Critical Perspectives and Reflections

  Ontario must have vaccine passports, the time is NOW! Gee, go figure, BC announces COVID passports, vaccinations go up 200%. What happened to “We don’t know the long term impacts, hundreds of thousands, millions, billions, gazillions have had adverse side effects, blood clots, grown two heads, died and had their penises fall off?” It’s ok my ultra-right wing FB friends (by in large anti-vaxxers), trust me, the needle doesn’t hurt. I truly hate the things, having “blood work” terrifies me, my veins are hard to find. I’ve had open heart surgery and all kinds of other surgeries. Had to walk around with an anti-biotic/pain drip for a week after a motorcycle accident. After heart surgery, I had to have at home blood work for 6 weeks. I have well over 30 vaccinations in my Health Canada Vax Reg book. Being a soldier for forty-one years will do that. I just hate them, no I loathe them, I have a bit of a phobia, I could sure live without them. Ahh but I can’t can I? Not these days. So, ...

  Recently, people around the world celebrated the anniversary of the birth of a truly outstanding human being. Saint Oscar Romero was born on August 16, 1917, in El Salvador. (Jesuits of Canada and the United States. Face Book post, 2021) Bishop Oscar Romero was one of the most inspiring men in modern history. Though born and raised in privilege he grew into a “man of the people” committed to their liberation and dignity. He demonstrated amazing commitment and bravery. He demonstrated to us how to think deeply about the way we have to, and can be, open to the need for progressive, liberating change, even against the most implacable and vicious forces of evil, greed and repression. Through his life, mission and martyrdom, he called on us all, and still calls on us, to work to understand how there can be no genuine moral polity without justice, compassion and courage. For Romero there could be no “neutrality” where social justice was concerned. He exemplified what it means to really...

The selfish, self-serving, COVID anti-vaxxers continue to peddle their falsehoods and create dangerous memes, the latest of which talks about how evil the idea of a COVID passport is and how it would create a world of “us and them”, and “my rights” and other such malarkey. They speak of rights. Excuse me, as if we, the rest of the vaxxed public don’t have any. Surely there is a technological means of creating a compassionate and efficient way of indicating who is and who is not vaccinated. While I’m not a computer chap I can’t believe there is not a program that could pull the correct info/image off of health cards. The truth is, a COVID registration card/passport would be rather easy to produce. In Ontario every person vaccinated is electronically recorded, batch #, type of vaccine, location(s) administered, name, DOB, healthcare # etc. I presume this is the case for every province and territory. All the info, including a photo, is already captured. A tamper-proof security card will b...

Power is one of the most important elements of life. Many people have written on the importance of power, Lord Acton1, (Lord Acton Quote Archive) is probably the most famous example but Saul Alinsky (1971) and Krupali, (2020) among others also discussed its importance. My own definition of power is a simple one, “The degree to which we are able to act to influence our environment, - to get things done, or make things happen; or to keep things from getting done, or happening.” (Lee, 2011) Today, we live in an age where bromides about power seem to abound. Power is seen as a bad or corrupting force and to be avoided (Shea, 2012) for example. Or, power is a good thing, and within us all, as Hay (1991) suggests. A corollary of that is that we do not, and cannot, be powerful if we do not believe we are powerful and thus, to be powerful (in a good way), requires that we believe that we have power and the agency to achieve what needs achieving. There is a quote by Alice Walker (2004) that fit...

I’m afraid history has shown time and time again the “organized” religion is far more harmful than helpful. There can NEVER BE PEACE with RELIGIONS!!!!! - Facebook posts There is a bit of rhetoric that has been slagging away at professed Christians and suggesting that they are possessed by a particular proclivity for violence, and often hypocrisy. One such piece, easily found on the web, is supposedly articulated by the great Indigenous statesman, Tecumseh that goes: When Jesus Christ came upon the Earth, you killed Him. The son of your own God. And only after He was dead did you worship Him and start killing those who would not. It is a very popular quote, and there is no denying the latter section. It is often seen on Facebook or in letters to the editor. It is typically used when a person wants to have a go at the, pretty often well-known, hypocrisy of a goodly number of Christians, (e.g., the fundamentalist gangs that are so keen on the obviously immoral D.J. Trump, the Roman Catho...

  Listening to CBC Morning Live's and the National's  reporting on Haiti and the assassination of Moise's assassination. It made me nauseous. I had to scribble an e-mail to a former j-school classmate, now a CBC reporter, Evan Dyer. I copied head of CBC news and the ombudsman. If you find it useful feel free to share it and amplify accordingly: Hello Evan, I am writing to express my deep concern about CBC's reporting on Haiti in general and yours specifically re Moise's assassination. Your reporting is entirely void of context and historical background that would bring some understanding for Canadians. If CBC News programs were the only source Canadians resorted to on Haiti, the public broadcaster certainly would be remiss by severely damaging the public's right to know. From the archives, historically Canada has been implicated in Duvalierist corruption: "The planning meeting for the coup d'etat and putting Haiti under trusteeship was organized by Cana...

We ha ve made it past Canada Day with the existential angst about the calls for and against the cancelation of celebrations. Whatever people did, or didn’t do, to acknowledge the competing desires for the “holiday” however, we need to come to grips with the meaning of the term genocide. I keep stumbling over posts, or letters to editors, complaining of its use because there was no huge slaughter of Indigenous people (though we don’t really know yet the total numbers of the lives lost to neglect and abuse in residential “schools”. And we often fail to take into account the numbers who died thanks to the hunger/starvation due to John A. MacDonald’s policy of “clearing the plains”). Because of the way we have been taught our history, up until recently, we tend to believe that genocide must involve the outright killing of a people; like the herding of six million European Jews, as well as Gays and Roma, into gas chambers in Nazi Germany; or the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turkis...

“The article below is the fourth in a series of four reflections on the residential school issue in Canada that will be published every day in the following week in Critical Perspectives and Reflections.  The discovery of the 215 bodies of Indigenous children in unmarked graves signaled the beginning of what many of us hope will be a genuine awakening in this country of the long standing colonial wound that has been festering since even before Confederation. The first article, by Wayne Johnston is a plea for us to Wake Up! to the profound seriousness of the issue? The second, by Darryl Newbury focuses on the need for education in our history. The third, by Bill Lee, considers the issue of the responsibilities of the Church and the State to right the wrongs. The fourth is a compilation of nine Indigenous voices with their individual reactions to the specific news of the 215.”  * * * THE CONTEXT OF THE PROJECT The words below, that are shared here, came about after an...

  “The article below is the third in a series of four reflections on the residential school issue in Canada that will be published every day in the following week in Critical Perspectives and Reflections. The discovery of the 215 bodies of Indigenous children in unmarked graves signaled the beginning of what many of us hope will be a genuine awakening in this country of the long standing colonial wound that has been festering since even before Confederation. The first article, by Wayne Johnston is a plea for us to Wake Up! to the profound seriousness of the issue? The second, by Darryl Newbury focuses on the need for education in our history. The third, by Bill Lee, considers the issue of the responsibilities of the Church and the State to right the wrongs. The fourth is a compilation of ten Indigenous voices with their individual reactions to the specific news of the 215.” * * * If Canada cares, we’ll lower our flags. We’ll have a national week of mourning. We’ll stop fi...