. Whether you are old stock English or French, a descendant of Ukrainian or Polish prairie settlers, aboriginal, or a more recent immigrant who is nonetheless proud of the True North Strong and Free, you are invited!
Our simple pride in our people can be celebrated with a Red Ensign flag or a Maple Leaf (don’t get caught up on this one, I know the Ensign is our real flag, but it can be hard to buy so either works just fine), fireworks, patriotic red clothing, beer, parades, picnics, time spent with family and friends and good deeds done for neighbours in need. Roll into store parking lots with two full-sized flags on your truck, organize a convoy around your town with a few buddies, boat around the lake with a huge flag, sing Oh Canada, and have a good time. Don’t get depressed by the hostile takeover of our country, resist it! This simple joy in place and identity and culture might seem silly to the more intellectual types in the EuroCanadian movement, but it is exactly this type of pride that the globalist elite is trying to crush. It is one of the few things that really threaten them.
Break free from the globalist machine seeking to abolish our pride and install a New World Order without nations or borders!
Enjoy July 1st, Euro-Canadian Resistance Day!
Instead of singing the national anthem, let’s pause and reflect on the many lives that the building of the Canadian state has cost. No fireworks. No flags. Let’s make July 1 a day of reckoning. Perhaps then we might create a Canada worthy of our celebration.
This isn’t just one anti-Canadian academic, this is the symbol of a rising tide of anti-Canadian sentiment. But perhaps worse than the overt radicalism of Shira Lurie and the bowing to this radicalism by the many Canadian cities who have cancelled Canada Day celebrations, is the pathetic apathy of many normal Canadians. Chris Selley’s recent National Post column advanced his opinion that “Now is a strange time for ‘rah-rah’ Canadian patriotism”.
“Patriotism is the admission that people who share a land, a place, and a history have a special obligation to that place and to each other” – David Ehrenfeld
Referring indifferently to our beloved national day of celebration as “a summer stat holiday”, Selley admits that even before the discovery of the residential school graves he wouldn’t have wanted to celebrate because of Canada’s bad handling of the pandemic. He also complains about Toronto’s poor control over civic issues such as anti-lockdown protests. I suppose for Chris Selley, whether he celebrates Canada Day or not is based on how well the government provides services to him. Maybe one July the city hasn’t fixed the pothole outside his house, so he doesn’t celebrate, but then the next year they’ve paved it over, so he gets out the flag and fireworks.
At the end of his article, he says that there “is much to appreciate about being Canadian, albeit little that’s really unique to Canada. Impressive as our suite of rights and freedoms might be, they are nothing less than all human beings should demand from their governments.” And so, in a stroke of a columnist’s pen, the interest and value of a fascinating and unique centuries-old culture is summarily dismissed. Sadly, this is the view of many Canadian columnists and cultural influencers, even so-called conservative ones; uninterested in Canada’s culture, the only interest they show in our country is a concern that the managerial state performs the functions of government in a smooth and calm fashion.
Christopher Lasch aptly describes the complete lack of attachment to place and identity among the cosmopolitan professional classes in his 1994 book Revolt of the Elites:
Patriotism, certainly, does not rank very high in their hierarchy of virtues. ‘Multiculturalism’, on the other hand, suits them to perfection, conjuring up the agreeable image of a global bazaar in which exotic cuisines, exotic styles of dress, exotic music, exotic tribal customs can be savored indiscriminately, with no questions asked and no commitments required. The new elites are at home only in transit, en route to a high-level conference, to the grand opening of a new franchise, to an international film festival, to an undiscovered resort. Theirs is essentially a tourist’s view of the world…(p.6).
Canada finds itself in a situation in which the academic, media and political classes don’t have the deep positive psychic attachment to Canada that the core of the country still retains. Any manifestation of pride in Canada, even one as mild-mannered as Don Cherry’s plea that immigrants wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, is viewed by these classes as an outburst of parochial, outdated, uneducated xenophobia and national particularism. Why would anyone wear a poppy or wave a flag in a global bazaar?
EURO-CANADIAN RESISTANCE DAY
I’m not proud of Canada because of the benefits I get from it; I’m proud of Canada because it’s my country. Being proud doesn’t mean you’re proud of our government, it means you’re proud of your people. Being proud means you feel love for our homeland; a visceral attachment, a feeling of belonging, and a willingness to fight for it and contribute to it in your everyday life. I live in the countryside, and there’s a lot of people out here who are poor and working-class. In a lot of ways, some of them might feel let down by the Canadian government or institutions. But they don’t let that translate into a lack of pride in their country. Sometimes I drive by a particular shabby old wooden house that looks like it has seen better days. Their proud display of the Canadian flag on the porch shows a nobility of spirit lacking in our cultural and political elites (whether on the left or right) who seem to feel that they are too sophisticated for patriotism. Throughout my life I have visited a particular valley in the British Columbia interior. The farmers and ranchers are by and large proud to be Canadian and often display the flag year-round, even if by the sweat of the brow they barely get by. Have our moral betters in the media, academia, and government considered that this simple pride reveals a more sophisticated and philosophical sense of love and humanity than their vague cosmopolitan “citizen of the world” ethic?
I hereby christen July 1st not only as Canada Day, but as Euro-Canadian Resistance Day. All patriots who are attached to the true unique culture of our country, which is Anglo-Protestant, French-Catholic, and more broadly European Canadian, are invited to celebrate. Whether you are old stock English or French, a descendant of Ukrainian or Polish prairie settlers, aboriginal, or a more recent immigrant who is nonetheless proud of the True North Strong and Free, you are invited!
Our simple pride in our people can be celebrated with a Red Ensign flag or a Maple Leaf (don’t get caught up on this one, I know the Ensign is our real flag, but it can be hard to buy so either works just fine), fireworks, patriotic red clothing, beer, parades, picnics, time spent with family and friends and good deeds done for neighbours in need. Roll into store parking lots with two full-sized flags on your truck, organize a convoy around your town with a few buddies, boat around the lake with a huge flag, sing Oh Canada, and have a good time. Don’t get depressed by the hostile takeover of our country, resist it! This simple joy in place and identity and culture might seem silly to the more intellectual types in the EuroCanadian movement, but it is exactly this type of pride that the globalist elite is trying to crush. It is one of the few things that really threaten them.
Break free from the globalist machine seeking to abolish our pride and install a New World Order without nations or borders!
