An inside look at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s anti-white exhibit funded by the Federal Government
By Lindsay Shepherd – November 8, 2023 FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsAppLinkedin
A social media post about a hateful, anti-white exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery called “Conceptions of White” recently went viral, so naturally, I had to go see it for myself.
After you fork over your $30 admission fee (geez) and take the stairs to the third floor, the first thing to catch your eye is the giant phrase on the wall that reads, “When you’re the problem, we’re the solution.” The text is accompanied by a large headshot of a white male.
Gallery attendees then have the opportunity to interact with an AI program on a set of tablets.
“Stop talking. Never share an uninvited opinion again,” text on the wall reads. When you look into the tablet, a mute symbol is superimposed over your mouth.
“Check privilege. Learn whether you’re special or just lucky,” the text reads. Upon looking into the tablet, a halo that says “Undeserving” appears over your head.
“Get curious. Vocalize your own ignorance.”
The tablet prompts me to say aloud, “I know nothing.”
I sauntered over to the gallery security guard.
“Do people find this funny?” I asked her, gesturing at the tablet display. After all, the artist behind the work had described it as “tongue-in-cheek.”
“No,” she said, with a sheepish smile.
“They don’t like it?”
“No,” she shook her head.
I asked her whether this exhibit has been popular so far, but the answer was another negative.
“The Emily Carr exhibit is popular though,” she offered, referring to the famous Canadian painter.
I walked by some schizophrenic ramblings and pictures on the wall about how because statues from Ancient Rome and Greece had curly hair, they were probably not white people.
I arrived at a computer station with a webcam.
“Aryan Recognition Tool: How Aryan Are You?” the screen read.
The computer program claimed to measure how your face compared to the facial measurements of “the most infamous leaders of the Third Reich.”
Sign me up!
“Could face recognition be used to detect genocidal predators, or even casual racists? Find out whether your face matches any of the 1,900 examples of Aryans we’ve gathered.”
I was so eager to do so, but darn! An “out of order” sign was propped up in front of the facial recognition camera.
On to the next.
The next major installation was a timeline that spanned about 15 feet long.
“An incomplete timeline of the circumstances that influenced the emergence – and evolution – of White racial identity,” it read.
I learned that as a white Canadian born in the mid-1990s, my identity is defined by slavery, scientific racism, Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden,” colonialism, the Ku Klux Klan, the Third Reich, the “alt-right,” and Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
The last items in the timeline of white terribleness were “2013: Black Lives Matter founded” and “2021: January 6 Insurrection.” I chortled.
I was exhausted at this point, and still so very dismayed that I paid $30 only for the Aryan facial recognition tool to be out of order.
The final installation was a short film that purported to be about reflecting the “current state of White identity in America.”
What followed was a 30-minute compilation of internet meme videos spliced with scenes of racial violence, guns, and creepy staring.
On the way out of the screening room, I asked a couple visiting Vancouver from Australia whether they liked the exhibit.
“I was horrified. Horrified, devastated, saddened,” the man said, before praising the exhibit and trailing off about “violence” and “so many wars.”
The man had been successfully programmed into hating his heritage.
We are a culture that preaches self-love: individuals should be self-confident, self-respecting, self-reliant. But how can white people love themselves if they are told repeatedly that they are oppressors, purveyors of violence, and racists just for existing?
Especially when it is the high-culture institutions like galleries, museums, and universities beating them over the head with this message? The “Conceptions of White” exhibit also received government funding through the Canada Council for the Arts.
The exhibit was palpably hateful and designed to demoralize. I left the gallery not inspired and infused with joie de vivre, but rather drained: it was as if I had just exited a zone of concentrated psychological warfare, and I had fortunately come out alive with my critical thinking faculties still intact.
The security guard had spoken highly of the Emily Carr exhibit, so I went upstairs to the fourth floor to gaze upon something beautiful for a change.
I read the paragraphs of text about Emily Carr’s life that accompanied her paintings.
“Carr proclaimed to document a ‘disappearing Indigenous culture’ by undertaking frequent sketching trips in the province and painting totemic sculptures and villages,” the text read.
“She was sincere in her effort to represent Indigenous villages and culture in her work, but naive of her own colonial response to Indigenous cultures and the exploitative and romanticizing effect of her artwork.”
Sigh.
Even up at this exhibit, the artist is scolded for “romanticizing,” by painting vibrant and expressive landscapes.
I’d had enough.
My trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery: 0 out of 5 stars.
The Climate is Indeed Changing – Grab a Warm Jacket
By Brian C. JoondephOver the past few years, we have been lectured to by professed scientists to “follow the science,” echoed by the corporate media that often sees financial gain in following particular views of science.
For example, Pfizer is alleged to sponsor 15 television news shows, a sure fire way to get their version of “the science” (and their products) out to the masses.
Much of the COVID dogma broadcast by the medical establishment and health authorities turned out to be wrong, from masks and lockdowns to vaccine efficacy and safety. Yet these views could not be challenged without threat of losing one’s employment or licensure, in the case of health care workers. And as time goes by, we learn that much “science” was propaganda.
People are catching on, perhaps explaining why, “Less than 3% of eligible Americans have gotten the new COVID booster this fall” according to the CDC.
Or Steve Kirsch’s recent unsettling analysis, “The data is clear and consistent. The COVID vaccine killed 3.5X as many people as the COVID virus.”
What are other examples of science morphing into propaganda? How about global warming, a.k.a. climate change?
Image: A healthy dose of global warming on my back deck the morning of Oct. 29, 2023
Climate change scolds insist that the Earth is heating up and will be uninhabitable in just a few years. For decades, climate “scientists” have predicted doomsday apocalypse scenarios a decade away, none of which thus far have come to pass.
Failed past predictions should question the credibility of any future predictions, but there is no accountability for a string of failed prognostications over the decades.
What climate scientists conveniently ignore is the cyclic nature of climate.
The Climate4you website explains clearly:
From time to time the planet has been affected by millions of years with relatively cold climate, each such period leading to a long succession of glacial and interglacial periods. During the last couple of millions of years, planet Earth has been in such a cold stage. The last (until now) ice age ended around 11,600 years ago, and we are for the time living in a so-called interglacial period, until the next ice age will begin some time into the future.
Climate4you screenshot of Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core from Antarctica. // Per creator, freely available for download
The Earth’s temperature falls, then rises, then falls again, in a regular pattern. These cycles occurred long before humans roamed the planet, driving SUVs and having backyard barbecues.
Climate “scientists” only look at the far-right side of the graph, the portion that resembles a hockey stick, ignoring all that came before, the rhythmic and consistent rise and fall of global temperatures.
A simple question for the scientists would be what is the “normal” temperature? There is no absolute normal as the temperate waxes and wanes on a time scale far longer than man’s influence.
Based on the above graph, “normal” is far cooler than temperatures today. An eyeball estimate is that we are now 6 degrees C, or 11 degrees F warmer than the average over the last half million years. Stock up on sweaters!
Where is the analysis of why this pattern is regular and predictable, based not on a few decades of measurement but instead a half a million years?
Obviously, there are forces beyond human activity, such as solar activity, changes in the Earth’s orbit, altered tilting of the Earth’s axis, or activity far beneath the Earth in the yet unexplored molten core.
Instead the media and climate scientists follow the Congressional bartender who warns that climate will “destroy the planet” in a dozen years if humans do not address the issue, no matter the cost.
And that was four years ago. What may destroy the planet is her political party and the neocons pushing World War 3 in Ukraine and the Middle East, not her doomsday climate apocalypse.
Instead, we are facing, based on the graph, a long period of global cooling and another ice age. In fact, humans today are enjoying an interglacial period of relative warmth that typically lasts for 10-15,000 years, preceded by and followed by a 100,000-year glacial period where it will get quite cold.
Another graph from Climate4you shows the air temperature at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet,
Image: Climate4you screenshot // freely available for download, per creator
This is in essence a magnified view of the far-right temperature peak on the first graph above, looking back only 11,000 years. Even within the present interglacial warm period, there are rising and falling temperatures indicative of mini-ice ages with shorter warm periods in between.
These occurred during human activity, although not at the scale of today as there were no cars, gas stoves, airplanes, or air conditioners during the Roman Empire, biblical times, or the Middle Ages.
Also noteworthy is the downward temperature trend line over the past 4000 years, with each warming and subsequent cooling period a bit colder than the preceding one, showing a clear downward trend.
Based on the real science of looking at past data and trends, we are currently in a warm period that may last a few more years, but when it ends will usher in another mini-ice age colder than the preceding ones.
And at some point, in the not too distant future, we will likely enter another glacial period when man made global warming might be necessary for survival.
These mini-ice ages can cause plagues, declines of empires, loss of indigenous peoples and mass migration due to poor plant growth and starvation. The fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages, around the year 500 A.D., correspond to one of those cool periods on the above graph.
The mini-ice age of around 1500 A.D. led to the fall the Ming Dynasty, freezing of the River Thames, and generalized famine. History teaches us that civilizations and humans prosper during warmer periods, and struggle when temperatures drop and kill off food crops.
These concerns are small potatoes compared to the major ice ages.
As the Chicago Tribune noted:
Twenty thousand years ago, Chicago was encased in ice roughly 3,000 feet thick — twice the height of Willis Tower. All that’s left of the colossal ice sheet that sprawled over much of North America and formed the Great Lakes is a kernel of ice in the Canadian Arctic — and it’s dwindling fast.
It may be dwindling fast as we are in an interglacial warm period where this is expected, but fear not Chicago Tribune, history demonstrates that in a matter of time, your office and city will again be under more than a half-mile thick ice sheet.
Shouldn’t scientists and government agencies be looking forward to how humankind will manage and survive the next cooling period and mini-ice age, not to mention the future glacial period which is on schedule in the next few centuries based on historical precedent?
Rather than listening to ill-informed progressive legislators or cranky Swedish teenage climate scolds, here is where it would be helpful for government agencies and the media to truly “follow the science.”
The only “consensus” in climate science is that governments must spend taxpayer dollars and increase centralized power in an ill-fated effort to stop Mother Nature and planetary forces. Any efforts of Al Gore, Bill Gates, King Charles, or Greta Thunberg is mere spitting in the wind of Earth’s billions of years of climate cycles.
The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and has survived just fine. Human life represents a micro-blip in the Earth’s lifespan, and it is the ultimate in hubris for humans to believe they influence forces beyond their wildest comprehension.
Dozens of scientists say we have hit the tipping point… again. It is amazing how often we’ve hit this tipping point, yet things don’t seem to be as dire as “they” predicted. From CNN via Yahoo News:
Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries.
Then, former climate scientist at NASA James Hansen said it is far worse than he originally anticipated in 1988:
In a recent statement released by Hansen alongside two other scientists, Hansen predicted the warming of the planet to accelerate in the coming years, musing about a ‘new climate frontier.’
…
Of the lack of response by humanity as a whole, Hansen added, ‘It means we are damned fools. We have to taste it to believe it.’
Yet, Hansen has a tough time explaining why we had a global cooling period from 1940-1970. His best guess? Aerosols. From NASA:
‘I think the cooling that Earth experienced through the middle of the twentieth century was due in part to natural variability,’ he said. ‘But there’s another factor made by humans which probably contributed, and could even be the dominant cause: aerosols.’
So, if aerosols can override all the things we are told cause warming, why don’t we just use aerosols to cool the earth instead of destroying industries that produce reasonably priced energy and which have greatly improved our quality and length of life?
We were told 1970 was also a tipping point, and billions would soon die from an impending ice age, because the earth had been cooling for 30 years.
The media operatives have been warning the public of a “tipping point” since at least 1989, and as always, the window of time to solve the problem was rapidly diminishing:
Over the last 30 years, the media has made this clear. ‘A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000,’ wrote Peter James Spielmann of the Associated Press in 1989. ‘UN scientists warn time is running out to tackle global warming. Scientists say eight years left to avoid worst effects,’ wrote David Adam in the Guardian in 2007. ‘We have 10 years left to save the world, says climate expert,’ wrote HuffPost’s Laura Paddison in 2020.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Antarctica had the coldest six months on record, six degrees colder than the average of the last 40 years.
California had record snow in 2023, a weather event—not a transition to electric vehicles or less crude oil consumption—which alleviated the state’s long drought.
Texas also had record cold in February 2021.
And in 2023, Los Angeles had the coldest May and June on record. How could a big city like LA—with lots of cars and people, and notorious smog—set record low temperatures for months if everything we are told caused warming actually did?
Why doesn’t the media highlight record snow and cold periods to show natural variability? The answer is that it wouldn’t scare people, and the green pushers would lose all public support.
My wife and I just took a 5,000-mile trip out to the West. It would help if journalists took a similar trip to see that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally, instead of just repeating what they are told.
Here are a few places I saw and what I learned:
Lake Tahoe has gone through millions of years of change including earthquakes, volcanoes, and glacial activity. All natural!
Yosemite National Park was formed two million years ago when a huge sheet of ice melted. The warmup, which had to be significant, did not destroy the planet.
CA, UT, NV, and AZ are all covered by massive deserts that have been there long before humans and our use of natural resources could have caused them.
Here are more than 1,600 scientists who will never get a voice on or in mainstream media outlets, because they are scientists who say that there is no climate emergency, and assure the public that the climate is changing cyclically and naturally as it always has.
Kamala says that a huge number of young people have climate anxiety. I wonder why! Maybe they wouldn’t be depressed if they were told the truth that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally.
It is pathetic that we see what is going on in China, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Israel, and North Korea, that we see rampant crime with the open border… but our “president” says the greatest existential threat is a predicted temperature rise (of one or two degrees) based on easily-manipulated computer models that have been consistently wrong.
It is even more pathetic when most people posing as journalists, entertainers, and educators just repeat the leftist talking points instead of asking questions and doing research. That makes them dangerous to our survival as a great and prosperous country.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, and LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph
[Wow, isn’t diversity a hoot. “He bought a razor” to cut open on of the packages to do some drugs before he crossed the border. Not very swift. It struck me that he, being a man, had to BUY a razor as, being a bearded Sikh, he does’t shave.. Foprtunately, he lost his appeal! — Paul Fromm.]
Trucker smuggling cocaine snorted some of his load before Canadian border check
Mississauga trucker loses appeal over claim he was forced to smuggle nearly $5M in cocaine and was really trying to set up the ‘bad guys’
Published Oct 26, 2023 • Last updated 4 days ago • 5 minute read 75 Comments
A long-haul transport truck driver dipped into the 30 kilos of cocaine he was smuggling into Canada, opening one of the bricks hidden among California oranges, snorting it, and then resealing the package during his four-day drive, which may explain his strange behaviour at the border.
Crossing from Detroit into Windsor with his paperwork in order, he told border agents there was nothing but oranges in his truck — but then added that a man had tried to recruit him to smuggle drugs and maybe next time he could agree so the government could arrest the guy.
His truck was searched and the cocaine found; he was arrested, convicted, sentenced, and faces likely deportation, but then appealed the court decision, an effort denied Tuesday by Ontario’s court of appeal.
Manpreet Singh Dhatt’s life changed in the pre-dawn hours of Dec. 27, 2016, when the long-haul driver from Mississauga pulled his refrigerated transport truck up to the primary commercial inspection booth at the Ambassador Bridge and spoke to a Canada Border Services Agency officer.
He gave the border agent his commercial paperwork, his identification, and an E-manifest that showed his load was oranges.
He then volunteered that he had information about a person who had been pressing him to smuggle goods into Canada, according to court records. Dhatt said he was prepared to say “yes next time. Then you can arrest everyone involved at once, so they don’t think I was part of it.”
Dhatt was directed to drive his truck to a CBSA lot to speak with an investigator. There he was specifically asked if he was smuggling anything.
“No. Nothing. No problems,” he said, according to testimony, and he backed his trailer in for inspection.Article content
In a space between the 19 skids of 40-pound boxes of oranges he had picked up in Parlier, California, agents found 30 bricks of cocaine. Court heard the illicit part of his load was 94-per-cent pure and had a value ranging from $1.95 million, if sold at the wholesale level, to $4.8 million, if cut and sold by the gram at the retail levelRelated Stories
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At his trial, Dhatt admitted he had cocaine in his vehicle when he tried to cross the border from the United States into Canada but claimed he was smuggling the cocaine under threat.
He said a man he knew proposed smuggling for a $10,000 payout. When he declined the man said he had already told suppliers in the U.S. that he would do it — and they were “angry” and “dangerous.”
Dhatt said he was told to drive to a specific truck stop in California after he picked up his oranges and park his truck. As he waited in his truck, he said, he saw two men go into his trailer. When they left, he was told to buy a new seal at the truck stop and place it on his trailer, which he did.Article content
He drove on but when it was starting to get dark, he pulled into another highway truck stop and opened his trailer, found the wrapped bricks, and took one into his truck cab.
He bought a razor blade and duct tape, cut one open, sniffed a line of the packed white powder, and taped the brick back up.
He later told court he believed he was coming clean at the border and offering to work with agents to arrest the “bad guys.” He said he was waiting to speak with an investigator to make a plan to bust the smugglers. He never got that far. He was arrested and taken to a holding cell.
Prosecutors attacked his testimony, saying he was doing it for quick money. Court was shown text messages from Dhatt to his wife saying she would have a new car in a week.
While Dhatt’s unusual talking at the border played a part in dooming his venture, it was not a confession or turning himself in, prosecutors said, because he declared he wasn’t smuggling drugs but could help officials in the future find someone who was.
The judge rejected his defence of duress, saying the evidence proved he had accepted the cocaine, driven it on his own for several days, and had even opened, inspected, and ingested some of it on his trip.Article content
He knowingly arrived at the border crossing and had ample opportunity to contact police ahead of time. Instead, he seemed to get “cold feet” at the border and try to deflect onto someone else.
Dhatt was convicted in 2020 of importing cocaine into Canada, possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, and then sentenced to 10 years, less his time in custody awaiting trial.
The trial judge considered as mitigating factors that he was a first-time offender who faced likely deportation to India when released from prison. Aggravating factors included the use of a commercial vehicle, driving under the influence of cocaine, and the large quantity and high quality of the drugs.
Dhatt appealed his conviction and his sentence, this time representing himself in court.
He argued the trial judge was wrong to dismiss his defence of duress and claimed he couldn’t be convicted of smuggling because the cocaine was seized by border agents before he was admitted into Canada.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario denied his pleas on Tuesday.
A panel of three judges rejected the idea he acted under duress and that someone caught at a border checkpoint with drugs had not smuggled them into the country.
“There is no sense in which he did not bring, or cause the cocaine to be brought, into Canada. This was not a case where there can be any controversy over whether the appellant was involved in the physical element of the offence,” Benjamin Zarnett wrote on behalf of the court.
The judges rejected his appeal of both his conviction and his sentence.
Directives to military chaplains urge expunging God, religion from Remembrance Day, public ceremonies
[Plain and simple,, they hate us. Our Globalist Ottawa elite cannot replace the traditions of the European founding/settler, mostly Christian people fast enough. The Canadian military may have fewer than a dozen serviceable tanks, jet fighters are a generation out of date, the second hand submarines spend more time being repaired than at sea, and moral and recruitment are in the dumps, but, by God(if that’s not too politically incorrect, the Canadian Armed Forces are “diverse and inclusive,” and won’t tolerate any of that God stuff from pastors!
New directives for military chaplains that tell them to be “respectful of … spiritual diversity” during public addresses, to employ “Gender Based Analysis” and replace religious symbols like crosses and stars of David with a generic chaplain’s crest could spell the death of the role in Canada’s Armed Forces, says one long-serving veteran of the chaplaincy.
“It’s a further trek down the road of trying to eliminate religion altogether in the military,” said Father Timothy Nelligan, who served over 35 years as a Canadian Armed Forces member, two decades of those as a Roman Catholic chaplain.Article content
The director of chaplaincy services for the Royal Canadian Chaplaincy Service has also said it would mean that any mentions of God and religious language should be left out of any public ceremonies at Remembrance Day.
The directive urges chaplains to ‘adopt a sensitive and inclusive approach’ during public addressess. … Fr.
Nelligan said he thinks it is all leading towards eventually eliminating the role of the chaplain in the Canadian military.
“If that continues, all we’ll be doing is glorifying the secular,” he said. “In an effort to be inclusive, all the government is doing is being markedly exclusive.” — Paul Fromm, Director.]
New directives for military chaplains that tell them to be “respectful of … spiritual diversity” during public addresses, to employ “Gender Based Analysis” and replace religious symbols like crosses and stars of David with a generic chaplain’s crest could spell the death of the role in Canada’s Armed Forces, says one long-serving veteran of the chaplaincy.Article content
“It’s a further trek down the road of trying to eliminate religion altogether in the military,” said Father Timothy Nelligan, who served over 35 years as a Canadian Armed Forces member, two decades of those as a Roman Catholic chaplain.Article content
The director of chaplaincy services for the Royal Canadian Chaplaincy Service has also said it would mean that any mentions of God and religious language should be left out of any public ceremonies at Remembrance Day.
“Because it came from the Chaplain General’s office, the thing that hurt me the most was to hear someone, supposedly a person of faith, supporting the removal,” said Nelligan, who served providing spiritual support for Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Now retired from the military, he is pastor at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Ottawa and a priest of the Military Ordinariate of Canada.
The directive, issued earlier this month by Canada’s Office of the Chaplain General, urges Canada’s military chaplains to “adopt a sensitive and inclusive approach” during public addresses.
The Department of National Defence said in a statement to National Post that the directives should be viewed as “expanding participation in the reflections of military chaplains,” as opposed to limiting them.Article content
“We deeply value the work of military chaplains to support CAF members — and we’ll continue to build a diverse, inclusive military that attracts and retains talented people,” the statement read. “Our commitment to diversity, inclusion and the betterment of our chaplaincy program remains steadfast as we strive to create a more inclusive and respectful environment with the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces.”Related Stories
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The new directive bases much of its policy as a reaction to a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada decision concerning a Quebec city council’s habit of reciting prayers and crossing themselves before council meetings, which found that government could not “promote the participation of certain believers or non-believers in public life to the detriment of others.”
A section in the new directive entitled “Public Addresses” urges chaplains to be “inclusive” and “respectful of… religious and spiritual diversity” during public reflections.Article content
“They should employ a language mindful of the Gender Based Analysis (GBA+) principles, incorporate elements in both official languages, and include the use of local languages when appropriate,” the directive read.
The directive also does away with the traditional military chaplain stoles, replacing individual symbols of faith with a generic chaplain’s crest.
“Chaplains must consider the potential that some items or symbols may cause discomfort or traumatic feelings when choosing the dress they wear during public occasions,” the directive reads.
It also asks chaplains to cease requesting removal of hats and head coverings, as “reflections” are not considered religious ceremonies.
The new directive comes after last year’s report from the defence minister’s systemic racism and discrimination advisory panel that recommended Canada cease hiring chaplains from faiths with more traditional beliefs and recommended sweeping changes for the CAF chaplaincy program.
Religion, the report states, should be considered a “source of suffering and generational trauma” for some Canadians.Article content
“This is especially true for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirited members of Canadian society,” the report read in its sixth recommendation, entitled “re-defining chaplaincy.”
Many Canadian military chaplains, the report states, “represent or are affiliated with organized religions whose beliefs are not synonymous with those of a diverse and inclusive workplace.”
Top in the report’s recommendations was avoiding hiring chaplains affiliated with “religious groups whose values are not aligned with those of the defence team.”
In response to a report last week in the Epoch Times that the new directive would ban chaplains from leading public prayers at Remembrance Day ceremonies next month, Defence Minister Bill Blair denied the accusation.
“Canadian Forces chaplains are not — and will not be — banned from prayer on Remembrance Day, nor at any other time,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter. “The Chaplain General’s directive seeks to ensure that public addresses reflect the spiritual and religious diversity of Canadians.”
The director of chaplaincy services for the Royal Canadian Chaplaincy Service has said however that in public ceremonies the directive urges that there should be no mention of God or religion. Article content
“In certain settings, in faith-based settings and church settings, they (chaplains) of course will speak about their own faith and the role that God or their heavenly being has in that setting,” Col. Lisa Pacarynuk told radio host Graham Richardson at Ottawa’s CFRA.
“But in a public setting where there are people who do not believe in God or people who bring different perspectives, they will not use that language.”
During Tuesday’s House Veterans Affairs Committee meeting, committee vice-chair Blake Richards tabled a motion calling for an investigation into what the Conservative party described as a “gag order” for chaplains.
“As a result of the directive I referenced in the motion, (chaplains) won’t be able to pray for the fallen or pray for those who’ve served this country at public ceremonies such as Remembrance Day,” Richards said.
“It may restrict our ability to hear the words to In Flanders Fields because it references crosses. It may restrict our ability to sing the national anthem, because it references God. It may restrict our ability to have hymns such as Amazing Grace, which are often sung at remembrance services.”Article content
Replies to a request for comment to the Department of National Defence consisted of a verbatim repeat of Blair’s Tweet, with an explanation that the directives should be viewed as “expanding participation in the reflections of military chaplains,” not limiting them.
“We deeply value the work of military chaplains to support CAF members – and we’ll continue to build a diverse, inclusive military that attracts and retains talented people,” the statement read.
A statement from the Royal Canadian Legion said prayer will remain an important part of Remembrance Day ceremonies, including this year’s observances at the National War Memorial.
“While military chaplains are required to modify their language, that decision does not eliminate the inclusion of prayer to God or a higher power by other spiritual representatives at Legion ceremonies,” read the statement.
Nelligan said he thinks it is all leading towards eventually eliminating the role of the chaplain in the Canadian military.
“If that continues, all we’ll be doing is glorifying the secular,” he said. “In an effort to be inclusive, all the government is doing is being markedly exclusive.”
National Post