UPDATED: A Breath Of Fresh Air

Newly-elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez articulates the kind of values that progressives pine for in their political leaders. Given the gladiatorial nature of American politics, the chances of her vision coming to fruition are probably slight; however, just getting her ideas out there in the public arena is an accomplishment, one sure to spark a great deal of heated discussion in many quarters.

While the following video is about 14 minutes in length, even watching just a few minutes will give you a measure of the woman:



You can read more about her, and see additional video, here.

UPDATE: Predictably, the perpetually aggrieved and threatened and outraged rabid right has already launched a full frontal assault on Ocasion-Cortez.

Things We Would Like To Forget

One of the benefits of receiving the print edition of the Toronto Star seven days a week is the Sunday edition. While not necessarily replete with news, the Sunday paper frequently embraces the opportunity to explore issues in depth. Today, Mitch Potter looks at an aspect of Canada's bigoted past, something, I suspect, we would all like to forget.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide a link, as it is not on the Star website, but here are some excerpts:

Let’s start with the seemingly benign but in fact casually racist phrase “Restricted Clientele” — a phrase that appears in a wide range of old advertisements for jobs, apartments and resorts in and around Toronto.

It wasn’t just Toronto advertisers that employed the words. “Restricted Clientele” can be found in old newspaper ads from Vermont to Miami. Unpack the phrase and it bleeds blatant anti-Semitism and white supremacy.

A few examples: a mid-’30s ad for the now-defunct Beaumaris Hotel and Yacht Club in Muskoka offering sumptuous accommodation and “cuisine par excellent” with the glaring caveat, “Restricted Clientele.” Nearer to home, a 1935 classified ad for “attractive, newly decorated rooms with screened verandas” on Centre Island in Toronto Harbour, “Restricted Clientele.”

A cluster of ads for ski resorts in the Laurentian Mountains entices Torontonians to make the journey “90 miles north of Montreal” to sample the best runs this side of the Rockies. A majority of those ads include the phrase “Restricted Clientele” but one in particular, a1941 ad for Mont Tremblant Lodge, juxtaposes that small-type condition beneath a much larger banner message proclaiming, “Skiing For All.” What they are really saying is “Skiing for all white people, excluding Jews.”

Of course, "restrictive clientele" is a euphemism, a phrase that sounds innocent but obscures an ugly truth. Oftentimes, such niceties were disposed of entirely, and the prejudice was quite blatant:

... far more direct — is the phrase “Gentiles Only,” which recurs in Star classified ads throughout the first third of the 20th century. Here’s a typical example from the mid’30s: “A fast-growing factory has a good opportunity for two neat, quiet women to fill good permanent positions. Gentiles only.”

Or how about this one?

... the Toronto-based Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society that was among the first to offer not just friendship but to extend insurance benefits to average working families... in 1937 — Foresters launched a series of ads championing the organization ... All seven of the ads include these three toxic words: “White race only.”

Uncomfortably, racist exclusions were relatively common in the last century, and they extended into home ownership. In 1944, a Toronto labour group, The Workers’ Education Association (WEA)

announced it had developed plans for “ideal workingman’s home.”...The price: just $4,700.

But there was a catch:

... when WEA officials purchased the property, they discovered an unwelcome surprise on the deed: a so-called “restrictive covenant” preventing the land from being sold to “Jews or persons of objectionable nationality.”

While such covenants on new developments were ultimately struck down, old ones were allowed to remain. Consider the section of Hamilton, Ontario known as Westdale:

Westdale was envisioned as an exclusive white Protestant neighbourhood. Specific groups such as blacks, Asians, Slavs, and Jews were unable to purchase homes; near the end of the Second World War restrictions upon Jewish home ownership were lifted whereupon many relocated from the central part of the city. However, legal loopholes allowed for discrimination to persist into the 1950s.

The lessons of history are often ignored. However, with bigotry increasingly rearing its ugly head worldwide, now would be a good time to make an effort to remember our recent past, lest we make the same mistakes again.

What Fools These Mortals Be!

We humans are a strange species. Despite access to almost unlimited information and data, far too many prefer to notice only what is front of them at the present moment, simply reacting rather than anticipating and planning. Probably the best illustration of this is the fact that the majority of countries, and this certainly includes Canada, wring their hands when disaster strikes and pay the upfront costs of many billions of dollars instead of putting that money to better use: mitigating climate change and adapting to it. Interestingly, at least in Canada, that shortsightedness breaks down somewhat along gender lines, as you will see shortly.

If you have five minutes to spare, three stories, beginning at the four-minute mark, amply illustrate the above:

A Note of Thanks To A Very Important Group

I am currently reading a book by Seymour Hersh called Reporter. If you are unfamiliar with him, click on the link I have attached to his name, and you will see what a long and distinguished career he has had as an investigative reporter who first notified the world of the My Lai Massacre, one of the mos egregious war crimes committed by the United States during the Vietnam War.

Although I have read only about 100 pages thus far, the book serves as a reminder of the very hard work, determination and integrity that are the foundations of true journalism. I highly recommend the book.

Since this is the end of the year, may I also suggest that you read this Star editorial, which begins as follows:

When U.S. President Donald Trump, the purported leader of the free world, calls members of the media “enemies of the people” and refers to anything critical of him as “fake news,” it’s clear that freedom of the press, one of the pillars of democracy, is imperilled.

And so are the lives of too many journalists.

Indeed, Reporters Without Borders says 63 professional journalists were killed around the world in 2018 as a result of doing their jobs, a 15 per cent increase over the previous year. It blamed their deaths on “the hatred of journalists that is voiced, and sometimes very openly proclaimed, by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen.”

The editorial then goes on to list the names of those killed this year, It is a sobering read.

Also in today's Star is a piece by the public editor, Kathy English, well worth perusal. Entitled What readers should know about journalism, it should be especially instructive to those who disdain contemporary journalism as "fake news" or adamantly refuse to pay for one of the true pillars of democracy.

I will leave you with an excerpt of a recent piece by Paul Berton, the Hamilton Spectator's editor-in-chief, in which he enumerates some of the reasons people should subscribe to a newspaper, reasons that should resonate with all of us:

1. A newspaper subscription, whether it's for print or digital editions, helps keep you informed.

2. It allows you to better understand the world around you.

3. It helps you live your life productively by giving you a glimpse of opportunities and new ideas.

4. It keeps you safer by reminding you of risks or pointing out new threats.

5. A newspaper — digital or print — is more reliable than an increasing number of other popular news and information platforms today. Reliable information is increasingly lost in the new wave of misinformation and disinformation.

6. Once you start reading the news regularly, it's a joy you'll look forward to and a habit that's hard to break.

7. It is said children who grow up in households where a newspaper is delivered are more likely to attend post-secondary education.

8. Journalism helps shape public policy, by telling you stuff governments often don't bother to, or indeed try to hide.

9. Journalists hold public officials to account.

10. Newspapers connect communities.

11. Newspapers tell us about each other.

12. Journalism helps us help each other, by sharing stories that spur action or charity.

13. Newspapers put the world in perspective, describing people who aren't as lucky as we are, whether they are sick neighbours or homeless people downtown, or refugees in far-off places such as Syria or Myanmar.

14. Journalism takes you places you've never been and places you may never go, whether these places are just down the road in an off-limits building, or in a remote valley in the Himalayas or a city in North Korea.

15. Newspapers tell us how we can aspire to something greater, by showing us what is possible, what can be done, who can do it, and how.

16. Journalists ask questions many are afraid to ask. They demand answers from people who are often reluctant to provide them.

17. Journalists tell us they've at least asked questions we are all curious about, even if answers are not forthcoming or available.

18. Responsible newspapers, and good journalists, believe in a balance of views and equal time for all reasonable viewpoints. We may not agree with all of it, but we try to reflect all views.

19. Good newspapers decry increasing polarization in society and try to promote healthy debate.

20. Journalists make the world a better place, despite increasing utterances to the contrary.

Happy New Year, everyone, and here is to a better informed, more critical-thinking 2019 populace.

Think Again, Canada

I sometimes feel that many Canadians are complacent about climate change, assuming that we will somehow be protected from the worst of its effects. As this CTV 2018 weather review amply illustrates, such thinking is unforgivably naive:

Calling The Rewrite Department

Also, a new cameraman, ideology and leader might not be a bad idea for the Conservative Party of Canada:

The Climate Year In Review

Go ahead. Tell me that climate change is an unproven theory.



Meanwhile, if you live here in Ontario, 2019 will likely prove at least as depressing as the second part of 2018 has been:

In the midst of this season of giving, a precious treasure is being taken from Ontarians; the hard-won tools that protect our environment are being stolen in broad daylight by a provincial government that claims the need to do this to fight “red tape” and make Ontario “Open for Business.”

It has taken Ontario’s current provincial government remarkably little time to sweep away an array of laws and policies that are crucial to the protection of Ontario’s natural environment and farmland. It took decades of discussion by previous Ontario governments, academics and other experts for these environmental safeguards to be finally put into place.

The heart and soul of the Environmental Bill of Rights Act is the oversight provided by the creation of an independent environmental commissioner. A bill to cut “red tape” strips the commissioner of many of her powers and much of her independence.

Similarly, the Greenbelt Protection Act, intended to give permanent protection to this area, became law in 2004 after decades of studies, planning and debate. The act was intended to give permanent protection to an ecosystem of forests, streams and farmland surrounding the Golden Horseshoe. Less than six months after their election, the Ford government has introduced legislation that opens the door to development within the Greenbelt.

It has also taken decades for governments, including Ontario’s, to accept that harmful climate change is real and to take action to slow its acceleration. Ontario’s cap-and-trade program was introduced less than two years ago by the former Liberal government.

By July of this year, the Ford government had repealed those regulations and quickly replaced them with a scheme which the environment commissioner considers only a fraction as effective as the one it replaced.

If this were a movie, it would be called How Doug Ford Stole Christmas.

The effects of the Grinch’s theft of Christmas presents were at least limited to inhabitants of the small village of Whoville. The same cannot be said of Doug Ford’s theft of some of our most precious gifts of a clean and healthy environment. The harm will be felt throughout Ontario by both present and future generations. Nor is there any evidence that the eventual redemption of Dr. Seuss’ Grinch will be replicated by Ontario’s Grinch. This movie is not likely to have a happy ending.

John Swaigen, Toronto