Critical Perspectives and Reflections

Bill Lee December 30, 2020 A little while before Christmas, Erin O’Toole the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, had taken to peddling the old colonial lie that Residential Schools were created with some sort of benevolent intent. Press Progress (2020) reported that, at an event at Ryerson University in Toronto, O’Toole suggested that John A and his gang, and the governments that followed, simply wanted to make it possible for those little “savages” to be able to fit into the enlightened society of the properly “civilized” European interlopers. Good Grief! This is disheartening, though perhaps less than surprising. This vile mendacity has been “accepted wisdom” in this country until very recently. Nevertheless, the absurd lie that good intentions were at the root of the residential school project (which lasted for generations) continues to be trotted out by various people. The idea of presenting the residential school project, one of the founding acts of this country, as anythi...

December 15, 2020 BILL LEE ... the people screaming outside Benson’s house raise an entirely different question, about how long our society can endure absent any overlapping values or common truths. - Michelle Goldberg (2020) The USA, a country to which I have many and varied positive connections, including family, seems to be tumbling further and further down a dystopian rabbit hole of chaos and violence. The era of Trump appears to have let loose some sort of national derangement. Of course, the USA has had some deep fissures and “sins” since its founding. They have indeed caused deep anger, frustration and pain. But this is different. George Froehlich (FB, Dec. 11, 2020) was moved to remark that, Donald Trump has ripped open that soft underbelly for the world to see, the cesspool of systemic racism, inequality, the super rich and the super poor, and politicians who are totally corrupt. What has not simply been exposed but activated is a very dangerous farrago of deep working-class a...